What The Fire Said: Andromeda and the Monster

What The Fire Said

What The Fire Said is the portal for my own art and writing. It is necessarily a work in progress, and you are welcome to return anytime to see what has been added here.

In my header you will see both contemporary calibration dials and centuries-old symbols used in the practice of alchemy. My art tends to operate at the interface between such extremes: between our shared distant past and an unknown far future, between the realities of history and the at-times greater realities that lie over the threshold in the world of myth. At these extremes science and magic, myth and history turn into each other, become indistinguishable from each other – as in the far future they well might. ~ Hawkwood (David Bergen)

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What The Fire Said by David Bergen a.k.a. Hawkwood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License covering all written and visual material at: http://whatthefiresaid.blogspot.nl/.

These personally created artworks remain the property of the © David Bergen Studio. The terms of my above Creative Commons License allow for re-posting of these works on the express condition that they remain unaltered (that is: with my embedded © credit attached) and that the context is non-commercial. Please respect my art.

Hawkwood (David Bergen)

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Copyright of any material credited to Hawkwood remains with the author. The registered creative commons license below permits further use and distribution of Hawkwood's work subject to the three conditions: (1) The user attributes the work to 'Hawkwood', (2) The context is non-commercial, (3) The work remains unaltered. A link back to this weblog is appreciated.

It was, of course, asking for trouble. When Queen Cassiopeia made the claim that she considered herself more beautiful even than the sea nymphs of Poseidon, the god who was the sea demanded retribution. Chained to an offshore rock, her daughter Andromeda now waits in helpless terror for the arrival of the sea monster that will devour her. In myth, victorious rescue is preordained, and the hero Perseus will arrive from the skies to do battle with the monster and win fair Andromeda’s hand.

Perhaps the myth hints at other possibilities. Perhaps the princess is more powerful than this traditionally masculine reading of the myth allows her to be. Andromeda, with all the power she commands, has made a pact with the serpent, who is really her guardian. Entwining her in its radiant coils, the monster will protect the princess against all threats.

Understanding none of this, brash Perseus in his glinting armour wings towards the pair above the moonlit Mediterranean waves, and the monster, to protect its mistress, knows that it must join battle with the meddlesome hero. Andromeda, princess of monsters, must wish that the outcome will favour her protector, although the myth dictates otherwise. And yet she must hope against hope that, for once, the myth will be rewritten in the monster’s favour.

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