#arkhaos.art

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 2. Hera

So I came to the conclusion that I would like to add my favorite little facts about the gods while doing this here, so first up is Hera (and a bit Zeus, because there was nothing about him yesterday)

Do you know that Hera wasn't Zeus' first wife? She was most likely the third, or possibly the fifth! First was probably the most famous Metis (Athena's mother) and the second Themis (with whom he had 6 children - the Horae and the Moirai) and at this point Eurynome with Mnemosyne OR Hera probably appear. Either way, I think we can all agree that she had no choice and was drawn into a relationship with her brother, right? On the more pleasant side, they had a fairly well-known son Ares and daughters who are much less talked about - Eileithyia & Hebe, the goddess of fertility and youth. It is sometimes said that their common child was also Hephaestus (although I personally prefer to make him just Hera's son) and Eris, Ares' supposed twin sister, although in other versions she is Nyx's daughter.

Hera was ironically the goddess of women and marriage, poor girl needs a break. Her sacred bird was the peacock, which apart from symbolizing immortality and beauty, the Greeks believed that she created this animal when her many eyed bodyguard Argus died. She just gathered his eyes and placed them on this tail feather.

And finally, did you know that Hera literally beat Artemis' ass with her own bow, in the Iliad? Like, this is not some unknown interesting fact, but in general I remember the first time I heard it I was like "Shoot, Hera is really the mother of mothers, you better not mess with her".

That's all, these are the interesting things about Hera. Hope you like it! :)

Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 9. Ares He is probably one of the most misunderstood gods, right after Hades. Like of course Ares the cruel BUT he was the god of the bloody aspect of war, AND at the same time he was the only one who did not murder without reason, did not kidnap and above all did NOT force himself on women! Woow! (Someone once did this to his daughter, and you might think cruelty is a mild word for what Ares did in revenge.)

Generally most myths about him are "typical" and there is nothing more unusual about it, maybe apart from the fact that he was imprisoned in a jar by a couple of giants for over a year and no one noticed, poor Ares. I wrote a large part of him in Aphrodite post (he had an affair with her, u know) and I can say that even their children together are probably more interesting after all (especially Eros and Harmonia), but Ares himself, for example, had a very cool role in the Iliad. That is, not cool for him because he broke his promise to Athena and Hera that he would fight for Greeks, his partner convinced him to change sides. Due to fighting with the Trojans, Diomedes, with the great help of Athena, stabs Ares, who has to return humiliated to Olympus and is even scolded by Zeus. When the siblings return to the battlefield (because after all the king of Olympus did not give them a 100% free hand to fight), Ares tries to take revenge on Athena but is eliminated immediately.

There are sources that say that he could have had a twin sister (Eris or Enyo), but he definitely had two full sisters, Hebe and Eileithyia, who are worth mentioning because they have too little love. We do not know their relationship with Ares, tho.

Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 12. Makaria So Makaria (or Macaria) is a very interesting person because there is a chance that there would be two of them in mythology ... or not, lol. Generally there was a period when people were afraid to write literally about Hades so we have Makaria who was his daughter (more in the Roma version) and Makaria who was the daughter of HERAcles (not to be confused with Hercules, that's how I talk about you Disney). The problem is that we don't know for sure if there were two girls or if we are still talking about one, because both of them are somehow connected with death. I like versions of myths in which Hades is sterile, so let's take the second version of this in the middle, which my drawing shows. Macaria was the daughter of Heracles and after his death she was forced to flee with her siblings from the wrath of King Eurystheus, to Athens - the guy had a grudge against her father. They were accepted there by the current ruler of the city, Demophon. After some time he saw an army at his door and was informed that if he did not give them children of the dead hero, Athens would face war. He did not obey. However, a prophecy appeared and said that Demophon's city would win only if a young girl was sacrificed to Persephone. Macaria volunteered and the prophecy came true. Generally I drew her holding purple irises in one hand, which were often offered to women's graves, and a butterfly in the other, you remember from the previous post that this is one of symbols of death, right? She accepts it willingly. She as Hades' daughter doesn't do much except live in the Underworld, which is why I prefer this version much more. Despite the association with death and even Persephone herself, I prefer to think that there was just one girl. Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 11. Thanatos So there will be a bit of mythology and a bit of my life story here. Thanatos as the deity of peaceful death is very interesting, he comes, cuts a lock of your hair and then Hermes could do the rest. He has a twin brother Hypnos and oh boy, the old paintings of them are so cute. Check out "Hypnos and Thanatos: Sleep and His Half-Brother Death" by John William Waterhouse, excellent one. Btw, he got butterfly's antennae because that's his sacred animal, which is also a symbol of the soul. BUT now some lore from my life. Mythology somehow stuck with me for a long time, once in primary school when we talked about Greek gods each of us got our own god for which we were supposed to dress up and talk about. I got Thanatos and I'll tell you that 10 years ago I couldn't find almost anything on the Polish internet. A very short Wikipedia and a few pictures, because nobody spoke English at my house at the time, so my mother took matters into her own hands. She was a seamstress and sewed me a black and white outfit (the one Thanatos is wearing on my art), bought angel-costume wings and helped me paint them black, attaching even more feathers to make them bigger. And believe me, how much she heard from my grandmother that it was "a profanation of religion" and so on. On day we were supposed to present it, I was late for my first lesson because I was doing the most "deadly" make-up that the cheap cosmetics we found at the last minute would allow me to do. And I had a phenomenal performance, I even walked around the room with my paper knife painted gold in one hand and a paper torch in the other. I had "diabełki" (little devils) in it, which were gunpowder wrapped in parchment, wrapped in small balls. You could buy these at kiosks and when you hit the ground with them there was a mini BOOM, I used them at the end of my presentation for t h e w o w effect. And you know what? I got a 4- (which is like B in a Polish school), and you know why? Because "it's very unsightly to watch a girl pretending to be a male character". BUT I DID NOT CHOOSE A MALE CHARACTER, that teacher gave us gods, I had no choice in with one! 12-year-old me was sad and 22-year-old me is disgusted by that woman. But you know what? I went to an art school after that and there was an "initiation as a student lit party" (which always had an interesting theme at that school), we of course got a topic about Greek mythology. I put on my Thanatos outfit, went to the bathroom to do my make-up and met a girl from my class who I hadn't talked to, and who commented on something about my costume. We started talking and talking and talking... 3 years ago we finished this school and she is still my close friend so I can say that the effort of making this costume really paid off. Thanks to my mom lol. I really like Thanatos for that. Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 17. Persephone Persephone is one of my favorite goddesses because we have few sources about her but on the other she is very well known and you can infer a lot about her. For me she is a very sassy queen who when she wants to can be scarier than death. Tho, she has a warm heart and absolutely will not resist sighing for true love. In general I could not find her canonical sacred animal, I saw entries that it was a deer, a bat or a rooster but nothing is certain. On the one hand I liked the symbolism of the bat - sooo she get fangs. I think they fit her. On the other hand due to the fact that she is very well known for being the daughter of Demeter I gave her pig ears, the same as her mother had. And the color of pomegranate, of course. Other than her abduction, her known myths include the one with Adonis (bleh) and the one where she gets pregnant by force from Zeus and gives birth to Zagreus (BLEH). Warmer myths include when she supposedly played with the nymph Hercyna who had a goose, the goose ran away to a cave and hid under a rock, and when Persephone picked it up, a river leaked out of it, which was named after the nymph - Hercyna. There's also a really cool myth about how she deals with Hades' howling lover, Minthe, and turns her into a mint bush. Persephone doesn't have a chill about her relationship. I also drew asphodel flowers on her clothes because they represented the underworld, death, and mourning. She also has some wheat here in honor of her former self, Kore. Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 3. Hephaestus

(So let's say that in my art of him and Athena he was simply younger, which is why he has a longer beard and hair here - and I like him much better tho.) ((Yeah, let's just say that after God Games Zeus' lightning bolts needed a little cleaning. Btw, Hephaestus made them, in mythology they were weapons, not atmospheric ones.))

Of course, donkey ears and a tail because that was his sacred animal. I can't say anything but the timeline of his life is very strange. On the one hand, he was supposed to be the son of Hera AND ZEUS just to be thrown off Olympus because he wanted to protect his mother from his father's anger, and by the way, in another myth, he is the one who smashes his head from which Athena comes out, in another version Prometheus does it. This one is more likely when we assume that Hephaestus was a child born ONLY of Hera, who did it because she thought that Zeus had given birth to a daughter also only from himself, but when it turned out that her child was disabled, she threw it off Olympus. In comparison, when Zeus throws Hephaestus down, that's when he gets his disability.

By the way, did you know that Hephaestus' forge was in a volcano, on the island of Lemnos? Very cool.

Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 15. Poseidon

So Poseidon is equal to Zeus in being horrible, he generally has a lot of stories involving women who don't want him but he doesn't understand the word no, although his participation in the Iliad is very interesting to me. On the one hand he has a constant argument with Athena (the cursed olive tree) and on the other hand he took the same side as her in the Battle of Troy. So if they want they can actually get their act together, wow. His sacred animal is a horse because according to myths he gave people the first animal of this type, and a dolphin. Why? Because he seduced his wife with the help of a talking dolphin (and for that he was supposed to create the dolphin constellation!). So... does anyone even know anything about Poseidon's wife? Everyone knows Persephone and Here but Amphitrite is rather on the dark side. Good for her tho?

I think his appearance will change over time, he looks like Vaporeon lol.

Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)

[firinnie]

MYTH-TOBER 2024 16. Hades I gave it the brown color because it's on Pluto, the planet it represents! Also, I read that besides the obvious snake, dog, and owl (woooo?) there's a black ram. I absolutely love that! Hedes, absolutely wronged by any modern media. It's really hard to find a true representation of him because a lot of people think that the Underworld is like Hell so he must be evil. And he's not at all, he's a really chill dude who loves his dog, keeps the place he rules tidy and surprisingly has one of the healthiest relationships in all of Greek mythology. Yes, in most versions he kidnaps Perseofne but it was with her father's consent and most marriages of those times started that way. He treated her well and she loved him. The origin of his name is unclear and in general older texts often treat it as "You Know Who" typo of thing. People were afraid that writing or saying "Hades" could bring death to them, so it's sometimes hard to find out if it's something really about him. Besides, his name probably means "unseen", which is interesting because one of his attributes is a helmet that provided invisibility. Another interesting thing, did you know that Hades rules the Underworld because he drew lots? He, Poseidon, and Zeus drew lots to decide and it wouldn't surprise you if I said I saw sources that said Zeus cheated, right? So... I just like a guy, the end. Inctober by @/arkhaos.art (on ig)