It’s a Loki!

Close ups on the piece here:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/154068090/loki-pendant

This is just a gloating type of post because this thing took beyond two weeks of ‘paint it, no-it’s wrong-let-it-alone, repaint it’ business before the right tones took shape.
In Loki-style, making it was a bitch from the beginning to the end, but I feel pretty self-satisfied.

Also, I don’t feel very up to posting about ‘meaty content’ lately but I missed my blogging so … you get visual post with commentary. Best I can manage atm … although I am collecting interesting info on Dionysos and la tarantella, and working on ritual dance in general it will likely take some time before I can solidify those experiences into written records.You just might be subjected to pictures of my Dionysos and Ariadne artwork instead.

Whereas Seastruck introduces her sacred art shop, finally AND explores more the link between art and initiation

I am the annoyingly picky sort when it comes to shopping for my shrine items, particularly in regards to choosing the involved deity statuary/icons.

I start shopping with a specific ‘feeling’ for that deity and unless the icons reflect at least part of that, I can’t reconcile myself with the shrine-making. With this annoyance in mind, a few months ago I decided to just spare myself and start sculpting my own shrine items and jewelry, as I found the idea of wearing above the heart chakra a pendant representing a certain deity potentially useful to strenghten the connection.

And then the bug struck me and I just started doing pendants for deities that had nothing to do with those I worked with, simply because I couldn’t shake off the ideas unless I pinned them into clay.

Interesting discoveries that occurred during the process:

1) every time I started with a precise concept of Who I was sculpting in mind, I ended up realizing half-way that it was actually Somebody Else face, but if I went at it with an ‘open mind’ I could be pleasantly surprised at the things I didn’t realize I knew about my subject. For example, my Loki pendant (that I am still trying to paint suitably- it’s a pain) looks nothing like I ever imagined Loki to look – it has Him with animal ears, a Joker-like mouth and only vaguely humanoid features twisted by flames. Yet, the final result gave me a really good mental image of chaos and trickery-ness.
Or, I ended up doing half of Poseidon’s face as blurring into waters, just to eventually realize that , yes only a very limited part of His domain has anything to do with humanity.

2) Resulting pendants do somehow channeled a small part of the represented deity energy, even if I didn’t go at it with that purpose in mind- I even had to wrap up my Odin pendant for a time because it gave really strong ‘Wild and furious wanderer ‘ vibes.
This kinda brought me back to the question of whether inspiration is really the riding of a current that comes from gods, as hellenes believed, or my subconscious just knows better. I find it particularly interesting since a large part of my spiritual part involves studying the bond between art and initiation.

3) I love doing wall-masks and I am soon starting a series with those now my pendants frenzy ended. Also, I plan for mini shrine plaques in the same style of my pendants if I can manage it.

4) However I would like to hang everything I made on my apartment walls, it is not very practical to do so… hencefore my idea of making a shop out of this: http://www.etsy.com/shop/GoldenSwanSongs

Predictably, there are a lot of pieces about Apollon in there right now but I am starting a series about Dionysos and Ariadne quite soon (I have wanted to make a figurine about Her for the longest time).

And since it’s shameless self promotion time, you get to have me parading around my favorite works *smirks*

Persephone:

Hades:

Apollon:

Poseidon:

Aphrodite:

Artemis:

Odin:

So now you know what I was up to in my long online silence.

ETA: Okay, those pictures are NOT upside down in the original version. No idea of why wordpress ‘gets them wrong’ and refuses to let me edit me into rightness. I am hoping it’s a temporary glitch, i’ll try fixing them later.

Hera Basileia (Queen) In Squares and Lines

“She wanted to say ‘I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage’ instead she said…” ― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

(Particular From Hera Pendant at GoldenSwanSongs,
Sacred Art For The Modern Polytheist :http://www.etsy.com/shop/GoldenSwanSongs )

“But once I took the crown to which I had been schooled and bred,
I found it heavy on the heart, though light upon the head.

Although I am the head of state, in truth I am the least,
The true Queen knows her people fed, before she sits to feast.
The good Queen knows her people safe, before she takes her rest,
Thinks twice and thrice and yet again, before she makes request.”
Song by Mercedes Lackey

Ariadne Poetry Cycle: Hieros Gamos

You would think, by the way they tell our tale today,
That it happened at all once, the way my husband disfigured me,
Despoiling me of my humanity even while He reveled into it.
You would think I died just so I could rise again, in His arms, to last longer.
But no, it’s close enough but not the truth.

We were … together and that’s all what it was.

In existing side by side alone we were two halves of the same thing,
And we became more and more of that, every day.

My insanity and His sanity chasing each other,
As hunter and prey,
Or maybe as masks of the same release,
The Seducer and The Seduced trading places until we didn’t remember the difference between my perdition and his rediscovered innocence.

And it was those days I woke up covered in blood,
enclosed in the greedy, cherished prison of His arms
Only sky and trees as our home’ roof,
Only the butchered limbs of the beasts we had tore apart side by side in the night as our company,
And the forest was silent and infinite before the terrifying scream of our joined lust,
That I knew myself for the first time.

His nurse and His mother and His slayer… I was the hands that re-made my god.

I was Ariadne!
Most Holy, Most Terrifying creature -
A monster with a tender heart!

And I understood finally,
How much of a gift was my madness.
How precious it was, this blessing
Of having nothing standing in the way of dancing with my fate.

How would have any sane woman not recoiled before the impossible arrogance of this truth?

And I heard Death gliding slowly toward me…
But not to ruin the happiness of our wild nest,
Only to make it complete.
Because I am Ariadne,
The other half of His Mysteries,
And there’s no part of My Beloved that can ever be a stranger to me.

Death?
It flows in Our shared blood,
Through Our shared heart,
As much the purest essence of Life does.

Hieros Gamos … just the word to say it -
Nature consigned Us to Each Other,
So We could be two sides of the same coin and yet … the very same reality.

Fictional And Not – On gods and faith

‘Well, all deities are fictional, after all so…’

lines that start like this usually end in ‘ there’s no substantial difference between Freya and Aphrodite, if not in the cultural slant/understanding’ or ‘there’s no difference between praying to Zeus or Batman or any other fictional entity that was believed in for long time’.

*scratches head*

I think those arguments originate all in the same place of the human heart – we spent so much time as a sentient race to put distance between the physical and the spiritual, the scientific and the religious, the rational and the subconscious, that even when we approach the world of those who are so ‘Other than us’ we just can’t reconcile ourselves mentally with the idea we are not the biggest player on the field.

We grew so used to think that man controls nature, and that man is creator and arbiter of reality than we find genuinely more natural to think that we shaped gods with our need and belief than looking at evidence and admitting it is rather unlikely, given how big They are in comparison to even generations of humans.

We are, as a race, so used to that illusion of control and mastery in all things that we find on some level the idea of gods as ‘really real’ (with personalities and agendas! and the ability to bestow real inspiration, in the original hellenic sense of the word!) even quite fantastical.

There’s a part of me that finds this absolutely hilarious.
There’s another part of me that finds it deeply sad.

And that’s all I have to add to this argument.

Art and Initiation, Entwined

How do you tell the difference between what is craft (in writing, painting, sculpting, etc.) and what is art?

Art reaches inside some twisty, deep place inside you, subtly or violently, and just touches you. It moves you from a place to another place, emotionally or even physically, even for a minute or a second. It twists your perception of something so you leave it with that precious sense of ‘ah! this is what I didn’t see before! And now? I can’t to un-see it, ever again!’.
Maybe that feeling takes root inside you and produces a new root, or maybe it fades away but in the end, for a moment, Art gave you a window on something greater, a seed of change.

And Initiation? What is it? Where’s the difference between a passage rite and ‘It’, the real deal?

Those who go through one notice it is not really about the ritual. The Initiator can be a spirit, a god, or an human teacher but the substance of the process -because it is a process, more than a single moment in time- doesn’t change.

Your initiator uses a microcosmic situation – one that can be perfectly ordinary in nature and often is – as the mirror of a macrocosmic truth. Your initiator uses a simulation of something to trigger you into jumping from a ‘before it’ to a ‘after it’. You cross a threshold, you see Something, and what you have seen stays with you, changing you if you allow it (sometimes, even if you don’t allow it)

What have Art and Initiation got in common?

They both use a lie to tell the truth. They weave illusions to break delusions and trigger discovery (about yourself or the world). They crack the texture of what you know to lift the veil off your eyes. They are revolutions.

It’s not a surprise therefore, that both concepts are both intrinsically bound to Apollinean and Dionysian fields of influence and that Apollon and Dionysos can be so equally present in those two territories. Or that mystics, witches and shamans are so often artists as well.

All Art is potentially initiatory and all Initiations are a work of Art.

Because… Art and Initiation? Two faces of the same medal.

Apollon Hekatos (Shooter from Afar) In Squares and Lines

First Hera Oracle Session : 10 May 2013

I am taking a bit of time before starting because I want to build the connection up but once I start, there’s going to be one oracular session for every month, for at least three months. As per usual, you can send inquiries to the email on my About page or you can just ask to hear from The Queen.

I am also going to expressly ask my querents for feedback too, since this is the first session for Hera and I want to know whether my preparation is sufficient.

Hera Akraia (Dwelling In Heights) In Squares and Lines

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” -Sun Tzu

“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.” ― Joanne Harris, Runemarks

On a personal note, one of the first things I noticed about Hera is that She is ALWAYS seemingly two steps ahead in whatever chess game is being played, even when other gods are involved. That … leaves quite the impression once you have a chance to notice it and so now I mainly link Her Akraia epithet to Her dwelling in heights, and so foreseeing keenly well long-term repercussions of events, like She is effectively watching everything from a supreme vantage point. I am really looking forward starting my oracular practices with Her.

Delia/Thargelia contest

Reblogged from Beloved in Light:

So even though I have a terrible track record so far of folks participating in contests, I thought maybe that was because I haven't created the prize way before hand for people to see and feel driven by the want. So this time I have. This was made so that it could be worn around the neck (hence the reason the top coil is shaped as it is, or set on an altar.

Read more… 123 more words

Lykeia holds a wonderful poetry contest to honor the birth of Apollon ... join!