Part 5 of our essay on fantastical, mythological, and supernatural Muses
Contemporary Examples of Half-Female/Half-Beast Sorceresses and Their Familiars
We see people using the disguise of hybrid creatures to kinky effect in the film “Eyes Wide Shut,” which was based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1920’s novella, “Dream Story.” We all know the scene – that scene, in which the men wear dominoes and masks, the perfectly shaped women only masks, and the result is a phantasmagoric garden of delights of which both Zeus and Pan, I believe, would have approved. We see all kinds of animal or mythic transformations alluded to by the wide variety of masks: Grecian ones and Venetian ones; simple eye coverlets, birdlike masks with brightly colored, proud plumage — even ones that are topped, appropriately enough, with the horns of a satyr.
But we don’t find these kind of fantastic beasts just at literary or cinematic sex parties.
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The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
In the shadow of the Sun (King): Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart, marquise de Montespan
Athenais (October 5, 1641 – May 27, 1707), known as Madame de Montespan, is famous as perhaps the most bewitching mistress of Louis XIV of France. Fecund and luscious, and mother to several of his children, her tenure as his royal mistress also coincided with the period that saw the zenith of the Sun King’s reign (1667-1680). She was said to be literally dazzling, with golden hair and brilliant white skin, and she favored gold-hued gowns, one of which was reported to be “of golden tissue, worked with gild thread and sparkling gold tinsel”; the famous literary lady Madame de Sevigne swore that in this concoction she “shimmered like a captive sunbeam.” Even when she sat behind him at church, she tempted his mind from the sacred and lured it into a fantasia of the sensual by the seductive perfumes that floated from his kneeling body, enveloping him like a caress. She also took part in the Sun King’s famed ballets, and the King constructed the castle of Clagny near Versailles for her.
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Part 5 of our essay on fantastical, mythological, and supernatural Muses
Half-Woman/Half-Beast Enchantresses
Finally, I want to look at those creatures whose transformation into something more than the normal mortal/normal human is not shown or stressed in a tale: it does not matter what the hour of the day or night is, these half-female/half-beast mistresses of magic just are. What’s more, some are evil, some are helpful and kind-hearted, but they are usually beautiful and tempting no matter which, spelling disaster if you happen to cross paths with one of the human-beastess hybrids possessed of cunning wiles and wickedness of the soul.
One of the oldest of such hybrid creatures, and one with countless variants in world cultures and religion, is Lilith. Continue reading . . .
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Part 3 of our essay on fantasical, mythological, and supernatural Muses
Nocturnal, Diurnal, and Seasonal Changelings
There is a specific class of changelings that appears in ancient Greek myths, folk tales from around the world, Shakespearean plays, Japanese ghost stories, fairy tales, and modern stories: those creatures that are compelled by spell or their own design to come alive, or be born anew, at the witching hour of midnight. For them, nighttime is their playground, and the nocturnal changes that occur for them are often beyond their control. If no changes occur, they are often creatures who find kinship and comfort with the night: they are most themselves within its velvet embrace. Alternatively, I will also explore a few instances of diurnal changelings, as well as the grandmother of all seasonal time-sharers: Persephone.
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Chapter 1: The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
The revival of courtly love: Diane de Pointiers and Henry II
Diane de Poitiers (1599-1666) was a French woman of impeccable noble lineage, who became the mistress of the much younger – and totally devoted – French king, Henry II, for twenty years. After she was widowed at a young age by a much older husband, but before Henry II was old enough to realistically announce his passion for her, she decided from then on to only wear the colors black and white, and the result was a stylistic revelation: for her chic she was later dubbed by Christian Dior the greatest female fashion innovator of her time (originally “her colors” were green and white, as in the image below, but they now lacked the statement she wanted to make as a widow).
However, the colors she wore not just for aesthetic affect: as she now had no husband or close male relatives to protect her at court, by announcing her permanent widowhood and unimpeachable character, she hoped to avoid court intrigue and any scandals, or the ultimate and unthinkable punishment – banishment from the royal court. She succeeded so well in her guise as a virtuous noble lady who didn’t take lovers that later, when she and the King eventually began their legendary affair, many people really didn’t believe that this was other than a platonic relationship – even though their passionate exertions in the realm of amours had broken several beds in a court where news traveled fast among the staff.
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Chapter One: The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
The Meteoric Rise of Theodora, who Never Forgot Her Lowly Roots
Destined to be an empress and arguably the most powerful woman in Byzantine history, Theodora came into the world amidst extremely humble circumstances in 497 A.D. in Constantinople. Quite literally born into a circus family, she is said to have been born in the outhouse of the amphitheater where her father worked as a bear-leader. Theodora probably sensed from a young age that the circus setting of her childhood was quite apt for someone whose life was to be extremely eventful: for even while she was still a young girl, she allegedly had a prophetic dream that foretold she would become “mistress of all the riches in the world.”
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Chapter 1: The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
Oiran, Tayu, and Geisha of the Splendid Edo Period in Japan (1600-1868)
Unlike the courtesans of Belle Epoque and Second Empire Europe, many of whom history still recalls by name, very few geisha are personally remembered. For individual portraits of Japanese courtesans, both visual and written, you’d have to go back centuries, to the Edo period, when chroniclers looked beyond the mysterious mask of the white faces and kept records of famous tayu and oiran, the top courtesan ranks, whose members predate geisha (the characters for “oiran” mean “leader of the flowers”).
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Part 2 of our essay on fantasical, mythological, and supernatural Muses
Sudden, Mythical Metamorphoses
In this first section I would like to consider the sudden transformations we see so many of in Greek and Roman mythology, captured so well in ancient classical texts like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as in some more modern fairy tales. In these stories, abrupt transmutations sometimes serve as a pleasant surprise from a god or goddess – a prayer answered by those fickle deities. As we are discussing muses, it seems fitting to start with the story of Pygmalion and Galatea.
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Chapter 1: The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
Venice’s World-Famous Renaissance Courtesans
During this era, Veronika Franko was the epitome of the cortigiana onesta, or honest courtesan. Known for her keen mind and poetic talents, she published two books of poetry and was as prized for her artistic talents as she was for her beauty and any secret sexual tricks she might have been thought to possess. Despite her prodigious success, and the debt Venice owed her for allegedly showing Henry III such a good time when he visited Venice that he promised to help the city in its current conflict, no courtesan’s life was ever truly secure, not even the gifted and canny Veronika’s. She had to face jealous competitors who might come after her with weapons, the constant threat of syphilis and other diseases, and the menace of the unspeakable degradation of what was called the “Royal 31″ – that is, being cornered and gang-raped by 31 men at the same time.
Despite having powerful men as loyal clients, Veronika also was forced to face the Inquisition. If things had not gone her way, she could very well have been burned at the stake as a “witch” – the proof was that she had beguiled so many prominent men in Venice.
During this golden age for Venetian courtesans, Veronica Franko was not alone in being famed for impressive attributes that went beyond sexual skills or beauty. In her remarkable catalog of assets, particularly prodigious intelligence and writing talent, she was preceded by Tullia d’Aragona (c. 1510-1556), a courtesan who was ending her career as Veronica began hers in the latter half of the 16th century.
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Introduction: Introducing the Courtesan, and Admiring her Avatars from Antiquity
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to a Squadron of Dyed-Pink Rabbits: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
“History begins at night in dingy lanes with the waking of prostitutes . . . If the curtains are history, the shadows behind the curtains are the faces of the prostitutes that give the curtains a dimension of reality.”
With the above words Prakash Kona pays tribute to one of the most unfairly despised and defamed characters in real life: the prostitute. In contemporary India, recounting a slum of a town called Hyderabad in Streets that Smell of Dying Roses, Kona, however, like writers throughout the ages, finds a muse in whores, writing of them as dreamily as he harshly condemns the town that abuses them, for they are history’s constant, history’s secret, and, as Kona suggests, history’s three-dimensional flesh. They are a reality and necessity that many people avoid naming, yet they have been a staple in world literature. Within narrative, the prostitute haunts a variety of social and historical settings: luxurious palaces and down-and-out brothels, boom economies and war-torn landscapes, myth and dream. Her status runs the gamut from cheapest alleyway hooker to the most glamorous demimondaine of all: the courtesan.
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Part 1 of our essay on fantasical, mythological, and supernatural Muses
Half-Women/Half-Beast Enchantresses and Nocturnal Charmers and Changelings
Throughout world literature and mythology – from ancient Greco-Roman myths to the Grimms Brothers’ fairy tales; from Japanese folk traditions to artists’ renditions of fantastic creatures that are hybrids of humans and something else – people have been endlessly fascinated with the idea of transformation, mythological beings, changelings, human-animal monsters, beasts, or goddesses, and people who act normal by day but turn into another being – or behave under the command of a charm — by night. In many of these myths and stories, one reason for their importance and their persistence in our culture is because those of us “ordinary people” both long for and fear those touched with otherness – a phenomenon that can be as divine as the instant when the priest consecrates bread so as to make it into the body of Christ at Catholic mass, and he feels one with God; or, at the other end of the spiritual spectrum (and hopefully purely fictional) as crude and petty as when an insatiable, vengeful demon-woman turns an innocent man into a pig.
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