On the Semiotics and Symbolism of Yellowjackets: A Mythinterpretation

Prelude

When the wise men of old (whom we call in the Greek tongue “Philosophers”) found any arcana, any hidden things, either of a natural kind, or resulting from the activities of man, they were accustomed to hide these in various ways and with the aid of figures. They did this in order that these might not be understood by the wrong kind of people.

- Oswald Crollius

 

 

A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.

 

- Carl Jung

In this post, I'm going to present a possible explanation behind the symbol of the cultus in Yellowjackets tv series. I'll use the mythological and archetypal approach in my analysis, given the numerous similarities between the constituents of the symbol (as well as the symbol itself as a whole), with the elements and patterns in the mythology literature. In the first part, by investigating the symbol in various aspects, I'll give a hypothesis regarding its representation. In the second part, I'll provide some hints and indications that would be in favor of the hypothesis. 

As a disclaimer, I should mention that first, I'm not an expert in mythology at all, and all I did was connecting some dots based on a bit of a research and stuff that I had picked up already during my journey through the ethereal realm of gods and goddesses—what a journey that was! Second, I haven't gone through all the details of the show, since I watched it only once and not with a keen eye. Therefore, I might've missed so many relevant things, for or against the hypothesis. So I'll update this post if I find anything of value in the future. You learn new things every day, right? 

Finally, it's important to note that although this essay might utilize an archetypal take every now and then, it does not imply any archetypal approach towards the ancient Greek theoi at all—it's just a comparative tool. As much as I like Jung's ideas, I think the old man missed a lot (or maybe blinded himself) in his mythological explorations with respect to the human mind—probably due to a simple unconscious confusion between ἐπιστήμη and ὄντος. After all, to recall Hamlet:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Now without further ado, let's begin the journey, shall we?

Part A: Hypothesis

The symbol is greater than visible substance… Unhappy the land that has no symbols, or that chooses their meaning without great care.

- Freya Stark

 

A.1    The Symbol: Atomos

In order to understand the symbol, let's investigate its building atoms first.

The Symbol

©ChateletUSA [Etsy]

A.1.1    The Sickle

Starting from the bottom, we first have the sickle:

The Sickle

©Wikipedia

In mythology, this is the symbol of the goddess Ceres, whose Greek counterpart is the goddess Demeter. Both were the goddesses of agriculture and fertility. Demeter represented the Earth's crust (while Gaia embodied the whole terrestrial globe with its internal molten fire and its subterranean divisions). Hence she was called the Mother-Earth [1].

Ceres

©Britannica

Demeter  [1]

A.1.2    The Triangle

Next, we have the upward triangle (pyramidion). In mythology, this represents the Axis Mundi (World Pillar, World Tree or Cosmic Mountain), which connects the Heaven and the Earth. In alchemy, triangle is the symbol of fire. Heraclitus considered fire to be the most fundamental element and the world as an ever-living fire. In Zoroastrianism, fire is the symbol of purity, in the Bible it represents god, and in Islam fire is the essence of the Jinn. In certain literal representations, as we'll see, it may correspond to the human body, specially the torso.

A.1.2    The Circle

Then we have the circle. One of the most common meaning of a circle is the perfection, representing an eternal spiritual realm beyond the material one. Mythologically, the ancient Egyptians associated the circle with the Sun-gods. We'll come back to this one later.

A.1.3    The Spikes

Now we get to the hardest part: interpreting the spikes and the diagonal line. If you've looked at the ancient depictions of gods and goddesses, you probably had noticed that one of the most prevalent symbols among them is the crescent, or specifically, a circle on top a crescent, i.e. the sun-in-crescent:

So what would be the meaning of this symbol? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is regarding the crescent as, duh, the crescent Moon. But that doesn't lead us anywhere good. Hence we need to go and find what else a crescent could've meant in the mythology. Well, it turns out that we can associate the crescent with the Cosmic Womb, i.e. the mother goddess, which is housing the circle, i.e. the Sun-god [2].

A beautiful Sun-in-Crescent viewed at Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan
 ©AP Photo/Wally Santana

A.1.4.1    Crescent as The Great Mother

How could that be, right? Well, let's take a closer look. The name of Hathor (goddess of the sky, women, fertility and love) means 'estate of Horus,' with Horus being the falcon-headed god of the sun, sky, war, and kingship. Also, the name Isis (the goddess of motherhood, magick, death, healing, and rebirth) means 'throne,' which you can tell that she's in fact the throne of Osiris (the god of the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and fertility). In fact, this is why both Hathor and Isis were shown having the Sun-in-crescent on top of their heads:

The Goddess Hathor

©Brooklyn Museum

Isis and Horus

©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

It's important to mention that Moon-goddesses were equally the Earth-goddesses as well.

A.1.4.2    Crescent as Horns

It appears that almost all the sun-gods took the form of the horned deities (the Mighty Bull). David Talbot writes,

Hindu sources depict Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, Agni, and Indra as bulls with luminous horns. The Greeks' Dionysus (Romans' Bacchus) is 'the bull-horned god,' said to have been born a 'horned child.' Adonis receives the same form. The Canaanite's El is addressed as 'Bull-god,' and the Greeks' Kronos is 'the horned god.'

Interestingly, in the the Egyptian mythology, horns and the Cosmic Womb were synonymous for the goddess. In fact, according to Talbot [2],

Because Hathor is the goddess of the horned womb, there is no contradiction between the hymns locating Ra 'in the womb of thy mother Hathor' and the representations of the goddess as 'sky-cow who bears the sun-god between her horns.' In the same way, Hathor is at once the Eye of Ra and the horns supporting the Eye: 'I am that eye of yours which is on the horns of Hathor,' reads a Pyramid Text.

Also sometimes, crescent-horns were associated with twin peaks of the Cosmic Mountain, and called "The Bull of the Two Mountains."

Baal (Moloch)

©Damascus Museum

Astarte (Ashtoreth)

©Dictionary of the Holy Bible/W.W. Rand

Baal (Moloch)
©Louvre

Astarte (Ashtoreth)
©Louvre 

A.1.4.3    Crescent as Hands and Wings

There are two other interesting cases for the representation of crescent that's relevant to us. First one is to consider it as the raising arms of the mother goddess, when combined with the cosmic mountain symbol. This case includes, for example, the oldest depictions of female deities. The second case is to regard the crescent as the wings of the goddess, when combined with the World Pillar. 

Nut embracing Aten
©Louvre

Minoan goddess
©Heraklion Museum

In the following four pictures, we see the representations of Tanit, the chief goddess of Carthage, with outstretched arms.

 

©The British Museum

©Bardo Museum

Mosaic at the ruins of Kerkouane   
©Britannica

Mosaic at the House of Dolphins, Delos  
©Giannis Papathanassiou

The winged deity also has been depicted numerously throughout history.

Goddess Ereshkigal (Sumerians' Queen of the Great Earth)
©The British Museum

Goddess Ishtar (Inanna)
©The Oriental Institute

Goddess Nut   
©Glencairn Museum

Goddess Isis
©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

To sum it up, we can argue that the first two left and right spikes beneath the circle represent the crescent which itself is associated with the equivalent concepts of horns, outstretched arms and wings. All of them can fit into one conclusion, that the whole symbol is in fact a representation of the Mother-Earth goddess.

A.1.5    The Diagonal (Oblique) Line

This last item is very tricky, but you'll see how all of its interpretations will be consistent with our final conclusion regarding the symbol.

A.1.5.1    Esoteric Meaning

The vertical line correspondences to the union with divine, to go beyond the world of appearances and connect with the ideal. It's a representation of the axis mundi. The horizontal line on the other hand, is the material world, the ground on which humans are standing. The oblique (diagonal) line represents the liminal realm between material and spiritual, the occult and the magickal. Like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter which is the hidden wizarding world [3]. It's the world of "irrational." It could also represent the true axial tilt of the World Tree, specially when the triangle represents the figure, instead of the cosmic mountain.

A.1.5.2    Literal Correspondence

The other possible meaning of the oblique line could be just a representation of an object in the given mythological depiction. For example, it could represent a rod, like a scepter, long torch, spear, sword, bow, etc. In fact, this is the kind of representation we'll use for our purpose. This way, the diagonal line together with the remaining right side spike could be the raised hands, holding a cornucopia (the symbol of nourishment, which was a horned-shaped basket full of fruits, corns, flowers, ...) or a sheaf of wheat in the right side, and holding a rod in the left side. Note that I use 'side' to specify that the 'left' and 'right' is seen with respect to our third person view.

A.2    The Symbol: Holos

Now I'll give a possible representation of the whole symbol based on the previous discussions, and I'll provide some hints that support our hypothesis.

A.2.1    Magna Mater (Μητηρ Μεγαλη)

It's pretty clear now that the whole symbol is a representation of the Mother-Earth goddess. In the literature, we can trace its representations back, for example, to Cybele (Kybele: Κυβηλη), or Rhea (Ῥέα), or Demeter (Δημήτηρ). In addition, with given clues in the show, not only the goddess represents the Mother-Earth but she's also associated with hunting (forest animals), as well as magick. At first, having all these aspects in one goddess might seem a far fetched idea, but very interestingly, we have indeed a goddess in the mythology who represents all these three aspects!

A.2.2    Diva Triformis (Τρίμορφη Θεά)

One of the most recurring and interesting concepts in mythology throughout the history is the threefold representation of the Great Mother (the great feminine triad), which is called Diva Triformis (Τρίμορφη Θεά), which means Three-formed Goddess, representing the Sky, Earth and the Underworld (or more precisely, Sky, Sea and Earth). It corresponds, for example, to Jung et al.'s archetypal divine feminine, i.e. Demeter, Kore (Persephone) and Hekate (with respect to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries), or when regarded in relation to Zeus, as mother (Rhea), wife (Demeter) and daughter (Persephone).

For example, we have the triad of goddesses (aka Tridevi) Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvati in Hinduism, and in the pre-Islamic Arabia, we have the triad of Al-Uzza, Al-Lat and Menat. The diva triformis is also reflected in the religions as well. For example, in Christian folklore, we have the Three Marys (Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleopas), and a chant addressing the Virgin Mary, called Regina caeli which means 'Queen of Heaven.' In the Gnostic tradition, we have a feminine divinity (possibly Sophia) introducing herself in the fascinating poem, The Thunder: Perfect Mind, as

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter. 

 

Goddesses Lakshmi, Parvati and Saraswati
 ©V.V. Sapar/Wikipedia

Goddesses Al-Lat, Manat and Al-Uzza
©Iraq Museum

In fact, this would be our starting point for the specific identification of our version of the diva triformis, since it has been argued that the female divinity in the poem could be the Egyptian goddess Isis [4]. This is important because there's an ancient Roman novel by Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), in which Isis reveals herself as the single embodiment of the multiple goddesses across different cultures [5]:

I, mother of the universe, mistress of all the elements, first-born of the ages, highest of the gods, queen of the shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights of heaven, the health-giving sea-winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes, with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; the native Athenians the Cecropian Minerva; the island-dwelling Cypriots Paphian Venus; the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana; the triple-tongued Sicilians Stygian Proserpine; the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; some call me Juno, some Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia; but both races of Ethiopians, those on whom the rising and those on whom the setting sun shines, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen Isis.

This enchanting piece contains an important clue for our final conclusion, since I believe the diva triformis in the show is a specific triad of goddesses in the Greco-Roman mythology. 

A.3    The Symbol: Eikon

A.3.1    Hekate Trimorphis

Who is the goddess behind the symbol? Well, the short answer is Hekate Trimorphis (Ἑκατη Τριμορφις), whose domain is the sky, sea and earth, who embodies the Olympian Artemis (Αρτεμις), the Ouranic Selene (Σεληνη), and in some sources, the khthonic Persephone (Περσεφονη). We should also note that the Hekate triad includes the mother goddess as well, which is often represented by, or associated with, Demeter. The more primal Mother-Earth goddess aspect could come from, for example, The Derveni Papyrus, in which Ge (Gaia), Rhea, Demeter and Hera are said to be one and the same. It's worth mentioning that Hekate is actually one of the epithets of Artemis as well. I'll talk more about Hekate in my third post, so for now, let's talk a bit about the more familiar representation, i.e. Artemis.

Please note that in all the three posts, I won't differentiate between any of the aforementioned goddesses, unless stated otherwise.

A.3.2    Artemis

In the Greco-Roman literature, the three-formed goddess is known as the Artemis-Diana triad, consisting of Artemis, Hekate and Selene (the bull-horned goddess of the Moon). For example, in Seneca's Phaedra we read [6]:

O [Diana-Artemis] queen of the groves, thou who in solitude lovest thy mountain-haunts, and who upon the solitary mountains art alone held holy, change for the better these dark, ill-omened threats. O great goddess of the woods and groves, bright orb of heaven [Luna-Selene], glory of the night, by whose changing beams the universe shines clear, O three-formed Hecate, lo, thou art at hand, favouring our undertaking.

Just like with the case of Isis, there are also other goddesses who are identified with those in the triad. For example, in one of the spells of the Greek Magical Papyri, the three-formed goddess is identified with Hekate, Artemis, Persephone and Selene, with having bull's head [7]:

Bull-headed, you have eyes of bulls,

To you, wherefore they call you, Hekate

Dart-shooter, Artemis, Persephone,

Shooter of deer, night-shining, triple-sounding,

Triple-voiced, triple-headed Selene,

Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked,

And goddess of the triple ways, who hold

Untiring flaming fire in triple baskets,

And you who oft frequent the triple way

And rule the triple decades with three forms.

And in a few lines later, she is addressed as the Mother-Earth, having Kronos' (Saturn's) scepter:

Bull-eyed, horned, mother of gods

And men, and Nature, Mother of all things,

And you hold in your hands

A golden scepter. Letters 'round

Your scepter, Kronos wore himself and gave

To you to wear that all things stay steadfast.

 

Hekate Triformis
©National Gallery Prague

Hekate Trivia
©Carole Raddato/Antalya Museum

A.3.3    Diana

Just like her Greek counterpart Artemis, the Roman goddess Diana is also considered to be the three-formed goddess, aka Diana triformis, who is the unison of Luna (Sky), Diana (Earth) and Hekate or Proserpina (Underworld). In fact, one of her oldest epithets was Trivia (plural of Trivium, 'a place where three roads meet') as well as Diana triplex [8].

Hekate Triformis
©Vincenzo Cartari/Warburg Institute

Diana Triformis with her twin brother Apollon
©Vincenzo Cartari/Warburg Institute

Part B: Hints

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

- David Foster Wallace

And to the ancient gods of the sky and the dirt, we give our thanks.

- Lottie Matthews

Let's see what clues and hints we can find in the mythology literature, in the show, and among the artifacts of the past which would be in favor of our hypothesis.

B.1    Queen of Animals

Artemis herself was the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, chastity, childbirth and maiden dance. She was also associated with the Moon, though she wasn't the goddess of the Moon. In previous sections, we discussed that the spikes in the symbol might represent the outstretched wings of a goddess. Now one of the epithets of Artemis was Potnia Theron (Animal Queen/Queen of Animals/Lady of Wild Beasts), and surprisingly or not, among the depictions of Artemis as the potnia theron, we see her with the outstretched wings:

Artemis
©National Archaeological Museum of Florence

Artemis
©National Museums Liverpool

It's clear that the being who is governing the wilderness and supporting the kids in the show with (sacrificial) foods, and keeping them safe from the wild animals, is a representation of Potnia Theron. Therefore, we're dealing with Artemis of the diva triformis—the nourisher Artemis.

B.2    The Huntress

The multiple hunting references in the show speak for themselves. On the Agrotera epithet of Artemis (which means 'the huntress'), Joseph Campbell writes [9]:

Originally Artemis herself was a deer, and she is the goddess who kills deer; the two are dual aspects of the same being. Life is killing life all the time, and so the goddess kills herself in the sacrifice of her own animal. Each life is its own death, and he who kills you is somehow a messenger of the destiny that was yours from the start.

Here, we're dealing with Artemis who helps the kids with the hunt—the goddess of the hunters and huntresses—and if necessary, with an upcoming battle of any sort (e.g. between clans), as she was honored in the Agroteras Thysia (sacrifice to the Agrotera) festival for she had granted the Athenians their victory over Persians in the Battle of Marathon.

The chemistry between the two obvious hunters of the show, i.e. Natalie and Travis, as well as their each individual characters, has a lot to offer with respect to the concept of Artemis Agrotera interpretation, specially in the light of Doomcoming episode. I'll talk more about it in the third essay. Let's not forget that the guns of today were the bows of yesterday, and among the epithets of Artemis, we have Toxophoros (bearer of the bow), Toxotis (archer), Iokheaira (of showering arrows, she who delights in arrows) and Khrysalakatos (with golden arrows). Aren't these the type of things that Natalie embodies, both as a teen and as an adult? She definitely delights in her guns, doesn't she? In the pilot, the first thing she does after leaving the rehab is opening the trunk of her car and checking her hunting rifle with joy.

Artemis Agrotera
©Louvre

Artemis Agrotera
©Vatican Museums

Diana, The Huntress

©Guillaume Seignac/Christie's

Diana, The Huntress

©National Archaeological Museum of Naples

 B.3    Childbirth

Apollodorus writes [10]: 

[Leto] finally reached Delos and gave birth to Artemis, who thereupon [as a baby] helped her deliver Apollon. Artemis became a practiced huntress and remained a virgin.

and Aeschylus writes [11]:

We pray that other guardians be always renewed, and that Artemis-Hecate watch over the childbirth of their women. 

It's interesting that Taissa is the one who notices Shauna's pregnancy, and later tries to help her with the abortion, under a giant tree, eventually leading to abort the abortion. The scene is featured in the episode 6, titled 'Saints.' Hopefully, we're gonna learn more about the child in the future seasons, and in what way Artemis-Hakate could enter the scene. Would she claim the child for herself?

B.4    Veil

In the book On Isis and Osiris, of Moralia, Plutarch writes about the statue of Isis in Sais which bore the inscription [12]:

I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and no mortal has yet lifted the veil which covers me.

In the metaphorical level, by identification of nature (physis) with the mother goddess, i.e. Isis-Artemis, the 'veil of Isis' would then translate as the tendency of nature to remain as a mystery. In the eastern traditions, this was synonymous with the concept of Maya [13]. On the literal level, first we’ve already established the correspondence between Isis and Artemis. Now in the Greco-Roman world, the concept of veil was very important not only in their daily lives, but specially in their religious activities. For example, in Roman rites, people usually sacrificed with their head covered with a veil (capite velato), regardless of their gender. Plutarch writes:

they thus worshiped the Gods, either humbling themselves by concealing the head, or rather by pulling the toga over their ears as a precaution lest any ill-omened and baleful sound from without should reach them while they were praying.

This head-covering and wearing veils was utmost necessary for the priestess while performing a sacrifice [14,15]. In some neo-pagan (e.g. Wiccan) covens (or even in the ones that predates Wicca), the high priestess and the high priest both wear crowns to embody the Triple Goddess (Artemis/Diana) and the Horned God (Cernunnos/Dionysos). The high priestess wears the crown of circlet with crescent moon, and the high priest wears the crown of antlers or horns, sometimes depicted as having a beast’s head in order to emphasize the union of the divine and the animal (human) [16].

The High Priestess, Chateau Des Avenieres
  ©Anne Marie Wegh

Veil in ancient Greece [17]

The Veil of Isis
©Auguste Puttemans
Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

Persephone veiled

©Cyrene Museum

Now putting it all together, we have the answer to the mystery of the veiled priestess in the show. So I wasn’t surprised when I saw that artists personified the constellation/zodiac sign Virgo (which means Virgin in Latin) as a goddess with wings, horns (antlers) and sometimes veiled. In early Greco-Roman astronomy, Virgo constellation was associated with Demeter, Ceres and Persephone.

Virgo constellation
©Sidney Hall/US Library of Congress

Virgo zodiac sign
©Emilee Petersmark

Divine Virgin Mother
"it is hidden"
[17]

Sol Invictus
©Jake Baddeley

In the following, you'll see the four different personifications of the Madonna and Child. Notice the sun above (as our circle), crown, robe/habit (as the triangle), scepter (as the diagonal line), crescent (as the upper pair of left-right spikes) and the obliquely positioned child (as the remaining spike on the right side of the symbol). Now it's easy to see that if you combine all of them into a single picture and "paganize" it just by putting the crescent on the head as the new crown, you'll get the exact representation of the symbol! 

Wouldn't it be great if this was indeed the case, specially now that the extra spike on the right side of the symbol represents an actual infant? I mean, ahem, the classic myth of Artemis and the newborns, which here would obviously be Shauna's baby. So was this the real reason behind the inclusion of pregnancy in the script?

©aturbanstatue.com

Black Madonna of Einsiedeln

©Louie.Nacorda-at-Cebu

Virgen de los desamparados

©Fritz, MD/flickr

Virgen de la Cabeza
©8inspain.com

So, after seeing Lottie's coronation and, hopefully, understanding a thing or two about the concept of the veiled "bull-headed" high priestess, can we finally link them together? 

Maybe there's a mythological reason behind our inability of giving a definite answer. What's that? Well, in the following section(s) you'll learn a bit about Artemis' dark side, if you haven't known it already. The shadow is also strong in her Roman counterpart, Diana, which in turn, naturally reflects on the characteristics of their cultus. The example that I had in mind for my aforementioned suspicion, was the story of Diana's High Priest in her sanctuary at Aricia. Legend has it that Diana had loosened up the condition for anyone interested in becoming her King/High Priest (Rex Nemorensis, King of the Wood) in such a way that if a person kills the incumbent King Priest, he'd automatically take that poor guy's position. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay describes this tradition eloquently in his poem, The Battle of The Lake Regillus:

From the still glassy lake that sleeps
Beneath Aricia's trees-
Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain

So maybe we'll see something similar happen in the show as well, but now for the High Priestesses, or THE SHAMAN, as she's named in the pilot script—a Regina Nemorensis spin-off.

'sic transit gloria mundi'

The Horned High Priestess

B.5    Wildness

Cruelty and wildness of Artemis is well known in the literature. Once, she turned the famous young hunter Aktaion (Actaeon) into a stag and made his own frantic hounds tear their master apart. Why? Well, because according to Euripides, Aktaion "boasted that he was superior in the hunt to Artemis" [Eur. Ba. 340], while Pausanias writes that, "Stesichorus of Himera says that the goddess cast a deer-skin round Actaeon to make sure that his hounds would kill him, so as to prevent his taking Semele to wife." [Paus. 9.2.3]. In case you're wondering why she wanted to prevent Aktaion from marrying Semele, well, because Semele and Zeus were in love (whose offspring would then be Dionysos), and Artemis loves her father and she always likes to please him. In another wrathful occasion, together with her twin brother, they massacred all 14 children of queen Niobe, because she had boasted over the number of her children compared to Leto's. The list goes on.

It seems that the wildness of Artemis as the virgin huntress, is partly a representative of her raw and untamed sexuality which could easily channel itself into a destructive force. Symbolically, Agrotera could represent the possessive side of the animus, which in fact is reflected in the show as a collective motif, together with its polar opposite, i.e. Iliadic Hera, though limited individually to a few characters only. I mean, Hera was the only one who "bitch-slapped" Artemis—after "manshaming" her twin brother, Apollon, for not going against their uncle Poseidon in the Trojan War—making her cry and go to the daddy Zeus :) Homer is indeed a great comedy writer as well!

 

 

B.5.1    Homeric Detour

[You can skip this subsection]

 

Now it might be a good idea to refresh our archaic memory just for fun! So after Apollon refuses to go against his uncle Poseidon, out of modesty [Hom. Il. 21.470ff]:

But his sister Artemis, the Huntress, queen of beasts,

inveighed against him now with stinging insults:

"So, the deadly immortal Archer runs for dear life!—

turning over victory to Poseidon, total victory,

giving him all the glory here without a fight.

Why do you even wear that bow, you spineless fool?—

it's worthless as the wind!

Don't let me hear you boast in Father's halls,

ever again, as you did before among the immortals,

that you could match your strength in combat against Poseidon."

Oof, right?! Our beloved Apollon doesn't say anything to her, for he's the modest god among them all. But then, Hera, full of anger,

scolded the lady of showering arrows in words of revilement:

"How have you had the daring, you shameless bitch,

to stand up and and face me here? It will be hard for you to match your strength with mine

even if you wear a bow, since Zeus has made you a lioness among women

and let to kill anyone among them at your pleasure.

Better for you to hunt down the ravening beasts in the mountains

and deers in the wilderness, than try to fight in strength with your betters

But if you would learn what fighting is, come on. You will find out

how much stronger I am when you try to match strength against me."

And then:

She spoke, and caught both of Artemis' arms at the wrists in her left hand

and with her right hand stripped away the bow from her shoulders,

then with her own bow, while smiling, Hera beat her about the ears

as Artemis tried to twist away, and the flying arrows were scattered.

Bursting into tears, Artemis slipped from under her clutch, as a pigeon

in flight from a hawk wings her way into some rock-hollow

and a cave, since it was not destiny for the hawk to catch her.

So Artemis left her archery on the ground, and fled weeping.

Finally:

By now the Huntress had reached Olympus heights

and made her way to the bronze-floored house of Zeus.

And down she sat on her Father's lap, a young girl,

sobbing, her deathless robe quivering round her body.

But her Father, son of Cronus, hugged her tight

and giving a low warm laugh inquired gently,

"Who now of the Ouranian gods, dear child, has done such things to you,

rashly, as if they had caught you in public, doing something wrong?"

Alright alright, the class which was supposed to be a break is over. Let's get back to work.

B.6    Wolf

Why wolves keep appearing in the show, specially in Taissa's case, as if they cross the temporal and spatial boundaries?

B.6.1    Divine Wolves

Wolves have a long and rich historical presence in the mythological foundations of the people around the world. From being the benevolent mother Asena of the Turkic people and Lupa Capitolina nursing the founders of Rome, to the malevolent god-eater Fenrir of the Nordic people. Not to mention the title of an amazing (and ongoing) mytho-sci-fi show is 'Raised by Wolves,' in which one of the leading characters is called Mother/Lamia! There have been also the instances where wolves were the messengers of the deities.

In Greek mythology, Leto was the mother of Artemis and her twin brother Apollon, and she turned herself into a she-wolf while running from Hera, to give birth to the twins. That's why one of the epithets of Apollon and Artemis is wolf-born (Lykios/Lykeia), and Artemis is called Lykaina (she-wolf)—alone or as the three-formed goddess in the ancient magical ceremonies [7]. Just like the case with deer, Artemis protects wolves as well as hunting them down.

B.6.2    Witch Wolves

Interestingly, in the Middle Ages, it was very common to associate witches with werewolves, hence alongside the witch trials, there were also the werewolf trials! Yeah. Authorities argued that these witches, apart from being guilty of witchery, were capable of lycanthropy (turning into wolf), enchanting wolves and wolf riding. Werewolves in their eyes were rapists, mass murderers and cannibals [25].

To give an example, in 1591, the news of 300 female werewolves who had made a pact with the devil and attacked Duchy of Julich was published on a broadsheet by Georg Kress (photo below). Apparently, 85 of these she-wolves were caught after killing and eating people, including children, and they were burnt at the stake afterward [26].

Woodcut of the She-Wolves of Julich, Germany
©Georg Kress/Wikipedia

B.7    Human Sacrifice

Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.

– Zora Neale Hurston

Let's see some bloody examples.

B.7.1    Iphigenia

First, there's the famous story of Iphigenia's sacrifice by her own father, Agamemnon, to appease Artemis who had demanded it since he had angered the goddess by killing one of her stags. This was the reason why Lucretius declared that 'religious scrupulousness was able to persuade them into so much wickedness,' (translation of 'tantum religio potuit suadere malorum', by Joonas Ilmavirta at here) when he was describing Iphigenia's sacrifice [18]:

As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,

Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,

Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen,

With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain.

However, in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, she escapes the sacrifice by the help of Artemis, who replaces her with a deer at the altar. Then she becomes the priestess of the temple of Artemis in Taurica, in which she is tasked with the ritual of human sacrifice [19]:

Artemis has made me the priestess in this temple. Here I begin the rites, which the goddess delights in, of a banquet noble in name only---I am silent as to the rest, for I fear the goddess---[for I sacrifice, by a custom of the city established earlier, any Hellene who comes to this land.] But others carry out the sacrifices, not to be spoken of, within the temple of the goddess.

 

B.7.2    Lovers at the Triclaria

Comaetho was a beautiful priestess in the temple of Artemis Triclaria who had a lover, Melanippus, but they weren't allowed to get married. So one day they had sex in the temple, and Artemis got so angry that she unleashed fatal diseases on the people and she caused crop failure. To appease her, she ordered that not only the two lovers should be sacrificed to Artemis, but every year the most beautiful and pretty young man and woman should be sacrificed to her as well. Of course, this madness of human sacrifice came to an end only with the intervention of the god of madness himself, Dionysos [20].

B.7.3    Krypteia

One of the rites of passage for the young Spartans, ephebes, was to go into the wilderness for a period and live like beasts, without getting any external help from krypteia. This was in fact, part of learning the skills of hunters, in the process of becoming the competent military warriors in the future. Their patroness was Artemis, and one part of their training involved in chasing and killing the helots (a class of slaves) with their daggers [21].

B.7.4    Diamastigosis

Pausanias writes [20]:

The Spartan Limnatians, the Cynosurians, and the people of Mesoa and Pitane, while sacrificing to Artemis, fell to quarreling, which led also to bloodshed; many were killed at the altar and the rest died of disease. Whereat an oracle was delivered to them, that they should stain the altar with human blood. He used to be sacrificed upon whomsoever the lot fell, but Lycurgus changed the custom to a scourging of the lads, and so in this way the altar is stained with human blood.

B.8    Cadenza: Heart Sacrifice [revised]

Until recently, there was one important piece of puzzle that I couldn't fit into my narrative, which was the offering of (animal) heart on two occasions in the finale: Lottie's at the tree shrine (yorishiro), and Taissa's at her basement altar. The reason was simply due to my vast ignorance of the ancient Greek theoi, both in the mythological and the theological contexts, as well as the usual problem of not paying enough attention to the details. At the time, I wasn't able to find any direct evidence of performing such an act in the Greco-Roman era.

It's true that ancient Greeks did sometimes offer parts of their animal sacrifices as well, but my problem here was the showrunners' special focus on one particular 'vital' organ of the offering, i.e. the heart, specially with Lottie's case (since Taissa's involved a head as well). 

Now I think I've finally resolved this issue, and not surprisingly, it fits into our hypothesis perfectly! So to whom they offered the heart in the ancient times? The answer is: To our lady Hekate Trimorphis! 

The following subsection [B.8.0] is newly added.

B.8.0    Hekate

I really don't know what I was doing at the time, but I remember that I suddenly encountered this epithet of Hekate on my screen, which had the answer that I needed: Kardiodaitos (καρδιόδαιτος), which according to the LSJ, means 'feasting on men's hearts, heart-eater.' Now isn't that great? 

In PGM IV. 2441-2707, we read the following spells invoking Hekate Trimorphis:

She is burning for you,
Goddess, some dreadful incense
And dappled goat's fat, blood and filth,
Thc menstrual flow of virgin
Dead, heart of one untimely dead,
The magical material
Of dead dog, woman's embryo
...
For she said that you slew a man
And drank the blood of this man
and ate his flesh, and she says that
Your headband is his entrails.

For you the woman burns

Some hostile incense, Goddess;

The fat of dappled goat, and blood,

Defilement, embryo of

A dog, the bloody discharge of

A virgin dead untimely,

A young boy's heart, with barley mixed

In vinegar, both salt and

A deer's horn, mastic, myrtlc and

Dark bay, and mix at random.

Well, she's associated with magick after all! Also, in PGM IV. 2785-2890, she's called by her many epithets, including Kardiodaitos:

Hail, goddess, and attend your epithets,
Arrow-shooter; heavenly one, goddess of harbors,
Who roam the mountains, goddess of crossroads,
O nether and nocturnal, and infernal,
Goddess of dark, quiet and frightful one,
O you who have your meal amid the graves,
...
And you keep Kerberos in chains, with scales
Of serpents are you dark, O you with hair
Of serpents, serpent-girded, who drink blood,
Who bring death and destruction, and who feast
On hearts, flesh eater, who devour those dead
Untimely, and you who make grief resound
And spread madness

Now just look at other three interesting epithets which are also relevant to the show:

• Sarkophagos (σαρκοφάγος): 'flesh eater,' or to be precise, 'cannibal.'

• Aorovoros (ἀωροβόρος): 'devourer of those who die prematurely/untimely.' 

• Oistroplaneia (οἰστροπλάνεια): 'spreader of madness,' or 'causing the wanderings of madness.'

Sounds very familiar, right?

By the way, among the offerings for this spell (for the "black magick" purpose) is the 'organic material' of a dog (e.g. head, heart, blood, etc) and a dappled goat, or an untimely dead virgin! Part of the protective charm for the rite reads as follows:

Take a lodestone and on it have carved the three-faced Hekate. And let the middle face be that of a virgin/maiden wearing horns, and the left face that of a dog, and the one on the right that of a goat. After the carving is done, clean with natron and water, and dip in the blood of one who has died a violent death.

I guess this concludes the answer to the heart part. But I'd like to mention three extra heart-related cases which might be of our interest. Two of them have Greek origins, while the other one is Mesoamerican.

B.8.1    Dionysos

There's no doubt that he is the god of paradoxical nature! But unfortunately, as much as I love talking about Dionysos Saotes (Dionysos the Savior) (Διονυσος Σαωτης), I'll restrict myself to one of his origin stories here. According to Hyginus [34]:

Liber [Dionysus], son of Jove [Zeus] and Proserpine [Persephone], was dismembered by the Titans, and Jove gave his heart, torn to bits, to Semele in a drink. When she was made pregnant by this, Juno, changing herself to look like Semele's nurse, Beroe, said to her: Daughter, ask Jove to come to you as he comes to Juno [Hera], so you may know what pleasure it is to sleep with a god. At her suggestion Semele made this request of Jove, and was smitten by a thunderbolt. He took Liber from her womb, and gave him to Nysus to be cared for. For this reason he is called Dionysus [meaning 'twice-born'], and also the one with two mothers.

On the contrary to my hypothesis, after watching the Doomcoming episode, one might get the impression that maybe the cultus is not of Artemis-Hekate after all. Rather, it's a cult of Dionysos, and the Yellowjackets are in fact the Maenads. However, the heart sacrifice falsifies that rushed conclusion, since it was known in the ancient times that among the prohibitions of the cultus of Dionysos, was the prohibition on offering the heart of an animal [35, 36].

But that doesn't rule out a Dionysian connection, since based on what we've seen so far in the show, it seems that Shauna's child would either be stillborn or have a neonatal death. Guess who was also unborn? Yes, Dionysos, in his second birth from Semele. And boy, he does have multifaceted representations! So maybe her child is twice-born and in the custody of Artemis-Hekate.

B.8.2    Lollianos' Phoinikika

There's an ancient Greek novel by this name, survived partially in fragments, which contains orgy, rituals, human sacrifice and cannibalism. One part of that novel, tells the story of a band of robbers who initiate themselves into an allegiance of some kind by sacrificing a boy and extracting his heart, then cooking and eating it, engage in orgy and some of them later go out and strip corpses and paint themselves in black and white, dress up like ghosts, and set out through the moonlight [37]. 

Things get interesting when we note that some authors have drawn similarities between this book and The Golden Ass [36, 38, 39]. If we recall, the main theme of the latter was around the cultus of Isis, in which she identifies herself with diva triformis. Also, as we talked a few moments ago, the whole thing represents a ritual for Hekate, with ghost costumes and roaming under the moonlight (like her hounds at night). Needless to say that this book is murky and incomplete, and I'm not an expert at all. So I don't want to rush into conclusions. But so far, it's in our favor.

Now speaking of Hekate, one of her epithets is Krokopeplos (Κροκόπεπλος), meaning 'with yellow (or saffron) robe, dress or veil.' I'm still amazed by this particular scene: torches, hanging tree ribbons, yellow dress and ultimately, the fate of the person wearing it. Noticed how Jackie strangely, yet smoothly, crossed the boundary between life and death? Will she come back, and become the high priestess? I don't think so. A messenger? I don't know. But hey, at least there's yellow in yellowjackets :)

Jacqueline Krokopeplos

B.8.3    Aztecs

Human sacrifice, including infanticide, among the Aztecs is somewhat well known in the history. Although the Aztec mythology probably would not be directly involved in the series (but hey, maybe it would, who knows?), and that I pretty much know nothing of their cultures and myths, there is a related theme to our cultus in the heart department that I found out while revising this post. Namely, they have a ritual of human heart extraction and feeding it to their deities, while it's still bloody fresh and beating.

In fact, they revere human heart so much that they nurture their major gods with it. According to their myths, their god Tetzauhteotl had told them that [40]:

And you must open the chest of your war captives, those that you take prisoners, on a sacrificial stone and with the rock of an obsidian knife. And you must make an offering of their hearts to the [Sun of ] movement.

Also it's noted that Huitzilopochtli "did not eat anything but hearts," and related to our series, their Earth Goddess, Tlaltecuhtli (her Greek equivalent is Ge/Gaia),

sometimes cried at night time, wishing to eat the hearts of men and she would not be quiet until they would give them to her and she would not bear fruit until she had not been showered in the blood of men.

And their Mother of the Gods, and Earth Mother, wears a skirt full of alive snakes and has a necklace made of human hearts and skulls. 

So does our veiled priestess feed the Hekate Trimorphis with hearts?

B.9    Orgies of The Mother

When it comes to the orgiastic frenzy, people rightly trace it back to the Dionysian rites. However, they often miss the most important fact that the original orgiastic festivals belonged to the Great Mother—Mother of the Gods: Kybele (Cybele), Rhea and Demeter. In fact, another important epithet that these three goddesses share is Orgia (Οργια).

Strabo, an ancient Greek geographer, provides a detailed account of such rites, by citing Pindar and Euripides on this matter as well [Strab. 10.3.12 - 13]:

 

The Berecyntes, a tribe of Phrygians, the Phrygians in general, and the Trojans, who live about Mount Ida, themselves also worship Rhea, and perform orgies in her honour; they call her mother of gods, Agdistis, and Phrygia, the Great Goddess; from the places also where she is worshipped, Idæa, and Dindymene, Sipylene, Pessinuntis, and Cybele.

 

Pindar, in the Dithyrambus, after mentioning the hymns, both ancient and modern, in honour of Bacchus, he makes a digression, and says, "for thee, O Mother, resound the large circles of the cymbals, and the ringing crotala; for thee, blaze the torches of the yellow pine;" where he combines with one another the rites celebrated among the Greeks in honour of Dionysos with those performed among the Phrygians in honour of the mother of the gods. 

Euripides, in the Bacchae, does the same thing, conjoining, from the proximity of the countries, Lydian and Phrygian customs. "Then forsaking Tmolus, the rampart of Lydia, my maidens, my pride, [whom I took from among barbarians and made the partners and companions of my way, raise on high the tambourine of Phrygia, the tambourine of the great mother Rhea,] my invention. ‘Blest and happy he who, initiated into the sacred rites of the gods, leads a pure life; who celebrating the orgies of the Great Mother Cybele, who brandishing on high the thyrsus* and with ivy crowned, becomes Dionysos' worshipper. Haste, Bacchanalians, haste, and bring Bromius Dionysos down from the Phrygian mountains to the wide plains of Greece.’ "

And again, in what follows, he combines with these the Cretan rites. "Hail, sacred haunt of the Curetes, and divine inhabitants of Crete, progenitors of Zeus, where for me the triple-crested Corybantes in their caves invented this skin-stretched circle [of the tambourine], who mingled with Bacchic strains the sweet breath of harmony from Phrygian pipes, and placed in Rhea's hands this instrument which re-echoes to the joyous shouts of Bacchanalians: from the Mother Rhea the frantic Satyri succeeded in obtaining it, and introduced it into the dances of the Trieterides, among whom Dionysos delights to dwell." And the chorus in Palamedes says, "Not revelling with Dionysus, who together with his mother was cheered with the resounding drums along the tops of Ida."

 

In The Golden Bough, Frazer talks about the frenzy and the madness in the great spring festival which was celebrated by Romans in honor of Kybele, and how Emperor Claudius had incorporated the orgiastic elements to this religious festival, which existed in its original Phrygian rites. Frazers writes that on the third day of festival (March 24), which was called the Day of Blood (Dies Sanguinis) [Ch. XXXIV]:

The Archigallus or highpriest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice. Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood.

 

Catullus, an acclaimed Roman poet, also depicts the manic motifs of the Kybele's rites, including the self-castration, in his beautiful poem 63 [Catul. 63 , Carmen 63]:

Taken in a swift bark, over deep waters,
Attis, when eagerly, with rapid foot,
he reached those Phrygian woods
and entered where the goddess was,

shadowy, this: a forest—
it was there, impelled by madness, by rage,
his mind bewildered,
with sharp flint,
he made fall from him his weight of maleness.

...

thus began she to sing to her
companions tremulously:
“come away, ye Gallae, go to the
mountain forests of Cybele together,
together go, wandering herd 

of the lady of Dindymus,
let dull delay depart from your mind;
go together, follow
to the Phrygian house of Cybele,
to the Phrygian forests of the goddess,
where the noise of cymbals sounds,
where timbrels re-echo,
where the Phrygian flute-player blows
a deep note on his curved reed,
where the Maenads ivy-crowned
toss their heads violently,
where with shrill yells they shake
the holy emblems,
where that wandering company
of the goddess is wont to rove,
whither for us ’tis meet to hasten
with rapid dances.”

 

In the case of Greeks, it's also interesting to note that it was none other than Rhea who purified Dionysos of his mania, and then initiated him to the Orgia (Mysteries). According to Apollodorus [Apollod. 3.5]:

Dionysos discovered the vine, and being driven mad by Hera, he roamed about Egypt and Syria. At first he was received by Proteus, king of Egypt, but afterwards he arrived at Cybela in Phrygia. And there, after he had been purified by Rhea and learned the rites of initiation, he received from her the costume and hastened through Thrace [where he introduced the orgiastic cult].

 

We also hear the chorus of the Euripides' Bacchae singing [Eur. Ba. 73]:

Blessed is he who, being fortunate and knowing the rites of the gods, keeps his life pure and has his soul initiated into the Bacchic revels, dancing in inspired frenzy over the mountains with holy purifications, and who, revering the mysteries (ὄργια) of great mother Kybele, brandishing the thyrsos, garlanded with ivy, serves Dionysus.

 

And Herodotus too, talks of people taking part in Orgia, as the worship rite of Demeter [Hdt. 5.61].

 

There is also a large body of evidence linking the usage of Psilocybin (i.e. magic mushrooms which were the "food of the gods" in ancient Greek), or any other entheogenic fungi and psychoactive agents, in the orgiastic rites of the Great Mother, specially in the Kykeon (or Kukeon: κυκεών)—a mysterious potion used in the Eleusinian Mysteries. It was this potion that Demeter requested to drink, when she was in the company of Metaneira in Eleusis, while grieving for Persephone. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we read [HH 2. 205-211]:

Ever since, she [Iambē] has been pleasing her [Demeter] with the sacred rites (ὀργαῖς).   
Then Metaneira offered her [Demeter] a cup, having filled it with honey-sweet wine.   
But she refused, saying that it was divinely ordained that she not   
drink red wine. Then she [Demeter] ordered her [Metaneira] to mix some barley and water   
with delicate pennyroyal, and to give her [Demeter] that potion to drink.   
So she [Metaneira] made the kukeōn and offered it to the goddess, just as she had ordered.   
The Lady known far and wide as Dēō [Demeter] accepted it, for the sake of the divine law.

 

 

* A wand or staff tipped with a pine cone, most notably associated with Dionysos. Note that Pine tree was sacred to Kybele, and her consort Attis whom they say turned into a Pine tree after his death.

 

B.10    Hair Offering

Have you noticed the locks of hair on our veiled priestess' robe?

Among the rites of a young girl before marriage was the offering of a lock of her hair to Artemis, or in some cases, to those who had died virgin. Matthew Dillon writes [22]:

More significant as a rite of passage before marriage was the ritual of the cutting and dedication of a lock of hair. Generically, Artemis received the maiden locks of girls prior to marriage. But instead of Artemis, heroised virgins, who had not married because they had died, received an offering of hair in some parts of Greece. As with Artemis, this act was a propitiatory one: those who had not crossed into the married state would nevertheless aid those who were about to do so. The cutting of the girl's 'maiden's hair' signified her transition to marriage and ultimately (through childbirth) womanhood.

Damagetus, an ancient Greek poet, writes that [23]:

Artemis, who wieldest the bow and the arrows of might, by thy fragrant temple hath Arsinoe, the maiden daughter of Ptolemy, left this lock of her own hair, cutting it from her lovely tresses.

In Euripides' Hippolytus, it is the goddess Artemis herself that speaks directly to her beloved dying devotee, Hippolytus, foretelling him of a cult devoted to him will be established at Troizen [24]: 

To you, poor sufferer, in compensation for these bad things that have happened to you here

the greatest honors in the city of Troizen

I will give to you: unwed girls before they get married

will cut off their hair for you, and throughout the length of time

you will harvest the very great sorrows of their tears.

And forever there will be a thought that comes with the songmaking about you by virgin girls,

and it will be a troubled thought. The story and the names will not fall aside unremembered

the story of the passionate-love of Phaedra for you. No, it will never be passed over in silence.

 

And in fact, Pausanias writes of that sanctuary and the ritual that took place in it [20]:

The Troezenians have a priest of Hippolytus, who holds his sacred office for life, and annual sacrifices have been established. They also observe the following custom. Every maiden before marriage cuts off a lock for Hippolytus, and, having cut it, she brings it to the temple and dedicates it. 

 

B.11    Etymology of the Main Characters' Names

Are their names in accordance with the truth of the script?

• Taissa: One of the famous werewolves of 17th century, was a Livonian man called Thiess of Kaltenbrun, who had told in his trial that he went to Hell with his werewolf pals three times a year to fight the devil and his witches and bring back the stolen grains. I mention this because of his name, Thiess. Etymologically, Thiess originates from Matthias (Matthew) which means 'gift of Yahweh.' Now the name Taissa (Taisa/Taisiya) originally means 'gift of Isis' [27], and consider that the consort of Israelite god Yahweh (Canaanite Baal) was Asherah (Canaanite Astarte), who was called the 'Queen of Heaven', and as we discussed before, she is associated with goddess Isis-Artemis-Hekate.

• Shauna, Natalie: Both names in their Hebrew roots also mean 'gift from Yahweh.'

• Lottie/Lotte: 

1. Short form of Liselotte, Charlotte. In French, it means 'womanly', but it's native Hebrew root is Elisheva/Elisheba, (El+Shavuot) which means 'god is my oath/god is perfection.' Now Shavuot is the Jewish holiday of (wheat) harvest. It's also considered as the day of the revelation of the Torah to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai. Elsheba was the wife of Aaron, the elder brother of Moses, who was the ancestor of the Jewish high priests. Note that Lottie's last name is Matthews.

2. If we omit the pronunciation part (which we can rightfully do so at this stage), we can draw a very interesting connection with the Lote tree, aka Ziziphus spina-christi (Christ's thorn jujube). In Quran, it's the Lote (Cedar) tree (or Sidr in Arabic), called Sidrat al-Muntaha (The Lote tree of the boundary), that marks the boundary between Allah and the rest of his creation (divine and mundane). Located at the farthest end of the seventh heaven, beyond which no one (even angels) can pass except Mohammad, during the climax of his night ascension to the seventh heaven (Mi'raj). Even the archangel Gabriel was not able to pass beyond the Lote tree. Just look at the beautiful description of that moment (ref. 53:11-18) below for yourself and see what analogies you can draw from:

[Mohammad's] Heart did not doubt what he saw.

How can you then dispute with him regarding what he saw?

And he certainly saw that angel descend a second time.

at the Lote Tree of the boundary [in the seventh heaven]—

near which is the Garden of [Eternal] Residence—

while the Lote Tree was covered with [heavenly] splendours.

[Mohammad's] Sight never wandered, nor did it overreach.

He certainly saw some of his Lord’s greatest signs. 

Sheikha Moza bint Nasser describes the Lotte tree (the symbol of Qatar Foundation) as follows:

With its roots bound in the soil of this world and its branches reaching upward toward perfection, it is a symbol of solidarity and determination; it reminds us that the goals of this world are not incompatible with the goals of the spirit.

• Misty: From Greek 'mystikos', meaning 'secret, mystic, mystery.'

• Travis: 'Traverser, to cross.' Hekate/Diana/Persephone, Dionysos and Hermes are all crosser of boundaries.

• Jackie: Short form of Jacqueline, originates from Jacob, which means 'supplanter (a person who replaces someone or a thing of lesser value).' It might also mean 'protected by Yahweh.' But is she?!

B.12    Bear

I bore the holy vessels

At seven, then

I pounded barley

At the age of ten,

And clad in yellow robes,

Soon after this,

I was Little Bear to

Brauronian Artemis;

Then neckletted with figs,

Grown tall and pretty,

I was a Basket-bearer

This text from Aristophanes' Lysistrata [28] shows some form of an initiation ritual for the Athenian girls. To be precise, in the festival called Arkteia (bear festival) which held at the temple of Artemis at Brauron, young girls were called Arktoi (bears) and by wearing yellow robes (representing bearskin) and dancing, they celebrated entering their womanhood by acting as the bears for goddess Artemis. The priestess of the temple, in charge of the little bears, was called Arkos/Arktos (bear), and the perquisite of marriage for any girl was to attend Arkteia and 'play the bear' for Artemis.

Now there's another side to the reason behind imitating the bear, which generalizes to the older girls before marriage, and possibly it's not confined to Brauron. The story goes as follows [29]:

A man named Embaros played a subtle trick in prayer. For he set up the sanctuary of Mounykhian Artemis. And a bear appeared in it and was slain by the Athenians, and so a plague arose. And from this the god proclaimed that there would be a release if someone should sacrifice his daughter to Artemis. And Embaros promised he would so this on the condition that his family should have the priesthood for life. Dressing up his daughter completely, he hid her in the inner recess of the temple and adorning a goat in clothing, he sacrificed it as if it were his daughter... And when the god said that whoever claimed to have made the sacrifice should do it in this way also in the future, the man revealed what happened in secret. And from this, girls before their wedding did not hesitate to play the bear, as if they were expiating themselves for the killing of the animal.

So this one suggests that the sole purpose of imitating the bear by maidens was to appease the wrath of goddess Artemis. In fact, it's been mentioned that in that story, people tame the bear first, then a maiden provokes the bear and the irritated bear scratches her. Then her brothers kill the bear, and because of that, Artemis demands a maiden sacrifice in return.

Now further on the bear relationship, J. D. Hughes even argues that [30]:

The etymology of the name Artemis would be ark-temnis, 'bear sanctuary,' or more fully paraphrased, 'she who establishes (or protects) the bear sanctuary.' Such sanctuaries were commonly and most characteristically groves of trees. 

In the description of the cult of Artemis at Achaea (Akhaia), Pausanias writes:

Every year too the people of Patrai [in Akhaia] celebrate the festival Laphria in honor of their Artemis, and at it they employ a method of sacrifice peculiar to the place. Round the altar in a circle they set up logs of wood still green, each of them sixteen cubits long. On the altar within the circle is placed the driest of their wood. Just before the time of the festival they construct a smooth ascent to the altar, piling earth upon the altar steps.

The festival begins with a most splendid procession in honor of Artemis, and the maiden officiating as priestess rides last in the procession upon a car yoked to deer. It is, however, not till the next day that the sacrifice is offered ... For the people throw alive upon the altar edible birds and every kind of victim as well; there are wild boars, deer and gazelles; some bring wolf-cubs or bear-cubs, others the full-grown beasts. They also place upon the altar fruit of cultivated trees. Next they set fire to the wood.

At this point I have seen some of the beasts, including a bear, forcing their way outside at the first rush of the flames, some of them actually escaping by their strength. But those who threw them in drag them back again to the pyre. It is not remembered that anybody has ever been wounded by the beasts.

Hmm, setting a baby bear on fire as a way of sacrificing to Artemis.. Sounds familiar? Of course! You remember Laura Lee's plane explosion scene, right? What got on fire first that triggered the explosion? Yes, her teddy bear! Laura Lee was a maiden Arktos, trying to leave Arkteia before 'playing the bear' for Artemis.

B.13    Lake

One of the most famous sanctuaries of Diana was on the shores of Lake Nemi at Aricia, which according to legends, was founded by Orestes and Iphigenia, the succession for the bloody cultus of Artemis at Tauris. The lake was sacred and belonged to Diana and her Nymphs. People called her Diana Nemorensis, aka Diana of the Wood. The lake was also referred to as Diana's Mirror. 

Emperor Caligula (Ah, Romanophile Misty!) had built two large ships on this lake, one as a temple dedicated to Diana, the other as his palace. He had also reinstalled the cult of Isis in Rome. They say Caligula's grandmother had an influence on his later dedication towards Isis. The scene in which Lottie is baptized in the lake, resembles the the first purification ritual of the cult of Isis which Lucius performed in Apuleius' The Golden Ass, both as an ass before praying to the goddess for help, and as a new initiate to the cult after his metamorphosis. Artemis was also associated with Lakes, and in the cults, she was often addressed as Limnaia (Lady of the Lake).

An 18th-century depiction of Lake Nemi
 ©John Robert Cozens/Wikipedia

B.14    Bees  

 

At last, we're about to understand the mythological meaning behind the name Yellowjackets. Here we go! Bees were also associated with Artemis, and they were specially appeared on the statue of Artemis at Ephesus, as well as on the ancient coins of the city (figures below), as the symbol for Artemis. Bees were of such importance in the cult of Artemis, that her priestesses were called 'Melissai' (bees). Artemis was called by Cretans, Britomartis (sweet virgin, bee/honey maiden) [31].

Artemis of Ephesus
©Naples National Archaeological Museum

Look at them B's!

Silver coin of Ephesus
©Wikipedia

Melissai also appears as the title of the priestesses of Demeter, so with what we discussed before, it's not surprising that the role of bees was specially emphasized in the motherly aspect of Artemis. Bees are typically associated with order, diligence and sociability, but they are also the symbol of chastity, and the queen bee is literally the Great Mother of bees. That's one of the reasons that in Christianity, the bee is the symbol of Virgin Mary [32], which is perfectly aligned with our hypothesis, since we already saw the connection between Virgin Mary, the Great Mother and Artemis.

In relation to the show, although technically yellowjackets (as insects) are not bees, but they could very well represent the dark side of the bees. In fact, wasp was considered evil in ancient Egypt, as well as Zoroastrianism and Greco-Roman mythology, and in some other cultures like Siberia and Mongolia, it is linked with shamanism [33].

 

One other interesting fact is that in ancient Greek, the word οἶστρος (oistros) had referred to a flying insect (a member of fly family, or even wasps?) with loud buzzing which was capable of stinging such that it could drive cattles into agitation and frenzy. Interestingly, oistros had the following meanings as well: a sting, anything that drives mad, frenzy (madness) and mad desire. In Aeschlus' Prometheus Bound, Hera sends an oistros to taunt Io [Aesch. PB 566]:

Oh, oh! Aah! Aah! An oistros, phantom of earth-born Argus is stinging me again! Keep him away, O Earth! I am fearful when I behold that myriad-eyed herdsman. He travels onward with his crafty gaze upon me; not even in death does the earth conceal him, but passing from the shades he hounds me, the forlorn one, and drives me famished along the sands of the seashore.

The waxen pipe drones forth in accompaniment a clear-sounding slumberous strain. Alas, alas! Where is my far-roaming wandering course taking me? In what, O son of Cronus, in what have you found offence so that you have bound me to this yoke of misery—aah! are you harassing a wretched maiden to frenzy by this terror of the pursuing oistros? Consume me with fire, or hide me in the earth, or give me to the monsters of the deep to devour; but do not grudge, O King, the favor that I pray for. My far-roaming wanderings have taught me enough, and I cannot discern how to escape my sufferings. Do you hear the voice of the horned virgin?

 

And in Euripides' Bacchae, oistros is used as frenzy, when Dionysos talks about what he did to his aunts (Semele's sisters) because of their deed [Eur. Ba. 32]:

 

Therefore I have goaded them from the house in frenzy (ᾤστρησ), and they dwell in the mountains, out of their wits (μανίαις); and I have compelled them to wear the outfit of my mysteries (orgies: ὀργίων).

 

Finally, an interesting thing happens if we compare wasps with flies. Flies were also associated with evil. As an apt example, the name Beelzebub (originally a Philistine god, but then his role changed into being one of the seven princes of Hell in the Christian tradition) literally means 'Lord of the Flies.' Now I think it's easy to see the connection between the main theme of the Yellowjackets show with the main theme of William Golding's Lord of the Flies book, and connect some dots, then draw some conclusions. So, I hope you can now see the mythology behind choosing the name Yellowjackets for the show.

Things are mythologically falling into place, aren't they?

B.15    Addendum

The masque is only a metaphor.

- Maurice Conchis

For some reasons, I keep forgetting to mention that besides from the possible Lord of the Flies influence—if we keep in mind that this show wanders in the liminal spaces (aka it's a liminal show) and would do so in the future—I'd say that there might be another possible literary inspiration for the creators: John Fowles' magnum opus, The Magus.

 

I know, right?
The Magus full cover ©wearethemutants.com

 

I remember earlier this year, someone on reddit asked about the name of a book which young Misty was reading in a scene. After I saw that u/Blackrainbow2013 had mentioned it's none other than The Magus, I did a quick search and the first thing I found was that, lo and behold, the author had dedicated the book to the goddess Astarte! That was an enough sign for me to start reading it, and by gods and goddesses, it had enough signs aligned with my hypothesis!

Misty reading The Magus

First things first, the story was set in Greece! To be precise, in a fictional island called Phraxos which is the name of the husband of Nikandre, who dedicated a statue to Artemis (aka Dedication of Nikandre), which some say represents Artemis herself! And the real island is Spetses, which is in Attica, where the famous cult of Artemis at Brauron had a sanctuary there, in which if you recall, they held the compulsory Arkteia festival for maidens, who wore yellow robes and called the bears!

Kore of Nikandre
Delos, in front of the Temple of Apollo
©Museum of Classical Archaeology,
University of Cambridge

Then, spoilers ahead, we hear of Artemis, Apollon, Astarte, magick, mystery and a grand play dedicated to the deities. The most important thing though, was its liminal nature. It was up to you, the reader, what to believe and conclude, just like the creators of Yellowjackets have been reminding us. Now whether the use of this book in the show was a coincidence or not, it was a pretty damn interesting sign for me! Maybe I'd be too much of an optimist dreamer if I were to use the same description for the Yellowjackets that Avrom Fleishman used for The Magus [41]:

it is a mystery only in the sense in which the Eleusinian rites were—and remain—mysteries.

After all, one of the reasons for pursuing my own mythinterpretations, as well as keep being psyched up for the show, is due to what Jonathan Lisco (one of the showrunners) told in an interview with Variety:

We're after something almost beyond logic. we're all in pursuit of something intangible, that's like beyond reason that moves you on a visceral gut level...we're getting weird, there are no obstacles to how weird we wanna go.

Before we go, let me indulge you with a quote from the book, when Dr. Friedrich Kretschmer tells the baffled Nicholas Urfe in the final reveal that:

Now—on my left—you see an empty box. But we like to think that there is a goddess inside. A virgin goddess whom none of us has ever seen, nor will ever see. We call her Ashtaroth* the Unseen. Your training in literature will permit you, I am sure, to guess at her meaning. And through her at our, us humble scientists', meaning.

* aka Astarte.

 

 

C    Epilogue

The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. Symbols, moreover, are natural and spontaneous products. No genius has ever sat down with a pen or a brush in his hand and said: “Now I am going to invent a symbol.”

 

- Carl G. Jung

If there exists a metapoint to this essay, it would be that there's more to the symbol of cultus than meets the conscious eye. In other words, at best, my hypothesis points towards a hidden unconscious meaning behind the symbol—the one that transcends any representation that might have been assigned by the conscious efforts of its creators. And at worst, we—the viewers and the creators—may never find out the true meaning of the symbol.

Click here, if you'd like to read the second movement of the essay

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