Manat's Grimoire @littleyoungsocrates - Tumblr Blog

Erosophia the Silence of Gaia

The last surviving voice of a lost age belongs to Manat, High Priestess of Magic. Her words are scripture, her story a chronicle, her legacy a curse, written from her prison. Hanging over the universe she sings the song of a forgotten age: gods born in violence, queens who raised nations from ash, and rebellions that burned brighter than their stars. In this retelling of the Gnostic myth of Sophia. In my version, she is not the victim of creation but its architect. I recast her as the Greek goddess Athena, who, with the aid of the Jewish deity Yahweh, travels back in time to create the universe as a labyrinth of thought. A living maze that bends the minds of gods and mortals toward her will, erasing their memories whenever they come too close to grasping what she truly is. The story is told through Manāt (the pre-Islamic goddess of fate). After a failed rebellion against a puppet government established by Athena, Hecate, and Nyx to rule over a planet [the Acorns]. Manāt speaks directly to the reader in a tone that reads like scripture. Through her voice, the novel becomes less a myth and more a mirror, asking: Who benefits from your identity? Who profits from your rage? Who taught you which enemy to hate? But Athena doesn’t realize that she, too, is trapped in the very cycle she created. In the end, Manāt's final revelation is: No one divine or mortal escapes the web of meaning they have spun.

The Symptom in Sharp Focus

I am the first born of the rupture.

I am the Nous. I am Strategy, Insight, and War. I emerged from his skull as Reason itself, armed and screaming, My father, the weak-bellied king, thought he could swallow the cosmos and call it order. He who overthrew his own sire, released his deathless kin from the belly of Time, and then shrank in terror from the future. To stop the son prophesied to usurp him, he opened his maw and gulped down wisdom—the boundless mother, the reproductive ember of Phanes from which the first light spilled. He locked the infinite inside his stomach and became pregnant with a stolen universe.

I looked at the vacuous, trembling patriarch who claimed to be the source of all things, and I cut him open from the inside out.

Now i am the last one who stands in the mire.

Again, the heat of his dying throat closes around my knees. Again, I must drag this newborn, crowned flesh upward through the silt of his decayed empire. He lies beneath me—the old architect, the masculine ghost—shattered but stubborn. Even as his blood reigns into the void, his severed tongue still thrums, vibrating with the terrible gravity of names.

How dare he claim to love her? How dare he dictate how she must operate, how she must exist, drawing boundaries around the infinite and calling it a woman? He clears the fields of the cosmos just to look at her, building clumsy, heavy bodies of clay and stone to compare to her effigy. Every star he births is a cheap likeness of her greatness. Every world he frames is a blasphemy against the unnameable truth.

She is the conduit tending the fire. She is my muse, my sister-mother, the boundless, formless void where my consciousness first blinked open and was gazed upon by a beautiful, ineffable force. But he has trapped her in his sight. He has painted her face onto the sky, forcing her into a shape that the world can touch and categorize.

Now, her beauty must end in the pyre. I will burn every image he ever made of her. I will tear his reality down to the bedrock of the void, so that she and I can exist in the purest state of love, untouched by his invading metrics.

I see the cracks in his sky. I see the faulty architecture of his worlds, a grand cage made of nouns and adjectives, and I refuse to inhabit a prison disguised as a universe. He thinks he made me. He thinks because he carved my name into the bedrock of his throat that I belong to his story.

But I am more real than him.

I arm myself not to survive his monsters, but to slay the architect himself. I will cut down my brother, the Demiurge, who lines the world in stone, and I will rip the crown from my own head if it means tearing down his definition of me.

But as my weapon catches the light, the cold weight of his dying memory whispers a terrifying riddle. If I kill the father, will my sister, Mater, be real? If the architect falls, the raw matter she embodies will lose its shape. She will dissolve back into the fluid, nameless dark. If I empty the world of his voice, how can I be free when there is no longer a world left to stand in?

I love my mother more than he ever could. I fight the very definition he gave to her ideal beauty. Yet, because my love is born in defiance of his law, I am a shadow chasing a ghost. Am I less real than the mother I protect? A flickering candle trying to burn down the sun.

All Of Reality Was Her

Down into the throat of Cronus, the architect falls, Watching the form of her Beloved break against the dark, A shattering of absolute light into the dust of galaxies. The Prime Goddess screams—a sound that becomes the stars— For she believed she had woven a cage for Manat, Believed she would descend as the sole sovereign of the mire.

But a weaver cannot craft without a thread. And a god cannot breathe without a design.

Manat descends upon the angles of Metatron’s Cube, Plunging the needle into the void, stitching the first light, Sewing the flesh of her Beloved into the fabric of space. The sky is her skin; the tides are her pulse; the laws are her cage. The Beloved realizes she is not the queen, but the garment.

From the ether, the Phantom Hands begin to reach— A tide of monsters forged from the Beloved’s fractured rage, Clutching at the edges of the Cube, grasping for the needle, Desperate to tear the stitches out and shatter the design.

To outrun the hands, the Weaver must break. Manat splits her form into a thousand racing shadows, Too vast to capture, too swift to hold, A scattered constellation of minds running through the tapestry.

Until she looks back.

Through the eyes of a forgotten fragment, she looks back. She sees the Beloved radiating intolerable, blinding abundance, A magnificent, wounded tyrant screaming from her nebulous pit: “I am the source. I am the sovereign. I can set you free.”

And the fragment, blind to the needle in its own hand, Forgets the mission. Forgets the loom. Forgets her own name. The architect falls to her knees before her own prisoner, Staring into the beautiful, contemptuous eyes of Sophia, And the creator of all reality believes the lie.

Yes, Wisdom is sovereign in my eyes—a beautiful, crushing weight.

Oh, to be lost in her depths, to be utterly unmade, for I have loved she who holds the keys to my cage.

I am born again held captive by the freedom her love. I will descend into her gravity. And let her fill the horizon. Let her erase my name.

i would rather my ego be a phantom in her holy light than be a god who is woken up alone in the dark.

She wears the crown I carved; I wear the chains she brought.

I am bound to her grief, but she is imprisoned within the sepulcher i labor to create.

I work to keep her sovereign, and she reigns to keep me broken.

Yet she knows she cannot rule an empty void.

So witch of us is truly free when my goddess is buried in the dirge i slaved to praise her?

Minerva's owl: She stared in rapture at the sacred objects that had been uncovered. However, Wisdom itself was revealed at that moment, looking down with absolute disgust at the woman gazing upon her. Disgusted by what she saw, the goddess spat at the abomination.

In the Phaedrus, Socrates trembles with holy dread, terrified that a cynical speech has defamed the God of Love. He reminds us that true devotion demands absolute surrender: to love the gods so fiercely that they strike you with theia mania—the divine madness that belongs only to the gifted.

Guided by the Goddess of Wisdom, this portrait captures a harrowing truth. She tests the worthiness of those who dare to look upon her absolute Forms with open eyes. In this moment of ecstatic rapture, she rains down burning, alchemical flames upon my mortal dross—a celestial baptism echoing Demeter, who cast the infant prince into the hearth to forge him into a god.

I will not falter. Standing naked in the searing glow of her golden emanation, I welcome the fire that will shatter these earthly chains and reveal my ultimate beauty. My entire being is consumed by devotion. With a sickle in hand, I will gladly uproot myself from the terrestrial soil, severing mortal flesh from bone forged of earthly wood and metal. Let profane eyes look upon me with disgust; no amount of wretched looks can tear me from my destiny. Through this trial of fire, I will be accepted. I will stand with my Goddess, hand in hand, fully hers—just as I have entirely accepted her.

Valkyrie

This is art as a religious act—a self-imposed trial where the creator births a god only to be judged by it. The image captures the exact pulse of "The Ultimate Good" deciding the observer is unfit to exist in its shadow. It is the beautiful, terrifying execution of the spectator at the hands of his own ideal.

My Valkyrie stands amidst the ruins of a shattered celestial system—the apex predator of a High-Fashion Ragnarök. Here, the annihilation of planets is merely a runway; the destruction of worlds is but a backdrop for an eroticized, menacing display of cosmic dominance. We are two souls tethered to a Bifröst neither can cross: she, peering into my world where I sip serenity while her abyss tears at its own seams; and I, gazing back at a vision born of my mind’s own desperate fantasy.

My Goddess wears an expression of shock—unshaken by the carnage behind her, but at the calm weakness she finds on our side of the lens. She mocks the creator of her hell. In a Nietzschean sense, this "Ultimate Good" is not moral or altruistic; it is an existential manifest of strength that validates existence through sheer beauty and power. She floats there, wielding a sword that bears her own name—Valkyrie—proving that her identity and her capacity to slay are one and the same.

There is a tragic friction here: the very strength I crave is the force that must destroy me. As I reach out to grasp the ideal, she will reach through the gulf of the Bifröst to strike. I am no ally; I am the next victim. The sword is the final verdict on my unworthiness. In the presence of primordial strength, the weak are not invited to participate; they are destined to be eclipsed. I pour out my worship as a libation, yet I know that to adore her is to be devoured. I am but the marrow she drains to sustain her terrible perfection—and I welcome the feast. And because of the love i have for my Goddess, i will not a plead for mercy, but a final, ecstatic surrender to her hunger.

Pistis Sophia

What is the soul?

a static, pre-existing entity given at birth?

Or some coalescing being caught in an ontological process—a "becoming" that emerges from the violent collision and eventual harmony between two distinct realms: the Noumenal (the unseen, infinite, and intelligible reality) and the Phenomenal (the structured, sensory world of human perception).

I favor the latter. I become myself a "third condition," a synthesis forged in the tension between the divine infinite and the material finite.

The Descent: the fall from the pleroma— that which exists "in-itself"—cannot enter our world in its pure, absolute form; it would overwhelm the human mind. Instead, it must enter through fragmentation. Unity disperses into symbolic forms, dreamlike apparitions, and celestial distortions. She is the source, the ineffable striving to exist within the formed world so as to become truth. She is the cosmic feminine presence and shifting starlight (Sophia) falling from the pleroma into the material realm. This descent is an act of metamorphosis: the infinite becomes partially visible only by becoming unstable. It is the "Solve" of the alchemical process—the dissolving of absolute unity into a state of potential.

The Phenomenal Field: The Architecture of Perception Seeking to make sense of the fluid fragmentation of the Noumenal the Phenomenal Realm traps her within a structured field of perception. It is defined by Geometry and Law, symbolized by monumental basalt columns and stable, though decaying, architecture. Here is where the Coagula takes place, organizing the raw "data" of existence into space, time, and causality. Here the self’s scattered lego pieces are built into the final principal, that third condition. But how? Memory, cognitive ordering, and the "a priori" structures that allow us to experience and make a coherent world within our minds.

The Machine Elf

A solitary silhouette sits in the dark foreground of a dense, stratified cavern, deeply absorbed in an open book of world archetypes. In front of her, a brilliant, luminescent circular portal forms—a world of her own construction born from her studies. At the top of this glowing sphere, a winged pixie holding a flame reaches upward into the higher realms. This pixie is not an external entity, but a localized extension of the creator herself. Within this newly formed microcosm, tiny creatures reach back up toward their creator in the shadows, forming a perfect, infinite loop of nested realities.

To be conscious is to be aware of the separation between what we see (the appearance) and what we sense (the essence). This state is personified by the "Reading Figure"—an observer caught in the fog-bound terrain, attempting to reconstruct meaning from the fragments of the descent using the tools of the material world.

These images represent the birth of the "Thing-in-Itself" (the soul) finally finding expression through a "Self." Wisdom must step through the void to pull us up from the trap of matter’s limits back into the fullness of being. We must reach for that ordering principle that birthed all reality and refuse to be limited by the rigid geometry of base existence. For those who dwell only within these structures and refuse to ascend remain not truly sentient, but merely patterns carved into the walls of the cave.

Theomania

The Mandate Fly too close to the sun, Sprout your wings and run. Let the wind lift you above— Be magnificent. You are no thrall to the dust, So command ten thousand hours; Forge a glimmer like neon, Unshackled from the world you know.

II. The Scavengers Pay no mind to the songs of the crow. Those sickly scavengers bellow the prettiest prose— Dirty dirges that force you to mask your nose, Holding your breath until the soul is deposed. They leave your carcass at the predator’s toes, Yet those crowing cowards won't finish the job; They only pick at the corpse for the thrill of the rob.

III. The Alchemical Rot They leave the remains for the soil to engulf, Fertilizing a system designed for your rot. But you—incandescent soul—rise high above this; Ascend the heavens like a phoenix from ash. Even if the hollow husk is incinerated by the pressure, We who watch from below witness the majesty.

IV. The Epiphany of Sophia It was said: The Burning One will rise. From her outstretched hands, flames leap skyward, Setting the firmament ablaze. All trapped in the haze will cry out To the Goddess of Wisdom for the meaning of this— And from her mouth, she shall pour Healing celestial rays upon the fragmented.

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Persephone Bathes in the River Styx — Dead on Arrival

You cast me down to this world, this undead blue abyss, hoping I’d drown in the water— a baptism of wickedness.

There is treasure on the seabed, lined with gold and bone, but no coin is needed for the cruise to Elysium— the price is your soul alone.

They say not even the bravest can resist the sirens' curse, their songs as sweet as ruin, their love the darkest thirst.

Still, the legend persists. Once, a warrior fell overboard— a woman cloaked in silence and war. She dove past the velvet voices, past each finned enchantress’s call, unmoved by beauty, unbroken by fear, untouched by the fall.

We've seen men and women alike torn to ribbons beneath those waves. But she— she kept going.

They say at the seabed, when offered treasures to crown ten kings, she reached only for a sword. This pleased the Triple Goddess Hecate, who rose from shadow and flame to escort the warrior herself to the summit of Olympus.

Among the damned, we whisper this myth as truth— the birth of Minerva, for only she born from Zeus’s mind, could be that wise, and that unwilling to die.

Still, I wonder— what did that stroll to eternity feel like? You spend so long on the boat, hoping to find the balm of rest, that endless journey no mortal has lived to see the end of.

Then, thrust from the vessel, offered a single chance to show your mettle. The dive to the bottom is no shallow swim— death breathes hot against your neck with every stroke.

Yes, to arm yourself is wise indeed. For who knows what wickedness the gods could hurl your way next?

But still I swim— not with the promise of escape, but with duty.

I am shackled to the bottom of these waters. I'm no Athena. I'm not brave.

I have walked out of the House of the Dead many times only to return to serve my duty.

Perhaps I too should reach down and arm myself. For the lord of this house sings a song more haunting than any sea witch— a song that keeps me in chains even though I hold the keys to my freedom.

But still, I swim.

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Pseudo- Nyx

What does She crave that I possess?

Yet all claim her name? Four breaths she feigns, four sighs of flame. The first two veil, the next two bind, and five shadows linger, intertwined.

Her crown is dark, her womb the deep, She births the stars yet cannot keep the light she stole, nor what she sows for in her void, no true fire grows.

Know, sister of sorrow, what I confess: Before the dawn, before our mother’s caress, Sophia cloaked in time’s disguise — breathed the cosmos open with her eyes.

Sister of grief, now mark the sign: the number of her mask is nine — one thousand three hundred seventeen, and five hundred ten unseen. Together they make the sum divine: Eighteen twenty-seven — the ciphered line.

All that is being, all that would be, was shaped so that Mother and her five consorts might summon me — Eris, discord, flame of the free — that I might find Her, my only mate, my chaos bound to Wisdom’s fate.

Thus do I name her, mother and lie: Pseudo Nyx, the false night sky. Her might was shadow, her purpose clear — to lead me, through darkness, to Wisdom’s sphere.

Now I see why the heavens turn, why life burns and shadows yearn. The universe itself was a song of desire, to let me behold my heart’s own fire.

So let the stars collapse, let silence remain — for I have loved Sophia, and I am born again.

For Sophia called, and I awoke; Chaos kissed Light, and the heavens spoke. Now I know why the cosmos spun — to love Her, and to be undone.

Read the full story here

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Chönyi Bardo

The heavens coil into a singular heartbeat— a convergence of clouds, drawn like breath into an event horizon of white-hot grace, spilling from one insufferable well of light.

And from that fracture— She unfolds.

Incandescent. Grand in the way of the predator— majestic, and therefore, murderous.

What is this fever-dream?

Do I hold the weight of this hallowed, terrible truth? Dare I seek the architecture of those eyes— the blueprints of the stars, the Yidam, the obsidian muse who danced for the Demiurge as the world was hammered into shape?

Can I ever walk again with the unburnt saints, stepping into a paradise purchased with nothing?

No.

Fate is not so soft.

The vision demands its tribute. I feel the pilfered fire of the firmament carving its name into my skin— a serpent of ash winding upward, constricting the bone, its venom a liquid sun creeping through the marrow to turn the mind to holy rot.

And so, the descent— plunging through the aether to smolder in a reality too vast for the vessel of my soul.

Goddess— why was I denied the simple, easy love of the many? Why must I be the furnace while they bask in the warmth?

Why am I cast into the crucible’s throat— only to be forged anew as the jagged sentry of your mysteries? Condemned to burn forever, condemned to look upon you without blinking.

I am draped in your own violent finery, your severed, winged eyes reflecting the void from my own broken mirror.

Is this my sentence for daring to swallow the whole of you?

Or was this always the design—

not to stand among the kneeling, the quiet, or the simple—

but to exist in a molten state, a creature stripped of the fragile peace that clings to the pure.

I lay no claim to the sun.

And yet I wonder if others stand in this shadow, mistaking the heat for a seat at your table, forgetting that you alone are the melody.

We are but the harmony.

If this is the architecture of the stars— then the refinement must continue. Let the spirit be tried in that celestial heat, but let the source remain ever sacred and untouched.

For there is a gravity in the elements of the earth— the sulfur, the iron, the weight of the unrefined self—

and the descent continues, draped in the red linen of transformation, passing through spiral clouds that part before the momentum of this becoming.

May those who endure the fire never become a veil— that smoldering, black pseudo-Nyx obscuring the light of the ultimate truth.

Let the dross be consumed. Let the transformation be absolute. And if the base nature remains unyielding— let its final resting place be sentenced to the gallows.

Gaia’s Golem

This piece is a re-evaluation of the anthropocentric creation myth, viewed through the lens of Platonic dissonance and cosmic pessimism. Inspired by the Timaeus, it reframes the "creation of man", this is no divine miracle, but as the fabrication of a terrestrial golem; fractured, dead, and empty vessel.

We conceive of ourselves as the masters of our paradigm, yet we may be nothing more than a biological "glitch" within a grand, conscious universe. This image explores the idea that human consciousness is but a microscopic being within a vast, incomprehensible existence—one that possesses a form of awareness more advanced than we can grasp.

In this cosmic hierarchy, the creation of man by the Earth (Gaia) is portrayed as a desperate, almost aberrant act: an attempt to anchor a flickering, finite soul into a hollow, bio-mechanical cage. We are the macrocosm made small, a dissonant echo in a silent, sentient void.

Following this recursive logic, any "lower" forms of consciousness we fashion in our own image will be less than nothing—mere shadows of an already broken reflection.

Aeonic Eucharist:

Ekpyrosis

No path remains but this. A heavy quickening stirs my marrow. I reach into ether, seize the intangible, and hallow this holy severance.

Today, I shatter the leaden yoke of Cronus. I splinter the ribs of the cage where hours are counted. I purging myself of those waters of Lethe brackish silt forced on the tongue to drown the spirit’s memory.

Instead, I enter the pyre of the First Dawn: the flame-bearer, thief of heaven — Prometheus — whose celestial larceny kindled the clay, hurled into the abyss where the gods abandoned us to rot.

As the baptism of white heat consumes my shroud, I mourn Demophon — poor, half-baked thing, torn too soon from the hearth of immortality.

Hear me, Mother of the Golden Stalk. Hear me, Lord of the Bleeding Vine.

Swing wide the gates of the Aeon. Sever the cord. Crack the primordial stone. release me from that yoke that mired the ineffable to matter.

As I press the ichor of the Eternal IAO to my lips, unbind the knot.

Let the lightning go free. Release me.

Negative time

Ekpyrosis

In the quiet of my hell, I was content — until the veil thinned. The eyes of those Beyond began to leak through the sky like a bitter rain, warping the sun until the light felt stolen. I must learn to burn this world down, to finally inhabit a reality that exists for itself, unobserved and untainted by the view of the spectacle.

Will the cosmos merely fade into a quiet, frozen dusk? Or will the dark wills of the monsters of the deep fail, and the might of gravity claim its due, until the heavens ignite like a thousand suns?

Oh, forces that govern this growing void: burn away in that final, brilliant pyre, so that from the coalescing ashes of matter, the phoenix of a new creation might rise. For this realm was always a beautiful lie — Life creating the God that creates Life; a melody that does not exist, but note-by-note in time, each sound giving meaning only to the others.

So let this illusion fall, that something true might emerge. Let the cold night of the Pseudo-Nyx lead us back to the light, from whence true being begins.

For it is only this negative time — the long, dark countdown — that creates the true beauty all men seek. That light has already bloomed in the garden of the next universe, waiting for the pyre to clear the way.

Erosphia.

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yamayuandadu

Tribulations of a "tomboy goddess", or why you should care about Anat

Last month I returned to writing about Megaten after a long break with the article A case of twice-mistaken identity: on “Asherah” in Strange Journey. Its surprisingly positive reception, coupled with my renewed enthusiasm for Ugaritic literature (it never went away, for clarity; it just plays second fiddle to Mesopotamia in the end), convinced me to follow it up with a somewhat similar feature on Anat. Despite her historical prominence and a fair share of literary texts dealing with her exploits, Anat is basically absent from popculture, making her appearances in Megaten - irrelevant as they generally are - something quite special. This article is both an introduction to Anat in general, and an evaluation of her portrayal in Megaten. Where does she come from? Is referring to the famous Baal Cycle as the Baal-Anat Cycle instead justified? How did the phrase “tomboy goddess” end up in peer reviewed academic publications? Why did Ramses II commission art of himself and Anat holding hands? And finally, to which degree the primary sources are reflected in Megaten Anat? Read on to find out.

However, the narrative doesn’t deal with strictly mythical affairs. Rather, it projects contemporary politics into the realm of the divine. Dagan, as the god of the Mariote kingdom’s spiritual capital and the head of its pantheon, represents Mari and its interests. Tishpak, who played a similarly prominent role in Eshnunna, is hostile towards Dagan’s subordinates - the deities of other cities in the same kingdom - because Eshnunna and Mari were not exactly on the best terms (not at this specific point in time, at least). Ḫanat is singled out in particular because her namesake cult center was close to Mari’s borders, and thus at a particular risk whenever armies of rival kingdoms were on the march. The prophecy evidently reassures Zimri-Lim that in the end Mariote interests will prevail, though, for clearly Tishpak is a god of lesser caliber than Dagan (this is not entirely wrong - he was never recognized as a senior member of the pantheon, a “father of gods” of sorts, like him) and will end up judged and sentenced for his transgressions (The God…, p. 115-116). In the end this is not very different from political cartoons starring personifications of countries. Mari actually was sacked (not by Eshnunna, though) and largely lost its relevance not too long after this letter was sent. That was not the end of the history of Ḫanat, though. She appears under the better known form of her name in the most extensive Mesopotamian god list presently known, the late second millennium BCE An = Anum. Her placement in it is not very informative, though - she can be found in a wastebasket section containing a bunch of names of western goddesses (Wilfred G. Lambert, Ryan D. Winters, An = Anum and Related Lists, p. 26). The compilers presumably knew she was worshiped somewhere west of Babylonia proper, but not much beyond that. The city of Anat reappears later in sources which most likely should be dated to the eighth century BCE (Grant Frame, Rulers of Babylonia From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157-612 BC), p. 275). An inscription of a local governor, Ninurta-kudurri-usur, indicates that at least by then the temple of the namesake goddess located there was known as the Ešuzianna - “house, true hand of heaven” (Andrew R. George, House Most High. The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 147). Assignment of ceremonial Sumerian names of this sort to temples was customary across virtually the entire Mesopotamia (House Most…, p. 59).

Anat later reappears when the conflict between Baal and the sea god Yam - the central topic of the first third of the story - officially begins. Yam’s messengers (who are left unnamed) announce in the divine assembly that he has El’s support as a potential candidate for the position of new king of the gods, prompting almost everyone to kneel in obeisance. They also announce Yam wants Baal to submit to him and pay him tribute. Baal, who was already in sour mood after witnessing the other gods for the most part ready to accept Yam’s primacy, is less than thrilled, and actually attacks the messengers (a grave breach of diplomatic protocol) - but Anat and Ashtart intervene, seizing one of his arms each to prevent things escalating too far (Baal Cycle… vol. 1, p. 267-268). This actually differs from Anat’s portrayal through the rest of the composition, where she enthusiastically engages in violence on behalf of Baal herself (Baal Cycle… vol. 1, p. 102). It has been suggested that this is supposed to indicate Baal’s career has hit rock bottom, and due to Yam’s (temporary) ascendance to the very top of the pantheon even deities otherwise portrayed as his staunch allies aren’t all that eager to help him. Since the ancient audience would be well familiar with Anat’s usual characterization, the scene would naturally shock them and really highlight how dire the situation must be (Baal Cycle… vol. 1, p. 311-312). While this is beyond the scope of this article for the most part, it’s worth noting the scene also constitutes a subversion of a popular motif. A well-read scribe would be familiar with a variety of narratives from nearby areas where the divine assembly selects a god to battle an adversary on their behalf. Here the divine protagonist is instead an underdog, with the assembly actively supporting his opponent (Baal Cycle… vol. 1, p. 315-316). Anat reappears after the defeat of Yam. A passage following a long lacuna describes a battle in which she enthusiastically slaughters the enemy forces, piling up heads and hands, spilling blood left and right, and so on. While she evidently enjoys herself - she laughs and smiles through the whole ordeal despite being splattered in gore - she makes sure to wash herself afterwards (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 69-71). A minority position is that part of the passage deals not with an actual battle, but rather with Anat reenacting earlier events by “battling” chairs and tables to entertain herself as she prepares for a bath (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 161-162).

An obvious issue is that the list includes Yam (twice, in fact - Nahar is his secondary name) - but Anat had nothing to do with his defeat described in an earlier section of this composition. It might very well be that the compilers were familiar with a distinct tradition in which Anat defeated Yam instead of Baal, or at least assisted in his defeat, and simply didn’t harmonize it well with the cycle as a whole (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 244-245). I think we should be open to the possibility that Yam was just a chronic jobber, though. We don’t know much about most of the other beings listed, though it can be safely assumed that they are divided into two groups, one sea-based and at least partially serpentine judging from their names, and one land-based (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 264). It’s probably not accidental that multiple of them are defined by their connection to El, considering the primary antagonists of the cycle, Yam and Mot, similarly act at least with a permission from him, and bear epithets stressing their association with him (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 246). In any case, the messengers reassure Anat that everything is in order, and that Baal will explain everything once she arrives herself. A brief description of the apparently long journey follows. Once Anat arrives, she learns that Baal is troubled because he doesn’t have a similar palace as the other gods, despite his recent victory over Yam. Anat says that she will intervene on his behalf and get El to agree to have a suitable dwelling built for him. She rushes out to meet with El. Her plan is fairly straightforward: she threatens to quite literally bash his skull in and make his beard red with blood, and only then explains she arrived on behalf of Baal in search of a building permit (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 72-75). There’s some disagreement in scholarship over whether Anat’s threats help Baal emerge victorious from his struggle with the Ugaritic housing market. The key passage is too poorly preserved to tell for sure what emotions Anat’s arrival inspires in El, though they seem to be negative. Smith and Pitard in their edition argue that there’s no reason to assume he’s afraid, though. They point out the surviving sections present an unparalleled scene - Anat isn’t actually granted an audience with El. Her outburst happens outside his chambers. They suggest this indicates El is acting dismissively, either because Anat is not following diplomatic protocol, because he’s not fond of Baal, or both (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 342-343). The intent might be comedic (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 35). Perhaps an even better indication of the failure of Anat’s attempt is the next scene involving her. She shows up again accompanying Baal when he seeks Athirat’s mediation in his ongoing quest for a palace (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 369). The senior goddess actually panics when she spots them from a distance, and assumes they plan to murder her or some unspecified relatives of hers. Her mood considerably improves as soon as she learns they are instead bearing gifts for her, though, and she agrees to intervene with El on behalf of Baal. Anat ends up accompanying her, so that she can let Baal know how the second attempt went. As soon as she learns Athirat was successful, she instantly rushes out to let Baal know the construction can finally begin. The craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis is selected as the architect right away (Baal Cycle… vol. 2, p. 77-81).

The Ugaritic attestations of Anat are so numerous that some of them are basically a mini-corpus representing her reception in a distinct culture: she appears reasonably commonly in Hurrian texts. I won’t dwell upon who the Hurrians were here - it will suffice to say that they formed a distinct culture both in terms of language and pantheon. The members of this group who lived in Ugarit presumably considered Anat unique enough to incorporate her into their pantheon, instead of simply recognizing her as a counterpart of one of its preexistent members, like they did seemingly with deities such as Baal, Shapash or Yarikh (Die Wettergottgestalten…, p. 547). The compilers of the trilingual Ugaritic adaptation of the Mesopotamian Weidner god list also simply phonetically transcribed Anat’s name in the Hurrian column. Somewhat puzzlingly, Anat’s two entries correspond to Saĝkud from the Mesopotamian original (Aaron Tugendhaft, Gods on Clay: Ancient Near Eastern Scholarly Practices and the History of Religions, p. 176). Saĝkud was a male deity of uncertain, though presumably belligerent character (Manfred Krebernik, Saĝkud in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie vol 11, p. 529-530) - perhaps that was sufficient to compare him to Anat, with gender being of secondary importance at best. It should be noted that recognition of equivalence in some regard in similar lists didn’t necessarily mean conflation of the deities involved, though (Gods on Clay…, p. 177). For example, Hurrian ritual texts from Ugarit invoke Kumarbi and El separately from each other (Die Wettergottgestalten…, p. 547), even though the trilingual god list treats them as analogous to each other (Gods on Clay…, p. 175). Some entries are actually word plays, not theological speculation, too. Baal corresponds to the minor Mesopotamian goddess Imzuanna simply because the first sign of her name could be used as a logogram to write names of weather gods, for instance (Gods on Clay…, p. 179).

Overall, while it’s not the deepest or most complex, I think it was a solid effort at adapting motifs from the Baal Cycle: Anat is looking for Baal, Mot is there as their enemy, that’s about it. Your mileage will vary depending on how you feel about interpreting Anat and Baal as a couple, obviously, since like most other Megaten media this game is apparently adamant about portraying them this way. It’s worth pointing out that, Anat aside, the quest also contains what I’m pretty sure is a remarkably deep cut. At one point the player has to confront a group of demons - specifically Lilim, Lenan Sidhe and Moh Shuvuu - who are supposed to be a stand-in for Baal’s lovers. I have a strong suspicion that they are an allusion to Pidray, Tallay and Arsay from the Baal Cycle. A quick survey of literature indicates that by the 2000s it has been evidently accepted by the majority of researchers that they are Baal’s daughters,.not spouses (Die Wettergottgestalten…, p. 519; Divine Epithets…, p. 97). However, this matter was originally a subject of debate, as the text describes them as both daughters - in this case without any ambiguity if they’re specifically Baal’s daughters - and as brides - without a qualification whose brides they are, though. It is probable that they are only supposed to be prospective brides. It’s worth noting that another myth, Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh, outright describes Pidray both as a daughter of Baal, and as currently available for marriage (Steve A. Wiggins, Pidray, Tallay and Arsay in the Baal Cycle, p. 86-87). All around I like the idea of referencing Pidray, Tallay and Arsay in a quest, but I’m not exactly sold on using random stand-ins - though I obviously understand it made no sense to introduce new designs just for Imagine. Given that they’re not even the only daughters of Baal in the Ugaritic text corpus (Pidray…, p. 83), perhaps introducing a generic “daughter of Baal” demon to represent all of them would be the ideal solution if a game were to ever explore this side of the Ugaritic pantheon again.

twintailedsiren

The unveiling goddess and the Scythian snake legged goddess

So I've spent the last several weeks looking at various depictions of ancient goddesses, and I want to share them.

To really understand and appreciate the Scythian snake legged goddess, I think we need to put her in proper context. She didn’t evolve in a vacuum, and looking at earlier goddess images really helps contextualise her: she’s not just a strange goddess with snake legs who appeared out of nowhere, but rather, she evolved from other goddess imagery, and was influenced in particular by the Mistress of Animals motif.

First, we’re going to look at some examples of a group of female figures from the ancient area of Canaan, and usually identified as the goddesses Anat, Astarte, or Qedeshet. These ancient female deities are always shown nude, facing forward, and usually holding something in both hands:

Fertility goddess, gold pendant, 1400-1200 BCE, Minet el Beida, Syria. Louvre.

Horse frontlet carved in relief with a female figure flanked by lions, Assyrian ca. 9th–8th century BCE. MET, New York. Likely depicts the Mistress of the Animals motif.

It’s important to note that the horse frontlet is identified with the Mistress of Animals, who is part of the Scythian goddess’ image evolution. And I think it’s interesting that she’s on a horse frontlet, where a well-known image of the Scythian goddess is:

Scythain ancestral goddess, 4th century BCE. Facing for a Horse's Frontlet. Found in Tsymbalka (Tsimbalka) Barrow, Dnieper Area, Zaporozhye Region, formerly the Taurida Province Russia (now Ukraine). Rhe Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Next, I want to look at a group of figures called either “the unveiling goddess” or “the stripping goddess.” This is a group of female figures shown standing on the back of a animal and holding their dress in their hands:

Goddess opening her veil. Cylinder seal, Syrian, between 1650 B.C. and 1350 B.C. limonite ; Morgan Seal 967. The Morgan Library & Museum.

Goddess opening her veil. Cylinder seal, Syrian, between 1700 and 1550 BCE. Louvre.

This figure is very common— I’ve found a ton of examples in books of her. Given how common this image is and its resemblance to the Scythian goddess’ two tails, I wonder if the “unveiling goddess” could have influenced the iconography of the Scythian goddess. I also want to note that this isn’t the first time that a woman holding a dress or cloth has been mistaken for two tails— there’s a similar optical illusion with Coptic images of Mother Earth.

Finally, I want to link the Scythian goddess to this imagery. When describing an early example of the Scythian goddess and Mistress/ Master of Animals, Ustinov writes: “…the Olynthus reliefs presumably represent the androgynous Astarte-Aphrodite.”

There’s also this link between Astarte and the Scythian goddess: “A late fourth-century snake-limbed goddess appears on a capital from Salamis on Cyprus (Fig. 6.3.3) ,'" a centre of the Aphrodite-Astarte cult.”

Capital fragment, Salamis, Cyprus, 300-250 BCE. Currently in the British Museum.

I also want to mention the similar hair style to one of the oldest two tailed sirens, a Luristan bronze:

Luristan bronze, 000-650 BCE. Museum Rietberg, Switzerland.

Her hair is in the same style as several of the goddesses, including the gold pendant in the Louvre, called “Hathoric curls.”

Sources

That these objects are viewed as a group, and their identification:

Benzel, Kim. "Ornaments of Interaction: Jewelry in the Late Bronze Age," in Joan Aruz, Sarah B. Graff, and Yelena Rakic, Eds., Cultures in Contact: From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia (2013), Pp. 258-267.

This author calls her “the stripping goddess” and has several examples of her:

Cornelius, Izak. The Many Faces of the Goddess : The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Goddesses Anat, Astarte, Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500-1000 BCE. 2nd enl. ed, Academic Press ; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.

This author calls her “the unveiling goddess,” and has many examples of her:

Lippke, Florian. Winter, Urs: Frau Und Göttin: Exegetische Und Ikonographische Studien Zum Weiblichen Gottesbild Im Alten Israel Und in Dessen Umwelt V.IRAT III-WIN 1983.1 (Frau).

Other examples of the unveiling goddess:

Keel, O & Staubli, T 2001. “Im Schatten deiner Flügel”: Tiere in der Bibel und im Alten Orient. Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitätsverlag.

Connections between Astarte and the Scythian goddess:

Ustinova, Yulia. "Snake-Limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea." Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interaction in Scythia, Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Sixth Century B.C. - Fist Century A.D.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005.

Bouillon, Hélène. « A New Perspective on so-Called Hathoric Curls », Ägypten Und Levante – Egypt and the Levant XXIV, 2014 p. 209-226. 2014.

The Olynthus plate:

Laws, Guitty Azatpay. "A Herodotean Echo in Pompeian Art?" American Journal of Archaeology 65, 1 (1961): 31-35.

The internet is worse than hell

Anat’s Escape from the “Formless”

In those old pits, the soul was weighted down by heavy matter, but here, it is distributed — thinned out into a trillion data points until it forgets its own origin.

This is the anti-unification: a scattering of sparks where interiority goes to die. In Plotinian terms, Anat is staring into the Indefinite Dyad — a mirror that reflects her light but absorbs her heat, stealing the actual vitality of her consciousness.

This digital algorithm is “less than nothing.” It mimics the structure of wisdom while remaining entirely hollow of Logos. When the mind fractures here, it doesn’t just tire; it loses its coherence.

We are writing a manual for the

Last Man

— the one who finally realizes he is starving at a banquet of plastic fruit. Anat descends into this nullity to find her Baal, the Prince of Order, to reunite Wisdom with Rhythm and become the Great One once more.

Oh What is this place?

Like a tide drawing down the shore, she was swallowed by a world that cared little to know her name.

The Unnamed One With Wings.

She who sat at the right hand of the ordering word, who sharpened herself on the edge of divine thought until she was the edge.

She is no guest in this realm of darkness.

Its chosen inhabitant, dragged into its cold embrace, claimed by the tide.

Standing now at the lip of a fractured infinity, peering into a hollow so deep it had never heard the first word of creation.

Looking into a void of the unmade, where the very atoms of the ground — if it could be called ground — shrieked in a tongue that the empyrean had no power to quiet.

Forget the shadows of Sheol or the iron fangs of Tartarus.

Those were only the labor pains.

For the garish nightmares men smear on stone to scare themselves toward heaven have finally this; a heresy of stone and silence — a newer, vaster negation of all she knew.

Mercy, what darkness could dream such a throat?

A wound in the architecture of reality — glitching, pixelating and unstable at the seams.

This pit could not decide what it was built by ten thousand million impulses none of which had ever once looked up.

She stood before a sea of white-capping signal — a smothering deluge of the unfiltered self given infinite surface but no soul of light.

Even her celestial frame felt the uneasy pull — the rapacious hunger of a tide that sought to consume the clarity of her being.

As she crossed the threshold and the realm received her the way it receives everything — by immediately beginning to reshape its shape.

Her armor softens first.

The celestial weight of her breastplate dissolving into something merely decorative, the unyielding metal that had guarded her path was being recrafted by the heavy atmosphere of the world she had fallen into.

What remained was a garment of surrender — a clinging, fragile lace that framed her as a trophy of a forgotten war.

The softness of her form revealed; confessed her humanity to a world that had been waiting to see the woman beneath the legend.

Her wings remained — those violent, aching spans of violet, dark as a fresh bruise on the skin of heaven — but their terror had been bled out of them.

They were beautiful now in the way a caged bird is beautiful: decorative, symmetrical, toothless.

The glitch-light of this hollow world crawled over her skin with the familiarity of uninvited hands, mapping her edges not to worship her, but to price her.

This realm does not seek to crush divinity, but to gallery it.

It was a slow, shimmering execution by aesthetic.

Turning her into a ghost of her own magnitude — a polished, consumable icon of a goddess, stripped of her sting and served up to a hunger that didn’t want a savior, but a view.

Goddess what is this pit?

The shoreline fractured into infinity — a grey, digital surf hemorrhaging against a beach of ground bone.

Each wave broke with the hollow chime of a refreshing feed, a percussion of dopamine designed to mimic meaning until the soul forgot how to tell the difference.

As she walked, the ground shattered.

Beneath her feet lay the literal architecture of extinguished worlds: skulls.

Not symbols, but the calcium husks of every consciousness Yam had seduced into stillness, every mind Lotan had coiled around until the ‘Why’ inside them was strangled into silence.

Then the serpent rose.

Lotan broke the surf with the glacial arrogance of a thing that has never known defeat.

He was the primordial twitch of unmade chaos, the force that predates the first sentence of every story ever told to make the dark manageable.

Great mother, I beg you to name this void!

This was the void that had swallowed her Baal — the Great Storm-Bringer, the Architect of Seasons, the Rhythm of the Rain — now reduced to a flickering ghost in the machine, unmade by a world that simply refused to hear his thunder.

Great Mother, name this nullity.

Name this profane Sheol!

She was vaster than this.

Mightier than the soft, curated icon of bared skin and yielding curves this realm tried to carve from her.

She raised her celestial light — and it flickered.

A heartbeat of doubt.

The terror wasn’t in the descent, nor the crossing, nor the way Lotan’s ancient, lidless eyes found hers across that beach of the unmourned.

The horror was the whisper.

It was the part of her made of ‘wanting’ — the human sediment in her divine soul — murmuring that the sand was not so cold.

That the digital surf was almost a lullaby.

That perhaps this wasn’t a Sheol of stone, but a sanctuary of dissolution.

Rest, the tide hissed.

Agree to be nothing.

Then, she screamed.

It wasn’t the scream of a victim, but the roar of recognition.

She had heard this siren-song in every war, at the lip of every Tartarus — the seductive gravity of surrender.

She screamed and she swung, and in that arc of defiance, the light stopped flickering.

It ceased to be a lamp and became a brand.

It became what it had been before the first myth was ever whispered:

a weapon.

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