milicentbrovovich:

The Alkonost is, according to Russian folklore, a creature with the body of a bird but the head of a beautiful woman. It makes sounds that are amazingly beautiful, and those who hear these sounds forget everything they know and want nothing more ever again, rather like the sirens of Greek myth. The alkonost lays her eggs on a beach and then rolls them into the sea. When the alkonost’s eggs hatch, a thunderstorm sets in and the sea becomes so rough that it is untravelable. The name of the alkonost came from a Greek demigoddess whose name was Alcyone. In Greek mythology, Alcyone was transformed by the gods into a kingfisher.

geekybitch:

damnlayoffthebleach:

amantes-amentes:

damnlayoffthebleach:

Another example, this time from mythology.  In the Greek myth of Perseus (the one who killed Medusa), did you know that the princess Andromeda he saves is black?  The same Andromeda who was chained to a rock and almost devoured by a sea monster as punishment for her mother’s boastfulness.  THAT Andromeda.  Yes, Andromeda in the myth is a BLACK WOMAN.  She’s from ETHIOPIA (her father Cephus is brother to the kings of Libya and Egypt).  She’s black.  Heck, Perseus stops in Ethiopia on his way home and ends up saving her there.  So, I did a simple Google image search of ‘Average Ethiopian Woman’.  The image on the left came up; it’s a composite of multiple faces of various Ethiopian women morphed together to form an ‘average’.  Andromeda would historically look like the image on the left.  But check out the images on the right: THAT is how the Ethiopian princess has been portrayed throughout the ages - as a white woman.  In sculpture, paintings, and film she’s almost always portrayed as white.  In fact, I’ve only ever seen two pictures of Andromeda as black, and at the time I didn’t even recognize her because the total whitewashing of her and her culture is so pervasive.  Not only has Andromeda from the myth been whitewashed, her people and culture in the myth have been as well.

TayTay:

A guy in my program is actually doing a ton of research - like seriously I think this will one day be PhD material - about perceptions of ethnicity in the ancient world and really what his research has yielded is that it is early modern scholars who fucked shit up like this for mythology and made everyone super white. Assfaces.

Medea was from Colchis, I want to see a bad-ass representation of her and her non-sparkly-whiteness.

^This

^This, yo. I’m a mythology nerd, and I really fucking wanna see a black Andromeda.

When I was little, I remember drawing a picture of a black Andromeda. It always pissed me off that she was depicted as white.

phassa:

Seignac, Guillaume - Diana Hunting

Eos, Evelyn Morgan

(via Wikipedia)

garagedump:

Rock on!

smudgieflorence:

terrierfancy:

Persephone and Hades by sorskc

This is really pretty.

I love the story of Persephone and Hades~