Juno Sospita

These two photos show terracotta acroteria of the head of Juno Sospita from a temple of Juno that was once on the Palatine Hill. They are now in the Palatine Museum, a museum that seems to be open every day - even Mondays when other museums in Rome are closed. When I first saw these in 2006 I was quite struck by Juno's goat-skin headdress because it looked to me a lot like... well, what we would now expect a certain founder of The Church of Satan to be wearing - as if a goat-skin really means the Satan of the New Testament (as the ha' satan of the Hebrew Bible is another thing altogether)! Consequently when I was in Rome in 2009 I marched through the Roman Forum in the boiling midday heat and up on to the Palatine Hill, almost getting heat-stroke, to find the museum to have another look at these terracotts and photograph them. So here they are. And what can I say about Juno Sospita? Well, according to Price and Kearns in the "Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion" p.305, the cult of Juno Sospita was imported to Rome from the city of Lanuvium which from 338 BCE was administered jointly with Rome. The distinctive iconography of this goddess, who wears a goatskin and carries a spear and shield, indicates a martial character. Dumezil believed that her full epithet Sospita Mater Regina confirmed his thesis that Juno was originally trivalent, with influence over military prowess, fertility and political organisation. In Beard, North and Price's "Religions of Rome Vol 2: A Sourcebook" p.37-8 Cicero is quoted (On the Nature of the Gods I. 77, 81-2) saying "...Just as much, I'd swear, as you believe in the divinity of that Juno Sospita of your own native town - the one you never see, not even in your dreams, without a goat-skin, spear, shield and shoes turned up at the toe. But the Argive Juno does not appear like that, nor the Roman. So it follows that Juno has one appearance for the Argives, another for the people of Lanuvium, another for us." Anyway, while I am less amazed at her goat-skin headdress than I once was, I still think it's pretty remarkable. See these interesting coins with Juno on them.

Trees and Clothes

I am really struck by this photograph by artist, Simryn Gill, from her exhibition, 'Inland'. I don't actually know what the title of this work is, but I find it evokes in my mind a Vodou aesthetic, possibly as mediated through black and white films, either ethnographic, or horror. Basically it is an image of banana trees wearing clothes. I love it, and I would never have thought to do that myself, dress up banana trees. I don't think the artist's intention was to evoke Vodou, well, I don't know, but that's what it suggests to me.

I know what to do, you do Voodoo.

Dance in a ring of flames, shadows fall the same, fire, love and pain. Do voodoo, voodoo, voodoo. ~Chris Isaak. 'Voodoo'.

Since the earthquake in Haiti "Voodoo" or more properly Vodou is a hot topic on people's lips - especially religious nutters who think it's demonic. Having originally come across Vodou through a simultaneous mix of reading Anne Rice books, buying the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot Deck by author and practitioner Sallie Ann Glassman, and film maker Maya Deren's book 'Divine Horsemen' in the early 1990s, when Vodou was a huge trend in Australia's occult scene (Religious Studies academic Lynne Hume discusses a "vodou ritual" she attended, in which I was one of a group of Hounsi, in her book 'Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia' - we had no idea how inauthentic we appeared!), I later went about reading more ethnographical works on the subject in an effort to understand it from that angle. I guess I'd say I was actively interested in Vodou for about five years and only moved on to other topics because, well, there are just so many things to know about. Seeing as it's now featuring in the news - especially the religious news, including Pagan religious news - I am inclined to Google it and see how it's going here in Oz these days. Of course there is still musician Kerri Simpson , a student of Glassman, who has some interesting things to say, there is also Mambo Racine in New Zealand, and I just discovered this group, Sancista, in South Australia. I'm mainly interested in Vodou nowadays from an art angle (sequined flags, vodou sculpture) as well as in regards to deified aspects of landscape and the natural world for the purposes of analogy with prehistoric Aegean religion(s) - not from the syncretistic angle of African religions and Catholicism of course, but from the possession angle. It seems poignant that the only tattoo I have is the Vodou veve of Ayizan, the first priestess (pictured above). It's a schematized palm frond mask and that is exactly where I'm currently going with my PhD research. We circle around, it seems.

I Love Aegean Glyptic

Really, who wouldn't love it? I've been spending days going almost blind, scrutinising the CMS volumes in the uni library, and I've only done about half of them. Yay! This one, the Isopata Ring, is particularly gorgeous, but there are hundreds of other beautiful ones too. I saw some of these 'celebrity' rings and seals in the Athens Archaeological Museum in July. Haven't been to Crete yet though to see famous examples there, anyway the Heraklion Museum was closed last year, I think it is still closed. I'd feel irritated to go to Crete and be confronted with a closed museum, like how in Israel the archaeological section of the Israel Museum was closed, but I already knew that and the Rockefeller Museum, the Bible Lands Museum and Eretz Israel Museum were compensation enough.

I'm in Biblical Archaeology Review

Last year I spent the first half of the year scrimping, saving and scrounging money to attend an archaeological dig at tell es-Safi/Gath in Israel. Part of my trip was funded by a scholarship from the Biblical Archaeology Society, publishers of the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review. I had to write a report on my dig experiences and it has recently been published in the online version of the magazine. The above pic shows myself with co-students Jason and Dean in Jerusalem before we got to the dig, hence clean. See two dig pictures in the article.

Green Gown

Me in a green crushed velvet dress with a ram skull. Green is the theme colour for my Edenic PhD. The topic is green, the folders and notepads are green, I am green. Bright grassy green. (Like the Wicked Witch of the West's skin tone? Hopefully not). Over on Facebook, where comments tend to be rather fleeting because of the quick turnover, Peg Aloi commented about this blog post so I thought I'd include what she said here: "Nice! In my Color in Cinema class, the film we study for green is ATONEMENT. The gown's bright green color represents the lost romantic past; and after the pivotal scene where it is last seen, the color is never again seen in the film except in flashback or in battle/war scenes of the present." Then Jeffrey Winters commented below that "Hopefully you're studying the Green Fairy as well. Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder." I replied to these posts thus: "Wow, Peg, I like the idea of a green gown representing a lost romantic past, because that's pretty much what the photo of me in the green gown represents! And no Jeffrey, I'm not drinking the Green Fairy, at least not right this minute." I must say I'm not familiar with the film Atonement, better look that up.

Thirteen Years of Tapestry Weaving

You could say it's 14 years, but I did have a year off for maternity leave. Well, tomorrow is the last day that I work at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. After starting off there in 1996 fresh from a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University, I am about to finish in order to start something else, a full-time PhD in Aegean Archaeology at Melbourne University. I'm excited, but a teeny bit apprehensive. It's comfortable to stay the same, but it's time for a change. Plus, although like Archane I'm as good at weaving as Athena, I don't want to become a spider.