If Simek is correct that ‘Vanir’ is a construct of Snorri and of modern scholarship, questions of whether other gods like Heimdallr or Ullr are ‘Vanir’ or ‘Æsir’ become moot, while questions are opened about the so-called ‘Æsir’–‘Vanir’ war and Njǫrðr’s entry into the community of gods as a hostage. I avoid the terminological issue here by referring to Njǫrðr, Freyr and Freyja with the vernacular term Njǫrðungr, n.pl. Njǫrðung (i.e. including Freyja), m.pl. Njǫrðungar. This word can be interpreted as a dynastic term for Njǫrðr and his descendants.
Mr. Frog, The Æsir: An Obituary (p. 143-144)
I'm a syncretic Mediterranean polytheist; I spent the past 15 years in various flavors of pagan spaces. I made this sideblog to have a dedicated space for all things related to my personal practice.
I have an academic background in Roman history and Religious Studies. I don't enjoy discussing related topics here for personal reasons (including English not being my first language and not feeling eloquent enough), but what and how I studied substantially informs my practice.
I'm interested in Graeco-Roman, Graeco-Egyptian, Anatolian, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Phoenician, and local pre-Roman religious systems and traditions, especially from Late Antiquity. I love celestial bovine deities-spirits, and most of my practice is currently focused on them. I'm not comfortable sharing which gods live in my lararium because it feels like making a grocery list, but I'm open to discussing them or my practice if asked in good faith.
I still retain a healthy dose of vanic animism that stuck with me since my heathen days, and I'm very interested in astrolatry and ancient astronomy/astrology. A practice based on star worship is a big challenge for me since I have to deal with time blindness and astrophobia & thalassophobia (these are the same to me).
I'm also knee-deep in the history and literary tradition of early Christianity from Syria, Cappadocia, and Egypt & (local) folk catholicism, which I use to build my occult practice since its praxis is a technology that works and I'm already familiar with. And no, I'm not dual-faith.
It took me an awful amount of time to write this short intro, and it'll probably change in the future as things get more complicated each time I reflect on my practice :')
A devil, a wizard and other ghoulish characters decorate an illustrated title page of a book about the occult.
El libro Negro ó la Magia : Las ciencias ocultas, la alquimia y astrología con secretos y reglas admirables, sacados de los más celebres autores cabalísticos. 1886.
Regarding the association between the cardinal archangels and the royal stars, I'm aware that it's usually given as Regulus - Raphael and Antares - Uriel, BUT to me the opposite makes much more sense...
Regulus being associated with Leo, gold and brilliance which is literally Uriel's domain
And of course, the correspondence between Antares and Raphael would make sense as an association between poison and healing, and would give this archangel a much more chtonic dimension.
It's takes like this that makes me like the Inana-Astarte-Aphrodite theory less and less. Some people don't even like Aphrodite on her own, they much rather add parts of Inanna and Astarte mythology that had nothing to do with Aphrodite just to ""spice it up"". Ignoring the fact that this reads exactly like a millennial trying way too hard to connect with the teens I find it absolutelly insulting to insinuate that Aphrodite's frmininity is a downgrade from Inanna's war domain. Inanna and Aphrodite are completelly different goddesses and they deserve more then to be just careless lumped together like that
“Literary accounts of Medusa’s death generally conform to the pattern of the mythical abduction, and the connection was already several centuries old by the time the images I have discussed above were produced. The elements of the mythical abduction are firmly in place in Hesiod’s Theogony (270–281), where we are told that the Gorgons, daughters of Phorkys and Keto, live together in the borderlands between Ocean and Night. Two of the sisters, Sthenno and Euryale, are immortal and ageless, but Medusa is mortal, and she alone of the three “suffers a grievous fate” (λυγρὰ παθοῦσα, 276). She couples with Poseidon in a soft meadow among the spring flowers (ἐν μαλακῷ λειμῶνι καὶ ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσιν, 279), and when Perseus cuts off her head, Pegasos and Chrysaor—the children of her union with Poseidon—spring forth.
Several details in this account suggest an affinity with the paradigm of the mythical abduction. Though smaller than most of the groups treated by Calame,³¹ the Gorgons are a group of sisters born in the same generation (and thus contemporary with each other in age), who share a collective name (Γοργόνες, 274) and live together. Of the three sisters, one is distinguished as exceptional, and she alone becomes the object of male attention. What is remarkable about this account is that the poet says nothing of either the physical appearance of the Gorgons or the dangers involved in looking at them—although he does not hesitate, some 15 lines later, to describe the monstrous Echidna in vivid detail (295–305). The Gorgons of the Theogony are simply three sisters, two of whom are immortal; the mortal one couples with Poseidon, is killed by Perseus, and through her death gives birth to Pegasos and Chrysaor. In fact, the only physical monstrosity that can be ascribed to Hesiod’s Medusa is her unusual way of giving birth.
The most significant difference between Medusa’s story and more traditional accounts of abducted maidens is its preoccupation with mortality, for Perseus does not rape or marry Medusa, but kills her. Still, we do not have to look far to find that the connection between death and marriage was strong in Greek thought. Perhaps the most apt comparison for our purposes is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, in which Persephone’s seizure by the lord of the Underworld is equal parts death and rape.³² Medusa, too, is raped by a god before the arrival of Perseus, and Vernant has noted the parallel between the flowery meadow (ἐν μαλακῷ λειμῶνι καὶ ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσιν, Hes. Theog. 279) that serves as the setting for that event and the soft meadow (λειμῶν’ … μαλακόν, Hom. Hymn Dem. 7) where Hades finds Persephone and her companions gathering flowers.³³ Despite its emphasis on mortality, Hesiod’s account of the Gorgons contains a strong sexual element, and even Medusa’s death resembles marriage in the sense that both produce children.
As the earliest surviving description of Medusa’s death, the account in the Theogony attests to the antiquity of the Gorgon’s association with the maiden who is raped by a god or hero. It also shows us that even in this early period, her death was figured as a perversion of the erotic abduction. Her fame rested on her mortality rather than her beauty; her fate, likewise, was a death that produced prodigious offspring. Subsequent accounts, both literary and visual, distorted the paradigm further: the maidens became hideous monsters deadly to behold, and Perseus turned from pursuer to pursued when he was forced to flee the dead Medusa’s sisters. Despite their effect on individual elements of the story, these reversals did not violate its basic framework, which remained consistent with the paradigm of the maiden taken from a circle of her peers, as I hope the following examples will show.³⁴
If we consider that the practice of distinguishing the abducted girl from the others in her group may explain why Medusa sometimes appears physically different from her sisters in vase painting, we can begin to see evidence for the pattern in the early visual record. On the famous Proto-Attic neck amphora in Eleusis, all the Gorgons appear as monsters, but Medusa is much larger than her sisters and has a rounder torso.³⁵ Similar distinctions can occur when the Gorgons are beautiful maidens: although both Gorgons on a mid-5th-century white-ground pyxis in Paris have human faces, the Gorgon on the left (usually identified as Medusa, probably because of her proximity to Perseus), has a round, upturned nose, in contrast with her sister’s straighter nose, and their chitoneskoi differ in color.³⁶
The vase painters were not alone among their contemporaries in emphasizing Medusa’s affinities with the abducted maiden. In Pindar’s account of Perseus’s victory in the Twelfth Pythian Ode (6–17), the parallels with the traditional erotic abduction are striking. Here Pindar specifies that the Gorgons are maidens (παρθένοις, 9), and while noting the forbidding appearance of the two sisters (παρθένοις … ἀπλάτοις ὀφίων κεφαλαῖς, 9), he singles out Medusa for her beauty (εὐπαρόου … Μεδοίσας, 16). His focus on the Gorgons’ dirge (θρῆνον, 8) for their dead sister strengthens the connection to maiden choruses: the threnos typically consisted of a monodic performance with choral accompaniment, and in Pindar’s account of Medusa’s death, the sisters’ dirge accompanies Perseus’s shout (ᾖξεν, 11). Since the story of Medusa’s death plays upon the theme of the maiden’s abduction, moreover, we might even understand the threnos sung by Medusa’s sisters as a replacement for the epithalamium they would have sung if her story had adhered to the traditional pattern of abduction for marriage.³⁷
Pindar’s definition of Medusa as an object of erotic desire corresponds to a larger pattern in epinician poetry that Timothy Power has recently explored with reference to Bacchylides 13. In this ode, the maiden choregos appears as a leaping, carefree fawn (ἥυτε νεβρὸς ἀπενθής … θροΐσκουσα, 87, 90) dancing with her companions in a flowery landscape (ἀνθεμόεντας, ἐντ[’ οὐχ]οῦς, 88).³⁸ Power argues that the ode presents the choregos as an idealized marriage partner for the victor, and that their union has an analogue in one of the heroic labors narrated in the poem: “I propose that Herakles’ subjugation of a person of hubris hypsinoos, figured as the defeat of the Nemean lion, in the ode’s first myth narrative (44–49) is a model for the victor’s subjugation and acculturation (through marriage) of the hypsauches (84) choregos, who is figured as a wild fawn. Indeed, the sexualized acculturation of ‘wild women’ (or women guarded by antisocial wild men) by god or hero is a fairly common theme in the epinikia.”³⁹ Power goes on to list Pelops and Hippodameia (Pind. Ol. 1) and Apollo and Cyrene (Pind. Pyth. 9) as examples of such pairings, and to his list I would add Perseus and Medusa in Pythian 12. Equal parts maiden and beast,⁴⁰ Medusa is the perfect wild woman for the epinician hero to subdue, and it seems to be in keeping with this tradition of erotic subjugation in the epinikia that Pindar has emphasized her maidenly beauty.”
- “Perseus, The Maiden Medusa, and the Imagery of Abduction” by Hesperia 76 for The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2007)
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Further reading: Zolotnikova, Olga A. “A Hideous Monster or a Beautiful Maiden?: Did the Western Greeks Alter the Concept of Gorgon?” In Philosopher Kings and Tragic Heroes: Essays on Images and Ideas from Western Greece, edited by Heather L. Reid and Davide Tanasi, 1:353–70. Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa, 2016. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbj7gjn.23.
Just curious but where does the star on cheek motif come from in Ancient Greece? It’s beautiful but I don’t know what it’s called so I can’t google it effectively and ‘star on cheek ancient Greece’ did not net me much. If you have any resources on this I would love to read them!
I'm not sure if there's an actual term for it, but the main (and perhaps only) point of reference that everyone seems to use is this painted plaster head of a woman from Mycenae c. 12th century BCE (National Archaeological Museum Athens inv. 4575). it's a unique and pretty unusual object for the period, but apparently there are a couple of other (less well-preserved or less impressive) examples of women's faces depicted with these red suns/stars/rosettes on their cheeks and chins in Mycenaean art. there's some thought that it might be a representation of some sort of makeup worn by real women in late Bronze Age Mycenae, potentially royalty and/or priestesses in official ritual contexts. alternatively it could be an artistic marker of divinity or non-human status with absolutely no relation to women's appearances in real life, since this head may have belonged to a statue of a goddess or a sphinx. we do have a decent number of Mycenaean wall painting fragments depicting female figures, and I don't believe any of them have these markings on their faces-- the trend of depicting mythic or historical Bronze Age Greek women like this really does seem to all come back to this one object.
Hey, jumping in to add some resources - during my archaeology degree I focused specifically on Late Bronze Age (LBA) Aegean dress & adornment, so while I'm not at all an expert I've got a pretty good grasp of current research.
Answering the first question, the term you're looking for is 'rosette', or more specifically - depending on the academic - 'dot-rosette'. This was a common LBA iconographic motif in the Near East & Aegean, depicted on a variety of materials; from ceramics to textiles, architecture, metalwork, jewellery, stone carving, etc etc. These depictions could be simple & stylised, more realistic/flower-like, or even quite sophisticated and complex - the dot style seen on NAM.4575 (the plaster head that OP linked & pictured above) being on the simpler, more stylised side.
It, as OP pointed out, is a very singular object for the LBA. Not only is NAM.4575 a large scale three dimensional human figure, but it has so much surviving pigment!! As per gendered iconographic norms (e.g. skin colour) for the LBA Aegean it clearly depicts a female, however there is debate over the specifics depicted. Is she real or divine, human or mystical? It certainly comes from religious context, excavated in the Cult Centre of Mycenae, and the headdress she wears (known as a Polos) has strong links to ritual practice. Worn by (likely) goddesses, mortal figures of high religious or social significance (e.g. priestesses), as well as sphinxes (but not exclusively! older scholarship skewed towards majority sphinxes but our understanding of Poloi wearers has improved over time and tbh there are more occurrences of being worn by human/human-like divinities than by a sphinx). This led to the initial identification of NAM.4575 as a sphinx, however more recent consensus in scholarship interprets her (IMO more correctly) as a goddess or mortal woman of high ritual/social status. Either way, wherever she falls on the mortal/divine divide, it is clear NAM.4575's facial markings hold some form of ritual function for high status women.
However, as mentioned briefly by OP, she is not the sole depiction of facial rosettes from the archaeological record - similar markings *do* appear occasionally elsewhere.
Brief Overview of Rosette facial markings within the archaeological material:
Earlier examples of painted facial rosettes (as well as so many other simple designs) can be seen on some Early Cycladic Figures, such as this EC II marble female head from Keros pictured below on the left, displayed at the Karlsruhe Badisches Landesmuseum (inv.70/550). While the condition of the figure's pigment has deteriorated, traces of pigment on the cheeks and chin in a dot-rosette pattern can still be seen.
More contemporary with NAM.4575 both in time (LBA) and location (found within the Mycenae Cult Center complex) is MM.294, a LH IIIB2 ceramic female figurine. As can clearly be seen in the middle picture below (taken by me at the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae) two facial dot-rosettes are detailed, with one on each cheek. They are less sophisticated then those seen on the plaster head, unsurprising with the differences in material and quality between the two artefacts. Other body markings are also present.
Another LBA dot-rosette example can be seen on CMS II 052, a LM I hematite seal stone now located in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. While not depicted explicitly on a human face, the seal consists of 4 'floating' objects isolated from any background - an eye, ear, and two dot-rosettes. CMS II 052 (pictured below right) therefore provides evidence of an explicit association of dot-rosettes with other human facial features.
With the explicit proviso I have yet to find scholarly discussion regarding a link to facial markings specifically (unsurprising with how extremely niche of a subtopic this is), through my own research I've found some fragmentary examples of apparent facial dot-rosette markings on phi Φ type figurines. As currently for many phi Φ types no comprehensive pigment analysis exists, or if undertaken most technical reports are not publicly available, so my interpretation of painted facial markings cannot at this stage be definitively confirmed. This identification is instead based solely on visual surveying of available material, with some examples seemingly depicting dot-rosette facial markings that have degraded due to pigment loss over time. One such example is below, a LH III phi Φ type grave good from Tanagra, now displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Thebes (where this picture was taken, by me). On the figurine's left cheek two dots are visible, potentially once part of a larger dot-rosette motif (especially considering pigment loss is evident elsewhere on the figure).
Facial Markings more generally in the archaeological record:
Looking not *just* at dot-rosettes but more broadly at the practice of facial markings in the LBA Aegean there is a greater body of evidence. They appear within a larger variety of contexts, depicted on votive offerings, grave goods, religious objects, and as artistic imagery within high status urban complexes, domestic spaces, peak sanctuaries, and even rock shelters. Notably, while many of these depictions may hold ritual purposes they are represented not just on goddesses but also on explicitly confirmed non-divine women (in fact, I'd argue the majority are mortal rather than divine). This suggests that facial markings were practised by real LBA women in the Aegean, albeit likely not as common, everyday practice for majority of the population. At current, there is no absolute consensus on whether this was achieved by temporary cosmetics (most likely?), tattooing, scarification, or some other method with a variety of generally simple geometric designs depicted within the archaeological record.
The simplest design of facial markings - red, blush-like circular blobs on the cheeks - can be seen on multiple frescoes, see below pictured examples of women within the House of the Ladies Fresco from LBA Akrotiri, Thera; as well as another female plaster head from Mycenae, the smaller and more damaged NAM.7712 pictured below right.
Simple cheek circle markings are also represented on other figurines such as ceramic head AMH.Π1102 from Agious Antonios (pictured below left & centre), or on this stunning clay woman's head found at the Pisokephalo peak sanctuary, with a very distinct red pigmented mark on her left cheek (pictured below right, taken by me at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion)
Diamond facial marks also occurred, evident on a few terracotta Mycenaean figures, MM.320 (left) and MM.1552 (right), both images taken at the Archaeology Museum of Mycenae by me
A favourite of mine from Agia Triada, the fragmentary AHM.Π3085 shows unique fragmentary forehead marks of concentric semi or full circles. (below left taken by me at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion)
Appearing significantly more frequently are depictions of (painted?) red ears, for example seen in the West House Priestess Fresco from Akrotiri (below right taken by me at the Prehistoric Museum of Thira)
The above examples of facial markings designs are not exhaustive, but with many of the remaining extant designs being unique and/or in poor condition I've tried to only discuss those that are of most relevance.
Of these examples, majority come from secure religious contexts and while some could potentially depict divinity, many can also be ruled out as not depicting goddesses at all - but rather real women. While most likely these would be high ranking priestesses, worshippers, holders of some other specific ritual function, or otherwise high status individuals (rather than the average woman) it is clear that some form of cosmetic facial marks were practised by some LBA women. The rarity of depictions likely means these markings held a specific ritual or social meaning no longer evident today. Regarding rosettes specifically, it was a much more widespread motif in textiles, art, architecture, and jewellery then depicted as a facial marking, however several examples *do* exist - with NAM.4575 being the most spectacular and well known.
For more in depth discussion and research on rosettes and/or facial markings within the LBA Aegean I've listed a few articles in the readmore below. I've tried to only add ones that are freely available online, but for the ones that aren't feel free to dm for pdf copies. All imagery not taken by me are from publicly available sources (wikimedia commons, the Arachne CMS database, open access publications, and online museum digital collections)
Further reading:
Blakolmer, H. 2012 ‘Body Marks and Textile Ornaments in Aegean Iconography: Their Meaning and Symbolism’ in KOSMOS ed. Nosh and Laffineur.
Earle, J. 2012 ‘Cosmetics and Cult Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean? A Case Study of Women with Red Ears’ in KOSMOS ed. Nosh and Laffineur.
Nicolakaki-Kentrou, M. 2007 'Artists exchanging vocabularies: the dot-rosette motif on ceramics and textiles of the 2nd millennium BC in Egypt and the Aegean' in Mediterranean Crossroads. ed. Antoniaou and Pace.
Palaiologu, H. 2015 'A Female Painted Plaster Figure from Mycenae' in Mycenaean Wall Painting in Context. New Discoveries, Old Finds Reconsidered. ed. Brecoulaki, Davis, and Stoker.
Rehak, P. 2005 'The 'Sphinx' Head from the Cult Center at Mycenae'. British Archaeological Reports.
I tried to be more gentle and patient, and I changed the way I engage with pagan spaces here on tumblr (mostly how I think about them and the people who share their experiences nowadays) because I was so tired of seeing the same trite, dumb shit passed around over and over without understanding why. And then it clicked: it's frustration for the fact that Greco-Roman polytheism(s) is now the entry point for paganism for people who never questioned anything about their life and it shows.
Can I complain for one sec about the fact that people (mostly recons) with more than 8 years of experience left because this place stinks? That you cannot see anything more than the same lists of correspondences and shit I used to debunk 10 years ago in wiccan forums because it was new age stuff? Am I the only one tired of seeing it?
And I know the standard reply to this kind of man-yells-at-clouds position could be "If you want to see more serious stuff, then start sharing!" but I'm very sorry to tell you that I won't share a drop of what happened to me in the past 15 years because I don't see a good reason to do it publicly. When I did it in the past, it only fueled bad-faith discussions by twisting my words and immediately proclaiming to be super experts after I shared my time and resources with them. I already had my share of newbies who, after not even a month being pagans, swore that Ares was their boyfriend, Asklepios their bff, and Fenris their brother, all after gaining access to my library and my time because I thought they were genuinely interested.
But then you point out that hey, maybe you should spend a little more than one month before announcing things that might bind you without knowing, because saying a dynamic exists might start a very real, very official expectation on the other party that you're not ready to accept when you're a newbie, and they say you're a gatekeeper. But what do I know - it's not like I'm still experiencing deep spiritual consequences for having spent years knowing and saying that my goddess (whom I loved fiercely and with burning passion) was my Mother, and now having her empty eye sockets fixed on me because I'm not keeping up with my familiar obligations after years of being "no contact" due to religious trauma. What do I know about reciprocated familiar dynamics with the divine, I wonder?
I'm very tired of sharing and caring for people who will dismiss everything because the idea and the aesthetic are more appealing than the boring truth that devotion is a long-term commitment. I'm very tired of bean soup type of arguments.
And to quote a comment I saw under a yt video, gatekeeping is a term exclusively used by the people the gate is meant to keep out.
The planetary forces, according to Bardaisan, are responsible for those events and circumstances that are neither controlled by physis nor desired by human free will. For instance, most people desire to be rich, powerful, and healthy, but only some attain these goals, whereas others do not. It is for Bardaisan out of the question to attribute the origin of negative events to a divine power, yet he also explicitly rejects the Epicurean doctrine that events occur by chance. He thus concludes that the occurrence of unwanted events, such as sickness, poverty, or unruly children, is caused by fate (helqa). Fate, however, is not a power independent of God, but, as was noted already, one subject to the divine commandments. Bardaisan’s view of fate as an entity subservient to God is thus similar to the Platonic concept that there are some areas of life control over which God has delegated to lower entities. Bardaisan then sums up the impact of nature, fate, and freedom onto humankind as follows: “We human beings are found to be equally led by nature, and separately by fate, and each as he wants by our freedom.” It is thus on account of fate, and not as divine punishment or reward that individuals attain their goals of health, wealth, and a happy family life, or fail to attain them. While Bardaisan thus concedes some power to the planets, he strictly limits their sphere of influence and maintains that the planets never can limit uman freedom in ethical matters. The planetary constellations at birth do not determine a person’s action, and neither do they determine the customs of people in the various regions (or klimata) of the earth, as he reasons at length in the second half of the Book of the Laws, making brilliant use of the arguments first articulated by Carneades (21/3–129/8 b.c.e.). While Bardaisan’s treatment of the stars and their influence upon terrestrial affairs has unique elements, many of his ideas have parallels not only in the philosophical literature of his age, but also in the writings of Origen.
Possekel, Ute - Bardaisan and Origen on Fate and the Power of the Stars (p. 529-530)
