I like coffee. A lot. Even so, I try to avoid Starbucks coffee like the plague. Though their coffee is admittedly delicious, even sinfully so, their affiliation with abortion providers is disgusting.
Not only that, according to 2nd Vote, that's just the beginning of Starbucks' list of offenses.
With such insidious designs on life, marriage, the family, and religion, I started wondering about the Starbucks logo ...
[After reading, if you're looking for alternatives to Starbucks coffee, I've prepared this article on pro-life, Christian coffee companies.]
Here's a video I have prepared investigating all the questions surrounding the logo: how did the Starbucks logo evolve to its current form? Where did the Starbucks logo come from? Is the Starbucks logo a mermaid? siren? Dagon? Lilith?
Starbucks Logo Meaning - What is that creature?
Most people realize that the name "Starbucks" comes from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Starbuck was the name of the first mate of Captain Ahab's ship, the Pequod. Incidentally, Pequod was the first name chosen by the founders of Starbucks -Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker -but they eventually decided that name was a little too obscure.
The character Starbuck was a Quaker and known for his goodness, all of which is ironic given the hidden meaning of the Starbucks logo.
So what is the Starbucks logo? What is the symbolic meaning of the image? Is the Starbucks logo Isis related? Is the Starbucks logo Dagon, a Lovecraftian Philistine demon fish god? Is it all just a conspiracy theory?
Find out below ...
Where did the original Starbucks logo come from? What was the evolution of the Starbucks logo to its current version?
Here is the official history of the Starbucks logo, according to the FAQ on the Starbucks webpage:
When we were originally looking for a logo for Starbucks in 1971, we wanted to capture the seafaring tradition of early coffee traders. […] We poured over old marine books until we came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid encircled by the store’s original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice.
Co-Founder Howard Schultz elaborates a bit more on the story in the excerpt below from his 1997 bookPour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time:
[Another Starbucks co-founder] Terry [Heckler] also poured over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren, encircled by the store’s original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself.
There's a problem with this. There's no such thing as a 16th-century Norse woodcut.
The Norse ceased to exist as such around 1300. Woodcuts didn't arrive in Europe until about 1400.
Finding a 16th century Norse woodcut would be like finding a photograph of Leonardo da Vinci. Or a selfie of Abraham Lincoln. It just didn't happen.
So what's the real story? Where did this image come from? And what is that weird mermaid-thing?
Let's just assume the founders of Starbucks meant nothing insidious by this anachronism. It is most likely they just forgot where they found the image. That's a bit odd given their ferocious protection of their own intellectual property, but whatever.
So, where did the Starbucks logo really come from? What is the evolution of the Starbucks logo?
It seems Michael Krakovskiy ofDeadProgrammers Cafe was among the first to unravel the mystery ...
In "How the Starbucks Siren Became Less Naughty," Krakovskiy reveals that the original Starbucks logo (pictured below, right) bears an uncanny resemblance to an entry (below left) in J.E. Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols, which was first published in English in 1962.
There's something just not right about this crowned mermaid and the way she is holding her double fishtail. Not to put too fine a point on it, the bare-chested mermaid appears sexually provocative.
The Starbucks logo evolved from here through various stages of simplification and abstraction.
The Evolution of the Starbucks Logo
Starbucks seems to have agreed that their original logo wasn't exactly G-rated, especially as they "went corporate." Here's the transition of Starbucks logos since the 1970s:
Thankfully, Starbucks allowed their masthead a modicum of modesty. The mermaid covers up a bit, so she's no longer bare-chested. Good decision! Also, Starbucks refocused the logo onto the mermaid's face and - thank God - away from whatever she was doing with those fish tails.
But that still leaves a big question ...
Who is this Starbucks Mermaid and why is she wearing a Crown?
According to the Symbol Dictionary, the twin-tailed mermaid is Melusine or Melisande, a siren of anguepede body-type, who is also a symbol in alchemy.
The legend of Melusine runs deep in French history even to the days of Charlemagne. Several royal houses trace their lineage from Melusine's family, including Houses of Plantagenet, Angevin, and Anjou.
Many rulers of French descent through history, including Richard (I) the Lionheart, have claimed to be descended from the devil.
As cited by the historian Flori, the chronicler Giraud le Cambrien reports that King Richard was fond of telling a tale that he was a descendant of a countess of Anjou who was in fact the fairy Melusine, concluding that his whole family "came from the devil and would return to the devil."[1]
The Duke of Berry commissioned Jean D'Arras in 1393 to write an account of the story of Melusine, the Chronique de Melusine.[2]According to The Serpent And The Swan: The Animal Bride In Folklore And Literature, D'Arras abbreviated "Mère des Lusignan" or "Mother of the Lusignans"to form the name "Melusine."
So what is the Legend of Melusine, the Lady of Starbucks?
Melusine was the daughter of Pressina, a water fairy, and a mortal man, King Elinas (or King Helmas). Melusine wasn't born a mermaid, however. This was an affliction created by Melusine's mother as punishment for what Melusine did to her father.
King Elinas met Pressina at the "fontaine de la soif," the Fountain of Thirst - maybe the thirst for coffee? - and fell instantly in love. Pressina agreed to marry the king with one condition: he must never enter into her chambers during or just after childbirth.
Shortly thereafter, Pressina gave birth to three daughters, Melusine, Melior, and Plantina. As it to be expected, King Elinas soon broke his promise to Pressina. His curiosity soon got the best of him. Overcome with grief, Pressina runs away with her babies to a hidden island, Cephalonia.
One day many years later, Pressina takes her girls to look upon their father's kingdom. It is then that she tells them of their father's broken promise. Melusine decides to seek revenge against her father. With the help of her sisters, she kidnaps her father and imprisons him inside a mountain. Pressina becomes enraged when she discovers her daughter's treachery. She curses her daughter. Every Sabbath day thereafter, Melusine's lower half transforms into a fish or serpent.
Times passes. Melusine grows to womanhood, living alone in the forest.
Just a weird Starbucks lady living alone in the forest (drinking coffee), so what?
Into Melusine's forest comes Raymondin, who is either the Count of Anjou or the Duke of Aquitaine depending on the account. He is distressed after having accidentally killed his uncle during a boar hunt. Melusine counsels him on how to explain the accidental death of his uncle. She also promises him wealth and power, as though she were a genie granting wishes. Raymondin quickly proposes marriage to the strange forest lady.
Wealth, power, accidental killings - what's not to like, right? Definitely marriage material, but wait. There's more!
Like her mother, Melusine accepts the marriage proposal conditionally: Raymondin is prohibited from seeing her in her chambers on the Sabbath.
Stays in her room all day on Sundays - this lady's just ticking through the Commandments!
Giving little thought to the request, they were married at once. Melusine did as she promised. Raymondin's kingdom grew quickly in power and stature. They built the cities of Poitou and Lusignan, where Melusine became the mother of the Lusignan line. She built a castle in Lusignan, where she became known as a gracious ruler.
After years of marriage and ten, mostly deformed, children, Raymondin began to grow weary of his promise. Curiously, Melusine was also loathe to attend Mass at their Cathedral.
Finally, in a fit of jealousy, Raymondin peeks into Melusine's chambers and sees her bathing.
Starbucks Melusine: She's just as beautiful as ever from the waist up, but ...
From the waist down, her fish tails or serpent tails or whatever are thrashing around in the water. Gross.
| Melusine in her bath, spied upon by her husband Raymondin |
Raymondin never told anybody about what he had seen. Until he did.
Raymondin tried to convince himself that nothing was wrong. So what if she's half serpent? She's a great mother, right? And she's beautiful - most of the time, anyway.
But then their kids start doing bad things. Like when little Geoffrey burnt down some churches.
Raymondin finally accused his wife of being a "Faulse Serpente."
Melusine didn't take this too well. It wasn't so much that her husband accused her of being the spawn of Satan. She was distraught that he had broken his promise. So Melusine does what any of us would do in a situation like that ...
Melusine turned into a dragon creature and flew away.
For the next several generations, she was said to visit her children in the night in human form. Mostly, though, when she would appear, it was just a bad omen. If you saw her flying around, crying like a banshee, it meant death would visit the land that night.
Awesome. Let's go start a coffee company in her image.
What then does the Starbucks dragon-lady logo mean?
Starbucks product placement in an 8th-century cathedral
This she-dragon creature has made multiple appearances in iconography, as well as history. The oldest known image of Melusine, the twin-tailed mermaid, is on the mosaic floor of the Otranto Cathedral.[3]
| The twin-tailed mermaid mosaic at Otranto Cathedral. (Photo: Angelica Calabrese atAtlas Obscura) |
One section of the floor depicts images of Eden, along with the Tree of Life growing from the back of two elephants. Another section depicts the Inferno, virtues to adopt, and vices to avoid. This is where we find Melusine:
Otranto, the home of this cathedral, passed hands through several of histories empires, including the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Norman. Commissioned by the city’s Norman rulers, the cathedral was eventually completed by the local Greek-Italian monks.
If that wasn't already a mix of symbols and icons, Otranto was also home to a thriving Jewish community. Some hypothesize that Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, is the key to understanding the unusual mosaic.
Hmmm ... Eden, Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and an evil serpent-lady. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Lilith.
The Starbucks Dragon-Lady is none other than Lilith
I've previously written about Lilith here, and the appropriation of her name and likeness by radical feminists and pro-abortion groups, such as the Lilith Fund, which raised money for so-called emergency abortions in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Lilith has been called "the goddess of a thousand faces," but she's no goddess. Sometimes described as Adam's first wife among her promoters, she is typically described in literature as the devil's own wife and a "child eater." Lilith is actually entire category of demons. The Lilith is a sexually wanton demon that comes in the night and steals newborn babies. There are ancient Sumerian prayers for women and newborns that call for protection from the lilith. She even appears in Scripture. Read more here.
In his book The White Goddess, the poet Robert Graves described Lilith:
The Goddess is a lovely, slender woman with a hooked nose, deathly pale face, lips red as rowan-berries, startlingly blue eyes, and long-fair hair; she will suddenly transform herself into sow, mare, bitch, vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid or loathsome hag. Her names and titles are innumerable. In ghost stories she often figures as ‘The White Lady,’ and in ancient religions, from the British Isles to the Caucausus, as the ‘White Goddess.’ I cannot think of any true poet from Homer onwards who has not independently recorded his experience of her. The test of a poet’s vision, one might say, is the accuracy of his portrayal of the White Goddess and of the island over which she rules. The reason why the hair stands on end, the eyes water, the throat is constricted, the skins crawls and a shiver runs down the spine when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily an invocation of the White Goddess, or Muse, the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust–the female spider or the queen-bee whose embrace is death.
As described above, Lilith frequently occurs among the archetypes of the world's cultures. She is the Siren, the Lady in White, Duessa in The Faerie Queen, even Ursula in Disney'sThe Little Mermaid,and, of course, dragon-lady Melusine. She dates as far back as 2000 BC, and her image is found in ancient Sumerian tablets.
[Insert shivers here]
Lilith is usually depicted as a beautiful woman from the waist up and as serpentine from the waist down. Sound familiar?
Is the Starbucks logo not an evil Mermaid, but actually Dagon, the evil fish god of the Philistines?
Dagon was the fish god worshipped by the Philistines. The Starbucks logo is clearly some sort of fish creature. But is it Dagon?
Here is a Starbucks meme you might encounter "floating" around the internet describing the Starbucks logo as derivative of the Dagon fish god:
The implicit argument here is that the golden idol on the left is Dagon, but is it?
First off, probably not. The Starbucks logo is a crowned female with twin tails. These don't match Dagon, which is typically presented as male with a single tail. Let's still examine the evidence, though.
Here are some common depictions of Dagon:
Or, at least, these are depictions ofof the Babylonian Oannes (Ὡάννης) mentioned by Berossus in the 3rd century BC. Oannes only became associated with Dagon in the 19th and 20th centuries. The scholarship making this connection has come under some scrutiny.
Iconographically, we are not really sure what dagon looked like. The golden idol meme above is likely just a false equilavence.
Pagan god Dagon described in the Bible
Here is a description fromManners and Customs of the Bible:
Dagon is the diminutive of dag, and signifies 'little fish;' not so much, however, in reference to size, as to the affection entertained for it; so that some would render it, "dear little fish." The Babylonians believed that a being, part man and part fish, emerged from the Erythraean Sea, and appeared in Babylonia in the early days of its history, and taught the people various arts necessary for their well-being. Representations of this fish-god have been found among the sculptures of Nineveh. The Philistine Dagon was of a similar character.[4]
Again, Dagon is a male fish, not the female fish from the Starbucks logo. Is there another basis for this comparison?
What or who was the god dagon? Dagon appears in the Bible several times, but you are likely the most familiar with these two:
Samson Tearing Down the Temple of Dagon
Judges 16:23 describes how the temple to Dagon in Gaza is destroyed by Samson. Samson was chained to the temple's supporting columns. Samson knocked these down and destroyed the pagan temple as his last act after regaining his strength.
Here is the Temple of Dagon set from the movie version of Samson and Delilah. Hollywood is also apparently not of the opinion that Dagon was a fish god, or at least the fish god is equipped with two very non-fishy feet:
Another temple to Dagon, located in Ashdod, is described at 1 Samuel 5:2–7 and 1 Maccabees 10-11. King Saul's head was displayed in a temple of Dagon as described in 1 Chronicles 10.
The Ark of the Covenant Knocking Dagon Down
1 Samuel 5 describes how the Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines and taken to Dagon's temple in Ashdod. The following morning, the Ashdodites discovered the image of Dagon had fallen and was lying prostrate before the Ark. They restored the image to its original position, but the following morning they again found dagon prostrate before the Ark. This time, however, its head and hands had been severed.
Take that, dagon! It's a bad idea to place a false idol next to the Ark of the Covenant. Just ask the Nazis:
| Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark: what happens when the Nazis try opening the Ark of the Covenant |
Conclusion: Is the Starbucks logo Dagon, the fish god?
No, the crowned female with double fish tails is likely not dagon, the male pagan god of the Philistines. It's uncertain whether dagon is even part fish at all or if that's the separate Babylonian and Phoenician god Oannes. Regardless, even if dagon is half-fish, the other half is a man, i.e. not a woman.
There is far more evidence supportingthe Melusine theory of the Starbucks logo.
Either way you cut it, though, the symbolism of the Starbucks logo is evil.
What's in a Cup? The Starbucks Logo is no mistake
Don't think all this Starbucks imagery isn't intentional. This isn't the first evil cup controversy related to Starbucks.
Starbucks started a campaign in 2007 printing “The Way I See It” on their cups. The cups also featured short pontificating statements from their customers.
An Ohio woman noticed the following atheistic message stamped on the side of her coffee cup:
Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.
This comment might have been inspired by looking into eyes of the logo, herself.
So the next time the nice people at Starbucks begin to question your religion, ask them why they work for a company whose logo features a demon. Comment below if you encounter any interesting responses!
P.S.
And now I finally understand Austin Powers and Dr. Evil's corporate acquisition of Starbucks:
In case you're wondering, perhaps for boycott purposes, the Starbucks corporation also includes the following brands according to theirwebsite: Teavana, La Boulange, Evolution Fresh, Seattle's Best Coffee, and Tazo Tea.
[1]Flori, Jean (1999f), Richard Coeur de Lion: le roi-chevalier (in French), Paris: Biographie Payot, ISBN 978-2-228-89272-8,p. 465-6.
[2] Following that ofWilliam de Portenach,D'Arras' workconsumed most of his life. In 1478, D'Arras' final work on the subjectLe Liure de Melusine en Fracoyswas published posthumously.Read more inWhat Does History Say?
[3] Read more about the Otrantocathedral and Starbucks product placement here.
[4]Rev. James M. Freeman, Manners and Customs of the Bible (Plainfield, New Jersey: Logos International, 1972; originally written about 1874), p. 126, 236.
Read more here:
Got Medieval?Starbucks coverup.
Melusine inSymbol Dictionary.
Evolution ofStarbucks Logo.
Melusine: Race to Get Her.
