Athena

And another, though not an Aztec.  I'd never quite liked the earlier version of Her, so I redid it with rather a different emphasis.  It's tricky to find female tricksters, after all, but Athena absolutely qualifies (if you don't believe me go read The Odyssey.)

I don't know if anyone's going to pick up on this but I hinted at Her more martial qualities with the bronze jewelry in the shape of spear points and shields (the pins on Her shoulders are specifically Spartan shield-shaped).

I quite like Her.

As usual, I've put up t-shirts and prints with this art on them, if you are interested.

Itzpapalotl

I guess I'm on an Aztec kick right now. Here's another new card, this time of the Aztec Goddess Itzpapalotl, Whose name means 'Obsidian Butterfly':

She's the Goddess of the sacrificial flint knife; She's got some skeletal aspects to Her and She is usually shown with claws. The face (and hand/arm) paint are directly from a depiction of Her in the Codex Borgia.

As usual, I've got prints here and t-shirts here with this design on them, if you're interested.

Xochiquetzal

Well, more art. (I'm not going to question it, thanks.) This time it's the Aztec Goddess of flowers, Xochiquetzal. Her mother was said to be Tlazolteotl, the Goddess of Filth (or Earth), and She had a variety of husbands, depending on the myth; in some She's said to be Tlaloc's wife.

I've shown Her here with (of course) many many flowers, all natives of Mexico; She's holding a bouquet of dahlias (the national flower of Mexico), has strings of fuchsia in Her hair, and is crowned with a garland of marigolds and petunias. The marigolds are somewhat after the garlands typically seen on Day of the Dead altars; She doesn't have anything to do with that holiday (that I know of), but it seemed appropriate. Of course just now I read that marigolds are especially sacred to Her; I didn't know that when I drew Her.

Her name is made up of two Nahuatl words, xochi meaning 'flower', and quetzal meaning 'precious feather', specifically of the bird which is also called the quetzal. She wears the green feathers of this bird as part of Her headdress.

I've put up some prints at my deviantArt gallery here; and some t-shirts over at Printfection here. Enjoy!

Vanth

This is the other piece I did earlier, another of that deck I'm now calling the World Goddess Oracle. It's of Vanth, an Etruscan underworld Goddess Who was often depicted on tombs and sarcophagi carrying a torch to help guide the souls of the dead. Because that's what Her presence signified, that someone's death was near. She is, however, a neutral force. She does not bring death, I don't think, but is there to guide the spirit on its new journey.

Here she is:

I've depicted Her in a very typical pose from one of the Etruscan tombs, where She is shown on one side of a door.

Isaac

I suppose I should let everyone here know that Sir Isaac Mewton has died, since I mentioned it earlier. He died the Monday before last, in the early morning. He had been up and walking around as late as that Friday, but declined over the weekend.

He was a good, good, kitty.

Art

Funny enough with everything going on I've got a couple pieces of art done. I have no idea what's going on or what that means, but they are two more Goddesses for the World Goddess Oracle (née the Goddess Oracle Deck). Actually there are three now, but I haven't scanned in the third, because with the new (to me) computer and the issues it has with not recognizing the scanner it's this huge big deal of swapping cables and restarting to the old computer that will do Classic to scan something so I'll wait till I'm doing a couple at a time. Anyway.

I redid Chalchiuhtlicue, the Aztec Goddess of water; I was never really happy with the original, and like the new one much better.  Aztec Goddesses just kind of aren't the fluffy love and light kinds, you know?

She's still got hair after the way the Aztecs drew water in the codices, with seashells and water droplets; Her dress is after a pattern from a statue which I've colored in to look sort of like the mosaics the Aztecs made out of bits of turquoise, which was sacred to Her for its blue watery color.  Also the tassels are part of Her usual iconography, though they kind of ended up with seashells on top, though I'm not sure what they are originally supposed to be.  It works, though.

The second one (well, actually the one I did first) is Yhi, an Australian sun Goddess Who was said to have created all the living creatures.   As she's Australian I always figured She was a bit of a quirky sort Who loves pockets; after all She created all those marsupials as well as the platypus.  Here She is, Her hair sunbleached, rising over the Outback, with white lines painted on Her body like sun-rays:

Both of them are available as prints over at my deviantArt gallery, here for Chalchiuhtlicue and here for Yhi.  Enjoy!

Things

Wow, it's been almost a year since I've posted here. I'm not sure what to say.

It hasn't been busy, so much, at least not on a mundane level; on the level of processing things though I suppose it has been very busy.

And recently, in the past couple of weeks, some things have happened.

The first is that my father has died. He was ninety and had been failing for a long time; he had been in a nursing home since 2006, after a stroke that took away most of his mind. As it was he had had some dementia prior. It was not a surprise, really, his death. Also, before the stroke and the dementia he was an abusive bastard, a hoarder and a control freak who did his very very best to make sure the people around him were as miserable as possible. That sounds harsh I'm sure, but it's true. And I will speak the truth about this.

So I'm not in mourning, not for him. I am in fact quite relieved, and the day after his death I recognized that what I was feeling was in fact freedom, for one of the first times in my life.

But then there's the other thing that has happened, and it is agonizing to watch and to deal with.

One of the cats (there are eight here these days) was looking a bit under the weather a couple weeks ago. For some reason, even though he didn't look that bad it felt urgent, so I brought him to the emergency vet, because they were the only ones open on the Fourth of July.

Turns out Sir Isaac Mewton has a very large mass or tumor in his abdomen.

The local ultrasound person who makes the rounds with the vets here was out of town, on vacation at the time; but the emergency vet (and a couple days later my usual vet) said it's not good. They took x-rays, and even though that doesn't tell as much as an ultrasound would, like for example what it is or what it's growing from, like the stomach, liver, or pancreas, still they could tell it's not good. Even with an ultrasound and knowing what it is, chances aren't good it's something surgery could fix.

So my choices are to track down an ultrasound and based on that decide on surgery, which means subjecting him to another vet ride and procedure and then just possibly surgery. But probably not. Odds are an ultrasound wouldn't tell me anything any better. And he's an oldish cat, twelve years old now. Not very old, but old enough that putting him through major surgery, especially given that he's been sick a while and so weaker than usual, would be a big deal. But most likely surgery wouldn't help.

Or basically let him die, while making him as comfortable as I can, and when the time comes and his suffering is too much, have him put down.

I have sort of opted for the latter. I have no idea if this is the right decision. I especially can't tell if I'm just being lazy or in denial; it's certainly easier to do nothing than something. Though the thought of putting him through a bunch more tests, which he will hate, keeps coming up. I don't want to do that to him. The money, oddly enough, is there; but if I opted for surgery it would still be something like several thousand dollars spent on something that's not likely to work.

If he were a human, then yes, you take what chance you can; also if he were a human he'd probably be the one deciding this, not me. So it's hard.

I'll also have to figure out, probably sometime soon, where that line of too much suffering is. I have no idea where that is. Right now, though he has more or less stopped eating, he is still fairly perky and alert, and can still follow me downstairs to the kitchen to lick at a little baby food. He's still reacting happily to catnip. It's so hard to tell; cats in particular don't show it when they're in pain. When Ratty had a broken hip, such that the head of his femur was out of the socket, when the vet tried to listen to his heartbeat she couldn't, because he was purring too loudly. (Ratty may not be the brightest bulb, but still, he's a happy guy just by default, pain or no pain.) So I don't know.

I really don't know.