The Goddess Mania

The Myth of Mania

In Greek mythology, the Maniae were female spirits personifying madness, frenzy, and insanity. These frightening emotional states were beyond human control, and therefore believed to be a result of spiritual possession or dark ritual practices.

The Maniae operated closely with Lyssa, the spirit of rage and rabies, and like Lyssa, was among the daughters of Nyx, the goddess of night. The Maniae were also associated with the Furies, three fearsome goddesses of vengeance.

The ancient Romans had a deity named Mania who was a goddess of the underworld. Similar to Hecate in Greek mythology, she had the power to guide the souls of the deceased to the afterlife, and was honored in various rituals and ceremonies designed to guarantee those souls safe passage.

We're All A Little Mad Here

It's interesting that the ancient Greeks and Romans dedicated an entire goddess, albeit a minor one, to the domain of madness. It shows that insanity has been a human concern for millennia, and that its causes were as mysterious to the ancients as they are today, even as our remedies have arguably grown more humane.

You could choose to interpret it as sexist that the deity ruling over states of mental illness and emotional turmoil was female, but I prefer to think of it the opposite way. Anything women were given dominion over in the ancient world was a win. At least she wasn't named “Hysteria.” LOL

Hearing Voices

But then, I'm also not one of those people who think it's sexist when AI "assistants" are named after women. There will always be abuses of power, like when OpenAI’s founder Sam Altman famously tried to get Scarlett Johansson (of “HER” fame) to lend her voice to ChatGPT. She said no, and they went out recruited a soundalike that fooled even her closest relatives.

But there are just as many male computers as female ones in science fiction, most famously HAL in 2001 and KITT in Knight Rider, and more recently, David in the Alien prequels. My mother uses a charming male Scottish voice for her driving navigation app. It sounds a bit like James McAvoy is giving her directions.

The voice of the computer in the original Star Trek series was female because it was voiced by creator Gene Rodenberry’s wife, Majel Barrett. Sure, the women on the original Enterprise wore mini-skirts because it was the ‘60s, but as the Star Trek universe expanded, they got to captain their own starships and rule entire alien species.

People who complain about the equating of feminine voices with helpfulness or servitude are missing the point. Sure, AI can be used as an “assistant,” but only because it knows almost everything about any topic you care to ask it. If people prefer to think of their pocket keeper of all the world’s knowledge as female, I think that’s progress.

Mad, Badass Goddesses

Of course, in the mythologies of the ancient world, some of the most important concepts were ruled by female deities, including love, beauty, healing, magic, food production and childbirth.

Although some cultures relegated their goddesses to the light and fluffy realms of human experience, there was no shortage of goddesses representing evil, war, mischief, fury, storms, earthquakes, fire and all the other untamed elements.

There are goddesses of famine, pestilence, forgetfulness, drunkenness, madness, magic, sorcery, every aspect of death, rebirth, and the afterworld.

The Artwork

The inspiration for the drawing of Mania was one of my favorite burlesque dancers posing at Dr. Sketchy's, the iconic and mesmerizing Little Miss Risk, aka Tristan Risk. In fact, she was the model at the very first session I ever attended, back in January 2010.

My friend had seen an article about Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School in The Georgia Strait and asked me if I wanted to go. I hadn't drawn anything in literally 15 years, but I agreed because the accompanying photo of my other favorite model, Melody Mangler, nearly naked and covered in birthday cake, was too irresistible to pass up.

As we were walking towards the venue, the Wallflower Cafe on Main Street in Vancouver, we saw Little Miss Risk in her makeup and costume using the phone on the street outside. Her makeup was an airbrushed homage to Aliens and Predator... right up my alley!

In the photos below, taken by photographer Heather Renney, you can see my bleached hair glowing like a beacon in the front row.

After not drawing for around 15 years, that first session was rough. Tristan was such an awesome model I wanted to capture every detail of her amazing costume, from the robotic claws to the tentacled headdress, but my drawing muscles were woefully out of shape.

My poor neck and shoulders were throbbing within the first hour (of three!) and my hands kept going numb. It didn't help that we arrived late and got stuck in the front row staring up at an awkward angle.

I muddled through that first class and managed to get a few good drawings, but looking back, I really wish that hadn't been my first session. I wish I could have done a better job at recording the awesomeness that was Little Miss Risk in all her airbrushed alien glory.

But after that session I was hooked. I attended almost every month for the next decade, until it shut down in 2020. You can see a few of my very rough drawings from that night below.

El Riesgo Siempre Vive

In subsequent sessions where she was the model, I found myself struggling to follow the usual rules of life drawing, where you’re supposed to sketch out a rough collection of lines and polygons to get the full body before zooming in for detail.

The "problem" with drawing Tristan is that she's so damn beautiful your natural human inclination is just to stare at her face and try to render it as faithfully as possible. I usually had to give up and refer to the photos for reference when I went back and finished my drawings at home.

Little Miss Risk was a common fixture at Dr. Sketchy's, posing at least once a year, sometimes more, doing Halloween sessions, homages to Mad Max, Quentin Tarantino's Planet Terror, Death Proof, and other camp classics.

Goddess With A Thousand Faces

Tristan Risk is actually a B-movie star in her own right, featured in dozens of art house horror films like Ayla and Frankenstein Created Bikers.

She ended up inspiring more of my goddesses than almost any other model (probably tied with Melody Mangler), including Mania, Persephone, Watamaraka, Bastet, and a handful of my Zodiac Pin-ups, which I drew for a few years before switching to Badass Goddesses.

The original drawing that eventually became the goddess Mania, had a life before that, as Virgo in my 2016 Zodiac Pinups calendar.

In real life, of course, Tristan Risk is a Scorpio.

You can find the goddess Mania on dozens of printed products, apparel, accessories and household items in my RedBubble shop.

You can also find Virgo products in my RedBubble shop.

Check out all the goddesses in my self-published Amazon book, Badass Goddesses, available in paperback, hard cover or Kindle format.

Thanks for reading, everyone!