World’s End - Horton Plains National Park

Hey, what do you think about Medea? I know people portray her as a cruel witch but I think she never had someone besides her than her aunt; Circe. She really deserved to be happy, right?

This is the story of the wicked villain’s daughter who whispers in the hero’s ear and teaches him how to overcome every trial. Through her magic she transmutes the most insurmountable labor into triviality, she foils the villain’s pursuit so that her father cannot catch them in their flight.

(she chops her brother into pieces and casts the pieces to the sea, so that her father’s fleet must be hindered dredging up every bloody portion so that their king might bury his son)

She is wise, and she is good, and she is wonderful, filled with wonders, and the story never thinks to ask:

Why, with all her knowledge and her power, in all the years before the hero came, did she do nothing to curb her father’s wickedness?

---

When Medea excoriates Jason for his betrayal, he snaps back in retort:

“You exaggerate your favors,” he sneers. “Should I thank you? Did you act purposefully? Or was it not the shafts of Eros, as Aphrodite willed, that compelled you to save my life?”  

---

Medea loves her children dearly, and she kills them, and in that she is beyond compulsion.

---

We might ask instead what purpose Jason served in the story, if Medea and the Argonauts accomplished all his feats for him. Did Jason on his own slaughter the six-armed Gegenees? Did he know how to withstand the fiery breath of the Kolkhis Bulls? Did he know the dangers of sowing the dragon’s teeth, how to lull the sleepless dragon into sleep?

Could he have outplayed the sirens, killed the bronze man Talos on his own initiative?

What was the point of him, then?

(the answer is: it was his story)

---

When Medea returns to her home of Colchis many years later, after all the unpleasantness with Jason is well and done, she discovers her tyrannical father has been overthrown by his brother Perses, the new king.

Unfortunately for her, this is no happy ending. Perses hopes to purge her father’s bloodline and eliminate all other claimants to the throne.

So, she kills him.

(she is good at that, killing family)

It was said that when the Golden Fleece was removed from Colchis, so too would the king be removed from his throne. Medea returns, years later, and kills her uncle and restores her father to the throne, and the old wrong is finally set right.

.

The dead are all still dead, of course.

---

After Medea kills her brother, the gods demand she must be cleansed.

The Argo sails through storm and hellish steam and darkness, and finally docks at Circe’s island. Circe slits the throat of a piglet, stains their hands with its blood. The hearth fires blaze bright, and many cakes are brought out to be burnt as offerings to Zeus.

“There,” Circe says afterwards. “All done.”

Medea sits next to her on the polished chairs, looking at the thin dark line of pig’s blood still beneath her fingernails. “I don’t know that I can ever be cleansed of this.”

Her aunt smirks. “Too bad,” she says. “Ceremony’s over. You are.”

“I just -” she says, and looks towards the Argo where Jason is waiting, and feels her throat close up with emotion. “I feel like I’m going insane. I don’t know what I’ve done. I feel like I would do anything for him.” 

“The only morality in the world is love,” Circe says. “Everything else is mere ambition. Falling headlong into someone else’s story, and selfishly living out your own.”

“I helped kill him,” Medea says. “I killed my brother.”

“He was hunting you down. They would have killed you both, if they caught you.” Circe looks meditatively into the fire. “The gods have done worse, for worse reasons. Zeus, the Cleanser of Sins, once tried to devour his own daughter.”

They are silent for a time. The fire crackles cozily, and the burnt fragrance of cake hangs in the air. “I don’t deserve any of this,” Medea says.

“Ah, that’s the cruelty of it.” Circe sighs. “You are part mortal and part divine, a truth unto yourself, consequence unmoored from judgement.” She lays a hand over Medea’s. “You don’t deserve a damn thing.”

---

When Medea kills her children, she weeps.

(but she has wept before, and gone on to do more wickedness, and so tears are neither salve nor salvation)

After her children are dead, Helios sends down a golden chariot from the heavens to carry her away, to carry away with her the bodies of her children, so that she might bury them with her own two hands in Hera’s sacred grove, safe from any further indignity or harm.

(as a sign from the gods, this might be taken as approval)

---

This is how Medea’s story goes: Time passes and wounds slowly heal. She falls in love again, and has another child. She falls into old habits and once again tries to kill her lover’s son, but this time is unsuccessful. She is forced to flee, and at last returns to her father’s kingdom. She kills her uncle. More kinblood is shed.

Her son Medus grows up to take the throne, and he is so renowned in conquest that the Aryans rename themselves the Medes, in his and his mother’s name.

He is her darling son. She loves him dearly.  

.

This is a happy ending, perhaps.

Greek mythology from A to Z:

[P] - Pandora (Πανδώρα), the first woman, was created by Zeus to neutralize the blessing of fire, which had been stolen by Prometheus from Olympus.

In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora had a jar containing all manner of misery and evil. Zeus sent her to Epimetheus, who forgot the warning of his brother Prometheus and made Pandora his wife. She afterward opened the jar, from which the evils flew out over the earth. Hope alone remained inside, the lid having been shut down before she could escape.

your icon is hera??? ma’am.... pls tell me about peacocks and marriage 🥺🥺🥺

YES ANON ME TOO 💕

i fucking love hera so much!!! she and artemis are my two absolute favourite goddesses!!!

ahhh and look how beautiful they made her in Blood Of Zeus!!! she’s stunning!!

Raa Atoll, Maldives by Muhammad Saushan

He’s beauty, he’s grace, falling from Doctor Strange’s portal straight on his face.

Thor Ragnarok, 2017. Directed by Taika Waititi.

There you go girl... life is a fucking shit without its hopes.

Pandora opened the box—

inside the box there was a great wickedness. inside the box there was an apple. inside the box there was the knowledge of good and evil. inside the box there was a mirror. inside the box there was the contents of her own heart, given form and volition. inside the box there was a darkness that was dispelled the moment it was opened, leaving her only with an open box and all the world around her and an amorphous sense of dread.

inside the box there was another box. inside the box there was the box itself, unopened. inside the box there was a replica of the world and all its ills, made miniature. inside the box there was an infinite series of progressively smaller boxes, so that her labor might never be complete, nay, not til the end of mankind.

inside the box there was a secret. inside the box there was the bloody remains of all the women who had dared to open the box before her. inside the box there was a great treasure, a revelation that could outweigh all the splendor of the idyllic world around her. inside the box was whatever evil her Creator had placed inside of it to begin with. inside the box was the innermost portion of the soul that must first be known in order to be loved, were she to love Him in His entirety. inside the box was her inheritance. inside the box was evidence of a crime.

inside the box there was a promise. inside the box there was nothing at all, nothing but a moral lesson. inside the box there was a tiny image of Pandora herself, her head bent over a box as if seen from a great height, and when Pandora looked up it was then for the first time she saw the four walls surrounding her.

Inside the box there was a perfect world, just waiting to begin.

Sand

Soft sand 

lifted gently 

By steady winds

Carried swiftly forward

Leaving tiny particles behind

building sand dunes and loess 

That blanket the land

Where once there was nothing

Grainfall and grainflow

Wind ripples

Creating

Love

WHATEVER THE SONG IS... THE STEPS ARE CLEAR!!!

can we make it better? ‘cause I’m losing hope James Bay - Us