Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:55:07 -0500

From: RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM

Subject: Re: subculture terms (Zenobia, Jupiter)



I believe it was Tim who asked a few days ago, "Do the names "Zenobia"

(Xenobia?) and "Jupiter" have any significance in lesbian subculture

parlance?"



Here are the two answers that I have received to date from a GLB bulletin

board; please let me know if anybody has got any others somewhere else:



1.

According to my resource, "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets," by

Barbara G. Walker, Harper & Row, C. 1983:

Zenobia

Dynastic name of matriarchal queens of Palmyra. In their native Aramaic, the

name was Bath-Zabbai, or Bath-Sheba, meaning "Daughter of the Goddess." See

Solomon and Sheba. The famous queen Zenobia Septimia was the "seventh

Bath-Sheba." She had no official consort. She named her son Wahab-Allath,

"Gift of the Goddess Allath." Allath was the same Semitic Moon-mother whom

Islam later masculinized as Allah.

Walker's other book, "The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred

Objects," also has a rather lengthy discussion of Jupiter, and the notion

that as a youth "Jove," he replaced the Virgin memberof the formerly

all-female Capitoline Triad, consisting of Juventas, Juno and Minerva. He, of

course, later became Juno's consort.

As for uses of these names in Lesbian parlance. . .I've never heard it; and

I've been around the block and read a heckuva lot. If you find out about any

slang usage, I'd like to know of it.



2.

*Z*enobia SHOULD [have significance in lesbian subculture parlance]-- a

warrior queen in the Roman empire, commander of Palmyra in Palestine, died

272 A.D.