Back and Front endpaper I did for Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara, featuring in ToBeeRead May book box.\

Poseidon and Dionysus sketches ✏️✏️✏️

I love the sea horse on the side of his throne.

In honor of naming my fire chariot after it, here’s some information on Mt. Etna!

The name Etna likely comes from the Greek word, αἴθω (aithō), meaning "I burn". Some researchers suggest that the name is derived from the Phoenician word attuna meaning "furnace" or "chimney". The volcano was named after Aetna, a sea nymph who was a possible consort of Lord Hephaestus.

After Lord Zeus defeated Typhon in the battle for power over the cosmos and entrapped him under the mountain, through Typhon’s anger, his breaths of fire led to the mountain becoming an active volcano.

Hesiod describes this fall:

When Lord Hephaestus was thrown from the cliffs of Mount Olympus, the caves of Etna became his home. The volcano’s frequent eruptions were perfect for using his forges to craft the tools, armor, and other metal works for the Gods and others who needed it (like Achilles’ armor). Here he worked alongside the Cyclops’ to craft magnificent works. Almost every metal object used by the Gods was crafted by Lord Hephaestus.

Other fun facts:

- In Arabic, it is called جبل النار Jabal al-Nār ('the Mountain of Fire').

- Mt. Etna is still a a very active volcano, although generally seen as not dangerous. Over a six-month period in 2021, Etna erupted so much volcanic material that its height increased by about 100 ft.

- It is one of the tallest active volcanoes in Europe, located on the island of Sicily in Italy.

- The volcano has erupted smoke rings on several occasions and in the 1970s, it was the site of some of the first recorded smoke rings on a volcano. It is extremely rare for volcanoes to be able to do this!

Please check out Crow Time on Webtoons!

You can also help my out by voting for my comic as best Comedy comic of 2022 by clicking this link. If you have the webtoon app, you can also vote by clicking on the canvas tab, followed by the Canvas Awards 2022 banner. 

La Centauresse et le Faune, c. 1849. Augustin Courtet in Parc de la Tête d’Or, Lyon, France via Flickr

✨These are going to make some Hellenics mad but the visuals are stunning🤩

List from top to bottom:

- Zeus - Hera - Poseidon - Aphrodite - Apollo - Ares - Hefesto - Dionysus - Artemis - Hermes

Additions to the group (I assume from the image limit):

Athena

Demeter

Eris

Eros

Hades

Hestia

Nike

Pan

Persephone

Themis

wow! These are stunning! I love how they captured the majesty and power! And the special effects look amazing too!

Omggg the new additions are amazing

Did anyone else give a delighted cry of "Cerberus!" when he turned up? :D

in this house we stan dionysus!

#Hermes: he’s dead Dionysus you don’t actually have to do this #Dionysus [polishing his giant wooden dildo]: I made a PROMISE (x)

This is the also the myth of the creation of the dildo. And in some versions of the myth, Prosymnus’ soul was so overjoyed, that he was transferred to Elysium. That’s right, Dionysus rode Prosymnus’ pseudo-dick so good that he was moved to the Blessed AfterlifeTM

dionysus: can’t believe prosymnus died before I could keep my promise to let him bone me the nymphs: you don’t have to, you know dionysus, oiling up the world’s first dildo: no I’m gonna

Prosymnus’ soul literally ascended

Dionysus: What do you desire as payment brave psychopomp? I will give anything in my power as a god. How about a lyre that plays itself? Or a font of endless wine?

Prosymnus, who has been sweating with barely contained horny for the entire boat ride: 

Greek Gods, pinup style. 

(Follow-up to the Norse God pinup collection, Dat Ás. Also on DeviantArt and Etsy)

✦ The Mares Of Diomedes ✦

Charon’s Obol: How ancients paid the ferryman!

Charon’s obol (aka danake) is the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources explain it as a payment or a bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the River Styx, which divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.

More precious gold or silver coins were seldom buried with the deceased so a type of “ghost money” was made instead by making an impression of a real coin into thin gold foil. These types of pseudo-coins were too flimsy to use as currency. This particular gold piece (c. 5th-1st century BC) was obviously modeled from the bee drachms from Ephesos (or Arados). Actual coins were also buried with the dead as well, though they were generally small denominations.

Two more examples of Charon’s Obols can be seen here and here.

Perseus and Medusa 

the myth of persephone is about the trauma of the separation of mothers and daughters by marriage and this is the hill i will die on

To be clear I’m not against retellings that reinterpret the relationship between Hades and Persephone and present it as consensual and healthy– I do think there’s something incredibly powerful about looking at a story that’s been passed down to us through millennia about a girl being kidnapped and raped and saying “no. No, that’s not the kind of story I want to hear, that’s not the kind of story I want to tell, and that’s certainly not the kind of story I want my daughters to grow up on.” (Although I think it’s disappointing that these are now the only sorts of Persephone retellings we get, and at this point it’s really not a particularly revolutionary take, given how often it’s been done.)

But I also think we do a great disservice to the women of the ancient world by not remembering how this story, in that form, mirrored their very real pain. I’ve been thinking recently about how we can tell that women participated in the formation of their culture’s folklore because women’s trauma is embedded in it. (In Greek terms, the stories of Leto and Alcmene very clearly come out of women’s traumatic experiences with childbirth, and there are elements of women’s traumatic experiences of sexual assault embedded in, for example, the stories of Daphne or Callisto or Artemis and Actaeon) And the story of Persephone comes out of women’s experiences of being permanently separated from their mothers and daughters at marriage. (See also this post from @gardenvarietycrime.​)

For an ancient woman sending her daughter off to be married, knowing that she will see her only rarely and that the odds of death in childbirth were high, Persephone meant something. For an ancient girl leaving her mother and her entire world for a man she may never have met knowing the same, Persephone meant something. I do think a lot of the conflation of death and marriage in the ancient world comes out of this: that a girl is dead to her mother and her family whether she leaves them to go to a husband’s house or the house of Hades. Maybe it’s a consolation to know that someone else has done this before you, to know that a goddess once lost her daughter and a goddess once lost her mother the same way you are losing yours. And that they survived it.

Essentially I think we need to remember that this myth (like all myths and all folklore) is not necessarily entirely the product of men, that women’s voices and women’s trauma remain embedded in it despite all of our written sources being men’s tellings of the story. And when we retell it we risk losing those voices if we are not careful and if we dismiss the myth as it survives today as solely men’s version of the story.

in this house we stan dionysus!

#Hermes: he’s dead Dionysus you don’t actually have to do this #Dionysus [polishing his giant wooden dildo]: I made a PROMISE (x)

This is the also the myth of the creation of the dildo. And in some versions of the myth, Prosymnus’ soul was so overjoyed, that he was transferred to Elysium. That’s right, Dionysus rode Prosymnus’ pseudo-dick so good that he was moved to the Blessed AfterlifeTM

Dionysus: You got troubled spirits? Cause I got a dildo.

Bring in the New Winter

The myth of Achilles, but instead of holding him by the heel, Thetis sumberges him fully so that Achilles is completely invulnerable and Thetis has one invulnerable hand.

She only needs one oven mitt when taking cookies out of the oven.

REALLY, WHY DID SHE NOT DO THIS?