The Gods of Misery

"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.

In Praise of Venus

"Venus healing Aeneas" by Blondel (19th century)

In Greco-Roman mythology only Venus has the power to disarm Mars, whom we associate with violence, or to sooth Vulcan’s destructive and potentially life extinguishing fires. Even today, the white doves of Venus are the foremost symbol of peace. Venus also shared her love with the quick-witted Mercury and thereby bore he whom we think of as the masculine aspect of love – Cupid. Interestingly in Germanic mythology we see a related pairing – Woden, God of wisdom (equated in ancient times with Mercury), is paired with Frija, Goddess of love – surely Venus in another guise. It seems to me that when the two Gods merge we find the highest state of being arises – the Buddha himself said that wisdom (prajna) and love (maitri) are conjoined paths to enlightenment.

Germanic Pagan Lego

Here follows a Lego tribute to the traditional Germanic Gods. The Gods depicted immediately below are meant to depict (from left to right): Heimdall (with a red shield), Freyr (horned), Freyja (in purple), Thor (with red hair), Loki (in the back), Odin (bearded), Skadi (blue shield) and Tyr. Of course there are many more Germanic deities than this.*

Source: brickshelf.com

Paganism for Children

Goddess of wild animals, forests, the hunt and the moon -
Diana / Artemis, by xx12taylorxx.deviantart.com

This post is devoted to helping older children to understand what Paganism is. Pagans have a wide range of views and not all Pagans will agree with everything written on this page – which is fine. Paganism  embraces an open, not a closed, view of the world and can incorporate a wide range of different beliefs and practices – which makes it both very wonderful and very hard to describe. I have attempted to not use too many complex words, so that everyone can easily understand it – and disagree with it, if they want to.

What Paganism is

Paganism means different things to different people, but the one thing that almost all Pagans agree on is that the natural world includes sacred, or divine, forces and that it is good to show respect for the sacred forces, or spirits, that exist in nature – because as humans we are part of nature. When we show respect for the natural world we show respect for ourselves and the entire universe in which we live. Many Pagans understand that the most powerful divine forces of nature are Gods – which includes Goddesses. By tapping into the power of the Gods we can improve our own daily lives. As the Gods are powerful they can help us achieve the things we want.

Messenger Animals as Omens

An owl in England (source: neo polytheist)

For me, being open minded about the potentiality of omens is part of polytheistic practice – omens being signs from the Gods indicating their will, favour or disfavour, as well as being divine signals indicating present or near future auspiciousness or inauspiciousness. In ancient Rome divination of omens could take any number of forms but the most common methods included observing the manner of the flight of birds; observing the way that birds ate; studying the state of the internal organs of sacrificial animals (haruspicy); analysing one’s dreams, and being alert to the import of unusual natural phenomena (Shelton at 375; Turcan at 15; Kamm at 83-84). Tacitus records  that as well as the casting of lots, which appears to be an early form of reading the runes, the following means of divination were common amongst the ancient Germanic tribes:

Salus – Health and Well Being

"Hygieia" (the Hellenic Salus) by Klimt (1900)

Salus is the Goddess of safety, health, well being and, according to some translations, salvation. If we think of the English word deriving from her name – salubrious – we get an idea of who she is. The Arval Brothers, priests in charge of public sacrifices made for the well being of Rome, prayed and made offerings to her not just for the safety of the city of Rome but also for the health and fertility of the entire Roman community, including its animals and farms (Beard et al, Religions of Rome: Volume 1 at 52). The Nones/fifth of August was the day on which she was honoured most, with circus games and the public sacrifice of a cow (Beard et al, Religions of Rome: Volume 2 at 73). She was revered from at least as early as the 4th century BCE, with her temple on the Quirinal Hill being founded in 302 BCE (Rüpke, Religion of the Romans at 55). In the 4th century CE her temple in Rome still stood – despite being twice hit by lightning, in 276 and 206 BCE, and damaged by fire in the 1st century CE (and then restored) – and she appeared on Roman coinage up until the reign of the Christian emperor Constantine I (Rüpke, A Companion to Roman Religion at 162; Platner, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome). In her public aspect she was known as Salus Publica and even Salus Augusti – for during the imperial era the well being of the emperor was equated with the well being of Rome as a whole (Lipka, Roman Gods at 95). Another title was Salus Romana – Ovid briefly mentions that an offering should be made to her, alongside Janus, Concordia (Goddess of peaceful agreement) and Pax (Goddess of peace), on 30 March (Ovid, Fasti, Book 3). It may be that the three Goddesses shared a temple founded on that date (Boyle and Woodard’s notes to the Penguin edition of Ovid, Fasti at 229); at the very least we know there were statues of these Goddesses in Rome, erected by Augustus (Wiseman’s notes to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Ovid, Fasti at 136).

Shamanism

Korean Shaman. Source: people.cohums.ohio-state.edu

A month or so ago I got talking to a fellow I know who had just come back from South Korea – he was a little drunk, which was fortunate as it opened up a bridge of uninhibited communication between us via which we landed on the fascinating topic of Shamanism. He told me he had been to Shamanic ceremonies in Korea and proceeded to describe them. I can’t recall his exact words but what really hooked me in was the fact that he was describing Shamanism as a living tradition. I had recently been reading about the Shamanistic religions of the former nomads of northern Europe, but it was all in the past tense. What he described was a continuing, unbroken tradition practiced by people of our own times who are not wildly different from ourselves – I can’t say I think of Koreans as exotic (there are a lot of Koreans in Sydney). Following our fascinating conversation, I got my hands on the most reputable book on Shamanism I could find. It is by Piers Vitebsky, who is described as “an anthropologist and head of Social Sciences at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge”. Most of the information, and all page citations with no other referencing, in this post are sourced from this book, published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2001.

Vesta of the Hearth

"The Vestal" by Frederic Leighton (1883)

For Romans Vesta was the great protecting deity; this is why ancient Romans were so concerned to keep her sacred flame alive and attended by the most important of all Roman priestesses – the Vestal Virgins.

“The Vestals were clearly set apart from the other priestly groups. Six priestesses, chosen in childhood, they lived in a special house next to the temple of Vesta. They had all kinds of privileges … they were responsible for tending the sacred fire, on the sacred hearth of their temple; they guarded their storehouse (penus) and they ritually cleaned it out and expelled the dirt … There is an obvious parallel between Vesta, the hearth of the city, and the hearths of individual families – the priestesses of the state apparently representing the women of the household …     

It may be that the key to the Vestals’ sacred status lies precisely in its ambiguity: they are paraded as sharing the characteristics of both matrons and virgins, with even some characteristics … of men too. It is a pattern observed in many societies that people and animals deemed ‘interstitial’, those who fall between the categories into which the world is usually divided, are often also regarded as sacred, powerful or holy.

Buddhist Tattoos

Thai Buddhist monk receiving a sak yant tattoo
Source: peaceloveandtea.tumblr.com

Given the popularity of my earlier posts on tattoos and my familiarity with Buddhism I thought I would do a post on Buddhist tattoos. I note that many devout Buddhists, especially Theravada Buddhists in south and southeast Asia (who make up nearly 40% of the Buddhist population worldwide), may be offended by certain kinds of Buddhist tattoos, so it may be an idea to get one in a place that is easily covered by clothing. Tattoos depicting the Buddha himself are the most likely to offend, as are tattoos below the waist, especially those near the foot. Western tourists sporting Buddhist tattoos in Sri Lanka have even been deported and in 2011 the Thai Ministry of Culture instigated a crack down on Thai tattoo parlours so to prevent Western tourists receiving Buddhist tattoos, and thereby (in the eyes of some) trivialising Buddhist iconography, by (supposedly) reducing sacred images to mere fashion statements. While I don't doubt there are people out there who have chosen Buddhist designs for essentially frivolous reasons, I do think those who are offended by Buddhist tattoos on Westerners may be underestimating the reverence many Westerners have for Buddhism; as well as misunderstanding Western attitudes to tattoos in general. I feel sure that many Westerners who get such tattoos, even those who don't fully appreciate their provenance, are trying to tap into and comprehend the sacred, as well as Buddhist teachings more generally.