Hi there. I just started this blog as a dedication to my matron deity, Rán, the Norse goddess of death and the ocean. Here I will post everything I can find about her (informational articles, songs, artwork, whatever else), as well as things that she is said to like (gold, greener shades of blue), and things that I personally correlate with her (deep sea creatures, deep ocean habitats generally, cephalopods, dark mermaids). Generally, this will serve as a blog for those of you sea witches into the darker side of the ocean.
As the last flickers of life fade
She sinks into the depths.
The great journeys of her life remain etched into her skin
Until the sharks tear it away, erasing the record of where she’s been
The life bleeding out as she sinks, but she is not alone
In her final journey to nourish the starving depths of the unknown.
As her corpse settles on the seafloor
She begins to be stripped away.
The hagfish follow the scent leaching out into the frigid ocean
In search of the promise of life for their world of slow motion
They burrow into her body to tear flesh away from bone
Relishing in the muscle memories of warmth that she has known.
As the deep sea cleans off her bones
She exists to be picked clean.
Squat lobsters make their homes in the shelter of her system
Chiseling away the scraps of blubber that held her wisdom
Working around the boneworms whose roots siphon the marrow
And free the stories of her ancestors from her deep-sea barrow.
As the abysses exhaust her flesh
She continues to sustain life.
The deeps worship her skeleton; great sustenance falling from the light
None of which is ever wasted, for the abysses are sympathetic to her plight
Bacteria extract the lipids from her bones so they may enrich
The sediments around her grave, creating an oasis in a ditch.
As the deep sea strips away everything
She still has more to give.
Even hundreds of years after her death and decay
After the deep sea has consumed the stories her body could convey
In a seemingly empty world of muddy plains
Anemones and corals cling to her mineralized remains.
People are always talking about the “divine feminine” like it’s a beautiful and gentle force fueled by menstrual cycles or whatever when in a lot of world mythologies the female deities are just as violent as the male ones.
Get ya a girl who can do both. Violent bloodthirsty force of nature who is also endlessly compassionate. Will just as easy cut a bitch as bandage your wounds and tell you which herbs to use to heal.
Anyone who thinks the "Divine Feminine" is universally nurturing and that the masculine isn't, clearly aren't religious studies nerds and haven't met Hekate, or Kali, or Inanna, or The Morrigan. Or Melinoë.
Mermay 2025 🪸🌊 Mikkian Eo would be a great anemone ✨ I think it was gorgeous @feral-ferrule who gave me that picture, so thank you for inspiring me! 🫶
I indulged 5- and a half hours of meditative painting 🫠 One rough sketch, no refs, only one brush (named Oberon from the basic brush kit of Procreate, my favorite for coloring) and I just let it grow like the corals and sea grass on the reef do 🥰 I‘m a little sea creature myself, so I feel this very much 🩵 I hope you like it!
Have some close ups:
I love the chalky structure my fav brush makes 🫠 And I love Neptune grass (Posidonia oceania). Every picture or video of it waving in the water makes me breathe deeper ✨ Did you know it’s protected species?
Monet is one of my favorite artists by the way (Yeeess cliché, but the atmospheres he created *happy sigh*) I thought of his work while doing the corals ☺️ Ou! And I also love everything about Atlantis 🩵✨ Sunken statues and all the topics and lessons that come with that whole philosophy, legend and mystery 🥰
I could never ever be finished tinkering at the details of a face when it comes to a bigger brush 🙈 It’s like polishing a stone but with the difference, that I hunt for a perfection, that I not even want to achieve. I only want to do better and then – in the middle of imperfection – there is that moment where I look at it and know „This is it. It‘s fine now.“ Not perfect, but if I would continue, it would not get better, but worse instead 😂
For feeling completely blocked at the moment a painting is maybe just else. Drawing is lines, but painting is just color and I can layer all the imperfection, insecurities and struggles in form of colored brush strokes layer over layer until the whole picture builds itself – to look at it and go like „Hey, I made a thing. And it’s a good thing.“ ☺️
