Anuket

It's Anuket this time, the ancient Egyptian Goddess of the Nile River in the area around the First Cataract, where the river is rocky and shallow, making navigation difficult. Her name means 'The Clasper', because the banks at that place are high and narrow and further constrain the River. The First Cataract was traditionally the border with Nubia, so I've given Her Nubian features.

It's done digitally like the earlier Bat piece, to look like an Art Deco lithographed poster, though I've taken plenty of cues from ancient Egyptian art as well, such as the shape of Her hands. I'm having a lot of fun with that style, and I'm really pleased with how this came out!

Her Obscure Goddess Online Directory entry is here, if you're interested in further reading.

And I've put Her up on cards and prints at Zazzle and deviantArt respectively.

Abundantia and Aeternitas

I've been obsessed with this odd technique lately, and though it's having its successes and failures I am determined to get something useful out of it. It uses white gouache as a resist, with ink painted over it. When the ink is dry the gouache (which doesn't stick to the paper) is washed off, leaving the ink behind, usually as outlines. I've seen it done with black ink as outline, but I thought I'd try it with colored inks in several layers of alternating gouache and ink. It's had, as I said, a couple failures so far, but I've got two little pieces that I think do work (the originals are about three inches in diameter).

The first one is the Roman Goddess of abundance, Abundantia, shown pouring out the riches of a cornucopia. I was trying to get away from outlines and just do some shapes. Not sure I succeeded. I'm really very fond of (and used to) outlines.

And the second (actually the earlier of the two) is Aeternitas, the Roman Goddess of eternity, with Her traditional imagery of the Sun and Moon (considered eternal), and the ouroboros, or snake biting its tail, symbolic of infinity.

The links go to the Obscure Goddess Online Directory entries for said Goddesses, and incidentally I recently converted all the OGOD stuff over to php. I also redesigned and streamlined things a bit there, which should make it easier to navigate and read all around.

G Is For Goddesses of Finland

(This one took a while to write up, which is why I'm behind with these Pagan Blog Project entries. Not that I'm surprised or anything.)

Well, okay, you didn't think I was going to let G pass without somehow talking about Goddesses, did you? This is me, after all. Among other things, as part of that year-and-a-day course I'm taking (in Christopher Penczak's book The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft) I am supposed to research a particular culture's mythology.

Yeah, I know; what a drag.

So I chose Finnish mythology, because it is so heavily steeped in both magic and shamanism, so it seemed appropriate. It's also one I don't know a whole lot about, although part of that is because there isn't too much information out there, or there isn't at least as far as I've been able to find (in English). I have acquired a copy of the Kalevala, the so-called national epic of Finland; it's pieced together from traditional folk songs collected in the early 19th century by one Elias Lönnrot and so is a little problematic as far as a source goes, since to make it into some kind of coherent narrative Lönnrot had to mix it up a bit. Still, the tales, or songs, called runot (which means, yes, 'runes') are pretty clearly speaking about the Gods.

Or, as is ever my focus, the Goddesses.

There is of course generally more information out there about Gods than there is about Goddesses, and the mythology of Finland is no exception. So often, researching Goddesses is about piecing together the tiniest scraps of information. But I'll try.

These are, necessarily, going to be brief entries, just a taste; I suspect that this will form the germ of the Finnish series over at the Obscure Goddess Online Directory, my crazy project I started because I just get obsessive about researching Goddesses.

I'll start with the creation Goddess Ilmatar.

Her name means 'Female Spirit of the Air', from ilma, 'air', and the suffix -tar, meaning 'female spirit', though in other names the latter looks to be translated as 'daughter', so Her name could I suppose also mean 'Daughter of the Air'. She is also called Luonnatar, though that is technically a title rather than a proper name, and means 'Female Spirit of Creation' or 'Daughter of Nature.'

She is quite certainly a primeval creation Goddess of great power. Her story, related right at the beginning of the Kalevala, is that She grew bored with living in the air, so let Herself fall into the Sea, the only other thing (besides light) that was in existence in those earliest of days. By the Sea She floated in She became pregnant, but as there was no dry land yet, She could not give birth. One day a bird, depending on the version an eagle or a scaup (a type of duck), landed on Her upraised knee, and made her nest (in Larousse, the author, one F. Guirand, of course consistently calls the duck 'he', even though 'he' lays an egg, reverting to male-as-default even when it makes no sense.) In time, though, Ilmatar moves, and the egg rolls off into the Sea, where it breaks open. From the egg, then, which is of course a symbol of infinite potential and the beginnings of life and matter, Ilmatar creates the rest of the cosmos. From the yolk She makes the Sun, from the whites the Moon; from one half of the shell the Earth, and the other the dome of the Heavens.

She then shapes the land, hollowing out bays, smoothing out shores, arranging islands; she also sets up 'the sky's pillars.'

Finally, after more than seven hundred years, She gives birth to a rather impatient Väinamoinen, one of the heroes of the Kalevala.

Now, one of the other major heroes of the Kalevala is one Lemminkäinen, rather a rakish and impulsive sort; on one adventure He descends to Tuonela, the Underworld, where He is bitten by a poisonous serpent, drowned in a whirlpool, and then cut in pieces. His mother (Whom He didn't listen to, of course), searches for Him far and wide, taking many shapes:

The mother sought the one gone
astray, for the lost she longs:
she ran great swamps as a wolf
trod the wilds as a bruin
waters as an otter roamed
lands she walked as a pismire
as a wasp headland edges
as a hare lakeshores;
rocks she shoved aside
and stumps she tilted
moved dead boughs to the roadside
kicked dead trunks to form causeways.

('Pismire', in case you're wondering, is an old word for an ant.)

Finally the Sun tells her what He has seen; She Herself then descends to the Underworld and fishes the parts of his body from the river with a rake. She then reassembles Him, and brings Him back to life, and, yes, Lemminkäinen is rather a shamanic figure, as His death (threefold, incidentally) and dismemberment very much resemble a shamanic initiation.

But here's the thing. His mother goes unnamed, though She is clearly a very powerful figure, at the very least a powerful magician, probably a Goddess. But She is only ever called in the Kalevala 'Lemminkäinen's mother.'

But then there's this: Crawford, in the Preface to his 1888 translation, says that the Finns thought Väinamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen to be descendants of Ilmatar, which is usually taken to mean they are Her sons. So Ilmatar, the Creation Goddess, the one Who formed the Earth, is Lemminkäinen's mother, and She has a name.

Another major Goddess is Louhi, the Mistress of Pohja, norther Finland or Lapland. She is roundly portrayed as an evil figure, Who thwarts Lemminkäinen, has the ability to lock the Sun and Moon in a dark cave, and let loose disease upon the land of Kalevala. She also demands that Väinamoinen forge the magical sampo as bride-price for Her daughter. She may well be the same as the Goddess Loviatar, the blind daughter of Tuonetar (the queen of the Underworld, Tuonela) and Tuoni (the king there and God of death). Like Ilmatar, She was also a virgin mother, in Her case made pregnant by the wind, and bearing nine sons Who personified various diseases.

Tuonetar Herself is infamous for Her hospitality: in the Kalevala She offers Väinamoinen a two-handled flagon of beer swimming with frogs and worms, then tells Him to drink up, to which He says He's not interested in getting drunk. She then tells Him he'll never see His home again.

Her daughters, like Louhi's sons, are Deities of diseases, the first being Loviatar (probably Louhi), as mentioned above, considered the origin of all evil. Other Goddesses of illness are Kipu-Tytto, Kivutar, and Vammatar.

Mielikki is the Goddess of the forest, invoked, with Her husband (or father-in-law) Tapio and daughter Tuulikki, for success in the hunt; She also protects domestic animals, like cattle, and heals wounded animals. Her name comes from the word for luck, mielu.

Vellamo is the Goddess of the Sea, said to be the wife of Ahti, the Sea God, a name often applied to Lemminkainen in the Kalevala, though in that epic His wife is Kylikki. Vellamo and Ahti live in a place called Ahtola, located under the waves by a cliff.

And I'll end this with Mader-Akka, a Goddess of the Lapps in the north. Her name simply means 'Woman'; her husband is Ukko, the God of thunder and the sky. Between the two of Them They created humanity; She making the bodies, and He the souls. Mader-Akka, or just Akka, granted fertility to women, and successful harvests; She corresponds more or less to Mother Earth. Her Estonian name is Maan-Eno; She was also called Rauni, after the rowan tree, which are sacred to Her.

Mader-Akka and Mader-Atcha (another name for Ukko, I assume) had three daughters, Sar-Akka, Uks-Akka, and Juks-Akka. If the child to be born was a girl, Sar-Akka placed the soul into the body to be born; if a boy, Uks-Akka did so.


Sources:

New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, section on Finno-Ugric Mythology, by F. Guirand.

Wikipedia (I know).

John Martin Crawford's 1888 English translation of the Kalevala, accessed through sacred-texts.com.

Keith Bosley's translation of the Kalevala, from 1989.

Fessonia Article at OGOD

Now up, a new article at the Obscure Goddess Online Directory on the Roman Goddess of the Weary, Fessonia.

One might presume I had my reasons for choosing to write about this Goddess this week; well, you'd be correct.

New Fulgora Article at OGOD

I've just uploaded a new article about Fulgora, the Roman Lightning Goddess. It's really quite remarkably long for a Goddess for Whom we only have Her name; I guess I do tend to natter on. But it does take a fun side-track into the Etruscan origins of haruspicy and how lightning was read as an omen.

I wrote this because I got an email from someone lamenting the fact that they could only find a single sentence about Fulgora anywhere, and wondering if I might know more information; and I was happy to oblige. So, as I said on the OGOD Roman index page, I'd like to remind folks that if you have a request for an article about an obscure Roman Goddess, just ask. For now, remember, obscure, (i.e. not Diana or Venus) and Roman (not Romano-Celtic, as I haven't gotten that far.)

Oh, and one more thing. Here's sending a big fat raspberry to Saint Augustine!

:P

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.

Happy Holidays

I suppose I should have warned y'all that I was going to be away for several days last week, hence no Goddess of the Week last Saturday. I do apologize, and the feature will resume tomorrow night.

In the meantime, though, Happy Yule, Winter Solstice, Summer Solstice, Litha, Opalia, Saturnalia, Holy Day of Epona, Birthday of Mithras/Sol Invictus, Alban Arthan, Alban Heruin/Hefin/Hefyn, Holy Day of Dionysos, Midsummer and its Eve, Angeronalia or Divalia, Modranicht, and/or Larentalia, and anything else I may have left out.

The One Hundred Somethings Project

Last night, after I left a comment over on Leah's Creative Every Day site updating my last two Art Every Day Month entries, I followed some of the links other participants had posted and ended up at mousetales, home of the lovely Miss Rosie Posie; and from there to the marvelous Tollipop, where I came across an open invitation to Make One Hundred Somethings.

Hmmmm, I thought. That is my kind of project.

But what clinched it was going from there to FairieMoon's version of it, in which she is making one hundred dresses for her doll Hitty Dauphine.

And when I saw those doll's dresses my heart just leapt. Oh what fun that would be! O wouldn't that be wonderful! And so I contemplated what one hundred Somethings I could make.

But then the tedious, overly serious Grown Up, the Artist, capital A, in me, the judgemental-yet-defensive Critic started in; and she subtly, and ever-so-reasonably started swapping out the idea of one hundred dolls' dresses for more serious, Artsy, Religious things, saying things like, Well, how about something like writing one hundred meditations? Oh and hint, one hundred Somethings should fit a Tarot deck inside of it quite nicely actually; then there are one hundred Gods you should be drawing, or, really, one hundred descriptions of Goddesses, since aren't you supposed to be writing a Book you useless procrastinator, you shiftless dreamer you? You should be doing one hundred Useful Somethings, one hundred High Art Somethings; why don't you take this as an opportunity to get your sad, sorry butt in gear?

And so I felt rather bad, and guilty, and all those other useless, harmful, judgemental things that actively stop creativity; but then I remembered something.

When your heart leaps at an idea, when you are so taken with something you longingly exclaim What fun! O! How I wish I could do that! That would be so marvelous!

That is the surest sign you must. For that is your soul speaking.

So, I will honor Inspiration, and the Muse.

Though it won't be one hundred dresses, I don't think. I have too many ideas for things, fun things, like the things I made when I was a child, to restrict it to that. So I'll open it up a bit more: I will make one hundred toys. That will include dolls, dolls' dresses, critters, and who knows what else; perhaps I shall even be inspired to make something in wood. (This may, also, indicate the beginning of an Etsy shop, so stay tuned.)

I don't know how long it will take me, probably some time, at least a year. But it is my kind of project. You may have noticed that I work well on long projects made up of small individual parts; my brain is wired in series, I guess (har har). Goddess Oracle cards, God cards, Tarot, even the Obscure Goddess Online Directory are all of that ilk.

I don't know where it will take me, and this is a good thing. I expect it will evolve and do its own thing. That is another wonderful thing about doing art in a series: through repetition of a theme one works through habits and prejudices about what one thinks things should look like, if only because one simply gets bored.

At any rate, by this time next year I should be more than qualified for a job at the North Pole with the Elves.

(Though, you don't think Santa would have a problem with my being Pagan, do you? I mean he is Saint Klaus, after all. I would assume, given his reputation for being the generous sort, and his (His?) ancient ties to Yule customs, he'd be an equal opportunity employer, right?)

Anyway, I do know that I have felt stuck in a rut lately, artistically. And perhaps I have forgotten how to have fun with my art. Before I fell into painting Goddesses, I was focussed on children's books, mostly of the fairy-tale princess sort. Not, really, that big a leap, stylistically, or thematically, when you think about it. But a lot more fun. I think that is what I really need now.

Ravings of a Frustrated Wannabe Scholar

I was a scholar in a past life, I really think I was; but in this one I'm just an artist. I make no bones (I think) about not being a proper expert in any of this Goddess stuff, by which I mean, one with degrees and a dissertation behind her; really, I am just a (very) interested amateur when you come down to it.

So this week, in researching the Goddess Ceres for The Book To Go With The Goddess Oracle Deck (for which I really should attempt to come up with a catchier title), I came across Barbette Stanley Spaeth's book The Roman Goddess Ceres. Which book, alas, is not available at my famously crappy local university library (and, as I am not a student there I do not have access to inter-library loan); so I've been reading what I can of it on Google Books. And I only got to page two before I hit this passage:

Ceres’ name also links her with several ancient Italic divinities, such as Kerrí, Keri Arentikai, Regina Pia Cerria Iovia, and Anceta Ceria. These divinities were worshipped by the Osco-Umbrians or Sabellian-Umbrians, peoples of the central and southern regions of Italy.

And my head just about exploded. These are Goddesses, obscure Goddesses, about Whom I've only ever found a diabolically mysterious mention there and here; and I am fiercely, fiercely jealous of the access to material proper scholars have. I mean, it's true, I have to rely on others' work, and that in English to boot, as I can't read things for myself in Latin or Greek, or even French or the German that every freakin' work on the Etruscans seems to have been written in; so I have a few limitations. But damn. She just tosses these names around like it's the Red Sox lineup for the year.

Yeah, jealous, a bit.

But excited too, in a way I suppose only a fanatic, or a Goddess worshipper who leans towards the nerdy side of things can get; because, OhmyGod! more Obscure Goddesses for the collection, as it were. And I find myself in an odd state, one that I've been in a lot lately for some reason: a kind of blocked or unfocused inspiration.

It's very strange. I have been quite inspired, I mean on fire! about my various projects; yet the way it's playing out in me is that I am so inspired and so excited I can't actually sit still long enough to get anything done. I am full of plans and dreams and ideas but am having a terrible time just doing the damned stuff. I'm not usually like this; not, I mean, that I've ever been any good with discipline, I suppose.

It's not even quite a question of not knowing where to start; I've had that problem all my life and have some ways around that by now. It's that when I sit down to do one thing, I find myself passionately thinking about something else I'd like to do; but if I start on that something else comes up. It's like my inspiration is misfiring, or isn't timed correctly. I need the psychic equivalent of one of those strobe light thingies for your car engine.

Any ideas?

Inaugural Post

Hello everyone!

It has been, I admit, a bit of a rough year. Various issues, with which I won't bore you, have come up, with the end result being that I have neither worked on the book for the Goddess Oracle Deck very much (the main thing I have to be doing to get the deck itself published), nor, and this is just awful, have I even completed a new piece of art in the last year.

Depressing, I know. And not just for you all out there.

So, this blog.

The main purpose of this blog, then, and I'll be right up front about this, is to get me back into writing the book to go with the deck of cards I've given the working title of The Goddess Oracle Deck. That won't hold, of course, given that Hrana Janto and Amy Sophia Marashinsky already have one out by that name (though I note with some surprise that Googling that phrase pulls up my version as the first hit, which is simply crazy).

So I plan to feature regular updates and progress reports on the book; but also I thought this would be a good place to talk about new artwork I create, or new articles I write for that crazy I-don't-know-whatever-possessed-me-to-take-it-on project of mine, the Obscure Goddess Online Directory; and perhaps this might also be a place to feature a Goddess or two I especially like. I'm sure it will become a lot of things, in time.

Anyway, though, that word up top, inaugural. In Roman times, which is where the idea comes from, to inaugurate meant to mark out a place as sacred, a job properly done by an augur, a type of priest responsible for divining the signs; now, I am not an augur, but I like the idea of marking out this blog as some kind of sacred space, if such can be applied to a blog. For I intend this to be, at the root of it, a blog about the creative process; and well, it doesn't get much more sacred than that.