Goddess of the Week

This is the first time Oshun has come up; She is originally an Orisha (Spirit or Goddess) of the Yorùbá people, who are mostly from the West African country of Nigeria (though more than a million live in Benin, also). She is the Deity of the Osun river in Nigeria (where Her name is usually spelled the same way, Osun), and like Yemaya, finds a place in many of the 'New World' religions of the African diaspora, such as Lukumi (aka Santería), where She is known as Oshun or Ochun, and Brazilian Candomblé, where She is Oxum.

She is a Deity of love and beauty who is also concerned with matters of riches and prosperity and abundance, as well as prediction and divination; the eldest of the Orishas, Obatala, taught Her the proper use of the cowrie shells, which knowledge She then passed on to humankind. She is charming, and beautiful, and on the young side, being a bit of a coquette, so I hear; and gold, orange, and yellow are Her colors, the colors of wealth, the muddy river, pumpkin seeds. Five is Her number.

She is called Oshun Yeye Kari, "the Mother of Sweetness," and sweet things like honey, oranges and perfume are offered to Her; as is the pumpkin, both for its orange color and the abundance of its seeds.

She is about both sweetness and healing; and She has a bit in common, it occurs to me, with Kamrusepas, that Goddess of the Hittites Who heals with honey and fruit and sweetness.

When I first picked this card it struck me as personally rather incongruous, because I would not say I feel life is very sweet right now; in fact much of my personal work lately has been about acknowledging and accepting a great deal of anger on my part. And then I thought about how my surroundings aren't exactly infused with sweetness at the present time either, and, well, I got a bit cynical, which is never good for helping one feel sweet.

And though of course these readings are not really for my benefit, it takes a bit to see through one's own filters, as ever; and so the question that came to me was how does one find sweetness when it is not around you? If your environment isn't sweet, then what?

The answer as always is to look within yourself. If they can't provide you with it, you can at least give it to yourself. You have to start there anyway.

So, this week, look to how you can be kinder, sweeter, to yourself, regardless of how bitter your circumstances might feel, and without discounting or invalidating your own anger or bitter feelings. It's not that dealing with anger is not important work, if that is where you are; rather that a break is much needed and can help you get perspective. Perhaps it might be good to put it down, for a little while.

This week think about how you treat yourself. Honey, we call our sweethearts--what if we took a week and used that name on ourselves? What difference would that make in how we looked at our actions, our thoughts, and how we treat ourselves? How can you treat yourself with sweetness?

I ask Oshun if She has anything to say to us, and She says:

Flow flow flow, slow and smooth, like gold, sweet sweet honey, sweet sweet water; let it all flow. Just let it, no pushing; it will find the way. Water always does. Let it carve out the path of least resistance and greatest beauty, the sweet sweet waters. Flow, flow, flow. Just let it be. It will find its way. You will find your way. Down, down, downhill to the Sea. All is well. All is golden and lush and sweet. See your face reflected in the setting sun, down, down, sunset reflected in the blue Sea. Let it be.

Goddess of the Week

Well now. This is the fifth time Kamrusepas has come up. Kamrusepas the Hittite Goddess of magic and healing, She Who cured the God Telipinu's anger, She Who is said to heal paralysis by loosening that which is bound.

And all this time when She has come up for Goddess of the Week I have talked about how She is a healer Who heals primarily through kindness and compassion.

When the other Gods were faced with Telipinu's absence, They sent a bee to bring Him back. Finding Him asleep, the bee woke Him up by stinging the God on His hands and feet. This did not, and this is a shock, make Him any less angry. It was Kamrusepas, finally, Who was able to bring Telipinu (and the fertility of the land He had taken with Him) back into the fold, by casting powerful spells to make His anger go from Him.

Now, the first time I drew this card, I had not tracked down the story in which Kamrusepas heals paralysis; however I found a version of it tonight, from Images of Women in Antiquity edited by Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt (essay on Hittite birth rituals by Jackie Pringle).

In this story, both the Great River and the Storm God have 'bound' up the land and its fertility, in much the same way the land suffered when Telipinu was lost. Affected are the fish, mountains, clouds, lions, the milk of the antelope and the water of the Great River itself. Kamrusepas, upon being told of this, drove Her chariot to the Great River and performed an incantation, in which She loosened all that had been bound, and the land was restored to fertility and health.

The same source has this to say about Kamrusepas' name (she is spelling it here without the final S):

If Kamrusepa's name, with its typical -sepa suffix indicating a 'genius', may be correctly derived with Laroche (1947) from the Hittite word kammara- 'smoke, haze', we may see her originally as the divinised concept of the sacrificial and cleansing smoke that rose to the sky from burnt offerings, and by extension, of the ritual itself and representative of its human performers.

One of the ways Kamrusepas heals in the legends is by transferring illness from the afflicted person to something else, for example wheat, which is then burnt as an offering, the original harmful energy being safely released in another form. She represents that energy of transformation, cleansing, and unbinding, all within a ritual context.

The ritual part is striking me as important here, and I am reminded, somewhat guiltily, that I as a Witch have not done a working spell in some time; or at least, not a formal one.

But then something else hits me: in all this time writing about and contemplating Kamrusepas, I am astonished to realize that I have never thought to ask this very obvious question:

What is bound? What in your life needs to be loosened so that you may heal? What is stuck? What old magic needs to be released? What is still bound?

She has been waiting politely all this time with a little smile on Her face, I can see it. All right, what do You have to say, Lady?

Ah, there we go. You are getting it now. Yes, that is it exactly. What is bound? When you can ask the correct question, you will get the correct answer. Just ask. I will unbind it, loosen it up, let the river flow again, easily, gently, with sweetness. This is about flow and about creating the space for good to flow into; bound is a word for full-up, stuck, tight and unmoving because there is nowhere for anything to go. What I do is exorcism, I suppose you could call it, if you wish to be dramatic. It is gentler than that, though, really, though do not mistake it as not powerful.

But yes. I am still keen on kindness, still wish to see it a part of your daily practice; and yes, I am here again as reminder. A gentle reminder.

But again, and this is important: if you can first see that which is bound, I can then loosen it. All you need do is ask.

What do you think? What within you is bound, especially in matters of health or anger? How might you go about loosening it? Can you think of some ideas for unbinding spells?

Goddess of the Week

Good grief. I am starting to wonder. After all it is a homemade deck, of photocopies and bristol board assembled with rubber cement, and each card was cut out by hand; and a decidedly untrusting and un-magical thought has come to me. Is this card simply wider than the others and so more likely to be picked?

I do not think, really, that is what this is about. (And I did check Her card against the others. No, it is very much of average width.)

At any rate, this week's Goddess of the Week card is again Kamrusepas, the Hittite Goddess of magic and healing. She has come up three times already, on December 27th, a week later, and again on February 28th. She is remembered for bringing the Grain-God Telipinu back into the company of the Gods after He stormed off for some reason or other; and She cast an elaborate spell of healing and soothing which made His anger disappear.

Her message, in the past, has been one of kindness, especially towards ourselves. Of healing ourselves gently, steadily, thoroughly, and with compassion.

But I wonder. In my own life these are themes I'm working with, healing and unbinding and undoing past knots so that I can then invoke the new; and it is, I think, a big magic I am doing, mise mi fein, me myself. So it is hard not to take this personally, though I suppose in any reading the messages are both for the reader as well as the querant, in this case the world. And when I asked what She had to say to the world, this is what She said:

I am here because you are working Magic, and I love to see that. Deep magic, and not just you singular but all of you plural. There is powerful Magic being made in the world now. Not only the Magic of springtime and the turning seasons, but people-Magic. Something good and beautiful is coming into being, and so many of you have a hand in it.

Yes, I'm checking in again as a reminder; self-kindness should be as common as breakfast, or grounding rituals. Not something for special occasions, or only after everyone else has been taken care of; but first. It is ever important, that you are kind to yourself, yes, but it is vitally important now, that you do this, while this Great Magic is being made. And I will keep reminding you. This is a time of magic and healing. Now.

Yes, you are doing this. Yes, you are pushing it along. I am here to remind, to give the momentum that extra force. Things are moving, things are accelerating; it is spring now for many of you. And part of this movement is in undoing, yes, even as you are doing. How are you loosening paralysis? What has been bound that you are untying? What knots still need to be unpicked?

Mainly I am here, though, to offer encouragement, to let you know it is working and that things are moving. Yes, for you, but also for all the world--you do not think you are not part of it, do you? You are remarkably prescient if you would just trust it. Yes, all of you.

What is this Magic we are doing? What is your part in it?

Goddess of the Week

Ah. We would appear to be being Goddess-bothered. This is the third time, now, I have picked Kamrusepas. It is well. She is a very kind Goddess, and Her message is one of healing.

As I have explained on the two previous occasions this card has come up, Kamrusepas is the Hittite Goddess of magic and healing. Her spells and rituals helped bring the petulant harvest-God Telipinu back from his self-imposed exile, and restore fertility and growth to the earth.

My first thought when I picked the card this time (before I went and reread my previous posts on Her) was that She was calling for us to perform spells of self-healing, and that for some reason this was the exact right time to be doing this. Perhaps it is because Spring is coming; even in my neck of the woods the snowdrops are out, and the crocus are budded. And tomorrow is the first of March; it will not be long now.

Looking back on the previous entries on Her I found this quote from Her dating to the first week of the year:

This is what I ask this week. It is your New Year; start with the basics. And this is most basic: how are you kind to yourself? What do you do, on a practical, real, level--I want a list!--to be kind to yourself, to be sweet to yourself? Answer this, deeply, honestly, and with great love. Yes, I am giving you home-work, if you will.

Perhaps, then, She is simply checking in to see if we've done our homework.

I will admit, I don't know how far I have gotten with the assignment myself. It is hard work, learning to be kind to yourself.

I ask Her what She has to tell us this time, and She says:

Keep at this, this kindness and this healing; for kindness and healing are bound up together and cannot be separated. You are doing well, very well, though you may not know it; and I am so sorry that this work is hard. It should not be hard work to learn to be gentle with yourself. Yes, this Work is ongoing; and I am here to remind you to keep at it and have faith, for it makes the world of difference.

When I ask Her how do we do this? She says:

Love yourself. Heal yourself. Be kind to yourself. Now. Right now. Stop what you are doing, stop your spiraling thoughts of unworth; dig in, and love yourself. It all comes down to that. Where to start, with love and healing? It is so sad that you do not know; but that makes it all the more urgent, doesn't it? Start with compassion for yourself, always. Look over your past deeds and forgive yourself. Forgive yourself your mistakes and your humanity; then, love yourself for your mistakes and your humanity. This week? You want another assignment?

Look back in your past, all of you, not just Thalia here I'm talking to, all of you, and find a deed that you are not proud of. If you are feeling afraid of digging back into it, that is all right; you can choose a small deed, a little regret, if that is all you can handle. And allow yourself to choose something small if you like; that right there is a way to be kind to yourself. Then from that most compassionate, gentle, kind part of yourself, address that maker-of-mistakes part of you as you would a frightened child, with deep love, understanding, and forgiveness. Do not judge it by what you know now; appreciate and thank that part of you and the mistakes you made then as contributing to your wisdom today.

I will think about this, and see what I can do. How about you? Do you have other suggestions on healing ourselves through kindness?

Also, any thoughts on why Kamrusepas is showing up so much?

Goddess of the Week

Weird. I usually shuffle fairly obsessive-compulsively, but this time, I had only cut/shuffled the cards a few times when I heard a little voice say, No, go back. So I uncut to what I think had been the top card after the last shuffle and was like, You mean this one? and the voice was like, Yes. And there She was, again.

So, Kamrusepas it is. I guess the question is, What do we still have to learn from Her presence?

When I wrote last week's entry, I was aware of the fact that in previous writings on Her, I had said that She healed through sweetness, placating Telipinu with honey and fruits. But suddenly having access to the translations themselves (via that new book, Hittite Myths, by Harry A. Hoffner Jr.) instead of a few oblique references found in the mythology books of my famously crappy local university library I found no mention of honey or fruit, at least not specific to Kamrusepas's spell to cheer Telipinu up, anyway. And so I figured that I had just researched it badly back in the day (not all that surprising given there is not a whole lot of information out there for the layperson on Hittite myths), or, more likely, that it just wasn't included in the translations in my new book.

But when I did the art at the time I was thinking that Kamrusepas healed Telipinu through sweetness. So let's see.

Now, I was going to try to expand on that a bit more, but She jumped right in, saying:

I am Magic, incarnate. I know all the spells, the sweet as well as the harsh. So yes, I can heal through sweetness, with honey and fruit--and yes, chocolate and sugar and macadamia nuts and bananas and cookies baked--and it works. Who is healed by being bee-stung? No, sweetness is not placation, or compromise, or being nice to someone through fear, or through expecting them to be nice to you in some way too; this is genuine. This is kindness. See where the other person is hurting, and soothe that hurt. Yourself too; in fact I always recommend you start with yourself. For one it's good practice, and will acquaint you with the process; for another it is best to start from a place of solidity if you are to most effectively help others; but most importantly, you deserve to see yourself whole first. You deserve it. All these good things you wish for others? You should have them too. Wish them for yourself. You must start with kindness for yourself. You must.

This is what I ask this week. It is your New Year; start with the basics. And this is most basic: how are you kind to yourself? What do you do, on a practical, real, level--I want a list!--to be kind to yourself, to be sweet to yourself? Answer this, deeply, honestly, and with great love. Yes, I am giving you home-work, if you will.

And then She laughed, and Hers is a very sparkling laugh.

Well. I guess then we all have our assignments. For me, I know it has been a continuing struggle to look at myself and my actions without judging them; and I have been trying for some time now to remember kindness towards myself.

Now, Leah on her Creative Every Day blog reminded me of an idea that my old late lamented really marvelous coven used to do, come Yule: pick a word (or two), a quality, that you wanted to work with for the next year. People picked things like Delight, Joy, Sufficiency, Balance, Direction, Gratitude, Grace; funny, I don't entirely remember now what I picked, though I think Play was in there somewhere.

But I hadn't picked a word in years, since my coven broke up when some of us moved north and some of us moved south. But this reminded me, and I got to wondering what I'd pick for the coming year. The more I thought about it the more I wanted something that was not, well, active, for want of a better word. Because where I am with things right now I feel like I need to let things settle, so the water can clear and I can then really look at what's going on; and at any rate I have found out through years of trying to force it that pushing this sort of thing is not going to work, at least not for me.

So I thought, and came up with stuff like Relax, Calm, Peace, Letting; but none of them were right till I hit on Permission. I know it's the right one because when I say it to myself I can feel my shoulders relax.

So to wrap up a long-winded tangent (get used to them) taking Permission this year as my theme is a big way for me to be kind to myself, as Kamrusepas is asking of us this week. Because it cuts right through all the shoulds and shouldn'ts and just says, Go ahead. You can if you want. Or not, if you don't want.

What ways can you think of to be kind to yourself?

Goddess of the Week

This week's Goddess is Kamrusepas, the Hittite Goddess of Magic and Healing.

Which struck me as funny, as I'd just received a book called Hittite Myths, by Harry A. Hoffner, Jr. for that holiday the other day; and so I'd just been reading about Her and Her role in Hittite mythology.

The Hittite Empire ruled central Anatolia (roughly modern-day Turkey) from about 1600 to 1200 B.C.E., their capital Hattusa finally being destroyed around 1170 B.C.E. in that wave of unrest commonly blamed on the so-called Sea Peoples (said unrest including the fall of Troy).

The Hittite religion was one that had no problem at all incorporating the Deities of surrounding cultures into its own, which means Goddesses like the Babylonian Ereshkigal and Ishtar (called Shauska by the Hittites) found their way into Hittite mythology. The Hittites called their Deities "The Thousand Gods," which sounds about right considering that we presently know more than eight hundred of Their names. (The Hittite chapter promises to be a long one in the Obscure Goddess Online Directory).

The best known tale of Kamrusepas involves Her role in helping the agriculture God Telipinu to cheer up and be brought back into the fold.

One morning Telipinu got up on the wrong side of the bed, the Hittite version of that being literally that He put His right shoe on His left foot, and His left shoe on His right. Telpinu stormed off to the moors, leaving the steppes barren. Without Him, nothing grew, neither woman nor animal became pregnant, those who were already pregnant were not able to give birth, and the land was gripped in a famine.

Faced with this terrible situation, the Gods searched for Telipinu but could not find Him. Then the Sun God sent an eagle; no luck. The Storm God Himself looked; but He had no luck either. Finally Hannahanna, the old Mother Goddess (Her name means "Grandmother Grandmother") sent a bee, though the Storm God didn't think much of the idea and told Her so. The little bee, however, did locate Telipinu, who was deep in sleep; the bee's method of waking the God, however, by stinging Him on His hands and feet, shockingly did not much improve Telipinu's mood. When He returned to the Gods then He was even angrier than before, and scattered thunder and lightning before Him.

But then Kamrusepas came, and removed His anger, wrath, and sullenness by performing an elaborate ritual of banishing and cleansing. She commanded Telipinu's anger to become sterile, like malt; to be extinguished, as fire; to be let go, as water drains out a pipe and does not flow back uphill; to be pulled from Him, as the hawthorn tree pulls tufts of fur from oxen and sheep who pass under it; and finally, to descend into the Dark Earth and never come back, just as the Dead do not return.

This worked and Telipinu came back to His senses; and the world returned to fruitfulness.

In another (fragmentary) myth, Kamrusepas removed illness by performing the "spell of the fire," apparently by transferring the illness to some wheat, then burning it so the illness is "overcome" by both heaven and the Dark Earth.

In the myths Kamrusupas is a powerful Goddess Who heals Telipinu after the efforts of the other Gods' fail. When I first heard about Her, it was through one line in Goddesses in World Mythology (by Martha Ann and Dorothy Myers Imel), which states that She is a healing Goddess Who "can cure paralysis by 'loosening that which is bound.'" Hence my depiction of Her teasing out Her braid, in parallel with the way Witches are said to be more powerful when our hair is unbound. I have not been able to find the original reference to this power, though I suspect it has something to do with the myth of Hahhimas, or Frost personified, Who goes through the land inflicting paralysis and causing things to stop or become stuck. (The version in my new Hittite Myths book does not mention Her in the context of this story.)

At any rate Kamrusepas is a healer and powerful worker of magic. If indeed it is She Who loosens the paralysis of winter, Who thaws Frost out of existence with Her warmth, Her appearance just after the Winter Solstice would seem to be a little early, in this part of the world anyway where Winter has just begun. But perhaps She is part of the message that though the northern part of the Earth is gripped in cold and will be for some time, the Sun is now daily strengthening.

In many cultures this week marks the last week of the year, a natural time to take stock of where we have been in the past and where we wish to go in the future. She may also be calling for us to banish old grudges or old anger, or to prepare and purify ourselves for the new year, so that we truly can make a fresh start.

When I asked Her what She had to say to the world She said:

Focus on healing yourselves. You cannot expect to be able to heal others if you are not yourself healthy. You have a duty to attend to yourself first. Find the root of true health for yourself, what it looks like to you; do not get caught up in superficial aspects of "health." Take care of yourself now, and take care of yourself well.

I'd be tempted to interpret that as a warning against the superficial nature of most New Year's resolutions: I think She is saying that it is not healthy to, for example, resolve to lose weight while ignoring that one is not eating properly. A holistic approach to the foundations of our own health and our own healing is what is necessary.

What do you think?

For more information on Kamrusepas, go here.