From Head Of Medusa (1617-1618) By Peter Paul Rubens

“Take my heart and hurl its fragments to the moon, the trees, the beasts, in the air, the dark, the waters, so that nothing returns to me ever again.”

— Anna de Noailles, tr. by Jean Morris, from Poems; “Ariadne’s Lament,”

To all my hoes and nerds out there: what are the best sources for Orphic myth? (@judiejodia?)

Medea, by William Wetmore Story, at the Met

Fyodor Dostoevsky ― Crime and Punishment

Manuel Bujados (1889-1954), “La Esfera”, October 1915

Alexa Demie in Fairy Tales (2020) Photography: Petra Collins

The Epic of Gilgamesh illustrated by Wael Tarabieh (½)

One of the oldest goddesses in the historical record is Inanna of Mesopotamia, who was referred to, among other honorifics, as “She who makes a woman into a man, she who makes a man into a woman.” The power to alter such fundamental categories was evidence of her divine power. Inanna was served by at least half a dozen different types of transgendered priests, and one of her festivals apparently included a public celebration in which men and women exchanged garments. The memory of a liminal third-gender status has been lost, not only in countries dominated by Christian ideology, but also in many circles dedicated to the modern revival of goddess worship. Images of the divine feminine tend to appear alone, in Dianic rites, surrounded only by other women, or the goddess is represented with a male consort, often one with horns and an erect phallus. But it is equally valid to see her as a fag hag and a tranny chaser, attended by men who have sex with other men and people who are, in modern terms, transgendered or intersexed.

— Speaking Sex to Power: The Politics of Queer Sex by Patrick Califia

Mirror with Scythian mistress of the animals, Griffins, Sphinxes, animals, and Arimaspians 7th C. BCE. This may have association with the Scythian deity Artimpasa, as she could be associated with animals, though the Potnia Theron figure has usually been associated with Artemis, from what I've seen. From the Kelermess Barrow. Hermitage Museum.

"Among these, the Tauri have the following customs; all ship-wrecked men, and any Greeks whom they take in their sea‑raiding, they sacrifice to the Virgin Goddess (Artemis)​ as I will show: after the first rites of sacrifice, they smite the victim on the head with a club; according to some, they then throw down the body from the cliff whereon their temple stands, and impale the head; others agree with this as to the head, but say that the body is buried, not thrown down from the cliff. This deity to whom they sacrifice is said by the Tauri themselves to be Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia. As for the enemies whom they overcome, each man cuts off his enemy's head and carries it away to his house, where he impales it on a tall pole and sets it standing high above the dwelling, above the smoke-vent for the most part. These heads, they say, are set aloft to guard the whole house. The Tauri live by plundering and war."

-Herodotus, The Histories, Book 4.103

kadamba style architecture