Atropos
Atropos or Aisa (/ˈætrəpɒs/; Ancient Greek: Ἄτροπος "without turn"), in Greek mythology, was one of the three Moirai, goddesses of fate and destiny. Her Roman equivalent was Morta.
Atropos was the oldest of the Three Fates, and was known as the "inflexible" or "inevitable." It was Atropos who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of mortals by cutting their thread with her "abhorred shears." She worked along with her two sisters, Clotho, who spun the thread, and Lachesis, who measured the length. Atropos has been featured in several stories such as Atalanta and Achilles.
Origin
Her origin, along with the other two fates, is uncertain, although some called them the daughters of the night. It is clear, however, that at a certain period they ceased to be only concerned with death and also became those powers who decided what may happen to individuals. Although Zeus was the chief Greek god and their father, he was still subject to the decisions of the Fates, and thus the executor of destiny, rather than its source. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Atropos and her sisters (Clotho and Lachesis) were the daughters of Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night), though later in the same work (ll. 901-906) they are said to have been born of Zeus and Themis.
Atropos (Goya)
Atropos, or The Fates (Spanish: Átropos or Las Parcas) is one of the 14 black paintings painted by Francisco de Goya between 1819–23. Goya, then 75 and in mental and physical despair, created the series directly onto the interior walls of the house known as "The House of the Deaf Man" (Quinta del Sordo), purchased in 1819.
It probably occupied a position on the second floor of the house beside the Fight with Cudgels and across from the Fantastic Vision. Like the rest of the black paintings, it was transferred to canvas in 1873–74 under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells, a curator at the Museo del Prado. The owner, Baron Emile d'Erlanger, donated the canvases to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Prado.
The painting is a reinterpretation of the mythological subject of the goddesses of destiny—the Moirai or fates as recounted in Homer, Hesiod, Virgil and other classical writers. These "Daughters of Night" were headed by Atropos, the inexorable goddess of death, who carries a few scissors to cut the thread of life; Clotho, with her distaff (which Goya replaces with a doll or newborn child, possibly an allegory of life), and Lachesis, the spinning one, which in this representation looks across a lens or in a mirror and symbolizes time, since she was the one who measured the length of the fiber. To the three female figures suspended in the air a fourth figure is added in the foreground. Possibly male, this figure's hands are bound behind him as if is captive. If this interpretation is true, the fates would be deciding the destiny of the man whose bound hands cannot be opposed to his fate. It has been speculated that he may represent Prometheus, who was bound on a mountain and left to be savaged by an eagle as punishment for stealing fire from Mount Olympus. All four are hideously ugly.
Atropos (journal)
Atropos is a UK-based journal for specialists in Lepidoptera and Odonata. It takes its name from the scientific name of the Death's-head Hawkmoth, Acherontia atropos.
It was first published in May 1996.
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Atropos
by: Brave Saint SaturnDeepest oceans of despair
This vast and somber
Charcoal night of space
Have you given up yet?
What hope lingers in the crevasses
And corners of your soul?
I know you, you haven't given up yet
You are brave in this darkness, Saint Saturn
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