Heqet (Heket)

A goddess of childbirth and fertility, depicted as a frog, or a woman with the head of a frog. According to one tradition, she was the wife of Khnum, the creator god of Abu (Elephantine). He created each person on his potter’s wheel, and she breathed life into them before they were placed in their mother’s womb. Pregnant women wore amulets depicting Heqet for protection, and during the Middle Kingdom ritual ivory knives and clappers inscribed with her name were used to ward off evil during childbirth. She could also bring on labour and offer protection during labour. 

Heqet was depicted as a frog because, to the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile.

Xipe Totec “our lord the flayed one” as pictured in the codex Borgia. He’s also known as Red Tezcatlipoca. His direction is east. He is a god of agriculture, life-death-birth, and fertility.

He represents renewal and spring, as well as the growth to manhood for young men. Worshiped especially during the rainy season in March. The sacrificed were foreign warriors, often captured, and forced to participate in a gladiatorial games. He was then tied to a rope and given little to defend himself while he fought off four richly dressed Aztec warriors.

After the gladiator lost, he would be cut open and his still beating heart would be given to Xipe Totec according to Sahagun of the Florentine codex.

Lemminkäinen is a prominent figure in Finnish mythology. He is one of the heroes of the Kalevala, where his character is a composition of several separate heroes of oral poetry. He is usually depicted as young and good-looking, with wavy red hair.

The original, mythological Lemminkäinen is a shamanistic figure. In the Kalevala, he has been blended together with epic war-heroes Kaukomieli/Kaukamoinen and Ahti Saarelainen.

Pantheon Mesopotamia

art is mine.

these precious darlings are my redisgn of the anunnaki gods

you know what really gets my goat?

el chupacabra

Stick-gods ~ God of Embalming

I DREW ALL THE AESIR!!!! and Hel

Well, no, not all of them, just most of them XD

This is my own personal interpretations of them. I sketched them out in my sketchbook then scanned them and colored them in Photoshop. And I’m finally done! Yay!

I think I might have erased Frigga’s name on accident, so that’s who the goddess with no name (next to Odin) is XD

Merrow (from Gaelic murúch) or Murrough (Galloway) is the Scottish and Irish Gaelic equivalent of the mermaid and mermen of other cultures. These beings are said to appear as human from thewaist up but have the body of a fish from the waist down. They have a gentle, modest, affectionate and benevolent disposition.

There are other names pertaining to them in Gaelic: Muir-gheilt, Samhghubha, Muidhuachán, and Suire. They would seem to have been around for millennia because according to the bardic chroniclers, when the Milesians first landed on Irish shores the Suire, or sea-nymphs, played around them on their passage.

The merrow were capable of attachment to human beings and there are reports of them inter-marrying and living among humans for many years. However, most times they eventually return to their former homes beneath the sea.

{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrow}   

Inuit Mythology: Mahaha, Tuniit, and Other Creatures.

Inuit Mythology has proven time and time again to be an important element in society for the Inuit. Although it had more importance during the early years of the tribe, many of the Inuit Myths are still taken seriously to this day.

This Inuit had quite a few more myths than the other tribes, which focused primarily on the creation aspect of society.

There are a variety of different creatures that comprise these Inuit Myths such as the Mahaha, Ijiraat, Taqriaqsuit, Gallupilluk, Inupasugjuk, and Tuniit. Exploring these creatures is an important task to fulfill for any individual whom wishes to know more about this aspect of the Inuit tribe.

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Qallupilluit

In Inuit mythology, the Quallupilluit is a creature that lives beneath the ice. It takes many forms, depending on the storyteller, and snatches wandering children who venture out too far, alone. The story of the Quallupilluit served as a cautionary tale, to keep Inuit children from playing too close to dangerous cracks in ice.

In medieval culture, an event like a royal christening is not a private party; it’s the public social event of the year. To not invite any person of rank to such an event is a deadly insult.

Maleficent is certainly someone you wouldn’t want at a party, but she’s also someone powerful enough that only a fool would ever dare treat her with such blatant disrespect. The only way the King and Queen could possibly have gotten away with not inviting Maleficent was to not invite any of the fairies at all; inviting the other fairies and excluding her is explicitly taking sides in the conflict between the fairy factions.

Which means they made themselves her sworn enemies, and she responded by treating them as such from then on. If you actually get into analyzing the social dynamics of the scene, it’s very clear that Maleficent was willing to show mercy at first by giving the King and Queen a chance to apologize for their disrespect to her. She doesn’t curse Aurora until after she gives them that chance and they throw it back in her face with further disrespect.

And yeah, if the King and Queen had done the properly respectful thing and invited her, Maleficent would have given Aurora a scary awesome present. Moreover so would the other fairies, because at that point both sides would be using it as an opportunity to show off and one-up each other. What they gave her before Maleficent showed up was basically just trivial party favors by fairy standards.

How do you know so much about the social dynamics of medieval fairies

How don’t you

Not just that, Maleficent is a fairy. Whilst Flora, Fauna and Merryweather represent the Victorian revision of fairies as kind, helpful and friendly to humans, Maleficent is the Fair Folk from traditional folklore: unpredictable, dangerous, vicious, primal and very much operating on a moral code very different to that of humans.  Cursing a baby for the passive aggressive rich people behaviour of her parents, and then “punishing” the girl’s betrothed to boot is very much typical behaviour of the Fair Folk: we are talking about the creatures that stole babies and replaced them with changelings in the dead of night, controlled the forces of nature and are capable of catastrophic acts of retribution for a slight, real or imagined.   Even the few humans they take a liking to are not safe: folklore fairies are distinctly non-sentimental, and decades of charity and faithful service can be undone and earn fury fairy wrath with one simple act of breaking a fairy bargain or personal standard, unthinking or otherwise.  If a fairy says you are not to leave any eggshells lying out under a full moon after showering you with riches, you better do as they fucking say or you will be very, very, very sorry.  In fairy code, you can be punished for a loved one’s act of “transgression”, as Aurora and Philip found out.  

I would have loved Maleficent to not do the stupid blah blah Wicked ripoff crap and focus on her lore as a fairy witch: one way i would do that is focus on the traditional weakness to iron (that’s why steel types are strong against fairy types folks): the very touch of iron is painful to a fairy and the slightest wound with the substance is deadly to them.  One way I would show this is when Flora and friends present Philip with the Sword of Truth, they are very careful not to touch it with their bare hands, and usually keep it wrapped up (and even then they get a very uncomfortable prickling feel when they touch it through the fabric) and an iron sword straight through Melly’s evil heart is the only way to do the bitch in. 

OHHH I LOVE THIS BITCH

This has just made me so much more excited for that Maleficent movie.

How To Survive Greek Mythology:

Have you suddenly woken up in a parallel universe in which there are temples everywhere, marble statues all up in everything, and hot naked people running around? 

Congratulations! You might be in a Greek myth. 

There’s a good chance you might probably won’t make it out alive, but just in case, here’s ten things you can do to lessen your chances of a sudden and terribly painful death. 

So, there you have it. Have any other tips? 

The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A—Z of Fantastic Beings From Myth and Magic

John & Caitlín Matthews

Here are all 9 pieces from my first thesis project!

At the beginning of the semester, I read folktales from around the world and sought out interesting imagery and characters to develop into 9 full page illustrations. As I made each illustration, I did a ton of research into the clothing, symbols, patterns, and other related imagery from the each story’s culture.

I am fascinated by old stories and how they have been passed down and shaped future stories. I learned a lot from this project, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface! There is so much more to these unique cultures, and I’ll continue to draw inspiration from them.

For each individually, and some process sketches see the links below:

The Fisherman and the Gruagach of Tricks (Ireland)

The Giant Who Had no Heart In His Body (Norway)

The Firebird and the Horse of Power (Russia)

Sinbad and the Seven Voyages (Middle East)

The Magic Brocade (China)

Urashima (Japan)

Hats to Disappear With (Korea)

The Search for the Magic Lake ( Ecuador)

Oni and the Great Bird (West Africa, Yoruba Tribe)

All are available as prints on my inprnt!

Thank you everyone for your support over the past year! Here’s to a great 2014!

Sámi Doll (Indigenous peoples of Norway). The Sami people, also spelled Sámi or Saami, are the indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are the only indigenous people of Scandinavia recognized and protected under the international conventions of indigenous peoples, and hence the northernmost indigenous people of Europe. Sami ancestral lands span an area of approximately 388,350 km2 (150,000 sq. mi.), which is approximately the size of Norway, in the Nordic countries. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages and are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family.

Traditionally, the Sami have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including coastal fishing, fur trapping, and sheep herding. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding. Currently about 10% of the Sami are connected to reindeer herding and 2,800 are actively involved in herding on a full-time basis. For traditional, environmental, cultural and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved only for Sami people in certain regions of the Nordic countries.

So errbody is getting ready for Christmas and shit, right? Now we here don’t have Christmas, we have this thang called Winter Solstice Festival or Dong Zhi, and it’s pretty awesome ‘cause it marks the day with the shortest amount of daylight - duh! And the longest night, like, ever. It usually…