Another page with the Roma family, although we’re almost done with this scene. Too bad; I love drawing mustaches, and the 18th century was otherwise a very clean-shaven era.
Now that election fever had passed (and thank heavens for that), it’s on to cheerier parts of the year. Coming up early on the world schedule of Festivals of Light is Diwali! It’s actually a little late this year – normally it falls in October. To celebrate, here’s my sixth goddess illustration – the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Click to see her at full size!
Like many Hindu deities, Lakshmi has literally dozens of different forms, incarnations and names, has complex relationships with other deities (like Vishnu and Ganesh) and plays many roles. She’s probably best known for being a goddess of abundance – and that can mean simple good luck, personal fulfillment, or material wealth. Lakshmi is the one who fills your cup.
In most devotional images Lakshmi is depicted standing or sitting in a giant lotus blossom, floating on a tranquil sea – a bit like Aphrodite, she was born from the ocean. She has four arms (the better to distribute wealth!) and holds lotuses in two of them. She is sometimes attended by two white elephants. This is an illustration, not a traditional devotional image, so she is behaving a little less formally here! Lakshmi is generous of spirit, so hopefully she won’t hold it against me.
Detail from Page 271 of Family Man.
Things are heating up a little in this scene! Settlement – forced or “chosen” – was tantamount to giving up Romani identity. Children were often forcibly taken away from their families and made to speak the local language exclusively – a cultural death sentence. Adults were often forced to live in conditions that went utterly against their strict purity laws. In many Rom cultures the lower half of the body is considered very impure – to the extent that living in the bottom floor of a house could be considered unclean because of the lower parts of the people walking above – thus the comment about “living on top of each other.” Ancient family trades dating back to life on the Indian subcontinent would have to be abandoned in favor of subsistence living.
Many families who did concede to settlement (rather than being forced by local law enforcement efforts) had virtually no choice in the matter; losing your horses or wagons or being cut off from a traditional trade route could be a crippling blow. This particular family has had a rough year for its patriarch to be giving thought to the matter.
Cheerful stuff! Check back next week, I promise that things will perk up a bit.
Since it’s Halloween, I thought adding a death goddess to my Goddess Series was fitting!
Ma’at is the Egyptian goddess of truth and order. She spends a lot of time in the Egyptian underworld. According to the Book of the Dead, after you die, the canopic jar that contained your preserved heart (the organ that housed the soul) was set on one side of the Scales of Judgement.
Ma’at then placed her Feather of Truth on the other side. The jackal-headed god Anubis then weighed the two against each other.
If your heart was lighter than the feather (and therefore pure), Anubis sent your soul on to eternal life. If it was heavier, your soul was fed to the crocodile-headed demon Ammut.
Ma’at was sometimes symbolic shorthand for everything that bound together Egypt as a civilization (civil order, natural law, personal morality), and sometimes a personified goddess like this. Either way, you very much wanted her to come down on your side.
Detail from Family Man, Page 270.
This is the second page of a little scene in Family Man that I’ve been looking forward to for awhile! You can catch up over at lutherlevy.com.
This morning’s lettering practice, using my favorite translation of Rilke’s poem Herbsttag (Autumn Day); I always think of this version when the weather turns to autumn.