Tag: Roman mythology

Earth Goddesses – FAUNA

Earth Goddesses – FAUNA 

Fauna, the Roman goddess of nature and animals, was most often called Bona Dea (“the Good Goddess”), which is a title, not a name. Sometimes she was referred to as Bona Mater, which means “Good Mother.” To say the actual name of Fauna was taboo in ancient Roman society. Fauna was a Earth Goddess and was worshipped primarily by women. She was the daughter (sometimes represented as consort) of the nature god Faunus. It was said that after her marriage, she never laid eyes upon another man. This chastity. Improved her ranking among the gods. She was a country goddess, the protector of cattle and farmlands. She also presided over virginity and fertility in women. Today the word fauna is used to encompass all animal life.

Fauna is depicted as an old woman with pointed ears. She is represented holding the horn of plenty, and a snake is her symbol. It is said that the snake represents her phallic nature; however, men were not allowed at her temples or festivals. Her image is often found on Roman coins.

Bona Dea had two major festivals, one in May and the other on December 3 or 4. (This feast was moveable.) The festival held in December was a secret rite. It was unique because it was often held in the homes of high-ranking Roman magistrates as opposed to public temples. It was an invitation-only affair. Men were not allowed, nor was any depiction of a man welcome. Paintings and statues that included a male figure were covered up or removed. This festival was said to be a lesbian orgy; however, it has been suggested that it was actually a purification rite. It was forbidden to use the word “wine” or “myrtle,” because Fauna’s father had beaten her to death with a myrtle stick upon finding that she had gotten drunk. Wine was forbidden to women under Roman law. However, it was also her father who gifted her with her divinity, be repenting of her killing and bestowing divinity upon her. Wine was served at her festival but was called milk. It was traditionally kept in a jar covered with cloth. The jar was referred to as the honey pot.

Fauna’s May celebrations took place in her temple and was held on May 1. Wine was served in the same manner as in the December rites. The temple was decorated with vines, flowers, and plants, with the careful exclusion of myrtle. This celebration was public and open to all women. The festival was rumored to included the ritual sacrifice of a pregnant sow.

Fauna’s temple was built over a cave that housed consecrated serpents. Enslaved women were prominent among the worshippers. In fact, Fauna was the only Roman deity to allow freed slaves to serve among her priestesses. Her rites were unique because she allowed high-ranking Roman women, poor women, prostitutes, and slaves to worship together side by side.

Fauna was also seen as the mother of the fairies. In this role she was a prophetess and seer. In addition, Fauna was the female essence of wildlife. In this role she was the companion of Faunus, who served as the male essence.

Fauna was a healing goddess and her temple garden was filled with medicinal herbs. The sick were brought to her temple gardens to be healed.

Calendar of the Sun for January 29th

Calendar of the Sun
29 Wolfmonath

Concordia: Irene’s Day

Color: White
Element: Air
Altar: Upon a white cloth set the single white candle from Eunomia’s ritual the day before, a cup of milk, a garland of leaves and white flowers, and a white bird.
Offerings: Work for peace, in the home or outside of it.
Daily Meal: White food.

Invocation to Irene

Hail, Irene, Keeper of the Peace,
Hora of the Open Hand!
Without you, third of the Graces,
There are rules and justice, but no man
Is happy for more than a moment,
And no one is content.
You whose hand is extended in friendship,
You who are the quiet at the end of the storm,
You whose compassion aids the fallen
And who gives the struggling a space to breathe,
Like the bird that flutters beneath the cages of our ribs,
You, Lady Irene, pure white maiden of tranquillity,
Show us the way of the opened heart.

Song: Peace I Ask Of You O River

(The milk is poured out as a libation. All sit for a time in silence, and then go. No arguments or harsh words may be exchanged today.)

VESTA / HESTIA

 

VESTA / HESTIA
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Vesta was the Roman Goddess of the hearth and home (Hestia was her Greek counterpart). Her six Vestal Virgins (virgin in the sense that they belonged to no man – they were “one within”) tended her sacred fire in a round temple in Rome and the Romans offered a prayer to her every day at their own hearths. On March 1st, every year, her priestesses extinguished the fire and relit it. Her worship was connected with fertility and to let her light go out would mean that civilization would also end. On June 9th, the Vestalia was held when her priestesses baked salt cakes and sacrificed them on Vesta’s fire for 8 days, after which the temple was closed, cleaned out and then reopened the next day. She holds an oil lamp from 1st century Pompeii and wears a Roman earring from the 3rd-4th centuries. The statues of Senior Vestal Virgins in the background are from the House of the Vestal Virgins in the Roman Forum (heads and hands restored ). On the wall is a Roman frieze from the College of Vestal Virgins.
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http://www.goddessmyths.com/Vesta.JPG

The Goddess Diana

 

Research on the Goddess Diana

Part 1

“Goddess Of The Hunt”

Diana (lt. “heavenly” or “divine”) was the goddess of the hunt, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and also of the moon in Roman mythology. In literature she was the equal of the Greek goddess Artemis, though in cult beliefs she was Italic, not Greek, in origin. Diana was worshiped in ancient Roman religion and is currently revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Dianic Wicca, a largely feminist form of the practice, is named for her. Diana was known to be the virgin goddess and looked after virgins and women. She was one of the three maiden goddesses, Diana, Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry.

Along with her main attributes, Diana was an emblem of chastity. Oak groves were especially sacred to her. According to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.

Diana (pronounced with long ‘i’ and a’) is an adjectival form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later ‘divus’, ‘dius’, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia and in the neuter form dium meaning the sky. It is rooted in Indoeuropean *d(e)y(e)w meaning bright sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus (god), dies (day, daylight).

The Greek αδει(αν)ός (adei(an)os) means empty, because Aeneas’s mother, Venus, in the form of a hunting woman was very similar to the goddess Diana and because the Aeneid describes that since Paris (mythology) the temples hallow an empty name and she went down the empty sky when Eurytion held the arrow ready on his bended bow.

Theology

The persona of Diana is complex and contains a number of archaic features. According to Dumezil it falls into a particular subset of celestial gods, referred to in histories of religion as ‘frame gods’. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities, i.e. transcendent heavenly power and abstention from direct rule in worldly matters, did not share the fate of other celestial gods in Indoeuropean religions – that of becoming dei otiosi, since they did retain a particular sort of influence over the world and mankind.

The celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connexion with light, inaccessibility, virginity, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana therefore reflects the heavenly world (dium) in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility, and indifference towards such secular matters as the fates of men and states. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and in the preservation of mankind through the protection of childbirth.

These functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess. 1) The institution of the rex Nemorensis, Diana’s sacredos in the Arician wood, who held its position til somebody else challenged and killed him in a duel, after breaking a branch from a certain tree of the wood. This ever totally open succession reveals the character and mission of the goddess as a guarantee of the continuity of the kingly status through successive generations.The same meaning implying her function of bestower of regality is testified by the story related by Livy of the prediction of empire to the land of origin of the person who would offer her a particularly beautiful cow. 2) Diana was also worshipped by women who sought pregnancy or asked for an easy delivery. This kind of worship is testified by archeological finds of votive statuettes in her sanctuary in the nemus Aricinum as well as by ancient sources, e.g. Ovid.

According to Dumezil the forerunner of all frame gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image (avatar) of the Vedic god Dyaus. Having renounced the world, in his roles of father and king, he attained the status of an immortal being while retaining the duty of ensuring that his dynasty is preserved and that there is always a new king for each generation. The Scandinavian god Heimdallr performs an analogous function: he is born first and will die last. He too gives origin to kingship and the first king, bestowing on him regal prerogatives. Diana, although a female deity, has exactly the same functions, preserving mankind through childbirth and royal succession.

Dumezil’s interpretation appears deliberately to ignore that of James G. Frazer, who links Diana with the male god Janus as a divine couple. Frazer identifies the two with the supreme heavenly couple Jupiter-Juno and additionally ties in these figures to the overarching Indoeuropean religious complex. This regality is also linked to the cult of trees, particularly oaks. In this interpretative schema, the institution of the Rex Nemorensis and related ritual should be seen as related to the theme of the dying god and the kings of May.

Physical Description

Diana often appeared as a young woman, age around 12 to 19. It was believed that she had a fair face like Aphrodite with a tall body, slim, small hips, and a high forehead. As a goddess of hunting, she wore a very short tunic so she could hunt and run easily and is often portrayed holding a bow, and carrying a quiver on her shoulder, accompanied by a deer or hunting dog. Sometimes the hunted creature would also be shown. As goddess of the moon, however, Diana wore a long robe, sometimes with a veil covering her head. Both as goddess of hunting and goddess of the moon she is frequently portrayed wearing a moon crown.

Worship

Diana was initially just the hunting goddess, associated with wild animals and woodlands. She also later became a moon goddess, supplanting Titan goddess Luna. She also became the goddess of childbirth and ruled over the countryside.

Diana was worshipped at a festival on August 13, when King Servius Tullius, himself born a slave, dedicated her temple on the Aventine Hill in the mid-sixth century BC. Being placed on the Aventine, and thus outside the pomerium, meant that Diana’s cult essentially remained a ‘foreign’ one, like that of Bacchus; she was never officially ‘transferred’ to Rome as Juno was after the sack of Veii. It seems that her cult originated in Aricia, where her priest, the Rex Nemorensis remained. There the simple open-air fane was held in common by the Latin tribes, which Rome aspired to weld into a league and direct. Diana of the wood was soon thoroughly Hellenized, “a process which culminated with the appearance of Diana beside Apollo in the first lectisternium at Rome”. Diana was regarded with great reverence by lower-class citizens and slaves; slaves could receive asylum in her temples. This fact is of difficult interpretation. Wissowa proposed the explanation that it might be because the first slaves of the Romans must have been Latins of the neighbouring tribes.

Though some Roman patrons ordered marble replicas of the specifically Anatolian “Diana” of Ephesus, where the Temple of Artemis stood, Diana was usually depicted for educated Romans in her Greek guise. If she is accompanied by a deer, as in the Diana of Versailles this is because Diana was the patroness of hunting. The deer may also offer a covert reference to the myth of Acteon (or Actaeon), who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to kill him.

Worship of Diana is mentioned in the Bible. In Acts of the Apostles, Ephesian metal smiths who felt threatened by Saint Paul’s preaching of Christianity, jealously rioted in her defense, shouting “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:28, New English Bible). After the city secretary (γραμματεύς) quieted the crowd, he said, “Men of Ephesus, what person is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is the keeper (guardian) of the temple of the great Diana and of her image that fell from heaven ?” (Acts 19:36)

Sanctuaries

Diana was an ancient goddess common to all Latin tribes. Therefore many sanctuaries were dedicated to her in the lands inhabited by Latins. The first one is supposed to have been near Alba before the town was destroyed by the Romans.

The Arician wood sanctuary near the lake of Nemi was Latin confederal as testified by the dedicatory epigraph quoted by Cato.

She had a shrine in Rome on the Aventine hill, according to tradition dedicated by king Servius Tullius. Its location is remarkable as the Aventine is situated outside the pomerium, i.e. original territory of the city, in order to comply with the tradition that Diana was a goddess common to all Latins and not exclusively of the Romans.

Other sanctuaries we know about are listed here below:

Temple of Diana, in Evora, Portugal.

Colle di Corne near Tusculum where she is referred to with the archaic Latin name of deva Cornisca and where existed a collegium of worshippers.

The Algidus Mount, also near Tusculum

At Lavinium

At Tivoli, where she is referred to as Diana Opifera Nemorensis

A sacred wood mentioned by Livyad computum Anagninum(near Anagni).

On Mount Tifata, near Capua in Campania.

In Ephesus, where she was worshiped as Diana of Ephesus and the temple used to be one of world’s seven wonders.

Legacy

In religion

Diana’s cult has been related in Early Modern Europe to the cult of Nicevenn (aka Dame Habond, Perchta, Herodiana, etc.). She was related to myths of a female Wild Hunt.

Wicca

Today there is a branch of Wicca named for her, which is characterized by an exclusive focus on the feminine aspect of the Divine. In some Wiccan texts Lucifer is a name used interchangeably for Diana’s brother Apollo.

Stregheria

In Italy the old religion of Stregheria embraced goddess Diana as Queen of the Witches; witches being the wise women healers of the time. Goddess Diana created the world of her own being having in herself the seeds of all creation yet to come. It is said that out of herself she divided into the darkness and the light, keeping for herself the darkness of creation and creating her brother Apollo, the light. Goddess Diana loved and ruled with her brother Apollo, the god of the Sun. (Charles G. Leland, Aradia: The Gospel of Witches)

Since the Renaissance the mythic Diana has often been expressed in the visual and dramatic arts, including the opera L’arbore di Diana. In the sixteenth century, Diana’s image figured prominently at the Château de Fontainebleau, in deference to Diane de Poitiers, mistress of two French kings. At Versailles she was incorporated into the Olympian iconography with which Louis XIV, the Apollo-like “Sun King” liked to surround himself.

There are also references to her in common literature. In Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, many references are made to Diana. Rosaline, a beautiful woman who has sworn to chastity, is said to have “Dian’s wit”. Later on in the play, Romeo says, “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun. Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon.” He is saying that Juliet is better than Diana and Rosaline for not swearing chastity. Diana is also a character in the 1876 Leo Delibe ballet ‘Sylvia’. The plot deals with Sylvia, one of Diana’s nymphs and sworn to chastity and Diana’s assault on Sylvia’s affections for the shepherd Amyntas.

In Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et la Bête it is Diana’s power which has transformed and imprisoned the beast.

In literature

In Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre Diana appears to Pericles in a vision, telling him to go to her temple and tell his story to her followers.

Diana is also used by Shakespeare in the famous play As You Like It to describe how Rosaline feels about marriage.

Diana is used by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night when Orsino compares Viola (in the guise of Cesario) to Diana. “Diana’s lip is not more smooth and rubious”

Speaking of his wife, Desdemona, Shakespeare’s Othello the Moor says, “Her name that was as fresh/As Dian[a]’s visage, is now begrim’d and black/As mine own face.”

There is also a reference to Diana in Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing where Hero is said to seem like ‘Dian in her orb’, in terms of her chastity.

In All’s Well That Ends Well Diana is seen again, not only as a figure in the play, but also where Helena makes multiple allusions such as, “Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly…” and “…wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian/was both herself and love…” The Steward also says, “…; Dian no queen of virgins,/ that would suffer her poor knight surprised, without/ rescue in the first assault or ransom afterward.” It can be assumed that ‘Dian’ simply a shortening of ‘Diana’ since later in the play when Parolles’ letter to Diana is read aloud it reads ‘Dian’.

The Goddess is also referenced indirectly in Shakespeare’s player A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The character Hippolyta states “And then the moon, like to a silver bow new bent in Heaven”. She refers to Diana, Goddesse of the moon, who is often depicted with a silver hunting bow. In the same play the character Hermia is told by the Duke Theseus that she must either wed the character Demetrius “Or on Diana’s alter to protest for aye austerity and sinle life”. He refers to her becoming a nun, with the Goddesse Diana having connotations of chastity.

In The Merchant of Venice Portia states “I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father’s will”. (I.ii)

In Romeo & Juliet, Romeo describes Rosaline, saying that “She hath Dian’s wit”.

Carlos Fuentes’s novel entitled, Diana o la cazadora solitaria (Diana or the lone huntress), was based on The Goddess. Diana Soren was also a character that being described as having the same personality as the goddess.

In “The Knight’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Emily prays to Diana to be spared from marriage to either of her admirers Arcite or Palomon.

In “To Science”, the sonnet by Edgar Allan Poe, science “dragged Driana from her car” (9).

In language

Pomona (left, symbolizing agriculture), and Diana (symbolizing commerce) as building decoration

Both the Romanian word for “fairy”, Zână and the Leonese word for “water nymph”, xana, seem to come from the name of Diana.

In Arts

Diana had become one of the most popular theme of arts. Painters like Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, François Boucher, Nicholas Poussin had made her as a major theme. Most of stories that being exposed are the stories of Diana with Actaeon, story of Callisto, and when she rested after hunting. Some famous work of arts with Diana theme are :

  • Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto, and Death of Actaeon by Titian.
  • Diana and Callisto, Diana Resting After Bath, and Diana Getting Out of Bath by François Boucher.
  • Diana Bathing With Her Nymphs by Rembrandt.
  • Diana and Endymion by Poussin.
  • Diana and Callisto, Diana and Her Nymph Departing From Hunt, Diana and Her Nymphs Surprised By A Faun by Rubens.
  • Diana and Endymion by Johann Micheal Rottmayr.
  • The famous fountain at Palace of Caserta, Italy, created by Paolo Persico, Brunelli, Pietro Solari told a story about when Diana being surprised by Acteon.
  • A sculpture by Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain could be seen at the Musée du Louvre.
  • A sculptural mascot on the Diana car manufactured by the Diana Motors Company.

In Beaux Arts

Beaux Arts architecture and garden design (late 19th and early 20th centuries) used classic references in a modernized form. Two of the most popular of the period were of Pomona (goddess of orchards) as a metaphor for Agriculture, and Diana, representing Commerce, which is a perpetual hunt for advantage and profits.

In Parma at the convent of San Paolo, Antonio Allegri da Correggio painted the camera of the Abbess Giovanna Piacenza’s apartment. He was commissioned in 1519 to paint the ceiling and mantel of the fireplace. On the mantel he painted an image of Diana riding in a chariot pulled possibly by a stag.

In Film

Diana/Artemis appears at the end of the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ segment of ‘Fantasia’.

In his 1968 film La Mariée était en noir François Truffaut plays on this mythological symbol. Julie Kohler, played by Jeanne Moreau, poses as Diana/Artemis for the artist Fergus. This choice seems fitting for Julie, a character beset by revenge, of which Fergus becomes the fourth victim. She poses with a bow and arrow, wearing white.

Other

  • In the funeral oration of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, her brother drew an analogy between the ancient goddess of hunting and his sister – ‘the most hunted person of the modern age’.
  • William Moulton Marston used the Diana myth as a basis for Wonder Woman.
  • For the album art of Progressive metal band Protest the Hero’s second studio album Fortress, Diana is depicted, protected by rams and other animals. The theme of Diana is carried throughout the album.

 

“Hail Diana”

Hail Artemis Diana
Blessed Lady of the Beasts
I dedicate myself to You

May my path honor Thee
May my spirit celebrate Thee
May my life force magnify Thee

These things I pray
Be fulfilled this day
Goddess Mother help me
To know what is right.”
– Goddess Prayers and Invocations

Research on the Goddess Diana

Part 2

Diana . . . The Roman Goddess was known by many names including Queen of Heaven; the Great Goddess; Lunar Virgin; Mother of Animals; Lady of Wild Creatures; and the Huntress. Diana as the Roman Moon-Goddess was originally worshipped on the mountain Tifata near Capua and in sacred forests. Later she was given a temple in the working-class area on the Aventine Hill where she was mainly worshipped by the lower class (plebeians) and the slaves, of whom she was the patroness. She is often depicted carrying a bow and arrow and wearing animal skins or accompanied by animals.

When the Greek city of Ephesus fell to Roman rule, Goddess Diana was merged with the Greek Goddess Artemis. This is most likely due to the fact that around the time of the Roman empire, Romans would allow the places they over took to continue worshipping their own Gods and Goddesses, incorporating those Goddesses into the Roman Pantheon. Artemis and Diana were worshipped at the same times historically and when the Great Greek Temple of Artemis was destroyed the Romans rebuilt it in honor of Diana and the myth of Goddess Diana of Ephesus began.

Stories of Goddess Diana are told form the beginning of Troy to the Christian Bible of King James in the scriptures of Acts and the gospels of Paul.

Ephesians.”

The multi-breasted statue of Diana at Her Temple in Ephesus displayed her capability to nourish all creatures and provide for them. Worshippers adored Goddess Diana so much that the only way the Christians could rid the people of their Goddess was by assimilating her into their new religion. Thus Ephesus became a place of Mary, Mother of God. The church even invented stories of Mary living at Ephesus and being entombed there.

In Babylonia, and in the nation of Assyria, she was known as “ISHTAR” The Phoenicians called her “ASTARTE”. The Israelites knew her as “ASHTORETH”.

Diana was also the goddess of the Latin commonwealth where She rule with Her brother Lucifer. Lucifer being a Latin word for “Light Bringer”.

In Italy the old religion of Stergheria embraced goddess Diana as Queen of the Witches. Witches being the wise women healers of the time. Goddess Diana created the world of her own being having in herself the seeds of all creation yet to come. It is said that out of herself she divided into the darkness and the light, keeping for herself the darkness of creation and creating her brother Lucifer, the light. Goddess Diana loved and ruled with her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and Moon.
As time went on, the Earth was created and Diana descended to Earth, as did her brother Lucifer. Diana taught magick and witches were born. One night using witchcraft in the form of a cat, His most beloved animal, Diana tricked Lucifer. She gained entrance to His chamber where She seduced Him. From this union a daughter was born. Goddess Aradia.
In other versions of this myth we find the similarities the Christain tales take as their own in attempts to dispel the Goddess.
The first being, Lucifer who is so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride is driven from the Paradise of Goddess as is the tale of Lucifer falling from Gods grace.
The second being Goddess Diana also sends Her daughter Aradia to live as a mortal and save the misfortunate people of Earth as does God send His son Jesus to live as a mortal and save the people.

As pagans my sisters, Goddess Diana is the eternal Mother of all creation, the first that is and the last that will be. She is the Huntress of the forest seeking means of survival. She is the call of the wild, the beating heart of the forests, the animal spirit within, urging us to remember our origins. She awakens nature within us that we remember to feel the rustling wind through our hair, to hear the howling of a wolf or the echo of a voice in the forest. Goddess Diana calls to us to let our animal essence out and hone our inherent sensibilities. Dance and sing to the moon, run until our heart pounds to the top of a hill, to take a swim in a creek, roll around in the grass as we once did as a children, or just gaze upon the stars in wonderment; knowing all the while that Goddess Diana is within us, sharing sharing our journey.

As with the Christian invasion into the old religion , we too are told as women what is right and wrong. We are told what is the correct thinking to blend into a society that denies us our truth. Not tonight my sisters, tonight we pray to the Goddess Diana that you never forget the wonders of creation, the joy of being alive, and the importance of being a woman. Tonight we pray to Goddess Diana to be filled with Her strength to survive the challenges that would steal our dreams. under Her Full Moon we are alive in Her reflection. As a Circle of women we pray to Goddess Diana to grants us development and change within ourselves. As we embrace Her energy that is the vibrations of the universe that lives within us let the hunt begin. Let us seek out and tame the resources that is the beast and the forest of our lives. As goddess Diana let us be the huntress of our path. Tonight as women we say “Great is the Goddess Diana and Great is the Goddess in Me”.

Research on the Goddess Diana

Part 3

Ode to Diana

I am Diana

Know me

I have many names, many faces

You know me as the Queen of Heaven, The Huntress, Lady of the Wild Creatures, Lunar Virgin, Daughter of the Moon,

My name has been Ishtar, Astarte, Artemis, Ashtoreth.

I am mother to Aradia. Sister to Lucifer. Daughter of Zeus, most high.

You will find me in Tifata, nearCapua.

My temple is atEphesus, before the time of others that stole.

My temple is in your heart.

My name is your name.

My life is your life, our hearts beat as one.

I am Diana

Celebrate me

When I am a maiden on Ostara, call me by name…

Diana, Aphrodite, Arianrhod, Venus, Cybele, Freya, and Rhiannon.

When I am the mother on Litha, call me by name…

Amaterasu, Hestia, Juno, and Sunna

When I am the Crone on Samhain, call me by name…

Hecate, Inanna, Machi, Mari, Ishtar and Lilith.

Call me down when the moon shines full.

Embrace me when the moon is dark.

Caress me when the moon waxes and wanes.

I am Diana

Honor me

In the night sky as the Great She Bear.

In the phases of the moon,

In nature, the beauty of a sunrise

The mystery of the moon rise.

Speak to me at dawn, at noon when the sun’s heat warms your face

Whisper to me at dusk when purple fingers of nights stain the sky

Sing to me at midnight as you dance beneath my silvery luminescence.

Light a white candle and I am there

Use jasmine and breathe in my spirit.

Place a moonstone in your pocket and I walk with you.

Carry me within your heart and we shall be together

Always.

Written by Ladyhawke. Copyright 2008

Diana in prayer, magic and divination.

Hail Diana

Hail Artemis Diana
Blessed Lady of the Beasts
I dedicate myself to You

May my path honor Thee
May my spirit celebrate Thee
May my life force magnify Thee

These things I pray
Be fulfilled this day
Goddess Mother help me
to know what is right

~ Abby Willowroot © 1999

 

Etymology: Our Pagan World

Etymology: Our Pagan World
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Author: Willow Grove

Most of the Pagan community has read many articles regarding the “borrowing” of certain holidays and yearly traditions by modern society. We have heard that the December 25th birthday of Jesus was taken from Mithras, and we know that Easter was originally Eostar or Ostara, a spring fertility festival. Groundhog’s Day falls on Imbolc, and both holidays involve an animal predicting the coming spring.

Even our modern secular traditions of grilling out and shooting off fireworks could be linked to the ancient fire festivals held in summer. It is our natural human tendency to give thanks for the harvest in the fall, be it with Thanksgiving turkey or Lammas bread. But is that it? Do our Pagan roots extend only to the days we celebrate?

To Pagans, it may seem that we live in a world that is not accepting of our religion, and in many cases seems to be at odds with our beliefs. Certain groups in society denounce the pagan origins of celebrating Halloween, and may even go so far as to ban their children from dying Easter eggs. While that is of course their right to make that choice, the Pagan influences on every day life go a bit deeper than most people realize. This is especially obvious when looking at the origin of some of our common words.

Few people realize that in their every day speech, they may use words of Pagan origin and not even know it. Take this simple sentence for example: “This morning I woke up after a night of insomnia and had a bowl of cereal.” There are two words in this sentence that have Pagan origin. If you had a bowl of cereal this morning, thank the Goddess! “Cereal” comes from Ceres, Roman counterpart of Demeter, Goddess of agriculture, harvest and grains. “Insomnia” comes from Somnus, the Roman counterpart of Hypnos, god of sleep.

Pagan etymology includes our calendar. Take for example the days of the week. The connections between Sunday and the sun, between Monday and the moon, and between Saturn and Saturday are the more obvious references. But what about the etymology of the other days? A lesser-known fact is that every one of the seven days of the week has a name firmly rooted in Paganism.

The Germanic god of war was Tiu, whose name became part of Tuesday. Wednesday is a modification of Woden’s Day, being named for the Anglo-Saxon god of the wild hunt. Norse god Thor is the basis of the name Thursday, and Friday is named for the Norse mother goddess Frigg, wife of Odin. When looking further, we can see that the names of the months also have Pagan etymology. The Roman god Janus was ruler of gateways and new beginnings; hence we celebrate the New Year by honoring him through the name of January. In ancient Rome, a festival of purification and cleansing was called Februs.

Since it was held at this time every year, the month was given the name February. March comes from the Roman god of war, Mars. April was derived from the Roman word for “open”, because the spring flowers did just that in this month. June is appropriately the most common month for weddings given that its name comes from Juno, goddess of marriage. The remaining months have names that stem from Latin, mostly based on numbers such as “octo”, but it is easy to see that our calendar as we know it in modern times is most certainly influenced by our Pagan past.

So we can see that our language has some Pagan influence, but what about our government? So many in our society claim that America was formed on Christian values and ideas. If that is so, where are the monuments in Washington depicting Jesus Christ? The simple fact is that there are none. There are however, several examples of Pagan influence to be found.

Take for instance the U.S. Capital Building itself. Prominently displayed to the right of the main entrance, you will find a statue of Mars, Roman god of agriculture and war. The Great Hall of the Justice Department Building is home to a statue of the Spirit of Justice, based on the goddess of Justice herself, Justitia. (Here we also find another word in our language with pagan origins: justice.)

Even in the military we can see the presence of the ancient divine. The Army’s Medal of Honor features the Roman goddess of wisdom and martial prowess, Minerva. However, the largest and most obvious example of Pagan influence in our capital has to be the Washington Monument, which is, without a doubt, an Egyptian Obelisk.

Even in the realm of corporate America there is an influence of our Pagan past. Look closely at the glossy magazine ads and the slick television commercials and you may find the touch of a goddess. Disposable razors blades for women are named for the Goddess of Beauty, none other than Venus. Cars are named Saturn, Taurus, Equinox, and Solstice.

Do a search on the internet for Osiris and you will find not only much information about the Egyptian god, but also a line of skateboarding shoes, an IT company, and a medical research company all named for him. In fact, one of the most successful and well-known brand names of our time is named after a Pagan deity. Modern society may think of athletic shoes when they hear her name, but the ancient Greeks knew her as Nike, Goddess of Victory.

The influence of ancient Paganism is found in every culture throughout the farthest reaches of the world, even right here in the United States. When we as Pagans acknowledge and embrace this cultural heritage, it is sure to bring us a deepened sense of belonging in a world that often struggles with our acceptance. While it is easy for us to feel a little disconnected from modern society, looking back on the past and the influence the ancient deities have had on our everyday, mundane lives can indeed strengthen our connection to them, to each other, and to the world we live in.

Daily Feng Shui Tip for Jan. 9th

On ‘Play God Day’ I thought we’d take a look at the deity that the month of January is named after. January is actually derived from the ancient name of the Roman god Janus, who is touted to have presided over the dawning of every new year. He was often revered as the ‘God of Gateways’ or ‘God of Doorways.’ He is also known as the ‘Lord of Beginnings.’ The image of Janus is often symbolized by a face that looks both backwards and forward at the same time, perhaps a reminder that this is a good time to reflect on events of the previous year. And you don’t have to be reminded that any past reflection should only be in addition to recognizing the clean slate of opportunity that waits immediately ahead. So this would be a great day to make some lucky little upgrades to your front doorway. Remember that the front door calls in the subtle energies that enter your house and therefore has an impact on your opportunities and income. So be sure that this particular door is in good condition! If possible, paint the front door red to auger in fortune and luck, or green to grow health, happiness and prosperity. If you can’t do that, at least give it a good cleaning. No need for the God of Doorways to come knocking when a little elbow grease and a fresh coat of paint will bring you a year of blessings!

By Ellen Whitehurst for Astrology.com

The Sacred Household: Rites and Mysteries

The Sacred Household: Rites and Mysteries

Author: Ian Elliott

To Joseph Brazauskas, a true pagan

The Threshold

The sacred household in ancient and more recent indigenous cultures bears certain analogies to the human body. The front door is similar to the eyes, the hearth to the heart or solar plexus, and the central supporting pillar to the spine. Shrines or altars at these locations were guarded by spirits who were linked with internal spirits in each family resident, and the proper worship of the household guardians involved being on familiar terms with their inner analogues and tending their inner shrines.

This study of the sacred household uses the names of Roman household spirits, but it is based more broadly on a number of other cultures. We no longer live in Roman houses, so some latitude must be taken in locating household shrines; and we are not all of Roman descent, so some attention must be paid to the forms of piety practiced by our ancestors from other lands.

It is not enough to study household rites and set up modern versions of ancient shrines. Our early conditioning separates us from some pre-verbal modes of awareness, by teaching us to ignore certain readily available perceptions; these must be recovered if we are to properly install our internal shrines and so link them with those of the household. I have called practices that open up these perceptions ‘mysteries, ’ because having been forgotten they have become secret things.

The Roman god of the threshold was Janus, who has two faces, one looking outside and the other inside the home, as well as forward and backward in time. To enter a house, as H.J. Rose pointed out in Religion in Greece and Rome, is to begin something, and so household piety always began by honoring Janus at the threshold. His annual festival was on January 9th, and offerings at his shrine were made on the Calends (the day after the dark moon of the lunar calendar) , as well at the beginning of any endeavor, such as a journey; also on one’s birthday.

The Romans, even after they came under Greek influence, were by preference an aniconic people; that is, they preferred worship without images. Perhaps this was because they focused on the link between the inner and outer shrines and found external images a distraction. I keep my own threshold shrine simple, hanging a god-face about a foot and a half above a small offering shelf, the shelf set next to the front door a little above eye-level. On the shelf is a candle, a stick incense holder, toy-sized dishes for water and salted grain.

Upon crossing the threshold one always steps over it, never on it, and one should touch the doorpost as an acknowledgement of the threshold guardian and to receive his numen. We can tentatively define numen as liberating and empowering energy that is unknown or at least unfamiliar.

My prayer when offering to Janus is the same as the one I used when setting up his shrine:

Honor and thanks to you, O Janus,
for guarding the threshold of my home.
May only harmonious beings enter here,
and may the discordant depart!
Please accept these offerings of salted grain, water, light and scent,
Open this week [month, journey, etc.] for me on blessings,
and teach me to look out and in at once as you do,
so I may guard the threshold of my inner home;
for I, too, am a threshold guardian.

The god-face for Janus looks straight in, as I prefer to imagine his head imbedded in the wall, with his outer face guarding the outside of my doorway.

The Inner Threshold

This ability to look out and in at the same time holds the clue to Janus’ mysteries, to the pre-verbal mode of perception that will give us the ability to look in the same manner, outward and inward simultaneously. To do this we must ‘stand in the doorway, ’ and Douglas Harding provided the best description of this in his important little book On Having No Head. Harding was hiking in the Himalayas and one morning he suddenly saw the world differently:

“…I stopped thinking…Past and future dropped away. There existed only the Now, that present moment and all that was given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in – absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.”

This nothing, however, was filled with everything: mountains, sky, valleys below, extending to the horizon. Harding felt light and liberated. He had ceased to ignore the sensations of his own headlessness, ending a habit acquired in infancy when told that ‘the baby in the mirror’ was merely his own reflection. In addition to his headlessness, he was now attending to the limits of his perceptual field. Consequently, he wasn’t tracking on this or that object, as we spend so much of our time doing, using our eyes as searchlights for our impulses and desires. Instead, he was looking at his whole visual field at once, and the lightness he felt resulted from dropping the burden of his eyes from incessant tracking, and of his mind from incessant thinking.

Indigenous peoples are aware of the difference between these two ways of looking at the world. When the psychologist C. G. Jung visited an Indian pueblo in the American Southwest years ago, he had a conversation with the local chief, Ochwiay Biano (his name means Mountain Lake) .

“The white man’s eyes are always restless, ” the chief told Jung. “He is always looking for something. We think he is mad.”
Jung asked him why they thought that.
“He says that he thinks with his head.”
“Why of course, ” answered Jung. “What do you think with?”
“We think here, ” he answered, indicating his chest.

There are two potential errors in assessing what Ochwiay Biano said. One is to take his words sentimentally, as if he were merely speaking of ‘heartfelt thinking.’ The other error would be to dismiss his words as expressions of a primitive, pre-scientific physiology. The Pueblo chief would not have been troubled to learn that Western science has determined through experiments that we think with our brains. This would have seemed to him irrelevant to what he was talking about, namely the sensation of where the thinker seems to be located in the body. We feel we are located in our heads because of certain muscular tensions around the eyes from tracking, and in our foreheads from ‘knitting our brows, ’ and performing other social cues indicative of taking thought. But these external muscular contractions, though spatially closer to the brain, are nevertheless external to it and involve muscles on the outside of the head. The feeling we get from them of being ‘in our heads, ’ therefore, is no more scientific than the feeling the Pueblo chief evidently got of being in his chest.

When we look at our headlessness, our chests come into view as the closest part of the body that is completely visible; and when mental talk quiets down as a result of tracking being replaced by restful awareness of the whole available visual field, words are employed only as and when necessary for external communication. The rest of the time one simply looks, listens and understands, and this quieter form of awareness allows feelings to come to the fore since they are no longer drowned out by incessant mental chatter. For these reasons, Ochwiay Biano felt that he thought in his chest, or solar plexus.

The Hearth

The ancients associated this part of the body, including the heart, with the hearth, and regarded it as the seat of memory. The hearth was the center of the home as well as the place of contact with ancestors. It was the place where the family gathered and traded experiences of the day, recalling in the process the words and deeds of the past. Without memory there is no family, even if the people living together are all related, as we know now that the hearth has been replaced by the television or computer as the central focus of the house, especially if meals are taken individually in the living room.

In the old days, the hearth gave heat and light to the home and was also where food was cooked. Nowadays some are fortunate enough to own a house with a fireplace, but they usually have a stove as well, so that the functions of the ancient hearth have become divided, and it is difficult to decide where to place the hearth shrine.

I have no fireplace where I live now, so my hearth shrine is near my stove. My stove is electric, but I keep a large candle in the shrine and light that, together with stick incense, when I want to awaken the hearth guardian. Additionally, I keep there somewhat larger versions of the offering dishes described above for the threshold shrine.

The hearth guardian is both a goddess and the hearth fire itself. In ancient Latium she was called Vesta. She accepts offerings for herself and also passes on some of them to the ancestors, godlings and blessed immortals. Because I cannot maintain a perpetual flame, I have a picture of her in my shrine, and close to her picture is a statuette of my family lar. The lar familiaris is an ithyphallic youth pouring wine from a wineskin into a chalice. He symbolizes the vigor and luck of my family line, and as such forms a link back to the ancestors, and onward to posterity. If I want to honor and pray to another deity, I can conveniently place his or her statue in the shrine for the occasion. This saves on shrines.

At the shrine or close by are photos of my parents and maternal grandmother. These are the ancestors who were my caregivers when I was small, and with whom I still share a bond of love. The Romans and other ancient peoples represented their ancestors by small clay figurines on the altar, as seen in some recent films.

When my offerings are laid out, I light the candle saying “Honor to fire, honor to Vesta, honor to the hearth.” Then I light the incense. Then I pray: “Holy Lady, please accept these offerings of salted grain and pure water, light and scent for thine own dear self, and pass on some to the lares and penates, the di manes, daimones and blessed gods, thanking them for their good regard for me and my family, and asking for a continuance of their favor.” To this basic prayer I add anything special for other deities.

While the fire is lit in the shrine, I call on my ancestors and talk to them. I let them know how things are going in the family with me, my sons and grandson, our concerns, blessings, problems and plans, just as I would if they were still in the flesh. If any of them has appeared recently in a dream, I thank him or her for the visit.

At the close of the rite, I bid farewell to ancestors and deities and extinguish the candle, letting the incense burn down. I say the opening prayer in reverse order, ending with “Honor to the hearth, honor to Vesta, honor to fire.” In Roman houses the hearth shrine was decorated with fresh flowers and offerings made at least three times in the lunar month: on the Calends, that is, the day after the dark moon; on the Nones, the ninth day before the full moon; and on the Ides or full moon itself. In Caesar’s solar calendar the Ides was regularized as the fifteenth of each month, which would place the Nones on the seventh.

The Inner Hearth

When we practice ‘standing in the doorway, ’ we naturally do not do so all the time, and this provides us with a contrast between the two modes of experience, so that we begin noticing things that were formerly invisible to us because they were constant. Some of these things are external to our minds, such as shadows and clouds, and some are internal. One of the internal things is the synopsis or background summary we take to experience, the mental account we refer to offhand when answering the common question “How is it going?” The synopsis is more readily observed in dreams, because it is different for each dream-story or sequence, whereas in waking life it is ongoing and only changes gradually except in moments of crisis.

When we enter a dream-story we generally enter in the middle of it, provided with a ready-made background that tells us where we are and what we are supposed to be doing. We are provided with dream-memories, sometimes selected from previous dreams (as in recurring dreams) , and unless we become aware we are dreaming, we do not question it or the actions of other dream-figures.

Similarly, in waking life we are generally absorbed by the problems and affairs of the moment, as supplied by an ongoing mental summary or synopsis. From this we derive our sense of who we are in the present and what we need to do. The synopsis is based on a selection of memories, and these change gradually unless we are in the throes of a crisis, in which case we need to revise our orientation, sometimes on the basis of earlier memories, in order to cope with the situation. At times our synopsis can become so obsessive that we throw it over in a breakdown and temporarily become disoriented.

Standing in the doorway provides a milder sort of disorientation, as the contrast between it and our usual awareness brings the operation of the synopsis to the forefront of attention. Then, as in the onset of lucid dreaming (when we suddenly realize we are dreaming) , we become free to question who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to be doing in the present moment. The process of interpreting present experience in terms of our usual selection of memories is suspended, and earlier memories are able to surface, bringing with them earlier feelings of ourselves and of life, derived from past synopses. This is a familiar experience when we go on a trip, especially if we visit old neighborhoods we haven’t seen in many years, and perhaps explains why we like to take such trips after surmounting a difficult crisis.

Vesta’s power to call up the ancestors from old memories works in a similar way, and when our focus of awareness has moved to the chest or solar plexus, continual standing in the doorway can help her to perform the same feat for us at our inner hearth, especially if we augment our headless attention with another pre-verbal mode of awareness involving sound.

The first stage is to listen to all the sounds around us, without dividing them into ‘background’ and ‘foreground’. This comes about naturally once our visual attention rests on the limits of the visual field instead of tracking on this or that object. It is easy for the attention to waver, however, so the focus on sounds must be augmented by mentally copying sounds just heard.

Small children learn to speak by mentally copying sounds, and there is reason to believe that animals do something similar. Mentally copying sounds and associating them with specific situations would seem to have been a major part of humanity’s pre-verbal thought processes.

Once we learn to speak, and to speak to ourselves, mental mimicry of sounds is relegated to a minor role and generally limited to copying sounds for which we have words. When we begin ‘thinking with the chest, ’ like Ochwiay Biano, our minds become quieter and we become aware of feelings and images for which we have no words, not because they are ineffable, but simply because no words have yet been assigned to those experiences. Consider smells, for instance. We have many words for colors and quite a few for sounds, but our olfactory vocabulary is very limited. If a dog could be taught to speak, he would find himself at a loss to describe the many odors in his daily experience. If he invented words for the many different odors, we would find it hard to understand him, lacking referents because we are purblind in our noses.

In the same way, this particular sound I have just heard has no precise word describing it. We can say, ‘that is the sound of a car engine, ’ as we say ‘that is a tree, ’ and ignore sensory detail in either case. Our everyday minds can deal with such thumbnail descriptions without having to disturb the selection of memories forming a background to our moment-to-moment synopsis. But if we mentally repeat the precise sound of that car that just went by, our memory background is rendered more porous, as it would become in a crisis, so that feelings and images from past memories are able to emerge.

I tried mentally echoing sounds just heard as an experiment in 1972, while walking along a busy street in Encanto, California. I was also keeping my sunglass frames in view, an earlier version of ‘standing in the doorway’. I did this for an hour or more, and recorded the results in a journal:

“The result of this double exercise was three full days, not counting sleep, in silent awareness of total sensation…At one point the feeling of lightness became like a breeze flowing through my body from back to front. Everything seemed to take on a bluish tinge…By the third day, the breeze had risen to a light wind and was blowing through my memories. My personal history, the sense of who I am, was being shuffled like a deck of cards…By the end of the third day the wind set me down somewhere else in myself; that is, my store of familiar memories was completely revised and my feeling of myself permanently changed from that point on.”

After this experience, my dead grandmother began visiting me regularly in my dreams. I noticed that in many of these dreams I appeared to be younger, and to feel as I did when she was still alive, but my understanding was linked to the present. It was common to realize at the time that I was dreaming, if not at first then as the dream progressed, for I would remember that she had died. These earlier feelings of myself, and of my grandmother when she was alive, enhanced a feeling of harmony with her and allowed us to converse in close intimacy. However, as I had no unresolved issues with her, there was nothing specific to work through. I usually asked her how she was, and she said fine, but she felt tired a lot, and this probably came from memories of her as she was towards the end of her life.

My practices of the threshold and hearth continued over the next several years, and long after my father died I did have some serious issues to work through with him. This took about three years to get through, during which time I was periodically out of work (I was doing contract programming and moving around a lot) . In both dream and waking I agreed with my father to resolve certain problems for good with him in exchange for obtaining help in finding employment. On each of three occasions, I received job offers within twenty-four hours of these conversations. Skeptics may make of this what they will; but taking the view that I was in contact with the spirits of my ancestors, it makes sense that they would find it easier to relate to me after I had recovered earlier feelings of myself and of them, which I had when, they were still alive.

The Pillar

Before chimneys came into general use in the Renaissance, the old-style hearth was usually located centrally under the smoke-hole in the roof, and the central supporting pillar or pillars were set close to it. The main pillar in pagan times corresponded to the World Pillar, round which the heavens appear to revolve and which links the Underworld, Middle-Earth, and the heavenly realms of the cosmos together. It also corresponds to the human spine, and the subtle passage therein known to yogis as the sushumna. An upright person has a straight spine and thus a direct link to the vigor of the ancestors. He or she can stand before the ancestors unashamed, with a record of honorable conduct.

In the old Roman religion, every man was born with a guiding spirit called his genius, and every woman a similar spirit called her juno. These were inner spirits, with a meaning originally connected in some way with sexual vigor, but later they became mixed with the Greek notion of a personal daimon who guided one through life. The connection of the genius with sleep and dream is suggested by the lectus genialis, located in the atrium just opposite the entrance-door. Rose conjectures that in the days of one-room houses it probably served as the marriage bed, hence its sexual significance; but in later times it persisted as a sacred furnishing that was reserved for the genius of the paterfamilias and never used by the house’s human occupants. Presumably the lady of the house had a similar place in the women’s quarters dedicated to her juno.

While we must do without a pillar in modern houses, we can set aside a special area in the home for meditation, and include a shrine to a personal guiding deity, giving external form to our indwelling genius or juno in the shape of an image if we prefer. A staff can be set up in a nearby corner to represent the pillar, perhaps with alternate red and white bands spiraling clockwise around it from the top to the bottom, like a Maypole. The main thing, of course, is to sit there with an erect spine, the seat being raised by one or two cushions.

If you offer to your patron or patroness (or directly to the genius or juno) as at the other shrines, ask for guidance or wisdom in both dreams and waking life. It is also good to do this before going to sleep. If you remember your dreams on awakening, take a few moments to ponder them and try to determine what the deity was saying to you. Even seemingly trivial dreams often contain a message if we take the time to examine them.

The Inner Pillar

As the World Pillar is the link between the realms of our cosmos and thus with the ancestors, so the inner pillar is our own personal link with them through memory. As we have seen, memory contains more than the record of events: Vesta at our inner hearth can recall past versions of ourselves, our feelings and impressions, our viewpoints, joys and fears, all the way back to birth, as well as that strange kind of nostalgia, with phantom images, associated with the distant past which we call far memory. Like the rings on a tree-trunk, these vital memories represent different stages of our growth-journey from the realm of the ancestors, and each is vitally available to the present moment.

It will come as no surprise, then, to learn that each man’s genius and each woman’s juno resides in the inner pillar of memory and has the job of guiding, not just our present selves, but each of these versions of ourselves, guiding all of them together. Thus, as Vesta calls back our previous selves and integrates them with our current self, the genius or juno shows us the path linking them, the plan our life has been following, and the living form of our self through time, of which our current self is the growing tip. For whereas the ancestors are concerned to help that growing tip, our current selves, with advice and vigor, our indwelling genius and juno are concerned with the growth of the whole plant, clear down to the roots. The journey down the inner pillar of memory, taken by the silent, inward-looking self, is not like a train-journey, which leaves behind each station as it travels to the next one. It is rather a projection of awareness from the present back through the past, uniting with the whole trunk of memory as it goes. As such, it is a preparation for the fuller integration that will take place in the Underworld after the death of the body.

In the Underworld the integrated soul will undergo further integration with its selves from previous lives. Thus, the answer to the question, “What age shall I be on the Other Side?” is “All ages to which you have attained.” This is expressed beautifully in the Lakota (Sioux) myth of Falling Star. It seems long ago there were two sisters who wished to marry stars when they grew up. Then, when they were about to go to bed, two men appeared outside the flap of their tepee:

“They were men, but they were not like other men, for they made the light they lived in, and there was no shadow where they stood. This light was soft and kind, and when the two men smiled, it spread about the sisters so that they were not afraid at all. Then they saw that one man was young and one was very old. The younger one was taller than any man the girls had ever seen; but the older one was even taller. I think he stood above the other like a tree, and the light which he made was that much brighter. He was old, old; but he was young too. I think he was older than the other because he had been young so much longer.”

Journeys down the inner pillar can take place in lucid dreams or in waking moments when inner silence begins to deepen on its own, spontaneously. The latter experience feels like being in an old elevator that has suddenly slipped its cable a little. There is a feeling of being lowered into deeper silence. Present sensations continue, but new senses open up, or perhaps feelings, for which we have no descriptions. These seem to be showing through the current landscape, if we are outside, that is. Time undergoes subtle changes as well, with the mind taking in more rapid details occurring, as it were, between successive instants of time. This continues until one has had enough and decides to re-surface into the everyday present.

Standing in the doorway and mentally echoing sounds just heard help to set up lucid dreaming. Additionally, after closing your eyes at night, instead of becoming immersed in thoughts, watch your phosphenes, the lights and shapes created by the pressure of the eyelids on the optic nerve. As we fall asleep, dream images will naturally become superimposed on our phosphenes; but if we fall asleep while watching instead of thinking, we shall watch the images in our dreams afterwards and be less caught up in the words of the dream-synopsis. When dream images become superimposed on phosphenes, it is like a door opening, and when it is fully open we are asleep and immersed in a dream. If we have watched our phosphenes change into dream-images, it is only a step further to realizing we are in a dream, when the journey down the inner pillar can commence.


Footnotes:
Bibliography

BERNSTEIN, Frances, Classical Living, San Francisco, Harper Collins, 2000.
ELIADE, Mircea, Shamanism; Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press, 1964.
HARDING, Douglas, On Having No Head, London and New York, Arkana , 1986.
JUNG, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, New York, Vintage Books, 1963.
NEIHARDT, John G., When the Tree Flowered, New York, Pocket Books, 1974.
OVID, Fasti, transl. by A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard, New York, Penguin Books,
2000.
ROSE, H. J., Religion in Greece and Rome, New York, Harper and Rowe, 1959.

How-dy! Happy Saturday To You All!

Funny Christmas Comments
I figured after being stomped on in the stores yesterday, you might need a little humor. How about that turkey? Sick of leftovers yet. I could eat turkey all year-long. I am kicking myself this year because I didn’t buy a big of turkey as usual. But hubby and I always get stuck with everything I have cooked. This year I didn’t, I have taken that as a compliment, lol! I was digging out the bones yesterday and I got to wondering if hubby would notice if I ran out and got another turkey and cooked it, lmao! I think he might notice that.  But I love my leftovers, we haven’t even had our first turkey sandwich yet. And if I don’t quit writing and thinking about it, I will be in the kitchen pigging out.

 

 So with thoughts of turkey dancing in my head, let’s see what Saturday is all about…..  

 

Saturday Is Ruled By Saturn

Saturday is ruled by the Roman God of the harvest and planting. New starts and firmly planting your seeds of intention or good focuses on Saturday. Other correspondences for Saturday are:

Ruling Planet: Saturn

Rituals: Disciplining ourselves.

Element: Earth

Colour: Black and sometimes purple

Number: 3

 
Magickal Graphics

Happy Friday to you all, dear friends!

Days Of The Week Comments

Couldn’t resist! I should say the above graphic only implies if you are shopping on this “Black” Friday, lmao! I don’t mind crowds but the crowds on this Friday are too much for me. I avoid all major shopping centers like the plague. But to all you hearty-die hard shoppers, good luck and I hope you get what you are shopping for. Now behave yourself and no tug-of-wars for that last fabulous buy!

 

Friday Is Ruled By Venus

 On Friday anything related to love and relationships will have good results when done this day, which is derived from the Goddess Frigg, the Norse patroness of fertility. Other correspondences for Friday are: 

Ruling Planet: Venus 

Rituals: Love, Attraction. 

Element: Water 

Colour: Green 

Number: 7 

Magickal Graphics

The Sacred Household: Rites and Mysteries

The Sacred Household: Rites and Mysteries

Author: Ian Elliott
To Joseph Brazauskas, a true pagan

The Threshold

The sacred household in ancient and more recent indigenous cultures bears certain analogies to the human body. The front door is similar to the eyes, the hearth to the heart or solar plexus, and the central supporting pillar to the spine. Shrines or altars at these locations were guarded by spirits who were linked with internal spirits in each family resident, and the proper worship of the household guardians involved being on familiar terms with their inner analogues and tending their inner shrines.

This study of the sacred household uses the names of Roman household spirits, but it is based more broadly on a number of other cultures. We no longer live in Roman houses, so some latitude must be taken in locating household shrines; and we are not all of Roman descent, so some attention must be paid to the forms of piety practiced by our ancestors from other lands.

It is not enough to study household rites and set up modern versions of ancient shrines. Our early conditioning separates us from some pre-verbal modes of awareness, by teaching us to ignore certain readily available perceptions; these must be recovered if we are to properly install our internal shrines and so link them with those of the household. I have called practices that open up these perceptions ‘mysteries, ’ because having been forgotten they have become secret things.

The Roman god of the threshold was Janus, who has two faces, one looking outside and the other inside the home, as well as forward and backward in time. To enter a house, as H.J. Rose pointed out in Religion in Greece and Rome, is to begin something, and so household piety always began by honoring Janus at the threshold. His annual festival was on January 9th, and offerings at his shrine were made on the Calends (the day after the dark moon of the lunar calendar) , as well at the beginning of any endeavor, such as a journey; also on one’s birthday.

The Romans, even after they came under Greek influence, were by preference an aniconic people; that is, they preferred worship without images. Perhaps this was because they focused on the link between the inner and outer shrines and found external images a distraction. I keep my own threshold shrine simple, hanging a god-face about a foot and a half above a small offering shelf, the shelf set next to the front door a little above eye-level. On the shelf is a candle, a stick incense holder, toy-sized dishes for water and salted grain.

Upon crossing the threshold one always steps over it, never on it, and one should touch the doorpost as an acknowledgement of the threshold guardian and to receive his numen. We can tentatively define numen as liberating and empowering energy that is unknown or at least unfamiliar.

My prayer when offering to Janus is the same as the one I used when setting up his shrine:

Honor and thanks to you, O Janus,
for guarding the threshold of my home.
May only harmonious beings enter here,
and may the discordant depart!
Please accept these offerings of salted grain, water, light and scent,
Open this week [month, journey, etc.] for me on blessings,
and teach me to look out and in at once as you do,
so I may guard the threshold of my inner home;
for I, too, am a threshold guardian.

The god-face for Janus looks straight in, as I prefer to imagine his head imbedded in the wall, with his outer face guarding the outside of my doorway.

The Inner Threshold

This ability to look out and in at the same time holds the clue to Janus’ mysteries, to the pre-verbal mode of perception that will give us the ability to look in the same manner, outward and inward simultaneously. To do this we must ‘stand in the doorway, ’ and Douglas Harding provided the best description of this in his important little book On Having No Head. Harding was hiking in the Himalayas and one morning he suddenly saw the world differently:

“…I stopped thinking…Past and future dropped away. There existed only the Now, that present moment and all that was given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in – absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.”

This nothing, however, was filled with everything: mountains, sky, valleys below, extending to the horizon. Harding felt light and liberated. He had ceased to ignore the sensations of his own headlessness, ending a habit acquired in infancy when told that ‘the baby in the mirror’ was merely his own reflection. In addition to his headlessness, he was now attending to the limits of his perceptual field. Consequently, he wasn’t tracking on this or that object, as we spend so much of our time doing, using our eyes as searchlights for our impulses and desires. Instead, he was looking at his whole visual field at once, and the lightness he felt resulted from dropping the burden of his eyes from incessant tracking, and of his mind from incessant thinking.

Indigenous peoples are aware of the difference between these two ways of looking at the world. When the psychologist C. G. Jung visited an Indian pueblo in the American Southwest years ago, he had a conversation with the local chief, Ochwiay Biano (his name means Mountain Lake) .

“The white man’s eyes are always restless, ” the chief told Jung. “He is always looking for something. We think he is mad.”
Jung asked him why they thought that.
“He says that he thinks with his head.”
“Why of course, ” answered Jung. “What do you think with?”
“We think here, ” he answered, indicating his chest.

There are two potential errors in assessing what Ochwiay Biano said. One is to take his words sentimentally, as if he were merely speaking of ‘heartfelt thinking.’ The other error would be to dismiss his words as expressions of a primitive, pre-scientific physiology. The Pueblo chief would not have been troubled to learn that Western science has determined through experiments that we think with our brains. This would have seemed to him irrelevant to what he was talking about, namely the sensation of where the thinker seems to be located in the body. We feel we are located in our heads because of certain muscular tensions around the eyes from tracking, and in our foreheads from ‘knitting our brows, ’ and performing other social cues indicative of taking thought. But these external muscular contractions, though spatially closer to the brain, are nevertheless external to it and involve muscles on the outside of the head. The feeling we get from them of being ‘in our heads, ’ therefore, is no more scientific than the feeling the Pueblo chief evidently got of being in his chest.

When we look at our headlessness, our chests come into view as the closest part of the body that is completely visible; and when mental talk quiets down as a result of tracking being replaced by restful awareness of the whole available visual field, words are employed only as and when necessary for external communication. The rest of the time one simply looks, listens and understands, and this quieter form of awareness allows feelings to come to the fore since they are no longer drowned out by incessant mental chatter. For these reasons, Ochwiay Biano felt that he thought in his chest, or solar plexus.

The Hearth

The ancients associated this part of the body, including the heart, with the hearth, and regarded it as the seat of memory. The hearth was the center of the home as well as the place of contact with ancestors. It was the place where the family gathered and traded experiences of the day, recalling in the process the words and deeds of the past. Without memory there is no family, even if the people living together are all related, as we know now that the hearth has been replaced by the television or computer as the central focus of the house, especially if meals are taken individually in the living room.

In the old days, the hearth gave heat and light to the home and was also where food was cooked. Nowadays some are fortunate enough to own a house with a fireplace, but they usually have a stove as well, so that the functions of the ancient hearth have become divided, and it is difficult to decide where to place the hearth shrine.

I have no fireplace where I live now, so my hearth shrine is near my stove. My stove is electric, but I keep a large candle in the shrine and light that, together with stick incense, when I want to awaken the hearth guardian. Additionally, I keep there somewhat larger versions of the offering dishes described above for the threshold shrine.

The hearth guardian is both a goddess and the hearth fire itself. In ancient Latium she was called Vesta. She accepts offerings for herself and also passes on some of them to the ancestors, godlings and blessed immortals. Because I cannot maintain a perpetual flame, I have a picture of her in my shrine, and close to her picture is a statuette of my family lar. The lar familiaris is an ithyphallic youth pouring wine from a wineskin into a chalice. He symbolizes the vigor and luck of my family line, and as such forms a link back to the ancestors, and onward to posterity. If I want to honor and pray to another deity, I can conveniently place his or her statue in the shrine for the occasion. This saves on shrines.

At the shrine or close by are photos of my parents and maternal grandmother. These are the ancestors who were my caregivers when I was small, and with whom I still share a bond of love. The Romans and other ancient peoples represented their ancestors by small clay figurines on the altar, as seen in some recent films.

When my offerings are laid out, I light the candle saying “Honor to fire, honor to Vesta, honor to the hearth.” Then I light the incense. Then I pray: “Holy Lady, please accept these offerings of salted grain and pure water, light and scent for thine own dear self, and pass on some to the lares and penates, the di manes, daimones and blessed gods, thanking them for their good regard for me and my family, and asking for a continuance of their favor.” To this basic prayer I add anything special for other deities.

While the fire is lit in the shrine, I call on my ancestors and talk to them. I let them know how things are going in the family with me, my sons and grandson, our concerns, blessings, problems and plans, just as I would if they were still in the flesh. If any of them has appeared recently in a dream, I thank him or her for the visit.

At the close of the rite, I bid farewell to ancestors and deities and extinguish the candle, letting the incense burn down. I say the opening prayer in reverse order, ending with “Honor to the hearth, honor to Vesta, honor to fire.” In Roman houses the hearth shrine was decorated with fresh flowers and offerings made at least three times in the lunar month: on the Calends, that is, the day after the dark moon; on the Nones, the ninth day before the full moon; and on the Ides or full moon itself. In Caesar’s solar calendar the Ides was regularized as the fifteenth of each month, which would place the Nones on the seventh.

The Inner Hearth

When we practice ‘standing in the doorway, ’ we naturally do not do so all the time, and this provides us with a contrast between the two modes of experience, so that we begin noticing things that were formerly invisible to us because they were constant. Some of these things are external to our minds, such as shadows and clouds, and some are internal. One of the internal things is the synopsis or background summary we take to experience, the mental account we refer to offhand when answering the common question “How is it going?” The synopsis is more readily observed in dreams, because it is different for each dream-story or sequence, whereas in waking life it is ongoing and only changes gradually except in moments of crisis.

When we enter a dream-story we generally enter in the middle of it, provided with a ready-made background that tells us where we are and what we are supposed to be doing. We are provided with dream-memories, sometimes selected from previous dreams (as in recurring dreams) , and unless we become aware we are dreaming, we do not question it or the actions of other dream-figures.

Similarly, in waking life we are generally absorbed by the problems and affairs of the moment, as supplied by an ongoing mental summary or synopsis. From this we derive our sense of who we are in the present and what we need to do. The synopsis is based on a selection of memories, and these change gradually unless we are in the throes of a crisis, in which case we need to revise our orientation, sometimes on the basis of earlier memories, in order to cope with the situation. At times our synopsis can become so obsessive that we throw it over in a breakdown and temporarily become disoriented.

Standing in the doorway provides a milder sort of disorientation, as the contrast between it and our usual awareness brings the operation of the synopsis to the forefront of attention. Then, as in the onset of lucid dreaming (when we suddenly realize we are dreaming) , we become free to question who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to be doing in the present moment. The process of interpreting present experience in terms of our usual selection of memories is suspended, and earlier memories are able to surface, bringing with them earlier feelings of ourselves and of life, derived from past synopses. This is a familiar experience when we go on a trip, especially if we visit old neighborhoods we haven’t seen in many years, and perhaps explains why we like to take such trips after surmounting a difficult crisis.

Vesta’s power to call up the ancestors from old memories works in a similar way, and when our focus of awareness has moved to the chest or solar plexus, continual standing in the doorway can help her to perform the same feat for us at our inner hearth, especially if we augment our headless attention with another pre-verbal mode of awareness involving sound.

The first stage is to listen to all the sounds around us, without dividing them into ‘background’ and ‘foreground’. This comes about naturally once our visual attention rests on the limits of the visual field instead of tracking on this or that object. It is easy for the attention to waver, however, so the focus on sounds must be augmented by mentally copying sounds just heard.

Small children learn to speak by mentally copying sounds, and there is reason to believe that animals do something similar. Mentally copying sounds and associating them with specific situations would seem to have been a major part of humanity’s pre-verbal thought processes.

Once we learn to speak, and to speak to ourselves, mental mimicry of sounds is relegated to a minor role and generally limited to copying sounds for which we have words. When we begin ‘thinking with the chest, ’ like Ochwiay Biano, our minds become quieter and we become aware of feelings and images for which we have no words, not because they are ineffable, but simply because no words have yet been assigned to those experiences. Consider smells, for instance. We have many words for colors and quite a few for sounds, but our olfactory vocabulary is very limited. If a dog could be taught to speak, he would find himself at a loss to describe the many odors in his daily experience. If he invented words for the many different odors, we would find it hard to understand him, lacking referents because we are purblind in our noses.

In the same way, this particular sound I have just heard has no precise word describing it. We can say, ‘that is the sound of a car engine, ’ as we say ‘that is a tree, ’ and ignore sensory detail in either case. Our everyday minds can deal with such thumbnail descriptions without having to disturb the selection of memories forming a background to our moment-to-moment synopsis. But if we mentally repeat the precise sound of that car that just went by, our memory background is rendered more porous, as it would become in a crisis, so that feelings and images from past memories are able to emerge.

I tried mentally echoing sounds just heard as an experiment in 1972, while walking along a busy street in Encanto, California. I was also keeping my sunglass frames in view, an earlier version of ‘standing in the doorway’. I did this for an hour or more, and recorded the results in a journal:

“The result of this double exercise was three full days, not counting sleep, in silent awareness of total sensation…At one point the feeling of lightness became like a breeze flowing through my body from back to front. Everything seemed to take on a bluish tinge…By the third day, the breeze had risen to a light wind and was blowing through my memories. My personal history, the sense of who I am, was being shuffled like a deck of cards…By the end of the third day the wind set me down somewhere else in myself; that is, my store of familiar memories was completely revised and my feeling of myself permanently changed from that point on.”

After this experience, my dead grandmother began visiting me regularly in my dreams. I noticed that in many of these dreams I appeared to be younger, and to feel as I did when she was still alive, but my understanding was linked to the present. It was common to realize at the time that I was dreaming, if not at first then as the dream progressed, for I would remember that she had died. These earlier feelings of myself, and of my grandmother when she was alive, enhanced a feeling of harmony with her and allowed us to converse in close intimacy. However, as I had no unresolved issues with her, there was nothing specific to work through. I usually asked her how she was, and she said fine, but she felt tired a lot, and this probably came from memories of her as she was towards the end of her life.

My practices of the threshold and hearth continued over the next several years, and long after my father died I did have some serious issues to work through with him. This took about three years to get through, during which time I was periodically out of work (I was doing contract programming and moving around a lot) . In both dream and waking I agreed with my father to resolve certain problems for good with him in exchange for obtaining help in finding employment. On each of three occasions, I received job offers within twenty-four hours of these conversations. Skeptics may make of this what they will; but taking the view that I was in contact with the spirits of my ancestors, it makes sense that they would find it easier to relate to me after I had recovered earlier feelings of myself and of them, which I had when, they were still alive.

The Pillar

Before chimneys came into general use in the Renaissance, the old-style hearth was usually located centrally under the smoke-hole in the roof, and the central supporting pillar or pillars were set close to it. The main pillar in pagan times corresponded to the World Pillar, round which the heavens appear to revolve and which links the Underworld, Middle-Earth, and the heavenly realms of the cosmos together. It also corresponds to the human spine, and the subtle passage therein known to yogis as the sushumna. An upright person has a straight spine and thus a direct link to the vigor of the ancestors. He or she can stand before the ancestors unashamed, with a record of honorable conduct.

In the old Roman religion, every man was born with a guiding spirit called his genius, and every woman a similar spirit called her juno. These were inner spirits, with a meaning originally connected in some way with sexual vigor, but later they became mixed with the Greek notion of a personal daimon who guided one through life. The connection of the genius with sleep and dream is suggested by the lectus genialis, located in the atrium just opposite the entrance-door. Rose conjectures that in the days of one-room houses it probably served as the marriage bed, hence its sexual significance; but in later times it persisted as a sacred furnishing that was reserved for the genius of the paterfamilias and never used by the house’s human occupants. Presumably the lady of the house had a similar place in the women’s quarters dedicated to her juno.

While we must do without a pillar in modern houses, we can set aside a special area in the home for meditation, and include a shrine to a personal guiding deity, giving external form to our indwelling genius or juno in the shape of an image if we prefer. A staff can be set up in a nearby corner to represent the pillar, perhaps with alternate red and white bands spiraling clockwise around it from the top to the bottom, like a Maypole. The main thing, of course, is to sit there with an erect spine, the seat being raised by one or two cushions.

If you offer to your patron or patroness (or directly to the genius or juno) as at the other shrines, ask for guidance or wisdom in both dreams and waking life. It is also good to do this before going to sleep. If you remember your dreams on awakening, take a few moments to ponder them and try to determine what the deity was saying to you. Even seemingly trivial dreams often contain a message if we take the time to examine them.

The Inner Pillar

As the World Pillar is the link between the realms of our cosmos and thus with the ancestors, so the inner pillar is our own personal link with them through memory. As we have seen, memory contains more than the record of events: Vesta at our inner hearth can recall past versions of ourselves, our feelings and impressions, our viewpoints, joys and fears, all the way back to birth, as well as that strange kind of nostalgia, with phantom images, associated with the distant past which we call far memory. Like the rings on a tree-trunk, these vital memories represent different stages of our growth-journey from the realm of the ancestors, and each is vitally available to the present moment.

It will come as no surprise, then, to learn that each man’s genius and each woman’s juno resides in the inner pillar of memory and has the job of guiding, not just our present selves, but each of these versions of ourselves, guiding all of them together. Thus, as Vesta calls back our previous selves and integrates them with our current self, the genius or juno shows us the path linking them, the plan our life has been following, and the living form of our self through time, of which our current self is the growing tip. For whereas the ancestors are concerned to help that growing tip, our current selves, with advice and vigor, our indwelling genius and juno are concerned with the growth of the whole plant, clear down to the roots. The journey down the inner pillar of memory, taken by the silent, inward-looking self, is not like a train-journey, which leaves behind each station as it travels to the next one. It is rather a projection of awareness from the present back through the past, uniting with the whole trunk of memory as it goes. As such, it is a preparation for the fuller integration that will take place in the Underworld after the death of the body.

In the Underworld the integrated soul will undergo further integration with its selves from previous lives. Thus, the answer to the question, “What age shall I be on the Other Side?” is “All ages to which you have attained.” This is expressed beautifully in the Lakota (Sioux) myth of Falling Star. It seems long ago there were two sisters who wished to marry stars when they grew up. Then, when they were about to go to bed, two men appeared outside the flap of their tepee:

“They were men, but they were not like other men, for they made the light they lived in, and there was no shadow where they stood. This light was soft and kind, and when the two men smiled, it spread about the sisters so that they were not afraid at all. Then they saw that one man was young and one was very old. The younger one was taller than any man the girls had ever seen; but the older one was even taller. I think he stood above the other like a tree, and the light which he made was that much brighter. He was old, old; but he was young too. I think he was older than the other because he had been young so much longer.”

Journeys down the inner pillar can take place in lucid dreams or in waking moments when inner silence begins to deepen on its own, spontaneously. The latter experience feels like being in an old elevator that has suddenly slipped its cable a little. There is a feeling of being lowered into deeper silence. Present sensations continue, but new senses open up, or perhaps feelings, for which we have no descriptions. These seem to be showing through the current landscape, if we are outside, that is. Time undergoes subtle changes as well, with the mind taking in more rapid details occurring, as it were, between successive instants of time. This continues until one has had enough and decides to re-surface into the everyday present.

Standing in the doorway and mentally echoing sounds just heard help to set up lucid dreaming. Additionally, after closing your eyes at night, instead of becoming immersed in thoughts, watch your phosphenes, the lights and shapes created by the pressure of the eyelids on the optic nerve. As we fall asleep, dream images will naturally become superimposed on our phosphenes; but if we fall asleep while watching instead of thinking, we shall watch the images in our dreams afterwards and be less caught up in the words of the dream-synopsis. When dream images become superimposed on phosphenes, it is like a door opening, and when it is fully open we are asleep and immersed in a dream. If we have watched our phosphenes change into dream-images, it is only a step further to realizing we are in a dream, when the journey down the inner pillar can commence.

Footnotes:
Bibliography

BERNSTEIN, Frances, Classical Living, San Francisco, Harper Collins, 2000.
ELIADE, Mircea, Shamanism; Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press, 1964.
HARDING, Douglas, On Having No Head, London and New York, Arkana , 1986.
JUNG, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, New York, Vintage Books, 1963.
NEIHARDT, John G., When the Tree Flowered, New York, Pocket Books, 1974.
OVID, Fasti, transl. by A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard, New York, Penguin Books,
2000.
ROSE, H. J., Religion in Greece and Rome, New York, Harper and Rowe, 1959.

Today’s Goddess: Diana

Today’s Goddess: Diana

Festival of Diana (Rome)
 
Themes: Fertility; Children; Providence; Abundance; Harvest
Symbols: Moon; Water; Forest Items; Sun
 
About Diana: This Roman goddess embodies the moon’s fertility and watery aspects,
along with the sun’s protective and nurturing power over the forests and its creatures.
On this day she was celebrated in Rome, and she will be remembered in our hearts
as the huntress who helps us capture the spiritual “food” we need.
 
To Do Today: Starting on August 13, the Romans had a weeklong festival for Diana,
praying to her for the harvest’s bounty, and to turn damaging storms away. The traditional
place to leave an offering of fruit or vines for her is in the forest, or at a crossroads.
 
As you do, if any stone or leaf catches your eye, pick it up and carry it as a charm
that will keep Diana’s power with you that entire day. Come night, release the gift to
flowing water or back to the earth with a prayer of thanks and a wish for one of Diana’s
attributes that you wish to develop in your life.
 
It is also customary to light some fire source to honor her on August 15 or anytime during
the festivities. Afterward, to generate this goddess’s physical or figurative fertility within you,
follow Roman convention and wash your hair with specially prepared water (water to which
just a little milk is added so that it looks white, like the moon). If you have children, doing
this for them incurs Diana’s protection over their lives.
.

By Patricia Telesco~ From “365 Goddess”

Meditation for August 17th – The Life-Force

By meditating on things in a certain way, we can sometimes catch a glimpse of their aura. To try this focus your attention on a plant. closely observe its shape and form. Now shut your eyes and take several deep breaths. When you open your eyes, look for pulsing patterns of energy around the edge of the plant. Adjust your focus, allowing your imagination to play a little. With practice you may develop a form of inner seeing that allows you to see the life-force within living things.

Looking Both Ways Meditation

Looking Both Ways Meditation

 
Janu, the Roman God of thresholds, provides an appropriate focus for reflection when you are embarking upon a new phase in your life. He is often depicted with two faces — one of a child looking forward into the future and one of a bearded old man looking back into the past. Visualize yourself standing in a doorway, on the threshold of your new venture. Standing beside you is Janus. Looking behind you, survey your past and ask the old face of Janus to recount the most important lessons you have gathered from your previous experiences. Then look forward and ask the young face of Janus for some positive energy for the future. Encouraged by his hopefulness, set out on your journey.

 

Hiring a God: Selecting a Patron Deity

Hiring a God: Selecting a Patron Deity

Author: Chirotus Infinitum

So you’re a pagan now! Fun and exciting times await, full of mystery, magic, and maybe a skyclad ritual with the hottie working at the occult bookstore. For some, the magic and mystique are enough, but many take their new religion seriously. The religious aspects of paganism can be a little difficult to wade through, however, whether you’ve just started or even if you’ve been slinging spells for years. Many pagan traditions – branches of Wicca included – allow the adherents to choose his/her own patron deity. Given the wealth of religious traditions and pantheons pagans have access to this can prove a daunting task.

The first point that must be addressed is the importance of research. If you really want to devote yourself to a god, you should find out all you can. You should look up what pantheon he belongs to, who his friends and enemies are, how he was worshipped, and what is sacred to him. If at all possible, rely upon academic sources, as modern paganism is rife with fluffery and politically altered ideals of the gods. You’re better off establishing a solid link with a deity by finding out what we know of how past worshippers regarded that deity, rather than contemporary conceptions which may be watered down and edited for content. With that consideration in mind, let’s audition some gods.

The first thing you may want to consider is what pantheon you want to follow. Sure, some traditions ascribe to the belief that you can mix and match from different pantheons, but I’ve found that staying with a particular group of deities allows for significantly more self-consistency and a deeper meaning for the myths and lore attached to your personal deity. So what strikes your mood? Your personality? Your interests and passions?

A person who is physically active and aggressive may appreciate Norse pantheons more. An intellectual might find a Greek or Roman pantheon more appealing. Traditionalists could find all they need in the pseudo-pantheon of the Qabalah. Those with a flair for the exotic might look to ancient Egypt. Chaos Magicians might think that Voltron looks pretty cool this week. The point is not just that there are many options, but that each pantheon has a specific flavor to it that may appeal to you more than others.

Next you will probably want to look at what roles and areas of influence are sacred to certain gods. These associations are most likely to speak to your passions. Is home and hearth most important to your life? Academic success? Is much of your time spent in pursuit of the opposite (or same) sex? Various pantheons have different gods that fill these roles, but they are generally covered by someone. An artist working in the Greek pantheon might gravitate toward Apollo, while someone who parties all the time may find Dionysus more appealing. Again, do your research, as you may be surprised what gods are associated with what fields. A geologist may find more in common with Poseidon than Gaea!

If you’ve narrowed down your search for a patron deity, you may now want to consider how that deity relates to others, both in and out of its pantheon. A follower of Ares may want to be cautious in dealing with Hephaestus. Yahweh isn’t known for playing well with others. The devotee of Hera needs to watch she’s not too friendly with any of Zeus’ illegitimate children, but the follower of Zeus may want to include Hera in certain festivities. The gods have friends and enemies, just as we do. They may appreciate us extending courtesies to friends, but may frown upon associating with enemies.

Once you’ve taken into account matters of divine friends and foes, you might want to look at a calendar. Many gods have certain times of year associated with them, and some have particular feast days. You may even want to consider feast days of other gods in the pantheon than may be best celebrated or avoided. Certain times of the day may be more appropriate to make offerings than others. Devotion can be very time-consuming, and while I’m sure that most gods will allow for some schedule conflicts, you’ll want to keep matters of time and seasonality in mind.

So you’ve picked your god, know who he likes and dislikes, and have an idea of what times are best for you two to get together. How are you going to facilitate that? What should be included on an altar or shrine? The design of the altar should be appropriate to the gods in question, and should probably include materials and objects sacred to your chosen deity. Perhaps some gold plated censors will be nice for your Apollo shrine? A battery-powered mini-fountain might be nice for Neptune. Statuary might be appropriate as well (and easier to find) . Will your altar have candles, incense, or both? Perhaps a vessel for burning herbs? A god who liked animal sacrifices in the good old days may appreciate a barbeque grill dedicated to him.

This brings up another issue as well – how best to honor your god. Are prayers and daily devotions enough, or will your god want incense (the right kind!) burned regularly? Appropriate celebrations for feast days should be considered as well – while it might be fun, holding a full-scale Bacchanalia might be problematic. Perhaps a good party with an opening and closing ritual will suffice. Or perhaps not.

Issues of worship and divine associations bring up another important matter: the myths and stories that surround your patron deity. These stories help describe the personality of your god and those he cavorts with, and helps explain why he does what he does and rules what he rules. Such myths can inform how you set up your altar, what days you hold sacred, and what prayers and songs you may recite. These myths can also illustrate important associations and moral ideals that relate to your god, which can influence your daily actions and means of showing devotion.

A devotee to Hermes might carry silver coins in his pockets as a symbolic gesture, but he might also act as a grief counselor for those who have lost loved ones. Living one’s life according to mythical examples is paramount to Christianity, and can have positive results for pagans as well. Of course, depending on the myths you pick, you could run in to problems as well.

Settling down with a particular patron deity will assuredly have effects on how you live your life. Regular devotion will probably take some time from your day, and you may be mindful of things you hadn’t considered before. Close interaction with a god can change the way you see things, or the way you respond to things. Your religious understandings – about your place in the world, and how you should live – will most likely, and probably should, change as you continue to develop your relationship with your chosen divinity.

Any magical practice you may have will also be affected, as certain associations may become stronger or weaker, and as certain areas of magical work become more or less allowable. The symbols and tools you use should be appropriate to whatever pantheon and deity you chose, and care should be taken to avoid altering them too much (at least without appropriate divine consultation) .

One thing that should be considered at length, though, is what you hope to gain from your new relationship. Are you choosing a particular god who demonstrates a quality you have in abundance, and seek to honor through that quality? Or are you hoping that devotion to a god representing a quality you lack will result in personal improvement? Is it your hope that devotion to a specific god will result in rewards, such as luck from Jupiter or love from Venus? Or are you just looking for a deeper connection to the divine, through a form you can relate with well? Consideration of what your expectations are is important, especially with regard to the character of the gods you’ve chosen. Will your particular god be receptive to your goal, or will he laugh at you and smote you? Just remember, Cthulhu eats his worshippers too.

So now you’ve done all this work. You’ve selected a pantheon that appeals to you. You picked a god that seems appropriate to your passions and loves. You’ve met his friends and family and shunned his enemies. You set up a nice place to visit him from, and found out what kind of offerings he likes. You know when he likes to play and when he’s not to be bothered, and hopefully you know how he’ll respond when you ask him for something. What now?

Well, submit an application and wait for a reply.

Any effort to connect with a deity can prove challenging, and it may take a while before a strong bond is formed. At some point, though, you should expect some sign of acceptance from your patron deity. This may be a feeling of comfort after a ritual, an inexplicable lack of injury from a severe car wreck, or maybe just a feeling of coming home to a god you’ve always been fascinated by. Or, it may not come, and you may feel uncomfortable with your choice after practicing for a while. Your chosen god may instead send you a sign to chose another, and may even be polite enough to show you who. Openness to divine input should be part of any devotion – just be aware that sometime the message might be, “go away.”

The decision to devote yourself to a particular patron deity should not be taken lightly. Careful research and consideration should accompany all phases of the process, from the initial attraction of a particular pantheon to the final details of a sacred feast. What should be remembered is that no matter how we chose to relate to the divine, the divine will guide us in the way it sees fit, and openness to that counts for far more than adherence to a ritual schedule.

Deity of the Day

Venus (Roman)

Moon Goddess; patroness of vegetation and flowers.  She was strong, proud and loving.  She was also called virginal, meaning that she remained independent; her priestesses were not physical virgins.  Goddess of love, beauty, the joy of physical love, fertility, continued creation, renewal, herbal magic and romance.