{"id":1049,"date":"2013-06-14T12:18:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T17:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2013-06-14T12:21:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T17:21:37","slug":"lions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/pbp-2013\/lions\/","title":{"rendered":"PBP Fridays: L is for Lions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t really like lions. This is hilarious for two reasons and understandable for the third:<\/p>\n

1) I draw some hefty parallels between the behavior and physiology of the extinct-in-the-wild Barbary\/Atlas lion and myself. I don’t consider the Barbary lion to be totemic—it’s not an external entity to me—but I do find it to be a disconcertingly accurate mirror into my own instincts, intuition, internalized sense of self, and social patterns (or lack thereof). If you stuffed a baby Barbary lion into a human suit and raised it as a person, it might turn out a lot like I have. This is both a sorta-cool thing and a frequent disadvantage in normal human life. :)<\/p>\n

2) Two of my gods, Sekhmet and Ma’ahes, are leonine deities. I never see either of Them as purely human; They always appear as animal-headed people or full lions, often wreathed in flame (Sekhmet) or magma-skinned (Ma’ahes). The traditional symbolism of the African lion (power, nobility, dominance\/lordship, the sun) and African lioness (ferocity, motherhood, the tribe, the sun) is very intense in Them and reflects a large part of Their characters.<\/p>\n

3) I freaking love spotted hyenas<\/a>. African lions are pretty much meh<\/i> in comparison. I also think they’re kinda over-hyped, and as I am secretly a hipster, I tend to stray away from anything “too” mainstream. I prefer investigating the obscure and exploring the little corners, rather than strolling down the big ole well-trodden pathways.<\/p>\n

A large part of the disconnect between me and the African lion is not just thanks to my adoration of hyenas or my elemental-lion impressions from my Netjeru—it’s due to the drastic differences between Barbary lions, with which I identify, and the African lions that everyone’s familiar with. Barbaries weren’t pride animals; they lived alone or in hunting pairs. While males and females were still sexually dimorphic in terms of size and mane, they didn’t serve different social or gender roles; each Barbary still had to hunt, claim and defend territory, and find a mate. And, speaking of territory, Barbaries lived in the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa, where the terrain was, well, mountainous, and the climate was semi-seasonal instead of the hot savanna’s whomping dry-wet cycles.<\/p>\n

So the lions I grok are not the lions everyone refers to when they say “lion,” and while I am appreciative of the uniqueness of African lion social structure and other facets of their physiology and behavioral patterns, I just don’t admire and geek out over them like I do other animals like hyenas, scorpions, and snakes. The physical reality of the animal doesn’t win me over, even as I can respect the power that the lion wields in mythology and symbolism. Even with Barbary lions, my reaction is more “welp, that’s me” instead of “HOLY CRAP THEY ROCK.”<\/p>\n

That said, I still love lion gods:<\/p>\n


\nimage source<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year’s first L post was on magical language<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t really like lions. This is hilarious for two reasons and understandable for the third: 1) I draw some hefty parallels between the behavior and physiology of the extinct-in-the-wild Barbary\/Atlas lion and myself. I don’t consider the Barbary lion to be totemic—it’s not an external entity to me—but I do find it to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70],"tags":[89,17,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unorthodoxcreativity.com\/emky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}