ZAGREUS / THANATOS

Thanatos, death incarnate, sits with an arrow poised to his neck.

Like Thanatos, many of us feel pressured by the phantom arrow of societal expectation to be palatable, familiar, and easily understood. There is no room for oddity in a world that wants its pieces to slot together, identical. But by welcoming conformity we betray the oddity that underscores who we are. We are odd in the same way mending loves the needle, as time loves healing, as instinct loves the hunter. Our strangeness isnʼt defiance, but an act of honour to our personal truth; itʼs empowerment. Itʼs in Zagreus, god of rebirth, that we see the owl bring its wisdom: seek out our conformity-bound selves and put them to rest. With the gentle death of our hesitance comes the liberating rebirth of our oddity, and our slow return to our true selves.