a-gnosis

[a-gnosis]

Queen of the Dead part 2, 48

[a-gnosis]

I printed my own Christmas cards this year. Some of my cartoonist friends do this every year, but I usually forget about it until it's too late. The last time I did it was 2014 (ten years ago!). Since I used an old pic that most people already had seen, I wanted to make different drawings on the back side on each of them. The second one is probably the best drawing of a tomte (gnome) that I have ever done.

[a-gnosis]

This year’s unofficial Christmas pic.

Persephone: “Hey, Hades. Look who’s under the mistletoe.” Hades: “…” Persephone: “My pussy!<3”

I’m so damn funny sometimes.

[a-gnosis]

Queen of the Dead part 2, 47

I have started drawing on the comic again, but I’m taking it very slow since I still easily get overwhelmed. I'm still not sure about some of the previous scenes and I might redraw them later, but for now I have at least six new pages for you. ^^

[a-gnosis]

I visited the Christmas market at Högbo Bruk and bought some things. A wreath, a Yule goat (its name is Egon apparently), lussekatter (saffron buns), and a little statuette of the god Freyr with a hard-on. Typical Christmas stuff. ;)

[a-gnosis]

I have started drawing on Queen of the Dead again, but I'm taking it very slow since I still easily get overwhelmed. I have sketched six pages, then I got a bit stuck again. And of course it's the scenes with Sisyphus that's causing problems. Or rather, the scenes in Corinth. I have a hard time getting a picture of what ancient Corinth and Acrocorinth looked like in the Archaic and Classical period. Ancient Corinth was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BCE and later rebuilt as a Roman colony, so all the reconstructions of the city that I found was how it looked like after that. One option is to use ancient Athens as inspiration, I guess.

I might ink the six pages that I have, just to get some pages done. And because it's much more fun to ink than to sketch.

[a-gnosis]

Some more old Lucia pics:

Lucia celebration some time between 1909 and 1915. Photo: Ingeborg Enander.

Lucia celebration at Skansen 1896. Photo: Frans G. Klemming.

Three year old Hjalmar Carlander dressed as Lucia 1879. Photo: A. Jensen.

Man dressed as Lucia in the 1870s. Photo: B.A. Lindgren.

[a-gnosis]

The records preserved in the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore show that in the old farmer society of the 19th and early 20th century, there were many different notions about who Lucia really was. Since this time of the year was already associated with trolls, the dead, and evil spirits, the Lucia figure was sometimes seen as a frightening one. At some places she was believed to lead the Lussi Ride, a company of ghostly or supernatural beings that rode across the sky during the Lussi Night (a kind of variant of the Wild Hunt). Of course I couldn’t resist to try to draw that.

[a-gnosis]

1. Lucia celebration in Järpås some time between 1890 and 1905. Photo: Carl Victorin. 2. Lucia celebration in Broddetorp in 1918. Photo: Olof Johansson. 3. Luciacard from the beginning of the 20th century. Photo: Alfred B Nilson.

The Swedish Lucia celebration has a very varied history and took its present day form in the beginning of the 20th century. In the old farmer society it was in some places common for young people to dress up (sometimes as the opposite sex, or to different kinds of craftsmen or even to demonic figures) and go from house to house where they sang and begged for food and booze. If they weren’t let in, they could get into mischief. Quite different from our modern Lucia processions.

[a-gnosis]

To celebrate Saint Lucy’s Day (Sankta Lucia as we say in Sweden) on December 13 was one thing that I always looked forward to as a kid. Even if it’s totally wrong, I just couldn’t resist to draw Dionysos and the Erinyes dressed up as Lucia and her attendants, waking their “parents” Hades and Persephone early in the morning (The Erinyes are kind of Hades’s adoptive daughters in my version and Zagreus/Dionysos actually is Persephone’s son. A quite weird and bizarre story, a bit of it is explained in my comic Destroyer of Light).

Saint Lucy was a Christian martyr who lived in Syracuse 283-304 CE. According to legend she refused to marry and gave her riches to the poor. However, the Scandinavian celebration of her feast day has blended together with other customs that took place around this time of the year, so it doesn’t have so very much to do with the saint. In the old Julian calender, her feast once coincided with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year when it was believed that trolls, evil spirits, and in some accounts also the spirits of the dead, were particularly active. The tradition of lussevaka (“Lussi Watch”), to stay awake through the Lussi Night and guard oneself and the household against evil, has survived to modern times by throwing parties until daybreak.

Because of the long, dark winters in Scandinavia, Saint Lucy’s Day has become a festival of light (believe me, we really need that at this time of the year when we don’t get many hours of daylight). Processions are held with young women dressed in white gowns, holding candles in their hands. At the head of the procession walks Lucia, also dressed in a white gown but with a red sash (to symbolize her martyrdome) and a crown of candles on her head. Men also take part in the procession as “star boys” in cone-shaped hats and sticks with stars. Or they can be dressed as tomtenissar (“gnomes” is probably the best English translation). Lately the question has been raised if a man/boy could be Lucia and women/girls could go as gnomes or star boys if they want to. Some conservative people are very touchy about this, but if you ask me the answer is: Of course they can! Well, you can already tell that from my drawing where Dionysos is dressed as Lucia and Megaira as a star boy.

Anyway, these processions take place in schools, in churches and sometimes at home (with the children dressing up and singing for parents and relatives. When I was a kid we also visited the other houses in the neighbourhood). A national Lucia is elected, but every town also has their regional Lucia who walks in a public procession, visits working places, old people’s homes and such things. They sing Lucia songs (the most famous one is “The night walks with heavy steps”, the melody taken from the Neapolitan song “Santa Lucia”). The lyrics are often about how Lucia as a herald of Christmas overcomes the darkness and the cold with her light. Lots of ginger cookies and lussekatter (a special saffron bun connected to Saint Lucy’s Day) are also eaten on this day.

I’ve taken most of the English translation of the Lucia song from this site.

[a-gnosis]

maybe since Adonis' myth might also have some Mesopotamian/Near Eastern origins, "Adonis" could just be another god similar to Ariadne and his older exploits got intertwined with his relationship with Persephone (platonic? sexual? :shrug:) because of mortals' misunderstandings.

Yes, the cult and myth of Adonis seem to have been borrowed from the Mesopotamian fertility god Tammuz and adapted to the Greek mythological and religious framework. So if you don't want to include Adonis you could simply say that the Greek version never existed, that the myth was about Tammuz/Dumuzi, Ishtar/Inanna and Ereshkigal, and that the mortals made the rest up.

Personally I've always felt that Adonis' myth is a bit too similar to that of Persephone to really fit in my world (that is, they both have this thing of descending to the underworld, the dying of vegetation, and spending half their time among the dead and half among the living going on).

[a-gnosis]

Just had a dumb thought that I think you would enjoy.

I had just rememebered that Adonis was a thing in myth and big part of it was that Aphrodite and Persephone eventually started arguing over who he should belong to, after he died.

Now, the way you characterize them, I cannot see them arguing over some guy.

Persephone has Hades and she's more than content with him, she doesn't need another man to satisfy her.

And Aphrodite not only has Ares, she can have whoever she wants, barring asexuals...unless they're up for it, of course.

So, I like to imagine that Adonis is your world is just a guy (maybe he was lucky enough to catch Aphrodite's attention, who knows) who has a massive ego and he somehow started a rumor that both Aphrodite and Persephone have fought over him.

How that started without him dying, first, I have no clue, but I just love the image of Aphrodite and Persephone looking at each other like 'is this guy for real?'

That's definitely one way the story of Adonis could go (and I think that in some versions of the myth Aphrodite and Persephone started fighting over him before he was dead). However, I'm one of the few H&P fans who actually like the idea of Persephone sometimes feeling sexual attraction to other men than her husband, so back in 2017 I suggested a different scenario: That Hades and Persephone maybe could share Adonis. Since Adonis sometimes is said to be very androgynous, he maybe could be appealing to both of them (though it would of course take some time for Hades to warm up to him).

I never truly planned to include the myth of Adonis, so this was just some speculating for fun, but I thought it was very entertaining since it was so different from how the majority imagines Hades and Persephone. Of course, you could also let Persephone and Adonis have a mother-son relationship, since in at least one version Aphrodite hands over baby Adonis to Persephone for safekeeping (but considering what my version of Persephone thinks about kids, that wouldn't work in my world).

[a-gnosis]

Bonus: I drew myself as a steampunk rat. ^^

[a-gnosis]

Have I told you that I live only 20 km from Gävle?

Since I've grown up with the Gävle Goat I've never seen it as that remarkable, but it has apparently become a bit of a celebrity even outside of Sweden lately.

[a-gnosis]

Today I visited one of the "fire evenings" at Högbo Bruk for some Yule spirit. It's an evening when they light the place up, keep open longer than usual, and sell locally produced foods and handicrafts. Every winter the artist Margareta Persson makes an enormous gingerbread house that is displayed during those evenings.

[a-gnosis]

Daughter of the void Left out and annoyed Vengeant, quick to resent

Torch and snake and knife Controverse and strife For my pleasure and merriment

Morlocks - "The Golden Goddess"

My version of Eris was inspired both by the Greek myths and by Discordianism, a belief system from the 1960s in which chaos and discord are thought to be just as important as order. When I recently heard the song "The Golden Goddess" (about Discordian Eris) by the industrial rock band Morlocks, I just had to draw my version of Eris.

[a-gnosis]

16: Gerd and Freyr

Gerd said:

'Barri is the name, as we both know, of a wind-calm grove; and after nine nights, there to Niord's son Gerd will give love's pleasure.'

Skírnismál 39, translated by Carolyne Larrington

In this poem Freyr falls in love with Gerd, the daughter of a jötunn, and sends his old friend and servent Skirnir to woo her. Gerd agrees after Skirnir threatens to curse her with a repulsive husband and unbearable sexual frustration. Several scholars have suggested that the poem was intended for dramatic presentation, perhaps as a sort of hieros gamos since Gerd's name has been etymologically associated with the earth and enclosures.