'Since
a child I dream of Pegasus ...'
'Since
a child I dream of Pegasus ...' (Artist, Gaynor Evelyn
Sweeney). Image by Artist Chirs Satchell (Manchester,
England).
Information
on Image: Chris Satchell, an Aritst based in
Manchester, England, explores various subjects through
multi media. This is from a series of digital collages
where he produces spontaneous visualisations of those
he encounters.
Artist's
Dream: Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney (by Artist, 2006).
Visualisation of her dream (and portrait by her Father,
Mr Robert Allan Sweeney (Snr), 1972).
Portrait by Artist's Father, Robert Allan Sweeney (Snr),
1972.
Representation
by Artist, Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, of her dreams from childhood,
2006.
Research
Quotation on Pegasus: Winged horse of Greek myth,
symbol of the sacred king's or hero's journey to heaven;
an image of death and apotheosis, like the mythic death-hordes
of northern Europe. Pegasus had archaic, matriarchal origins.
He sprang from the "wise blood" of the Moon-goddess
Medusa, who embodied the principle of medha, the Indo-European
root word for female wisdom. Or, alternately, he was the
magic horse Arion, "the moon creature on high,"
born of the Goddess Demeter and ridden by Heracles in
his role of sacred king in Elis. There was an earlier
female Pegasus named Aganipe, "the Mare Who destroys
mercifully," actually a title of Demeter herself
as the destroying lunar Night-Mare.
Pegasus
was named for the Pegae, water-priestess who tended the
sacred spring in Pirene in Corinth. The cult seems to
have been rooted in Egypt. The oldest shrine of Osiris
at Abydos (ca. 2000 B.C.) centered on a sacred spring
called Pega.
The
Greek Pegae preserved an ancient dying-god cult, as shows
by the myth of Bellerophon, who mounted Pegasus and tried
to ride to heaven "as though he were an immortal."
He failed and fell. Bellerophon's predicessor (mythologized
as his "father") also failed and was devoured
by wild man-eating mares. This was not meant to suggest
that human flesh ever became incorporated into an equine
diet. It meant rather "the pre-Hellenic sacred king
was torn in pieces at the close of his reign by women
disguised as mares."
Pegasus
represented divine inspiration as well as god-like apotheosis.
A man who rode him could become a great poet. Pegasus's
crescent-moon-shaped hoof stamped the ground and dug the
Hippocrene (Horse-Well), a spring of poetic inspiration
on Mount Helicon, the home of the Muses. This was another
kind of immortality: the rider of Pegasus could figuratively
"fly through the air to reach the heavens."
-
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths of Secrets, by Barbara
G. Walker, 1983.
