Weekly Deity: Rhiannon

Rhiannon is a major goddess in the Welsh/Celtic pantheon.  Not only is she the wife and mother of important mythological figures, but is a great deity in her own right.  She is primarily the goddess of horses but also seems to be a mother goddess of inspiration, the moon, and magic.

Attributes

Often Rhiannon was shown riding a horse and either naked or dressed in finery.  She also had three sacred birds that she was often pictured with as well.  When pictured riding a horse, she looks a great deal like Epona, a related deity who was also a horse goddess, but who may have played a less important role in her culture than did Rhiannon in her own.

Mythology

The main tale of Rhiannon and her kin comes from the Mabinogi, the main record of Welsh tales.  Her name means “Great Queen,” or in some translations, just “queen.”  The most commonly used translation, however, is “Great Queen.”  Her name could also be translated as meaning “daughter of Annwfn (“Ah-noo-vin”–the otherworld)”, but her name would have to be derived from the Welsh “Rhian Annwfn” for that to be true.

In the story, Rhiannon meets Pwyll (pronounced “Poo-ill”) when she is out riding.  He sees her while out hunting with his men, and sends his men to chase her, but all fail to catch her Otherworldly steed.  After three days, Pwyll chases her himself.  When he came no closer to catching her than his men had, he called out for her to stop, and she did.  They finally meet and Rhiannon tells him that she loved him and not the man her father, Hyfaidd Hen, would have her marry, Gwawl (pronounced roughly as “Goo-ah-ull”).  Rhiannon and Pwyll made a promise, to marry each other.  She then told him that in a year if he would come to the court of her father, there would be a feast for them both.

A year later, Pwyll gathers a hundred horsemen to his side and travels to the court of Hyfaidd Hen, there to celebrate his engagement with Rhiannon.  Gwawl then enters and greets Pwyll, saying he has business with the lord.  Pwyll tells him that anything he asks he will grant.  Gwawl, of course, asks for Rhiannon’s hand, the feast, and the wedding preparations.  Pwyll is oathbound to grant it, and Rhiannon creates a plan.  A year from that day she would lay with Gwawl and seal their betrothal, and on that day Pwyll would have to bring the small magical bag Rhiannon gave to him.  Pwyll and Gwawl listen to their respective instructions and a year later, Pwyll tricks Gwawl into the magical bag.  He then tricks Gwawl’s own men into striking the bag a blow, injuring Gwawl enough to make him relent and give up Rhiannon.  Thus Pwyll wins Rhiannon from Gwawl and they were married.

Rhiannon became a queen, since Pwyll was Prince of Dyfed and Lord of Annwfn. In the third year of their reign, she bears a son, Pryderi.  However, on the night of his birth, he disappeared while Rhiannon slept.  Her six handmaids, fearful of being blamed for Pryderi’s disappearance because they also slept, framed Rhiannon for killing her son by using a puppy’s blood and smearing it over Rhiannon’s face and hands.  They swore Rhiannon killed Pryderi and Rhiannon was punished.  She was made to stand in the court of Arberth for seven years at the horse block and tell her story to all she thought would not know it, and offer to carry all those who would allow it on her back up to the court.  Few allowed it, but thus she spent her time.

Meantime, a nobleman and his wife, by some means of magic, found the boy in their home after a storm one night.  Not knowing who the boy belonged to, they took him in and cared for him.  For four years he was raised with the nobleman until the nobleman heard rumors of Rhiannon and her fate.  He put the pieces together and at once he and his wife decided to return the boy to his parents.  The nobleman and his company traveled to Pwyll’s court, where they met Rhiannon, who offered all the company the story and the carrying.  All refused, and instead took her to the court with them.  There it was revealed the truth.  Rhiannon was freed from her punishment and her good name restored, and Pwyll and Rhiannon got their son Pryderi back.

In a later myth, Pwyll has died and Rhiannon marries Manawydan, son of Llyr and friend of Pryderi.

Light Side

Rhiannon is a clever goddess who is able to finds ways to make her life her own and resist the marriage plan of her father and make up for the hastiness of Pwyll’s offer to Gwawl.  She was a mother not only to her son, but to her people, as many ancient societies considered the king and queen to be father and mother of the land and people.  The punishment she endured for falsely killing her son in the end only showed her to be a figure of great strength, endurance, and honor, as well as a compassionate woman with a deep understanding of people.  She knew her handmaids lied to protect themselves, but also knew that until her son was returned, she could not prove the handmaids’ story false.  Rhiannon is mostly a Light character with a great many positive characteristics.

Dark Side

I would say that part of Rhiannon’s Dark side is her stubbornness, but stubbornness can also be a positive quality.  Other than that one minor quality, I can’t think of another Dark aspect to Rhiannon.  She doesn’t dole out undue punishments, nor does it seem that she wishes harm on others despite their treatment of her.  All in all, she seems very positive and Light.

Weekly Deity: Isis

The Egyptian goddess Isis was and continues to be an extremely popular and well-known figure.  She was a mother goddess as well as a goddess of nature, fertility, children, magic, and love.  Isis was also linked to death as a protector of the dead (as explained in the myth of Osiris).

Attributes

The goddess is normally shown as a tall woman wearing a plain sheath dress to her ankles and crowned with the hieroglyphic sign for “throne”.  A common depiction was also of Isis holding or nursing her son Horus.  In other images (the most common ones), Isis holds the ankh in one hand and a plain staff in the other.  On funerary coffins and inscriptions, Isis and her sister Nephthys are shown with outspread wings, to show their status as protectors.

Mythology

Isis was the daughter of Geb, god of the Earth, and Nut, goddess of the sky.  Her brother (as well as husband) was Osiris.  Her two other siblings were Set (god of storms and chaos) and Nephthys (goddess of lamentation and the night).  Isis was the mother of Horus, hawk-headed god of the sky, war, and vengeance.

The main myth of Isis involves both Set and Osiris.  Set created a beautiful box and said that whoever could fit inside it perfectly could keep it.  What the gods didn’t know was that Set had secretly measured Osiris while he slept, so he would be sure to have the exact fit for Osiris.  The gods took turns, and then Osiris stepped inside to see if he would fit.  When all of Osiris was inside, Set slammed shut the lid and it became a coffin.  Set took the coffin and threw it into the Nile where it drifted away.  Isis went looking for the coffin to give Osiris a proper burial and found it in a tree in Phoenicia.  She brought it back to Egypt and hid the coffin in a swamp.

But Set went hunting that night for the coffin and when he found it he was enraged.  He chopped Osiris’ body into fourteen pieces and scattered them over Egypt.  Isis and Nephthys went searching for the pieces in order to properly bury Osiris but could only find thirteen of the fourteen.  The last piece, Osiris’ phallus, had been swallowed by a fish.  So Isis fashioned a new one with her magic (some myths say she first made a phallus of wood and used her magic to attach the replacement, but usually it’s just mentioned that she corrected the problem of the fourteenth piece with magic).  With all the pieces assembled, Isis was able to resurrect Osiris with her magic, after which they conceived Horus.

Sometimes it is said that the Nile floods each year because of Isis’ tears when she searches for Osiris’s parts.

Later on Isis merged with Hathor, the goddess of love and original mother of Horus (who originally was Isis’s husband rather than Osiris).  Because of the merging of the two beliefs and the institution of Osiris as Horus’ father, Horus was then brought into the struggle with Set, who wanted to kill Horus as well.  Isis fled with Horus and protected him until he was old enough to fight Set and become Pharaoh of Egypt.

In addition to assimilating Hathor, Isis also merged with Mut in popular belief.   Mut was a primordial deity from before the creation of the gods.  She is said to be the original mother from which the cosmos sprang.  Her properties by themselves coincided well with Isis, but Mut was the consort of Amun, which created problems in the stories later on when things did not match up well.

Light Side

On her Light side, Isis was a life-giver and life-restorer, in that she was a fertility goddess and protector of the dead.  By bringing Osiris back to life with her magical powers, she is then linked with resurrection, rebirth, and reincarnation (to a certain extent).  Although not strictly a goddess of the dead, she does seem to have some influence in that realm in that she protects burial rites, the dead, and those who would enter the afterlife.  Primarily Isis is a goddess of life, nature, fertility, and magic.

Dark Side

Isis, from the mythology alone, does not appear to have much of a dark side.  She seems to be wholly good, as a mother, magician, and protector.  She does not seem vindictive or hateful, or overbearing.  Therefore it is harder to find a Dark spot in her.  It could be argued, I suppose, that her Darker side is shown when she protects Horus so he can kill her brother later in vengeance–but that episode could also be seen merely as a mother protecting her son from his mad uncle.

Weekly Deity: Gaea

Gaea, also spelled Gaia, is the primordial Greek goddess of the Earth.  Her counterparts in other cultures include Terra Mater in Rome, Sumerian Ki and Ninhursag, African Obatala, and Irish Danu, among others.  At times Gaea is not considered separate from the Titaness Rhea, her daughter.

Attributes

In ancient carvings, Gaea was often shown as a rather voluptuous middle-aged woman, generally covered in a robe, with her long hair held up.  Often she was pictured alongside fruits or trees, or children, and around earthly bounty.

Mythology

An image of Gaia that I really liked

Gaia was born from Chaos and  sister to Eros, Nyx (goddess of night), Tartarus (god of the underworld), and Erebus (god of shadows/darkness).  She had many children.  On her own through parthenogenesis she bore Ouranos, Pontus (god of the sea), and Ourea (god of the mountains).  With Ouranos, the god of the sky,she bore the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatonchires (Hundred Handed).  From Ouranos’ blood when her Titan son Kronos castrated the god and his blood dripped to Earth Gaea bore the Giants, the three Erinyes/Furies, and the Meliae (wood nymphs).  From Tartarus she bore Echidna and Typhon.  By Pontus Gaea bore Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia.  With Aether she gave birth to Aergia.  From other fathers she bore: Antaeus, Charybdis, Creusa, Erichthonius, Mimas, Pheme, Python, Spercheus, and many more (Wikipedia has a full list that’s fairly accurate).

Erichthonius also features in a myth of Athena.  Although born from Earth from Hephaistos’ seed, Erichthonius (“khthon” meaning “earth” in Greek) is considered a son of Athena as well.  Hephaistos was chasing Athena with the intent of intercourse with her and he managed to catch her, but she fought him off (she is goddess of war, what was he thinking?!?) and found some of his semen on her thigh.  Athena wiped it off and it fell to the ground, which created Erichthonius from Gaia and Hephaistos.  Athena, however, cared for the boy after his birth and he lived in Athens.

Gaea has a major myth of her own, and appears in numerous other myths as a sort of side character (such as the myth of Ericthonius).  Gaea’s myth is that of the castration of Ouranos and the rise of Kronos as leader of the gods.  Ouranos, god of the sky and Gaea’s lover, was disgusted by the monstrous appearance of the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires, and so he shoved them back into the earth (into Gaea).  This caused Gaea pain, and so she asked her children the Titans for help in stopping Ouranos.  Only Kronos stepped forward and took the weapon she offered.  When Ouranos arrived, Kronos castrated his father and became the leader of the gods.

Light Side

Gaea is a Creator goddess, a Mother, a progenitor.  She is the Mother of the gods, and mother of Man in a way as well, as in one myth humanity is recreated from stones, parts of Gaea.  She is a nurturing character, and very fertile.  On her light side: fertility, motherhood, caring, nurturing, steadfastness, solidity.  Gaea stands her ground and protects herself and her children more often than not.

Dark Side

On her Dark side, Gaea takes revenge.  She revenges the harm done her from Ouranos by castrating him.  Granted, it was deserved revenge–who wants their children shoved back inside them?– but she did not seem to have any problem with cutting her husband’s penis off, even though she didn’t do it herself and was merely the conductor.  Still, it could be considered a part of her Dark side, the ability and desire for revenge.  On the flip side, if her revenge is termed justice, it takes on a more positive aspect.

Weekly Deity: Eriu

Eriu was an Irish goddess also known as Erin.  She was one of the three queens of the Tuatha De Danaan.  Ireland is supposed to take its name, Éire, from this goddess.

Attributes

What this goddess was supposed to have looked like is largely unknown.  Female, obviously, and most likely tall and blond like many of her Tuatha De Danaan kin.  But she is not described.  One artist’s portrayal of what we can guess is Eriu is shown above.

Mythology

Eriu was the daughter of Emmas of the Tuatha De Danaan.  The Tuatha De Danaan are often thought of today as a kind of fairy people, although that’s not exactly accurate.  Tuatha De Danaan means “people of the goddess Danu,” and this race was divine and its people were former rulers of Ireland before they were displaced.

Eriu had two sisters, Banba and Fodla.  When the Milesians arrived from Spain and were going to, of course, set up their own culture with their own names, each of the sisters asked that her name be given to the country.  This was granted, though Eriu became the chief name.  The other two are sometimes used poetically, similar to the way in which Albion is the poetic name of Britain.

She was also the mother of Bres with Prince Elatha of the Fomorians (a giant race), though her husband was Mac Greine, a High King of Ireland along with his three brothers.  Mac Greine and his brothers killed Lug (Lugh) in revenge for their father, Cermait, son of the Dagda.  The brothers were the last of the kings before the Milesians came.  Bres became a king of the Tuatha De Danaan and married Brigid.

Light and Dark Sides

Little is actually known about this goddess other than the small amount of story listed above.  We can probably assume that she is a type of mother goddess, since her name is the principal name for Ireland and as such she could be considered a mother of the land and its people.  But this is only a guess, and so her Light and Dark sides are difficult to discern.

How did her name come to be the chief name for Ireland?  By what means did she overcome her sisters as the right choice?  Was she honorable, or did she cheat?  All this is unknown, and what stories there are about this very subject are not “official” myths of the nature that the Greeks and Romans have “official” myths.  So the Light and Dark side of Eriu can only be guessed at.

Weekly Deity: Sita

Sita, whose name means “furrow,” is a Hindu deity who epitomizes the perfect wife and ideal woman.  In her divinity she is worshiped as both a mother goddess and an earth goddess.  She is the consort of Rama, who is an incarnation of Vishnu.  Sita herself is an incarnation of Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu.  The goddess Sita is one of the main characters in the epic Hindu tale the “Ramayana.”

Myths

In the myths of Sita, which are from the “Ramayana,” Sita is not entirely mortal, but not exactly a goddess either.  She is instead an “ex-goddess”; more than a mortal, but slightly less than a full deity.  She is still very much divine, but not in the same way that Rama is divine.

In one telling of Sita’s birth, she is considered to be the daughter of the Earth goddess.  Sita’s mortal father, King Janaka of Videha, fathered his daughter on the Earth herself.  Here’s an excerpt from the book “The Hindus: An Alternative History” by Wendy Doniger, telling the myth of Sita’s birth:

One day in the sacrificial grounds, I saw the ultimate celestial nymph, Menaka, flying through the sky, and this thought came to me: “If I should have a child in her, what a child that would be!”  As I was thinking in this way, my semen fell on the ground.  And afterward, as I was plowing that field, there arose out of the earth, as first fruits, my daughter, who has celestial beauty and qualities.  Since she arose from the surface of the earth, and was born from no womb, she is called Sita, the Furrow.

Much of Sita’s entire incarnation is primarily for the purpose of destroying the ogre/demon king Ravana of Lanka.  This story is a major part of the “Ramayana.”  Rama is exiled to the jungle by his father, who put Rama’s brother on the throne instead of Rama.  When Rama left for his fourteen-year exile, Sita gave up her comfortable life in the palace and all its amenities to follow Rama into exile.  During this exile, Sita is captured by Ravana and held for months until Rama is able to launch a rescue with the help of the monkeys and his half-brother.  After Rama and Sita return from killing Ravana, they are made king and queen of Ayodhya.  However, because of Sita’s capture by Ravana, there were questions about her chastity.  She was made to go through an ordeal of fire (an agni pariksha) to prove that she was still a chaste, pure woman and fit to be queen with Rama.  This ordeal would have killed a mortal woman.  When Sita stepped through the fire and passed the test, she not only proved her virtue but also her divinity.

Sita was forced into another exile when rumors of her supposed impurity resurfaced.  This time, she was pregnant with twins.  Rama, unaware of her pregnancy, forced her to leave in order to appease his people.  Sita goes to the hermitage of Valmiki and there gives birth to her twin sons, Lava and Kusha.  Sita remains with Valmiki the hermit for several years, and her sons grow up not knowing that they are princes and sons of Rama.  When the boys are teenagers, the boys go with Valmiki to attend a ceremony held by Rama, at which they recite the Ramayana composed by Valmiki.  During the retelling of Sita’s exile, Rama openly grieves for his lost wife.  At this point, Valmiki brings Sita forward, but before Rama could do anything about her presence, Sita asks her mother the Earth to receive her.  Sita vanishes into a chasm of the Earth and returns to her wholly divine form, dead to the mortal world as the half-mortal princess Sita.  This final exit of Sita is itself another kind of test like the agni pariksha–if Sita were not still pure and chaste, she would not have been accepted back into the Earth from which she came, and this was also further proof of her divine nature.

Light Side

Sita is the ideal wife, ideal mother, and ideal daughter.  She is dutiful and patient, loyal and gracious, virtuous and moral.  She is also very intelligent.  Throughout her half-mortal life she set an example for humankind of how to behave in a manner that is both right and virtuous, and remain gracious throughout hardships.  She gave up some of her own choices in order to support her children or her husband, and did so willingly because it was the right thing for her to do.  Sita is also brave and rather forward for a Hindu woman.  In the end, she walked away and left her husband, in a final proof that she was in the right and he had wronged her not once but twice.  She is in no way a doormat, despite being the supposed ideal of a wife and woman.  She uses her intelligence, and this shows in her interactions with her husband and brother-in-law, and in her actions before the rest of the world.

Dark Side

The dark side of Sita could depend on your point of view.  Some of the qualities that characterize her light side could also define her dark, if those qualities become too imprisoning.  Sita’s graces do not make her a doormat, despite the surface appearance that she is subservient to Rama’s wishes, especially in the double banishment.  She is in fact very composed and very much a decider of her own fate in many ways.  But those qualities have the possibility of being too loyal to the point of blindness; too virtuous to the point of harm; too dutiful to the point of being inflexible; and too patient to the point of being a push-over.

Sita, even more so than Athena, is for me a major draw.  I find her story admirable and worthy of retelling–in the face of hardships such as kidnapping, banishment, and a nearly destroyed reputation, Sita remained loyal, patient, and virtuous.  She is not an example of turning the other cheek and just taking it.  Instead, she is an example of riding the waves to find the peace after the trouble and having the strength to overcome obstacles set in the way in life and still remain a good, kind person who knows what is right and who is worthy of estimation.