Introduction to: The Goddess Eostre (Video)

Introduction to the Germanic goddess Eostre, as a continuation of the previous video about the Vernal equinox (Spring). A better understanding of the pagan celebrations of this season which gave birth to the origins of the christian celebration of Easter. Also, the connection between the "Easter Bunny" and the Eggs. Tack för idag! :D

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The Oracle of Delphi

One of the things that has always fascinated me the most, were the tales of oracles, prophetesses of the ancient world, sorcerers and so on. When I turn my studies to ancient Greece, I cannot help but to go and delve a little bit more into the knowledge of the oracle of Delphi. So let us leave the north of Europe for a time and go south into the ancient world of heroes and strange myths.

Situated south-west of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis, Delphi was a Greek city associated with the god Apollo. According to the legends, the hill was guarded by a giant serpent called Python, who was a follower of the cult of Gaia (the goddess or the personification of Earth). After killing Python, the god Apollo claimed Delphi as his own sanctuary. 

Every myth has its own truths; metaphores protecting the culture and tradition of a people. So this mythological account might well be based on actual events. Historically and archaeologicaly speaking, during the Mycenaean period (14 th-11th centuries B.C.) there were small settlements in Delphi dedicated to the Earth-Mother as a deity. However, the worshipping of Apollo was established between the 11th and the 9th centuries B.C. By the 8th century B.C. the city of Delphi was already renowned amongst the peoples of the ancient world as a place of prophetic powers held by the Pythia.

"Pythia" was the name given to any priestess throughout the history of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The priestess, apparently, was a woman over fifty years of age, lived apart from her husband and dressed in a maiden’s clothes. It's described to us that the ritual of the Pythia during the call of her prophecies required her to first enter the inner chamber of the temple, then she would sit on a tripod and inhale the light hydrocarbon gasses that escape from a chasm in which the temple was build. After falling into a trance, she would mutter words impossible to understand (at least to mere mortals). These words were thereafter interpreted by the priests of the sanctuary in a common language and delivered to those who had requested the prophecies of the Pythia. But of course, these prophecies were always open to interpretation and often signified dual and opposing meanings.

Some interpretations of the prophecies were just what people needed to hear to convince themselves to go to war or fight a specific battle; and as you might imagine, sometimes it went terribly wrong. Nevertheless, some prophecies were accurate and things did happen the way the prophecies had been translated and interpreted. Coincidence? Perhaps, but there were major events that were just too great to be mere coincidence. Nowadays our society has deprived us all of the magic and mystery of the world and what lies beyond conciousness. So I will just leave this post here and you decide what to make of prophecies, although I must say, sometimes there are forces at work greater than our desires and certain paths must be taken before we reach our true goals with success.

The Goddess Perchta

It's clear that there are thousands of deities we never heard of, and honestly, its quite impossible to know them all since many don't even have names or descritpions because it was lost in time. However, there are certain deities we can talk about even if the knowledge about such gods is a bit tiny but it might lead us to a better understanding, and who knows we might even find out more about them.

Today I will talk about the goddess Perchta, or at least everything I know about such a deity, which is little unfortunatelly, but it's just to expand the horizons and to let you know that there are loads of deities which are very interesting and people seldom talk about them.

Perchta is a birch goddess, well, a deity linked to this specific tree which shows at first a connection to the Celtic folklore. Perchta, Berchta or even Percht,  is a goddess belonging to the Alpine paganism (which is another sort of paganism we seldom hear of). The Alpine region is very rich in folklore and traditions dating back to the celts, gauls and germanic tribes, because it's a place right between these cultures and the peoples of this region soaked up different European spiritual beliefs and cultures, transforming it into something unique and quite interesting to study.

This goddess is the patron of spinning, and it is said she once led the Wild Hunt during the winter (her connection to the germanic spiritual beliefs). She is very similar to the germanic goddess Holda and the Norse one Friga/Frigg. However, it is said that she appears in two forms: as beautiful young woman with skin as white as snow, and another, elderly and haggard. There might also be a connection here with the Norse deity of the underworld - Hela/Hel - which also changes her appearance likewise, although more skeleton-like. This might mean that this goddess is in fact a deity that combines different spiritual beliefs and works as a sort of spiritual ambassador to unite different cultures in understanding one another through spiritual practice.

Some of her worshippers comprised a Mystery cult, which is hard to know what exactly was about and how the rituals were held. Her worshippers became possessed by the dead, or by the Goddess herself, in a ritual apparently related to her procession as leader of the Wild Hunt. 

Her name is definatly connected to the goddess Bertha, which is just another deity (or the same) connected with spinning and weaving. I would say this goddess through time became more of a household worship kind of deity rather than a goddess worshiped in the forests, but it's certain that she started to be a goddess from the wild probably connected with death and winter.

So Perchta might have been a goddess connected with the underworld, death, winter and the wild hunt. A very powerful goddess, both feared and loved, but probably due to the coming of christianity her cult might have been kept under secret within the family environment, thus slowly becoming a household deity.

Cybele The first goddess

Throughout the history of humankind there has always been many deities to explain each thing in the natural world. At first, the tribes worked with shamanic pratices ( which many tribal communities still do nowadays ) and the powers of divine were seen in nature and each animal was sacred, each animal had abilities and a way of dealing with life itself in a particular way, and such abilties and gift we humans also needed, so by watching how nature worked, we did the same, and there was what we call Totemism, a community belief in which every human is thought to have a strong spiritual connection  with an animal, be it a physical or a spirit animal, each person would have a Totem and follow its wisdom. But then those divine powers started to appear in the form of human beings, and that human shape of the divine spread through many cultures worldwide, there were thousands of gods and goddesses and that gave birth to religions, some more complex than others, as the human mind evolved, so did the gods and so did the necessity of explaining other complex things of the universe. But the figure of a goddess has always been present, a figure that comes from the Neolithic and even before that, the Mother goddess of the Earth,, of fertility, the goddess who gave birth to all and even to the gods. We see many of these statuettes through time and the cult of this mother goddess lived through the ages and had great adhesion in many cultures, such was this adhesion that religions were formed around her.
To our days comes the name of Cybele, the goddess mother of all men, goddess of the earth and fertility, giver of life and sustenance, a goddess who makes the synthesis of previous various religious realities. She is the goddess of all and this figure was created according to the cults of the earth goddess that comes since time immemorial, Cybele was created in the central area of the Turkish peninsula, the zone where Phrygia was. Since she was also a goddess of rebirth, her cult was around the 4th of April during Spring time. There is even the myth of Attis the shepherd, when the goddess Cybele fell in love with him and made him her priest with the condition that he would always be faithful to her, but one day he fell in love with a nymph, breaking the vow of chastity and the goddess killed him, not with her own hands or any power, not in a way that she could lets say " get her hands dirty " but by driving him mad in such a way that he was forced to mutilate himself. But after his death he turns into a three or revives in human forme, either way, he comes back in one form or another at spring, showing the powers of rebirth of this goddess, the symbolism of Spring.

 This worship of the mother goddess had a great importance in Roman society, and as such, it has reached us spreading throughout Europe. So important was her cult that we see in history several Mother Goddess' cults all over Europe until the present day. Portugal was one of many European countries to be invaded by the Romans and the Roman cults were placed in the country, and as the Romans adopted various deities even Portuguese ones (Lusitanian) the Lusitanian people also adopted this goddess, Cybele, and in many archaeological excavations we met traces of the worship of this goddess, figurines and such. In Portugal the cult to this goddess was great in the Central, southern and coastal regions of the country. In the Northern regions of Portugal the Roman cults weren't that much, in many places didn't even existed, because those regions are more mountainous and much cooler and to create pathways for these regions was difficult and even the transportation of soldiers and goods was dangerous and the romans lost more than they won, so the Northern parts of Portugal the cults remained Celtic and Germanic.

After the christianization of Europe and most Lusitanians got killed, or adopted Roman cults and later Christian ones, and the old deities were almost forgotten, a cult around the virgin Mary replaced the Roman cult to Cybele, the goddess of fertility, nature and of humankind and of gods, became virgin Mary which is symbolicaly very similar in the way that she is the mother of the son of the divine powers. As such, the cult of the virgin Mary became so important to the Portuguese people, which in fact comes from a Roman pagan past.

In Ancient Rome the celebrations to Cybele were very violent, it started with the sacrifice of a bull ( Taurobolium ) and a sheep ( Riobolium ) and the priest bathed in the blood of these animals, symbolizing the birth, in blood leaving the womb, and also by the symbolism of these animals that are generators of life by consumption. The importance of the bull as a symbol of strength in classical antiquity, was so marked in the festivities to Cybele while the Romans remained in the  Iberian peninsula, that still somehow remained as a cult and we can still see it in the bloody Bullfighting in Portugal and Spain (a tradition of which I am totally against).

The blood bath of the priest in these celebreations is still visible in christianity, when the wine was poured onto the head of the faithful, literally bathed in wine as in antiquity bathd in blood, of course with the passing of ages it is now drunk, the symbolism is implicit.

Note: The artwork to illustrate this post is a drawing of Bragi made by me. If you have any questions for me or if you want to see my artistic works, check out my Facebook page and make a Like if you can by following this link --> http://www.facebook.com/ArithHarger