When we encounter the Mediterranean's landscapes, we are called to remember its myths. In an advaya conversation with Francesca Heart, a movement artist and somatic practitioner who embeds myths and nature into her creation of dance and music, she describes how the landscapes we inhabit—from coastal shores to inland gardens—carry spirits and stories that have the power to lead us into creative dialogues with nature.
Heart introduces us to the concept of genius loci, a term from ancient Roman religion that names the protective spirit of a place. This spirit, often depicted in religious iconography—sometimes holding a cornucopia, a patera (libation bowl), or a serpent—embodies the enduring relationship between land and people, acting as the guardians of this bond. They live on offerings of fragrant herbs and wine, humble yet ancient expressions of reverence for the places we inhabit. For the Mediterranean, guardians are living memories.
But who are these guardians? What forms do they take in the hearts of those who occupy these lands?
Francesca guides us into the mythologies that have shaped them. The sphinx. The dragon. The siren. These symbols are the characters in the stories recounted across these lands. They reverberate in their waters and in their gardens, surviving centuries of cultural transformation. The dragon, for instance, although long cast as an adversary in Christian lore, has been reimagined by alchemical traditions as a protector of treasures, a metaphor for personal transformation.
Then there is the siren, a creature of water, a bird-woman turned fish-woman, whose allure is as potent as it is perilous. A symbol that is historically imbued with the power of seduction and danger, capable of luring sailors into peril or transforming their journey. The siren’s iconography—mirrors & hairbrushes—beckon us to confront the reflection we would rather avoid. And yet, it is in this very distortion that we often find revelation.
Indeed, the siren changes as society comes to fear the irrational, the unknown, and the feminine. Heart’s analysis of the siren challenges such patriarchal interpretations, suggesting instead that sirens symbolize freedom, creativity, and transformation. In the depths of Heart’s interpretation, the siren emerges not as a symbol of danger or seduction, but as an embodiment of freedom, of creative potential, of the sacred unknown. She is both a threshold and a muse, guiding us toward the edges of ourselves, toward a place where the familiar dissolves into something wild and new.
Powerful symbols like the siren are not confined to the Mediterranean, and instead represent a universal archetype. Across the globe, we encounter figures that embody both the allure and the danger of the unknown: from the selkies of Celtic folklore, who transform from seals to women, to the ancient myth of the siren’s counterpart, the mermaid, found in various cultures from Scandinavia to Southeast Asia. These figures, whether winged or finned, bridge the realms of the mind to land and sea, embodying the mysteries of the natural world and the deep, unconscious forces that lie beyond human understanding.
This enduring legacy of symbols illustrates the ways in which ancient mythology continues to inform our understanding of creativity, and the ways creativity lives in our lands and in our bodies. The siren illustrates how the Mediterranean landscape is more than just a physical place, but a mythological one that is rich with spirits of collective memory. In many ways, it is these icons that give our lands meaning. For centuries, they have invited us into a deeper relationship with our environments, our ancestors and the creative forces within us. As Francesca so beautifully concludes, “the invitation from water is one to listen—to open ourselves to the creative, generative forces that flow through nature and through us”.
To learn more about the magic of the Mediterranean with Francesca Heart, join the Wisdoms of Water course, here.
