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The Arachne story drives me crazy because it's one of the reasons that people say they hate Athena without knowing anything about her. But the story they know was told by exactly ONE GUY, and that was a Roman author using the stories to express political opinions.

The other story that people use to hate on Athena is the Medusa story, which - guess what - comes from the SAME GUY. IT'S JUST ONE GUY.

#athena #ovid's metamorphoses

I've just finished reading this article, "A New Web for Arachne" by Sarah Iles Johnston, that talks about the story of Arachne and Phalanx. That's not Ovid's version, where Arachne challenges Athena to a weaving contest, but an earlier Greek version. In it, Arachne and her brother Phalanx are turned into spiders as punishment for their incestuous relationship.

This story can be traced back to the physical characteristics of spiders themselves. For example, some spiders' venom can cause priapism, which lead to an association between spiders and lust. Also, ancient writers described spiders as killing and eating their parents, which was a crime linked in their mind to incest.

On top of that, there are ways to connect spiders to Athena's attributes. The most obvious connection is to weaving, which is what Ovid focused on; the article goes into more detail on the importance of weaving to society and how it connected to the Panathenaia. But also in this story, Athena was said to be teaching Phalanx how to fight. In fact, a phalangion is a venomous spider, where a phalanx is a military unit.

So, in this story, it's not that they're punished for challenging the gods, as in Ovid. He was writing from a political perspective, anyway. In this older version, Athena is raising Arachne and Phalanx into proper adults. Their inappropriate sexual activity invalidates that, and that's why they're punished.

#athena #arachne #greek myths

themonstrousother-moved

The Twisted Mirror in The Green Room: Abjection in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Enikő Kovács

#shirley jackson #the haunting of hill house #books

“Writing has never been capitalism's thing. Capitalism is profoundly illiterate.”--Deleuze and Guattari Capitalism may produce endless images, but as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, it is structurally illiterate. Hostile to critical language and resistant to memory, capitalism is allergic to any utterance that does not serve accumulation. It replaces narrative with spectacle, discourse with repetition, and historical consciousness with market cycles. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Intoxicated,” published in 1949, we encounter a brief yet clear disruption of that illiteracy. A seventeen-year-old girl named Eileen articulates, with stoic calm, the end of a world built on these illusions. Her voice cuts through the ideological fog of postwar domesticity and consumer optimism, unsettling a middle-aged man who is both literally and symbolically intoxicated. What begins as a casual kitchen conversation becomes a confrontation between competing temporalities, languages, and political positions: one aligned with the inertia of the spectacle, the other with its possible collapse.

from “The weigh[t] like a nightmare in the brains of the living”: Postmodernism, the Spectacle and Radical Adolescence in Shirley Jackson’s “The Intoxicated” by Ana Ibáñez Cirauqui

I'm back on my Shirley Jackson bullshit. I've read most of the stories in the collection The Lottery, but I've never read it all the way through, so I'm finally getting around to it. The first story in the collection is "The Intoxicated," which is basically about a teenage girl scaring the shit out of a grown man at her parents' party.

It was written in 1949, but it feels so relevant. The story is about the same generational divide we see today, where it's mostly the young people who are seriously concerned about the future while older generations tend toward complacency. There's a line where the girl, Eileen, tells the man that, if his generation had been thinking seriously about the world, maybe they would be in less trouble. It just feels like the same kinds of conversations that are going on today.

#shirley jackson #literature #writing

I've been looking for a way to connect the goes of ancient Greece to the goetia most people involved in occultism think of (the Ars Goetia/Lesser Key of Solomon). I know Jake Stratton-Kent has written on this, but I find that his work didn't do much to elaborate on the musical and funerary origins of goos/goes. Goos/goes comes from a word meaning wailing or weeping, so the connection should be self-evident, but I never see anyone talking about it.

The best book I've found on the subject is Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature by Gail Holst-Warhaft. She traces the history of the funeral lament from ancient to modern times, spending a lot of time exploring the suppression of the lament. After the war with Persia, Greek government began to center its power in the polis rather than in powerful family groups. One way of doing this was passing laws to suppress funeral traditions that focused on family ties, replacing them with theater traditions that moved the emotional center to the polis.

That doesn't mean that lamentation disappeared; in fact, Holst-Warhaft describes the tradition as ongoing, for example in Mani. But lamentation was marginalized and otherized; its association with women meant that it had to be de-powered for the patriarchal polis.

That's because it was (is) powerful. Modern laments may call on the living to enact revenge for the sake of the dead one and their mourners; ancient laments called directly on the spirits of the dead. Holst-Warhaft writes:

“Goos is the magic incantation that can traverse the shadowy realm between. In this sense its magic is linked to that of Orpheus, charming his way by means of music to the underworld. Goos, goeteia, thelgein—lament, charm, to charm —words that seem distant in mood begin to converge. Nor is this something peculiar to Greece. In Egypt, where ‘lamentations’ were a major feature of religious ceremony, music was thought to have an influence on people through a power called heka’ or hike which was similar to a spell. Similarly the Latin cantus and carmen are, of course, related to ‘enchanting’ and ‘charm’. The word ‘tragedy’ itself—traghodia—is a compound which includes the word ‘song’, and has become the general term for song in modern Greek...the words of a lament are cries in themselves, pure expressions of feelings that defy articulation in the language of everyday speech or of literature...The goos stirs up, or troubles, the emotions of the living and the dead, drawing them out of their inertia.” (119-120)

The later goetia has an entirely different feel to it, relying on very specific instructions (like protective amulets made from virgin parchment, drawn on with a particular ink, written with a particular pen, all which have to be made/procured while reciting prayers or incantations). But the fundamental idea of summoning a spirit being to work your will is the same, even though the methods are entirely different.

An essay by Sarah Iles Johnston helps to elaborate on this a little. It's called "The Testament of Solomon from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance," collected in the book The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It's a pretty short article, but she explains that The Testament of Solomon (an obvious influence on the later Ars Goetia/Lesser Key of Solomon) "is a well mixed bricolage" (p. 39) of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian beliefs with parallels in the magical papyri. Johnston mentions that:

“The rituals that the papyri record are several centuries older than the papyrus texts themselves, and have probably evolved from far earlier ritual techniques for manipulating the souls of the dead.” (p. 42)

I know that a lot of the content of the later goetia (like the parchment/ink/pen requirements mentioned above) have equivalents in the PGM. But I don't know what the connection is between the PGM and traditions of lament. More research needed

#goetia #occultism #pgm #greek magical papyri #lamentation

meirimerens

on the topic of underrated female artists and this is horse i will die on and stay in the saddle as a corpse:

HILMA AF KLINT

(in order : Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece - Group X, No. 2, AltarpieceEvolutionen, Serie WUS/Sjustjärnan, Grupp VI, No. 16Group IX/SUW, The Swan (Svanen), No. 9The Evolution, No. 10)

ABSTRACT ART PIONEER. THEOSOPHIST. MEMBER OF AN ALL-WOMEN MEDIUMS & SPIRITUALISTS GROUP.

AGNES LAWRENCE PELTON

(in order: The Fountains ; Sea Change ; Winter ; Being)

ABSTRACT PAINTED. TRANSCENDENTALIST. PAINTED OF MEDITATIVE STILLNESS.

SOLANGE KNOPF

(in order: Cosmos n°3 ; Behind the Darkness ; Astral Odyssey ; The Protective Shields)

CONTEMPORARY SURREALIST. WORKS WITH BAUDELAIRE'S POETRY AND MUCH MORE. ARTIST OF GHOSTLY AND ONEIRIC LANDSCAPES.

autumncrowcus

Yes, and I would add:

DOROTHEA TANNING

Door 84; Portrait de Famille; Woman Artist, Nude, Standing

Surrealist artist with a lot more range than I'm showing here, but I'm biased

#dorothea tanning #hilma af klint #agnes pelton #solange knopf #art

nemfrog

Illustration from the article, “The grotesque.” Form, a quarterly of the arts. April 1916. Austin O. Spare (1886-1956), artist.

Heidelberg Universiy

#austin osman spare #baphomet

Dionysos SOS by Dorothea Tanning

Roland Hagenberg: In your imagery you constantly refer to Dionysus. Dorothea Tanning: We destroy our order in the hope of finding a better one. That's what the cult of Dionysus is about. Without results it would be senseless insanity. It's simply a revolt. RH: Do you consider yourself a religious person? DT: Not at all. But what do you mean by religion? Art is a religion and one of the things that make people do what they do is that everyone is afraid of the unknown, afraid and baffled by the unknown so everyone has to have something to believe in. A patriot will believe in the supremacy of the state, a monk on the mountain top will try to commune with the spirits, everyone has to adhere to something to quiet their fears so they can get up in the morning and go through the day. —from interview with Roland Hagenberg, "Dorothea Tanning," Art of Russia and the West, No. 1 (March 1989), p. 31.

#dionysus #dorothea tanning #surrealism #art

rebeccathenaturalist

Each human body contains a complex community of trillions of microorganisms that are important for your health while you're alive.

I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.

There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.

And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.

I've always wanted a green burial, and I find it comforting that when my remains are laid in the ground, they'll be accompanied by the tiny ecosystems I spent a lifetime tending, and who will return the favor by sending my molecules off in a billion new directions.

#nature

electricheart

a little reminder! by annalaura_art

crowcus-art

autumncrowcus

I started an art blog

The astrology apps are fighting

roadkill-pup

noctumsolis

top 5 bread

#1 has to be apple bread. It's very simple, just use pressed apple juice as the liquid component.

#2 is tea loaf, made with dried fruit after soaking overnight in strong black tea. Brilliant for toast.

#3 Jalapeno bread. I've never made it but get it from the bakery. Incredible flavour, doesn't need butter or anything.

#4 my recreation of Bapir. Makes the list mainly for spiritual reasons.

#5 basic brown. Not chorleywood brown crap out of a plastic bag, but the real thing. It's just such a good staple that it has to be here.

panecultus

@trans-pickles I wouldn't say "any" recipe, but a basic white/brown/wholemeal bread with yeast, yes.

The great thing is that the apple juice is slightly acidic, which yeast loves. You get a great rise. I'd also recommend butter for the shortening just because the flavour works well.

Now, if you were trying for a fortified bread, like brioche, I wouldn't recommend using any acidic liquid. It could complicate matters in a soda bread as well since it would increase the rate of the reaction.

But, yeah. For a basic, yeast leavened bread, just use pressed apple juice instead of water. You can use concentrate if you like but I don't think that's as nice.

#some great ideas here #BREAD!!

skaldish

Little bit of personal trivia, but fun fact: Despite the fact Loki is my patron, I actually don’t identify as a Lokean. At least, not anymore. I used to back when Loki was the central focus of my practice, but over the years I switched to using “Heathen.”

It’s taken me a long time to really understand why I don’t identify as a Lokean and a Heathen, or even as a “Lokean Heathen,” and now I think I really know why—It’s because my spirituality has always been centered around philosophies, not figures, and I don’t feel comfortable using terms that suggest the latter.

skaldish

Ngl this is also a big reason why I don’t use it. The word “Lokean” is extremely American. I’ve actually done a lot of research to figure out where it came from. While I still need my tracks to be verified fully, this is the history as I have it so far: In the 1970’s, Odinism arrived in the United States. This is a Nazi-derived Volkish brand of Heathenry, and it was the only form of Heathenry that was circulated in the United States until recently. In those early years, a lot of research was still going into building the religion of Ásatrú, and debates surfaced over what to do with Loki. Eventually, the Volkisch decided to use Loki and his progeny to represent everything they deemed antithetical and oppositional to the “Aryan” identity. However, spewing blatant Nazi rhetoric negatively impacts Volkisch recruitment, so in order to make their stances palatable, Volkish heathens disguise many of their arguments behind “Reconstructionism.” The Asatru stance on Loki is this: “Loki has no place-names in Scandinavia, which tells us he wasn’t worshiped as a god. Therefore, it’s neo-pagan revisionism to worship him now.” This is a very common argument, and it’s used to forbid people from hailing Loki at sumbel or including him in any typical service. This created a lot of discord within American Heathen organizations in the 90’s and 00’s, because—surprise!—they had members who worked with Loki. I’m not sure the specifics behind it, but the term “Lokean” seemed to rise out of this as a way to legitimize Loki-veneration—perhaps even to contrast the term “Odinist.” Lokean authors and bloggers started publishing material on Loki, both online and in print. Now the term ‘Lokean’ is used to describe “someone who venerates Loki,” and at times it can act as its own subdivision of Norse paganism. I wasn’t in the thick of all this madness, but I learned about it secondhand from those who were, and what they went through was pure religious abuse. They treat the term “Lokean” as their solid ground and their way of fighting against the Volkish demonization of their deity. But my background is very different. I’ve never experienced any of this marginalization for myself, nor have I had to answer to Volkisch heathens in any propensity. For this reason, I find it more legitimizing to simply call myself Heathen. Loki is a heathen god to all of Scandinavia, and I prioritize Scandinavia’s authority on Heathenry over anything the Volkisch Heathens have to say.* (I actually received a lot of backlash from Lokeans for this initially. They took this as a betrayal to their cause and erasure of the issues that persist in American Heathenry. There are a lot of other reasons why I don’t use the term ‘Lokean’ for myself, but ignoring the issue is not the reason why.) — *American Lokeans couldn’t do this back in the day because global communication wasn’t really a thing until now. You either had to fly to Europe (inaccessible for the average person), dig up a bunch of Norse history papers that could maybe perhaps give you some kind of clues about Heathen spirituality (also inaccessible to the average person), or learn from the people who were already doing these two things—Volkisch Heathens. If you were an American Heathen and wanted a community, you had to suck up to the Volkisch. So when it came to Loki contentions, people who worked with Loki were left with two choices: Leave, or self-advocate using literally any meager tool at their disposal. This seems to be the motivation behind the published works of Lokean writers, anyway.

gendertrickery

that’s excellent summary of american heathenry’s history, I knew most of it in general, but it clears out many details. I’m puting it in bookmarks to link this to people who ask me about this (I’m the only norse heathen in my circle of various-pagan-traditions-inklined friends, I get asked about things a lot).

skaldish

Glad it helps. I’m always down to explain to Europeans why American Heathenry is the way it is.

elizatungusnakur

Interesting. And then there’s people like me, an Italian-American with a Slavic surname living in Scotland, running a solely Lokean podcast. My introduction to the word “Lokean” came from a bunch of young queer people out in the Midwest of the United States. I think the term is just beginning to stick now, as it travels the world and Loki finally comes out his demonized shadows, for this reason and that.

I don’t currently identify as heathen, but as an eclectic pagan. Lokean is just one facet of who I am at this moment in time. That very well may change as I work through my own forms of religious trauma.

skaldish

*Nods* that makes sense. I’ve met a lot of Lokeans who are more eclectic and/or don’t like the baggage or implications that come with the word “heathen,” so I definitely see why the word has its uses and its appeal.

(…Also, now that I think about it, the implications behind the word “Lokean” may have also changed in the last 10 years or so. People coming into the community aren’t getting the same experience I had when I joined, and I think that’s for the better.

When I first entered the Lokean scene in 2017, everything was kind of a mess. Lokeans basically only bonded over one of two things: Godspousing, or the trauma they faced at the hands of the Volkisch. Trying to bond over either of those two things took a massive toll on my mental health and it one of those multiple reasons why I don’t self-describe with the word anymore.

You can imagine how excited I was to learn how Scandinavian Heathens see Loki.)

skaldish

I think the diversity is good too, and I apologize for coming off like I thought otherwise. If I sound sour—and I know I do—it’s not because I think the Lokean label is bad, but because my own personal experiences with using it weren’t good.

However, my experiences aren’t universal, and I’m glad people find connection with the word. It means they’re getting more out of it than what I got.

elizatungusnakur

Reblogging again for the additional useful responses. Thank you, pagan tumblr gang.

hildshall

Good conversation. As I have only very recently had an experience where Loki entered my life in a big way, this is helping me sort it all out for myself. Thanks y'all.

rokkr-witness

One of the great things about Heathenry is no central talking head on dogma. As such, as it grows and evolves, I think you’ll see a lot of differences in the groups and schools of Heathenry that speak to people.

I tend to identify in a number of different ways- Lokean Heathen, Rokkatru, Thursatru- but none of those schools are really all that accurate overall (Loki is my patron but the Ymir/Surtr dichotomy is the central figure in my practice). Heathen is what I use because that’s the root of my practice. Unless we’re having an in-depth discussion about specifics saying I’m a heathen a proper amount of information. I will say I never describe myself as Asatru, since the aesir aren’t part of my personal practice at all.

American Heathenry is its own beast with all its own issues-sorta like everything here in the states. And I think from a modern perspective it’s important to try and look to those more progressive countries that are the root of this practice to find a better way forward.

#norse heathenry #this is a very helpful explanation

thegodwhocums

nobody asked but I think my favorite statue of Dionysos is in Stockholm, it's by Erik Gustaf Göthe, and the only decent photos of it online are from 3D scans or reproductions but I am still in love