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| "Nott" (Germanic Goddess of Night) by Arbo (19th century) |
When misery comes at first one struggles
against it. One tries to make things right, shake it off, force a smile, rise
above it all and be kind and open hearted. Then hour by hour and day by day one
somehow forgets how to be happy. Dull resentment, a sense of isolation and a
sort of hopeless surrender to melancholia entrenches itself. One stops trying …
and one stops crying. At this point one is lost in misery – yes, Gods of
darkness and depression, it is easy to have faith in you.
But who are these Gods? To start off with
we acknowledge that any God that can give a blessing can take that same
blessing away – thus, for example, Apollo is the God of both healing and disease. In a similar vein, Ovid
tells us that ancient Roman farmers made offerings to the God of wheat leaf rust,
Robigo, not because they wanted Robigo to visit their crops, but to persuade
her to stay away from them. It follows then that if we honour the Gods of
misery, perhaps we can placate them, perhaps they will leave our sides sooner,
though some of us, let’s be honest, take some kind of enjoyment in their
company, lugubrious though it is.
