Goddess of the Week

Idun (also spelled Iðunn) is the Norse Goddess of springtime and youth Who keeps the golden apples that keep the Gods eternally young. Her name means "Ever-young" or "She Who Renews." She passes Her apples out at feasts, and no matter how many She takes from Her basket the same amount remain within.

She was once enticed out by one Loki to be captured by the jötunn (giant) Thjazi or Þjazi (Skaði's father, by the by) who desired the apples; though once imprisoned, to Thjazi's dismay, She refused to share them.

Without Idun the Gods soon began to age; and so they sent Loki out to retrieve Her on pain of death, which He did, though not without a bit of drama. But all was made right in the end, and She was returned unscathed; and the Gods were soon young and strong again.

There is another, though fragmentary legend about Idun: one day Idun accidentally slipped down into Niflheim, the land of mists and cold, where Hel's realm is located. Once there She fell into a stupor or coma; and though Her husband Bragi and other Gods tried to warm Her up by wrapping Her in furs She would not respond. The other Gods eventually left, but Bragi promised to remain with Her until She could be roused.

That's where that story breaks off; but we can see in both tales the common idea of youth and renewal being absent for a time, in much the way that winter and cold descend upon the land every year.

I don't think, however, that Her appearance now is connected with the actual seasons, given we just had a solstice and aren't particularly near springtime in either hemisphere; more likely this is a personal sort of renewal to be had this week. Perhaps something from your youth or childhood may be rekindled now, or may prove inspirational; how may you find renewal through such things?

Alternately, what have you been hoarding? What resources or energy have you been keeping close? There is no need to hoard; this energy is self-renewing and generous now. Remember that no matter how many apples Idun takes from Her basket, there are always the same amount left.

And so I ask Her, What do You have to say to us this week?

Hoard, hoard, spare a penny
I am one and I am many
Old is new and new is old
All the world will end in cold

Yes I am young, for spring is young. But likewise I am ancient too, for spring is the most ancient of all.

All lies within the apple. It is eternal; it is the food of the dead. Who are eternal, after all.

I am the living face of Hel. Where do you think I am in the winter?

It is more complicated than you think. I am not all shining blond hair and big blue eyes; I am the process by which the old becomes new. It is not a painless one. But you knew that, didn't you?

For to be eternally renewed, you must always be dying. Not so fun now, is it? But take it. It is your best, truest path.

And then She is gone, very very quickly, like a blast of the north wind.

That was not at all what I was expecting, and I am not sure what to do with that. What do you think? Any ideas?

Goddess of the Week

This week's Goddess is Hel, Norse Goddess of Death and ruler over Niflheim ("Mist-Home"), one of the realms of the dead; those who had died accidentally, or of sickness or old age came to Her realm.

She was said to be the daughter of Angrboða ("She Who Brings Sorrow"), a jötunn or giantess, and the God Loki (Who is also technically a giant or jötunn, though accepted into the circles of the Gods). Hel is described as being half alive and half dead, of foreboding expression. She was given Her realm by Odin, Who gave Her power over the Nine Worlds, i.e., the whole of creation; meaning, I assume, that all is mortal and will come to an end, including the Gods, Who are fated to die in Ragnarök.

When the well-loved bright and shiny God Baldr was killed through the machinations of Loki, the Gods much mourned His loss. Determined to do something about it, the God Hermod rode off to Hel's realm to try to bargain with Her; though She seemed a bit skeptical that Baldr had been quite that well-loved, She agreed to let Him (and His wife Nanna, Who had died of grief at His death) go back to the realm of the living on one condition: all things, living, dead, animate or inanimate, must shed a tear for Him.

It would have worked, too, save for the giantess Þökk, who didn't think Baldr was quite all that and a bag of chips; and so Baldr remained (remains) with Hel in Niflheim. Þökk, of course, was Loki in disguise.

Now someone as bright, as beautiful, as good and as perfectly one-dimensional as Baldr is of course not realistic; and I have always felt the legend of His death to be a sort of repudiation of that kind of naïve vision of things. Because life is more complicated than that; and nothing is wholly good, or wholly of the light. And I have to say I have always agreed with Þökk. Death cannot be cheated; not because it is breaking the rules, but because it isn't the natural order of things. It isn't right.

Interestingly enough, some versions of the myth say that Hel is the same as Skuld, the Norn or Fate of the Future; also the Winter-God Ullr, sometimes husband of Skaði, is said to spend a couple of months of the year in Niflheim as Hel's lover.

Hel is half alive and half dead, half light and half dark; and I have always considered this a card of balance and integration, though Her legends may seem to be weighed towards the dark. That She has a lover, though, is a point or two for the living, the light side of things; and I suspect He is Her summer lover (when would a God of Winter be said to be in Niflheim, i.e., dead? Summer, I'd guess). So Hel is not all dark. Nor is She necessarily unreasonable, though She is, it is true, rather unsympathetic. It's a good trait in a Death-Goddess, I imagine.

So I think the message this week is about finding the balance within a situation that appears dark, or looking into a place inside you you have thought dark or dead and finding the light and life there. And then seeing how the two support and harmonize with each other, or how the two are integrated. Integration, after all, brings integrity, both of the physical or structural kind as well as the moral kind. And if there is one thing Hel is, She is strong.

So what does She say?

Do not think you may cheat; all come to me. All the natural deaths, all the non-violent ones. Why is violence celebrated in my world? Because glory and daring are celebrated, though I suspect you see right through that. It is not all as dreary as they would make it in my realm; and anyway who wants to be surrounded by drunken boasting heroes for what is left of time? Rest is a very good thing.

I am the black and the white; I am the shades of grey; I am the mist that cloaks. Do not forget that Hvergelmir, the roaring cauldron giving birth to the twelve rivers, bursts forth from my realm; I have a hand in inspiration too, you know. There is far more here than you think.

I am on the one hand and I am on the other hand. It all comes to me in the end.

Well. What do you think?

Goddess of the Week

Sif is a Norse Goddess Who is commonly assumed to be a grain or fertility Goddess. This is because She was famous for having very beautiful golden hair which reached all the way to the floor; this abundance of flowing gold has been equated with the ripe grain.

She was married to the Thunder-God Thor, who was Her second husband; by Her first husband, one of the Jötnar, or Frost Giants, She had had a son Ullr ("Glory"), the God of winter, hunting, and skiing.

Sif was very beautiful anyway, but Her extraordinary hair put Her over the top; and not surprisingly, She could be rather vain about it.

Now Loki, the God of mischief and fire, saw this; and always being one to mess with perfection, He snuck into Sif's chambers one night. Without waking Her somehow, He chopped all of Her beautiful hair off, leaving Her with a terribly unflattering, and rather uneven, buzzcut.

When Sif woke She was quite distressed, both by the loss of Her wonderful hair and the assault on Her person; and when Her husband Thor found out, all Hel broke loose, at least for Loki.

A good deal of roughing up later, Thor extracted a solemn promise from Loki that He would somehow restore Sif's hair. So Loki went to one of the dwarfs (Oh! Ow! As a Tolkien fan it really hurts to spell that plural correctly, especially given that the dwarf in question was named Dvalin), who were known for their outstanding ability in crafting things. He not only convinced Dvalin to make a new head of hair for Sif out of real gold, but also persuaded him to make a magic spear, Gungnir, and a magic ship, Skidbladnir. Loki was so impressed by both the dwarf's ability and gullibility that He decided to use these new wonderful things to trick an unrelated family of dwarfs to make their own, better, even more wonderful things.

Now this is Sif's story, not Loki's; but suffice to say that Loki's tricksiness almost cost Him His head, and He had to do a fair amount of undignified weaseling to get Himself out of it. As usual.

When He finally brought back the crafted golden hair, it immediately and magically affixed itself to Sif's head, and thereafter grew just like real hair.

One of the important points of that whole story is that that one impulse of Loki's--the one that could not stand stasis and perfection--led to greater rewards than He or anyone could have imagined.

Well, except maybe Sif Herself. For She is said to have possessed prophetic powers; and one wonders just how much She knew of the events that would be set in motion by the loss of Her hair. Myths about grain do tend to involve themes of sacrifice, as the grain is cut when ripe, at its prime; and given the famously poor soil of Scandinavia and the short growing season they must have being so far north, I'm not surprised that in the myth the price of the cut hair, that which is required to balance the loss, is so great.

So what does this card have to teach us this week?

I am a cautious type, myself, so I am reluctant to recommend schemes of the cockamamie kind; but were it not for Loki pushing His luck, and then being forced to His wits' ends when His scheming backfired, the results would not have been anywhere near as wonderful.

I don't know. On the one hand Sif is the catalyst, the perfection that brings about the balancing act of chaos, the still point that demands movement and change; but in framing it that way there is then an element of temptation, and of blaming Her as the victim for what Loki of His own free will chose to inflict on Her.

What does She say?

Don't bet on it. This is about the flow of riches, and can even represent changing a career; it will work out in the long run, but the short run is Hel. How much did I know? All of it, of course. Knowing it does not mean not reacting, though; I still cried when my hair was cut. A loss is still a loss, even in the name of the longer arc, the long view. Do not expect that you will not mourn these things.

But still, things will turn out better than you would have imagined, and when you look back on it all you will find one thing feeding into and leading into another, and it will all make sense. You must have faith in this, that you will see the pattern and the flow in the end; for you will not see it now.

I'm not sure what to do with that. It comes down to trust and faith, I guess, a good reminder to those of us stuck in the last half of a long winter; those of you in the southern hemisphere may perhaps relate better to the theme of harvest that runs through Her story. Either way, there is turning and change, though it may have its ups and downs.

What do you think?

To read more about Her, go here.