Category Archives: Mythology

Marketa Lazarova

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A still shot from "Marketa Lazarova," the 1967 classic Czech fim, directed by Frantisek Vlacil.

A still shot from “Marketa Lazarova,” the 1967 classic Czech fim, directed by Frantisek Vlacil.

Are you looking for something to watch during these last couple of weeks before Labor Day? Marketa Lazarova is a classic of Czech filmmaking.

“Frantisek Vlacil’s atmospheric, symbol-charged medieval epic is a wide-screen black-and-white feast for the eyes.”
—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

One of the crowning achievements of Czech cinema is this epic celluloid hallucination of savagery and mysticism in the Middle Ages. Centered around a violent feud between two 13th-century pagan clans, Marketa Lazarova is a riddle that’s not to be cracked (at least not on first viewing). Featuring a hypnotic dreamscape—hooded figures wandering through stark, barren landscapes and black wolves prowling virgin snow—and set to a thunderous, primordial soundtrack of clanging bells and liturgical chanting, the film’s lustrous, monochrome ’Scope cinematography gleams anew in this freshly struck 35mm print.

You can get it on Netflix, I think, and on Amazon. I saw it at a special BAM screening last spring and it was amazing. It reminded me of The Seventh Seal but it was also a very different movie. I highly recommend it!

A Janus Films release.

Narcissus

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Echo and Narcissus (1903), a Pre-Raphaelite interpretation by John William Waterhouse

Echo and Narcissus (1903), a Pre-Raphaelite interpretation by John William Waterhouse

Despite there being no clear evidence that the flower’s name derives directly from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who drowned while gazing at his own reflection in the water, the two are firmly linked in popular culture and the flower taken as a symbol of vanity. Another Greek myth finds Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter, lured to her doom in the Underworld by the god Hades while picking a narcissus flower.

In ancient China, a legend about a poor but good man holds he was brought many cups of gold and wealth by this flower. Since the flower blooms in early spring, it has also become a symbol of Chinese New Year. Narcissus bulb carving and cultivation is even an art akin to Japanese bonsai. If the narcissus blooms on Chinese New Year, it is said to bring extra wealth and good fortune throughout the year. Its sweet fragrances are highly revered in Chinese culture.

In classical Persian literature, the narcissus is a symbol of beautiful eyes, together with other flowers that equal a beautiful face with a spring garden, such as roses for cheeks and violets for shining dark hair.

The narcissus, otherwise known as daffodil, is the national flower of Wales, where it is traditional to wear a daffodil or a leek on Saint David’s Day (March 1). In Welsh the daffodil is known as “Peter’s Leek”, cenhinen Bedr or cenin Pedr). You can read more about daffodil and spring here.

An Ancient Egyptian Health Plan?

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Crocodiles were associated with Sobek, a god responsible for pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked particularly for protection against the dangers presented by the Nile river.

Crocodiles were associated with Sobek, a god responsible for pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked particularly for protection against the dangers presented by the Nile river.

My current writing project is an academic book about Byzantine attitudes towards sexuality in the 4th–14th centuries. I found that the early Egyptian monks, as well as the later Byzantine monastic charters, insisted that there should be no female animals kept on monastic farms as the monks would be tempted to use them in untoward ways. This fear seemed exaggerated to me, so I did some checking to see how real the likelihood of bestiality was.

It turns out that bestiality was not only common in rural areas but was a part of pagan worship and folk magic. Egyptian gods were always depicted in animal form or as human-animal hybrids and Greco-Roman mythology described gods and goddesses assuming animal form to seduce humans. In northern Europe, heroes and royal families claimed to be descended from animal ancestors who bestowed their strength, cunning, and other abilities on the clan. Sex with certain animals was reported to heal certain diseases.

One example of the healing powers unleashed by acts of bestiality struck me in particular. In ancient Egypt, the god Sobek was depicted in alligator form and was said to have helped Isis collect the body parts of her son Horus and raise him from the dead as well as impregnating Isis and giving her into the protection of a “bask” or group of crocodiles. Because of this, sex with a crocodile was said to heal certain life-threatening diseases and the Egyptians developed a way of catching and then flipping a crocodile onto its back and restraining it so that it could not resist penetration. Clearly this form of bestiality was a large group activity and not something engaged in by a man ashamed and alone in the dark, though it is hard to imagine how terrible the disease must have been to drive people to resort to this as a cure!