Creatures Of The Underworld Quotes

The usual warmth of his hands wasn’t there. They chilled my skin as they slipped to my waist, and I realized he was scared.

A star becomes a sun, under the pressure of darkness.

Realization hit his face like a bomb. His hand trembled on my cheek, and he looked down to the ground, no longer able to hold my gaze.

she told me to be my own hero. Inside of all of us was the potential for greatness—all it took was a change in perspective. “You can burn brighter than they can, if you have too.

For a second, fire flared inside of him, not like mine, but the fire of a man about to lose control.

Do you want me?” he whispered. It was a simple but loaded question. The answer, like it could remove all anguish from the past few weeks, stood out in my head. “Yes.

There are two types of men, Karolina. The ones who can admire the greatness of the little flower. Or the ones who try to control it.

I had plans, Karolina, and I chose power over love.

You can burn brighter than they can, if you have too.

she told me to be my own hero. Inside of all of us was the potential for greatness—all it took was a change in perspective.

I couldn’t remember a time when I felt the type of love Miruna had. Eternal love. The kind which keeps one going when one is ninety and alone.

Will frowned. "If you eat one of Persephone's pomegranates, aren't you stuck in the Underworld forever?" "Pretty sure that doesn't apply to creatures who are from the Underworld," Nico said. "But even if it did, it might be kind of romantic. Like sending a message: You're stuck with me." "I think we need to work on your definition of romantic, my love.

Dear diary," Anya muttered. "It's been three hours since I killed someone. Needless to say, life sucks. My gorgeous fiancé refuses to let me kill the most loathsome creature ever. Won't even let me give her a few superficial stab wounds. I'm thinking about breaking up with him." "I wouldn't recommend it" Reyes replied. "He may not ask for your hand in marriage a second time." She gasped with outrage. "Lucien. Tell him!" 'I'd ask again." Lucien told him,

Apparently she judged the souls of the dead by weighing their hearts against a feather; if she deemed a soul unworthy, it was sent to the underworld to be consumed—by this bizarre crocodile-lion-hippopotamus creature, it seems.

In idyllic small towns I sometimes see teenagers looking out of place in their garb of desperation, the leftover tatters and stains and slashes of the fashion of my youth. For this phase of their life, the underworld is their true home, and in the grit and underbelly of a city they could find something that approximates it. Even the internal clock of adolescents changes, making them nocturnal creatures for at least a few years. All through childhood you grow toward life and then in adolescence, at the height of life, you begin to grow toward death. This fatality is felt as an enlargement to be welcomed and embraced, for the young in this culture enter adulthood as a prison, and death reassures them that there are exits. “I have been half in love with easeful death,” said Keats who died at twenty-six and so were we, though the death we were in love with was only an idea then.

Camille, if you could be any fairy-tale person in the world, who would you be?” Amma asked. “Sleeping Beauty.” To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely. “I’d be Persephone.” “I don’t know who that is,” I said. Gayla slapped some collards on my plate, and fresh corn. I made myself eat, a kernel at a time, my gag reflex churning with each chew. “She’s the Queen of the Dead,” Amma beamed. “She was so beautiful, Hades stole her and took her to the underworld to be his wife. But her mother was so fierce, she forced Hades to give Persephone back. But only for six months each year. So she spends half her life with the dead, and half with the living.” “Amma, why would such a creature appeal to you?” Alan said. “You can be so ghastly.” “I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been,” Amma said. “And even when she’s with her mother, she’s not really happy, because she knows she’ll have to go back underground.” She grinned at Adora and jabbed a big bite of ham into her mouth, then crowed.

The creature touched me and suddenly feathers covered my arms, he bound them behind me and forced me down to the underworld, the house of darkness, the home of the dead, where all who enter never return to the sweet earth again. Those who dwell there squat in the darkness, dirt is their food, their drink is clay, they are dressed in feathered garments like birds, they never see light, and on door and bolt the dust lies thick. When I entered that house, I looked, and around me were piles of crowns, I saw proud kings who had ruled the land, who had set out roast meat before the gods and offered cool water and cakes for the dead.

Something about the gaping hole in the fabric of the cosmos gave him the chills. He leaned over the edge of the opening, expecting to find birds, or similar avian creations of the night’s sky. Instead, he was met with a swarm of unspeakable horrors; winged, pitiful and grotesquely malformed, and to his great stupor, he noticed they had human faces and that they suffered. And as they poured out of the Well of Making, like children from the womb of the eternal feminine, these luciferin creatures spilled onto the world, shrieking in existential agony, for they knew the pain of their mortality.

Her name is Hope?” John asked, the corners of his mouth beginning to tug upwards. “No.” I bristled, thinking he was making fun of me. Then I realized I’d been caught. “Well, all right…so what if it is? I’m not going to name her after some depressing aspect of the Underworld like you do all your pets. I looked up the name Alastor. That was the name of one of the death horses that drew Hades’s chariot. And Typhon?” I glanced at the dog, cavorting in and out of the waves, seemingly oblivious of the cold. “I can only imagine, but I’m sure it means something equally unpleasant.” “Typhon was the father of all monsters,” John said. He’d given up trying to suppress his grin. “The deadliest of all the creatures in Greek mythology.” “Nice,” I said sarcastically. “Well, I prefer to name my pets something that reminds me there’s-“ “Hope?” His grin broadened. “Very funny.” True, I’d admitted to him that I was inexperienced. But I didn’t have to prove it by acting like I was twelve.

The underworld was made up of many different regions. Each area was its own private sector and not everyone who resided here was malevolent. Some beings here were virtuous, while others had yet to decide what they were - their fates having yet to be decided. Not all dark creatures were evil, just as not all light creatures were moral. Corbin and Quentin were the epitome of that dichotomy.

Just as a snowflake went on to feed a puddle that filled a stream and then the river, the pumpkin patch is a gathering of molecules from my old goats, chickens, and cats, feeding the underworld of dirt creatures. And somewhere, my father’s ashes mingle with birds, air, and sea.

It had only two points of egress, the door to the hallway from which I’d just entered, and against which I’d been pinned-and now leaned against for support-and the other to the stable yard where a man dressed all in black leather had shoved John’s dog, and where I was assuming John kept his horse, Alastor, another creature from the Underworld who hated my guts. He was going to have to get in line, though. The boy who’d pulled Typhon off me was standing a few feet away, next to the wooden plank table that ran down the center of the room, staring at me with a look that suggested he disliked me even more than the dog had. It was difficult not to notice the size of his bare biceps-not as large as John’s, but still impressive-since he’d folded his arms across his chest, and this had caused the muscles to bulge. The fact that they were circled in vicious-looking rings of black tattooed thorns did even more to draw attention to them. It was hard to figure out if that was why he was so much more noticeable than anyone else in the room, or if it was because he was what my friend Kayla would have called smokin’ hot, despite a jagged scar that ran down one side of his forehead, through a dark brow, and halfway to the center of his left jaw. Whoever had wielded that knife had thankfully-for him-spared his dark eye. Not so thankfully for me, however, since he was able to use both eyes to give me a deathlike stare. “Um,” I said, finally feeling the blood flow returning to my limbs. “You might want to think about getting that dog neutered.” The boy with the thorn tattoos sneered. “I’m guessing she’ll be wanting to get us all neutered,” he said.

Fortunately, the great king did not have to deal with Set on his own. The Egyptians also worshipped Horus, the son of Osiris. Horus took the twin forms of a falcon, the most visually acute of all creatures, and the still-famous hieroglyphic single Egyptian eye (as alluded to in Rule 7). Osiris is tradition, aged and willfully blind. Horus, his son, could and would, by contrast, see. Horus was the god of attention. That is not the same as rationality. Because he paid attention, Horus could perceive and triumph against the evils of Set, his uncle, albeit at great cost. When Horus confronts Set, they have a terrible battle. Before Set’s defeat and banishment from the kingdom, he tears out one of his nephew’s eyes. But the eventually victorious Horus takes back the eye. Then he does something truly unexpected: he journeys voluntarily to the underworld and gives the eye to his father.

Indian thought has traditionally regarded history and prehistory in cyclical rather than linear terms. In the West time is an arrow -- we are born, we live, we die. But in India we die only to be reborn. Indeed, it is a deeply rooted idea in Indian spiritual traditions that the earth itself and all living creatures upon it are locked into an immense cosmic cycle of birth, growth, fruition, death, rebirth and renewal. Even temples are reborn after they grow too old to be used safely -- through the simple expedient of reconstruction on the same site. Within this pattern of spiralling cycles, where everything that goes around comes around, India conceives of four great epochs of 'world ages' of varying but enormous lengths: the Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Davapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. At the end of each yuga a cataclysm, known as pralaya, engulfs the globe in fire or flood. Then from the ruins of the former age, like the Phoenix emerging from the ashes, the new age begins.

THE INFERNAL NAMES Abaddon - (Hebrew) the destroyer ... Asmodeus - Hebrew devil of sensuality and luxury, originally "creature of judgement" ... Azazel - (Hebrew) taught men to make weapons of war, introduced cosmetics ... Bast - Egyptian goddess of pleasure represented by the cat Beelzebub - (Hebrew) Lord of the Flies, taken from symbolism of the scarab Behemoth - Hebrew personification of Satan in the form of an elephant ... Coyote - American Indian Devil Dagon - Philistine avenging devil of the sea ... Dracula - Romanian name for devil ... Fenriz - Son of Loki, depicted as a wolf ... Hecate - Greek goddess of underworld and witchcraft ... Kali - (Hindu) daughter of Shiva, high priestess of Thuggees ... Lilith - Hebrew female devil, Adam's first wife who taught him the ropes Loki - Teutonic devil ... Mania - Etruscan goddess of Hell ... Midgard - son of Loki, depicted as a serpent ... Pluto - Greek god of the underworld Proserpine - Greek queen of the underworld ... Sammael - (Hebrew) "venom of God" ... Shiva - (Hindu) the destroyer ...

The marine underworld stretched below the ship and embodied many secrets. The disappearance of Olga had become one of the mysteries that would remain with Stefania and her family. The disappearance of her baby sister and sudden departure from her home had taught the ten-year-old that life was filled with uncertainties. But she was willing to forget that for a little while. She jumped down from the barrel and headed toward Liam, Felix, and the other shipmates. They would sing shanties and talk of the constellations, the sea, its creatures, and the legends. It would get her through another night. La Suerte was the only stability for her passengers with the infinite unknown all around them. The waters of the sea, the world below the surface, and the sky that stretched beyond the horizon was a representation of the limitless possibilites and dangers awaiting those aboard.

The bird/snake Goddess represents the continuum of birth, death, and re-birth. The realms of the bird and snake cover all of the worlds. Birds soar in the heavens while some birds also occupy the waters; snakes live on the earth and in the Underworld, and likewise, water snakes occupy the waters. Both bird and snake embody graphic depictions of birth, since both are oviparous. Both creatures represent regeneration as well, since birds molt and snakes shed their skin. In Neolithic Europe, death and rebirth were tied together in the tomb which served as a ritual place for rebirth: the tomb could also represent the womb. In her death aspect, a Goddess such as Medusa turns people to stone—a form of death, since all human activity ceases for those thus ossified. Read against iconographies of the bird/snake goddesses, one can identify ways in which the Underworld Goddess, the Goddess of death, gives birth to life. Like Ereshkigal, with her leeky hair, Medusa, with her snaky hair, is also a birth-giver. But in Medusa’s case, she gives birth as she is dying, whereas in the earlier, Sumerian myth, the process of death led to regeneration; the Goddess of the Underworld did not have to die in the process of giving birth; she who presided over death presided over rebirth. The winged snake Goddess, before Perseus severs her head, is whole; in prehistory, she would have been a Goddess of all worldly realms. When Medusa’s head is severed, she becomes disembodied. Disembodied wisdom is very dangerous. Hence, she becomes monstrous. It is her chthonic self which the classical world acknowledges: Medusa becomes the snaky-haired severed head, a warning to all women to hide their powers, their totalities. This fearsome aspect goes two ways: she can destroy, but she also brings protection. In patriarchal societies, the conception of life and death is often perceived as linear rather than circular.

I have again been asked to explain how one can "become a Daoists..." with all of the sad things happening in our world today, Laozi and Zhuangzi give words of advice, tho not necessarily to become a Daoist priest or priestess... " So many foreigners who want to become “Religious Daoists” 道教的道师 （道士） do not realize that they must not only receive a transmission of a Lu 籙 register which identifies their Daoist school, and learn as well how to sing the ritual melodies, play the flute, stringed instruments, drums, and sacred dance steps, required to be an ordained and functioning Daoist priest or priestess. This process usually takes 10 years or more of daily discipleship and practice, to accomplish. There are 86 schools and genre of Daoist rituals listed in the Baiyun Guan Gazeteer, 白雲觀志, which was edited by Oyanagi Sensei, in Tokyo, 1928, and again in 1934, and re-published by Baiyun Guan in Beijing, available in their book shop to purchase. Some of the schools, such as the Quanzhen Longmen 全真龙门orders, allow their rituals and Lu registers to be learned by a number of worthy disciples or monks; others, such as the Zhengyi, Qingwei, Pole Star, and Shangqing 正一，清微，北极，上请 registers may only be taught in their fullness to one son and/or one disciple, each generation. Each of the schools also have an identifying poem, from 20 or 40 character in length, or in the case of monastic orders (who pass on the registers to many disciples), longer poems up to 100 characters, which identify the generation of transmission from master to disciple. The Daoist who receives a Lu register (給籙元科, pronounced "Ji Lu Yuanke"), must use the character from the poem given to him by his or her master, when composing biao 表 memorials, shuwen 梳文 rescripts, and other documents, sent to the spirits of the 3 realms (heaven, earth, water /underworld). The rituals and documents are ineffective unless the correct characters and talismanic signature are used. The registers are not given to those who simply practice martial artists, Chinese medicine, and especially never shown to scholars. The punishment for revealing them to the unworthy is quite severe, for those who take payment for Lu transmission, or teaching how to perform the Jinlu Jiao and Huanglu Zhai 金籙醮，黃籙齋 科儀 keyi rituals, music, drum, sacred dance steps. Tang dynasty Tangwen 唐文 pronunciation must also be used when addressing the highest Daoist spirits, i.e., the 3 Pure Ones and 5 Emperors 三请五帝. In order to learn the rituals and receive a Lu transmission, it requires at least 10 years of daily practice with a master, by taking part in the Jiao and Zhai rituals, as an acolyte, cantor, or procession leader. Note that a proper use of Daoist ritual also includes learning Inner Alchemy, ie inner contemplative Daoist meditation, the visualization of spirits, where to implant them in the body, and how to summon them forth during ritual. The woman Daoist master Wei Huacun’s Huangting Neijing, 黃庭內經 to learn the esoteric names of the internalized Daoist spirits. Readers must be warned never to go to Longhu Shan, where a huge sum is charged to foreigners ($5000 to $9000) to receive a falsified document, called a "license" to be a Daoist! The first steps to true Daoist practice, Daoist Master Zhuang insisted to his disciples, is to read and follow the Laozi Daode Jing and the Zhuangzi Neipian, on a daily basis. Laozi Ch 66, "the ocean is the greatest of all creatures because it is the lowest", and Ch 67, "my 3 most precious things: compassion for all, frugal living for myself, respect all others and never put anyone down" are the basis for all Daoist practice. The words of Zhuangzi, Ch 7, are also deeply meaningful: "Yin and Yang were 2 little children who loved to play inside Hundun (ie Taiji, gestating Dao). They felt sorry because Hundun did not have eyes, or eats, or other senses. So everyday they drilled one hole, ie 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, one mouth; and on the 7th day, Hundun died.

The window slid open. A blast of cold air gusted in. Ada stepped back, alarmed, as a figure climbed through the window, like some predatory animal or mythical creature. The kind of being that spirited young maidens from their beds to live forever in an underworld kingdom.

For an example of what the first step involves, look at Psalm 139, where the psalmist meditates on the infinite and unlimited nature of God’s presence, and knowledge, and power, in relation to people. We are always in God’s presence, he says. You can cut yourself off from your fellow human beings, but you cannot get away from your Creator. “You hem me in—behind and before. . . . Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens [the sky], you are there; if I make my bed in the depths [the underworld], you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,” I still cannot escape from the presence of God: “even there your hand will guide me” (vv. 5-10). Nor can darkness, which hides me from human sight, shield me from God’s gaze (vv. 11-12). And just as there are no bounds to his presence with me, so there are no limits to his knowledge of me. Just as I am never left alone, so I never go unnoticed. “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise [all my actions and movements]; you perceive my thoughts [all that goes on in my mind] from afar. . . . You are familiar with all my ways [all my habits, plans, aims, desires, as well as all my life to date]. Before a word is on my tongue [spoken, or meditated] you know it completely, O LORD” (vv. 1-4). I can hide my heart, and my past, and my future plans, from those around me, but I cannot hide anything from God. I can talk in a way that deceives my fellow creatures as to what I really am, but nothing I say or do can deceive God. He sees through all my reserve and pretense; he knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself.

We began this book with a passage from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, in which we accompanied Antisthenes in his descent to Hades. We now conclude this chapter with yet another passage from Lucian, in which we find Antisthenes already in Hades. Antisthenes, Diogenes, and other Cynics, Lucian tells us, persist in doing in the underworld exactly what they did while in this physical world, namely, raising hell about whatever they saw and heard. That and only that is what they are still doing after death, in fact, in so loud and harsh a fashion that those whose fate has been to share with them the same place in Hades beg the gods of the underworld to segregate the Cynics to some remote comer where their shouting cannot be heard. The gods, however, ignore this request, because they know that an important component of the punishment for those who passed their time on earth seeking pleasure, amassing fortunes, exploiting the weak and the poor, confusing people through deceptive language, and in other subhuman forms of behavior, is that they need to be reminded of how empty their lives were on earth. The Cynics wait at the gates of Hades for new arrivals, men and women who, while alive, turned themselves into less than human creatures and who now are about to suffer the unhappy consequences of their actions. As Diogenes invites Antisthenes to rush with him to the gates because new arrivals are entering, Antisthenes remarks: Let us be off at once, Diogenes, for, indeed, the spectacle will surely be an amusing one-to see them weeping and lamenting, and some begging to be let go, and some making their entrance with reluctance, and, regardless of how hard Hermes pushes them in, resisting and struggling, but all to no purpose.

The music of the Lyre, in Greek legend, cast such a spell that Orpheus charmed every living creature with it, even persuading the grim guardians of the Underworld to allow him to rescue his beautiful wife Eurydice from the Land of the Dead. Having been warned to cast no glance upon her until the couple had safely reached the upper world, Orpheus unfortunately lost Eurydice at the last moment by disobeying the fateful order. The story is one of the most popular of the Greek legends, and was the subject of the opera Orpheo ed Euridice by Gluck in 1762, and a ballet by Stravinsky in 1947.

Crooks and criminals, sadistic guards and serial rapists—all the creatures large and small of the underworld—did their souls descend from the lap of Necessity? Again, Plotinus asked the question centuries ago: “How could a wicked character be given by the Gods?”1 Can one be called to murder? Can the acorn harbor a bad seed? Or, perhaps the criminal psychopath has no soul at all?

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST IS THE CREATURE KNOWN AS THE ITALIAN HOUSEWIFE. Baby, trust me, when it comes to Italians it’s the women you have to fear.

Molech had the advantage. This was his turf and his dwelling. He had spent much of his time over the millennia below the surface, which made his skin pale white and his eyes unable to see well when up above on the surface. But down below, he was the god of the underworld. He could see better than even Mikael’s preternatural night vision. Mikael didn’t know what he was running into down here. He arrived at a fork in the small tunnel. He looked at the dirt and could see that his adversary had gone to the right. Mikael followed. The tunnels were quite small, only big enough for the bulky eight foot deity to move, with little leeway. For Mikael, there was more room because he was smaller, but not by much. He stopped again. Another split. But this time, three options. He took the middle way. Mikael figured that by now, his comrade archangels would have moved the stone away and were on their way to join him. He felt his pathway was circling back. When he saw another crossroads, he realized what he was now inside: a maze. The mole god had burrowed out a complex labyrinth of tunnels that seemed to Mikael a web of confusion. The rock was harder and the dust sparser, making it even more difficult for Mikael to follow his prey’s foot prints. About the only thing he could follow now was the creature’s stench. He heard the sound of footsteps in the dark, not far from him. He picked up his pace, trying not to make as much noise as the clumsy brute was making. He turned a corner and saw the deity jump down into an opening in the rocky floor. When he reached it, he saw it was an opening that led deeper still, to a lower level. He heard the voices of his comrades in the distance, shouting for him. He decided he would take this one time to give some direction, even though it would also warn Molech. But he needed his comrades. He shouted, “Down here, Angels! There’s an opening to a deeper level!” Then he jumped. He landed twenty feet below. Before him, a new opening to a new maze of tunnels. He thought, This has been one busy little worm. He followed the smell. His opponent now knew how close he was. Mikael turned another corner and saw the god waiting for him, before bolting down a pathway. Mikael responded instinctively to the sight of the fleeing divinity. It wasn’t until he was almost upon the pathway that it registered in his mind that he was being led into a trap. He slid to a stop. It was too late. He heard the sound of a release being tripped and rocks shifting. Above him. A triggered cave-in crushed him beneath a ton of rock. He was completely immobilized. He could not get to his weapons. He could only see through a thin crevice of some rocks as Molech walked up to him, laughed and spit at him, before disappearing deeper into the network of twisting tunnels.

The marine underworld stretched below the ship and embodied many secrets. The disappearance of Olga had become one of the mysteries that would remain with Stefania and her family. The disappearance of her baby sister and sudden departure from her home had taught the ten-year-old that life was filled with uncertainties. But she was willing to forget that for a little while. She jumped down from the barrel and headed toward Liam, Felix, and the other shipmates. They would sing shanties and talk of the constellations, the sea, its creatures, and the legends. It would get her through another night. La Suerte was the only stability for her passengers with the infinite unknown all around them. The waters of the sea, the world below the surface, and the sky that stretched beyond the horizon was a representation of the limitless possibilities and dangers awaiting those aboard.

Until I learned this building housed creatures of the underworld.

The Free Soul, also called the Wandering Soul, the Water Soul, or the Dreaming Soul, is the soul that pre-existed the body and the obtaining of the breath soul. It is often depicted as emerging from the "depths" of the world, from the Underworld or a Netherworld. That the Earth Indweller (the Earth and Underworld Mother) is believed to be the source of free souls automatically positions the free soul as taking some kind of "birth" inside the earth, and emerging from its depths. The "waters below" or the watery abyss that has been conceptualized mythically as the Underworld (and psychologically viewed as the deep, dark interior world of the subconscious and dreams) gives the free soul the name "water soul", making its character distinctive to the windy breath soul. Merkur writes: "The free soul, which can leave and return to the body in sleep, trances, and illnesses without causing loss of life, is a genuinely distinct type of soul. Either it is (conceived of) as miniature and located in the body, or it follows the body as though it were a shadow. It has and imparts the shape and personality of the person or creature, according to the respective species and, at least in humans, individuality. It is the seat of all illness, for its loss (or injury) causes illness (to manifest in the body.) It is also the site of spirit-intrusion. Through illness, the free soul can be an indirect cause of death. However, shamans may journey safely out of their bodies as free souls during their so-called spirit flights.

For Homer, glory was the only thing that was truly imperishable. Only the glorious live on after death, in the memories and stories of humanity. Glory is the only meaningful form of immortality. The abject creature that lives on in the underworld holds no appeal. In fact, Homer’s theology demands a dismal afterlife. That way, the heroes are fully motivated to achieve glory here and now. What else is there to aim for? The grim persistence of the soul after death is in every way unappealing. Do you want a mediocre life and an even more mediocre death?

In the Neolithic period, throughout Europe and the Near East, there appear figurines which represent bird/women, snake/women, and bird/snake/woman hybrids. Since Goddesses with bird and snake iconography appear in early historic religions, such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, it has been theorized that the figurines represent powerful divine female figures in the Neolithic cultures of Europe and the Near East. The “stiff white nude” figures of the Cyclades, Anatolia, and the Balkans may be death figures, but a pregnant Cycladic figure demonstrates that the Goddess serves regeneration as well as death. Early historic textual evidence of this may be found in the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, where the Underworld Goddess and Goddess of death, Ereshkigal, is in the process of giving birth. Just as the more ancient figures, Medusa too is winged, and she has snaky hair: that is, she embodies both the serpentine and the avian aspects of the Neolithic bird/snake Goddess, even though she does not have these characteristics in her earliest depictions. The bird/snake Goddess represents the continuum of birth, life, death, rebirth. The realms of the bird and snake cover all of the worlds; the realm of the bird is the heavens, while waterbirds also occupy the waters. That of the snake is the earth and Underworld, and likewise water snakes occupy the waters. Both bird and snake embody graphic depictions of birth, since both are oviparous. Both creatures are graphic depictions of regeneration as well, since birds molt and snakes shed their skin. In Neolithic Europe, death and rebirth were tied together in the tomb which served as a ritual place for rebirth: the tomb was also the womb. In her death aspect, a Goddess such as Medusa turns people to stone—a form of death, since all human activity ceases for those thus ossified.  Read against the iconographies of the bird/snake goddesses, one can identify ways in which the Underworld Goddess, the death Goddess, gives birth to life. Like Ereshkigal, with her leeky hair, Medusa with her snaky hair is also a birth-giver. But in Medusa’s case, she gives birth as she is dying, whereas in the earlier, Sumerian myth the process of death led to regeneration; the Goddess of the Underworld did not have to die in the process of giving birth; she who presided over death presided over rebirth. The winged snake Goddess, before her head is severed by Perseus, is whole; in prehistory she would have been a Goddess of all of the worldly realms. When Medusa’s head is severed, she becomes disembodied. Disembodied wisdom is very dangerous. Hence, she becomes monstrous. It is her chthonic self which the Classical world acknowledges: Medusa becomes the snaky-haired severed head, a warning to all women to hide their powers, their totalities. This fearsome aspect goes two ways: she can destroy, but she also brings protection.

Red smoke came rising out of the bottle, and Jasmine scrambled backward, crying out in panic. Something fiery within was pulling itself free, and though she tried to slam the lid back on, she was too late. The fire had escaped. It was growing larger and larger before her eyes, but the opposite of the Genie's comforting blue appearance. This creature had spotted red skin and flaming yellow eyes; it had claws longer than Jasmine's arms and dark hooves for feet. Jasmine had never seen anything so terrifying in her life. She trembled, staring up at the demon, which looked like it had crawled off the pages of one of Taminah's books. "The Story of Dahish the Ifrit." She could almost hear her tutor's voice again now. "A tale of a jinn who chose darkness." It was real... all of it. There was only one thing this demonic creature looming above her could be: an ifrit, evil jinn of the underworld. Just like the creature Jafar had turned into when he made his fateful final wish on the lamp--- the Genie's malevolent opposite.

Our elders had taught us well. First of all, you had to respect all living creatures — a category which did not include policemen, people connected with the government, bankers, loan sharks and all those who had the power of money in their hands and exploited ordinary people. Secondly, you had to believe in God and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and love and respect the other ways of believing in God which were different from our own. But the Church and religion must never be seen as a structure. My grandfather used to say that God didn’t create priests, but only free men; there were some good priests, and in such cases it was not sinful to go to the places where they carried out their activities, but it definitely was a sin to think that in the eyes of God priests had more power than other men. Lastly, we must not do to others what we wouldn’t want to be done to us; and if one day we were obliged to do it nonetheless, there must be a good reason.

Sumerian myths and legends of the antediluvian world do much more than speak of the five cities. They also tell an extraordinary story of how their ancestors, who lived in the 'most ancient times', were visited by a brotherhood of semi-divine beings described as half men, half fish, who had been 'sent [by the gods] to teach the arts of civilization to mankind before the Flood' and who had themselves 'emerged from the sea'. The collective name by which these creatures were known was the 'Seven Sages' and the name of their leader was Oannes. Each of them was paired as a 'counsellor' to an antediluvian king and they were renowned for their wisdom in affairs of state and for their skills as architects, builders and engineers.

Fundamentals of Esperanto The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one sitting. Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj & the accusative, -on Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative friend & friends. Ma amiko is my friend. A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA, has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto. Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space on board the Voyager spacecraft. - Esperanto is an artificial language constructed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, a polish oculist. following a somewhat difficult period in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the railway platform just outside Warsaw where I had missed my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit & dark glasses pushed a cart piled high with ripped & weathered volumes— sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing musical scores & outdated physics textbooks, old copies of Life, new smut, an atlas translated, a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics, a guide to the rivers & mountains, thesauri, inscrutable musical scores & mimeographed physics books, defective stories, obsolete sex manuals— one of which caught my notice (Dr. Esperanto since I had time, I traded my used Leaves of Grass for a copy. I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough. There’s a man from Quebec in my head, a friend to the purple martins. Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows. All purple martins are dying or dead. Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest these creatures feel the same levels of doubt & bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity. While driving home from the brewery one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program about purple martins & the next day he set out to build them a house in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything, let alone a house, not to mention a home for somebody else. Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting. Never piped sugar water through colored tubes to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded with strong, tired hands. Never dismantled the entire affair & put it back together again. Still no swallows. I never installed the big light that stays on through the night to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights, never rested on Sunday with a beer on the deck surveying what I had done & what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers. I have never collapsed in abandon. Never prayed. But enough about the purple martins. Every line of the work is a first & a last line & this is the spring of its action. Of course, there’s a journey & inside that journey, an implicit voyage through the underworld. There’s a bridge made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers; a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors; a digression on shadows; That’s how we finally learn who the hero was all along. Weary & old, he sits on a rock & watches his friends fly by one by one out of the song, then turns back to the journey they all began long ago, keeping the river to his right.

For Penina Mezei petrify motive in folk literature stems from ancient, mythical layers of culture that has undergone multiple transformations lost the original meaning. Therefore, the origin of this motif in the narrative folklore can be interpreted depending on the assumptions that you are the primary elements of faith in Petrify preserved , lost or replaced elements that blur the idea of integrity , authenticity and functionality of the old ones . Motif Petrify in different genres varies by type of actor’s individuality, time and space, properties and actions of its outcome, the relationship of the narrator and singers from the text. The particularity of Petrify in particular genres testifies about different possibilities and intentions of using the same folk beliefs about transforming, says Penina Mezei. In moralized ballads Petrify is temporary or eternal punishment for naughty usually ungrateful children. In the oral tradition, demonic beings are permanently Petrifying humans and animals. Petrify in fairy tales is temporary, since the victims, after entering into the forbidden demonic time and space or breaches of prescribed behavior in it, frees the hero who overcomes the demonic creature, emphasizes Mezei. Faith in the power of magical evocation of death petrifaction exists in curses in which the slanderer or ungrateful traitor wants to convert into stone. In search of the magical meaning of fatal events in fairy tales, however, it should be borne in mind that they concealed before, but they reveal the origin of the ritual. The work of stone - bedrock Penina Mezei pointed to the belief that binds the soul stone dead or alive beings. Penina speaks of stone medial position between earth and sky, earth and the underworld. Temporary or permanent attachment of the soul to stone represents a state between life and death will be punished its powers cannot be changed. Rescue petrified can only bring someone else whose power has not yet subjugated the demonic forces. While the various traditions demons Petrifying humans and animals, as long as in fairy tales, mostly babe, demon- old woman. Traditions brought by Penina Mezei , which describe Petrify people or animals suggest specific place events , while in fairy tales , of course , no luck specific place names . Still Penina spotted chthonic qualities babe, and Mezei’s with plenty of examples of comparative method confirmed that they were witches. Some elements of procedures for the protection of the witch could be found in oral stories and poems. Fairy tales keep track of violations few taboos - the hero , despite the ban on the entry of demonic place , comes in the woods , on top of a hill , in a demonic time - at night , and does not respect the behaviors that would protect him from demons . Interpreting the motives Petrify as punishment for the offense in the demon time and space depends on the choice of interpretive method is applied. In the book of fairy tales Penina Mezei writes: Petrify occurs as a result of unsuccessful contact with supernatural beings Petrify is presented as a metaphor for death (Penina Mezei West Bank Fairytales: 150). Psychoanalytic interpretation sees in the form of witches character, and the petrification of erotic seizure of power. Female demon seized fertilizing power of the masculine principle. By interpreting the archetypal witch would chthonic anima, anabaptized a devastating part unindividualized man. Ritual access to the motive of converting living beings into stone figure narrated narrative transfigured magical procedures some male initiation ceremonies in which the hero enters into a community of dedicated, or tracker sacrificial rites. Compelling witches to release a previously petrified could be interpreted as the initiation mark the conquest of certain healing powers and to encourage life force, highlights the Penina.

Let the monster cave-dog howl his howl forever And keep on terrifying bloodless shades...