Skip to main content

Jingwei and Xingtian

 "Jingwei bites hold of twigs, determined to fill up the deep-blue sea. Xingtian dances wildly with his spear and shield, his old ambitions still burn fiercely. After blending with things, no anxieties should remain. After metamorphosing, all one's regrets should flee. In vain do they cling to their hearts from the past. How can they, a better day, foresee." --Poet Tao Qian, 365 - 427 CE, writing about Jingwei and Xingtian.

Jingwei was a Chinese Goddess who transformed into a bird to save herself from drowning in the sea while playing. She is determined to fill the sea with twigs and pebbles so no one else will meet the same fate.

Xingtian was a Chinese God who fought the Supreme Divinity for control, not giving up even after he was decapitated. He continues to fight using his nipples as eyes and his bellybutton as a mouth. He fights with shield in one hand and a battle axe or spear in the other.

Both are known for their determination and persistence in impossible tasks.

Jingwei and Xingtian
Jingwei and Xingtian original painting available through Saatchi Art.  Prints and merch available in shop or through RedBubble or Fine Art America.
    



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Having a Child Is Like Having Your Heart Walk Around Outside Your Body

I've been reading a lot about evolutionary psychology lately.  It seems that what really made us human was the bond between mother and child.  Our big brains force us into the world before we can even hold up our own heads.  We essentially must continue gestating outside the womb.  The learning and empathy that develops between mother and child in infancy forms the basis of everything we call love, and lays the foundation for our cooperative culture.  Evolution, driven by the mothers.  It's been a series of fascinating reads, and it's reminded me of the quote about how having a child is like forever having a piece of your heart walking around outside your body.  Or, in the case of my painting, your whole heart.  My heart and I, walking through the parking lot of the New York Renaissance Faire a couple of years ago. Having a Child Is Like Having Your Heart Walk Around Outside Your Body, original painting by Echoing Multiverse.  Available via S...

Asherah

 An inscription from Khirbet El-Qôm (near Jerusalem) dated to the 700s BCE and translated by archaeologist Judith Hadley reads, "Uriyahu the Rich wrote it. Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh for from his enemies by his Asherah he has saved him by Oniyahu by his Asherah and by his A[she]rah.” ( Source ) Asherah was the Great Goddess of the Ancient Near East.  From this inscription and other evidence, it is surmised that Yahweh, the God of the Jews, once had a wife - Asherah.  Asherah was also sometimes known as Astarte and was associated with lions and the planet Venus, like her relative, Ishtar/Inanna.  Asherah's symbol was the tree of life, and her worship involved sacred groves and asherah poles.   Asherah original painting available through  Saatchi Art .  Stickers, prints, and other merch available in shop or through  RedBubble  or  Fine Art America.   All of the Asherahs in my painting are based on figurines housed in the Isra...

Arabian Goddesses al Uzza, Allat, and Manat and the Satanic Verses

 al Uzza, Al-Lat, and Manat are Arabian Goddesses, triple Goddesses of pre-Islamic Arabia.  They are famously depicted in a relief from the city of Hatra, created during the 2nd century AD, in which they appear atop a lion. These Goddesses are also mentioned in the Quran... "Have you thought of al-Lāt and al-‘Uzzá and Manāt, the third, the other? (Quran 53:19–20) "These are the exalted gharāniq,  whose intercession is hoped for. Gharaniq is sometimes translated as cranes, deities of the sky. It is generally claimed that these verses show the influence of Satan and do not reflect the true tenets of Islam 😆 I had fun with duct tape shapes and a palette knife. al Uzza, al Lat, and Manat original painting available through Saatchi Art .  Prints, stickers, and other merch available in shop or through RedBubble or Fine Art America . Besides being named in the Quran, all three Goddesses are attested to in the Book of Idols , written by Arab scholar Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi (73...

The Loftus "Princess"

 In Northumbria, in the U.K., near the North Sea coastline, is an archaeological site near the town of Loftus.  It contains a circular enclosure of post holes surrounding a raised center, dated to 2200 BCE.  It is thought to have been a ritual site.  Other structures at the site include the "Oldest House", which predates Stonehenge.   In addition the Neolithic ceremonial site, the area was also the site of an Iron Age settlement.  Superimposed, cutting through the Iron Age houses, 109 early medieval graves have been found.  "Each was dug carefully into the ground to allow enough room for a body to be laid in the foetal position on its side....Beads, scraps of metal, parts of eroded weapons all suggested that these burials were not Iron Age, but more recent....more excitingly still, they seemed to date from a period when this part of the north of England was undergoing an ideological revolution.  They dated from when Christianity was putting i...

Sophia and the Apocryphon of John

 In 1945, thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by an Egyptian farmer near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt.  These early Christian texts date from the 3rd century CE, and include writings attributed to John the Baptist.  The writings of John became known as the Secret Book of John, or the Apocryphon of John.  A translation by Frederik Wisse can be read online . In the Apocryphon, there is a female counterpart to the Father - the holy Mother, Barbelo.  "She is the forethought of the All - her light shines like his light - the perfect power...  The first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory in the aeons, the glory of the revelation... she became the womb of everything, for it is she who is prior to them all, the Mother-Father." I became aware of the Apocryphon of John after reading a graphic novel by Marisa Acocella, The Big She-Bang, The Herstory of the Universe According to God the Mother (highly recommended, by ...

Bucranium = Uterus

 A bucranium is a bull's head and horns.  Bucrania have been found in shrines at Catalhoyuk, one the oldest cities ever to be excavated.  Dorothy Cameron interpreted the bucrania at Catalhoyuk as a "symbol of life and regeneration--essentially a female symbol, representing the divine power of the female reproductive system." Bucranium = Uterus original painting, prints, and merch available in shop or through RedBubble or  Fine Art America .  Layout of bucrania based on a drawing of a reconstruction of Shrine E VI at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in a 2007 article by Joan Relke (below).    Source Marija Gimbutas writes, "the key to understanding Neolithic renditions of the bull's head and horns (bucranium in archaeological literature) comes through their resemblance to the female uterus and fallopian tubes."  Besides the bucrania from Shine E VI, other images at Catalhoyuk show female torsos with bucranium in the position of the uterus an...