A map, not a mirror
Gender-diverse divine imagery
Gods who change form, priests who cross a dress code, and the living people who are not illustrations of those stories.
Myths and cults sometimes show gender as unstable: Dionysus mocked for softness, Loki as a mare, Inanna’s contested personnel, Hermaphroditus fused against his will, cybelean priests of the Great Mother in Rome who were described by hostile sources as eunuchs. A shelf of images is not a single identity running through time like a subway line.
Separate these, every time
| This | Is not the same as |
|---|---|
| A god taking another shape for a trick or a birth | A human being’s gender. |
| A hostile Roman description of a foreign priest | That priest’s self-understanding. |
| An intersex variation in a living body | Ovid’s pool. |
| A modern nonbinary life | A symbol chosen for a ritual pamphlet. |
| Cross-dressing in a festival context | Being a woman, or being a man, as a daily truth. |
Hospitality
Trans, nonbinary, and intersex readers may use, refuse, or remake any image on this shelf. Cis readers may study the images and may not explain trans people with them at the dinner table. If a rite in this library ever asks you to “embody the other gender” as a spiritual exercise, it has been miswritten. None of the original rites here do that. Encounter with a story is not a costume party in someone else’s body.