Faces of the Bat

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Which is why I expect a lot less bat symbology and a lot more hummingbird symbology in Lunar temples serving the faithful.

Bat, hummingbird, pterosaur (just me), hummingbird moth, or hummingbird hawk-moth, or … Whichever it is — what day of the week is it? — isn’t the steed of the Goddess just an aspect of the Goddess herself, rather than a fully distinct entity? Multiplicity is to be expected. How long is any true bat’s tongue? But a hummingbird’s is long, as is a moth’s proboscis, more in keeping with familiar iconography and all the better for slurping up souls as if they were nectar. Trochilus pella or Trochilus Peloria?

The more terrible the aspect the Bat presents, the more it symbolises the Red Goddess’s ties to the middle world and to power. Don’t think of the Bat being banished if she is starved, think of her being liberated from the middle world if she ceases to commit atrocities. The Red Goddess–Crimson Bat is tortured every time she is fed. The Goddess is like the Legalists’ ideal emperor, nominally in charge but in reality trapped at the heart of the machine.

Perhaps the last form of the Bat seen in this world will be something like the final stage of a mayfly: “adults do not feed and have only vestigial mouthparts, while their digestive systems are filled with air” — ooh! symbolic.

[Ali the Helering]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

isn’t the steed of the Goddess just an aspect of the Goddess herself, rather than a fully distinct entity?

Didn't want to mention it, miss, but there's an odd growth with wings under your feet.....

[Eff]

The hummingbird is a symbol of ferocity and rebirth in Mexican contexts, which Stafford had recently had a transformative experience with. The faithful seeing a hummingbird is a symbol for them seeing the rebirth of Teelo Estara as Teelo Imara, the fierce protector goddess rising into the sky and swooping down on their oppressors. But the unfaithful see only death, Maha Quata. 

What would it say that people see a bat today? That requires thinking symbolically.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

What would it say that people see a bat today?

The natural enemy of the moth, so the pair represents self-overcoming, like Arkat–Nysalor off in the corner screaming “Gbaji” and beating himself up?

[scott-martin]

My summer is Mexico's bat season because all their hummingbirds are up here drinking my red sugar water and I rejoice.

When they go home again I only have bats to console me and they have slightly stronger tastes.