I’m writing to ask you for directions again.

I know Theseus is in here somewhere, unraveling his red clew like a vein across a chest.

I’ve been having memories again. I’ll close my eyes and remember passing things:

A face. A fruit. A war. A rib. The sea.

Two rivers merge in me, a Tigris and a Euphrates.

If I close my eyes, I can see,

I can see all of history and eternity to come

every language that is deemed dead and undeciphered,

every face lost to human memory,

I am turning, wandering Ulysses searching for his Adam, the first man.

Prophet of Paphos,

I have vague recollections of your face,

curling, coiling hair,

seafoam gathering like pearls in the sunlight,

a belly pregnant with the universe,

you reflect in every sea, every sky, every blue vein under the cloth of my skin.

Each dawn, I’m another Lazarus, weighed down and dreaming, losing one more memory and gaining one more mile from home.

I wish I knew what I was talking about;

it’s useless, even when I talk about you, I don’t understand my own riddles.

I’m Adam again, the first man, reaching out blindly for what I can’t see.

I saw you in a museum, once. It was Botticelli, your loyalest disciple, who painted you.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get to the painting through all of the people who wanted to see you.

You’re always out of reach,

that’s why they call you glukupikron, the Bittersweet.

Did you know Botticelli drew himself when he painted you?

So did I when I sat down to complete your composite sketch— nightsky hair, dimple under the lip, eyes so dark you can’t see the pupil,

my own face reflects back to me, repeating, I am, I am, I am.

Every painter paints themselves, they say.

I don’t know why I’m in your labyrinth,

searching for algebra

and a key, the center at which

Tigres and Euphrates meet.

Outside of here, a Liar is telling my story. He speaks truthfully when he says the center of the labyrinth is not as out of reach as I think it is, that the journey doesn’t have to take this long.

Kypria, I won’t have to wait long, will I?

This will all make sense, won’t it?

The labyrinth, the Red Books, the memories,

my nausea, my crying, my trembling?

You repeat, again and again,

‘Be not afraid of the universe.’

Kypria, why am I afraid?

Why cannot I not believe you?

Will you send me my redeemer,

or recall all of my memories?

***

I took a wonderful course over the summer on the anthropology of magic, religion, and witchcraft, with one of the assignments being an essay on a topic that interests us in religion and culture. Being someone who practices Islamic Sufism and has a deep passion for mythology, especially the god Dionysus, I wanted to research why the two often circle around images of wine and intoxication to explain experiences with the ineffable. It goes through literature, poetry, and history, but also my personal experiences (with Islamic Sufism of course, although if I had a time machine, I would definitely have personal experience with the Dionysian cult). I hope that you enjoy it and if you have any further sources to recommend, let me know!

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆⋆˚₊ 𖤓☽˚.⋆⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆⋆˚₊ 𖤓☽˚.⋆⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆⋆˚₊ 𖤓☽˚.⋆⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆⋆˚₊ 𖤓☽˚.⋆

Somewhere in the fir forests of Boeotia, a woman stood outside of herself. At the height of her spiritual ecstasy, a wild itch consumed her body, and she was possessed by a love so powerful it bordered on violence. A thousand years later and thousands of miles away, a Persian Sufi poet sat by candlelight, writing of the tavern, wine, and cupbearer. In the throes of creative inspiration, a sudden “heartsick anguish” seized him as he felt himself near his Beloved. Despite being separated by centuries, geography, and the number of gods they worshiped, this Ancient Greek devotee of Dionysus and medieval Muslim mystic both turned to wine and intoxication as a path to the divine.

Yet both traditions are more concerned with what the image of wine references rather than its physical form. For the followers of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, fertility, and theater), wine served as a means of entering an altered, intoxicated state of consciousness known as ekstasis, or “being taken out of oneself” (Dodds 77). For Sufi Muslims in the Iranian tradition, wine became a controversial symbol to express the annihilation of the self and divine union (Mojaddedi). Appearing in both cultures’ literature, intoxication functions as a method to describe the reportedly ineffable experience which the participant undergoes. Although the Dionysian mysteries emerged from the polytheistic framework of Ancient Greek religion and Sufism within the monotheistic context of Islam, both traditions were perceived as fringe religions that associated drunkenness with a transcendence of the physical plane of reality and unification with divinity.

Through the anthropological theories of Clifford Geertz, Émile Durkheim, and Victor Turner, one can conclude that wine and intoxication in Dionysian religion and Islamic Sufism serve crucial psychological, symbolic, and social functions. Whether used as a metaphorical device in poetry or physically consumed in a ritual, wine allows practitioners to escape their earthly identities, be pulled into communion with the sacred, and express experiences that resist conventional language.

In order to dissect the religious significance of intoxication to believers, one must first understand the historical and social contexts which generated these traditions. Dionysus’ origins in mythology are difficult to trace, with the first attestation of the god (as di-wo-nu-so) in the Bronze Age syllabic script of Linear B, but there are implications that he is pre-Greek and possibly Proto-Indo-European (Kerényi). By the fifth century BCE, however, the wine god’s cult had become widely, if not controversially, known across Classical Greece. Dionysus was considered a more rustic deity, one that came to be accepted in the “civilized” state of Athens relatively late compared to other gods like Athena, Poseidon, or Demeter. As British classicist Richard Seaford notes, he was constantly oscillating between boundaries and occupying liminal spaces: wilderness and civilization, order and the irrational, male and female (for his androgynous appearance and even being raised as a girl by Persephone in one account of his birth).

Wine, as a substance that alters consciousness and blurs the line between the logical and illogical, was central to the cult. In Euripides’ play The Bacchae, the blind seer Tiresias claims that wine is the “medicine for misery” which, when followers pour it, are literally “[pouring] the god of wine himself that through his intercession man may win the favor of heaven” (Euripides 282-286). While The Bacchae is a literary text, it presented the beliefs and mythology behind the Dionysian cult, therefore highlighting wine as a medium through which followers believed they could go beyond ordinary existence and towards a reality that is “realer than real” (Muraresku).

Yet, there is a crucial element to Dionysus: he was considered the Liberator (Lusios) who caused “people to behave madly” and dissolve their sense of self (Dodds 77). Through ritual dance, music, chanting, and wine, the followers of Dionysus came to believe that “they would never die” because they were understood to have been “freed from the burden of flesh” after becoming “one with [the god]” (Durant 187). It was in this crucial experience that each individual was convinced that “they were God” by drinking the “blood of Dionysus,” or wine. This concept is known as entheos or “a god within,” implying a literal possession of the human by a deity through ritual consumption in order for them to merge as one (Dodds 70).

From the anthropological perspective of Clifford Geertz, religion functions as a system of shared symbols that provide frameworks to understand reality and shape emotional experiences (Geertz). Wine, therefore, went beyond its physical effects to symbolize freedom and transcendence. By drinking wine in the context of entheos and invoking its imagery, worshippers were referencing the divine power of Dionysus within themselves, thus interpreting the substance through a cultural framework that taught participants to recognize intoxication as a manifestation of divinity.

The unruliness of the Dionysian cult and its associations with wine, emotional liberation, and activity in the countryside made it slow to be accepted among the civic elite just as the Theban King Pentheus was reluctant to accept Dionysus as a god in The Bacchae (Euripides). It is perhaps not surprising then to discover that his cult was popular among the outcasts of society, namely women and slaves (Dodds 76). While Dionysian celebrations were public and legally sanctioned, they created liminal spaces in which hierarchical restrictions were briefly suspended. For example, women who were often confined to the household were permitted to participate in rituals in the countryside that included trekking the wilderness (like oreibasia, or the midnight winter practice of mountain processions led by women) and ecstatic dancing (Dodds 272). Once they were said to be possessed by the spirit of Dionysus through wine (entheos), their earthly identities were understood to be eclipsed by their integration with the god (Dodds 70).

Victor Turner’s theory of liminality provides an explanation for the attraction to such an experience. Turner argues that many religious rituals stripped followers of social conventions by placing them in a threshold state (Turner). In the context of the Dionysian cult, participating in rituals conducted by a god that undermines social control and destroys boundaries, worshippers believed that they were more than groups in a hierarchy. From a sociological perspective, wine was not only revered for its physiological effects, but also for its spiritual connotations that liberated the consumer from social conventions. If wine was the tool through which worshippers could achieve an experience of ekstasis that convinced them of an identity and connection to something greater than ordinary existence, then the significance of drunkenness was not in itself, but rather the meaning that intoxication was understood to hold.

Furthermore, the importance of the ritual can be further understood through the lens of Émile Durkheim’s theory of collective effervescence which argued that communal religious practices made individuals feel both connected to each other and the sacred (Durkheim). The collective drinking, processions, and theatrical performances set the stage for such moments of shared ecstasy, therefore generating communal bonds.

Ultimately, Dionysian wine intoxication had a dual function. Socially, individuals were able to bond over collective experiences that connected them to divinity by believing that their earthly identities had dissolved and that they had been pulled into communion with the wine god through altered states of consciousness. Symbolically, it represented the presence of Dionysus within each individual by consuming the blood of the deity, thus providing worshippers with a worldview in which they themselves were understood to be manifestations of divinity (Dodds 70). As a result, wine was a type of tool through which intoxication was interpreted as evidence of the possession of the worshipper by Dionysus and, to an extent, a realization that the individual was one with the god.

But what happens when a religion discourages the consumption of wine?

In Surah Al-Ma’idah of the Qu’ran, readers are warned that “intoxicants” have the ability to “avert [one] from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer” (Qur’an 5:91, Ali). Why, then, would some of Islam’s most famous mystics write so passionately of the beverage?

When reading the Qu’ran, Muslims may be confronted with the condemnation of earthly intoxication yet wonder why Paradise is simultaneously described as having rivers flowing with delicious wine that satisfy the righteous (Qur’an 47:15, Ali). Sufism, often deemed “the heart of Islam” for its focus on the inward search for God, was the flower that emerged from the ground of such spiritual paradoxes.

Originating in the mystic movements of early Islamic pirs (spiritual masters) in the eighth and ninth centuries (“Remembrance of God”). Sufis seek an intimate relationship with God, often calling Him “the Beloved,” and consider each person to be a manifestation or mirror of divinity (Nader). Similar to the cult of Dionysus, Sufism was (and still is to some extent) seen as unconventional for its unique forms of worship such as rhythmic chanting (known as dhikr, or “remembrance”), ecstatic whirling (sama), composition of music and poetry to achieve a trancelike state, and, most intriguing, wine symbolism (“Remembrance of God”)

Yet, unlike the practices of the Dionysian religion, Sufis did not seek nearness to God through the physical consumption of wine; rather intoxication became a poetic symbol to voice spiritual ecstasy at the height union with divinity. In Sufi poetry, sukr or “drunkenness” was seen as a state of ego-annihilated enlightenment and love for existence in which the individual remembers that their identity is the same as God (Mojaddedi 2). Within this symbolic context, a sort of metaphorical trinity emerged in the poetry of Sufis like Hafez and Jalaluddin Rumi: the cup (representing the lover’s, or worshipper’s heart, which needs to be emptied of the ego and filled with wine, or divine love), the cupbearer (the pir who is believed to guide the path towards spiritual awakening), and the tavern (the spiritual state of those who have overcome their ego) (Schimmel 49).

At the center of this poetic language and convention lay a crucial Sufi concept of fana, or the annihilation of the self and dissolution in God, similar to how participants in the cult of Dionysus were believed reach a state of spiritual ecstasy where their identities would be annulled and replaced by the identity of the wine god (Schimmel 47). Sufis believe that one who has not annihilated their nafs or ego remains in a state of illusion in which they perceive that they are separate from the rest of existence while forgetting that their true identity is God (Schimmel 112). Similar to the initiates of the Dionysian mysteries who sought to transcend the social and hierarchical limitations of their time, Sufi mystics aimed to break through the confines of the ego and understand their identity as inseparable from God’s. Hence, when 14^th century Sufi poet Hafez demands to be brought wine, “for [he knows] not where [he] came from,” he is asking for a release from his ego and a reunification with or remembrance of God, not literal inebriation (Hafez).

This space, which both the Dionysian worshipper and Sufi mystic entered to liberate themselves from earthly constrictions, can be examined through Turner’s theory of liminality where participants are stripped of their previous identities and incorporated into a new status (Turner). Both used wine and intoxication imagery to suspend their identities and understand themselves as unified with a god. The means of reaching such a state contrasted and the name of the deity they were said to have unified with differed.

Ultimately, the significance of wine in Sufism originates in the image’s capability to articulate spiritual experiences that are otherwise difficult to communicate. This frustration proved to mystics that rational or logical language was insufficient in describing encounters with that which transcends the ordinary tongue. Just as wine symbolism was adopted in the Dionysian cult for its ability to overwhelm reason and alter consciousness, so too is it utilized in Sufism as a metaphor for the potency of sacred love when it nears the believer.

Through the lens of Clifford Geertz’s symbolic approach to anthropology, wine is more than merely a poetic image or simple metaphor. Geertz argued that religious rituals and symbols generated the ways in which worshippers would perceive or interpret the world (Geertz). Although many Muslims writing or reading these poems would not have consumed wine, it was still a culturally recognizable image that allowed intense spiritual experiences to be articulated in a manner that would appeal to those who had similar experiences or to entice those in search of such an encounter with God.

Despite the metaphorical imagery and symbolism, the body was never abandoned in the Sufi tradition. Ritual chanting (dhikr), breathing exercises (par anfus), fasting, music, the repetition of the 99 names of Allah (tasbih) or other phrases like la illaha illa Allah (“There is no god but Allah”), and ecstatic whirling (sama) were all practices within the Islamic context to reach that liminal space where the self was understood to be stripped of its prior earthly identity and entering union with God (“Sufism: Seeking God”). Similar to the collective effervescence of the followers of the Greek wine god, Sufi gatherings put participants in accord with each other as well as themselves and God, therefore strengthening connections within the community (“Sufism: Seeking God”).

In the Dionysian tradition physical rituals such as drinking wine, ecstatic dancing, mountain wandering (oreibasia), the rending and consumption of raw meat (sparagmos and omophagia; by committing this act, they were understood to be referencing the mutilation and ingestion of the god himself in order to unify themselves with him), and singing hymns to the god (dithyrambos) were conducted, thus placing yet another emphasis on the actions of the corporeal self (Burkert 290-291). There is also a theory in which the sacred wine drunk during these ceremonies may have been spiked with hallucinogenic substances like opium, cannabis, or even psychoactive fungi (Muraresku). In this case, the allusions to wine would refer to the visions participants saw when ingesting the entheogens, although this is still debated.

Neither tradition sustained itself on abstract belief but rather found divine experience through the senses. In both spiritual practices, the sacred that was symbolized by wine and intoxication (for the Dionysians, it was ekstasis; for Sufis it is fana) was seen to be physically reached through movement, breath, noise, and trancelike states of consciousness.

The similarities between these two cultures become even more remarkable when one realizes that they are not genealogical. While there is no historical link connecting the Classical Dionysian mysteries to medieval Persian Sufism, the parallels suggest that distinct cultures arrive at the utilization of religious technology (symbols, traditions, customs, etc.) independent of time. Although wine might have initially seemed like an oddly specific image, upon further inspection, its appropriation into religion makes sense. Wine appears to transform the mind from rational thinking to operating on intense emotion and lessened use of logic. The mind and its worldview are altered. It is a physical beverage that produces effects which are intangible. People, when drunk, are often deemed “mad” for their strange or illogical actions. As discussed previously, both religions were considered fringe and controversial for their practices, thus the adoption of wine not only served as a spiritual metaphor of being intoxicated by the divine, but also to highlight that these traditions were seen as unusual to the uninitiated.

This observation forces us to reexamine the anthropological theories through which these experiences are interpreted. From Durkheim’s perspective, the collective experiences of ecstasy give way to communal understandings of the sacred and to preserve cultural practices. For Geertz, wine and intoxication are symbols through which a culture can receive a specific worldview that communicates the beliefs of a religion. For Turner, wine (and the practices symbolized) was the medium through which intoxication was obtained and where psychological transformation is made possible. Through the lens of these three theorists, it becomes evident that wine and intoxication do not merely serve one function. There are social, cultural, and psychological elements that are closely linked to it.

The comparison also illuminates the various functions spiritual practices had. For the initiates of the cult of Dionysus, wine provided access to social liberation, possession by and unification of the wine god, and belonging in a community that shared the same experiences one initiate had. In Islamic Sufism, wine served as a symbol through which the love of and mystical communion with the Beloved could be expressed in poetry. The potency of wine lies in its power to indicate perceived experiences of spiritual transcendence.

Sobriety’s valued clear-headed connotations were replaced with a metaphor for the mind while in its ordinary state where the rational mind and ego reign supreme. Classical Greek culture generally praised rational thinking, temperance, and self-control, hence the inversion of such values pushed those outside of the cult of Dionysus to perceive it as strange and those within the tradition saw it as liberating (Burkert 290). Similarly, Islamic orthodoxy in the Middle Ages valued sahw (sobriety) and strict accordance with dogma, thus the poetry and practices of Sufi mystics was regarded with suspicion, even causing debates over if Hafez’s body should be buried if he is a blasphemer (Bekhrad). Thus, what appeared as madness to the uninitiated was enlightenment to those involved in ritual settings.

However, in meditating upon the connections between two cultures so vastly separated by time, geography, and belief, one might get a glimpse into a universal human feeling: namely the desire to transcend the limitations of mundane existence.

Practices attempting to near this sense of the beyond range far and wide from the consumption of wine to whirling and chanting to scarification. While I speak of wine and intoxication in this paper, any discussion of the purpose behind religious practices is merely the façade of an enduring inquiry: why do humans want to find meaning in transcending ordinary existence? What pulls us to search for that which cannot be rationally understood, which needs the symbol of wine or God or intoxication in order to be expressed?

In his Ghazal 143, Hafez writes of a conversation with a wise man. Throughout the poem, he hungrily asks question after question: Where can truth be found? What is the origin of beauty? When did wisdom emerge? “Hafez,” the sage finally says to the poet. “It’s your distracted, lovelorn heart that asks these questions constantly” (Hafez). So too does each human heart continually reach out for answers to those ultimate questions of existence.

Keep telling and collecting stories,

From One Universe to Another,

Ava 💫

Works Cited

Abdullah Yusuf Ali. The Holy Qurʼān : Text, Translation, and Commentary. New Delhi, Kitab Bhavan, 2015.

Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1985.

Dodds, E R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley, University Of California Press, 2012.

Durant, Will. The Life of Greece. Simon and Schuster, 1939.

Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Karen E. Fields, Free Press, 1995.

Euripides. The Bacchae. Translated by William Arrowsmith, University of Chicago Press, 2013.‌

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, 1973.

Hafez. “Ghazal 143.” Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, translated and introduced by Dick Davis, Penguin Classics, 2013, pp. 72

Joobin Bekhrad. “Iran’s Fascinating Way to Tell Fortunes.” Bbc.com, BBC, 24 Oct. 2018, www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181023-irans-fascinating-way-to-tell-fortunes.

Kerényi, Karl, and Ralph Manheim. Dionysos : Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1996.

Mojaddedi, Jawid A. “Getting Drunk with Abū Yazīd or Staying Sober with Junayd: The Creation of a Popular Typology of Sufism.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 66, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1–13. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4145692. Accessed 11 June 2026.

Muraresku, Brian. The Immortality Key : The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2020.

Nader, Ali. Sufism. M.T.O. Shahmaghsoudi, 2002.

Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill, University Of North Carolina Press, 1975.

“Sufism: Seeking God.” Pluralism.org, pluralism.org/sufism-seeking-god.

Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Aldine Transaction, 1969.

“Remembrance of God: The Sufi Circle.” Pluralism.org, pluralism.org/remembrance-of-god-the-sufi-circle.

The more I learn, the more I find myself kneeling before something I cannot quite comprehend.

It’s a paradox really—with each book I read, each topic I study, each word I learn in a foreign language, the more I get the sense that I am floating above a void that yawns wider than anything I could ever fathom. Reality, facts, and axioms loosen and stretch, evade definition. Meaning and symbols reveal themselves to be scattered across all of existence, smiling sympathetically at the little knowledge I am so proud to hold.

I am merely another verse in the music of the spheres, but in being that single verse, I have been eternally humbled and awed. Even if I were only a single letter, a single breath in the Poem of the Universe, I would still spend my entire life prostrating before this great Mystery. That I, one of eight billion humans on a planet among trillions in a cosmos that seems to have no end, should be granted the privilege to learn, to read, to write, to speak… it makes my heart constrict sometimes! What did I do to deserve such a gift?

Perhaps this is what learning and creation are: devotion to the ineffable.

For this reason, I wanted to create a personal curriculum that reaches from the annals of history and belief to brush the dust off of broken busts and return once more to Beauty. I will be journeying through prehistoric language families to early Greek literature to Neoplatonism in the Italian Renaissance to Northern European fairylore.

I am treating less as a curriculum with a strict deadline, because research and learning often takes time. I want to take in each material slowly: a cabinet of curiosities, books, ideas, and fascinations that will accompany me as long as they need to. I’ve even already completed some of the “assignments” in the curriculum. It is not arranged chronologically, nor is the outline intended to be exhaustive. What I do guarantee is that I will wander, double back, and follow the clew like Theseus through the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

So come with me, take my hand, and let’s turn ad aeternum to stars, centuries, and spirals…

⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･⋆｡𖦹°⭒˚｡⋆°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

Section I: Classical History and Myth in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more…”

— Julius Caesar (Act 3, Scene 2)

The Bard of Avon has followed me every year since I was twelve. In the seventh grade, my class read and performed Much Ado About Nothing; in eighth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; in ninth, Romeo & Juliet; in tenth, Macbeth. In junior year, however, our curriculum was dedicated to the American canon and, for the first time in years, my annual rendezvous with Shakespeare was postponed.

Determined to not break tradition, I’ve decided to design a section that will include the reading of Julius Caesar and the re-reading of my favorite of Shakespeare’s works, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But this is more than just the Bard’s imagination. I want to investigate the Classical world that pulses beneath both works: how betrayal is received in ancient Rome and on the early modern stage, how Greek myth finds its way into an English forest…

• Section IA: Julius Caesar and the Historiography of Brutus

  • Companions for Julius Caesar:

    • Shakespeare and Plutarch: How Shakespeare drew much of the narrative for his play from Thomas North’s English translation of Plutarch’s Lives.

    • Thomas Kullmann, “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the (Re-) Invention of Tragedy”: What Shakespeare himself added to the narrative to make the play seem more mythic and less historiographical.

  • My primary research project for this section centers on the figure of Brutus in both Shakespeare’s play and in actual Roman history. I’ve found myself endlessly fascinated by his envy, betrayal, and guilt and the centuries of moral and political meaning that have accumulated around it. I hope to also compare Brutus with religious characters like Judas (not because Caesar is comparable Christ, but because both betrayals became recognizable archetypes in the Western psyche). Dante even casts Judas and Brutus in the same circle of Hell, where both are gnawed for eternity by Satan.

    

• Section IB: Re-reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  • Returning to A Midsummer Night’s Dream gives me an excuse to follow Shakespeare’s Classical references back to their sources, a research topic I conducted a while back and that left me wanting more! I am planning on researching nymphs, spirits, and pastoral beings in Greco-Roman myth with a bonus section on the figures Shakespeare chooses to adapt into his own plays! Consider it your whimsical compendium and guide to the classical, archaic spirits of the wilderness 𖦹

• Along the way…

  • Watching a live Shakespeare in the Park production of A Comedy of Errors with friends; re-watching of one of my favorite movies of all time— Hamnet (2025)

  • Listening: Renaissance and early modern music (William Byrd, John Dowland, Thomas Tallis, lute music, etc.) and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (who, for no defensible historical reason beyond the theatricality of her voice, reminds me of Shakespeare), Florence + the Machine’s Lungs

  • Creative Prompts: design a character based on one of Shakespeare’s, try your hand at iambic pentameter, write the story of how Puck and Pan first learned mischief, design Titania’s sourt through plants actually mentioned in Shakespeare’s play and his native England

  • Keeping a commonplace notebook of my favorite quotations, metaphors, and images that I stumble across while reading

  • Memorize a passage from each play (for MSND, I definitely want this to be Puck’s final monologue which always leaves me a bit heartbroken)

Section II: Deep Time & The Beginning | Prehistory & the Paleolithic

“I will travel farther than the shipmates of Ulysses to the place of dreams, far past the reach of human memory.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, The Dream

The desire to create this section is probably best explained by a painfully unedited journal entry I wrote a few weeks ago:

June 15, 2026: I’ve really been interested in language roots, in pre/paleohistory, in natural history/origins of species/world, in ancestors, and ancient Egypt and funerary rites recently. I want to see the origin. I look at my hand and behind it are thousands, millions, billions of others, branching out across the vastness of time and space. Two rivers merge in me, Tigris and Euphrates. Who am I? Where did I come from? What does this all have to do with me and what does it mean? Am I alone? Will I forget to remember? Like Lethe or aletheia and Mnemosyne? And the hand that knows it will become a hand, knows how to become a hand… how long has it been doing that? How does it know how to make itself? How does everything in my body know what to do?

Memory, memory, I want to reach out into the realm of Memory, to the clouded annals of history where nothing is ever lost— no language, no script, no event, no thought, no story.

How old are you? You are the stub of an ancient root, the newest descendant of a family tree that reaches back beyond infinity. There is no word for your origin and any attempt at nomenclature is futile.

If your body is so old, so ancient, so wise that it knows how to make its own self conscious, that knows how to rid itself of disease, think, eat, sleep, breathe, drink, pump, desire, cry, defend, then why not trust it? If it carries the weight of your ancestors, of the very first single-celled organism to emerge from the primordial waters, then basic, fundamental knowledge comes from inside of your own self.

This feeling has only intensified since my grandfather passed away a couple of weeks ago. I kept thinking of how indelible grief and death are in the human experience, how every being from the beginning of life has passed this threshold, how death is one of humanity’s oldest companions.

As I mentioned in the entry, I want to see the stem, the root, the pith. I want to see what I have inherited. Who are you? What are you doing here? Who came before you and when will Death take your hand for a new Grail quest?

• Section IIA: The Birth of the Universe (Yes, I need to start here, thank you very much)

  • Reading

    • A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson): I thought this would be a perfect introduction into the study of geological deep time, astronomy, evolution, and the formation of the Earth! I really believe that it would be a mistake to separate science, myth, and philosophy in this section.

    • Hesiod’s Theogony: There are so many reasons I’m visiting this book— for Hesiod’s genealogy of the gods, for the heart-wrenching poetry, for his description of the Muses, and how the Greeks perceived the birth of the universe. I would especially love to use this book as an excuse to compare other creation and cosmological myths like Genesis or the Enūma Eliš.

    • Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura): I found an old Oxford edition of this Roman Epicurean poem in a thrift shop last year and have been meaning to get around to it ever since! It explores atomic theory, mortality, and the origins of civilization.

      

      • Section IIA (Part 1): Prehistoric Ecology and Natural History

        • For the longest time as a child, I was obsessed with natural history, evolution, and paleontology. I used to begin every morning with a bowl of cereal and a natural history documentary (my favorite was BBC’s Walking with Monsters: Life Before the Dinosaurs). Revisiting this subject has given me so much joy and nostalgia, so I thought that I would dedicate a section of it in my curriculum. Each day, I plan to pick a prehistoric organism and conduct some research on it, just enough to fill the page of a journal! These topics could include ginkgo trees, giant dragonflies, Tiktaalik, Anomalocaris, Prototaxites, club mosses, etc. These will be detailed in a journal that contains astronomy, mystical charts, a dictionary of masks, and these prehistoric creatures!

      • Section IIA (Part 2): Humans, Religion, and Entheogens

        • The mycological world has always been extremely fascinating to me, especially when it intersects with religion and altered states of consciousness.

          • Reading: Fungarium (Ester Gaya), Entangled Life (Merlin Sheldrake), Food of the Gods (Terence McKenna; highly speculative, but would be interesting to read as a work that was culturally influential)

          • Watching: Fungi: Web of Life (narrated by Björk!)

          • Listening: Björk’s Fossora (2022)— an album whose content and visuals were inspired by mycology! I would also like to start listening more to Cosmo Sheldrake whose music is largely inspired by nature.

• Section IIB: Becoming Human: Evolution, Art, Ritual, Burial, and Belief

  • Here, I want to see how we became human. I’d especially like to be able to be comfortable with our family tree (Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo sapiens).

    • Reading: National Geographic’s Prehistoric Mammals (to become familiar with the Ice Age ecosystems early humans were in), Joseph Campbell’s Primitive Mythology (I’ll be reading this critically, with an appreciation for his synthesis and also what contemporary scholarship has to say)

      • Human anatomy: I’d like to understand bones, muscles, organs, embryonic development… how our bodies know how to create themselves!

        • Reading: Anatomicum (Jennifer Paxton)

      • Prehistoric Art: Venus figurines, hand stencils, portable art, Altamira, ritual masks, early music, cave paintings (especially those at Tassili N’Ajjer in Algeria and the caves of France!)

      • End of Paleolithic to Neolithic: spotlight on Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük

  

  • Along the way…

    • Watching: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog), Walking with Cavemen (2003), PBS’ First Peoples, Life on Our Planet (2023)

    • Creative prompts: write death from the perspective of a Neanderthal, a dialogue between Mnemosyne and Lethe before humanity existed, a creation myth inspired by mycorrhizal fungi, a prehistoric painting scene

    • Listening: Björk’s Medulla, inspired partly by human prehistory; Infections of a Different Kind (AURORA)

Section III: Historical Linguistics & Philology

“In the beginning was the Word…”

— John 1:1

If there is any field of research that feels like following a string of yarn down a rabbit hole, it would be the study of language. How sound waves and little scribbles can reduce us to tears, make us laugh, lash out in anger, and quiver with fear is such a mystery to me. Every word is an artifact, a fossil left by people who aren’t here anymore and whose names we don’t remember. You could take one word in English and it could be from an Old English suffix which stems from a Proto-Germanic root, but ultimately lies in Proto-Indo-European; and beyond even that is silence.

This section is an attempt to chase language back toward its earliest recoverable ancestors, like the linguistic sequel to Section II. I want to understand how philology can illuminate comparative mythology and religion where historical records are scarce.

• Section IIIA: The Physical Making of Language: How we can physically make sound?

  • Studying the role of anatomy in linguistics: the lungs and breath, larynx/vocal folds, the tongue, lips, teeth, palate, nasal cavity, unique sounds in the IPA, etc.

• Section IIIB: Language Family Trees

  • Proto-Indo-European: the prehistoric, reconstructed ancestor of Indo-European languages which ranges from Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Latin, Celtic languages, Slavic languages, Germanic languages, and many more. It would be helpful to dip into sections of J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams’ The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World.

  

  • Uralic: a language family spanning across Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe as well as Northern Asia and is usually split into two main branches Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. This family encompasses languages such as Finnish, Hungarian, Sámi, Estonian, and others.

  • Afro-Asiatic: a massive language family with six major branches: Semitic (Arabic, Amharic, Maltese, Akkadian, etc.), Berber (indigenous languages across North Africa), Chadic (centered in West Africa with Hausa being the largest language), Cushitic (centered primarily in the Horn of Africa), Omotic (centered in the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia), and Egyptian (Yes— Ancient Egyptian!; I really want to focus on Egyptian in four stages: Hieroglyphics, Hieratic (cursive writing on papyrus), Demotic, and Coptic)

  • Other Eurasian family trees: Kartvelian, Dravidian, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Sino-Tibetan

  • Austronesian family trees: Proto-Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Formosan, etc!

  • “Paleo-European”: Perhaps the greatest mystery. “Paleo-European” is an umbrella label (not family tree) for languages spoken in Europe before Indo-European and Uralic expansions. These languages are largely unknown, but some of them include Etruscan, Iberian, Lemnian, Raetic, and, my personal favorite— the Linear A script (and other Pre-Greek substrates). I’m most interested in how little fossils of Paleo-European survive through untraceable words in modern languages, place names, and the titles of gods.

    • The Basque Language: a living isolate language thought to be the only surviving pre-Indo-European language of western Europe.

      • Brief detour through the Basque Witch Trials (plus Goya’s paintings based on them) and Basque folklore/myth

• Reading: Comparative Mythology (Jaan Puhvel): The part I’m most excited for in this section as Puhvel analyzes mythology through the lens of linguistics, etymology, and philology!

• Along the way…

  • Listening: The podcast The Endless Knot (hosted by married academics Marcie Sundaram (a medievalist) and Aven McMaster (a classicist) in which they explore the connections between history, etymology, and literature!) I’d also like to check out some episode of The History of English Podcast.

  • Creative Prompts: a scene in which language is first conceived/given to man, create illuminated manuscript-esque family tree diagrams, create your own language!

  • Keeping a little “word fossil” notebook of words and etymologies that catch my attention

Section IV: The Bronze Age Aegean: Minoans & Mycenaeans | Cretan Hieroglyphics | Linear A & B

“Out in the wine-dark sea lies a land called Crete, a rich and lovely island. It is filled with countless people, in ninety cities. They are not of one language, but speak several tongues.”

— Homer, The Odyssey (Book XIX)

I’m not sure what it is about the Bronze Age Aegean that enchants me so much.

My love affair with this period began when I was researching the origins of the Minotaur myth in the first episode of my podcast Mythos & Historia around two years ago. Ariadne and her dancing path, Linear A and its mystery, the origins of the Greek gods in Bronze Age religions we can only hear whispers of… it was like uncovering a whole new universe. I used to set my alarm a couple of hours before I had to leave for school so that I could research this topic daily. Opening my curtains to find the sky still dark, the air cold and damp, and cracking open texts on undeciphered Cretan languages or pre-Greek religion produced some of the happiest mornings I’ve ever had! I was even privileged enough to see the Palace of Knossos and the Heraklion Museum in person last year, something I have not shut up about since.

Thus, let me continue to chase Ariadne’s clew and blabber all the way through this Bronze Age labyrinth…

• Section IVA: Learn as Much as a 17-Year-Old Can About the Bronze Age Aegean

  • The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean: this sprawling collection of 66 essays covers Minoan/Mycenaean religion, language, architecture, seals, art, and much more (with some essays on the Neolithic in Greece and the Cyclades). I plan to use it to build a foundation in the subject area.

  • I’ll be looking through library books and museum collections, with an intimate focus on certain sites like Knossos, Akrotiri, Zakros, Phaistos and Malia. There are also some specific art historical topics and objects I would love to study like the Psi, Phi, and Tau figurines and the recovery of frescoes. I would also like to look into Minoan relations with Ancient Egypt!

  

  • Section IVA (Part A): The Iliad

    • I do not plan on treating the Iliad as a transparent historical record of the Mycenaean world. I would like to simultaneously analyze the religious and poetic symbolism of the narrative and what memories of the Bronze Age the text actually preserves (like boar’s-tusk helmets, cremation, the visual description of Achilles’ shield, etc.)

      • Once I get to this unit, I will post the additional essays/papers I will be reading on niche elements in the Iliad. These commentaries and analyses will cover topics like Homeric geography, formulaic composition/oral tradition, Ahhiyawa and Hittite influences, funerary rituals, the roles of the gods (and their evolution/perceptions in the Iliad), Homeric terms/phrases and also remnants of Linear B, etc. (The Iliad will also be mentioned in a later section, but it will be read once throughout the curriculum)

• Section IVB: Bronze Age Aegean Language & Script

  • This will almost certainly become an article or podcast episode, and it may eventually expand into a larger project on the evolution of the Greek language. The scripts of Bronze Age Crete are, to me, some of the most fascinating rabbit holes and have led to my passion for etymology, philology, and linguistics!

    • Cretan hieroglyphics: an undeciphered Bronze Age writing system that features highly pictorial symbols of nature, predating both Linear A and B. I will mostly be reading through selections of Cambridge Classical Studies’ Cretan Hieroglyphic.

    • Linear A: One of my Roman empires. It was used primarily on Minoan Crete and resembles some signs later used in Linear B, but it still remains undeciphered. If possible, I am planning on contacting Ester Salgarella, one of the leading scholars in the study and attempted decipherment of Linear A!

    • Linear B: One of the greatest detective stories in the history of languages. This syllabic script used for writing in Mycenaean Greek is the only one of the three languages mentioned on this list that is deciphered and is considered the earliest attested form of the Greek language.

      • The Decipherment of Linear B: Classist John Chadwick’s narrative of the decipherment and an analysis of the language through the accounts of Michael Ventris. I believe that it is also important to look into Alice Kober’s painstaking analysis of the script as her contributions are often forgotten.

• Along the way…

  • Watching: Documentaries and lectures on the Bronze Age Aegean and its languages (I’ve seen Bettany Hughes’ Minoan documentary three times, but I might as well watch it again!)

  • Listening: Cretan (and general Greek) music throughout the ages, from ancient to modern. I’ll be making a playlist titled The Wine-Dark Sea 😉

  • Language-Learning: I’m not expecting fluency, but I would like to learn how to read basic Linear B. There is actually an app on my phone literally called “Linear B” and functions as a sort of Quizlet to help recognize certain characters and words!

  • Creative Prompts: tell the story of the last day at the Palace of Knossos, describe the sea from the perspective of seafaring Mycenaeans, write the discovery of Linear B from the perspective of the actual language, the perspective of a Minoan ring or artifact in general

  • Baking: I first discovered the blog It’s All Greek to Me (created by Anna P. Judson, an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics & Ancient History at the University of Durham) around two years ago while first researching the Minoans. Some of the posts feature Dr. Judson baking cakes inspired off of Linear B tablets, so I thought that it would be fun to recreate my favorite one!

Section V: Following the Evolution of Dionysus

“Dionysus, the god most terrible, yet most gentle to mankind.”

— Euripides, The Bacchae

Oh, Dionysus. What can I say about my favorite god?

Twice-Born Liberator, Raw-Eater, Wine-Dark, Noise-Maker.

He breaks the boundaries between male and female, human and animal, conscious and unconscious, civilized and wild. He is surrounded by wine, ivy, bulls, serpents, mania, drums and flutes, mad women, masks, satyrs, and the wild, raging forest. He goes beyond definition, to the country of liminal space. This is my attempt to understand his figure more, not to solve the mystery, but to deepen myself in it.

This section will follow the god through his evolution: from his possible appearances in Mycenaean records (and other nearby cultures) to his youthful wandering in the Homeric Hymns, the terrifying stranger of Euripides, his strange role in mystery cults, the dismembered child of Orphism, the Roman Bacchus of Ovid, his offshoots in figures like Zagreus and Iacchus, and the provocative, proposed comparisons between him and Christ. I plan on this section becoming a podcast episode!

• Section VA: Early to Later Dionysus & Research Topics

  • Potential Proto-Indo-European roots & Dionysus in Linear B (where he is commonly transliterated di-wo-nu-so)

  • Dionysus and Ariadne

  • The Question of Foreignness: Dionysus’ roots in Thrace and the Balkans, Anatolia and the East, and Crete

  • Homeric (especially Hymn 7) and Orphic Dionysus; diving deep into Dionysian offshoots like Zagreus and Iacchus

  • The Role of Dionysus in mystery cults, especially Dionysian and Eleusinian

  • Objects traditionally associated with the child Dionysus (knucklebones, golden apples, dolls, and others). I’ll build a four-column “toy cabinet”: ancient source/date/later interpretative reading/a creative and poetic response

  • The heart of this section: reading Euripides’ The Bacchae

    • Studying the characters of Pentheus and Agave, gender and costume, and the chorus

  • Ovid, Bacchus, and the Bacchanalia (especially of 186 BCE)

  

• Section VB: Interpreting and Comparing Dionysus

• Syncretism: Dionysus-Osiris, Sabazios, Attis, Adonis, Thamus; comparatives: Shiva, Baldur

  • Reading Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Karl Kerényi) in which Kerényi analyzes Dionysus symbolically and poetically. I will also be reading Jung and Kerényi’s Essays on a Science of Mythology in order to glimpse at a psychological and philosophical perspective.

• Dionysus and Christ, a cautious comparison of motifs

  • Reading: The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides (Dennis MacDonald) in which MacDonald proposes that the Fourth Gospel engages in literary comparison with Euripides’ Bacchae.

• Along the way…

  • Revisiting Florence + the Machine’s Dance Fever (Oh drunken gods of slaughter, you know I’ve always been your favorite daughter…) and AURORA’s The Gods We Can Touch (Blood in the Wine specifically being for Dionysus), Dead Can Dance’s Dionysus, Daemonia Nymphe

  • Exploring Bacchus and Dionysus in art history (from Classical to Renaissance to Baroque to the 20th century avant-garde)

  • Watching: Princess Mononoke (1997) for its wild, forested narrative; a recorded production of The Bacchae

  • Creative Prompts: rewrite Pentheus’ account of seeing Dionysus’ horns, write from the perspective of a maenad or a satyr, write from Agave’s perspective as she tears her son limb from limb, let Shakespeare and Bacchus have a conversation about theatre, sketch/design Ariadne’s crown and the Stranger’s costume in The Bacchae

Section VI: Early Greek Literature

“Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost… Find the beginning…”

— Emily Wilson, The Odyssey

How could I even fathom creating a curriculum circling myth, stories, and wonderment without mentioning Greek literature?

The earliest surviving Greek literature is astonishing because it emerges with immense confidence from the so-called “Dark Ages” after the collapse of the Bronze Age. Homer offers our imagination grieving heroes and painfully human gods. Sappho reaches into our ribcages and peels our hearts for the rawest emotion almost 2,600 years old. To access what someone millenniums ago felt, thought, loved is such a privilege.

Especially with the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (which has made its place to one of my favorite films of all time), I have been inspired to look at the early Greek canon with a new, symbolic lense. Sometimes, if you’re quiet enough, these stories feel less like novelties and more like memories…

• Section VIA: Understanding Greek Literature & its History

  • Ancient Greek Literature (Tim Whitmarsh): Whitmarsh offers new readings of Greek literature, how it influenced society, and its legacy in later ages like, for example, the Victorian cult of Hellenism.

• The Odyssey and The Iliad: both for their historical/mythological and literary/poetic significance. In addition, I thought that it would be interesting to research a bit about the figure of Homer, himself: is he real or folkloric figure or something in-between, like grounded in someone who actually lived, but represents something greater? I mean, it doesn’t take much to realize that a blind poet could not have physically written down two such epics. But my main focus with this section is diving into some niche topics or even specific verses and disputed words; some of these could include:

  • Menelaus & Proteus (Odyssey 4)

  • The Lotus-Eaters

  • Circe

  • Xenia

  • Homer and the Homeric Question/the construction of the Homeric epics/Milman Parry and Albert Lord

  • Mycenaean Residue in The Iliad

  • Ariadne’s dancing path on Achilles’ shield

  • Comparing Greek and Norse Female Divination: Cassandra, Sibyls, Delphic Pythia, and Völur

  • Neykia, Katabasis, and Necromancy

  • A Mythical History of the Cyclopes

  • Nausicaa, her character, and Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

• Section VIB: Women Speak!

  • How Women Became Poets: A Gender History of Greek Literature (Emily Hauser): The only word that existed during Sappho’s era to describe a poet was aoidos— “singer-man.” Hauser takes the often overlooked role of gender to rewrite the story of Greek literature, “arguing that the ways the Greeks talked about their identity as poets constructed, played with, and broke down gender expectations that literature was for men alone.” There are so many ancient female poets, and as I look through a list of Classical women poets, I am ashamed by how I barely recognize most of their names.

  • Women in Power: Classical Myths and Stories, from the Amazons to Cleopatra: an anthology of ancient accounts of famous women written by men. It is divided up into three main sections: “the woman-run state” (like the Amazons, the “Female Revolution” as seen through the wives of Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen), “Mythical and Legendary Queens” (figures such as Semiramis (queen of Babylon) Omphale (queen of Lydia), Hypsipyle (queen of Lemnos), Dido (queen of Carthage) and Lavinia (regent of Lavinium)), and “Historical Queens” (such as Artemisia I (queen of Caria), Salome Alexandra (queen of Judea), Cleopatra, Amanirenas (queen of Kush), Boudicca (queen of the Iceni), and Zenobia (regent of Palmyra))

  • If Not, Winter (Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s fragments): Just slowly reading through and analyzing these poems for pleasure, letting myself be astonished by her sensitivity and honesty. Additionally, I really want to focus on Sappho’s invocations of Aphrodite, the poetics of Carson’s use of the bracket, and the Anactoria Poem (which never fails to give me goosebumps).

  • Eros the Bittersweet (Anne Carson): A true treasure I stumbled upon while wandering through a local independent bookstop. Carson begins from Sappho’s description of Eros as glukupikron— “bittersweet,” and follows the history and language of desire in Archaic Greece through a collection of essays analyzing the period’s poetry, imagination, philosophy, geometry, and language.

• Along the way…

  • Creative Prompts: give Briseis a scene outside Achilles’ story, write Homer receiving the Iliad and Odyssey, write scenes from the Odyssey from the perspective of the sea, create a poem using Homeric epithets (like wine-dark sea, rosy-fingered dawn, swift-footed Achilles), write your own version of the Anactoria Poem

  • Reading selections from A Century of Greek Poetry 1900-2000 because Greek literature most certainly does not end with antiquity

  • To please the romantic inside of me, I’d like to, at least once, go outside to watch the sunset and read some Sappho to the setting sun 😉

  • Watching: Emily Wilson’s lectures (Emily Wilson / Thomas More Lecture: War, Homecoming, Heroism, Truth and The Iliad: Emily Wilson, Juliet Stevenson, Tobias Menzies and Edith Hall) and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey!

Section VII: Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian Religion, Literature, & Funerary Rites

“Day comes,
And the brightness
Is hidden around me.
Shadows cover the light,
Drape it in sandstorms.
My beautiful mouth knows only confusion.
Even my sex is dust.”

— Enheduanna, Hymn to Inanna

Oh, what can I say about these two that could ever faithfully capture my love for them? The beginnings of civilization, of literature, of religion as we recognize it, emerged through the spirit of these two ancient cultures. Only this year have I been able to truly be infatuated with these two civilizations, thanks to my art history class which often required me to complete hours of outside research. Hieroglyphics, clay tablets, tombs, grief, and mysticism have filled my senses as I lay my head against my pillow at night, imagining I am looking up to the stars thousands of years ago or being lulled to the Valley of the Kings. As I wrote earlier in my journal entry, two rivers merge in me— Tigris and Euphrates.

The bittersweet ache that comes with studying the ancient world often feels like centuries echoing through your body, like you can feel the reverberations of those before you. I can’t help but think something has been lost. I can’t help but think that maybe I have forgotten something cosmic.

• Section VIIA: Mesopotamian Religion and Poetry

  • The Mesopotamian Pantheon: A group I have a good grasp on, but would like to understand in far greater depth, especially the differences across the diverse civilizations. Oxford’s Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others promises a much wider mythological archive than the fragments I’ve encountered so far! Besides, I have been looking for an excuse to revisit Gilgamesh and Enkidu, a story that I first discovered in my sixth-grade world history class and proceeded to spend an entire week mourning. No really, I’m not exaggerating. I vividly remember coming home the day we read of Enkidu’s passing, looking out the window in my bedroom with dramatic music pouring from my headphones, and suddenly bursting into tears. As silly as it may sound, it was probably my first encounter with ancient literature that really broke my heart. I’m still astonished how a 4,000 year old epic could make a 21st century twelve year old cry.

  • Poems of Heaven & Hell: This short Penguin Classics anthology will be emotional heart of our Mesopotamian half. It includes poems about death, Inanna, grief, the night, and the desire to be remembered.

  • Enheduanna’s hymns: The first recorded writer was a woman named Enheduanna. She was a high priestess associated with the moon god Nanna at Ur and daughter of Sargon of Akkad. She writes of longing, divine intimacy, and a deep religious connection to the goddess Inanna. I would love to connect her to Sappho who also circles similar topics through Aphrodite.

  • Haru/Extispicy: A strange method of divination used across Mesopotamia, Rome, and the Etruscan worlds that consisted of using the internal organs of a sacrificed animal to read messages from the gods. There are a few clay liver studies left behind, inscribed with omen sections, that I would love to research!

  • Watching: Irving Finkel’s lectures on cuneiform and magic (like Pazuzu and Lamashtu)

• Section VIIB: Ancient Egyptian Religion and Funerary Rites

  • Funerary religion: Ancient Egypt is often flattened into pyramids, mummies, and curses, but I really want to go beyond the stereotypes and more into the intellectual/metaphysical world behind these ideas. Some concepts I will be exploring:

    • Anubis is of particular interest to me, so I would like to spend some researching his evolution and the symbolic interpretations of his figure.

    • Literature of the Afterlife: spells, incantations, coffin/pyramid texts, papyri, selections of the Book of the Dead and Book of Two Ways

    • The mummification process, canopic jars, and the Opening of the Mouth ceremony!

  • Ancient Egyptian Magic, Metaphysics, & Mysticism: This is a section that will be dedicated to how the Egyptians saw the world, how magic played a role, and a deep dive into nicher or more enigmatic gods like Heka, Bes, or Wepwawet. Here, I will be:

    • Comparing creation traditions and priest systems across four main centers: Heliopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis, and Thebes.

    • Tracking the metaphysical body in Egyptian thought: ka, ba, akh, ib, ren, sheut, sekhem, khat, sah

    • Studying metaphysical concepts like ma’at, isfet, nun, heka, etc. Also how hieroglyphics play a role!

    • Tracking the journey into the afterlife and Ra’s descent

    • Alexandria and the Greco-Egyptian world: One of the topics I’m most excited about in this entire curriculum! I want to investigate:

      • The Veiled Isis

      • Syncretism in figures like Serapis or Hermanubis

      • Ptolemaic kingship

      • The Library and Mouseion; Hypatia 💔

      • Renaissance Egyptomania

      • Theosophy

  • Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and the Amarna period: After taking art history this year, I was enchanted by the Amarna period and was prompted to do further research on its development. I will now be revisiting this topic by studying:

    • Akhenaten: A brief look into his lineage, how he went from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, the suppression/erasure of Amun, the establishment of Akhetaten, and the fraught political implications behind the Aten religion

    • Nefertiti: Where did she go? Who was she? Could she have ruled under another name? Why has the Berlin bust become the controlling image of her?

    • Amarna Art: How it differs from the rigid, idealized art of previous periods in the sense that it creates intimate family scenes, elongated bodies, narrow limbs, thicker lips, rounded stomachs, and androgynous figures (perhaps in reference to Aten’s own androgynous nature)

  • Watching: Akhenaten and Nefertiti (2012), Esoterica (YouTube Channel) lectures on Hermeticism, and documentaries on Egyptian religion

• Along the way…

  • Listening: The Brothel (Susanne Sundfør; this album adopts some ancient Egyptian imagery and references, so I want to revisit it alongside reading New Kingdom love poetry and Mesopotamian lamentations), Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian hymns

  • Creative Prompts: Write the first cuneiform sign realizing that it will outlive the hand that made it, reinterpret some of Enheduanna’s poetry and personal history, write Gilgamesh and Enkidu coming to terms with Enkidu’s death, write what happened to Nefertiti, let Aten speak after the Amarna period is over, write and illustrate the whimsical classification of ka, ba, ren, etc.

  • Make a Mesopotamian clay tablet!

  • Creating a small glossary of hieroglyphics and cuneiform symbols for myself! Also including any words that I find interesting or want to look into

Section VIII: Rome, Carnival, Masks, and the Art of Excess

“Dulce est desipere in loco. It is sweet to play the fool at the right time.”

— Horace (Odes IV, 12, line 28)

There’s a kind of beauty that I’ve been circling for a long time: Pearls, corsets, gold leaf, sugary dishes, masks, perfume, mirrors, theatre, silk, poetry, elaborate hair, trailing puffed dresses, myth, thirty-eight different variations of the common fork.

And then—

Drunken, hellion laughter. Dancing yourself to death. Animal masks. Noise. Cross-dressing. Heaps and heaps of food eaten with hands. The old religion. Folklore. People masquerading as gods, animals, archetypes, demons, and one another.

I want to see why, at the very summit of refinement, civilization dips back into the wilderness. It’s almost like hitting yourself over the head with so much sophistication and that you go mad. I love the grotesquerie, the sense of liminality, the confusion. This section is dedicated to excess. Roman festivals, Dionysian processions, medieval banquets, carnival, Venice, Versailles, masquerades, Kabuki, global masking traditions, ballets russes, Surrealist balls.

• Section VIIIA: Luxury and Spectacle in the Roman Empire

  • After reading Honor Cargil-Martin’s Messalina last year, I was exposed to the darker, more sordid side of the Roman empire. I want to do a primary source deep dive into:

    • The “Mad” Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Elagabalus, Nero & his Domus Aurea (after being rediscovered by the Renaissance, artists mistook the ruins for underground grottoes, hence giving us the Italian grottesco, meaning “of a cave,” then the word “grotesque”; I love this little rabbit hole because it suddenly spirals into Raphael, Renaissance ornament, grotesques, and hybrid creatures) etc.

    • The Food and Banquets of the Roman empire: Looking into the show of wealth through food, its preparation, the history of the triclinium, entertainment at banquets, excess, frescoes of food, mosaics, and the behavior at dining-rooms. I’ll also be reading the Dinner of Trimalchio from Petronius’ Satyricon for some satire and theatricality!

    • The structure of the Roman domus: atrium, tablinum, peristyle, fountains, ancestral display, wall painting, etc.

    • Colosseum, Circus Maximus, imperial entrances, theatre, pantomime

    • The Upside-Down of Roman Festivals: Saturnalia, Lupercalia, Dionysia & Bacchic Festival, Cerealia, Floralia, Vestalia & the Vestal Virgins, Vulcanalia

    • I’ll be exploring Roman humor, performance, and entertainment through Mary Beard’s Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up

    • Poetry cabinet: selections from the Penguin Classics’ anthology of Latin literature (Horace for social observation, Catullus for intimacy and insult, Juvenal for some truly unhinged satire, Ovid for myth and transformation, Tibullus for elegy, etc.)

  

  • Section VIIIB: Medieval Feast Culture

    • Feast of Fools, Boy Bishop, Twelfth Night, Lord of Misrule, Shrovetide, Mardi Gras, feast days and food as theatre, guild processions, mystery plays, mummers, Morris traditions, seasonal disguising, hobby horses, Green Men, animal costumes, Cockaigne Wild Men, dancing plagues, tarantella, traditional medieval folklore & fairytales, sugar sculpture, jester culture, minstrels, troubadours, and the Fool archetype

      • Revisiting my notes on A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival (Al Ridenour) and looking through the strange, enchanting photos of Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann as contemporary documentation of living European masking traditions

  • Section VIIIC: The Carnival of Venice

    • Origins and contested origin stories rather than repeating some romantic origin myth. I’ll be analyzing the Venice’s theatre, opera, and gambling scene as historical context and seasonal calendar of performance

    • Studying the evolution of Commedia dell’arte (the stock characters and their costumes, improvisation, lazzi, women performers) and Venetian mask taxonomy (in which I’ll be documenting each form with a date, material, wearer, and meaning)

  

  • Section VIIID: This, Madame, is Versailles

    • Louis XIV: The lever, dressing, dining, dancing, hunting greeting, walking, and going to bed as political performances. The use of the title “Sun King” is of particular interest to me as it connects back to Classical reception and Apollo.

    • The spectacle of Versailles: ballets, fêtes, fireworks, gardens, processions, operas, fashion, court etiquette, and the Hall of Mirrors.

    • The history of fairytale circles and salon culture (especially those of Madame d’Aulnoy and Charles Perrault)

      • I will be reading Clare Pollard’s fiction novel, The Modern Fairies for this section!

    • Art History at Versailles

      • The Baroque: studying Bernini, Rubens and his women, Borromini, Velázquez (especially his Las Meninas), Pietro da Cortona, illusionistic ceilings, theatrical light, sculpture, incense, and the Gesamtkunstwerk-like need to overwhelm the senses.

      • Rococo: Fragonard, Watteau, Boucher, Vigée Le Brun, Rosalba Carriera, the miniature art work on porcelain and fans, mirrors, the flowers used within the art, fêtes galantes, and theatrical gardens

    

    • Marie Antoinette: What was true and what was propaganda?

      • Rose Bertin’s influence on her hair and fashion, Petit Trianon (which was gifted to by her husband as a refuge from court life and with which she redesigned into an English-style garden, constructed a private theatre, and created the rustic Queen’s Hamlet) and the Hameau, amateur theatre, Affair of the Diamond Necklace and Madame Du Barry, the tragedy of her imprisonment and the fate of her children, revolutionary propaganda, and Rousseau’s remark about a “great princess.” I’ll definitely be scrolling a lot through the Château de Versailles website!

      • Rewatching: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006)

  • Section VIIIE: Léon Bakst & the Ballets Russes

    • One of my favorite artists for his fluid, colorful, and reference to myth, history, and literature. Looking at Bakst’s characters are like watching a person from another, more familiar world leaping through a secret portal to our own mundane one. Each of his designs carry their own universe. Some rabbit holes I’m planning on falling down into are Schéhérazade, Narcisse, Daphnis et Chloé, L’Après-midi d’un faune, and designs connected to Classical tragedy like his stunning Euripides illustrations; Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Fokine, Stravinsky, and the visual legacy of the company.

    • Reading: Leon Bakst: Set and Costume Designs; Book Illustrations; Paintings and Graphic Works (Irina Pruzhaniri) and the Met’s overview of ballet

    

• Along the way…

  • Each day, I will be choosing a single mask from across cultures and time periods to sketch and research about (some traditions I’d like to study are Greek theatrical masking, Roman imagines, commedia half-masks, Noh omote, Kabuki kumadori makeup, Yoruba Gelede and Egungun, various Oceanic masking traditions, Venetian masks, Surrealist ball outfits). Inside of this notebook will also be a little cabinet of excess where I compile luxuries from my research (Bakst designs, Rococo shoes, Roman jewelry, sugar sculpture, etc.)

  • Creative Prompts: write Elagabalus drowning in his own roses, sketch your own Ballets Russes designs, a poem for each mask, write Death arriving at Carnival and discovering that everybody is already dressed as Death, describe the decadence of Versailles or Rome with sickening excess

  • Listening: Changeling (2002)— The Changelings, Amalie Holt Klieve’s music, TOMORA’s Come Closer

Section IX: Norse, Finnish, and Sámi Worlds

“I am driven by my longing, and my understanding urges me to begin my singing.”

— The Kalevala

Whenever anyone asks me what my favorite mythology is, I don’t give a straight answer. Persian has been with me the longest. I know the most about Greek. Egyptian will always remain esoteric to me. Yoruba and Celtic and Japanese and Yanomami and Slavic… every mythology has its own personality and message. But Northern mythologies have always had a special place in my heart. I don’t know if they’re my favorite, but they certainly feel the kindest to me. I remember owning a copy of the radiantly illustrated National Geographic’s Treasury of Norse Mythology as a child and spending hours on the floor of my bedroom, reading and daydreaming about gods, giants, and golden apples. I think it was maybe with Norse where I first felt like myth was a memory I had forgotten long ago.

Unfortunately, it’s a mythology that has been abused, misunderstood by cheesy Marvel adaptations or, on the more extreme side, appropriated by white supremacist hate groups. But when I read Norse mythology, all I can see is love. I still can’t put my finger on why it has such a beautiful quality, but I know I’d follow it anywhere.

Before I dive into this section of the curriculum, let’s get a couple of things straight. Norse mythology (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland) belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European cultures, Finnish to Uralic, and the Sámi are an indigenous people spread across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia in a traditional homeland known as Sápmi. I’ll be doing a deep dive on topics throughout each Northern cultures’ mythology, so be ready for some forests, snow, stars, and a very painful goat joke.

• Section IXA: Norse Mythology

  • The Poetic Edda: This anonymous central primary course collection will be approached as a manuscript anthology of poems, not some “Viking Bible.” In addition to the individual poems, I want to briefly dip into Sigurd/Brynhild heroic material.

    • Special emphasis and analysis on the Völuspá (a poem in which Odin consults a seeress (völva) who describes the creation of the cosmos, Ragnarök, and the subsequent rebirth of the world)

  • The Prose Edda: Reading Snorri Sturluson’s 13-century Icelandic work cautiously and comparatively; I want to go into these two texts with some surprise, researching a wide spread of topics (ex. Odin’s epithet “corpse-bringer,” Gjallarhorn, Frigg’s foresight, early echoes of the Wild Hunt (?), etc.) that catch my attention like how I usually do with Greek mythology.

  • Research on Runes: For this, I’ll be reading The Elder Futhark: The Oldest Runes (Jacqui Albert Lund & Joseph S. Hopkins) and researching the preservation of Nordic magic in the Middle Ages and grimoires. Many cultures and religions around the world have used letters for metaphysical and esoteric purposes like Islamic numerology (hurufism and abjad), Kabbalah/Gematria, Western Pythagorean numerology, Isopsephy, etc. It’s a tradition that has fascinated me for a while and will probably compel me to conduct a research project on it sometime!

  • Comparative Connections and Analysis: Reading H.R. Ellen Davidson’s Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions as an influential comparative work!

• Section IXB: Finnish Mythology

  • The Kalevala: The Kalevala will be read simultaneously as literature, a 19th-century national project, and a portal into oral poetry. I plan on going into this with a comparative perspective and for the pleasure of its beautiful prose. Just as I plan to do with the Eddas, I want to research whatever happens to capture my attention (ex. Louhi, the invented name Aino, nine in Norse and Finnish mythologies, hiisi, etc.)

    • Beside my reading of this epic, I’ll have Juha Pentikäinen’s Kalevala Mythology for historical context and analysis. Of course, I’ll have to dive into other papers as well; I’m thinking of reading studies of the haltija/väki and tietäjä traditions, Karelian oral-poetry scholarship, studies of bear ceremonial traditions (and comparing them to the Ainu people’s reverence for the Ussuri brown bear), and the archive material of the Finnish Literature Society.

  

  • Section IXC: Sámi Worlds

    • Cultural Context: Understanding the history of Sápmi and Sámi languages; some topics that I will be briefly dipping into for context are reindeer pastoralism, the art of Máret Ánne Sara, material culture & duodji, state assimilation/Christianization/Laestadianism, contemporary Sámi art (film, fashion, literature, etc.)

    • Sámi Mythology and Cosmology:

      • Since there is no singular primary source to point toward for Sámi animism and beliefs, I’ll be reading and/or reading selections of the following books:

        • Tracing Sámi Traditions: In Search of the Indigenous Religion among the Western Sami during the 17th and 18th Centuries (Håkan Rydving)

        • Saami Religion, edited by Tore Ahlbäck

      • Some rabbit holes I’m planning on tripping into: sieidi, animal personhood and hunting rituals, Sámi underworld and cosmology, noaidi and trance/ecstasy states, ancestor rebirth, oral narrative through joik, etc.

  

• Along the way…

  • Creative Prompts: write Frigg’s foreseeing the end of the world, describe Freyja’s hair and her Brísingamen, attempt to write your own joik, give Louhi and Aino monologues, write about a bear conscious of its own death and ritual

  • Reading (Fiction): The Year of the Hare (Arto Paasilinna), Nordic Visions: The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction, the Summer and Winter Books of Tove Jansson, rereads of Jenny Hval and Karin Tidbeck. In the meantime, I would highly recommend Norwegian singer AURORA’s cover of the traditional Sámi joik “Golle Máze”!

  • Listening: Mari Boine, Sámi joiks, Björk’s Vespertine and Homogenic (both influenced and inspired by her native Iceland), Myrkur’s Folkesange

Section X: Fairytales, Faerielore, and Folklore

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

— W.B. Yeats, The Stolen Child

I once read that the original teller of tales was the one who told fairytales. There’s something so childlike, but ancient about fairytales (then again, a child is probably an ancient creature anyways). Their morality ambiguous, their logic fickle and not of this world, their loyalty and kindness true. They are perhaps the realest language we can speak, from another reality we all poured in from at the genesis of humanity.

I want to take these stories seriously without robbing them of their strangeness. I’m equally interested in the feeling fairytales, folklore, legend, and wonder tales share: the thinning of our mundane world and the emergence of a world only children and sages are granted access to.

This section is an excuse to run through fairy mounds, mermaid stories, Otherworlds, and memories older than our minds.

• Section XA: Faeries

  • Scouring anthologies (like Katherine Briggs’) for all sorts of faerie and folklore beings from all over the world. Each creature I come across will be a mini-rabbit hole for which I will dedicate a page/dossier to

  • The Otherworld: I want to do a project on “Otherworlds” like Annwn, Avalon, and Tír na nÓg. I would be lucky to get my hands on a copy of Aisling Byrne’s Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature!

  • The Forbidden Food: A motif across many traditions of the the forbidden fruit— the Abrahamic fruit of knowledge, the pomegranate Persephone ate that bound her to the Underworld, the golden apples of Greek and Norse mythology, and, of course, the ultimate rule of Faerie: do not eat what the fair folk offer you! I’d also love to compare Faerie hospitality to Greek xenia.

  • Reading: Elves & Fairies: A Short History of the Otherworld (Matthias Egeler), Tolkien’s 1947 essay On Fairy Stories, Fairies: A History (Francis Young), Enchanted Forest (Boria Sax), The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (Michael Foster),

• Section XB: Fairytales and Folklore

• Reading: The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales, A Companion to the Fairytale (H.R. Ellis Davidson), W.B. Yeats’ poetry (from Finneran’s The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats), Mermaids: The Myths, Legends, and Lore (Skye Alexander), Everyman’s Fairy Poems, Oscar Wilde’s Fairytales, Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction (Marina Warner)

• Along the way…

  • Listening: Florence & the Machine’s Everybody Scream, Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day, The Changeling’s Astronomica

  • Rewatching: Penda’s Fen (for, like, the fifth time), Hilda, Cartoon Saloon

  • Creative Prompts: write the story of a selkie’s husband, a fairy scholar researching humans, a mermaid who collects human myths about mermaids, create your own fairytale and illustrate it

Section XI: The Grail Quest

“The Master whisper’d: ‘Follow The Gleam.’”

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Grail Cup. Galahad. King Arthur. Lancelot. Merline. Guinevere. Morgan Le Fay. These archetypal knights and heroes that have run across the Middle Ages and to my imagination hundreds of years later.

I first become infatuated with the tales of the Grail Quest when I read the story of Gawain and the Green Knight at fourteen. I’m not sure what it was about this story, but it stuck with me, haunted my mind. I found myself returning to these adventures, especially to the figure of Galahad, because of how much they reminded me of the teachings of Islamic Sufism and how seemed to be the intersection of Celtic mythology and Christian theology.

I want to uncover the meaning and symbolism behind these stories that we seem to just leave behind for children. What did Arthur’s figure mean? What was the point of Gawain’s journey? What happened to the Fisher King and his strange objects? Why did only Perceval, Galahad, and Bors find the Grail Cup?

• Section XIA: Getting to Know the Quest

  • Reading

    • Perceval, the Story of the Grail (Chrétien de Troyes): This is where I want to begin. Chrétien’s graal is part of a strange procession of objects associated with the wounded Fisher King and while the romance is unfinished, leaving the ultimate meaning of the items unexplained, the scene has generated centuries of interpretation. Perceval as a figure is also fascinating here as he is told not to talk too much, but at the crucial moment, his silence fails to help the Fisher King and his wasted land.

    • The Quest of the Holy Grail: Here is when the quest becomes intensely imbued with Christian spirituality through key concepts like Eucharistic symbolism, hermits, confessions, and the difference between earthly chivalry and heavenly knighthood. I’ll be exploring how the Grail became associated with the Last Supper and Joseph of Arimathea. My main focus on this text will be Galahad (my favorite knight!), Perceval, and Bors.

    • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien’s translation which also includes The Pearl and Sir Orfeo): The text I’m most excited about in this section! I’ll be researching this one heavily, focusing on the color of green, Christmas, and the Green Man motif (even comparing to Moses and Khidr in Islam; I’m trying to avoid the whole “Green Man actually being an ancient vegetation god in disguise” theory, although I do wonder if he carries some residues of Celtic mythology)

• Section XIB: The Metaphysical Grail and Modern Interpretation

  • The Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth (Joseph Campbell): a collection of writings and lectures that analyze the psychological, spiritual, and esoteric depth of the Arthurian canon.

• Along the way…

  • Creating a dossier for each of the Grail knights, kings, prophets, wives, and magicians (each will include earliest appearances, associated objects/places/colors, key features, and an illustration)

  • Watching: Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, rewatching A24’s The Green Knight (2021), Mysteries of Faith (2023)

  • Visual Archive: Exploring the art of the Pre-Raphaelites (especially their Arthuriana), Burne-Jones’ Grail cycle, Beardsley, and William Morris

  • Creative Prompts: Write the moment Galahad encounters the Grail Cup, write the Grail Cup in Christ’s hand during the Last Supper, illustrate seven of your favorite knights, create a riddle-poem about the Green Knight

  • Listening: Florence + the Machine’s Ceremonials

Section XII: Dante & Virgil

“Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

— Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso

I first found Dante in an old collection of books my aunt left behind when she moved to Italy. At the bottom of her shelf was a well-loved copy of Penguin Classics’ The Portable Dante which contained the poet’s Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova (I actually owe a lot to that shelf for it also introduced Borges, Blake, Kafka and Rodin to me!). I would keep it at my bedside and occasionally read through sections, dazzled by the beautiful prose and worldbuilding. I remember memorizing small phrases or verses I came across and repeating them to myself throughout the day, like each word was a star in my mouth.

Soon, Virgil followed, after I bought a copy of his Georgics and Eclogues. although I haven’t read either in full, I have frequently sat outside with small selections, savoring the words running across my lips and the green that surrounds me, imagining that Virgil is here to narrate the quietly grand story of nature for me.

I love the idea of a guide: a teacher, a mentor who is there for you even in death. Dante loved Virgil so much that he resurrected him, and followed him like moth to flame through Hell. Literature becomes the light.

But before I meet Dante’s Virgil, I want to meet Virgil himself: the pastoral poet of the Eclogues, the quiet and agricultural voice of the Georgics, and the epic master behind the Aeneid.

This section is a sequence of voices speaking to each other across the divides of time, in a place where the universe is unified. Homer to Virgil, Virgil to Dante, Dante to us and our psyches.

• Section XIIA: Virgil, Pastoral Poet

  • Virgil’s Eclogues & Georgics: As I mentioned above, I haven’t read this Oxford Classics edition from front to back, but any verses or selections I have randomly selected have enchanted me. The way Virgil speaks of the landscape, desire, loss, and our connection to it all makes me feel a sense of awe that is usually reserved for childhood. While disguised as lovely shepherd poems and a farming manual, these two texts actually discuss Orpheus, plague, uncertainty, grief, and the creation of “Arcadia.” Also, off topic, but I need to look into Eclogue IV and its enormous Christian afterlife!

  • Aeneid VI: A threshold book necessary for understanding Dante’s Sibyl, Charon, golden bough, punishments, shades, Elysium, and Rome’s future. I will probably read the Aeneid in its entirety for this section, but Book VI is a nonnegotiable.

• Section XIIB: Dante’s World, The Portable Dante

  • Reading The Divine Comedy (and referring to the Princeton Dante Project frequently here) plus selected poems from the Vita Nuova and Rime. Such topics that I’ll be diving into will include:

    • The layers of Hell and the architecture of the cosmos/afterlife

    • A comparison of the Underworld in Odyssey XI, Aeneid VI, and Dante’s Inferno

    • Dante’s Ulysses, his Latin sources, and his knowledge of Homer

    • Chaucer, who greatly admired Dante, so I will also be reading some Classical-inspired excerpts of The Canterbury Tales

    • Sinners as storytellers: Francesca, Ulysses, Farinata, Ugolino, Brunetto, Pier delle Vigne, and other damned people

    • Like I mentioned with The Kalevala and the Eddas, I want to go into this text with some surprise by letting whatever fascinates me as I come across it to become a niche topic I can research, so this section has a bit less structure to allow for that.

  

  • Along the way…

    • Creative Prompts: Draw Dante’s cosmos, keep a “Dante insult collection,” write Virgil after Dante leaves him, let Homer meet Dante, go out into nature and write in the lyrical style of Virgil

    • Visual Archive: Botticelli’s drawings, Gustave Doré, William Blake, and manuscript diagrams

    • Keeping a commonplace notebook of images, prose, and verses that tickle the imagination

    • Listening: Enya on shuffle!

Section XIII: The Art of the Italian Renaissance, Botticelli, and Neoplatonism

“Ogni pittore dipinge sé. Every painter paints himself.”

— Old Tuscan proverb

Last year, I took what was probably my favorite class ever: art history. It was the intersection of everything I loved— art, religion, beauty, philosophy… and since my class was asynchronous, I had a lot of time to research on my own.

This was how I began my love affair with the Italian Renaissance.

Well, technically the seeds were sown last summer. My brother and I went to stay with my aunt who lives in Milan (yes, the one with the bookshelf). After finishing a short story set in medieval Florence, I asked her if we could take a short day trip to see the city. Luckily, we were able to jump on a two hour train ride to what would be one of the most beautiful days of my life and for which I will forever be grateful for. In the midst of Renaissance architecture, enigmatic churches, second-hand bookshops, and painters crafting masterpieces on the street, was the Uffizi. As I walked through centuries of art history, I told my aunt and brother to call me if they needed me, and began my quest, headphones in ears and notebook in hand.

At some point I reached the Botticelli room, the artist who, little did I know at the time, would become one of my favorites. I immediately bumped into a crowd of people flocking around a large painting which I understood was The Birth of Venus (only because I was able to see through a sliver in between a man’s arm and back). While waiting for the crowd to die down, I turned towards the circular painting across from the famous Aphrodite Anadyomene.

I can’t quite describe what happened then. I haven’t ever been so taken aback by a painting in a museum as this one. I was looking at Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranates and for some strange reason I still cannot quite understand, I was enraptured. The world and psyche work in strange ways. I’ve had dreams about this painting since, images that seem enigmatic and esoteric. I’ve since drawn the angel on the far left, trying to understand him better. Even now when I look at the image online, I am frustrated with how it appears on the computer, just like a translator must feel when they cannot possibly convey the beauty of the original language.

Botticelli and the rest of the bright-eyed, beauty-seeking Italian Renaissance artists have now gripped my memory and imagination. I’ll follow where their figures’ downcast, melancholy eyes lead, where their humanistic vision projects itself, where the hair of Venus coils and curls in the horizon.

• Section XIIIA: Understanding Florence

  • Before diving into the artists, I would like to place myself within the historical context of their works. Other than reading selections from Paul Strathern’s The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance (for the Medici family’s history, mythology, and patronage), I’ll be diving into the impact of the plague, significant workshops and guilds, banking, and republican politics.

• Section XIIIB: Neoplatonism

  • Neoplatonism was a tradition that unfolded over time, so there is a bit of a chronology to look out for. It will be on of the most expansive and time-consuming sections in the curriculum, so I’ll be approaching it like so:

    • Start with reading Parmenides’ philosophical poem On Nature; I’ll also be revisiting my notes on Peter Kingsley’s interpretation of the work from his book In the Dark Places of Wisdom.

    • Understanding Plato beneath all of this:

      • Symposium and Phaedrus for eros, recollection, and the ascent toward Beauty

      • Republic VI-VII for the Good, divided line, and cave

      • Phaedo for the Theory of Forms and immortality of the soul

      • Selections from Timaeus for an understanding of Platonic cosmology, mathematical proportion, and the creation of the Universe

    • Reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entry on Plotinus for an introduction. As for his primary works, I’ll begin with:

      1. Ennead 1.6 — “On Beauty”

      2. V.1 — “On the Three Primary Hypostases”

      3. V.9 — “On the Intellect, the Forms, and Being”

      4. IV.8 — “On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies”

      5. III.8 — “On Nature, Contemplation, and the One”

      6. VI.9 — “On the Good or the One”

    • Reading Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis alongside brief selections from Gregory Shaw’s Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus to help understand why ritual/theurgy become necessary for Iamblichus in a way Plotinus might resist.

    • Reading the SEP entry on Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Theology of Aristotle and Arabic Plotinian materials, and Augustine’s Confessions VII

    • Starting with the SEP entry on Marsilio Ficino then his De Amore, selections from Platonic Theology: On the Immortality of Souls, and a brief encounter with De vita coelitus comparanda. I especially want to study his prisca theologia which is the imagined ancient chain of wisdom involving figures such as Hermes, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato!

• Section XIIIC: Classical and “Pagan” Influence

  • Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (Edgar Wind): a study exploring how Renaissance artists and philosophers used Classical mythology to express Neoplatonic ideas and Christian mysticism.

  • The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (Jean Seznec): A discussion of myth in late antiquity and the Middle Ages to Botticelli and Raphael’s works to Ronsard’s poetry and Ben Johnson’s court masques

• Section XIIID: The Artist Constellation

  • I’ll mostly be using digital sources like Smarthistory and museum archives for understanding the following artists and their works:

    • Giotto: the Arena Chapel, narrative sequencing, proto-Renaissance artistry, grief expressed through the body

    • Donatello: David and the revival of the classical nude, St. George, schiacciato relief, his relationship with the Medici

    • Botticelli: Primavera, The Birth of Venus, Venus and Mars, Pallas and the Centaur, Mystic Nativity, Madonna paintings, Simonetta and Medici portraits, and, one of my favorites, Calumny of Apelles

      • I’ll be reading Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (Joseph Luzzi), the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (for the Birth of Venus which will also be paired with my previous reading of Hesiod), and Horst Bredekamp’s Sandro Botticelli: Primavera (for a close political and botanical analysis of Primavera)

    • Da Vinci: I was obsessed with Da Vinci’s notebooks in the 6th-7th grades and attempted to make my own journal of anatomical observations and inventions. This is me revisiting him by exploring his notebooks, paintings and unfinished works, and use of sfumato.

    • Michelangelo: how his musculature influenced Blake and Rodin, his Sibyls, the Sistine Chapel, Medici tombs, poetry

    • Raphael: The four wall paintings in the Stanza della Segnatura, competition with Michelangelo, his archeological preservation of Roman ruins

  • Along the way…

    • Attempting to paint in the Renaissance style (I like referring to the YouTube channel Painting The Light)

    • Listening: Kate Bush’s The Dreaming

    • Creative Prompts: take certain paintings by these artists and give them a story, write each of these artists knowing each other in passing but not fully, write Ficino meeting Plato

Section XIV: Paradise Lost

“The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”

— Paradise Lost, Book I, Lines 221-270

I used to have a phase where I was really into the Devil. Well, let’s be more specific: Lucifer, or rather the enormous literary and theological canon behind a figure that has shapeshifted into moral, romantic, and tragic perceptions. No, I was not practicing Satanic rituals or dressing Goth and listening to heavy metal or anything like that, I was just interested in the archetype of a fallen angel from a symbolic perspective. I’ve never liked the stereotypical red-horned evil Satan surrounded by all the fire and brimstone of Hell. To be frank, I think the mythological figure of Lucifer is much more than just that.

For this reason, we jump to Paradise Lost where the Devil represents all of us— emotional, romantic, seemingly scarred by our Creator. Milton creates a master canon for us to peruse through: Homer, Virgil, classical mythology, Renaissance theology, political philosophy, angel and demon hierarchies… all to describe the inner turmoil of the creature that is the human being.

This section is a smaller as it revolves around the reading and analysis of the book, however I wanted to emphasize one thing in addition.

• Section XIVA: Tracking the Christian Epic from a Pagan One

  • I’ll be reading Paradise Lost with Homer and Virgil open beside it to track the literary and epic canon Milton inherits. He frequently uses invocations to a Muse, epic similes, and references to classical mythology and history. Milton himself explicitly measures his subject against Achilles and the old matter of heroic warfare, but only to claim that his own content is “higher.” Other than the obvious references to the Bible and Greco-Roman myth, Milton also brings forth apocrypha, Protestant theology, Renaissance angelology, and Neoplatonic inheritance.

    • I’ll be completing a research project on Adam, Eve (as mother of monsters motif), and the First Couple motif in myth

    • Tracking the history of “Lucifer”: Hebrew helel ben-shachar, the Islamic Iblis, Latin lucifer/the morning star connection to Venus, Isaiah reception, Christian demonology, Mephistopheles, and the Romantic Satan.

• Along the way…

  • Creative Prompts: Give Eve a botanical notebook, have Dante and Milton critique each other’s Hell, write the serpent after it is cast down on its belly, write Eden after humans leave, elaborate on the romantic undertones of Lucifer and Eve

  • Watching: Adam Walker’s lectures on Paradise Lost

  • Listening: Susanne Sundfør’s blómi

Section XV: Esoterica

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

— Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

I love meaning, I love analysis, I love poetry, and I love unraveling a mystery just to know that it goes on to infinity. Esoterica is searching for the metaphysical beneath the mundane, a place where planets correspond to metals, letters to numbers, angels to hierarchies, geometry to music. Belief traditions have collectively, throughout the ages, admitted to a deeper reality that our current blindness can see with our mere five senses, but maybe brush up against every once and while.

I want to approach esotericism carefully because it is very easy to collapse thousands of unrelated traditions into “mystic wisdom.” It’s more that I want to explore the recurring human belief in the depth of reality, of alam al-mithal, of the Forms, of the Otherworld. That our world might merely be a reflection of the invisible (to us) structures, symbols, images, languages, histories, beauties, dangers, and stories. This is my attempt to pull into that Deep.

• Section XVA: William Blake

  • Reading: Songs of Innocence and of Experience for his smaller poems before wandering into his enormous private mythology. Much of my time with Blake will be researching him as a mystic.

  • Understanding Blake’s illustrations and how they point toward his medium/mystical practices. I’ll also be categorizing certain Blakean figures (like Urizen, Los, Orc, Albion, and Enitharmon) through The Book of Urizen, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Milton, Jerusalem, and the prophetic books.

    • For curiosity’s sake, I’ll be flipping through J.E. Cirlot’s A Dictionary of Symbols as a companion to Blake’s seemingly archetypal illustrations

• Section XVB: Ibn Arabi, Islamic Mysticism, and the Imaginal Realm

  • This is one of the core philosophical centers of the whole curriculum and I want to understand it deeply, mainly because I practice Islamic Sufism. I want to use Henry Corbin’s interpretations of Ibn Arabi’s mysticism and read Toshihiko Izutsu’s Creation and the Timeless Order of Things: Essays in Islamic Mystical Philosophy and excerpts from Sufism & Taoism for analyses on the Imaginal Realm, khayal, and other concepts in Sufism.

  • Attar’s The Conference of the Birds: After seeing a stunning, emotional live production of MTO Zendeh Delan ensemble’s vision of this work in June, I want to return to the poem itself for the parables, the significance behind each bird, and the Seven Valleys.

  • Rumi’s Masnavi: rather than trying to “finish” six books as a box-checking exercise, I want to read selected stories shortly. The Masnavi is a collection of stories inspired by fables, folklore, and Qur’anic allusions in order to reference metaphysical concepts.

• Section XVC: Hermeticism & Alchemy

  • Hermes Trismegistus: after Hermanubis and Alexandria in Section VII, I’ll return to the identification of Greek Hermes with Egyptian Thoth and to the late-antique figure of Hermes Trismegistus. I’ll be reading selections from the Corpus Hermeticum, especially Poimandres, and the Asclepius.

    • The Emerald Tablet: I’ll be reading this short text and tracing its Arabic and Latin transmission and the later career of “as above, so below.”

  • Alchemy has a far deeper metaphysical meaning than just people trying to make gold. It is in reference to spiritual self-transformation.

    • Professor Hazrat Shah Maghsoud Sadegh Angha’s Weights and Balances. Although it is only 99 pages, I know that it is probably one of the most dense texts in the entire curriculum as the professor draws on forty years of his mystical experiences with alchemy.

    • Greco-Egyptian beginnings: The figures of Zosimos of Panopolis and Maria the Jewess; looking at furnaces, vessels, color changes, distillation, and metals.

    • Arabic alchemy: I want to follow the corpus associated with Jabir ibn Hayyan and al-Razi, classification of substances and apparatus, and the transmission of Arabic alchemical learning into Latin Europe.

    • Medieval/Renaissance alchemy: philosopher’s stone and elixir traditions, Paracelsus, and Renaissance Prague.

      • Reading excerpts from Alexander Roob’s Alchemy and Mysticism which covers a vast selection of related history that tickles the imagination!

    • Planetary metals: I will be dissecting the astronomical, mythological, and symbolic associations of Sun/gold, moon/silver, Mercury/mercury, Venus/copper, Mars/iron, Jupiter/tin, Saturn/lead.

• Section XVD: The Human Being as Microcosm

  • This is where metaphysics connects anatomy, astronomy, medicine, and medicine.

    • The Four Humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile as well as their associations with hot/cold, wet/dry, seasons, ages, diets, and temperaments.

      • A rabbit hole dedicated to melancholy: selections from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, Saturn, learned melancholy, and Albrecht Dürer’s mystical works (like Melencolia I)

    • Zodiac Man and lunar mansions: I’ll be studying medieval and early modern diagrams that map zodiacal signs onto parts of the body and study the 28 lunar mansions

      • Reading Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Anthony Grafton)

• Section XVE: Philosophical and Sacred Mathematics & Language

  • Pythagoreanism: I want to understand why musical ratios became tetractys, harmonic ratios, number symbolism, and the later legend of Pythagoras hearing mathematical order in sound.

  • Returning to Plato’s Timaeus for Platonic solids, sacred geometric shapes and designs, and how Plato connects mathematics to the elements and cosmos

    • Reading Cicero’s Dream of Scipio and Boethius’ musica mundana

  • Islamic geometric art: I want to study actual architectural settings, craftsmen’s techniques, proportion, repetition, star polygons, and the spiritual significance of certain constructions

  • Reading selections from Bertrand Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. I first added this book to my curriculum after I finished my last math test ever. The funny thing is that I have always liked mathematics much more when nobody is grading me. Now that I’m freefrom timed worksheets, I can turn towards mathematical philosophy to explore infinity, axioms, paradox, logic, and theories about the number zero.

  • The Science of Letters and Numbers:

    • Arabic ilm al-huruf, Abjad numerals, Hurufism, Hebrew gematria, Christian Cabala

• Section XVF: Hildegard Von Bingen and Medieval Mysticism

  • Reading Penguin Classics’ selected writings of Hildegard von Bingen for her beautiful prose, theology, and medical/natural knowledge

  • Investigating Hildegard’s languages of greenness/vitality and her own lingua ignota

    • Reading Simon Critchley’s Mysticism as a contemporary philosophical companion and interpretation

• Section XVG: Jung and Archetypes

  • Reading

    • Man and His Symbols: a foundational psychology book written by Jung and his close associates; a perfect introduction in Jungian interpretation. The book was inspired by a dream Jung had where he saw his work being understood by ordinary people instead of just scholars. The work explores his theories of the unconscious, archetypes, and individuation

    • Jung on Mythology (edited by Robert A. Segal): a collection of key writing on myth by Jung and prominent followers like Erich Neumann, Marie-Louise von Franz, and James Hillman on the subject of mythology and its recurring motifs

    • Essays on a Science of Mythology (C.G. Jung and Karl Kerényi): A collaborative text that pairs Hungarian classicist Karl Kerényi’s mythological studies with Jung’s psychological interpretations. The essays include research on the Divine Child figure, the Kore and Eleusis in myth, and even Aphrodite Anadyomene (across Greek, Norse, Finnish, and Christian traditions)

  • In my studying archetypes, I’d like to take a deep dive into tarot’s the history and symbolism from being a fifteenth-century Italian courtly card game to being used in esoteric wisdom traditions

    • Reading selections from Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages (especially on tarot) and Campbell’s The Mythic Dimension as modern interpretations

• Along the way…

  • Watching: I’ve created an Esoterica YouTube playlist which is basically just a compilation of lectures by experts on the study of the occult.

  • Listening: Rosalía’s LUX (an album inspired off of female saints), Hildegard von Bingen’s compositions, Arvo Pärt

  • Internet Sacred Text Archive is the perfect place to find sources on esoterica, myth, religion, and fairytales!

• Creative Prompts: write about one of Blake’s figures from his private mythology, write Ibn Arabi entering the Imaginal Realm which he faithfully believed in (or knew?), design the twenty eight lunar houses

Section XVI: Surrealist Art and Metaphysical Writers

“Je est un autre. I is another.”

— Arthur Rimbaud

One of the sections I am most excited about on this curriculum! It’s filled with the language of dreams, symbols, poetry, and the mystic quality behind art. My favorite type of art (both visual and written) often orbits this ineffable that can only be vaguely hinted at through tools like words, colors, or forms. If done properly, it can feel like recalling a deep, ancient memory.

Here, I want to study the Surrealist movement, but also place it beside creatives who are not technically surrealists, but create around that metaphysical beyond. This section is all about labyrinths, dream logic, and the strange and misunderstood. Similar to how esoterica seeks to penetrate our reality for signs of a “realer” one, so too does this section through the language humanity has spoken since our beginning— art.

• Section XVIA: The Surrealist Movement

  • Understanding Dada first: I’ll begin with the shock and disturbance of World War I and Dada’s anti-art, absurd performances, collage, chance, and “attack” on rationality and reason.

  • Reading selections from André Breton’s writings and the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism

  • Studying the methods: automatic writing/drawing, exquisite corpse, frottage, decalcomania, collage, found objects, dream transcription, and chance encounters

  • Surrealism beyond Paris: I’ll use museum scholarship such as Tate’s Surrealism Beyond Borders to follow how artists in Mexico, Egypt, Japan, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean adapted Surrealist techniques.

• Section XVIB: Specific Artists (Not all are necessarily tied to the Surrealist movement, but have mystical and surreal qualities)

  • Leonora Carrington: One of the artists I’m most excited to study here, because she almost seems to contain this entire curriculum in her paintings: Celtic mythology, transformation, medieval imagery, alchemy, fairytales, etc. I’ll be looking at her Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse), The Meal of Lord Candlestick, The House Opposite, The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, The Kitchen Garden on the Eyot as well as rereading The Hearing Trumpet, and discovering The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below and The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington.

  

  • Remedios Varo: Like Carrington with an alchemical laboratory. She brings astronomers, alchemists, monks, witches, and musicians to life. I’ll be looking at her The Creation of the Birds, Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle, The Call, Harmony, Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River, Celestial Pabulum, Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst, The Alchemist and reading her Letters and Dreams & Other Writings.

  

  • Kati Horna: Horna gives me an opportunity to move from painted dreamworlds into Surrealist photography. I want to study her Spanish Civil War photography, Hitlerei, her photographs for Mujeres and other Mexican publications, her masks/dolls, staged portraits, and domestic Surrealist imagery.

  

  • Frida Kahlo: Although Breton tried to claim her for Surrealism, she did not want that thrust upon her, so she’ll be more of Surrealist-esque artist in this category. I’ll be reading through Frida Kahlo: Complete Paintings for a reliable collection of her work with interpretation and context for her life. I especially want to focus on my favorite painting of her’s: What the Water Gave Me.

  

  • Elsa Schiaparelli: Surrealism you can wear!! Schiaparelli is where the movement escapes the canvas and crawls onto the human body. I want to look into her collaborations and friendships with artists (particularly Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray) and study fashion as an actual Surrealist medium. I’ll be looking at the Dalí Lobster Dress, Tears Dress, Shoe Hat, skeleton dress, drawer suits, insect jewelry, Cocteau collaborations, shocking pink, perfume bottles, buttons, embroidery, trompe-l’œil knitwear as well as reading her wonderfully titled autobiography Shocking Life.

  

  • Hilma af Klimt: A predecessor rather than a Surrealist, but absolutely essential to the metaphysical collection of this section. As a mystic who refused to show her art to the public until twenty years after her death, I definitely know that Hilma af Klimt will be one of my favorites in this section! I’ll begin with the enormous cycle The Paintings for the Temple, particularly The Ten Largest, the Primordial Chaos series, The Swan, The Dove, and Altarpieces. I’ll be reading Julia Voss’ Hilma af Klint: A Biography alongside museum catalogues reproducing her notebooks and paintings. I’ll also study her involvement with The Five (De Fem), spiritualism, automatic drawing, séances, Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner, botanical imagery, geometry, spirals, dualities, color systems, and her elaborate notebooks.

  

  • Gustav Klimt: An Art Nouveau artist who captured my imagination fiercely this year! I love how his figures are halfway between flesh and icon, consumed by pattern, spirals, and glittering gold. I have a book of Klimt’s artwork along with the stories behind the pieces, but some works I’ll be focusing on The Kiss, Judith I, Danaë, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, The Three Ages of Woman, Death and Life, Beethoven Frieze, and Medicine / Philosophy / Jurisprudence through surviving photographs and studies. I also want to study the broader Vienna Secession, Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna, gold leaf, Japonisme, Symbolism, his relationship with Emilie Flöge, ornament versus naturalism, Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and his use of mythological women such as Danaë, Judith, Pallas Athena, and the Gorgons.

  

  • Medieval “Surrealism”: Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Obviously neither man was remotely a Surrealist, which is exactly why I find the resemblance so fascinating. Long before Freud, Breton, or automatic writing, European painters were already imagining hybrid monsters, paradoxical architectures, gigantic objects, dreamlike transformations, bodily absurdity, and worlds whose logic seems to ambiguous and strange.

    • Bruegel: The Triumph of Death, Dulle Griet, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, Netherlandish Proverbs, Children’s Games, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

    • Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Temptation of St. Anthony, The Haywain Triptych, The Last Judgment

  • Reading: The Art of the Occult: A Visual Sourcebook for the Modern Mystic for other Surrealist and surreal artists.

• Section XVIC: Metaphysical Writers

  • Rainer Maria Rilke: Rilke was first introduced to me by my uncle who gifted me Letters to a Young Poet for my fourteenth birthday. Since then, I have found him to be one of my favorite poets, and one who speaks the truth in ways that form themselves before I can even think to describe them. I really do think he came face to face with some sort of cosmic memory. I want to slowly wander through The Book of Hours and Sonnets to Orpheus.

  • Jorge Luis Borges: One of my favorite writers, the first artist where I felt like he was speaking directly to me. Borges has become my companion in poetry, myth, and life. I have an anthology of all of his short stories, Poems of the Night, his Book of Imaginary Beings, and his essays, so I’ll be going through whatever works are left that I have not read yet. I’ll also be rereading some of my favorite stories (like “The Library of Babel” and “The House of Asterion”) for more analysis! Borges references so much scholarship on esoterica, literature, poetry, and myth, so it would be interesting to also research some of the traditions he mentions.

  

  • Fernando Pessoa: Never have I come across such raw, precise prose. Pessoa has such a way with words that leaves me enchanted, rereading a passage several time just for the pleasure of the words gliding past my lips. I’ll be finishing up The Book of Disquiet and reading selections from his poetry anthology, A Little Larger than the Entire Universe. I’ve also recently discovered a collection of his essays written under his heteronyms (which I’d love to research) at a local library, so I might read some selections from that, too.

  • Italo Calvino: I have been recommended Calvino based off of my love for Pessoa and Borges, so I plan on reading Invisible Cities (about Marco Polo describing 55 imaginary cities to the aging Kublai Khan), then followed by If on a winter’s night a traveler (I’ve been told to go into this book completely blind), The Castle of Crossed Destinies (about a group of mute travelers who use decks of tarot cards to share the stories of their lives; how cool is that?!) and the Cosmicomics (a short story collection with each whimsical, surreal tale inspired off of a scientific/cosmological theory).

  • Clarice Lispector: Another recommendation I’ve been given for her deeply mysterious and philosophical fiction. I want to start off with The Passion According to G.H. (a long monologue by a wealthy sculptress who has a spiritual crisis after she kills a large cockroach) and An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Pleasures (the story of Lóri, a lonely primary school teacher, and her relationship with Ulisses, a philosophy professor; Lispector claimed that she humanized herself in this one) before moving onto some of her short stories and The Hour of the Star.

• Along the way…

  • Listening: Kate Bush’s Ninth Wave (the second half of Hounds of Love), Susanne Sundfør’s Ten Love Songs, Björk’s Utopia, Cocteau Twins

  • Playing exquisite corpse with my friends and family!

  • Creative Prompts: Write a Borges-like scholarly essay about a nonexistent manuscript, create a city Calvino forgot, invent your own Pessoa-like heteronyms, create your own version of Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me, design clothes in the style of Schiaparelli

BONUS!: Instead of dedicating a particular section to this, I wanted to scatter it throughout my curriculum. In my research of belief, I have realized that I know very little about South/East Asian religions and mythology. Sure, I know the basic pantheon of Hinduism, the values of Buddhism and the story of Siddhartha, a few Shinto deities, yokai tales, and the adventures of Sun Wukong, but most certainly not to the degree I am familiar with Middle Eastern or European religions. I know next to nothing about indigenous Filipino beliefs or Southeast Asian gods or Mongolian shamanism or Daoism (which I’ve been told is quite similar to Islamic Sufism as per Izutsu’s dense book) which, I’m aware are all ginormous and expansive fields that I have been missing out on. I will, cautiously, be reading Campbell’s Oriental Mythology (yeesh, that’s an outdated title 😬) and some South/East Asian myth collections to fill some gaps in my knowledge. I hope this does not sound like I’m flattening centuries of tradition and hundreds of diverse beliefs into the broad umbrella of “South/East Asian mythology,” I would just like a general introduction before taking deeper dives. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or recommendations!

Keep telling and collecting stories,

From One Universe to Another,

Ava 💫

Dear Readers of the Universe,

There are certain boundaries and cliff-sides that dissolve all senses of structure. And there’s an uncanny feeling when you’re on the edge of this chaos and are craving to leap into something a little larger than infinity. There’s a door that is tempting you to open it, but what lies on the other side might just destroy your comprehension of it, so you sit at the foot of the threshold, loving and hating the longing of wanting to go beyond. As I grow older, I’ve realized that everything I love doing— writing stories and poetry, researching myth and folklore, reading— is an attempt to leap into this Unknown even if I’m unaware of it. And I know you, Dear Reader, are just as familiar with this feeling as I am, and I’m sure you understand how difficult it can be to articulate this hunger.

It’s for this very reason that I decided to pick up Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy about a month ago. Published when he was only 28, the book itself an attempt to voice this desire for the beyond. It is infused with his three favorite passions at the time: Greek tragedy, Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and the music of Richard Wagner (to whom the book is dedicated). The text was a treatise on art, most famous for its coinage of the terms “Apollonian” and “Dionysian”. Often flattened into simple dichotomies like calm vs chaos and logic vs hedonism, Apollonian and Dionysian forces are much more complex than what meets the eye.

So without further adieu, abandon all rationality ye who enter here…

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆

Let’s start with the Greek god Dionysus first, because we need to experience spirit before understanding structure. Dionysus is… frustrating to say the least. When I tell you that I rewrote this paragraph twelve times, I’m not kidding. Dionysus is undefinable, he’s a shapeshifter of myth. He is also my favorite Greek god for that very reason (it might be a character flaw that I strictly love elusive and liminal things that simultaneously frustrate and excite me but we can deal with that later). Dionysus is noisy. He is wild. He is the essence of existential rupture… and yet, he remains arguably the most mysterious figure in Greek religion. In a gross diminishment of his spirit, Dionysus is the god of wine, religious ecstasy/ritual madness, theatre, and fertility. I’m sure we’ve all seen this happy-go-lucky Bacchus on wine bottles and Renaissance paintings, crowned with ivy and filled with what seems to be hedonistic pleasure. But Nietzsche picks up on who Dionysus was to the ancients before he was reduced to such a superficial portrayal.

To him, the “Dionysian” force is that which fragments the principum individuationis, a term Nietzsche picked up from Schopenhauer that refers the metaphysical veil, manifested through “unreal” concepts like time and space, which place the individual under the illusion that they are separate from the Universe. This concept of the “veil” is universal. The Greeks themselves had a term for breaking it— alatheia, (from “a-”— not and “lethe”— forgetfulness). Similarly, in Sufi poetry, the Persian poet Rumi writes, “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First, to let go of life. In the end, to take a step without feet; To regard this world as invisible, and to disregard what appears to be the self.” And so by rupturing this veil, Dionysus brings his initiates to the fullness of Reality. In an astonishingly beautiful passage, Nietzsche writes of the place the Dionysian force brings its believer:

“Singing and dancing, man has found himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and talk, and is able to fly dancing into heaven… he feels like a god, he himself now walks about enraptured and elated as he saw the gods walk in dreams. Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: the artistic power of the whole of nature reveals itself to the supreme gratification of the primal Oneness amidst the paroxysms of intoxication. The noblest clay, the most precious marble, man, is kneaded and hewn here, and to the chisel-blows of the Dionysiac world-artist there echoes the cry… ‘Do you bow low, multitudes? Do you sense the Creator, world?’”

This is why Dionysus is known as Eleutherios (“the Liberator”) and Bakkheios (referring to the ecstatic frenzied force that survives death). The portrayal of the god as a sort of messiah coming to free his followers from the chains they have forged themselves is a beautiful, kind image. However, he is also known as Panphagmos (“All-Devourer”), Omopaghmos (“the Raw-Eater”), and Anthroporraistes (“Man-Destroyer)… but isn’t he supposed to liberate man from suffering and violence, not cause it?

In Dionysian myth, there are two notoriously gruesome motifs: sparagmos (tearing/rending of the body) and omophagia (eating of the body), usually performed by maenads (literally meaning “raving/mad ones”), or the god’s band of frenzied female followers. The most famous account of this occurs in the Greek playwright Euripides’ The Bacchae in which the rational, skeptical King Pentheus of Thebes refuses to worship Dionysus and is thus ritually torn apart at the deliciously horrifying climax of the play by his own mother who is possessed by the ecstatic spirit of Dionysus.

Sparagmos and omophagia also occur in humanity’s origin story. According to Orphism, an ancient Greek mystery religion, Dionysus’ first incarnation was known as Zagreus, and the goddess Hera was jealous of him as he was the result of an affair between her husband Zeus and Persephone. In a fit of rage, Hera sent the Titans to tear, boil, and eat the infant Dionysus. Thankfully, the goddess Athena rescued the beating heart, and gave it to Zeus, who either sewed it into his thigh or gave it to a mortal princess named Semele to eat, making him “twice-born”. Zeus then struck down the Titans with his thunderbolts, and the human race was formed from their ashes. Historian Will Durant elaborates on this myth by writing,

“Since the Titans, who had slain Dionysus, were believed to have been the ancestors of man, a taint of original sin rested above all humanity; and in punishment for this the soul was enclosed in the body as in a prison or a tomb. But man might console himself by knowing that the Titans had eaten Dionysus, and that therefore every man harbored, in his soul, a particle of divinity.”

Similarly, Classist E.R. Dodds, regarding this “Original Sin”, elaborates in a passage that is the most poetic I’ve seen of him and his work thus far:

“The Titan myth neatly explained to the Greek puritan why he felt himself to be at once a god and a criminal; the “Apolline” sentiment of remoteness from the divine and the “Dionysiac” sentiment of identity with it were both of them accounted for and both of them justified. That was something that went deeper than any logic.”

Perhaps that is why the Dionysian cult was said to perform sparagmos and omophagia, to release that necessary and transcendent spark from the confines of the body. This indestructible, eternal, and universal life force was known as zoe, not to be confused with bios which is individual and finite life. If we place these acts in the context of Islamic Sufism, sparagmos would be fana, or the undoing and annihilation of the ego while omophagia would be the dissolution and unification of the Self in wujud, or the ultimate reality. The god himself is sukr, or an all-consuming, raving intoxication for the ineffable. In this sense, Dionysus can be comparable to Christ (not only because both are dying-and-resurrecting gods associated with wine that alleviated suffering, had outcasts as followers, and a sacred initiation drink as well as the consumption of flesh) but also because, in the Christian tradition, Christ is seen as the New Adam, a redemptive figure that emerges from the fall of Eden and saves humanity despite having been persecuted by them. Dionysus is similar in the sense that he was tortured by the Titans, the ancestors of humanity, but still chooses to free or “save” his followers from the systems society and the ego have created.

Yet, here is where Nietzsche makes the argument that pure, unfiltered Dionysian force is dangerous: the human mind operates on a certain degree of logic and Dionysus does not, thus by presenting his full self, the individual would be completely annihilated. This should not be perceived as a bad element, just as one does not see the sun as malevolent simply because he cannot look at it directly without damaging his eyes. In fact, this is how Dionysus himself was born in some versions of his birth: his mother, Semele, was a mortal princess who was impregnated by Zeus. Hera was jealous of their affair and disguised herself as an old nurse who convinced Semele that she could not truly believe that the man who impregnated her was Zeus unless he revealed himself to her in his full glory. Semele eventually forced Zeus to reveal his true form to her, causing the sheer intensity of his truth to incinerate her. Dionysus’ fetus, however, was saved by its father who sewed it into his leg, thus earning him the aforementioned title of the “twice-born god”. In later myth, Dionysus resurrects Semele from the Underworld and grants her immortality. This story obviously deals with the theme of only believing in God once one has experienced it, and once they have, the illusion of the earthly self will be destroyed for the individual has died to himself, and he will be reborn in unification with the divine.

Nietzsche uses Hamlet as an example of this existential rupture and insight into reality by claiming that “true understanding… outweighs every motive for action, for Hamlet and Dionysiac man alike. No solace will be of any use from now on, longing passes over the world towards death, beyond the gods themselves; existence, radiantly reflected in the gods or in an immortal ‘Beyond’, is denied. Aware of the truth from a single glimpse of it, all man can now see is the horror and absurdity of existence; now he understands the symbolism of Ophelia’s fate… the god of the woods: it repels him.” In other words, when the Truth of the Universe is stripped bare before man, he sees everything in Existence as it is, in all its beauty and terror, in all its perfect imperfection, however Nietzsche claims that in the midst of all of this “we are happy to be alive, not as individuals but as the single living thing, merged with its creative delight.”

But how can one communicate with this spirit without shattering their psyche? Enter Apollonian structure and beauty to express Dionysian spirit. Apollo is the Greek god of music, prophecy, healing, sickness, light, archery, poetry, arts, knowledge, and the sun (what an underachieving résumé 🙄). To Nietzsche, Apollo is the god of image and dream, where overwhelming concepts can be expressed through symbols and beautiful forms that man can digest, therefore representing the illusionary quality of our state. If we think of this in the context of the fate of Dionysus’ mother, the Apollonian force is basically trying to express Zeus’ beautiful form without incinerating her. As Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, “Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed by it because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.”

Apollo takes the raw, irrational Dionysian emotion and indestructible form and turns it into art— poetry, music, dance, narrative, sculpture… these are all mediums through which the ineffable can be expressed. But Nietzsche voices a serious concern: language, being an inherently rational construct, is doomed from the beginning for it always remains in superficial contact with that which is irrational, erratic, and untamable. This is the frustration of many artists and writers worldwide and throughout history. When I myself write a story or poem, I sometimes feel a sense of irritation that there is no dictionary, no language, no sentence, no word that can even hold a candle to what I am trying to express.

The Birth of Tragedy is a slim book, only about 160 pages, but it’s filled with this sort of angst and frustration that the author himself acknowledges. In his Attempt at Self-Criticism, Nietzsche writes, referring to the text:

“What found expression here, in any case was a strange voice, the disciple of a still ‘unknown god’, disguised beneath the scholar’s hood… here was a spirit with strange, as yet nameless needs, a memory bursting with questions, experiences, mysteries, to which the name of Dionysus was appended as yet another question mark. This was the voice… of something like a mystical and almost maenadic soul, stammering laboriously and at random in a foreign tongue, almost unsure whether it wished to communicate or conceal. It should have been singing, this ‘new soul’, not speaking!

Here, Nietzsche explains why his book sounds awkward, overwrought, and was criticized by academics— because he realizes the irony of trying to express the inexpressible, to condense something uncontrollable that infuses creative inspiration (the singing) but refuses to be tamed by logical argument or academic prose (the speaking). Nietzsche admits that he is at odds with himself for using a language that restrains what so desperately wants to break out; it’s like trying to understand what someone is saying in between angry, clenched teeth. I think this is the reason why religious and mythical stories are expressed through art, poetry, and song, not speeches or arguments; I even find myself not fully understanding something explained logically until I write or read about it in a poetic format. In fact, Nietzsche himself even claims that it was a shame he had written the book in academic prose and not in poetry. So, although Apollonian structure can try to make the Dionysian spirit digestible, there will never be a pure translation for that which cannot be translated.

In his heartbreakingly beautiful essay, What Can Spiritual Poetry Teach Us about Living?, Iranian poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar writes, “The great Persian poet Hafez wrote, ‘Start seeing everything as God, but keep it a secret.’ I still have no idea what I mean when I say God, but I see it everywhere. I mean it intensely. I write poems and, yes, books about it. I read about it constantly, which seems, counterintuitively, to only deepen its secret. Close your eyes. Imagine in your head a bladeless knife with no handle. Do you see how the image recedes from view the more language I add to it? A bladeless knife. With no handle.” (It’s an astonishing essay; I highly recommend!)

However, that is not the only issue with the Apollonian. There is the problem of what Nietzsche calls “Greek cheerfulness”, or the luminous surface (art, form, beauty, festivity, clarity) that exists because the Greeks knew the Dionysian force too well. In The Birth of Tragedy, he mentions two types of “Greek cheerfulness”. The first is an early version, which is a protective, honest illusion that allows life to be affirmed while still knowing the abyss. In other words, it is aware of the reality of Existence and still says yes to life. The later, Hellenistic cheerfulness is a fearful retreat from the irrational, trying to explain everything, even art, intellectually or critically. Thus, this cheerfulness uses the Apollonian as comfort, not a vessel for truth. Nietzsche claims that the latter is what our modern society is currently suffering from, asking himself if “it still possible to find the company of a man capable of talking about Beethoven and Shakespeare?”, implying the internalization of art through experience and the soul, not criticism or intellect.

So, what happens if one goes to the extreme of either side? Well, at the risk of sounding like a mythological doctor, symptoms of an imbalance of Apollonian forces include the following: being too rational/structural, perfectionism, over-intellectualization, emotional repression, control addiction, shallow optimism, judgement/moralization, fear of the irrational, and what I like to call “knowing everything about water but still remaining thirsty” (in other words, you may learn as much as you can, but your longing can never be satisfied until you have experienced the ultimate truth). In contrast, the cost of a Dionysian spirit without structure results in chaos/instability, loss of self, impulsivity, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, self-destruction, and even violence or hysterics.

Here, Nietzsche makes his wager: the union of the Apollonian and Dionysian allows the human to exist within the world, recognize the veil, and break through it without falling into hysteria or repression. He claims that the art form of tragedy embodies this through salvation. He writes of this metaphysical mercy in the context of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde when Tristian dies in Act III because he has immediate awareness of “the world’s state”, yet he becomes a “prism for us, through which the ecstatic pain is communication.” Nietzsche puts it beautifully in a single line: “Tristan dies so that we may live.” This is the logic of the tragic hero: a sort of sacrificial prophet through whom the unbearable reality is made digestible for the audience. This is the core purpose of stories of dying-and-rising figures like Dionysus and Christ, namely that these prophets suffer in our place so that we may approach the truth without drowning in it.

The chorus, he argues, is Dionysian, for carries the pre-individuated, primal life-force while the tragic hero is Apollonian because he is an individual… but with a twist, because Nietzsche claims that the tragic hero is merely a mask through which Dionysus speaks, a drop in the vastness of the sea. This is precisely what makes his theory of art so mystical and thrilling: he claims that the great artist is not an isolated ego expressing personal opinion or feelings, but a medium through which something transcendent and universal passes. He distinguishes what he calls the “naive artist” (Apollonian beauty devoid of Dionysian meaning) from the “lyrical artist” whose “I” is not the empirical, moralizing ego, but rather the voice of a strange undercurrent that imbues the whole of reality. That is why tragedy does not offer comfort, but rather an affirmation of belief in eternal life. And we, as the audience, feel it deeper than any logic: we want to hear, and yet long to go beyond hearing.

This whole theme of the artist-as-medium and art-as-reflection-of-spirit has got me thinking— you know that whole idea that humanity is the cosmos becoming conscious? Well, are we illusions or symbols that the Universe has manifested to understand itself? Are we Non-Forms because we are reflections of the Ultimate Form? As it was said in the Bible, man is made in the image and likeness of God. So, just as an idol is a reference to God, are we personifications of infinity? The more I read, research, and write, the more questions I have, and the although the uncertainty outweighs the certainty, I have a strange love for not-knowing, because that means that there is always more for me to learn, that this is not the limit, that I can continue to walk this path towards eternity. The human mystery contains multitudes, we are walking contradictions, here and there, Nothingness and Everythingness, and as frustrating as that is, I’m not sure if there is anything more divine.

And what perhaps makes this even more delightfully eerie is that Plato, the stern father of Western rationalism, agrees. In a moment of tenderness, he writes that “the gods, in pity for the human race… have granted companions to their feasts: the Muses, and Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus… so that, by nourishing themselves in festive companionship with the gods, [humans] should again stand upright and erect.” I love this image: the Universe is not a silent, distanced being, but rather a choral, kind creature that fills us with a restless need for cosmic rhythm, even if it seems inconvenient to our societal structures.

But where can we find this liminal space where Apollo and Dionysus become one body? In Islamic philosophy and mysticism, especially in the work of Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi, there is a realm that is neither physical matter nor pure intelligible abstraction. It is known as the Imaginal Realm, from the Arabic alam al-mithal— literally “the world of Images.” This is not an invention of the mind or hallucination, but rather an objective order of truth, an intermediate isthmus where metaphysical realities take on perceptible images in the form of angels, visions, metaphors, dreams, archetypal symbols, and mythic stories which are all viscerally experienced as realer than real. It does not obey the same logic and laws of the sensory or intellectual worlds, but it is just as true. What brings us to the Imaginal Realm is the Imaginal Organ. Scholar Henry Corbin explains that, in Islamic Sufism, imagination is a cognitive organ that operates on the Imaginal Realm’s strange, surreal logic. Thus, the Imaginal Organ “spatializes” that which is untamable, similar to the Apollonian force that gives shape to the Dionysian spirit, mapping out a geography the human can navigate. That is why humanity reacts so naturally to forms, because we detect a meaning beneath it that rational thought is blind to. And once the individual submits to this liminal space, they step into the force that has always lived closest to that border— the Fool.

Divaneh Sho! Mastaneh Sho!: “Become a madman! Become drunk!” So begins one of the oldest songs I grew up listening to in an Iranian household. Persian art and literature is filled with stories of the Fool archetype, or the soul in its pre-bodied, undefined existence. He is one of my favorite characters in myth because he isn’t domesticated; he’s still porous enough to let the message seep through him. He speaks the language of “nonsense”, even though “nonsense” is the alphabet of prophets and revelation. In Jungian psychology, the Fool is closely linked to the puer aeternus, the fluid psyche that is in a constant state of hunger and enchantment like the child before adulthood.

In Persian stories, the most famous Fool character is Majnun. The tale of Layla and Majnun is rooted in ancient Middle Eastern oral tradition and was popularized through the Sufi poet Nizami Ganjavi’s 12th Persian epic. The story goes like this: One existed, another did not, before Existence, Nothing persisted. There was once a man named Majnun, or “madness” in Persian. Everyone called him Majnun because he was madly in love with a woman named Leyla to an obsessive degree. When the medicine man pricked Leyla’s thumb, Majnun would bleed, and the other way around. All that he could ever speak of was her unsurpassed beauty, so much so that the king demanded to see her. However, when Leyla arrived, he became confused as her beauty paled in comparison to Majnun’s lofty praises. To this disappointment Leyla replied, ‘I am Leyla. The problem is that you are not Majnun.’ In response to such bold words against the king, Leyla was married off to another man in a tribe, far, far away, across the desert. Majnun, love-crazed, ran into the desert that night to find Leyla and it is said that he is still searching for her. And as he calls out into the night, “Oh you cameller, oh you caravan! Where are you taking my Leyla?”, Leyla waits for Majnun, Majnun reaches out for Leyla. Always and forever, his longing only intensifies in the vast expanse of the Existence.

Although this story may initially come off as just another Romeo and Juliet, it’s actually deeply ingrained with the Sufi concept of jadhb, or divine attraction. It is common in Sufi poetry for God to be intimately personified as the Beloved, sometimes dancing, kissing, or embracing the Lover. Leyla is the Universe as seen by the human whose principium individuationis has been shattered, but to others, who still wear the veil, Majnun seems mad because he is intoxicated by infinity.

Similarly, Mansur al-Hallaj was a 10th century Islamic Sufi mystic who was famously executed for heresy after declaring “Ana al-Haqq” (“I am the Truth” in Arabic and one of the 99 names of God in Islam). This was another story I grew up with. My dad would tell me of the tale of how al-Hallaj spoke these words, how he was confined and claimed that “the important thing is to proceed seven times around the Kaaba of one’s heart.” As he was repeatedly tortured, he kept repeating Ana al-Haqq, Ana al-Haqq. His body was doused in oil and set alight, but when his ashes were thrown into the river, his remains read Ana al-Haqq, I am the Truth. Al-Hallaj became unified with that essence of Reality for when he said “I”, he was speaking on behalf of the entirety of Existence.

Yet, the Fool does not just appear in storytelling. In tarot, the Fool card is marked as 0 in the Major Arcana. In Kabbalistic language, this is called divine Nothingness, or ayin, where the Self is spinning in a constant state of Beginning and Ending. And here’s where the symbolism becomes almost offensively literal: in mathematics, infinity can actually be mapped out in geometry. There’s this concept called the Riemann sphere which makes my pre-calculus homework pale in comparison. Imagine the entire complex plane, every number that could possibly be marked as a point on a diagram, and then wrap all those integers around a sphere. Infinity itself becomes a single point on the top of the sphere, and its direct opposite pole is 0, so 0 can become infinity and infinity can become 0, thus the smallest and farthest points become mirrors. If you think about infinity as a manifestation or expression of numbers, 0 has the potential to become those integers. This means that they correspond to each other, and that without expression, there is no potential, and that without potential, there is no expression. One cannot exist without the other. They are somehow the same and yet complete opposites, just like Apollonian and Dionysian.

When I was little, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about when Existence truly began, because if you pick a starting point, then you have to wonder what was before that point and then before that, and so on and so on… this logical approach, ironically, quickly dissolves any sense of logic. I also used to wonder the same thing about the Universe, because, yes— Earth is in Solar System in the Milky Way in the Local Group in Virgo Supercluster in the Laniakea Supercluster in the vaster knowable Universe. But then what? What then? There, where our finite Universe ends, what is there beyond? What then? And same could be said about the human being. About our cells, then atoms, then neutrons, then quarks? What’s after all that?

There’s a truly beautiful song that I’ve recently been listening to by Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía called La Yugular which ends with the recording of a woman saying: 7 heavens? Big deal! I wanna see the 8th heaven, 10th heaven, Thousandth heaven. You know, it’s like, break on through the other side it’s just like going through one door. One door isn’t enough. A million doors aren’t enough.

Will it ever be enough? I don’t think so. And I feel it hurt sometimes, all of the space between myself and all that I see, as I’m sure you do. We could expand infinitely and shrink infinitely, we could be Everything and Nothing. But searching for something at the end of infinity is a paradox because there is no end, there is no beginning, there just is this constant state of longing for the unattainable. But somehow, I know that we will reach it.

And you know who has an answer to this paradox? It’s not Nietzsche, but rather medieval monks! In the Middle Ages, there is a Latin phrase that you can sometimes catch in the corner of Christian imagination— credo quia absurdum, “I believe it because it is absurd.” Once logic reveals its limits, the mystery of Existence must be experienced by flinging oneself over the cliff the Fool walks towards. That is exactly why the ancients treated madness as divine. “Our greatest blessings,” says Socrates in Phaedrus, “come to us by way of madness.” It is in this text that Plato mentions four types of madness (theia mania):

1. Prophetic Madness (whose patron is Apollo): Often hard to separate from insanity but considered highly rational insight, prophetic madness allows the medium to deliver messages and predications about the future through altered states of consciousness where the god possesses or quite literally speaks through the mediator by manipulating their vocal chords (hence why the medium usually speaks in first person). Plato gives three examples of this: the Pythia (the most famous oracle of the ancient world and everyone from lawmakers to kings consulted her; the priestess of Apollo at Delphi who would fall into ecstatic trances that were often disordered and had to be interpreted by male priests into hexameter verse or prose responses), the Sibyl (types of inspired prophetesses scattered across the ancient Greek world that would often speak in riddles, poems, and are even credited with having written prophetic books like Sibylline Books preserved in Rome; a Sibyl spoke spontaneously unlike the Pythia who spoke upon appointment and ceremony), and the priestess of Zeus at Dodona (priestesses of Zeus that interpreted divine messages through natural sounds like water, thunder, bird calls, the rustling of oak trees, and bronze cauldrons that were hung to clang in the wind; known as the Peleiades, or “Doves” and were considered to predate Apollonian divination, possibly implying that they are the oldest known method of ancient Greek prophecy). There were other seers who were known as “belly-talkers” that spoke with a “belly-voice”, or the strange, low sounds a medium makes when they are possessed by a god. This can also apply to necromancers and “belly-talking” is most closely associated with communications regarding the dead or death.

2. Telestic/mystical/ritual madness (whose patron is Dionysus): This is the madness of irrationality, frenzy, and catharsis, specifically spiritual purification. As mentioned previously, this could include drunkenness, dance, music as well as the tearing of the body and consumption of the flesh of the living. Historian Will Durant writes that followers of Dionysus “knew that they would never die” and “deemed their state an ecstasis, a going out of their souls to meet and be one with Dionysus; thus they felt freed from the burden of the flesh, they acquired divine insight, they were able to prophesy, they were gods”. Aforementioned classist E.R. Dodds mentions that this ecstasis was “taking you out of yourself”. Unlike Apollonian prophecy which was often institutionalized and required a sort of bureaucracy, the Dionysian cult and mania was for all, especially outsiders like women and slaves.

3. Poetic madness (inspired by the Muses): This third type of madness is, for me as a person who wants to pursue creative writing, the most fascinating and deals with the age old question of where inspiration comes from. Dodds writes that, to the Greeks, creativity was not “chosen” by the mortal, but “divinely given”, becoming a messenger of the universe. In many ancient epics across the world, the poet often calls upon a god, or a Muse to ask what he is to say, never how he says it (for example, the opening line of The Iliad is quite literally “Wrath— Sing, O Goddess of the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles”). In fact, several times do poets explicitly request knowledge of the past, hidden present, or future from the Muses, and Homer even begs to be inspired with an army list for the Trojan War. There is also a sort of urgency or demand, as we see in Hesiod’s case when the Muses appear to him on Mount Helicon, that the poet must write the story because it is divinely ordained. Hesiod himself also had a fondness for names and if he thought of a new one, he did not treat it as made-up, but rather divinely communicated. Similarly, when Odysseus, in The Odyssey, observes that when a poet named Demodocus can sing of the Trojan War, he concludes that the Muses must have “taught” it to him. Demodocus, interestingly, is also described as being given a “sweet song” by the Muses but “robbed him of his eyes” for it, implying blindness, that one must transcend their earthly senses to intake metaphysical knowledge. Even more intriguing is that the Muses were the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory, suggesting that creativity is born from divine remembrance and can be used as a tool or medium for universal recollection. Writers like Democritus spoke of a poetic ecstasy or a “holy breath” that filled them, very similar to how early Christians would describe the Holy Spirit descending and possessing those who recorded scripture. Plato even claims that the Muse is quite literally inside the poet. There is a strong Indo-European motif of particular interest to me: the one of the Bard, the Storyteller, the Poet, the Seer who often is possessed or called upon a god (sometimes by consuming a sacred drink) to tell a Story of the Universe. As Dodds writes, these poets had “the feeling that creative thinking is not the work of the ego.”

4. Erotic madness (inspired by Aphrodite and Eros): Considered the highest of Plato’s manias, this is the madness of lovers, of Layla and Majnun, of Cupid and Psyche. Erotic madness is not necessarily sexual, but celestial, referring to the soul in search of the Universe and is portrayed as being overwhelmingly emotional with a rejection of logic and a gravitation towards a contemplation on Beauty and the eternal Forms. But most importantly, it is cited as a recollection, a remembrance of the Self’s divine origins that were apparent in its pre-bodied existence, even claiming that it unifies man’s two natures: the “divine self and tethered beast”. Plato, in a way that hauntingly parallels the poetry of Sufi mystics that write intimately of God as the Beloved, describes the lover as “falling into worship” of the beloved, completely unable to rationally explain why the sight of this person shakes their entire being so intensely. It is written that the mere sight of this Beauty results in the sprouting of the soul’s “wings”, causing it to shudder and flutter with an intense heat or frenzied yearning to return to the heavens.

All four forms of madness seem to be as a result of entheos, meaning “a god within”, implying a literal possession of the human by a god and oneness between the two entities (entheos is actually where we get the world “enthusiasm” from!).

Dodds, in his excellent book The Greeks and the Irrational, also explains where some forms of divine possession come from. He begins by telling us of atê, a female daimōn (a spirit that is not quite god nor human and that does not have the negative connotations the word “demon” has today), as an “experience of divine temptation”, “infatuation”, or “temporary insanity” credited to daimōnic intervention or agency. This is the same force that Agamemnon claims manipulated him to rob Achilles of his mistress in Book 9 of The Iliad, stating that he was “blinded by atê” that was put into him by Zeus and the Erinyes (chthonic goddesses of vengeance).

Dodds warns us to not misinterpret the claim as Agamemnon’s attempt to avoid taking responsibility for his actions, but rather as a genuine belief of the ancient world. Achilles himself in Book 19 cries out to the sky god, claiming, “Father Zeus, great indeed are the atai (plural of atê) you give to men. Else the son of Atreus (Agamemnon) would never have persisted in rousing thumos (spirited anger/passion) in my chest, nor obstinately taken the girl against my will” and in Book 1, when explaining the situation with Agamemnon to his mother, Achilles also states that atê is responsible for Agamemnon’s behavior. Even in the first few lines of The Iliad it is mentioned, referring to the situation, that “the plan of Zeus was fulfilled”, implying that the entire story was executed by will of the gods and spirits, including atê.

And atê is not the only state of mind that is inspired within humans, but there are a whole host of others: thumos (previously mentioned as an impulsive seat of emotion, passion, and/or anger), menos (a vital force that is often described as a type of battle fury felt in the chest or “thrusting up pungently into [the] nostrils” that leads to supernatural strength, aggression, and speed; menos can sometimes be put into a person’s thumos, like how Apollo does with the wounded Glaucus, and can sometimes come as a result of prayer), lyssa (uncontrollable madness, often compared to berserk rage; the spirit that Hera sends to drive Herakles to kill his wife and children), deimos (considered even worse than phobos, fear/panic, because it is a paralyzing terror), and my personal favorite— pothos.

Pothos is a longing or nostalgia for what is absent and is often paired with eros, (irresistible/overwhelming desire), himeros (destructive yearning awakened by beauty), and anteros (reciprocated love) but should not necessarily be mistaken as earthly or sexual. Pothos is most similar to nostos (homesickness), and specifically in Orphic and philosophical traditions, pothos is cosmic longing, a yearning for the immaterial, a homesickness for the stars, for the belly of the Universe. This pining is often personified as a place or a lover (like Ithaca and Penelope in The Odyssey) and the poet Sappho describes pothos as wistful, bittersweet, and strangely beautiful in a melancholic way.

But these four erotes, or forces of love, in Orphic and mystical interpretations, are seen as the soul’s stages of longing for the reunification with the Self and dissolution into Existence. Pothos is that feeling of intangible yearning, that first spark that makes you realize you have distanced yourself from something that imbues the entire galaxy, the original place, the original language, the original Self. Himeros is the first, experienced moment of divine love, or eros, which is overwhelming, all-consuming, and can often be violent because it confronts the horror of how far one has strayed away from Home. It is in that moment that anteros, the reciprocated love of the Universe comes in— that, like God stretching out to Adam in Michelangelo’s imagination, like Majnun reaching out eternally for Layla, like al-Hallaj repeating again and again “I am the Truth”, it is only the human that needs to realize there has been Another on the other side of the veil, a hand that has been waiting to be held, pining for you just as much as you have pined for it.

There is a hauntingly beautiful song by Norwegian singer-songwriter AURORA that I believe perfectly encapsulates this feeling through the medium of sound. She writes,

All that I know
Lies within emotion
Words remain unspoken
Lead me through the dark
All that I see
Came to me in colors
Lasted for the moment
Lead me through the dark

All that I’ve ever known

Is the Universe is wild,

Is the Universe is wild

I highly, highly recommend this live performance of the song (best with headphones!). The first time that I heard it, especially at the climax of the song when the singer belts out, I felt like I had heard that melody before, those lyrics, and tears immediately sprang to my eyes. If the Universe had a sound to call its Child back to its Womb, it would be this sound. I’m sure of it. As I listened, it felt like I was being drawn back to the belly of something so vast, so kind, so mad, so infinite. It’s like a violent nostalgia for someplace you’ve already been to, but that you’re scratching at the ends of the world to get back to. Now, when I play the song, I am filled with an energy and a yearning to run back to this Home that it becomes almost all-consuming. Like there is nothing more that I want than to run back, back to that place, so far, far away.

Dear Reader, I hope that one day you and I can actually touch the sun and not just feel the warmth of its rays. That like Odysseus returning to Ithaca, we can go beyond the reach of our human memory, and to a Home that awaits our Arrival.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆

This won’t be the end of my musings on madness, so consider this article a prelude to what’s to come on my page. In fact, I’m currently working my fourth podcast episode! You can expect a variety of topics: the early evolution of Dionysus, his relation to Jesus, the eating and rending of flesh in Greek myth and Christianity, female medieval mysticism, bulls in prehistory and Islam, and the roots of all of this in Proto-Indo-European and Minoan belief (BECAUSE I LITERALLY CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THE MINOANS 😭). I know it sounds extremely rambly and slightly derailing (which it probably will be), but have faith in me— they’re all connected.

I can’t guarantee an official date for the release just yet, but I hope that you are content knowing I’m spending my mornings trying my hand at Linear B and reading about wild women in the forest and worshippers eating their gods.

Keep telling and collecting stories,

From One Universe to Another,

Ava 💫

SOURCES!! (if you're interested 😉)

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Dear Readers of the Universe,

Fashion is beautiful. Let’s set aside the obvious visual and aesthetic beauty, but the philosophy of fashion in and of itself is such a privilege— that we can express ourselves, our mortality and immortality through textiles and beads and ribbons and colors that represent our souls, our emotions, our human experience. As a fashion enthusiast and a person who sketches out designs inspired by historical styles, I hope to share with you the souls and expressions of people thousands of years ago in the hopes of you perhaps taking inspiration from them or resonating with such beauty that is merely reflective of the eternity within. Fashion is intimate. It is emotional. It is a manifestation of what animates the human body. And its individuality belongs to every human in every time.

Welcome, Dear Reader, to a runway of ancient expression…

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Minoan Open Bodice Dresses and a “Matriarchal” Religion (?)

The Minoans— what an enigma of a civilization! An undeciphered syllabic script, a mythology that inspired the beloved tales of Classical religion (check out my podcast episode on the Minoan civilization, labyrinths, strangled goddesses, and the Minotaur myth for more info!), and a mysterious ending. Almost everything known about the Minoans is either largely based on speculation or what their neighbors said about them. Even the name “Minoan” was made up by archeologist Sir Arthur Evans as what the Minoans called themselves is still unknown (although, the Egyptians reportedly called them “keftu”).

In the palatial world of Bronze Age Crete, Minoan women have a unique silhouette amid the later peploi and stolas of Classical Greece and Rome. Numerous depictions of Minoan women feature them in fitted bodices that expose the breasts while cinching the waist (actually, waist cinching appears to have been popular among men and women during this period) with a flounced, tiered skirt that sculpted the body and pronounced curves unlike the comparatively modest robes of the Classical period. Both genders are portrayed with long, elaborate hairstyles, flamboyant feathered hats, intricate gold and pearl jewelry, and colorfully dyed fabrics (possibly linen or wool). The Minoans also had access to an abundance of saffron for yellow dyes and murex sea snails for bright purple (whose shells were even incorporated into their palace walls), allowing them not only to have a unique style, but also made way for the facilitation of a robust economy that was famed across the ancient Mediterranean.

While much of what we know about Minoan men’s fashion is sparse (as most depictions feature women), most of the men seem to have a an ornamental blue or gold band around their biceps and a codpiece-like shield on their embroidered loincloths, breechcloths, and kilts. Like their female counterparts, they exposed their chests. Men are usually depicted with a reddish brown skin tone while women typically have white skin, a possible artistic feature borrowed from Egyptian art or a cultural ideal for women to be indoors taking care of domestic duties while men worked in fields.

One of the most fascinating elements of the Minoan civilization is its emphasis on women. Many of the representations of women’s intricate dresses appear in ritual scenes (e.g., bull-leaping frescoes, processions, scenes that seem to depict women pouring each other libations or offerings among many other works) and in these contexts, women seem to be either leading the worship of a deity or seem to be worshipped themselves, perhaps suggesting more of a cultural reverence towards women or “the feminine” in general. However, the term “matriarchal” must be used with care because although there is strong evidence for female iconography, goddess fertility worship, and women in high ritual status, the direct evidence for a female-dominated or matriarchal sociopolitical order remains speculative. It is safer (for now) to claim that Minoan imagery emphasizes female ritual agency rather than outright matriarchy, which, again, could be a possibility.

What gets even more fascinating is when we can compare Minoan dress to a more recent time, but in a different country. Under the Qajar period, an Iranian dynasty that ruled from 1794 to 1925, women sometimes wore open-bodice dresses very similar to the Minoan style, however the setting differed. Usually worn by Qajar women in elite and semi-private gatherings, the style consisted of a kolija (a type of short, fitted jacket) and sheer pirahan (transparent chemise) with an open neckline that sometimes left the entire torso open or just the breasts. Qajar women, with or without the exposure of the chests, often always wore very full, puffed skirts with pants under them in some cases, a type of style that is still seen in many tribes in Iran like Kurdish, Bakhtiari, and Mazandarani (I actually have a few of these skirts in my closet as a gift from my family in Iran).

Unlike the Minoan dresses, however, Qajar women would often only wear this in andarun (Spheres in houses often reserved for women. The female residents would stage theatrical/musical performances for each other, smoke hookah, host poetry recitals, book gatherings, create textiles with secret patterns encoded on them, conduct calligraphy, painting, perfume creation/experimentation, ritual bathes for menstruation, and early feminist conversations before the movement was even sparked in the West).

Although the reason as to why Minoan women revealed their chests and why they seemed to be placed in a reverent position is unknown, the comparison between the two cultures, centuries and miles apart, goes to show that breasts are simply just another part of the body and can be seen as symbols of intimacy, beauty, and elegance rather than a cultural taboo.

I really do think that the Minoans are my Roman empire. I was even privileged enough to able to see the Palace of Knossos in person last summer, undoubtedly one of the best days of my life. I know a lot of people warn against placing your emotions in academia, but so much of what gives me passion, gives me a deep sense of longing and yearning, lies in what I study. I find myself feeling infinite, feeling limitless, even getting emotional when I learn about history, religion, myth, literature, and folklore, when I read of these ancient peoples. I want to reach out, to tell them that I am listening. I don’t let my feelings interfere with facts, but I let them guide me in my love for the subject and what I should study next. There is something about the Minoan civilization that feels so right, so familiar to me that I cannot express exactly what. Perhaps it is an indication to keep following it.

Dear Reader, tell me what civilization makes your heart stir too in the comments :)

Jewelry Spotlight: The Malia Pendant

There are few pieces of jewelry that genuinely leave one breathless. The Malia Pendant is one of them. This gold pendant was discovered in 1930 at a tomb near a site called “Chrysolakkos” (literally “gold pit”), near the Minoan palace of Malia in Crete. It is a masterpiece of miniature art all on its own as it only spans about 4.6 cm in height and 4.4 cm in width. The piece depicts two symmetrical insects, most likely bees, with their little legs holding into a bead in the middle.

Because it was found near a mortuary site, scholars theorize that the charm could have had a chthonic significance as bees do in later Greek myth. Honey and bees seemed to have been important in Cretan culture according to extensive administrative tablets, records that portray honey as a holy libation, and other general depictions of honey-bees in art, indicating economic but also possibly religious significance. This emphasis on honey can be seem in the word itself. The Linear B (the syllabic script of the Myceneans, a Bronze age peoples that came from mainland Greece to Crete) word for honey is “me-ri”, an ancestor of the Greek “meli” of the same meaning and the name “Melissa”, meaning honeybee.

Later Greek myths often feature three bee-nymphs called the Melissae (not to be confused with the Meliae, or ash-tree nymphs from Hesiod’s Theogony) who were often associated with prophetic work and divination specifically within the context of Apollo and Delphi. Even the term “Melissa” was sometimes a title used for a priestess of Artemis, Demeter, or Rhea. Whatever their importance in such an enigmatic, strange Bronze Age culture, honey-bees will always feel more sacred to me than before this research.

Jeweled Byzantine Crowns and Christian Superstition

The Byzantine empire is underrated. Yeah, yeah, I know— Western Rome is fascinating for its Caesars and aqueducts and whatnot, but everything east of the Balkans got sort of ignored for a good few centuries after 476 AD… including some truly astonishing pieces of jewelry!

In medieval Byzantium, the crown was a central part of the coronation ritual in the Hagia Sophia cathedral in which the emperor/empress was anointed and crowned by the patriarch of the time, implying the ruler’s divine legitimacy and blessed authority while also portraying political subservience to spiritual superiority. In De Ceremoniis of Constantine VII, a Byzantine handbook from the 10th century that details court rituals, the author describes the coronation as an invitation for the Holy Spirit to “fill” the wearer with divine pneuma.

The crowns and Byzantine regalia in general, often were often fashioned from gold (visual articulation of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis or the concept that humans can emulate God through divine grace; the incorruptibility of gold was considered parallel to God’s eternal state in a world of change, of temporary elements) and were encrusted with jewels like amethyst and sapphire, large pearls (which were considered to be a type of defense against the evil eye), enamel icons, and, my personal favorite, pendilia.

Pendilia were, as their Latin etymology suggests, ornaments like lines of pearls that hung from crowns, sometimes featuring the Greek letters alpha and omega (a reference to the Gospel of John, a Gospel targeted towards Greeks, where God is called alpha and omega, the beginning and the end). They were possibly derived from early Hellenistic diadems. The little jingling sounds and shining light that the pendilia make when the wearer moves were thought to have warded off the fixating gaze of the evil eye.

Everything about the crown was crafted with intention, with purpose, with elegance and poise. I definitely recommend checking out more Byzantine jewelry in this article— it’s all just so stunning.

Jewelry Spotlight: Ring with an Intaglio of Pan

In my personal opinion, everything gets increasingly more interesting when it has to do with mythology, folklore, or paganism. That’s why a tiny gold ring from 12th century Byzantium is much more fascinating than what meets the eye. Little is known about the Ring with an Intaglio of Pan, but what is certain is that it truly is one of those artifacts that remind historians of continuity and the potency of ancient myths.

As the name suggests, the ring features an intaglio (likely older than the ring itself) of one of my favorite mythic deities, the great god Pan. He is depicted as he usually is— goat-legged and playing away at his pipe, a reference to his pastoral and wild nature. The image of Pan is flanked by two lions carved onto the gold sides of the ring while an inscription is written below, a quote from Psalm 26: “The Lord that is my light and my savior; whom shall I fear?”, perhaps implying a sort of protective or apotropaic quality.

This type of Abrahamic and pagan synthesis is what I absolutely live for! Even though the ring is used as an example of medieval recycling of antique traditions and Pan was recontextualized to fit a Christian setting, it is fascinating how one faith, “replaced” by another never truly goes away. That each spirituality, each faith, each myth, each story is the Truth, is this Light, is inscribed onto the Body and Script of the Universe. How wonderful, then, to think that the message is the same but is presented for each person in a personal, unique way. What a kindness and love that is presented to us from the cosmos.

Something completely unrelated to ancient jewelry, but still pertains to the god Pan is the claim “the great god Pan is dead!”, which was famously written in Plutarch’s De Defectu Oraculorum (On the Decline/Failure of Oracles). The text describes the story of how the death of Pan came to be announced, claiming that an Egyptian pilot named Thamus (not to be confused with the Egyptian king Thamus from Plato’s Phaedrus) who believed he heard a voice from the island of Paxi that instructed him to announce that “the great god Pan is dead.” The motif of the death of Pan is later utilized by Christian writers as a symbol for the decline of paganism and the rise of Christianity.

There is a prevailing theory, however, that the phrase “the great god Pan is dead” could possibly be a mistranslation. In the original Greek, the sentence goes like this: Πὰν ὁ μέγας τέθνηκε (Thamous Pan ‘o megas tethneke), which can be read as either “Thamus, the great god Pan is dead” or “Tammuz, the All-Great is dead” (Tammuz being the Mesopotamian god who was killed by a wild boar, prompting his lover, the goddess Ishtar to descend into the underworld to resurrect him. If the sentence was about Tammuz, it would not be anything unusual as the death of Tammuz was announced seasonally to commemorate his divine story. This myth of the dying-and-rising god is particular interest to me, because it isn’t just limited to Tammuz, but also appears in the myths of global deities like Dionysus, Osiris, Baldur, and, of course, Jesus Christ among many others, not to mention mythic beings that are able to journey to the Underworld and back like Christ). The word Πάν (“Pan”) in Greek can mean both the name of the deity and just the suffix “all”, implying that the phrase could have been meant as a pun that expressed the decline of the oracular function of wild gods. This is especially support by the fact that there is no other canonical evidence that Pan had ever died. However, no surviving manuscripts change the capital Πάν to πᾶν (“all”), which is why some philologists reject the “mistranslation” hypothesis, but the definite answer is still unknown.

Roman Makeup and Witchcraft Spells

When we think of Rome, we often think of Caesars, gladiators, and the famous line from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian: “What have the Romans ever done for us?”, right before a list of their countless contributions to society. But Roman beauty and the magic of its makeup, I assure you, has probably never crossed the minds of men whose Roman Empire is the Roman Empire. But cosmetics were far more than just aesthetic pleasure, they were powerful tools of pharmakeia, or sorcery and magic spells native to the ancient Mediterranean.

Roman women often whitened their faces with cerussa (a type of lead), lined their eyes and thickened their brows with kohl and lead sulfide, ingredients that were sometimes mixed with other ingredients to create eye-salves. In later antique/imperial medicine, cosmetics slowly become a branch of therapeutics, often blurring the line between healing and beauty. Even the glass containers which these archaic women used to store their cosmetics and perfumes were stunning, made with beads that imitated the sparkle and glimmer of precious stones like sapphire, emerald, and amethyst.

However, there was some moral panic about women’s use of makeup for elaborate beautifying, especially in the Roman poet Juvenal’s Satire 6 (although Juvenal tends to sort of hate everyone, so this isn’t really a surprise). The poet condemns women’s use of unguenta (Fatty ointments used to heal injuries and preserve the skin. The term is also used in the Early Modern witch trails in the phrase Lamiarum Unguenta, meaning “witches’ ointment,” a folkloric psychoactive substance made from poisonous plants) and even claims that it could cause marital harm and domestic danger, revealing early male paranoia of the links between makeup and witchcraft. Juvenal also expressed a worry of some elite males at the time: Are women using magical ointments to mask deception or harm? I highly recommend reading Satire 6, it’s absolutely hilarious (It literally begins with “In the days of Saturn, I believe, Chastity still lingered on the earth…”— how much more grumpy old man can you get?).

In a sense, these elite males might have been onto something as sorcery does play a role in Roman cosmetics, especially in the realm of love magic. Some preparations were used as erotic spells to enchant wealthy prospects and in many Greco-Egyptian hand books that circulated the Roman world, formulas for ointments that make the wearer attractive to all who look are listed in great detail. The Roman poet and Platonist philosopher Apuleius in his Metamorphoses tells the tale of a witch transforms herself with unguents as a vehicle of metamorphosis and eros.

The ancients had a peculiar way of making the mundane mystical and wonderous, perhaps bringing out what was already there through emotions and ritual. Learning about these peoples makes the world around me seem fuller, beyond our senses— that there is more love, more play, more feeling, more expression, that there is more available. However, a downside of this is that now, whenever I apply makeup, I can hear Juvenal loudly scolding me in the back of the my head.

Jewelry Spotlight: Lunula Amulets

If anyone is the expert at making weird accessories, it’s the Romans (just look up the fascinus to prove my point). In an attempt to ward off the evil-eye and disease, a sort of amuletic toolkit was worn on the body in the ancient Mediterranean (bells, eyes, hands, phalli, etc.), very similar to the later Byzantine pendilia. These protections were especially used on children who were more vulnerable to disease and death than their adult counterparts. But there is a strange pendant that has always roused my curiosity— the lunula.

The lunula, literally meaning “little moon” (how cute is that?), was the apotropaic, female version of the bulla (a protective amulet worn by young boys around their neck until they were of an age to became official citizens). Often given to young girls on their birthdays, lunulae were usually crescent shaped and gold (but could also be bronze and silver). They were often worn around the neck, suggesting the protection of an area that housed the breath/voice and that the glimmer (like the sound of bells and the shine of jewels in Byzantium), was meant to “catch” the evil eye before it inflicted any harm onto the child. The mere fact that the lunula is a crescent and not a full moon could imply more of a “becoming” rather than completion, a fitting metaphor for a hypothetically coming-of-age artifact.

Lunulae are not limited to ancient Rome, as these golden crescents have been found all over Europe and across different time periods, especially in Bronze Age Ireland. The lunula can also been seen in many depictions of goddesses in the Mediterranean and Near East. Greco-Roman and Egyptian deities like Artemis, Isis, Hathor, and Selene, who are frequently portrayed with crescent diadems at the center of their foreheads.

If something repeats in myth, I take it as a sort of alarm that I need to pay attention to. I’ve always been curious about the crescent moon and its connection to the divine feminine in mythology; it’s definitely a topic I would like explore more in depth in a future article. The crescent is also often associated with horns, specifically bull horns, adding another layer of mystery to this already enigmatic symbol.

La Fin ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧

And so comes the end of another musing on magic, belief, and stories. I hope that these notes on the universe of fashion, aesthetic, and beauty have found their way into your heart as they have with mine. Humans have been dressing themselves for centuries, for millennia, trying to express that mystery within them, the one that remains permanent, enchanting, and strange all at once while the world outside turns. Isn’t it beautiful, though, that fashion is just another way of the human trying to communicate the uncommunicable? How wonderful when words disappear and all that is left is emotions, color, and a sense of the beyond.

Before I leave you, I would like to announce that I’m currently working on my fourth podcast episode!— Holy Cannibalism, Female Dionysiac Frenzy, and the Gospels: Eating the Flesh with Jesus and Dionysus. It’s on the ancient Greek ritual of sparagmos (ripping of the body) and omophagia, as well as a comparison between Euripides’ The Bacchae, and John’s Gospel with a dash of medieval mysticism🩸The episode is basically trying to get some sort of semblance of an answer to the question of why there is so much violent imagery, cannibalism, and ecstatic madness in myth and religion.

I can’t guarantee an official date for the release just yet, but I hope that you are content knowing I’m spending my mornings reading about mad women in the forest and worshippers eating their gods.

In the meantime, Dear Reader, I wish you a beautiful day and thank you for reading my article.

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava ✨

☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★✧˖°☆⋆｡𖦹°‧☆⋆｡𖦹°‧

SOURCES:

1. Dewan, Rachel. “Revealing an Invisible Spice Market: The Minoan Use and Social Significance of Saffron.” Academia.edu, 12 May 2014, www.academia.edu/7027619/Revealing_an_Invisible_Spice_Market_The_Minoan_Use_and_Social_Significance_of_Saffron.

2. McDonnell, Georgia. “Beauty in the Bronze Age - Minoan & Mycenaean Fashion.” World History Encyclopedia, 8 Apr. 2021, www.worldhistory.org/article/1723/beauty-in-the-bronze-age---minoan--mycenaean-fashi/.

3. “CLOTHING X. In the Safavid and Qajar Periods.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 20 Oct. 2024, www.iranicaonline.org/articles/clothing-x/.

4. “QAJAR DYNASTY Xii. The Qajar-Period Household.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 20 Oct. 2024, www.iranicaonline.org/articles/qajars-period-household/.

5. LaFleur, Richard A., et al. “A Re-Examination of the Mallia Insect Pendant.” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 83, no. 2, 1979, pp. 208–12. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/504904.

6. Walker, Alicia. “Wearable Art in Byzantium – Smarthistory.” Smarthistory.org, 30 July 2021, smarthistory.org/wearable-art-byzantium/.

7. “Constantine Porphyrogennetos the Book of Ceremonies Brill : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2021, archive.org/details/constantine-porphyrogennetos-the-book-of-ceremonies-brill/Constantine%20Porphyrogennetos%20-%20The%20Book%20of%20Ceremonies-Brill/.

8. “Ring with an Intaglio of Pan, 12th Century (Medieval). Acquired by Henry Walters, 57.1580 | the Walters Art Museum.” Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum, 18 June 2025, art.thewalters.org/object/57.1580/. Accessed 3 Nov. 2025.

9. Borgeaud, Philippe. “The Death of the Great Pan: The Problem of Interpretation.” History of Religions, vol. 22, no. 3, Feb. 1983, pp. 254–283, https://doi.org/10.1086/462924.

10. “Pliny, Natural History, 35 (A).” Www.attalus.org, www.attalus.org/translate/pliny_hn35a.html.

11. “Roman “Pendants” Turn out to Be Makeup Tools – the History Blog.” Thehistoryblog.com, 18 Sept. 2019, www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/56466.

12. “Juvenal, Satires. (1918). Satire 6.” Www.tertullian.org, www.tertullian.org/fathers/juvenal_satires_06.htm.

13. Johnson, Marguerite. Ovid on Cosmetics. Bloomsbury Publishing, 28 Jan. 2016.

14. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Glass - the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Metmuseum.org, Oct. 2003, www.metmuseum.org/essays/roman-glass.

15. Coughlin, Sean. “Ancient Medicine.” Ancient Medicine, 26 Nov. 2021, www.ancientmedicine.org/home/2021/11/26/a-myrrh-and-iron-gall-ink-from-the-magical-greek-papyri.

Dear Readers from the Universe,

The beginning of September has reminded me that we all need a touch of whimsy in our lives. And when I use the word whimsy here, I mean it in it’s strange, murky etymology: we can trace the word pretty confidently back as far as the 1520s where the ancestor of the word was “whim-wham”, a fantastical trinket or idea with an unknown origin. However, there is speculation that “whim-wham” may have come from the Old Norse hvima “to let the eyes wander” which in turn could possibly be related to the Finnish word huima, “to be dizzy”.

Recently, I’ve been quite busy— running around, trying to study for countless exams, preparing for university— and sometimes I have to catch myself when I forget “to let the eyes wander” or “feel dizzy” with delight over the fact that the world is so big, so vast that my tiny microcosm of a perspective is only a speck in the larger mystery of the universe. I think that fairytales help me zoom out, look out over the mountain. They are guides, you know, sort of like collective dreams that pull me back towards my center with stars and spirals and strange creatures. As C.S. Lewis famously said, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again”. The bravery that comes with being comfortable with that foreign, familiar world which we all come from.

In the past few months in particular, fairytale art with an almost art nouveau-looking style has graced my eyes with it’s beauty and perspective on life by depicting the unknown, the strange, the whimsical, and seemingly untranslatable (from the incoherent, often odd language of infinity from which all things—ideas, objects, peoples, thoughts, spoons—emerge or never emerge). I find myself addicted to these pieces: I put them up on my wall or bedroom door, make some of them my home screen, and even print out copies of them to stick into the letters I write to my pen pal (in a sense, she already got a visual run down of this article before I even published it). But these works are mystical. They are childlike and ancient. They are beautiful and I want to dedicate some time to revering them, even if it’s just for a little while.

I have selected stories from the lives and inspirations of five fairytale painters from of the 19th-20th centuries (“The Golden Age of Illustration”) and their modern equivalents… I hope you enjoy and that this article “lets your eyes wonder!”

Gustave Doré ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré (1832–1883)— what a name!— was born on January 6 in Strasbourg, a city poised at the crossroads of French and German culture that is famous for it’s brooding, Gothic cathedrals and the wild pre-Lenten carnival of Fastnacht. The folklore of Strasbourg is both humorous and grotesque which is a theme that would influence his art.

Beginning his artistic career at fifteen, he moved to Paris, a center of Romanticism in the 19th century, where he worked as a caricaturist for the French paper Le Journal Pour Rire (The Newspaper for Laughter) and published comedic lithographs. From this early career, Doré went on to win commissions to depict scenes from over 200 books including works by Cervantes, Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, Dante, Perrault, and Shakespeare. He also illustrated a very successful edition of the Bible. He even explored different mediums like wood engraving, painting, sculpture, and documentaries (a proto-photojournalistic record of Victorian London; the work is called London: A Pilgrimage).

His Inspirations, His Metaphorical Muses…

• The Sublime Itself: the grandeur of the cosmos, of nature, of existential questions, especially cliffs and ledges where something could really go wrong.

• The Strasbourg Cathedral (Notre-Dame de Strasbourg): one of the tallest structures in the world when Doré was born. A medieval window enthusiast’s dream (BTW: comment down below your favorite medieval window!)

• Epic and Romantic Literature: Dante, Milton, Cervantes, poetry of Byron, Hugo, Balzac, Rabelais…

Media Recommendations that just GIVE Doré…

• Films: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006): If you haven’t seen this movie, I need you to drop everything and go watch it. Every time I watch it, I end up crying for hours on end and it remains one of my favorite movies because of it’s hypnotic, enchanting portrayal of the magic, of the love that transcends and imbues reality. The film does a beautiful (“beautiful” isn’t a strong enough word) to describe that nostalgic, melancholic longing for the intangible, the Otherworld, the original place, the thing that is described in all of the stories of the Universe with it’s strangeness and dark purity.

• Literature: Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories and poems, Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (I would also recommend film that came out in 2024!), Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl (do not read this at night!), Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (Ancient Roman whimsy at it’s max <3)

• Music: Father father (Susanne Sundfør… I actually can’t stop listening to her album The Brothel!), Desired Constellation and Jóga (Björk 💖), Achilles Come Down (Gang of Youths), Danse Macabre (The Oh Hellos), The Dream of Gerontius (Edward Elgar), Ascending Bird (Kayhan Kalhor— the absolute master of the kamancheh, a Persian instrument that sounds like the violin but more emotional and piercing, almost melancholic), Under Ice and Waking the Witch (Kate Bush— chills. Every. Single. Time!), Experience (Ludovico Einaudi)

• Niche Research Topics:

  • The Origins of Chiaroscuro in the Italian Renaissance: how the manipulation of light in art could symbolize moral philosophy.

  • Alsatian Carnival & The Grotesque Humor of Folklore: The evolution of European carnivals (from pagan-esque Germanic festivals to glittering French masquerades) and the use of grotesque humor, especially in relation to the Fool archetype.

• Modern Artist with Similar Style:

  • Edward Gorey: An enigmatic artist whose favorite outfit was a fur coat and sneakers, Gorey is the author of a dozen macabre books that take inspiration from ballet, surrealism, and silent film. If Doré’s art is like a Gothic cathedral that Lucifer had been banished to, Gorey’s work is like a mysterious, Victorian housecat that delivers deadpan punchlines. Fun fact: much of his art inspired the aesthetics of the book Coraline!

  • Paul Rumsey: I first discovered Rumsey in Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies (a collection of interviews, research articles, and analyses surrounding the genre of folk horror and it’s inspirations—highly recommend!) where the artist discusses his mythological, classical, and surrealist inspirations for his strange, often disturbing pieces. My favorite piece of his is Astrologers (2000).

Ivan Bilibin ☆.𓋼𓍊 𓆏 𓍊𓋼𓍊.☆

Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942) was a Russian illustrator, stage designer, and folklorist who was born from the soul of stories and the woods. He studied under Ilya Repin (who created the most disturbing, breath-taking, tragic painting called Ivan the Terrible and his Son) and became part of the avant-garde Mir Iskusstva (“World of Art”) movement, where he developed his love for crisp ink outlines, rich yet watercolor-like colors, and ornate decorative borders inspired by Russian folk embroidery, woodcuts, and medieval iconography.

He spent decades traveling through rural Russia, collecting folktales, studying traditional dress and architecture, and turning his findings into iconic illustrations that still remain the default way many imagine Russian folklore (also inspiring early Disney backgrounds!). Bilibin even designed storybook-like sets for Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas (notably The Golden Cockerel). After the Bolshevik Revolution, he lived in Egypt and Paris before eventually returning to Soviet Russia in the 1930s until he died of starvation in the Siege of Leningrad.

His Inspirations, His Metaphorical Muses…

• Folk Art & Embroidery: As you can see from his margins and the details in his characters’ clothes, Bilibin often copied the intricate patterns in embroidered towels (rushniki), painted wooden chests, peasant theatre/festivals, lacquered icons and illuminated miniatures in medieval manuscripts. He also took inspiration from folk woodcuts (Lubok) which often favored comedic portrayals of the people they depicted, hence the appearance of Bilibin’s sometimes cartoon-looking characters (this style is also due to the influence of Art Nouveau). His time in Cairo exposed him to Islamic ornamentation, too!

• Village Architecture: He sketched izbas (traditional wooden houses) and ornate window frames (nalichniki) during his trips to document the folkloric richness of Slavic culture.

• Fairy Tales & Oral Tradition: Bilibin often drew from stories collected by Alexander Afanasyev, a sort of Grimm for Russian folklore. He also read and admired The Byliny (medieval epic ballads) and the works of Pushkin.

  

Media Recommendations that just GIVE Bilibin…

• Films: The Color of Pomegranates (1969)— an Armenian Soviet film with cryptic, stunning visuals in the spirit of Bilibin that celebrates the survival of Armenian culture in face of oppression and persecution.

• Literature: Russian Fairy Tales (Alexander Afanasyev), Fairy Tales (Alexander Pushkin), The Kalevala (Finland’s whimsical, archaic national epic… on a side note, I’m actually super interested in Finnish culture and folklore/mythology because it’s so unique— it’s not Scandinavian or Eastern Europe… it’s a world of it’s own! Let me know if you have any recommendations for Finnish media😉)

• Music: Arrowwood (music by Chelsea Robb; her albums Dark Fairytales and Eye of Ivy, Thorn and Moss are extremely underrated. Arrowwood remains one of my favorite artists for writing and daydreaming and feeling at “home” because it captures a sort of strange, mystic wave that underlies world and snakes through every human. If the forest had a soundtrack, it would be Arrowwood’s music 🌿), The Green Knight soundtrack (another underrated piece of media! Other than being such a mysterious movie that blends medieval folklore with Arthurian canon, The Green Knight has a bomb soundtrack no matter what mood you’re in— Middle English Christmas carol? There’s a song for that! The haunting calls of giants that gives you shivers up the spine? There’s a song for that!)

• Niche Research Topics:

  • Folk Architecture and Domestic Spirits in Slavic, Finnish, and Japanese Folklore: the sanctity of the house (rituals for cleansing it as well as the symbolic art and design of the home itself) and spirits like yokai and the domovoi.

  • Baba Yaga: Everything to do with her— where did she come from? Is she really malevolent? What is her relationship with paganism and Christianity?

• Modern Artist with Similar Style: Tin Can Forest— hands-down one of the most unique, surreal, and beautiful art projects out there! It’s made by Canadian artists Marek Colek and Pat Shewchuk and encompasses illustrations, short films, and comics (which I’ve been trying for so long to get my hands on). They blend elements of Slavic paganism with surrealism, topsy-turvy dialogue/poetry, and nature-like hallucinations… I highly recommend them and I sometimes use their art as a writing prompt!)

  

Arthur Rackham °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

Emerging from fin-de-siècle London as a brother to twelve sibling, Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) was known as the frail child of his family. He was taken to Australia at age seventeen to “restore his health” (a typical Victorian cure), but his illness was not necessary physical. Rackham worked through an era of immense change. He saw the Industrial Revolution, World War I, and the decline of fairytales in favor of more commercial publishing. When looking closely, one can see that much of his art is melancholic, as if mourning a richer time. His work fused Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau design to bring European folklore and literature alive. His muted watercolor (a palette that resembles the colors of English weather) and ink characters have coiling hair and wily limbs that seem leap around the pages of books like Alice in Wonderland, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Grimm’s Fairytales, Undine, Rip Van Winkle, and scenes from Wagner’s music (especially Der Ring des Nibelungen).

A peculiar thing about him (which I’m sure all of the artists on this list were aware of) is that understood myth as a mirror of the subconscious long before Jung and Campbell gave it vocabulary. His worlds are childlike, reverent and animistic. The faeires and forests were characters and settings of the psyche where children which children found familiar, found to be “home”. He was, as one critic claimed, “an archivist of the invisible.”

His Inspirations, His Metaphorical Muses…

• The Romantic Poets: Blake, Keats, Rossetti, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge…

• Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e): translating to “pictures of the floating world”, Ukiyo-e is a type of Japanese woodblock popularized around the 17th-19th centuries. It often depicts folktales, history beautiful women, kabuki actors, landscapes, and erotica.

Media Recommendations that just GIVE Rackham…

• Films: Penda’s Fen (1974): My favorite movie to ever exist. This classic of folk horror follows an eighteen-year-old child of a pastor named Stephen Franklin who is obsessed with the ideal man: patriotic, Christian, purely English, and heterosexual. But as he is ready to finish his final year at military school, a socialist writer arrives in his hometown of Pinvin, forcing him to confront England’s pagan past, his own Christian morals, and his sexuality. As reality blurs with fantasy, Stephen speaks with the ghost of musician Edward Elgar, sees angels and demons, wrestles with his desire for a boy at school, has strange dreams, wakes up to a demon in his bed, and is crowned by England’s last pagan king, Penda. My favorite scenes are his conversations with his father. Some of the most beautiful dialogue I have ever heard comes from Stephen realizing that is father is not the pastor he really seems. This movie is mysterious and filled with yearning for something beyond, something intangible, something mystical across the expanse of the universe. Every time I watch it, I learn new things that help me express my own longing for “home”. Ah, just drop everything and go watch it!)

• Literature: Christina Rossetti’s The Goblin Market, The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame), Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Songs of Innocence and Experience (William Blake), Undine (Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué), he Wood Beyond the World (William Morris), The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairytales, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell (both by Susanna Clarke and feature stunning illustrations by Charles Vess), fairytales of George MacDonald, W.B. Yeats, Grimm Brothers, and Hans Christian Anderson

• Music: the orchestra Invadable Harmony, Wagner’s compositions (especially Der Ring des Nibelungen), Golden Brown (The Strangers… I think that I play this song everyday 😅), Army Dreamers (Kate Bush— the album cover of Never for Ever sort of looks like Rackham’s style), The Herald (Comus), Scarborough Fair and El Condor Pasa (Simon & Garfunkel), Song of the Sea: The Soundtrack (💖), Vinter (Myrkur), the album My Head is An Animal (King & Lionheart is my childhood song 🥹)

• Niche Research Topics:

  • Weather in English Romantic Poetry: how rain, drizzle, hail, snow, clouds, the wind, etc. are described in Romantic prose.

  • The Christian-Pagan Synthesis in English Aesthetics: From Edward Elgar to the Green Man Motif: The reimagining, romanticization, and creative interpretation of English paganism throughout media (like The Wicker Man) and folkloric studies (like Lady Raglan’s interpretations of the Green Man)

  • The Androgenous Sprite: How faeries and spirits in European folklore tend to be gender fluid and sexually liminal.

• Modern Artist with Similar Style:

  • August Ro: An artist that evokes Nordic/Slavic folklore, Romantic longing, Dark Academia, and fairytale surrealism. She uses muted colors and conjures up such a cozy feeling that makes you wish for rain and a good book. Her work is so comforting and is the definition of a mystical vision of autumn! <3

Edmund Dulac ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Quite similar in style to Rackham, French-born Edmund Dulac (1882–1953) originally started his career as a lawyer… until he quickly realized he was bored with the profession and dedicated his life to art. His first commissions were to illustrate scenes from the novels of the Brontë sisters, but then went on to bring fairytales to life, as well as Shakespeare’s plays, a truly beautiful collection of illustrations for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and postage stamps for the United Kingdom.

But his big artistic breakthrough was his art for The One Thousand and One Nights, which would define his career as a blender of Persian and Mughal miniatures, Japanese print, and Symbolist imagery. His work often uses colder colors like blues and purples with a layer of mist or fog to add to its intrigue.

His Inspirations, His Metaphorical Muses…

• The Music of Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré: Dulac painted in sound, specifically the sounds of French impressionists. He was especially influenced by the elegant, melancholic rhythms of songs like Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and La Mer as well as Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye.

• Eastern Art: A deep love for Persian, Arab, Indian, and Byzantine art as well as Sufi and Buddhist ideas of physical detachment and divine acceptance.

Media Recommendations that just GIVE Dulac…

• Films: Song of the Sea (2014)— One of the most hauntingly beautiful cartoon ever created. It is part of Cartoon Saloon’s Irish trilogy which attempts to preserve and re-interpret Irish magical culture through animation. This cartoon has been with me since I was a child and the soundtrack has kept me daydreaming for hours. I cannot recommend this film enough.

• Literature: Oscar Wilde’s fairytales, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Masnavi by Rumi and the poetry of Hafez (both poets are core essentials in an Iranian household like mine!), The Waves (Virginia Woolf), The Celtic Twilight (W.B. Yeats), the fairytales of Charles Perrault, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (Charlotte and Emily Brontë), Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale

• Music: Coraline: The Soundtrack (Can you blame me? It puts you in such a whimsical mood!), EVERYTHING by Claude Debussy, Je te lasserai de mots (Patrick Watson), Witch’s Lullaby (Daemonia Nymphe), The Shaman and Walumama (from the soundtrack of Pachamama— another phenomenal animation), the album Lungs (only second to Florence + the Machine’s other album Dance Fever!), Caves (CLANN), The Leaves of Yggdrasil (Myrkur), When I Can’t Sleep (Pascal Pinon), I of the Storm and Black Water (Of Monsters and Men)

• Niche Research Topics:

  • Persian and Mughal Miniatures: How they developed, how they influenced artists in the 19th-20th centuries, and how they influence the West’s perception of the East.

  • The Ethics of Orientalism: Quite a dense topic! To what extent is Orientalism as an artistic style appropriate without stereotyping a culture? Is it manipulation or romanticism or can it be both depending on the context?

• Modern Artist with Similar Style:

  • Ulla Thynell: A Finnish-born artist that seems like a mix of Dulac’s palette and Tove Jansson’s playfulness. She uses bright watercolor in soft ways to form atmospheric, emotional scenes of nature (primarily the woods) and of folklore. Thynell worlds are childlike, but bold in their storytelling. She has an incredibly unique style.

John Bauer ＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

John Bauer (1882-1918) is my favorite of the five on this list for his distinct, incredibly strange, hypnotic, but childlike and nostalgic illustrations. I wish that I could put all of his work in this article, alas, Substack has already notified me that this article has exceeded the email limit.

Bauer was born and raised in Jönköping, Sweden, amid the forests and lakes surrounding Lake Vättern where he developed an early reverence for the mysteries of nature. He moved to Stockholm at age 16 to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. Using muted/monochrome watercolors, he traveled throughout Lapland, Germany, and Italy. During his time studying art, one of his teachers, Gustaf Cederström, commented this on his work:

His art is what I would call great art, in his almost miniaturized works he gives an impression of something much more powerful than many monumental artists can accomplice on acres of canvas. It is not size that matters but content.

Bauer’s main mission was to preserve, illustrate, and spark new artistic life into Nordic and Sámi folklore and mythology. And he succeeded in this mission as he has become a symbol of the visual art of Northern Europe, one that encapsulates the quiet, wonderous, and mysteriously attractive beliefs of the region.

Bauer tragically drowned in a shipwreck with his son and wife when he was 36. The shipwreck was in Lake Vättern, the same lake he grew up near.

His Inspirations, His Metaphorical Muses…

• Nordic Folklore & Mythology: Bauer was heavily influenced by Nordic and Sámi stories, especially those collected in the series Bland Tomtar och Troll (“Among Gnomes and Trolls”), which he illustrated for over a decade. He took inspiration from the Eddas, sagas, and the Finnish Kalevala.

• Nordic Romanticism & Symbolism: As a student at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, Bauer exposes to Romantic and Symbolist artists like Caspar David Friedrich (for the metaphysical melancholy of landscape), Arnold Böcklin (for mythic solitude and dream atmosphere), Albert Edelfelt and Bruno Liljefors (for realism fused with poetic light), Gustaf Fjæstad and Carl Larsson (Swedish contemporaries who sacralized domestic and natural life).

Media Recommendations that just GIVE Bauer…

• Films: Hilda (Hands down my favorite cartoon and comfort show! It takes inspiration from Irish, English, and Scandinavian design, art, mythology, and niche folklore. It’s childlike, full of wonder, and nostalgic for a mythic, magical, natural era that has almost disappeared from the world)

• Literature: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (My favorite book on the entire planet… there truly is part of the universe stored up in those 170 pages. There has never been a book that has ever validated my yearning and memories for “home” as much as this book does. It knows me so intimately that it’s almost frightening. I don’t even know how to articulate the wonder and love that washes over me when I read this book. It’s like if a star was your friend— that’s how I can describe it. If text was manifestation of the galaxy and the force that permeates it, like a herald from far away from the universe has come to tell you that you are not alone in your memory, that you must be called back “home”.), The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairytales, fairytales of George MacDonald, W.B. Yeats, Grimm Brothers, and Hans Christian Anderson, everything and anything by J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and William Blake (he feels like my spiritual grandpa <3)

• Music: Vespertine (hands-down most ethereal Björk album— fight me on this), Herr Mannelig (an old Swedish ballad about a mountain troll who proposes to a young human man; thought to be an allegory for a pagan woman who is rejected by a Christian man), the compositions of Hildegard von Bingen (especially Spiritus Sanctus Vivificans), All My Demons Greeting Me As a Friend (A darkly childlike album including songs that personify wisdom, narrate a murder and a conversation with a boy born from nature, the feeling of running with wolves and swimming among black water lilies, and, of course, Runaway— one of the most beautiful songs that captures the universal, cosmic yearning for “home”, beyond the stars, transcending the world, running back to your own species across the galaxy and to the navel of the Universe… AURORA’s music knows the most intimate places of my heart 💖)

• Niche Research Topics:

  • Survival of Paganism in Nordic Folktales: characters, themes, or objects in Nordic fairy and folktales that preserve pre-Christian beliefs.

  • The Forest as a Liminal/Ecstatic Space, as the Psyche: A concept that has been on my mind a lot recently. In mythology, religion, and folklore, the forest has always been a place of the strange and unknown which sometimes harbors danger. It reminds me of a quote by Joseph Campbell: “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” Think about it— there are characters who fear the woods (often getting lost in them or dying somehow in them) and those who consider it home.

• Modern Artist with Similar Style:

  • Alexandra Dvornikova: An artist that incited that first spark of “home” that I have ever felt in visual art. Dvornikova is a Russian artist who manifests the essence of the forest. Using Jungian surrealism, dreams, and Slavic folklore/fairytale psychology, she creates strange, nostalgic pieces of art that seem oddly familiar, almost archetypal. Her work has a very special place in my heart and I am extremely grateful that I found her work at a young age🥹

  • Lilla Bolecz: Another artist that is incredibly dear to me. Bolecz is like Dvornikova’s witchy sister that blends folk traditions, the occult and surrealism, and eco-poetics. Her work is sort of similar to Leonora Carrington’s and, like Dvornikova’s, is heavily archetypal, like a familiar dream. Her work embodies the simultaneous wonder and horror of realizing that we have walked so far away from “home” for an illusion.

This article is already way to long, so I’ll leave you with a brief conclusion: I hope that these works of art are comforting for your soul, but are discomforting in a sense that holds up a mirror to our productive, monolithic, linear, rational, skeptical society that denies the mystical truth of fairytales. I hope that you have found familiarity in the ink and watercolor and I hope that many memories of “home” return to you.

In the meantime, dear Reader, I wish you a beautiful day and thank you for reading my (very rambe-ly) article.

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava 🪐

So, I did and I couldn’t put the book down, even as we were running to catch our train and I almost slipped off of the platform! I couldn’t help it— Piranesi was truly a masterpiece and one that left me with that feeling of magic and nostalgia for memories I have never experienced. When I finished the book, I kept flipping through the pages and realized how mysterious the story was even though everything was revealed at the end. Thus I decided to write this article expanding on the many references in this book which honestly feels like walking through a half-conscious dream or vision or, as one of the characters Sylvia D’Agostino (a favorite of mine) portrayed the House, a castle from another dimension.

So, without further adieu, welcome to my analysis of the references and subconscious meanings of Piranesi! ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

‼️WARNING‼️MILD SPOILERS AHEAD!

A Different Reading of Piranesi

As I was reading the book, I was confronted with beautiful passages that had a very deep spiritual undertone. The idea of a sprawling labyrinthine House reminds me of representations of the unconscious— twisting corridors, infinite staircases, maze-like structures easy to get lost in. The ocean has also been a common mythic representation of the unconscious, too. Piranesi’s desire to map out and discover his House reminds me of Borges’ verse in Another Poem of the Gifts, “For Reason, that will never give up its dream of a map of the labyrinth”, referring to the labyrinth of the human mind that is the Universe, that is Existence.

Piranesi’s childlike state with it’s gratitude, kindness, and reverence for life and the unseen is the human condition free of the confines of the ego. As he chooses to go beyond his limited perception of himself as Matthew Rose Sorenson, he sees what he doesn’t want to be anymore— his past self that was blocked from his mind and buried under his memories. The introduction of the Other, who represents those that want to keep seekers from their destination, only reinforces Piranesi’s view of reality as he attempts to look for the 16th person, the Prophet, Raphael. He looks for a savior who is able to go in and out of the House that has good intentions for him, unlike the Other, for whom the House is terrifying and inherently malicious. As Milton put it, “The mind is its own place and, in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”

However, Piranesi does something special— he loves his House. He loves his sense of wonder. He doesn’t like this new reality and yet he does. He is Piranesi and Matthew and yet he is neither. He is the liminal space. He just exists, without name or label, and at the end of the story, goes back frequently to visit the House— a sort of original source or place— to remind himself of the beauty that imbues the whole of reality, just as one only needs to look within oneself to recognize the numinous wonder of the Universe. He is like the Self, which cognizes It’s infinite and eternal place in the vastness of Existence.

Artistic & Literary Influences

In many of her interviews, let alone the references in the actual novel, Clarke has mentioned some of her literary and artistic influences on Piranesi, some of which I thought I would list and briefly describe here:

• Giovanni Battista Piranesi: An 18th-century Italian engraver celebrated for his eerie architectural fantasies, especially the Imaginary Prisons series which portray haunting, maze-like stone landscapes filled with infinite stairs and empty chambers. The atmosphere of the House is inspired from his Imaginary Prisons collections. Perhaps this is why the main character is named after him, Piranesi the character knows the House the best just as Giovanni Battista Piranesi knew the meaning of his drawings the best.

• Jorge Luis Borges: Surrealist, spiritual Argentinean writer (one of my favorites!!), Borges blends myth, philosophy, and symbolist traditions to create some of the most mystical pieces of art one can ever experience. Clarke mentioned being drawn to his work, even taking classes to analyze his books, leading her to, decades ago, write the bones of a story based on his work, specifically his short story, The House of Asterion. A book that would later become Piranesi.

• C. S. Lewis & The Magician’s Nephew: Multiple nods are made to Lewis’ work including a statue reminiscent of the satyr from Narnia and even uses the name “Ketterley” in Piranesi as a nod to the magician Andrew Ketterley in The Magician’s Nephew. Clarke as credited him as a source of literary comfort multiple times. Stick around and I’ll post a podcast episode about how Lewis and Tolkien perceived myth and fairytales!

I would highly recommend this video of Susanna Clarke being interviewed by Madeline Miller— both astonishing writers I am grateful to share a timeline with— if you’re interested in Clarke herself describing the inspirations behind writing Piranesi.

Architecture

While taking in Clarke’s wonderous descriptions of the House, a few architectural styles came to my mind— Gothic, Classical, and Rococo. The first two seem plausible for the House given the references to classical mythology, pillars, and the illustrations of Giovanni Battista Piranesi himself… but French Rococo? I’m not sure why, but while I was imagining the House, I saw some of the lighter elements belonging to the Rococo style. In order to get a better sense of the House’s interior, I wanted to research a bit about each architectural style:

• Gothic: Originating in 12th-century France, Gothic architecture marked a radical departure from earlier styles with its ribbed vaults, long stained glass windows, and flying buttresses, buildings like Notre-Dame and Cologne Cathedral reach impressive heights while maintaining a delicate-looking and luminous interior. There is something mystical and otherworldly about the details of Gothic architecture, especially the religious symbols and imagery which makes one wonder: what kind of belief does one have to create such an intricate piece of art for Existence?

• Classical: Rooted in Ancient Greece and Rome, Classical architecture emphasizes symmetry, proportion, and the use of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. Roman writers, like Vitruvius, codified principles that would give rise to Neoclassical revivals across Europe and later America, with examples like the Parthenon and Pantheon. This style is all logic, harmony, and balance that reminds the viewer of a different, archaic time, the wisps of which are caught in stone and marble.

• French Rococo: Slowly becoming a new obsession of mine, this architectural style emerged in 18th century France where it embraced curved forms and delicate ornamentation in a playful, soft, almost sensual aesthetic. It’s beautiful and haunting, the way the interiors are infused with with light pastel colors, twisted gilding, and natural motifs. This style prioritized personal, intimate spaces like salons, boudoirs, ballrooms.

Wonders of Astronomy, the Stars, and Constellations

Throughout the novel, there are many delightful passages filled with celestial imagery and Piranesi himself even names the constellations in one scene. To honor his love for astronomy, I have picked out three constellations (plus their folkloric stories!):

• The Pleiades: A prominent star cluster in the constellation Taurus that is often represented by a myth about seven sisters and one of them going missing (this tale can be found all over the world with the most famous instance in Greek mythology, but also features from Aboriginal Australian legends to pre-colonial Filipino traditions). It is thought to be one of the oldest constellations, the myth itself is estimated to be 100,000 years old (‼️).

• Coma Berenices: a small constellation in the northern sky with a sweet story. Named after Queen Berenice II of Egypt who, in 243 BC, vowed to sacrifice her enchanting long hair to the goddess Aphrodite if her husband, King Ptolemy III, returned safely from war. Upon his return, she let her hair wisp away among the stars as a tribute.

• Volans: a constellation in the southern sky that represents a flying fish gliding through the celestial ocean of the stars. It was presented in the late 16th century by Dutch navigators and was first depicted on a celestial globe in 1598. How whimsical is that! A constellation fish 💙 I love the things humanity decide to put into the sky and look up at every night.

  

Colors of Blue, Purple, and Gold

Other than the cover which includes all three colors, blue, purple, and gold have been mentioned (in several shades) in Piranesi, so I thought it would be interesting to analyze the meaning of each not just in the book, but in folklore, mythology, and mysticism.

• Blue: How amazing that this is the rarest color in nature and yet Existence made the two largest things the eye can see, the ocean and the sky, blue! The color has held profound numinous significance, often representing the divine and otherworldly. In Hinduism, deities like Vishnu and Krishna are depicted with blue skin to symbolize their connection to the celestial while in ancient Egypt, gods like Osiris and Amun have blue skin, associating them with the afterlife. The blue chakra (Throat Chakra or Vishuddha, meaning “purification”), linked to element of ether, governs communication, expression, and lies versus truth.

• Purple: Historically, purple has been the color of royalty and luxury, as well as it’s mystical association with wine-giving, dying-and-rising figures in mythology like Jesus and the Greek god Dionysus. The purple chakra (Crown Chakra or Sahasrara, meaning “thousand” or “thousand-petaled” in Sanskrit) is located at the top of the head and represents higher consciousness and foresight.

• Gold: Gold has often been associated with the celestial in mythology— the apples of Hesperides in Greek religion, the apples of Idunn in Norse myth, the cup of the Holy Grail. Gold is also associated with the highest chakra, up at the top of the head, and with greater cognition of the cosmos.

Favorite Quotes: Just a selection of some of my favorite snippets of beautiful prose from the book and my analysis of them!

• “The Sixteen Person: And You. Who are You? Who is it that I am writing for? Are You a traveler who has cheated Tides and crossed Broken Floors and Derelict Stairs to reach these Halls? Or are You perhaps someone who inhabits my own Halls long after I am dead?” (pg. 12)— another instance of Piranesi looking for the Sixteenth Person, which later ends up slotting into the inner “Savior” archetype that reveals reality to the main character. The Sixteenth Person, or Raphael, triggers his memories as the inner Savior triggers the Self’s memories of it’s whole reality. By addressing the Sixteenth Person, Piranesi indirectly reveals to the House his desire to recognize his own Self. The “death” the Sixteenth Person will come after is the death of Piranesi’s perception of reality and a merging between the characters of Piranesi and Matthew Rose Sorensen that exist within the same being. I would argue that Piranesi is the higher self while Matthew is the lower.

• “It is as though God had originally built the House intending to people it with Giants before inexplicably changing His mind.” (pg. 36)— this passage reminds me a bit of myths and biblical stories of beings populating the world before humans. It seems like another one of those mysterious yet beautiful archaic motifs that ring across the universal/collective subconscious of fiction.

• “Nor do I have any desire to live forever. The House ordains a certain span for birds and another for men. With this I am content.” (pg. 47)

• “I almost forgot to breathe. For a moment I had an inkling of what it might be like if instead of two people in the World there were thousands.” (pg. 59)

• “I saw the Rose, the Good Mother, and the Lamp-post. Towards morning these were followed by the Shoemaker and the Iron Snake. (These were some of the names I had given the Constellations).” (pg. 64)

• “I listened to the Songs that the Moon and Stars were singing and I sang with them. The World feels Complete and Whole, and I, its Child, fit into it seamlessly.” (pg. 71) Piranesi sees no separation or illusion between himself and the rest of Existence.

• “Do you understand the House? I ask Myself.

  Yes, I answer Myself.

  And if the House has made you forget, then it has done so for a good reason.

  But I do not understand the reason.

  It does not matter that you do not understand the reason. You are the Beloved Child of the House. Be comforted.

  And I am comforted.” (pg. 112)— This passage reminds me of the Islamic concept of tawakkul— pure surrender and trust in God. The word “Islam” literally means submission, a submission to the Love of the Universe, to the Song of Existence, to the Self. Piranesi trusted and the House gave him everything he needed.

• “The woman and the hierophant speak their own language which has nothing to do with ours. The true language of Moon/Wood is simple, stark imagery: moon, darkness, water, trees.” (pg. 115)

• “Laurence Arne-Sayles began with the idea that the Ancients had a different way of relating to the world, that they experienced it as something that interacted with them. When they observed the world, the world observed them back. If, for example they travelled in a boat on a river, then the river was in some way aware of carrying them on its back and had in fact agreed to it. When they looked up to the stars, the constellations were not simply patterns enabling them to organize what they saw, they were vehicles of meanings, a never-ending flow of information. The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man… One sentence puzzles me: The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man. I do not understand why this sentence is in the past tense, the World speaks to me everyday.” (pg. 148, 154)— The world is alive. The Human is never alone. Piranesi is in touch, without humans illusions, to see the universe in, perhaps, a truer reality.

• “He claimed that he personally was able to access the labyrinth-world simply by making an adjustment to his frame of mind, by returning to a child-like state of wonder, a pre-rational consciousness.” (pg. 178) Very similar to dying to oneself and being reborn as one’s deepest identity as we existed as children and whatever we were before we were born and whatever we will be after death. The Self is able access everything from this eternal state.

• “And did you ever see it? The labyrinth?” (pg. 178) I just love this as a standalone line— the labyrinth that is the universe, that is existence, that is the unconscious. Have you seen it?

• “I saw it clearly now. It is 16 that is my friend and not the Other. Tears sprang to my eyes at the thought. My only friend and I had hidden from her!

  ‘I am here! I am here!’ I shouted to the Empty Air. ‘Come back! I will hide no longer!’” (pg. 192) Reminds me a bit of an excerpt from Carl Jung’s The Red Book: “My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you — are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude.”

• “Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.” (pg. 228) I remember underlining this passage and being particularly struck by it. As I grow older, I feel that sometimes the things I keep sacred cannot be shared with everyone or else I risk letting someone foreign to my own personal universe and mythology impose their own baggage and weight onto something that they might not comprehend or understand even if they don’t know they are consciously doing it. It was a bittersweet epiphany for me, but seeing this written in a book comforts me in a way my own mind cannot— that another person has felt this and perhaps the other people who have also read this book.

• “People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realized I knew him. He is depicted on the Northern wall of the forty-eight western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd. A woman passed me with two children. One of the children had a wooden recorder in his hands. I knew them too. They are depicted in the twenty-seventh southern hall: a statue of two children laughing, one of them holding a flute.” (pg. 245). I love that line— “I knew them too.”

Sometimes when I analyze fiction, I almost feel that I am ruining it. The story can exist on it’s own and it does. The meaning, interpretation, and message of the story usually comes with an overwhelming feeling that doesn’t seem translatable into words. More than anything, stories like Piranesi exist in infinite ways, just like the infinite corridors of the House, and although the words in my article are a poor imitation of the feelings and memories and the ocean and the entire universe that I felt in this book, I hope you, dear Reader, can understand.

Thank you so much for reading my little ramble of the week,

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava 💫

When we think of the Vikings, we often think of bloodshed, raids, and axes. Lots of axes. We think of them as stealing hordes of gold and pillaging Christian Europe. We think of Norse mythology with Thor, Asgard, and the halls of Valhalla. But have you ever thought of Vikings peacefully interacting with Muslims and wearing Islamic merch? No, seriously— this is the surprise researchers in Sweden felt when they found Islamic references on the burial clothing of Vikings.

Initially kept in storage for more than 100 years and assumed to be normal examples of Viking Age funeral attire, the more rapid discovery of contact between Vikings and Muslims during the Middle Ages demands new investigations. These fragments caught the attention of textile archaeologist Annika Larsson of Uppsala University who became interested in these fragments after discovering that the material had come from Persia and China. Larsson claimed that she could not make sense of the geometric designs as she had not seen them before in Scandinavia, but, as she puts it: “then I remembered where I had seen similar designs —in Spain, on Moorish textiles.”

After some research, Larsson realized that these were not Viking patterns, but rather the Arabic Kufic script (a script developed in the Iraqi town of Kufah in the 7th Century; one of the first scripts used to transcribe the Quran). With the help of an Iranian colleague, she identified two reoccurring words: “Ali”, the successor of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the Shia tradition and “Allah”, or ‘God’ in Arabic.

There is some speculation that the wearers of these garments were Muslims from the Middle East that were buried in Scandinavia, but it is more likely that they were Scandinavians. Larsson elaborates on this: “We know from other Viking tomb excavations that DNA analysis has shown some of the people buried in them originated from places like Persia, where Islam was very dominant. However, it is more likely these findings show that Viking age burial customs were influenced by Islamic ideas such as eternal life in paradise after death.”

Although there is still debate over the interpretation of the clothing, after this discovery, Larsson claims that she is convinced she will find more evidence of the integration of Islamic culture into Viking society.

But this isn’t the only Islamic object found amongst the Vikings. A ring found inside a 9th-century woman’s grave in Birka, Sweden was reanalyzed in 2015 to find a Kufic inscription saying “for Allah”. Islamic craftsmanship influenced Viking ornamentation and metallurgy. Islamic coins have been found across many countries in the Northern Hemisphere, too. So what can this tell us about Viking and Muslim relations in the Middle Ages?

During the Middle Ages, Vikings, especially the Varangians (primarily from Sweden) and Rus’ (a subgroup of the Varangians who settled in Eastern Europe), traveled along the Volga and Dnieper Rivers, which led to trade routes that connected them with Islamic empires such as the Abbasid Caliphate. It is clear that there was a strong economic relationship between the two as numerous Islamic silver dirhams (unit of currency used across the Muslim world) have been found in Scandinavia. Although, what I find most interesting are Muslim accounts of the Vikings. And there are a lot of them (Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100–1165), Ibn Khordadbeh (820–910), Al-Tartushi (1059–1127), Al-Mas’udi (896–956), Al-Muqaddasi (940–991), Ibn Rustah, Miskawayh (932–1030), Ibn Hawqal, Ahmad al-Ya’qubi (897–898), Ibn Qutiya, Yaqut al-Rumi (1179–1229), Yahya Ibn Hakam al-Bakri (772–866), Al-Maqqari (1578–1632), Ibn al-Athir (1160–1233), etc.), suggesting a mutual curiosity and respect for one another.

Often referred to as Saqalibah (a general term used for the peoples of Northern and Eastern Europe), much of what we know about the Vikings come from the accounts of Muslim travelers. The most famous and vivid account comes from Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century traveler and diplomat of the Abbasid Caliphate, who met the Rus’ along the Volga River. While he criticized their hygiene (especially disgusted by the fact that they did not clean themselves after eating, going to the bathroom, or engaging in intercourse), he also expressed admiration by describing them as “perfect physical specimens” that were “tall as date palms”.

The 10th-century Persian geographer Ibn Rustah offered another particularly flattering view of the Vikings:

“They keep their clothes clean and the men adorn themselves with armbands of gold… They are generous to each other, honor their guests and treat well those who seek refuge with them, and all who come to visit them. They do not allow anyone to annoy or harm these. And whenever anyone dares to treat them unfairly, they help and defend them.”

Unlike many European Christian accounts, which often portray the Vikings as savage, barbaric, and backwards, Muslim scholars offered a more humanistic insight into the nature of Viking culture and society.

While Vikings were polytheistic and later converted to Christianity, there is evidence that suggests a smaller number of Vikings converted to Islam, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. For example, a community of settled Vikings in southeast Seville, converted to Islam and would later be famous for supplying cheese to other Spanish towns. Although this is beyond the time period of the Middle Ages, I wanted to mention what Amin Razi, a 16th-century Muslim geographer who recorded cultural habits of Vikings, said:

“They [the Vikings] highly valued pork. Even those who had converted to Islam aspired to it and were very fond of pork.”

I get it. As a Muslim myself, pork seems irresistible.

Aftermath ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆⋆✴︎˚｡⋆⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

In August 2024, far-right extremists held a protest in Stockholm demanding the deportation of Muslims and a ban on Islam as a whole in Sweden. Many Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark and Norway, have since attempted to ban Islamic attire in schools, universities, and nurseries. In 2022, far-right activist Rasmus Paludan was publicly protected for burning a Quran and making offensive remarks about Muslims in Malmö, Sweden. Stram Kurs (Danish far-right, nationalist political party) under Paludan’s leadership, has advocated for banning Islam and deporting Muslims from Denmark. After getting it’s required 20,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, the party gained 1.8% of the vote in the 2019 Danish general election but did not secure any seats in parliament.

I find it hilarious that Islamophobes and Muslim extremists have the same view of Islam while the rest of the 1.86 billion (93%) Muslims of the world continue to practice Islam in it’s peaceful reality. In fact (according to information from the Gallup World Poll in the book Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think), only 7% of Muslims worldwide have views that could be considered “politically radical”.

Despite the friendship and respect that the ancestors of Scandinavians and Muslims had for each other, it seems that some have never learned the kindness that humanity has at it’s core. We consider our ancestors to be backwards and stupid, but if we look closer, they had more peace and love for one another than we do now in our modern, “advanced” world. People have always been people— complex, empathetic, easily hurt and slow to heal— but every person has been given a life on this planet to embrace existence, thus every person is worthy of love. Why take away that human right to be loved and respected?

Thank you for reading my little ramble of the week ❤️

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava ⚔️✨

Sources:

1. “Why Did Vikings Have “Allah” Embroidered into Funeral Clothes?” BBC News, 12 Oct. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41567391.

2. AhmedSalim. “5 Things You Didn’t Know about Vikings and Muslim Civilisation.” 1001 Inventions, 1 Oct. 2017, www.1001inventions.com/vikings/.

3. “August 27, 2024 - Bridge Initiative.” Bridge Initiative, 2024, bridge.georgetown.edu/today_islamophobia/august-27-2024/? Accessed 10 June 2025.

4. Esposito, J. L., & Mogahed, D. (2007). Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. Gallup Press.
   ISBN: 9781595620170

5. “Denmark: Parliament Election Results 2019.” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/1013598/parliament-election-results-in-denmark/.

6. “Danish Far-Right Party Calling for Muslim Deportation to Stand in Election.” The Guardian, 5 May 2019, www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/05/danish-far-right-party-stram-kurs-calling-for-muslim-deportation-to-stand-in-election.

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Parnia, twisting around the cosmos, horizontal universe, horizontal Milky Way, returns to the Light

She can sit with Molavi now, with Shakespeare and Dante maybe. I hope Hafez will gather her someday and scatter her poems.

She is with Nika and Mahsa, Hind and Hadis, sitting up next to the Rainbow God, in a state of continuous prayer.

Maybe my Baba will see her one day after he is dead,

walking by a stream of stars and recognize a Poet.

My Baba, who is poetry, but cannot see it.

She wrote one poem,

about a falling star

and death.

Maybe she saw the universe then.

I wish I didn’t have a news headline to remember them by.

I wish Nika sang more so I could imagine what she could have been like in a free country.

I wish Persian didn’t become the language of tragedy.

I wish Alef, La, Mim didn’t become the sign of a suffering people. Persian is the language of God and when God speaks, something dies.

I wish I could stop calling it God even though she was sent by God, the Rainbow God, the Dancing God, the Laughing God (he was born on this land, you know)

You have taken her away, your rubble covers her.

You’ll call her a martyr. Or maybe you won’t. She was a Poet and your God doesn’t cater to poets in those halls of names and labels and numbers.

I saw a sketch once of an Iranian woman who was missing her breasts and pelvis. She said, “Take them and leave me.”

Does Hazrate Mohammad ever look down at the world, does Moses, does Jesus, does the Buddha, do they ever look down and wonder if they should have brought religion in the first place?

When we were younger, we saw where the prophets actually walked, and because of it, we used to call the Sea of Galilee a desert.

Now I listen to the call to prayer, someone calling me back to myself, and imagine these places I could enter.

I mean, people coming back to pray in the ruins of a mosque is the only architecture I’ve ever really understood.

My prophets are there, among the rubble. You have killed them. You have killed in their names.

Your colonialism doesn’t scare me. They will keep throwing rocks at you and We will keep writing poems against you.

My friend says the bombing is good, it’ll filter out my country.

Amelia, when have you ever known death to cleanse a people? When has history ever not been in your favor? Your father thinks my prophet is a pedophile, your mother thinks our men beat their wives.

While you’re wearing the names of God, do you ever wonder about the little gods living in the apartments of Tehran, in the streets of Rafah? Do you realize you’re wearing their names and spitting on them? There’s a graveyard on your neck. You told me once that you’re some different kind of white, yeah, living in Malibu, not knowing the definition of the word “apartheid”.

Run, Parnia, run away! Run like Nika away from the soldiers, away from their lust for her virginity, run like Abbas coming to bring hunted Muslims water, run like the shot-up children who missed a curfew placed by colonizers, run like Mahsa to keep her hair out, run like the lion and sun that don’t exist on our flag anymore, run like the children across minefields tricked into wearing the Keys of Heaven, run like the immigrant in search of their country.

I want to go back, back to the time Persepolis still stood, I would look at Our King, and I would say, in the words of Euripides, himself a foreigner who knew us too well, “Oh, Cyrus. Your subjects, the Persians, are a poor people with a proud spirit.”

I wish I could tell you to keep throwing rocks.

I wish I could.

But your arms are being shot off.

I’ll try throwing rocks for you.

I promise.

One day, you can tell them all that you’re the second coming. You’re the Messiah that rose up from the rocks.

Parnia, I see you in the night sky.

The star chart has one more white dot.

Parnia, up there in your domain,

with the Poets,

please write me a Poem and tell me about the Rainbow God.

Perhaps it might go like this, like the prayer that began the universe:

Allah, could you start again with the world?

Start singing, this time, like she did before she closed her eyes.

But start with our language this time.

Start with Alef, La, Mim.

So that we can be the people of birth, not tragedy.

Thank you for reading and letting me into your heart,

Keep telling and collecting stories…

Ava 💫

So, who is Comus and why has he made his mark on media even though we forgot him?

The Myth ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾𖤓 ⋆⁺₊⋆

In mythology, Comus is a minor Greek god associated with festivity, ecstasy, and nocturnal abandon. He is, in the postclassical tradition, the son of Dionysus (the god of wine, theatre, and spiritual ecstasy) and Circe (a powerful enchantress most famous for turning Odysseus’ men into pigs). He was often portrayed as a drunken reveler with grapevine wreaths around his head, winged young man, or satyrisko (a child satyr) that was involved in Dionysiac processions. He frequently appears alongside other personifications of festivity in Greek mythology, namely Gelos (Laughter) and Euphrosyne (Mirth).

A vivid account of Comus’ revels are found in the writings of Greek sophist Philostratus the Elder, specifically in the following passage from his book Imagines:

Dionysus sails to the revels of [the island of] Andros and, his ship now moored in the harbor, he leads a mixed throng of Satyrs and Bacchantes and all the Silens. He leads Gelos (Laughter) and Comus, two spirits most gay and most fond of the drinking-bout, that with the greatest delight he may reap the river's harvest.

Here, Comus is not a solitary figure like Dionysus, but serves as an integral part of joyful chaos by bridging mortal and divine pleasure with wine and performance.

Although he was not extensively written about in ancient sources, he becomes more prominent in Renaissance traditions. It was the aspect of Comus that brought enchantment and intoxication which caught the attention of John Milton and eventually led him to write his play Comus (1634).

The Play ✧˖ °🎭✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚

John Milton’s Comus (1634) is often read as a celebration of virtue. In the play, the mischievous Comus attempts to tempt a woman lost in the woods (simply called “the Lady”) into drinking from his magical cup which represents succumbing to man’s most primal desires. The Lady and Comus engage in debate over whether one should elevate these desires or submit to them. The Lady, who takes the former, succeeds in resisting Comus’ temptations. In the end, the Lady’s two brothers come rescue her with the help of a nymph called Sabrina (whose appearance in the play is really quite random if you ask me). Yet when viewed through the lens of Comus’ arguments, the play reveals a much more complex and morally ambiguous world. Comus exists in the space between clarity and confusion, reason and ecstasy, civilization and wilderness. Just like his parents, he casts illusions and enchantments upon the reader. When he is first introduced dancing merrily with his horde of revelers, the line between self-control and self-loss is blurred, especially when Comus says to his fellow dancers, “Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, in a light fantastick round!”

Comus makes three basics arguments against the Lady’s philosophy:

1. It’s Nature’s law to submit to longing (which could be read as sexual pleasure, but we’ll get to that later): Why should you be so cruel to yourself, / And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent / For gentle usage and soft delicacy?

2. Abandon is enlightenment: Thou hast nor ear, nor soul to apprehend / The sublime notion and high mystery / That must be utter’d to unfold the sage / And serious doctrine of virginity.

3. Love is a divine gift: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, / Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.

The Lady claims that Comus’ philosophy is hedonistic and too indulgent, thus she dismisses his arguments and attempts to undermine his side of the debate. As the play goes on, Comus and the woods begin to seem more dangerous and pose as a greater threat to virtue than anything else.

But Comus doesn’t initially come off as a silver-tongued trickster. In fact, when he is first presented, it seems to be in quite a positive light (well, if you exclude what Milton has to say about his parentage). The woods seem to carry more malice than Comus himself does at the beginning (“But their way lies through the perplex’t paths of this drear Wood / The nodding horror of whose shady brows threats the forlorn and wand’ring Passinger”) implying that, perhaps, although Comus is a manifestation of the chaos of the primal, nothing can represent or personify the actual source of that abandon— the woods. The woods essentially become a setting that forces submission to man’s true nature.

The Lady, who contrasts the woods and all it’s revelry with her chastity, Stoic calm, and unfamiliarity with the forest, carries a strong conviction and remains unwavering in her position. I mean, her name is literally “the Lady”— it adheres to the social structures society has created while also carrying superiority, all things that seem to not exist in the forest. However, her virtue, though idealized, is ultimately passive. She can’t save herself and needs the help of supernatural nymphs, a spirit, and her brothers. So, is human virtue a truly powerful resistance if it requires divine backup?

More troubling still is that Comus is never captured, never punished. He escapes back into the woods with his questions remaining unanswered. The resolution to the argument, in a very real sense, is avoided even though the Lady’s triumph is celebrated.

What’s even more interesting is if you read the woods as a symbol for the unconscious mind and Comus as a being that knows the unconscious like the back of his hand. In this case, does he know better than your conscious, rational mind? Maybe Comus is seen as a malevolent temptation because that desire to break through the confines of the ego is repressed so intensely in society in order to keep it functioning. Staying in this ego, feeding it, is like powering up the machine and to annihilate it and surrender to yourself is to put a cog in it. Here, Comus represents the desire to escape the diseased structures of the rational world: hierarchy, repression, and ego. So although Comus’ temptations seem sexual, they’re not. They’re metaphysical.

In this light, the Lady’s rejection of Comus’ magic cup seems pretty tragic. She had the chance to experience liberation and transformation, but she chose to leave the woods and find a solid path back to civilization. The play doesn’t end with clarity, but with an almost uncanny sense that something still lurks unresolved in the woods. Something that still waits for submission.

But to submit does not always mean to lose control. Yes, perhaps, rationally, but not a loss of control over your own existence. There is this concept in Islam called tawakkul, which in Arabic, means “reliance” or “trust”, but in the context of Islam, is more of a submission to the universe, that you put your full trust in existence— a dissolving of yourself into space and knowing that everything will be okay (sort of like the song All is Full of Love by Björk: “You’ll be given love / You’ll be taken care of /You just have to trust it”). Comus’ argument to surrender yourself reminds me of this.

Do I believe that Milton intended this interpretation? Probably not. You could also read the Lady’s resistance to Comus as the Self resisting earthly pleasures and transcesending the physical. But I think that a story can exist without the author or their intent, because in the end, the only thing it belongs to is Existence.

The Band ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ.

Who knew that Comus, the god, and the play, influenced a British folk band from the 70s? Formed in London by art students Glenn Goring and Roger Wootton, the band initially only played at folk clubs in Kent, but gained recognition by performing at David Bowie’s Arts Lab in Beckham. The band decided to be named Comus after both the Greek god and the masque by John Milton. Their music took inspiration from both the mythology and literature of the figure by handling themes of ecstasy, dark eroticism, and pagan mysticism.

I must specify that Comus channeled pagan mysticism not in a New Age or neopagan sense, but through a dark, primal, and often disturbing lens by drawing from the unsettling aspects of classical mythology and English folklore. Their first album “First Utterance” (1971) explores moral ambiguity and dark temptation, both of which are themes central to Milton’s “Comus” and the mythic character as a symbol of sensuality, intoxication, and chaos. The band is known for it’s dark and disturbing themes, such as rape, necrophilia, and shock therapy which sometimes leave the listener feeling quite nauseated.

If I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t really like their songs. I also don’t like their depiction of Comus as a raping god, and I quote, “hymen hunter” that steals “virgins’ virtue”. My favorite artists are AURORA, Björk, Florence + the Machine, Of Monster & Of Men, Kate Bush, Enya, Daemonia Nymphe, and Arrowwood (Chelsea Robb)… so that combined with Comus’ disturbing content, it makes sense that they wouldn’t exactly slot into my taste in music, all but for one song.

I discovered Comus’ song, The Herald way before I knew any of their other songs or did the research for this article. It’s the only song of theirs’ I like or listen to because it seems almost as if it came from a different source than the other songs. There is a beauty and mysticism that the other songs don’t seem to hold. Yes, it is a bit unsettling, but there is an underlying joy and comfort, almost celestial nostalgia. It’s about a herald that searches the world for another herald who announces the light in the morning. The beauty of the song overflows at around the 9:20 mark (yes, it’s a long song) with a rough, anticipatory stringed sound. If I could describe the sound it would be like being there, almost there— reaching a desire for something the world cannot offer. I would highly recommend giving it a listen.

Yes, Comus is a wild god. Yes, he is a manifestation of ecstasy and chaos like his father, Dionysus. But like his father, it is ecstatic, infinite, violent, chaotic love that he brings with him, imbuing the entire universe with intoxicating love for the self and existence. His temptation isn’t sexual temptation, but the desire to get away from diseased civilization, away from the ego, away from the judgement of ‘rational humans’ and to the unconscious of the forest, where man realizes himself to be divine. Comus reminds me of a person making it out of the cave in Plato’s allegory. Although I personally didn’t interpret him as a “hymen hunter”, in the world of media, Comus can be anything one needs him to be. In the band, he is used to discuss and confront dark topics while in John Milton’s masque, he is neither good nor bad, neither fully man nor fully god— he is an evader of definition. He is the liminal space, a place reminiscent of the imaginal world where the self is stripped down to it’s original source.

And I for one, prefer to keep him that way.

Thank you for reading my ramble of the week!

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava🪐

As far as I can remember, my grandmother has been skilled at healing. As a woman whose mother left when she was five, fled her country with her children to America knowing zero English, and suffered reproductive pains throughout her life… it’s a mystery how she still has love to give out. My grandmother has studied metaphysics and Islamic Sufism, the medicinal uses of plants, and traditional Middle Eastern/East and South Asian methods of healing. She was the first to teach me how to meditate and is the first to cure me when I’m sick. Even when she’s not directly healing, she spends most of the day gardening and her work pays off especially in the summer, when you can almost feel the plants thanking her for her constant care. As I sit here, writing in my room, I know that the next room over is hers— filled with books, charts, plants, and poetry.

This article is an attempt to dive into her world (albeit from my own interests), where the cure for illness is in the soul of the universe— always accessible, ever abundant.

⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆Tudor England ⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺

Between the 1542 Witchcraft Act under King Henry VII which made witchcraft a capital offense and the 1563 Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments, and Witchcrafts during Elizabeth I’s reign, Tudor England wasn’t the best place to be practicing magic, even for benevolent purposes. The legal frameworks of era were complex, because they criminalized and attempted to undermine the practices while simultaneously acknowledging their powerful existence. The concerns with witchcraft were not new as the invention of printing spread paranoia about witches, their links with the devil, and the need to hunt them (the most famous product of this being the Malleus Maleficarum, or the “Hammer of the Witches” written in 1486 by the incredibly paranoid German Catholic clergyman, Heinrich Kramer).

Although Tudor England differentiated between witches and cunning folk (practitioners of folk healing and white magic who were often associated with Christianity), on some occasions, the line between the two were blurred. In these cases, cunning folk who were usually tolerated or valued in rural communities would become suspects of heresy in the eyes of the Church. For example, Ursula Kemp, a 16th century English cunning woman and midwife born in St. Osyth, Essex, was a source of protection for her community against disease and misfortune. One day, Kemp’s neighbor and former friend, Grace Thurlow, asked for her help in aiding her son, Davy’s illness and it was believed that she cured him through incantations. However, after the death of the Thurlow’s baby daughter by a broken neck and Grace’s contraction of arthritis, the two women began to quarrel. Eventually, Thurlow blamed Kemp for her son’s disease, the death of her daughter, and her own arthritis. After several further accusations, including one by Kemp’s own eight-year-old son, she spent the rest of her life in confinement and was eventually executed by hanging.

Within the upper class, however, magic such as astrology was considered a wise and intellectual pursuit. Monarchs often employed astrologers to cast horoscopes for political decisions, read omens in comets or eclipses, and predict the dates of deaths, marriages, and births. The best example of this is found in Elizabeth I’s court, more specifically, in her trust in the astronomer, mathematician, and alchemist John Dee.

Dee was a breath of fresh air for the Tudor dynasty after Henry VIII’s distrust in astrologers for their repeated false predictions of a male heir. While Dee wasn’t a cunning man, he utilized ritual magic and was often involved in angelic and alchemical work. He collaborated with Edward Kelley, a medium, to communicate with angels and they both claimed to receive messages in a celestial language called Enochian (named after the Patriarch Enoch who was fabled to be the last person to speak this language).

Although Dee was never formally accused of being a witch, he was still vulnerable to suspicion. Under Elizabeth I, he was protected and seen as a learned man, but his reputation suffered under James I. His contemporaries viewed him as a dangerous man and his work with Kelley especially drew concern. Questions arose: Was he a fraud? Was he consorting with demons? Was he dabbling in the dark arts? Eventually, these questions led to Dee’s library, one of the largest in England at the time, being attacked and looted by a mob. Dee later died in poverty and was forced to sell much of his possessions to support himself and his daughter.

Going beyond different types of magic in different social classes, there were two healing concepts that intrigued me the most from this era: weapon salves and witch bottles. Weapon salves were salves or balms made up of various ingredients like animal fat, moss, copper sulfate, mummy power, psalms/incantations, and parts of the body believed to carry the essence of a person (hair, blood, fingernails). These salves were applied to the object by which a person was injured in order to heal them (for example, a practitioner would apply this onto a sword that stabbed a soldier). The underlying theory was sympathetic magic: that the wound and the weapon remained mystically linked while the practitioner took action at a distance.

The other concept that interested me was the witch bottle. Witch bottles were a form of protective folk magic primarily used in England and America during the height of witchcraft fears. Their purpose was to repel or break the power of a witch’s spell. The bottles (which could be glass jars, ceramic vessels, and stoneware bottles) were filled with symbolic ingredients and either hidden, heated in fires, or buried for long term protection. Such ingredients could include urine, fingernails, teeth, needles and pins (to harm the spirit), thread/fabric, salt herbs, blood or, more specifically in some alleged cases, menstrual blood. Unlike some of the magic mentioned above, this practice was common among folk healers and ordinary people with over 200 witch bottles having been discovered in Britain (mostly dating from 1550–1700). Although fewer than a dozen have been found in the United States: a witch bottle was recently found at a site of the Civil War.

Medieval Islamic Healing Magic°.✩┈┈∘*┈🌙┈*∘┈┈✩.°

I’ll put it plainly right here: Islamic magic is dense. My Sufi teacher’s father wrote a book on Perso-Islamic alchemy that spanned only 99 pages. Not only was it one of the most complex books I have ever read, but I only made it to page 25! The book is called Weights and Balances by Sadegh Angha, if you would like to check it out.

Despite it’s denseness, I am most familiar with Islamic magic than any of the others on this list as some of it is practiced within my household (for example, although not specifically Islamic in origin but tied to Islamic concepts, our family burns wild rue and uses it’s smoke as a sort of incense to sage off negative energy or when we clean the house. As far as I know this is Persian concept). The Quran itself is seen as a source of healing and in Surah Al-Isra (17:82), the following words are written:

“We send down (stage by stage) in the Qur’an that which is a healing and a mercy to those who believe.”

From this spiritual healing (reunification with God and recognition that the Self and God are One) comes the ability to physically heal oneself in times of need.

The use of the Quran in magic is called ruqyah. The word comes from the root ر-ق-ى (R-Q-Y) in Arabic, which relates to concepts of raising, ascending, or reciting incantations. In pre-Islamic Arabia, ruqyah referred to prayers recited over someone to cure disease, ward off malevolent spirits, or protection from harm. In modern day use, the most commonly recited verses are:

• Surah Al-Fatiha (1:1-7): Often combined with other verses; offers guidance

• Ayat Al-Kursi (2:255): A popular verse for safety (some Muslims even recite it in their cars before starting their day; in my family, we recite the Bismillah prayer in the morning before leaving for protection and a good day ahead)

• Surah Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq, and An-Nas: For seeking refuge from harm and seeking God’s protection.

  

Beyond oral recitation, amulets (ta’wiz) and talismans have been used in the Islamic world for centuries and continue to be used to provide protection and healing (I myself have a few hanging on my window sill). They often feature engravings of Quranic verses, the 99 names of Allah, or other sacred symbols.

Common Types of Amulets (that are not necklaces or stones):

• Healing Bowls: Bronze or brass bowls inscribed with Quranic verses, astronomical imagery, and numeric formulas. The idea was that the water placed in these bowls was believed to absorb the sacred words, making it a healing elixir when consumed. Sometimes metal tags inscribed with invocations, prayers (like the Bismillah) and the 99 names of God were attached to the bowls, such as the “forty keys” (chehel kilid in Persian; kırk anahtar in Turkish), a symbolic number in all three Abrahamic religions.

• Squares Used for Numerology (Wafq): Numerical grids in which numbers are arranged into a code that can correspond to letters (verses in the Quran can correspond to numbers which can be used on this grid to provide a deeper meaning to the passages). This practice is often found in Perso-Islamic alchemy where a ciphered language is used to deter those who want to use alchemy for earthly gain and not for the elevation of the Self from the ego. These squares are often used in talismans for protection and healing.

• Miniature Qurans: (about the size of the pinky finger) are also considered to have the same healing properties by folk practitioners, but is not formally recognized in Islam. We have a few tiny Qurans in my family and a silver necklace made by my great-great-grandfather that contains a mini scroll of the Quran.

Slavic Folk Medicine •◌•◌•★•◌•◌•

❗I would like to warn that most of the information on Slavic folk medicine was gathered by folklorists during the 18th-20th centuries, so some of what was practiced during the middle ages is based on these records❗

During the medieval period, Slavic folk medicine was a blend of pre-Christian beliefs and Orthodox Christianity. After the Christianization of the Kievan Rus’ (around 988 CE) folk healers began to incorporate holy water, icons, and blessings/prayers into their rituals. Similar to Tudor England, the Church allowed some practices but condemned others that resembled sorcery (koldovstvo). Many of Slavic healing prayers were a syncretic blend of Our Father or Hail Mary while simultaneously addressing natural phenomena. Many prayers called upon saints (especially St. George, St. Paraskeva, and St. Nicholas) that acted similarly to spirits.

Much of Slavic folk medicine was empirical but was often rooted in concepts like illness being seen as the result of curses, malicious forces, offending spirits, or the evil eye. Similar to cunning folk, types of healers often included:

• Ved’ma / Vedmak: Healer with special knowledge that was sometimes feared depending on regions associated with witchcraft. Often protective.

• Koldun/Koldunya: A sort of blend between a sorcerer and a magician and could be benevolent or malevolent (was condemned or considered harmful in usually Christianized settings).

• Babki / Babushki: Elder women who could serve as midwives or healers. They were often associated with childbirth, fertility, and protective magic.

Such practices that these healers would have utilized were banyas (steam baths with herbs) for purification, spitting or blowing over a person to remove curses, the use of charms or knots (often tied around babies or livestock for protection), and the burning of herbs and directing smoke toward the sick (a bit similar to the aforementioned Persian burning of rue seeds).

For specifically protective purposes, objects such as garlic were hung on doors and iron was though to “pin down” spirits or witches. Salt, like many cultures globally, was used to cleanse oneself and their homes. Amulets were also a large part of the healing tradition, similar to medieval Muslims. They were often made of stones, animal teeth or feathers and were sometimes carved with protective motifs. These protective motifs included:

• Eight-pointed stars: supposedly representing solar protection. I thought this was interesting because this shape appears many times in Islam and is decorated along the architecture of my Sufi school. In Abrahamic faiths, it can be the Seal of Solomon or the Star of Bethlehem while in Mesopotamian religion it was the star of Inanna/Ishtar. It could also represent the eight planets or the eight cardinal directions.

• Spirals: Perhaps symbolic of a strong life-force or continuity

• Crosses: Christian influence or protection

• Birds and horses: Liminal beings that can transcend certain spaces. These animals are featured in Slavic mythology and are associated with certain gods.

• Zagovory: Oral charms and incantations which combined Christian saints with seemingly animistic qualities. Used for healing, love, curse removal, and protection.

Now, I want to spend the rest of our time on the last bullet point: Zagovory. Zagovory, often practiced by the aforementioned znakharki, comes from the Russian zagovor, meaning “a speaking over” or “an incantation”, implying speaking something with intentional and magical force. If they were not spoken over a person, they were often spoken over water which was bathed in or drunk. Zagovory often began with sentences like “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…” or “on the ocean, on the sea, on the island of Buyan, stands an iron post…” then followed with mythic imagery/landscapes, identification of the problem, a command, and reinforcing of authority over the ailment.

La Fin ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･☾𖤓❀*ੈ✩‧₊˚˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚

Although these cultures were miles apart and had different values and traditions, humanity has always had a desire to heal and protect one another. The fact that many of these traditions are still practiced today is a testament to that archaic empathy. We are and have always been one living organism, one breathing God. To heal one person is to bandage a splinter in the heart of the world.

Thank you for reading my ramble of the week!

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava 🌿

Sources:

1. “The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2022, archive.org/details/oxfordhandbookof0000unse_e6u1/page/n9/mode/2up. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

2. “The John Dee Publication Project.” John-Dee.org, 2025, www.john-dee.org/. Accessed 4 June 2025.

3. İsa Sevgili. “Abdullah Yusuf Ali: Surah al Isra (the Journey by Night) 82. Ayat, al Isra (the Journey by Night) 82, 17:82.” Namazzamani.net, 3 Oct. 2005, www.namazzamani.net/quran//yusuf-ali/surah-al-isra-ayat-82.htm. Accessed 4 June 2025.

4. Rustamova, Flora. “The Arts of Protection and Healing in Islam: Water Infused with Blessing - Religion and Global Society.” Religion and Global Society - Understanding Religion and Its Relevance in World Affairs, 20 Sept. 2023, blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2023/09/the-arts-of-protection-and-healing-in-islam-water-infused-with-blessing/?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 4 June 2025.

5. McClelland, Bruce A . “WF Ryan, the Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in RussiaThe Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia. By WF Ryan. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, ….” History of Religions, JSTOR, 2003, www.academia.edu/1222553/WF_Ryan_The_Bathhouse_at_Midnight_Magic_in_RussiaThe_Bathhouse_at_Midnight_Magic_in_Russia_By_WF_Ryan_University_Park_Pennsylvania_State_University_Press_. Accessed 4 June 2025.

6. “Russian Folk Belief : Ivanits, Linda J., 1942- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2023, archive.org/details/russianfolkbelie0000ivan/page/n5/mode/2up. Accessed 4 June 2025.

7. “Conference Report.” Incantatio. An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming, vol. 5, 2017, pp. 81–82, https://doi.org/10.7592/incantatio2017_reports. Accessed 16 Jan. 2022.

8. “Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 : Levin, Eve, 1954- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2021, archive.org/details/sexsocietyinworl0000levi. Accessed 4 June 2025.

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Perhaps he saw the world, perhaps he saw the universe.

His own unedited soul in the cup of Christ.

His steps, clapping with armor, stop when he sees the Light.

What Light, we do not know.

This is the same mystery of the English language, of the Persian language, of the ruins of history, those two thousand year old trees in the glens and groves.

We do not know ourselves anymore.

And the ravens continue to perch on the Tower of London.

John Dee and Francis Bacon hide behind the masks of poets,

As Galahad runs through the waves of history.

Whatever Light he saw in that chamber, I do not know.

Perhaps I will never know.

It is not for us to know. It is not a thing for knowing.

Perhaps it was a feeling.

Maybe it’s useless to guess because it’s beyond the human condition.

But Galahad, when he saw the Cup, when saw the Light, he fell to the knees and a new Music filled his ear like hearing the breathing of the mother in the womb.

For all we speak of chivalry, we will never know one thing.

Others exist, that secret dialogue between sons and their father-gods,

The Odins and Baldurs, the Jesuses and Abbas.

But it isn’t for us to know.

When that goat will die on that cross, the one we deemed as Satan, he will rise like the Christ figure,

like the cup to Galahad’s mouth.

And with that, the boy dies and is taken to Heaven to hear those final dialogues,

The ones we have tried to position our ears to.

So he’ll join the tales of men,

up in some high hall,

they’ll be drinking mead with poetry and wine with bread and the blood with bodies—

call it what you want,

in that language you used to know,

that Grail is still out there,

looking for a mouth

as a lover

needs their beloved,

as a Universe

needs its Existence,

as Madness

needs it’s believers.

Thank you for reading and letting me into your heart,

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava 🪐⭐✨

About a year ago, before my old high school closed down, an English teacher let me take whatever books I wanted from the library. I did the only reasonable thing and found myself a copy of T. F. Thiselton-Dyer’s The Folklore of Shakespeare (along with a collection of Molière’s plays, a dictionary of festive costumes, a book of festivals, and The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes— all books I would love to write about on Substack). The book is 548 pages analyzing all of the references to folklore, history, and mythology in the Bard of Avon’s plays… needless to say, it’s a literature lover’s dream! It covers everything from faeries and ghosts to insects and fishes to demonology and dances, folk medicine, rings, precious stones, anatomy, plants, etc., all in Shakespeare’s works.

Although the book is outdated (as it was written in 1884), it has a wealth of information, and I made sure to do extra research on the selected topics here. So, pour yourself a cup of tea, find a tree to sit under, and enjoy some lore from 16th-century England…

1: Faeries ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡

a. Queen Mab

Shakespeare’s most detailed reference to Queen Mab appears in Romeo and Juliet when the character Mercutio says that Romeo has been visited by her (meaning that he has had a misleading dream). He calls her “the fairies’ midwife,” who delivers dreams to sleeping people, and among greater bodies of literature at the time, erotic dreams. In fact, the word “mab” seems to have been a term for a promiscuous woman and some theorize that the “queen” in Queen Mab’s title is a play on the medieval word “quean”, meaning whore or prostitute. This theory might be unlikely as Brits would have liked to please faeries by calling them more benevolent names to avoid attracting their unwanted attention (hence names like the “the Good People” when referring to spirits of the Otherworld).

Queen Mab is described as being extremely small (“no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman”), and the word “Mab” in Welsh and other Brittonic dialects signifies a child or an infant. She enjoys tangling hair and horses’ manes (the 16th-century word “elf-lock” actually comes from the concept of elves tangling people’s hair in the night) as well as stealing fruit and dairy products.

b. The Origins of Oberon

Oberon, the famous King of the Faeries in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has his roots in French and German romances. Dyer writes that he first appears in the 13th-century French chanson de geste (“song of heroic deeds”) romance called Huon de Bourdeaux, where the titular character encounters Oberon in a forest. However, it is theorized that Oberon was originally derived from a character called Alberich, who is a dwarf in the epic German poem Nibelungenlied (written circa 1200).

c. Demy-Puppets

These small, mischievous faeries are mentioned once in The Tempest, specifically in Act 5, Scene 1. In this scene, Prospero is relinquishing his magic powers and renouncing his worldly attachment; thus, he lists off the spirits that he has commanded and those who have helped him:

“You demy-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime

Is to make midnight-mushrooms.”

Here, he describes the demy-puppets as creating faerie rings and making ringlets of grass which livestock do not dare to eat, implying that they could cause harm. Shakespeare’s writings seem to be the first recorded reference to these creatures.

d. The Púca and the Origins of Robin Goodfellow

Initially referring to a race of fairies called “Goodfellows” (another term of appeasement), we now recognize Puck as the mischievous hobgoblin in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck is called a hobgoblin because “Hob” is thought to be a nickname of “Robin” which alludes to Puck’s other name, Robin Goodfellow. The word “Puck” seems to have come from “púca”, or the Old English word for “goblin”, and is SPECULATED to be connected to “piskey” or “pixy” in many parts of England like Devonshire or Cornwall (although this is a topic of debate as many suggest pixy comes from an Old English word for fairy while others claim it is of some unknown Celtic origin), the Iceland puki, and in Friesland and Jutland it is known as the domestic spirit “Puk”. Shakespeare and other authors of the 17th century describe Puck as sometimes coming in the form of a horse or a light, similar to a will-o-the-wisp in order to lead travelers astray like in this passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

“Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,

A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire.”

2. Natural Phenomena ˋ°•*⁀➷

a. The Moon

Ah, the moon—everyone’s favorite stone in the sky. Many cultures saw different beings in the moon, like the Chinese who famously saw a rabbit pounding the elixir the life. The people of Shakespeare’s time saw a man in the moon. There was a pretty widespread legend in which an immortal man with a bundle of sticks on his back and a dog for a companion has been exiled to the moon. The man’s identity is uncertain (Italian poet Dante Alighieri believes it to be the biblical Cain) and so is his reason for punishment (the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer thinks that it was theft although many theorize that the man on the moon was exiled because he collected wood on the Sabbath day, an act which is condemned in the Old Testament). Shakespeare plays on these ideas in the following dialogue from The Tempest:

Caliban: “Hast thou not dropp'd from heaven?”

Stephano: “Out o’ the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i’ the moon when time was.”

Caliban: “I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee: my mistress show’d me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.

The “bush” that the man on the moon carries is a thornbush (a concept that Shakespeare likely got from Chaucer) and is evidently established as his symbol in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this play within a play, various actors are creating the set of the play Pyramus and Thisbe and decide to represent moonshine with a lantern, dog, and thornbush. Later, moonshine describes itself by saying, “All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.”

Furthermore, in the passage from The Tempest, it is clear that people had a reverence towards the moon and Dyer even mentions that some would even bend their knees or remove their hats in respect for the moon, a tradition that apparently survived to the author’s day in both “conservatism and jest”.

b. Will-o-the-Wisps

Also known as ignis fatuus (foolish flame) or fire-drakes, will-o-the-wisps are atmospheric ghost lights, which are described as leading “men often in flumina et praecipitia” by Robert Burton in his The Anatomy of Melancholy and misleading “th’amaz’d night-wanderer from his way to bogs and mires” by John Milton in his Paradise Lost. Shakespeare never explicitly goes into detail about the nature of these beings, but rather references them in works like King Lear (“Look, here comes a walking fire”) in relation to what seems to be Robin Goodfellow. Puck even has a short monologue about being a will-o-the-wisp:

“Get you home, you merry lads,

Tell your mammies and your dads,

And all those that newes desire

How you saw a walking fire,

Wenches, that doe smile and lispe,

Use to call me willy-wispe.”

Will-o-the-wisps aren’t restricted to British folklore, but rather appear all over the globe from Thailand (where they are known as “Naga balls”) to North America (where they are known as “spook lights”) to Argentina (where they are known as luz mala, or “evil light”). Even the concept of the Jack-o’-Lantern comes from the idea of a ghost called Will or Jack that haunts the woods.

c. Dew

This is a tiny little fact, but I think it’s too whimsical to keep out: Shakespeare took from the Roman author Pliny who claimed that honey-dew is the saliva of the stars and that the liquid was created from moisture in the air.

3. Birds 𓅰 𓅬 𓅭 𓅮 𓅯

a. Barnacle-Goose

This is another short snippet from the recorded folklore, but I included it because I couldn’t say no to that feathered face 🥺 Apparently, the belief was that a bird called a barnacle-goose (Branta leucopsis) was generated from barnacles stuck on large ships. There is a reference to this odd creature in the Tempest when the character Caliban says: “We shall lose our time, And all be turn’d to barnacles.”

4. Folk Medicine 𓆤⭒𓆑⭒𓆣⭒𓆨⭒𓆦

a. Toothache

It was a common superstition that toothaches were caused by a little worm (sort of eel-looking) which would gradually gnaw into the tooth. This belief is demonstrated by some characters in Much Ado About Nothing:

Don Pedro: “What! Sign for the toothache?”

Leonato: “Where is but a humour, or a worm.”

This belief of a worm in the tooth is also widespread in Germanic mythology and appears in some Norse spells against tooth pain.

5. Dances ♩¨̮(ง ˙˘˙ )ว♩¨̮

a. Satyrs’ Dance

Mentioned in The Winter’s Tale, the satyrs’ dance was a dance performed by twelve hairy herdsmen who dressed up as Greek satyrs (half-men, half-goats). Shakespeare uses the dancing to foreshadow the character, Polixenes’s, disturbed peace. Dyer claims that this dance was common in Western Europe and was supposed to be comedic, but erotic, as satyrs are commonly associated with sexuality and lasciviousness. In literature, the dance becomes a symbol of unruly passion and the wildness of nature over the organization and structure of civilization.

6. The Human Body ꒦꒷🫀꒷꒦

a. Liver

In the ancient Near East, the liver was seen as the seat of life, the soul, and emotions (including love). Shakespeare plays with this concept in Love’s Labour’s Lost in a truly beautiful piece of dialogue by the character Biron after he listens to a sonnet on love:

“This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity,

A green goose, a goddess; pure, pure idolatry.”

Sometimes love in the liver is even seen as some sort of madness that some characters claim to cure, like in As You Like It. This negative connotation of love is further pressed in the 13th-century scholar Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s encyclopedia De Proprietatibus Rerum (“On the Properties of Things”), in which the author claims that “the liver is the place of voluptuousness and lyking of flesh.”

La Fin ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:

Shakespeare was not only a master of words but also of whimsy, history, and the lore of his own people. The references he made gave us a glimpse into what 16-17th century Europe looked like and how people perceived the world around them. These little references to folklore and superstition are miniature universes that people lived in that we can’t seem to access anymore. I mean, when I’m reading Shakespeare, I probably won’t immediately understand the reference to barnacle-geese without additional notes, but the audience members probably did. Even though Shakespeare, his audience, his actors, his contemporaries, and all of the spirits he has touched with his words have passed away, their stories remain, even if it lives on just as a reference.

Thank you for reading my little ramble of the week!

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava 🪐✨

If you are interested in hearing more episodes or reading posts on comparative religion/mythology and prose/poetry, please consider subscribing to my Substack or becoming a paid subscriber to help cover the cost of my Latin classes!: Ava Behjat

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava ✨

SOURCES:

1. Fahd, T., "al-Lat", in Bosworth et al. 1986, pp. 692

2. Monaghan, Patricia (2014), Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, New World Library, ISBN 978-1-608-68218-8:

3. Sykes, Egerton; Turner, Patricia (2014), Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities, Routledge, ISBN 9781136414374

4. "Aramaic Inscriptions of the Fifth Century B. C. E. from a North-Arab Shrine in Egypt":

5. Herodotus, The Histories, Book 1, chapter 131

6. Herodotus, The Histories, Book 3

7. (PDF) « South Arabia, Religions in Pre-Islamic », « al-Ukhdūd » et « Yemen », dans Encyclopaedia of the Qurʿān, 5, Leiden-Boston (Brill), pp. 84-94 et pl. I-VII ; 397-398 ; 561-569. | Christian Julien ROBIN - Academia.edu

8. Full text of "The Pantheon Of Palmyra By Javier Teixidor (z Lib.org)"

9. Baetyl - Livius

10. Offprint from Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East

11. Before Orthodoxy — Harvard University Press

12. Muir, Sir William. (1878). The Life of Mahomet. (pp. 86-88). London: Smith, Elder & Co

13. ARABIA AND THE ARABS: From the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam

14. The Holy Qur’an. translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, H & C International.

15. The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History

16. Sidra 8 | Hurqalya Publications: Center for Shaykhī and Bābī-Bahā’ī Studies

17. History of the Islamic Peoples - Carl Brockelmann - Google Books

18. The History of al-Tabari

19. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam - Francis E. Peters - Google Books

20. (PDF) Al-Jallad. 2022. The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia: A Reconstruction based on the Safaitic Inscriptions

21. THE BOOK OF IDOLS

22. Museum of Lost Objects: The Lion of al-Lat - BBC News

23. Beheaded Syrian scholar refused to lead Isis to hidden Palmyra antiquities | Islamic State | The Guardian

After the spread of Christianity, it seems like goats took on a malevolent connotation in order to portray pagan religions as “evil” and “demonic”, but what is the true symbolism of the goat? And why does it keep coming back into folkloric consciousness?

In order to find this out, let’s look at some examples of caprids in ancient and modern paganism, Abrahamic religions, and folk customs…

Pan🍇

Ok, so Pan is one of the most mysterious figures of Greek mythology and would probably require textbooks upon textbooks to explain his character, thus I will only be touching upon his origins and his connection to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion (a hypothetical religion from which many Eurasian mythologies sprung from).

For some background, Pan was the goat-like Greek god of the wild and is associated with divine madness, shepherds, music, and the countryside. He is also known to be linked with psychopomps, the underworld, roads, and traveling. He is often a teacher of young men, gifted Artemis her hunting dogs, and granted Apollo his gift of prophecy.

The name “Pan” has been suggested to come from the Proto-Indo-European word “Ph₂usōn” of which the English word “pasture” is thought to have come from. “Ph₂usōn” is also the root of a Vedic deity called Pushan who, like Pan, is a psychopomp and pastoral deity associated with traveling shepherds. Interestingly, Pushan has a chariot that is pulled by goats which can be compared to the Norse god Thor’s chariot which is also hauled by two goats named Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. This etymology, unsurprisingly, makes Pan and relationship with goats very old, positioning him as possibly pre-Greek.

The worship of the Pan we recognize likely began in the forested inland region of Arcadia where he was revered in caves and grottoes by mountain people who had a distinct culture from the Greeks around them. These peoples often poured libations on boundary stones along roads known as “herms” which were originally piles of rocks sacred to the god Pan. Later, these rocks became statues with the heads of men and a phallic symbol on the pillar… I’m not sure why the penis is nonnegotiable, but oh well.

From this emerged an epithet of Pan associated with herms that would later evolve into something along the lines of “Pan-Hermes”. This side of Pan was the protector of roads and traveling, especially to the underworld.

Yes.

The Greek god Hermes had his origins in these statues sacred to Pan:

Scholars theorize that at some point before the Bronze Age Mycenean civilization of Greece, the epithet “Hermes” was detached from Pan and became its own god.

This new god, Hermes, became the psychopomp god of shepherds, roads, and traveling (did you notice that these are all the divine domains of Pushan?). In Boetia, a region of Greece, Hermes was worshiped by annually sacrificing a lamb, an animal associated with shepherding. There is even one epithet of Hermes called Hermes Kriophoros (which takes the lamb) and it is theorized that the biblical concept of “the Good Shepherd” in the Gospel of John may have taken inspiration from this idea.

So, Pan seems to be a guiding god of liminal and transformative spaces such as forests and mountains where not many dare to go just like few go on the journey towards consciousness. His half-goat, half-man imagery while being both rustic and divine suggests a balance between the animal and the spiritual.

But, out of all the animals in the world… why a goat?

The Mother Goat 🍼

There seem to be two main she-goats that nourish the gods in mythology:

1. Amalthea (Greek mythology): Most commonly identified as the nurse of the god Zeus, Amalthea fed him a mixture of milk and honey on the island of Crete, near Knossos. On Mycenean tablets from Crete, there are records of libations of milk and honey poured out for the gods, so this myth may have some historical reference to an earlier culture. Amalthea is often credited as being placed among the stars for her service to the god as the constellation “Capra” and her horns are associated with the Cornucopia filled specifically with autumn fruits like “apples and pomegranates and grapes” (Diodorus Siculus).

2. Heiðrún (Norse mythology): Heiðrún is the nursing goat from Valhalla that produces daily mead and chews on the leaves of Læraðr tree (associated with the Yggdrasil world tree). During the early Scandinavian Bronze Age, the jawbones of goats were distributed around the entrance to a house, implying that the animal had a domestic connotation.

There is not too much information on either of these figures, however, judging from prior Greek influence on Norse mythology (for example, in the Prose Edda, the most detailed source on Norse paganism, the author describes the gods as Trojan heroes), I wonder if Heiðrún’s character took inspiration from Amalthea.

Baphomet 🔮

Probably one of the strangest figures on this list, Baphomet is the alleged heretical god worshipped by the Knights Templar. The first mention of this deity was in a letter written in 1098 by Frankish nobleman Anselm of Ribemont describing the Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade:

As the next day dawned, [the inhabitants of Antioch] called loudly upon Baphometh; and we prayed silently in our hearts to God, then we attacked and forced all of them outside the city walls.

Some scholars consider the name “Baphomet” an alteration in “Mahomet” or the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Another chronicler of the Crusades records that troubadours used the term Bafomet for “Mahomet” and Bafumaria for mosque. The name went on in a few more French poems at the time to refer the to prophet.

In 1307, however, Philip IV of France tortured and arrested many of the Knights Templar for a whole slew of crimes from disrespecting the cross to homosexuality. In records of the persecutions, the worship of the idol “Baphomet” (presumably meaning “Mahomet”) appears under forced confession. The figure was typically described as being a cat or a demon, both representative of witchcraft… so no goats just yet!

Authors of the era tried to etymologically reconstruct the origin of Baphomet’s name to have come from two Greek words meaning “color” and “spirit”, however this is false.

Years later, Baphomet became associated with Gnosticism, the Freemasons, and the occult, especially when French writer Éliphas Lévi reimagined the god as a Sabbatic Goat decorated with esoteric symbols (see below) in his 1854-56 book Dogma and Rituals of High Magic.

British occultist Aleister Crowley likened Baphomet’s character to the Greek god Pan. He describes the god in his book Magick in Theory and Practice:

This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade "Know Thyself!" and taught Initiation. He is "The Devil" of The Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection ... He is therefore Life, and Love.

Now, Baphomet is recognized for his association with Satanism and the occult, but the goat appearance seems to be a more recent addition.

The Yule Goat 🎄

Considered the Scandinavian Christmas symbol, the Yule Goat is a straw goat that appears in Northern European folklore. It’s origins are unclear, although some suggest Germanic paganism with a connection to the Norse god Thor’s sacred goats (Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr) or to goat-like characters in Slavic folklore. Information on this character is sparse and it was frustrating to find little to no papers or books on the topic (if you know of any, please message me on my Substack or comment down below 😉).

What I did get more information on is Julebukking (coming from Julebukk, meaning “Christmas goat/Yule buck” in Norwegian), which is when “Julebukkers” (those who don masks and costumes) go door to door during the holiday season and play a game where neighbors attempt to guess the identity of the participator. It’s not entirely clear why it is named after the Yule goat, but it has similar characteristics to the Mari Lwyd tradition of Wales (in which a person with the skull of a horse sings carols and the neighbors are forced to give up beer to the figure), Krampus runs (in which people dress up as perchten or Alpine spirits, some of which include goat-like attributes, and visit houses) and British wassailing (door-to-door drinking). The Finnish equivalent of Julebukk is Joulupukki (also meaning “Yule buck”), a figure now commonly conflated with Santa Claus but can also include people that dress up in goat costumes.

So… beware mysterious Christmas goats that show up on your front doorstep this winter!

Takam 💐

Originally from provinces in the north of Iran (particularly in the province of Azerbaijan), Takam (Taka meaning “goat” and the letter “mim” representing ownership, so “my goat”) is a folkloric figure most commonly known for it’s entertainment aspect as type of doll representing a goat whose dance steps were accompanied by songs announcing the Persian New Year (Norooz). The doll is made of wood, glass beads, red fabric, coins, bells, and feathers (depending on the region). Thus, the goat is seen as a heralder of the new year but is also known as the leader or lord of goats that leads it’s flock to the pasture (which we can connect to the theme we’ve seen from Pan of coming back to a pasture, a haven, of boundaries, and liminal spaces). The Takam-chi or Takam-gardan (both meaning “one that spins/turns Takam”) is the person who puppets the Takam doll and sings songs or poems of the coming new year (called “saya”).

The character of Takam not only reminds me of the Greek god Pan (it would be conceivable that they could be mythologically related) but also of the hobby horse tradition of various European countries (a costumed character that features during times of festival).

If you would like to see brief clips from the ritual surrounding Takam, you can click on the video below:

The Horned God 😈

This last figure is a bit different from the rest of the list because it’s not exactly a goat. The Horned God is a reconstructed character based on horned male deities throughout world mythologies. Most often associated with Neopaganism and Wicca where the figure represents the male consort of the female triple goddess, the Horned God is also a motif in fantasy literature as a balance between the divine and animal. Wicca has also placed him as the leader of the Wild Hunt (a mythological motif of a horde of the undead that wander after an ever-elusive prey) with ties to the underworld as seen in this prayer:

In the name of the Lady of the Moon,
and the Horned Lord of Death and Resurrection

The deity takes most of its inspiration and is often represented as the figure “Cernunnos”. Cernunnos was a name found on a several stone carvings across Europe and is known as “the Horned One” likely due to the deity’s depicted antlers. In The Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar does not explicitly mention Cernunnos but his description of the Roman god of the underworld, Dis Pater, might be a reference to the Celtic god. There is also a theory that this figure may have influenced medieval Welsh and Irish depictions of the devil. However, the identifications of Cernunnos on stones could be very well misinterpretations as there is not much Celtic literature on the deity. Some scholars have noted that depictions claimed to be Cernunnos could simply be antlered Celtic shamans.

The Goat as Protector of the Journey

From what I have gathered, the goat, to me, is a figure that represents a “return” to the flock, the pasture, and liminal spaces, but also to the wild, forested realms of the world. This journey back to the flock is perhaps symbolic of one’s reuniting with Existence’s deepest source— a place that is not physical but can be marked by physical objects or people.

The animal is one of wisdom that is associated with archaic times, the occult, and folk tradition, but it’s cryptic message of returning to the infinite origin or inviting the new year (or rebirth of consciousness) mostly likely scared religious figures involved in political and militaristic schemes who sought to demonize the character.

But isn’t that always what happens— persecution, demonizing, censorship— to those that seek the truth and go beyond what others want us to believe is reality?

Thank you for reading my (quite long) ramble of the week 💗

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava ⭐

Sources:

1. Dolan, J. Taliesin’s Map. 11 Jan. 2022.

2. Crudden, Michael. The Homeric Hymns. Oxford University Press, USA, 2002.

3. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 70. 1

4. Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 4 - 5

5. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 35. 3

6. Larrington, Carolyne. Poetic Edda. Oxford University Press, 2019.

7. Anatoly Liberman. In Prayer and Laughter : Essays on Medieval Scandinavian and Germanic Mythology, Literature, and Culture. Moscow, Paleograph Press, 2016.

8. Barber, Malcolm. Letters from the East : Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th - 13th Centuries. Farnham, Ashgate, 2010.

9. JOSEPH FRANCOIS MICHAUD. Joseph Francois Michaud - the History of the Crusades - Volume III (of III). Conflict Publishing, 2 Aug. 2018.

10. Jennbert, Kristina. “Barbro Santillo Frizell (the Swedish Institute in Rome.” Projects and Seminars, vol. 1, 2002, lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/files/4422556/1366100.pdf. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.

11. Azimpour, Poupak. Iranian Ritual and Traditional Puppets and Puppet Shows Dictionary. Tehran, Iran: Namayesh Publications, 2010.

12. niafam.com. “Takam Gardani.” Icro.ir, 2025, en.icro.ir/Customs/Takam-Gardani. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

13. MAGLIOCCO, SABINA. Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhfrj. Accessed 5 Mar. 2025.

14. Cartwright, Mark. “Cernunnos.” World History Encyclopedia, 1 Mar. 2021, www.worldhistory.org/Cernunnos/.

Dead languages, whether we love them or not, have shaped our society, especially religion, since the dawn of civilization. Take the etymology of the word “religion” as an example. It comes from the Latin ‘re’ meaning “again” and ‘ligio’ meaning “connect” or “bind.” So, the original sense of religion was to “reconnect.”

In Roman religious contexts, the word also meant being possessed by the divinity of God which, interestingly enough, is the root of the word “enthusiasm” in Ancient Greek—“possessed by God.” It was this definition of religion that caught the attention of thinkers like Saint Augustine of Hippo and Albert Einstein— both of whom studied Latin. This gives religion a new essence— one that is more of a mystical, personal connection with God rather than an institution or doctrinal law.

My thrifted little stack of dead language textbooks

Speaking of religion, we need to talk about the translations of holy texts!

One important instance is the story of Eve being created from Adam’s rib. The Hebrew word for rib is ala which appears, for example, in the Book of Daniel when a “bear had three [ala] in its mouth.” However, in Genesis, when Eve was being fashioned, it is written that God took a tsela which literally translates to “half” or “side.” The word tsela has been used over forty times in the Bible in reference to the side of the tabernacle or to one of the two gates of Soloman’s temple. So Eve is meant to be interpreted as equal, or one, with Adam— a duality.

Another example from Genesis is the misconception that Eve is Adam’s “helper.” The Hebrew word used to describe Eve is ezer, meaning “rescuer” which comes from two root words meaning “to be strong” or “to save.” In 2000, Pope John Paul II and the Church formally recognized these translation errors, however, they are unable to stop the printing of English editions.

Interior contents of an Ancient Greek textbook

Another example is the fact that the Seven Sins in Latin are all written in the feminine case (like in Spanish: “manzana” meaning “apple” is feminine). The reason behind this is that, to Latin speakers, the feminine represented earthly concepts (which are entirely separate from the female sex) which, if taken out of balance, can deter us from God.

Just because those who spoke these languages have since passed, that does not mean there is not a profundity in them that may not be present in our modern languages. Dead languages can inspire us towards a greater truth, one that reveals meaning within everything in existence, including words.

This was a bit of a shorter article, because it was an excerpt I wrote for my school newspaper, but I thought Substack might enjoy it🌿

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava

*fun fact: the photo of David blowing bubble gum is my phone’s homescreen ;)

But lying down and dying doesn’t seem very appealing, so why was it all the rage in the ancient world?

The etymology of the word “incubation” derives from the Latin verb incubare, which means “to lie on” or “to hatch”. It is composed from in- meaning “on” and cubare meaning “to lie” or “to recline”. So, the original sense of incubation was literally “lying on” something, a reference to how certain animals, like birds, incubate eggs by resting on them to keep them warm. The egg and the being inside of it has a sort of death in an of itself. The animal “dies” or leaves the egg and is reborn in a new world as a fully-formed being.

In ancient Greece, the concept of incubation went beyond the biological process and took on a spiritual significance. For example, the practice of incubation was part of a religious ritual often associated with healing. Those who were ill and were looking for a cure or people who had to make a big decision would sleep overnight in sacred places like temples dedicated to the god Asclepius (who presided over medicine, healing, and raising the dead), hoping to receive divine guidance or healing through dreams. Yes, this even included cases of blindness like one inscription recorded in the city of Epidaurus:

Alketas of Halieis: this man, being blind, saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god came to him and opened his eyes with his fingers, and that he first saw the trees in the sanctuary. When day came he left well.

Or cases of lice like this one:

Kleinatas of Thebes, who had lice: this man, having a great multitude of lice on his body, came and slept here, and he saw a vision. It seemed to him the god stripped him and, standing him up straight, naked, cleared the lice from his body with a broom. When day came he left the abaton well.

Other descriptions speak of women who wished for children and walked away pregnant from the temple the next day. Some stories have surgical connotations such as Asclepius removing a spear from a man’s jaw, operating on a person’s stomach in order to pull out a tumor or removing leeches and then stitching up the wound. Hilariously, there is one inscription that tells the tale of how the god relieved a man of a stone in his penis… how did that get there?

Relief of a sleeping participant of the incubation ritual

But as mentioned above, Asclepius also offered guidance. One patient, Arata of Lacedaemon, was suffering from edema which prevented her from traveling to Epidaurus where the Asklepieion was. Her mother slept in her place and experienced a dream in which the god decapitated her daughter, allowing the excess fluids to pour out from her body, and then reattached the head to her neck. When the mother returned home, she found her daughter to be cured after having the same dream. Another story tells of when a man with a missing son received a vision of his child’s location and after seven days, his son was found. I find these two stories particularly interesting because of their utilization of the sacred number seven and their possible metaphor for rediscovering one’s deepest identity (rediscovering the son and decapitation of any sickness, or ego, that is not serving the human being). Tell me what you think in the comments 🌞

This seemingly miraculous practice was known as incubation (or incubatio in Latin), and the belief was that the god or chosen spirits would either provide a cure in a dream or direct a method of treatment. Among those in the cult of Asclepius, offerings found to the god at sanctuaries in Epidaurus, Pergamum, and Rome describe the effectiveness of the method. Its Greek equivalent to the word incubation is the word “ἐγκομησις”, which appears only once in the works of Diodorus Siculus, within the context of an Egyptian custom that involves carrying the statues of their gods.

According to Kingsley, iatromantis (shamanistic figures in early Greek religion; often called “healer-prophets”) practiced incubation and that they could help interpret the dreams of consultants. He goes on to explain that the person who partakes in incubation reaches “the fourth state of consciousness”, a state that is not exactly sleeping, dreaming, or waking. Kingsley calls this state “consciousness itself” and likens to Indian yogic traditions.

These stories might seem like fabrications, but the participants constantly emphasize that their experiences are “realer than real” and often consist of entering a different place, another reality— one that seems more authentic to the truth than what we perceive as reality. I think a good example of describing this state is in the Mayan imagination where the soul after death is in the same primordial state visited during “a dream, vision, and hallucination”.

So, how can we interpret stories of incubation?

In the Greek playwright Aristophanes’ play “Wealth” (Ploutos), the character Ploutus is cured of his blindness by Asclepius who performs a ritual first by wiping Ploutus’ eyelids, then covering his face with a cloth, and finally summoning two snakes that lick his eyes back to health. The motivation behind restoring Ploutus’ sight was to have him distribute wealth (which is his divine domain) evenly among the peoples of the world. One way of interpreting this myth is that the god Asclepius wipes Ploutus’ eyes in order for him to be “reborn” with new eyes, a metaphor for self-annihilation and rebirth into the spiritual realm where one has the ability to see truth and justice without prejudice. The snake has been used in various traditions to represent the path to higher consciousness beginning in the base of the spine to the crown of the head (also known as the kundalini in Hinduism). Although this is my own speculation, the play’s themes of healing and sight raises some suspicion.

Statue of the healer god Asclepius

By the time the Romans pulled up, the most significant Asklepieions underwent a reconstruction to become “specialized spa centers”. This included the addition of swimming pools, baths, and areas for socializing that would later evolve into luxurious venues frequented for the Greco-Roman elite. One these such elites, who frequently visited the Asklepieion, was Aeilus Aristides who suffered many diseases and claimed to have had a deep connection with Asclepius. He frequently describes dreams in which the god appears to him and prescribes treatments. It is not clear if Aristides actually underwent the incubation ritual, however he utilizes one word, “κατάκλισις”, meaning “to lie down”.

The professional diviner Artemidoros in his work Oneirocritica, or The Interpretation of Dreams, mentions that some medical knowledge originated from divine guidance received in sanctuaries. This is not the first time a theory like this has been proposed as many Greek physicians claims to have received instructions from Asclepius in a dream.

But this is not just a pagan practice. In the Bible there are several accounts of incubation-like rituals. One in particular is in Genesis 28:11 when the patriarch Jacob lies down to sleep upon the rock, Bet-El (otherwise known as the House of God) and only there is he able to watch angels ascending. So incubation doesn’t take place in just anywhere— it must be sacred, regardless of if it is natural or constructed. This tradition seemed to have continued in Judaism as medieval kabbalists practiced a ritual between sleeping and dreaming that could help them commune with angelic beings.

Other, less explicit, examples of what may perhaps be a form of incubation or a dream technique in Abrahamic faiths is the Angel Gabriel’s apparition to Mary or the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey to the seventh heaven to speak with God.

The author Robert Bosnak led a modern dream incubation in 2002 in the Paleolithic caves of France. While there, Bosnak asked himself if the spirit of a place can affect the content of the dream or if “the charged environment was dreaming [the participants]”. The experience of sleeping within the caves while maintaining a reverent approach to the process produced, as he said, “different musings—and different dreams—than those of Times Square.”

Depiction of the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey

The term “incubation” is already pretty incomplete in it’s definition. The Oxford dictionary sums up incubation as the “ritual sleep in a sanctuary in order to obtain a dream, mostly for healing”, but as we have seen, the technique has underlying spiritual connotations. It is also a deeply personal experience with God, the gods, the Universe, the Force— whatever you want to call the living energy above us, below us, and within us. A participant sometimes dies to their animal self and emerges as a sort of spiritual incarnation or maybe they walk away with a penis that is devoid of a stone.

Whatever the case is, “lying down and dying” is a better definition than one the dictionary can provide for a timeless practice where one can return to a state— an old, forgotten home— where they realize the sanctity of their own person.

ALSO, bonus super random fun fact that has nothing to do with anything in this article: After hearing about the character of Ploutus (personification of wealth) in Greek mythology, I was instantly reminded of the Persian word for money which is pronounced like “pool”. The words sounded similar, so I decided to do some digging. Turns out that the Greek word ploutos (πλοῦτος) likely made its way into Persian during the Hellenistic period (after Alexander of Macedon’s conquests) when Greek culture had significant influence over Persian-speaking regions, especially during the Seleucid Empire (which ruled over parts of Persia after Alexander’s death). There is also an argument that the Persian word for money may have been influenced by Arabic, where the word for “money” is “fooloos” (فُلُوس), which is a plural form derived from the Greek term. How cool is that?!

Thanks for reading my ramble of the week 💕

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava

Sources:

1. Francisco Barrenechea. “Sanctuary Influence in Classical Representations of Incubation: The Motif of the Witness Awake.” Phoenix, vol. 70, no. 3/4, 2016, pp. 255–73. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.7834/phoenix.70.3-4.0255. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.

2. Pausanias, et al. Description of Greece. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1966.

3. https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2024-5924-AJHIS-HIS-Liwerska-Garstecka-05.pdf

4. Diodorus, Siculus, et al. The Bibliotheca Historica. London, Published For The Early English Text Society By Oxford University Press, -57, 1956.

5. Artemidoros, Daldianos, and Daniel E Harris-Mccoy. Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica : Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2012.

6. Patton, Kimberley C. ““A Great and Strange Correction”: Intentionality, Locality, and Epiphany in the Category of Dream Incubation.” History of Religions, vol. 43, no. 3, Feb. 2004, pp. 194–223, https://doi.org/10.1086/423399.

7. https://krasiancientastrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Reiner_astral_magic_in_babylonia.pdf

Many blame Essie, but I have always wondered about her.

Her husband, my great-grandfather, was a flirtatious man that often sought to make his wife jealous and her mother-in-law was often sadistic and manipulative towards her, especially because Essie made friends with social classes different than hers. As I look back, there is also evidence that Essie might have been suffering from a mental illness.

After she left, the family knew very little about her, but whatever memories my grandmother and her siblings have left of her, they remain their most vivid.

Thirty seven years ago from today, the family received a call that Essie had died of a stroke. Her neighbors found her a few days later in her apartment where she lived alone. After her death, it was discovered that she had attempted to make contact with her children, but was forbidden by her husband. Essie apparently had a family before my grandmother’s and one after. We also found out that Essie’s mother had left her as a child.

Everyone has their own opinions, but my grandmother has remained indifferent to the story. Her and the rest of the siblings defend their mother— calling her a kind and beautiful woman and immediately praying for her whenever she is brought up in conversation.

Last night, my grandmother’s sister, who referred to her mother has a “wonderful guest” showed me one of the only photos they have left of her. In a conversation regarding Essie with my aunt later that evening, she paused mid-sentence and said, “Perhaps she was a rebel.”

This is for her:

Essie, Essie,

come take off your dress where Cassanova can’t reach you anymore,

he’s been dead for so long,

you can unhook your trousers and lie in the grass without the fear of the immodesty they call nudity.

I wish I had your pearl earrings, I wish I had more photos of you— tell me twice, ten times, how you burned your daughter with hot water,

tell me how you left that day,

tell me of your other families,

I don’t care for your faults, I just want to hear them from you.

Essie, Essie,

they’ve crucified you over here,

in this house, above the fireplace, where the family gathers

and my grandmother’s body is hurting again.

Essie, they say you made her hurt.

They say you are the hurt.

They say you are a ghost.

They believe in haunting.

Essie, Essie,

I’m here to say that I see you on the left side of the dinner table,

your napkin folded on your lap,

looking at your children with soft almond eyes,

then at your husband,

you know that you would never come back.

Essie, Essie,

your daughter says they only have two photos left of you— one on the computer and the other in the album.

She says she got your eyes, sadly not your lips, but thank god not your nose.

I watch the world move by outside of my window and I understand

why you left this home,

Cassanova,

my grandmother,

and the fireplace,

because they always believed that you were a ghost, haunting the rest of the house.

Thank you for reading and letting me into your heart.

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava

Someone is always praying.

On the purple planet, beneath the silver moon, above the feet of the sun, someone is praying far, far away for you.

You’re holding the lantern, the light wisping away to the sky, and their faces are watching you,

but you stay.

You stay in the world and watch Time speak words you don’t understand.

The tree is watching.

The stars are turning.

The galaxy is breathing, pulsating, exhaling, inhaling:

— the Lungs are realer than real.

You can feel it in your veins, can’t you?

The way everything fasts, prays, gives for you?

Hold your hand up long enough to the sky where you came from and someone will grab it and take you home.

There is no god but God.

There is no i but I.

There is no time, but Time.

There is no present, but Present.

Erratically, the world turns.

All these books, these maps, these words, these skies, these definitions, these minds, these people, these buildings, these foods, these families, these children, these paintings, these computers, these songs, these concerts, these worlds, these microscopes.

Can you feel the world turning inside of you?

The constellations aren’t so far away from you.

The constellations coming to you,

the stars dotting your nail beds.

These words don’t mean anything to a Spanish speaker.

These words don’t mean anything to you or me. I can only watch myself cry from little patterns of scribbles being repeated over and over and over

until my whole world

is these symbols

and I understand them,

because a world of symbols is the place of Eternity.

Erratically capitalizing.

We will still keep praying in ruined buildings. 

Thank you for reading and taking time out of your day to let me into your heart.

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava

Front art was drawn by Lilla Bolecz

Our first proper literary source for Norse mythology comes to us after the Christianization of Scandinavia from an Icelandic politician Snorri Sturluson who wrote The Prose Edda (circa 1220). The Prose Edda was originally written as a guide for poetry, but also was used in an attempts to calm the political tension between Iceland and Norway at the time. It retells the myths of the ancient Norsemen (Odin, Thor, Loki, Ragnarök, all that jazz) and remains one of the most detailed texts on Germanic mythology. I know a lot of people hate on Snorri because there are some suspicious elements it seems he has tweaked to not be accused of heresy (like claiming the Norse gods are advanced warriors that escaped Troy after it’s fall… yes, Trojan War Troy), but at least he wrote stuff down!

Some things are most likely not fabricated because of their appearances in other sources. One such example is the torc, or neck ring, Brísingamen. In the Prose Edda, it is mentioned that the watchman of the gods, Heimdall, fought Loki for Brísingamen which is cited as the goddess “Freyja’s necklace”. Heimdall is therefore sometimes referred to as “Seeker of Brísingamen” and Loki as “Thief of Brísingamen”. Sturluson cites his source for this as the poem Húsdrápa by Úlfr Uggason (Icelandic skald from the tenth century) who himself described the story based off of the paintings of a mead hall he once visited. So, the story of the sources is already a bit sketchy. Sturluson is citing Uggason who is interpreting a painting which is in turn interpreting a myth. Not ideal, but that’s about all we have about Brísingamen from the Prose Edda.

Did Snorri Make This Up? (▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)

Although that is it from Snorri’s angle, we can turn to the Poetic Edda, a collection of anonymous Old Norse poems written in the second half of the 13th century, but contains poetry from 800-1100 AD. The text details that once the goddess Freyja was so angry, the torc Brísingamen breaks off of her neck, most likely solidifying the association of the necklace with Freyja.

If we turn our attention to the anonymous fourteenth century short story of Sörla þáttr, it is explained (with some artistic liberties as the gods are portrayed as mortals) that Freyja obtained the necklace as a result of sleeping with the four dwarves that crafted it. It also goes on to explain that Loki stole the necklace at Odin’s demand by biting Freyja in the form of a flea while she slept and therefore causing her to move and grant access to unclasping the necklace. After Freyja discovered that Brísingamen was missing, she confronted Odin about it and he returned it after she had undertaken to start a fight between two kings that would only be stopped until a Christian warrior arrived to kill them. Obviously the Christian element was a later addition, but it is unclear if the story of the war is not.

Thank God for Other Sources ಥ_ಥ

In Beowulf, there is a story about a warrior named Háma who steals a necklace named under “Brosinga mene” from a king, but later has an existential crisis and gives the necklace to a monastery. The text mentions that Háma chose “eternal gain” by stealing the treasures and escaping the hostility of the king. The story does raise some questions about if Brísingamen and Brosinga mene have any mythological relationship to each other. One way of translating Brosinga mene is “necklace of the Brosings”, so it could refer to a group of people instead of a reference to a goddess. Although this does not give us much to work with, it further solidifies the existence of it in Germanic folklore.

As for archeology, an ancient völva (Germanic seeress) was buried in Östergötland, Sweden with her wand, some horses, and a mysterious silver pendant that depicted a woman with a necklace around her neck. Perhaps the pendant was Freyja wearing Brísingamen.

Wait, Wait, Wait— Brísingamen As Representative of a Seed? ( ఠ ͟ʖ ఠ)

Recent interpretation and speculation surrounding Brísingamen’s mythological purpose in relation to seeds has emerged. These seeds, which were originally West Indian, found their way to the shores of Western and Northern Europe. Because of their mysterious origins, the seeds have long been regarded as magic which can be seen through many Scandinavian words. In Iceland, sometimes these seeds are called lausnarsteinar or “birth stones” while in Norway and in the Faroe Islands, they are referred to as søbønner (“sea beans”) or vettenyrer (“wight/elf kidneys”). In Húsdrápa by Úlfr Uggason, the necklace is described as singasteinn, a possible misspelling for signasteinn, meaning “magical amulet/stone” and explained as hafnyra or “sea kidney”.

The writer Birger Pering states that these seeds were placed in the hands or bound to the hips of a woman in labor to lessen her pain. As Freyja is the goddess of fertility, it would make sense for the stone or seed to be associated with her. Pering also believes that it was this seed that was the cause of the fight between Heimdall and Loki.

In Scotland, these seeds came to be known as Mary’s kidneys (referring to the Virgin Mary). Although Mary is not a fertility goddess, she could bend the rules of earthly fertility, is seen as a figure protecting pregnant women, and, after the Christianization of Europe, adopted many traits of previous pagan goddesses before her (ex. in Greece, she took on similar traits of Aphrodite Urania).

The seed is thought to have been the drift seed, which are also known as sea beans or sea kidneys, just as they were called in Húsdrápa. Collections of these seeds found on the coasts of multiple Northern European countries from 1800, 1945, and 1946 have come to be recognized by museums as pertaining to “sea witchcraft” for their use as amulets aiding pregnant women in labor.

Although our list of lost literary or artistic works seems to be getting longer and longer, thus encapsulating the modern learner in more questions than answers, there is still a beautiful glimpse of what could have been happening all those centuries ago. Brísingamen is only one of the parts of mythology that is hidden away from us, but there is something so hopeful about how complex the field is. Before starting this research, I thought that I only had the Eddas as a reference, however taking time to listen to the sound of the ancient world— what we know it was, what we think could have been, what we will never know—remains in some pocket of the universe. I like to think that somewhere, out in the macrocosm, in the microcosm, the past is not the past, but a continuous present that goes beyond space and time. Maybe in this place, Brísingamen and all the little seeds left by those before us are revealed in their truest form.

ALSO, bonus super random fun fact that has nothing to do with anything in this article: I found out today that the word “weird” comes from the Old English concept wyrd, meaning ‘fate’ or ‘personal destiny’. The word akin to wyrd in Old Norse is urðr which is also the name of one of the triple fate goddesses in Norse mythology. Around the time I found this out, I started a research project about demonology in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In Macbeth, there are three prophetic women inspired off of the triple fate goddesses of mythology like the Moirai of the Greeks and possibly the Norns of the Norse. Shakespeare calls these women in his play the Weird Sisters.

Thanks for reading to my random ramble of the week 💗

Keep telling and collecting stories,

Ava

Sources:

1. Faulkes, Anthony and Barnes, Michael A New Introduction to Old Norse. Part III: Glossary and Index of Names. Fourth ed. Viking Society for Northern Research, 2007.

2. Snorri Sturluson, and Jesse L Byock. The Prose Edda. Penguin, 2005.

3. The Poetic Edda. Translated by Carolyne Larrington, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.

4. Meaney, Audrey. “Drift Seeds and the Brísingamen.” Folklore, vol. 94, no. 1, 1983, pp. 33–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1260165, https://doi.org/10.2307/1260165.

5. “1945 - Sea Bean: Amulet - Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.” Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, 23 Mar. 2021, museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/object/sea-bean-amulet-2/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

6. Niles, John, et al. BEOWULF a N ILLUSTRATED EDITION TRANSLATED by SEAMUS HEANEY Illustrations Edited By. 1999.