masks

HOME AUTHOR DIONUSYS MASKS TULLIUS-WORLD LABYRINTH NEW-WORK LORNA'S LABYRINTH ARIADNE GODDESS OF THE LABYRINTH
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. -Oscar Wilde
MASKS		"My masks—they know.” He looked down. “Lucia takes power from Tullius. She is not the child of his body, but a ghost daughter sapping his powers. He loves her, teaching her, singing with her, and the masks know that he isn’t strong enough to go where they want to take him. He was weak on stage today, you know. He barely pulled it off.” from-The Actor King
*Walter F. Otto -Dionysus, Myth and Cult* *The Symbol of the Mask* It is not every superhuman bring who presents himself in a mask, but only those who are elemental, the ones who belong to the earth. In their honor, too, masked men danced their many and varied dances. The mask remained especially popular for the appearance of spirits and apparitions from the depths, and as such it has come down to us through the Middle Ages to modern times in Mardi Gras customs. But how does the mask make its way into the sphere of earthly spirits and deities? Moderns are quick to turn to magic for their ultimate explanations, but anyone who has thought this over seriously will see that magic does not help us much here. What good is it, anyway, to say that is prehistoric times the masks of earth spirits were put on to ward off evil or to promote vegetation, and that this was done so that man could change himself into these spirits or gain control of their powers? It is doubtful that this would ever have occurred had not the mask, in itself, been thought to have within it the mysterious might of such beings—even without a man wearing it. The proof of this is to be found in the awe which masks as such always inspired, and in the fact that the masks were kept in holy places. HOME AUTHOR DIONUSYS MASKS TULLIUS-WORLD LABYRINTH NEW-WORK LORNA'S LABYRINTH ARIADNE GODDESS OF THE LABYRINTH

Walter F. Otto -Dionysus, Myth and Cult

The Symbol of the Mask

It is not every superhuman bring who presents himself in a mask, but only those who are elemental, the ones who belong to the earth. In their honor, too, masked men danced their many and varied dances. The mask remained especially popular for the appearance of spirits and apparitions from the depths, and as such it has come down to us through the Middle Ages to modern times in Mardi Gras customs. But how does the mask make its way into the sphere of earthly spirits and deities? Moderns are quick to turn to magic for their ultimate explanations, but anyone who has thought this over seriously will see that magic does not help us much here. What good is it, anyway, to say that is prehistoric times the masks of earth spirits were put on to ward off evil or to promote vegetation, and that this was done so that man could change himself into these spirits or gain control of their powers? It is doubtful that this would ever have occurred had not the mask, in itself, been thought to have within it the mysterious might of such beings—even without a man wearing it. The proof of this is to be found in the awe which masks as such always inspired, and in the fact that the masks were kept in holy places.