Hello, friends!
At long last I present to you the first of this year’s Pride offerings!
I say, “at long last” both because I wanted to have this out two, even three weeks ago, and because I have wanted to make an image of Tiresias since before my first Pride line.
For those of you who don’t know, Tiresias is one of most famous oracles of Greek myth, second only to poor Cassandra. His name is a byword for wisdom and righteousness, and a famed reader of signs and omens. It is he who counsels Cadmus in the Bacchae and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex.
Though I do love him as an initiate of the Dionysiac Mysteries, and as a prophet and diviner, the tale that has made Teresias most dear to my heart is that of his time spent as a woman. Ovid, of course tells the story as a dirty joke, with a punch line about Zeus winning a bet with Hera about who enjoys sex more, but the tale also appears in (pseudo)Apollodorus: how Tiresias came upon two entwined and mating snakes on the road and separated them with his staff and was thereby transformed into a woman, and how some (traditionally seven) years later “restored” his masculinity by separating another pair of mating snakes. (Pseudo Apollodorus’ verseion can be found here, scrolling down just a little to 105; Ovid’s version can be found here.
For my own part, given the assumption (and the account of Apollodorus) that Tiresias gifts of prophesy and divination dated back to his youth among the nymphs of Athena, I take not just the latter transformation but the first as well to be conscious and deliberate choices. That is to say, Tiresias found (or perhaps even sought out) the first pair of snakes in order to spend some years as a woman, and only sought out another pair when it suited her to once more be him. Moreover, in both versions of the story, Tiresias led a full and active life as a woman: whether or not women, generally, have a better time of sex than men, clearly Tiresias had a better time as a woman.
To make this pendant, I looked to Attic red figure pottery for inspiration. I was not able to find any images clearly designated as Tiresias, so instead I chose a generic man with a himation and a staff, and retooled it to my liking. I then reversed the image, removed the beard and changed a visible pectoral for a tit, and soldered the two prototypes back to back.
I am very, very pleased with this image, and may well keep the exemplar for myself.
You can find this piece for sale in my Etsy store.