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Art reviews by Zephyros

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The Aztecs had a god named Xipe Totec, which translates as "Our Lord the Flayed One" who flayed himself to give food to humanity. Annually, slaves or captives were selected as sacrifices to Xipe Totec. After having the heart cut out, the body was carefully flayed to produce a nearly whole skin which was then worn by the priests for twenty days during the fertility rituals that followed the sacrifice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xipe_Totec
 
The Aztecs had a god named Xipe Totec, which translates as "Our Lord the Flayed One" who flayed himself to give food to humanity. Annually, slaves or captives were selected as sacrifices to Xipe Totec. After having the heart cut out, the body was carefully flayed to produce a nearly whole skin which was then worn by the priests for twenty days during the fertility rituals that followed the sacrifice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xipe_Totec


I also read this practice in this book ... ;)
 

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I guess this is technically not much worse than the original shredded flesh that resulted from a beating with the flagrum. It doesn't turn me on but it sure makes me curious...I've skinned (dead farm meat) animals before and it is not easy, even with fur and a layer of fat to pull away. I've always wondered, would human skin really come off in whole sheets like that? Or would flaying require thousands of small, careful cuts? Our skin is similar to pig skin (tattoo artists practice with pig skin), but many pork cuts include the skin, like ham. Also would flaying produce too much blood loss for the victim to last very long on the cross?
 
But considering the Aztecs , the victim had her cut heart and she wasn't crucified ...;)
 
References to hanging found in ancient Greece as well as in the Bible suggest that some have long viewed hanging as a dishonorable way to die. In ancient Greece especially it was considered dishonorable because it was associated with female suicides; a woman, it was believed, committed suicide by hanging because hanging was thought to be a bloodless death (though it is often not). For example, in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex Jocasta, upon learning the truth about her son-husband Oedipus, hangs herself from a »dangling noose.« Classicist Eva Cantarella writes that in ancient Greece, »the noose was not only the privileged instrument of female suicide, but also, very often that with which women were killed«.
For instance, Oedipus' daughter Antigone also killed herself by hanging, after being condemned by King Creon of Thebes, for having mourned the death of her brother Polynices who had taken up arms against Thebes.
 
Daisy Papp

»We are all in need of resurrection«, says art critic Carlos Scandiffio. This particular series of poignant photographs is designed to challenge the observer. The images are as controversial as they are direct in their approach to the subject matter, always maintaining the highest artistic impression. This is one of her finest examples.



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Some more @ http://www.daisypappart.com/photography-main-page.html

 
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»We are all in need of resurrection«, says art critic Carlos Scandiffio. This particular series of poignant photographs is designed to challenge the observer. The images are as controversial as they are direct in their approach to the subject matter, always maintaining the highest artistic impression. This is one of her finest examples.



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Some more @ http://www.daisypappart.com/photography-main-page.html

Very nice work, thanks!
 
ARTEMIS - Bitch or Goddess

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Insulting a woman by calling her a female dog pre-dates the existence of the word bitch itself. The English language historian Geoffrey Hughes suggests the connection came about because of the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis (Diana in the Roman pantheon) who was often portrayed with a pack of hunting dogs and sometimes transformed into an animal herself. In Ancient Greece and Rome the comparison was a sexist slur equating women to dogs in heat, sexually depraved beasts who grovel and beg for men.

The modern word bitch comes from the Old English bicce, which probably developed from the Norse bikkje, all meaning ‘female dog’. Its use as an insult was propagated into Old English by the Christian rulers of the Dark Age to suppress the idea of femininity as sacred.


Artemis (Ancient Greek: Ἄρτεμις) was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals". The Arcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter.

The childhood of Artemis is not fully related in any surviving myth. The Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus. A poem of Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines some charming vignettes: according to Callimachus, Artemis, at three years old, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo; to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt; to have sixty "daughters of Okeanos", all nine years of age, to be her choir; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested. She wished for no city dedicated to her, but to rule the mountains, and for the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.

Artemis' chief "occupation" was to roam the wilderness with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds, and stags. She also saw to their well-being, safety, and reproduction. Because she was a virgin, she demanded that all of her followers devote themselves to purity. According to one story, when the young nymph Callisto was seduced by Zeus and became pregnant, Artemis was so enraged that she changed her into a bear and then killed her. Another story tells of the fate of Actaeon, a mortal hunter who accidentally came across Artemis and her nymphs bathing naked. When Artemis saw him looking, she turned him into a stag and then turned his own dogs against him.

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Although she was worshipped as a protector of all young living things, Artemis could be cruel and destructive, and was often blamed for sudden deaths, especially of infants. When Apollo overheard Queen Niobe of Thebes, a mortal, boasting that she had given birth to more children than Leto, he informed his sister. The enraged twins then methodically hunted down and killed all of Niobe's children.

In the following you will find some of my favorite artworks ...
 
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Artemis' Bath



One bright and sunny day a youth named Actaeon decided to hunt a stag with the pack of 50 hounds that he had recieved from his father. The hunt was going well, but before too long, young Actaeon heard laughter and splashing coming from a grove of trees. Curious as to what was making the sounds, Actaeon pushed aside the branches of a tree and gasped as he saw several beautiful and naked young women bathing in a spring. Blushing, Actaeon turned away, but not before one of the young nymphs spotted him. Crying out in alarm, the women quickly moved to cover themselves and the goddess that was bathing with them, the goddess Artemis. Artemis was angry that the young man had seen her, the virgin goddess of the hunt, naked, and in anger she enraged his hounds, who hunted him and tore him to pieces. Confused without Actaeon to lead them, the hounds searched for their master, unaware that they had just devoured him. The forest rang with their cries and bays. Unable to sleep, the townspeople asked Cheiron, Actaeon's former teacher, to erect a statue to the boy in a cave so that the hounds might gather there, thinking the statue was the master. The rouse worked, and the hounds calmed down enough for the townspeople to once again sleep at night.

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She was a cruel bitch, that Artemis - when poor Callisto had been raped by Zeus
(an occupational hazard of being a nymph) and became pregnant,
Artemis just threw her out of her gang

rubens_diana_callisto_178.jpg

and then Zeus's wife Hera took out her jealousy on the poor girl
and turned her into a bear :(
 
Procop. Arc. 9.16 ff. (about Theodora)

Procopius, Historia Arcana (Anecdota)

Ἐς δὲ τοὺς ἐραστὰς ἐχλεύαζέ τε βλακεύουσα καὶ νεωτέραις ἀεὶ τῶν μίξεων ἐνδιαθρυπτομένη ἐπιτεχνήσεσι παραστήσασθαι τὰς τῶν ἀκολάστων ψυχὰς ἐς ἀεὶ ἴσχυεν, ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ πειρᾶσθαι πρός του τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων ἠξίου, ἀλλ᾿ ἀνάπαλιν αὐτὴ γελοιάζουσά τε καὶ βωμολόχως ἰσχιάζουσα τοὺς παραπεπτωκότας ἅπαντας, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἀγενείους ὄντας ἐπείρα. ἥσσων γάρ τις οὕτως ἡδονῆς ἁπάσης οὐδαμῆ γέγονεν, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐς ξυναγώγιμον δεῖπνον πολλάκις ἐλθοῦσα ξὺν νεανίαις δέκα ἢ τούτων πλείοσιν, ἰσχύϊ τε σώματος ἀκμάζουσι λίαν καὶ τὸ λαγνεύειν πεποιημένοις ἔργον, ξυνεκοιτάζετο μὲν τοῖς συνδείπνοις ἅπασι τὴν νύκτα ὅλην, ἐπειδὰν δὲ πρὸς τὸ ἔργον τοῦτο πάντες ἀπείποιεν, ἥδε παρὰ τοὺς ἐκείνων οἰκέτας ἰοῦσα τριάκοντα ὄντας, ἂν οὕτω τύχοι, ξυνεδυάζετο μὲν αὐτῶν ἑκάστῳ, κόρον δὲ οὐδ᾿ ὣς ταύτης δὴ τῆς μισητίας ἐλάμβανε. Καί ποτε ἐς τῶν τινος ἐπιφανῶν οἰκίαν ἐλθοῦσα μεταξὺ τοῦ πότου θεωμένων αὐτήν, ὥς φασι, τῶν ξυμποτῶν ἁπάντων, ἐς τὸ προὖχον ἀναβᾶσα τῆς κλίνης ἀμφὶ τὰ πρὸς ποδῶν ἀνασύρασά τε τὰ ἱμάτια οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ ἐνταῦθα οὐκ ἀπηξίωσε τὴν ἀκολασίαν ἐνδείκνυσθαι. ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπῴη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη.

And as she wantoned with her lovers, she always kept bantering them, and by toying with new devices in intercourse, she always succeeded in winning the hearts of the licentious to her; for she did not even expect that the approach should be made by the man she was with, but on the contrary she herself, with wanton jests and with clownish posturing with her hips, would tempt all who came along, especially if they were beardless youths. Indeed there was never anyone such a slave to pleasure in all forms; for many a time she would go to a community dinner with ten youths or even more, all of exceptional bodily vigour who had made a business of fornication, and she would lie with all her banquet companions the whole night long, and when they all were too exhausted to go on, she would go to their attendants, thirty perhaps in number, and pair off with each one of them; yet even so she could not get enough of this wantonness. On one occasion she entered the house of one of the notables during the drinking, and they say that in the sight of all the banqueters she mounted to the projecting part of the banqueting couch where their feet lay, and there drew up her clothing in a shameless way, not hesitating to display her licentiousness. And though she made use of three openings, she used to take Nature to task, complaining that it had not pierced her breasts with larger holes so that it might be possible for her to contrive another method of copulation there.

i imagine something like this ...

something_like_this.jpg ...
 
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So I googled "empress theodora porn" and the only interesting visual that came up involved another empress in total charge of her own sexuality, thank you.
 

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Procopius presented contradictory images of Theodora in his writings. In two of his surviving works, he portrays her as intelligent, pious, strong willed, beautiful and a champion of the people and especially of women. The passage above, comes from his "Secret History" which paints a completely different picture.

The veracity of the stories in the "Secret History" as well as Procopius' reason for writing is the subject of debate. Certainly, much of the material is high questionable, like this description of the Emperor Justinian:

"And some of those who have been with Justinian at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, have thought they saw a strange demoniac form taking his place. One man said that the Emperor suddenly rose from his throne and walked about, and indeed he was never wont to remain sitting for long, and immediately Justinian's head vanished, while the rest of his body seemed to ebb and flow; whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. But presently he perceived the vanished head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it had left it."

For those who don't know who we're talking about: Theodora was the wife of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I and ruled by his side from 527 until her death in 548. Her story has always reminded me of Evita Peron: she came from humble beginnings, worked as an actress and dancer, met and married a man destined for power, helped him to achieve and hold on to that power, pushed reforms that made her popular with the common people and earned her powerful enemies and died rather young (about 48) of breast cancer.
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Pandora - the first human woman

In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by the gods, specifically by Hephaestus and Athena on the instructions of Zeus. Pandora, the first woman, was created as a punishment. Before she was made, the earth was a paradise, populated by men who lived free from hardship and enjoyed the company of the gods. But after Prometheus disobeyed Zeus once too often, giving the gift of fire to mankind, the supreme god punished both him and the mortals complicit in his act of defiance. The first of the “race of women”, Pandora, was a trap – gorgeous on the outside, and evil on the inside – and she marked the end of paradise. Unwavering in her curiosity, Pandora could not resist opening the lid of a jar entrusted to her, releasing all the sorrows of the human condition. Intriguingly, only hope remained trapped inside.
The details of the original myth, sidestepped for the kiddies in Enid’s version, may be a feminist’s nightmare, but in antiquity such sacred narratives were not uncommon.
In Genesis, Eve was the first woman. Like Hesiod, who told the tale of the first woman twice, with variations and contradictions, there were two Eves (and two Adams) in Genesis.
In Genesis 1:27, man and woman were created together in God’s image. In Genesis 2:21-23, however, Adam was created first and later on, Eve was formed from his side, typically his rib.

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00 - How it began ...
01 - Pandora by Patricia Watwood, oil on canvas.
02 - Pandora by Thomas Benjamin Kennington
03 - Lefebvre, La boite de Pandore, 1882
06 - 'Pandora' by John William Waterhouse, 1896.
07 - Jules Joseph Lefebvre
08 - Vintace; Pierre Loison sculpted a Pandora
09 - Image - Box of Troubles
 
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The Socratic Pandora
(Mostellaria 289-92)

Pulchra midier nuda erit quam purpurata pulchrior:
poste nequiquam exornata est bene, si morata est male.
Pulchrum ornatum turpes mores peius caeno conlinunt.
Nam si pulchra est nimis ornata est.

[A beautiful woman will be more beautiful naked than extravagantly dressed. Hence, if she is of bad moral character, she has in vain richly adorned herself. Ugly behavior defiles more than dirt an honored beauty. Therefore, if a woman is beautiful she is already more than enough adorned.]

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In Genesis, Eve was the first woman. Like Hesiod, who told the tale of the first woman twice, with variations and contradictions, there were two Eves (and two Adams) in Genesis.
In Genesis 1:27, man and woman were created together in God’s image. In Genesis 2:21-23, however, Adam was created first and later on, Eve was formed from his side, typically his rib.
Later Jewish tradition explained this contradiction.
On the sixth day, Yahweh created Man and Woman. The man was named Adam and the woman was named Lilith. They were created from clay at the same time.
But, because they were created from the same dirt, Lilith refused to recognize Adam as her superior:

Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, "I will not lie below," and he said, "I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one." Lilith responded, "We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth." But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air. - The Alphabet of Ben-Sira

Adam needed a new woman so Yahweh created Eve from his side, thus making her inferior to him.
Lilith_(John_Collier_painting).jpgLady-Lilith.jpg
 
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