A nymph is a minor female nature deity in ancient Greek folklore. Distinct from other Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature; they are typically tied to a specific place, landform, or tree, and are usually depicted as maidens. Because of their association with springs, they were often seen as having healing properties; other divine powers of the nymphs included divination and shapeshifting. Nymphs, like other goddesses, were immortal except for the Hamadryads, whose lives were bound to a specific tree.
In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of his retinue, the thiasus. Their name, which comes from μαίνομαι, literally translates as 'raving ones'. Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae, or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox skin.
Salmacis was an atypical Naiad nymph of Greek mythology. She rejected the ways of the virginal Greek goddess Artemis in favour of vanity and idleness.
In Ancient Greece a thyrsus or thyrsos was a wand or staff of giant fennel covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and topped with a pine cone, artichoke, fennel, or by a bunch of vine-leaves and grapes or ivy-leaves and berries, carried during Hellenic festivals and religious ceremonies. The thyrsus is typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus, and represents a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism similarly to Dionysus.
The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its history. Greek music separates into two parts: Greek traditional music and Byzantine music. These compositions have existed for millennia: they originated in the Byzantine period and Greek antiquity; there is a continuous development which appears in the language, the rhythm, the structure and the melody. Music is a significant aspect of Hellenic culture, both within Greece and in the diaspora.
In Greek mythology, a nymph or nymphe is a female nature-spirit.
The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions. It also provided some liberation for men and women marginalized by Greek society, among which were slaves, outlaws, and non-citizens. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one, with Dionysus changing his nature accordingly. By its nature as a mystery religion reserved for the initiated, many aspects of the Dionysian cult remain unknown and were lost with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism; modern knowledge is derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.
In Greek mythology, Kleodora or Cleodora was one of the prophetic Thriae, nymphs who divined the future by throwing stones or pebbles and were associated with the Oracle of Delphi. She and her sisters Melaina and Daphnis lived on Mount Parnassus, where Delphi is located. With Poseidon, she was the mother of Parnassos, who created a method of telling the future using birds and founded the main city on Mt. Parnassus. Kleodora's father was Cephissus, a river god of northern Boeotia.
Priscilla Hernández is a Spanish singer-songwriter and fantasy illustrator. Born in La Palma, she is now based in Navarre, Spain. She is also the founder of the independent record label Yidneth Records.
Louisa John-Krol is a Melbourne-based Australian artist of the romantic folk/pop genre - described as 'romantic pop-ethereal faerie' music by the artist herself and others. She has released six albums to date, originally on the German label, Hyperium Records, but in more recent years with the French label Prikosnovénie aka The Fairy World Label. She has also been involved in a number of collaborative projects with other artists, including two film soundtracks. Louisa is often compared to Loreena McKennitt and Kate Bush.
Prikosnovénie is a French independent record label founded in Nantes in 1990 by Frédéric Chaplain and Sabine Adélaïde who moved to its current home in the medieval city of Clisson in 2001. Prikosnovénie, whose name in Russian roughly translates to “light touch”, specialises in promoting darkwave, neoclassical, medieval, and heavenly voices bands that incorporate a fusion of ambient and romantic cultural sounds around from the world. The label is best known for its promotion of fairy and elven-styled music and art, which is often described as art inspired by fantasy stories such as The Lord of the Rings.
Irfan is an ethereal world music band from Bulgaria formed in 2001. Their sound is an original electro-acoustic world fusion influenced by the sacred and folk music traditions of Bulgaria, the Balkans, Persia, the Middle East, North Africa and India, as well as by the musical and spiritual heritage of Byzantium and Medieval Europe.
The Orestes Papyrus is a musical fragment from the first stasimon of Orestes by Euripides. The headword, Katolophyromai, means "I cry, lament so much". In 1892, among a number of papyri from Hermopolis, Egypt, in the collection of Archduke Rainer Ferdinand of Austria, a fragment was discovered and published by the papyrologist Karl Wessely, containing a mutilated passage with musical notation. Although Vienna Papyrus G 2315 dates to the third century BCE, the melody recorded on it may have been written much earlier.
Aealo is the tenth full-length album by Greek extreme metal band Rotting Christ. It was released on 15 February 2010 via Season of Mist.
In Greek mythology, Telete is the daughter of the wine-god Dionysus and Nicaea, a Naiad daughter of the river-god Sangarius and Cybele, a mother goddess.
Peter Lawrence Ulrich is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, recording artist and author.
Corde Oblique are one of the main ethereal progressive neofolk bands from Italy. They are the solo project of Riccardo Prencipe with vocal contributions from numerous female singers and actresses. After seven albums the project began to change its skin and proposed "FolkGaze" sounds, a cross between folk and shoegazer.
Nympholepsy is the belief of the ancient Greeks that individuals could be possessed by the nymphs. Individuals who considered themselves nympholepts would display a great religious devotion to the nymphs. An example is Archedemos of Thera, who built the sanctuary of the nymphs in the Vari Cave northeast of Attica, Greece.
La Nymphe surprise, or Surprised Nymph, is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet, created in 1861. The model was Suzanne Leenhoff, a pianist whom he married two years later. The painting is a key work of Manet's, marking the beginning of a new period in his artistic career and generally in the history of modernism in French painting. It is in National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and is considered one of the collection's highlights. La Nymphe surprise remained in the artist's possession his entire life, and there is evidence that, apart from the emotional significance it had for him, Manet considered this painting one of his most important.
Psychostasia is the third studio album by the Greek musical group Daemonia Nymphe, released on 10 May 2013 by the record label Prikosnovénie.
