In Greek and Roman mythology, the Furies were female spirits of justice and vengeance. They were also called the Erinyes (angry ones). Known especially for pursuing people who had murdered family members, the Furies punished their victims by driving them mad. When not punishing wrongdoers on earth, they lived in the underworld and tortured the damned.
According to some stories, the Furies were sisters born from the blood of Uranus, the primaeval god of the sky, when he was wounded by his son Cronus*. In other stories, they were the children of Nyx (night). In either case, their primaeval origin set them apart from the other deities of the Greek and Roman pantheons.
Most tales mention three Furies: Alecto (endless), Tisiphone (punishment), and Megaera (jealous rage). Usually imagined as monstrous, foul-smelling hags, the sisters had bats’ wings, coal-black skin, and hair entwined with serpents. They carried torches, whips, and cups of venom with which to torment wrongdoers. The Furies could also appear as storm clouds or swarms of insects.
Jay Currie, “Character meets the Furies”, Jay Currie, 2018-10-08.
March 26, 2021
QotD: The Furies
February 23, 2021
QotD: Canadian myths
Canada is a huge but under-populated country. The wind echoes in our ears. Much has been made in our literature of the hardiness and resilience necessary for existence in a punishing climate and of the harsh labor required to extract the benefits of a resource-based economy. Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush is an early classic detailing the rigors and challenges of domesticating an unforgiving milieu. Canadian fortitude is a national foundation myth.
David Solway, “The Canadian Mind: A Culture So Open, Its ‘Brains Fall Out'”, PJ Media, 2018-10-10.
February 13, 2021
Miscellaneous Myths: Hades and Persephone
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 12 Feb 2021You asked, I’ve answered! Today let’s discuss greek mythology’s most beloved AND most maligned relationship — but which reputation is truly deserved? You all know where *I* stand on the matter, but today I’ll do my best to justify my hot take that Hades And Persephone Is Romantic Actually.
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January 16, 2021
Fables and Folktales: The Snow Queen
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 15 Jan 2021Welcome to 2021! It’s cold, it’s been a hell of a journey, and sometimes it feels like we’re being pelted by shattered glass. What story could’ve possibly fit the bill so perfectly?
Disney really missed an opportunity when they decided Frozen was going to have exactly nothing in common with the original story. Honestly that kind of analysis could be worth a video all on its own …
It’s myth-y enough I’m still gonna put it in the same playlist, but it would’ve felt disingenuous calling it a myth, soooooo
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December 31, 2020
QotD: The “noble savage” belief system
***When the ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples entered the New World some 16,000 years ago via Siberia, they hunted many of the mammals, reptiles, and birds, from the Arctic down to Tierra del Fuego. Mammoths, mastodons, and enormous ground-dwelling sloths, as well as giant bears, giant tortoises, and enormous teratorn birds with 16-foot wingspans — animals that had never had a chance to evolve in the presence of humans — were among the many species that disappeared from the Americas. Some medium-sized animals — such as horse, peccary, and antelope species — were also wiped out. But others survived: Bison and deer species, tree sloths, tapirs, jaguars, bear species, alligators, and big birds such as rheas and condors are, at least for the time being, still with us. The existence of these survivors, along with the relatively unspoiled forests, grasslands, and rivers seen by the first Europeans to enter the Americas, served to support the illusion that America’s first peoples had been maintaining what popular environmentalist David Suzuki calls a “sacred balance” with the natural world. Throughout history, however, humans killed animals that were tasty, numerous, and huntable. For kin-groups, staying alive meant making life-and-death cost-benefit calculations about where to send your berry-pickers and hunters. “Sacredness” had nothing to do with it.
This is not to say that the Indigenous peoples who migrated from Asia to the Americas were especially bloodthirsty (though Europeans typically reported that their hunting and fishing skills were excellent). In every known case where humans entered continents formerly uninhabited by our species, the bigger animals tended to disappear, since they provided the most sustenance per kill. The first humans to enter Australia some 70,000 years ago wiped out giant kangaroo species, rhino-sized marsupial herbivores, jaguar-sized marsupial carnivores, big flightless birds, and many other megafauna. The same thing would happen in Europe: After sapiens completed its occupation of that sub-continent some 30,000 years ago, the mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant deer, and lions they recorded in their cave paintings and carvings also disappeared.
Baz Edmeades, “The Myth of Harmonious Indigenous Conservationism”, Quillette, 2020-09-06.
December 26, 2020
Legends Summarized: The Journey To The West (Part VIII)
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 25 Dec 2020Journey to the West Kai, episode 5: Fishy Business and Mountaineering Madness!
Danger! Intrigue! Sandy fights a carp! Pigsy gets two makeovers! Monkey reunites with several old frenemies, and Tripitaka gets less screentime than the horse!
(merry christmas)
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December 11, 2020
QotD: Airbrushing out the worst parts of “Lost Cause” mythology
Looking back, we can see that between 1865 and around 1914 the Union and the former South negotiated an imperfect but workable peace. The first step in that negotiation took place at Appomattox, when the Union troops accepting General Robert E. Lee’s surrender saluted the defeated and allowed them to retain their arms, treating them with the most punctilious military courtesy due to honorable foes.
Over the next few years, the Union Army reintegrated the Confederate military into itself. Confederate officers not charged with war crimes were generally able to retain rank and seniority; many served in the frontier wars of the next 35 years. Elements of Confederate uniform were adopted for Western service.
The political leaders of the revolt were not executed. Instead, they were spared to urge reconciliation, and generally did. By all historical precedent they were treated with shocking leniency. This paid off.
Of course, not all went smoothly. The Reconstruction of the South between 1863 and 1877 was badly bungled, creating resentments that linger to this day and – in the folk memory of Southerners – often overshadow the harms of the war itself. The condition of emancipated blacks remained dire.
But overall, the reintegration of the South went far better than it could have. Confederate nationalism was successfully reabsorbed into American nationalism. One of the prices of this adjustment was that Confederate heroes had to become American heroes. An early and continuing example of this was the reverence paid to Robert E. Lee by Unionists after the war; his qualities as a military leader were extolled and his opposition to full civil rights for black freedmen memory-holed.
Lee’s heroism and ascribed saintliness would layer become a central prop in “Lost Cause” romanticism, which portrayed the revolt as an honorable struggle for a Southern way of life while mostly airbrushing out – but sometimes, unforgiveably, defending – the institution of slavery. Even today, the “soft” airbrushing version of Lost Cause retains a significant hold on Southerners who would never dream of defending slavery.
Eric S. Raymond, “Unlearning history”, Armed and Dangerous, 2017-09-22.
November 28, 2020
Miscellaneous Myths: The Zodiac
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Nov 2020Thanks to longtime patron Volt for requesting this topic!
We know their names! We know their symbols! We know there’s a truly staggering number of websites dedicated to their stereotypical personality traits! But what do we know about their stories? Let’s discuss!
FUN FACT I GLOSSED OVER IN THE VIDEO: like I said, it’s REALLY hard to determine when these constellations entered Greece. Most people set the date at 300ish, when Eudoxus codified the Greek calendar based on the Babylonian one — but that clashes with the fact that Heracles’s labors predate that by at least three centuries, and they’ve had those zodiacal themes since that lost epic poem was initially written. We know, therefore, that the Babylonian zodiac entered greece between Homer’s time (when he conspicuously didn’t mention them — and neither did Hesiod in his Astronomia) and Peisander’s time (author of the lost Heracleia), basically the interval between 800 and 600 CE. The phoenician traders carrying that info is a reasonable assumption, especially considering how important the stars are to sailors navigating at night. But it is WILD to me how hard this is to research and how nobody seems to have really explored the timeline here!
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October 18, 2020
Miscellaneous Myths: Orion
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 10 Jul 2020Look! Up in the sky! It’s a giant! It’s a hunter! It’s Orion!
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From the comments:
Overly Sarcastic Productions
6 days ago
whoops, uh – YES, way back in my Endymion video I DID say that Artemis loved Orion, but in my defense, I was a much less diligent researcher back then, and that little nugget of “common knowledge” was EVERYWHERE I LOOKED. I had to do some serious digging this time to find where it came from and how unsupported it really was. I wasn’t kidding — that interpretation was so appealingly tropey that it eclipsed the MUCH larger body of work that completely contradicted it, and even completely unrelated articles and descriptions will mention “btw Artemis and Orion were totally smoochin” like it’s a Thing. Mythology is fun like that! 😅 -R
October 10, 2020
Miscellaneous Myths: The Minotaur
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 9 Oct 2020Ah, Theseus. Athens’ favorite trash man. Let’s talk about someone a little more interesting — literally anyone involved in this story will do.
Good news, I found the 1080P button! Bad news, the minute differences in image resolution are now threatening my sanity.
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September 12, 2020
Miscellaneous Myths: Ares’ Abduction
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 11 Sep 2020PINS! https://crowdmade.com/collections/ove…
These pins are Pre-Sale, and are only available for a Limited Time! Production will begin after all orders have been placed, and are expected to ship in early November.Well, they may have wounded Ares’ body and spirit, but at least he still has his pride. Oh wait
Alternate title: Ares And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
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August 15, 2020
Miscellaneous Myths: The Book Of Invasions
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 14 Aug 2020The quintessential Irish mythological text, and … it’s about getting steamrolled by invaders. Now that’s what I call brand consistency!
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August 5, 2020
Berserkers! The facts and the fictions
Lindybeige
Published 16 Jul 2015Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige
This one has been a long time coming, but now I’m glad that I’ve said it. It may disappoint many die-easy fans of unnecessary carnage, but the truth about berserkers is that they may have been a great deal more sensible and human than the rage-fuelled psychos so beloved by the world’s male teenagers.
Here’s a link to Roderick Dale’s new Viking book (although Amazon inaccurately describes it as an audiobook and abridged): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-Experi…
For those wanting the full 100,000-word thesis, try here: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28819/
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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June 23, 2020
Legends Summarized: The Journey To The West (Part VII)
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Dec 2019Journey to the West Kai, episode 4: Trouble in Taoist Town!
Thrills! Excitement! Pigsy takes a bath! Sandy fights an alligator! Monkey helps Tripitaka cheat on a high-stakes game show! And as always, everyone forgets about the horse!
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June 16, 2020
Legends Summarized: The Journey To The West (Part VI)
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 14 Dec 2018JOURNEY TO THE WEST KAI, EPISODE 3: FAMILY FEUD!
Action! Excitement! Faces from the past! Kuan Yin discovers an exciting new acupuncture technique! Pigsy is unexpectedly skilled at CPR!
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