Showing posts with label ancient greek mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ancient greek mythology. Show all posts

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Malevolent spirits.

According to Wikipedia, there were in Ancient Greek mythology 5 Daemones Ceramici (Δαίμονες Κεραμικοί), five malevolent spirits who plagued the craftsman potter.
  • Syntribos (Σύντριβος), the shatterer
  • Smaragos (Σμάραγος), the smasher
  • Asbetos (Ασβετος), the charrer
  • Sabaktes (Σαβάκτης), the destroyer
  • Omodamos (Ομόδαμος), crudebake

I am glad to report that none of these bad guys have been troubling me too much of late, but this fact tickled me and I thought I would share it! Even with experience, sometimes there is no obvious reason why a pot has failed to make it through a firing - it will amuse me to think of these spirits when things go wrong! And of course, it is interesting, and also strangely comforting, to think that there were people doing what I do now so long ago.