The origin of the Undines (or Ondines) can best be traced all the way back to ancient Greece wherein mythology cites a clan of nymphs called Oceanides claimed the waters of the world as their home. The water nymphs or water spirits, belong to the Water Elemental, are are usually found in forest pools and waterfalls. They are said to have beautiful voices, which can be sometime heard singing over the sound of water that entices those that hear it. These beings are believed to be the daughters of Titan and his wife Tethys. Their presence in the oceans was legendary among seafarers. Mostly beneficent, Oceanides would aid water-travelers in navigation and provide safe sea-ways.In European lore, Undines are fabled to be the wandering spirits of love-lorn women. According to some legends, Undines can receive a soul when they marry a human man and bear his child. This aspect of them has them to be a popular subject motif for romantic and tragic literature. Often with sailors being drawn to them by their tears of sorrow that composed the salty seas when wept having lost at love. Tales indicate that these female water spirits are enchantingly beautiful and reputed to be relatively benign, however, like most female spirits they’ve got a temper when crossed and can be force to be reckoned with.
modern day greek mythology→the sirens as a girl gang of serial killers (1/2)
they tear the pavement with chrome horses, screeching tires and noxious fumes; stomping about in thug boots. they sing for their supper, in more ways than one. luring men to their doom, bullets to the brain, hacking limbs, garroting, disembowelment, decapitation. they are virtuosos in their art. bones crack between jaws. crunching, crunching, crunching. sometimes they snap them in half to suck out the marrow. they fill themselves to bursting, leaving heaps of corpses in flower starred meadowes.
“Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.” (Margot Datz, A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids)
I am a siren, a mermaid; I know that I am beautiful while basking on the ocean’s waves and I know that I can eat flesh and bones at the bottom of the sea.
A MERMAID is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans. Mermaids are associated with the mythological Greek sirens. (x)
the Sirens were dangerous and beautiful creatures, portrayed as femme fatales who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.
“A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.”
