falconspace: fish, fowl, falcon

The world is a mask that hides the real world.
Thatâs what everybody suspects, though the world we see wonât let us dwell on it long.
The world has ways - more masks - of getting our attention.
The suspicion sneaks in now and again, between the cracks of everyday existenceâ¦the bird song dips, rises, dips, trails off into blue sky silence before the note that would reveal the shape of a melody that, somehow, would tie everything together, on the verge of unmasking the hidden armature that frames this sky, this tree, this bird, this quivering green leaf, jewels in a crown.â¦
As the song dies, the secret withdraws.
The tree is a mask.
The sky is a mask.
The quivering green leaf is a mask.
The song is a mask.
The singing bird is a mask.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

fish, fowl, falcon

Sirens, Temptresses of the Sea:

Similarly Apollonius Rhodius (Ap. Rhod., Argon. iv.898ff.) describes the Sirens as partly virgins and partly birds. Aelian tells us (Ael., Nat. Anim. xvii.23) that poets and painters represented them as winged maidens with the feet of birds. Ovid says that the Sirens had the feet and feathers of birds, but the faces of virgins; and he asks why these daughters of Achelous, as he calls them, had this hybrid form. Perhaps, he thinks, it was because they had been playing with Persephone when gloomy Dis carried her off, and they had begged the gods to grant them wings, that they might search for their lost playmate over seas as well as land. See Ov. Met. 5.552-562. In like manner Hyginus describes the Sirens as women above and fowls below, but he says that their wings and feathers were a punishment inflicted on them by Demeter for not rescuing Persephone from the clutches of Pluto. See Hyginus, Fab. 125, 141. Another story was that they were maidens whom Aphrodite turned into birds because they chose to remain unmarried. See Eustathius on Hom. Od. 12.47, p. 1709. It is said that they once vied with the Muses in singing, and that the Muses, being victorious, plucked off the Siren's feathers and made crowns out of them for themselves (Paus. 9.34.3). In ancient art, as in literature, the Sirens are commonly represented as women above and birds below. See Miss J. E. Harrison, Myths of the Odyssey (London, 1882), pp. 146ff. Homer says nothing as to the semi-bird shape of the Sirens, thus leaving us to infer that they were purely human."

....the sirens were creatures who sang so sweetly that they attracted sailors to their death. The Sirens are a threat because they give the choice of hearing about life instead of experiencing it. Sirens were temtresses who with their sweet voices represent the distractions that keep you from your goal. The Greeks thought the Sirens were daughters of one of the Muses and were perhaps related to Hera. Odysseus brought about their destruction by listening to them while he was tied to the mast. Their fate was only to live as long as they were successful in their lure. Odysseus listened but was not lured. They ceased to exist as a result.

The fact that they are half human and half bird suggests that they came from the goddeses of another mid-eastern land. The deites of the other countries, such as Egypt, are more commonly of this form.