#agriope

@uraharapropoganda​ submitted: heres a few different fellows from around my house and farm :] no identification needed, i just wanted to share them. (sorry the jumping spider is blurry, they were FAST)

Wild-eyed, Fierce-faced, Savage Watcher, Wild-voiced. Agriope shares roots with the epithet Agrotera, a name given to both Hekate and Artemis.

Agriope is best known as one of the names for Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, who died and for whom Orpheus journeyed to the House of Hades, and who was lost when Orpheus could not uphold his promise to not look back at his wife during the journey back into the world. Elisabeth Henry, among other scholars, posits that Agriope is another identity of Hekate’s, but does not discuss the reasons.

In the Root-Cutters, we read of Medea, Hekate’s priestess and witch dancing and shrieking, “wild-eyed” while harvesting poisonous herbs. The Lamia were described as wild-eyed, and they too are associated with Hekate. The Goddess of the Crossroads carries the whip from the Lamia, and is called by their names. Hekate is, in many stories, a thing of the wild, of baneful herbs, and striking terror.

Wild-eyed is a trait given to monsters, animals, and women in Greek stories. It is ultimately an assessment of them as having some trait that resides outside of civilization. For a woman to embody that wilderness, for it to shine out of her eyes, is to be an outsider.

In my meditations on Agriope, I find myself somewhat fearful. I envision a banshee like manifestation, grim and ghastly. I know that wild doesn’t have to mean these sorts of things, but that’s what my mind sees when I contemplate this facet of Hekate. And yet, when I consider the priests and devotees of Hekate Agriope, I see something more akin to the Maenads of Dionysos. Dancing, hair wild and matted, laughing and howling, and tearing all that offends them into pieces.

Sources:

Conway, Robert Seymour. Ancient Italy and Modern Religion: Vol. 1, Cambridge, 2013.

Dillon, Matthew. Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, Routledge, 2003.

Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy. Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins, Univ. CA, 1959.

Henry, Elisabeth. Orpheus and His Lute: Poetry and the Renewal of Life, SIU Press, 1992.

Schmidt, Michael. The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets, Knopf Doubleday, 2010.

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