Read: Writing on Mermaids
I loved mermaids as a kid! "The Little Mermaid" and "Bambi" were my two favorite animated films (I like non-human protagonists, haha). I had a plastic mermaid doll whose tail and shell-decorations changed colors when she went under warm water. I used to try swimming like a mermaid in pools, but it was too hard, I wasn't very good at it, so I stopped.
Lately I have been thinking of Mazu, who is a Sea God/dess in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southern China; in some versions of folk history, Mazu was a young shaman/ess who died while saving sailors from a shipwreck. I am also interested in Naxi/ Mosuo "Rumugu" entities, a.k.a. "Nagas" in Tibetan Buddhism; these are Nature Spirits that reside in water. They look kind of like mermaids in drawings, with upper-half human body, lower-half reptilian (snake or fish).
A blog post I made from 2017, to introduce some pieces I donated for an anti-fracking fundraiser called "Lancaster Against Pipelines."
RUMUGU: A type of Nature God, the name meaning “water source.” The top halves of their bodies look like human beings, while the lower halves resemble reptiles’ tails. These deities come in twos, with a pair assigned for each of the four compass directions (North/ South/ East/ West).
This Rumugu color-print is from a commissioned series called “Dabba Cards” by artist Dava/ Frog Wing (working under the name WuZhimi). The Mosuo are an ethnic group with a traditionally matrilineal society, and Dabba is the name of their folk religion that values a balanced relationship between Humans and Nature. These paintings were based on a set of original Dabba cards that were used in rituals for expressing apology/ gratitude to water. The rituals are held near water wells, community pools, springs, rivers, or at other similar sites where human beings take and use water for daily consumption.
You can find the original versions of these prints in the Dabba Ritual Room at the Luoshui Mosuo Museum, which is located at the edge of Lugu Lake in Yunnan Province, China.
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