My Soul Is Beneath The Waves

“This is Apollo, the soul’s darkness and the soul’s clarity. His essence is such that he can be darkness and clarity at the same time.”

— Karl Kerenyi, Apollo: The Wind, The Spirit, and the God

Dionysos, Apollon, and Hermes—doodles that help me stay sane in class. I'm very happy with this, though it's unfinished right now. i hope to transfer it over to some good paper and have some fun with colors <3

. please do not repost for any reason

Dionysos Kolotes

Early in January, when I was in the deepest throes of my hyperfixation on researching everything about Dionysos, I found this post by @bacchant-of-dionysus with a nice, neat list of epithets of Dionysos, with their Greek spelling (much appreciated), meanings (even more appreciated), and small prayers you could say with the epithets (I was about to weep tears of joy). As I was reading through it, I saw the epithet of "Dionysos Kolotes", Kolotes meaning "spotted gecko", which gave me serious pause. It almost seemed comedical - where in Dionysos' mythology were geckoes of any kind even mentioned, especially spotted ones? And why the specification?

When I came back around to this epithet while working on my series of prayers, I decided to take to the internet to see if I could dig up any more information on why Kolotes was an epithet of Dionysos. After a few searches, I came across this page on Theoi.com about Asklabos, who had been turned into a spotted gecko. I'll copy it down below, it's not very long:

"Askalabos was the son of a peasant-woman named Mimse who the goddess Demeter visited upon first arriving in Attika during her long search for Persephone. The woman offered her a drink of barley-groats, and the goddess hurriedly quaffed it down to relieve her thirst. The boy rudely mocked her as a glutton and in her anger she cast the drink at him, transforming him into a spotted gecko."

This is interesting, because, while Dionysos was mentioned nowhere here, the story of Demeter looking for Persephone was in fact a part of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which He does have some connections to. But that still begs the question - why is it Dionysos who is given the epithet of Kolotes, rather than Demeter, who it would seemingly be more fitting to?

In my own opinion, this epithet is one that seems to connect to Dionysos' habit of being, in some ways, a God of hospitality. Frequently, when He appears in myths, He is seen judging people on their hospitality (usually lack of). For example, in the Bacchae, one of Pentheus' greatest evils was his lack of hospitality towards the maenads, and he was ripped apart. Lykurgous, too, attacked Dionysos and His maenads, and was punished with madness. And the Tyrrhenian pirates, who kidnapped Dionysos to sell him to slavery, found themselves turned into dolphins. In all of these examples, Dionysos is the one who carries out the punishment of those who have violated Xenia. The spotted gecko, meanwhile, was once a boy who mocked a Goddess as she quenched her thirst after frantically searched for Her missing daughter.

So in my opinion, Dionysos holds the epithet of Kolotes not because He is someone who would also mock Demeter on Her worst days, but because He reminds others not to do the same, as a God who seems to oversee Xenia. Just as we see dolphins not as an inspiration to go out and kidnap someone, but rather as a reminder to not take advantage of others, the spotted gecko is a reminder to always be courteous to other people, even when their actions seem strange or desperate to us. We do not know what they have undergone.

jack grayle, the hekataeon

Thinking about him.

Missing him.

Zeus is a wonderful God! (Aka he and his worshippers don't deserve hate, ever) I mostly worship him as Ktesios and Astrapaios but he's many things:

Zeus is a god of fate, of law and justice.

Zeus is a protecter, he is a king, he is a god of hospitality who protects fugitives, strangers and all who need it.

He is a just and fair God (even if we can't see it), he is the lightning, the thunder and the rain.

He is, many things but he is: The Good God

ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔪𝔭𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔄𝔭𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔬

'' I whose rays make the lines of thunder, And whose altars the universe worships; I whose greatest gods would fear war, Can I take mortals without dishonour?

I attack in spite of myself their proud envy, Their audacity overcame my nature and fate; For my virtue which is only to give life, Is now forced to kill them.

I free my altars from these troublesome obstacles, And trampling on these brigands whom my darts will punish, From now on everyone will come to my oracles, And prevent the harm that may befall him.

It is I who penetrate the hardness of the trees, Tear from their hearts a learned voice, Who silences the winds, who makes the marbles speak, And who traces to fate the conduct of kings.

It is I whose warmth gives life to roses, And raise up the buried fruits, I give duration and color to things, And bring to life the radiance of the whiteness of the lilies.

So little that I am absent, a cloak of darkness Holds with cold horror heaven and earth covered, The most beautiful orchards are funereal objects, And when my eye is closed everything dies in the universe.''

''Apollon Champion'', Théophile de Viau, (french poet, 1590-1626)

Bust of Apollo, marble. Late XVII/ XVIII°

the real reason mikey way used to be so quiet and stoic was because his jeans were too tight for anything to fit in his pockets, so he held it all in his mouth

aphrodite doodle from this neat little comic (i didnt know her canon colours </3)