Snapshot Saturday: Grand Canyon

I went to the Grand Canyon last Sunday and it was amazing.  We ran the gamut of weather: extreme heat, glaring sun in a clear sky, huge storm, dropping temps, etc.  It was very cool and really drove home the power and unpredictability of nature.  In the rainstorm, it dropped 25 degrees in a matter of minutes and the storm dropped hail.  Hail!  At the Grand Canyon in August!  It blew my mind.

This would be the hail that the storm dropped.

After the rainstorm. It was beautiful.

 

Weekly Deity: Ilyapa

Ilyapa is the Incan god of weather, rain, and thunder.

Attributes

This god was thought to carry a club and stones.  He wore shining clothes.  He was also human in form.

Mythology

Ilyapa was the weather god of the ancient Incans.  His sister was the Milky Way, who carried the jug of rain.  When Ilyapa wanted rain, he would shoot a rock at the jug with his sling shot and break the jug, causing the water to fall from the sky. The sound of thunder comes from the breaking of the jug.

In times of drought, the Incans would tie up a black dog outside and leave it there until it was almost starving and dying of thirst.  They would leave the dog there until Ilyapa took pity on it and let the rain fall.

Light and Dark Sides

Unfortunately, much of Incan myth has been lost to time and the conquistadors.  So Ilyapa’s personality is not well understood.  But, seeing as he’s a rain deity, it’s probably safe to say that Ilyapa could be considered a fertility deity.  Rain is necessary for healthy crops and humans and animals, even in the mountainous regions of the Incas.  Water is necessary for life–but too much water can kill.  Floods and deluges can cause harm, and if Ilyapa gave too much rain, he could be a destroyer.  So while Ilyapa could be a fertility god on the Light side, on the Dark he could be destructive.  Even so, there can be good from a flood, especially in the ancient days when there wasn’t as much loss of human or animal life during a flood as there is today.  Flood can redistribute essential nutrients and soil, and can change the environment for good or ill.

I think Ilyapa is an interesting god that very much embodies both the Light and Dark sides of his [potential] personality.

Weekly Deity: Ixchel

Image via Wikipedia

Mayan goddess of the moon, healing, medicine, midwifery, and rain.  Her name is roughly pronounced “ish-chel”.

Attributes

Her hair is full of snakes, and she is shown in the Dresden Codex as being slightly hunched over carrying an inverted jar.  Sometimes she is shown with claws instead of hands and feet.  It’s difficult to tell, but at times her skirt has crossed human bones on it.  She is associated with the jaguar.

Mythology

As a goddess of pregnancy and midwives, Ixchel is associated with the moon.  Her association, however, is up to debate over whether she should be matched with the full or waning moon.  Because of her attribute of the inverted jar and her rare epithet of Grandmother, some scholars think she is more associated with the waning moon.

The inverted jar Ixchel carries is also indicative of falling rain.  The water falls from the jar and lands on the earth, though its flow could be a trickle or a flood.  At one point in the Dresden Codex, Ixchel’s emptying of her jar replicates the vomiting of war by a celestial dragon.  At the same time, the emptying of the jar reflects Ixchel’s status as a midwife in that the jar could be taken to represent the sac holding the amniotic fluid, and the reversing of the jar represents childbirth.

Only one myth of Ixchel seems to have survived.  From Verapaz, this myth says that Ixchel and her husband Itzamna had thirteen sons.  Two of these sons created the heavens and the earth and everything held within.  These two sons possibly correspond to the Howler Monkey Gods in the Aztec system, but it’s uncertain.

Light and Dark Sides

As a midwife, Ixchel would hold life and death in her hands.  She could bring life into the world, but at the same time, she could fail to bring mother and baby through the birthing process.  Midwifery implies some measure of trust, as well, on the part of the mothers.  Likely Ixchel was honored greatly by Mayan women in order to retain her favor for their pregnancy. She is also a goddess of medicine, which again means she could hold life and death in her hands.

As a goddess of rain with her inverted jar, Ixchel could bring the killing flood or the life-giving rains for the crops.  Being a grandmother goddess and a goddess of the moon, she would be considered wise yet mysterious.

Since the only myth to survive of Ixchel doesn’t tell us much about her, we can only guess about what her personality would be like.  She seems to be very dual in her duties–on one hand she could be benevolent and helpful, but on the other, she could be cruel and bring death.  It would be wise to stay on her good side and honor her as the wise Grandmother moon, who brings medicine, easy pregnancy, and gentle rain and withholds the deadly floods.

Weekly Deity: Tefnut

Tefnut (left) and Shu (right)

Tefnut is the Egyptian goddess of the rain.  She has connections to both the sun and the moon, but her primary duty is rain/moisture.

Attributes

Tefnut was shown as a grown woman with the head of a lioness.  She carried a scepter and ankh and sat on a throne.  A full solar disk sat atop her head, circled by two cobras.

Mythology

The head of Tefnut is a lioness because the sun god Atum created Tefnut and her brother Shu as lion cubs.  Thus Atum is considered their father.  Shu is the god of air and also Tefnut’s husband.  The pair spawned the god of earth, Geb, and Nut the goddess of the sky.  All five of these deities were a part of the Ennead, a group of nine original gods worshiped at the birthplace of the gods, Heliopolis.  (The other four are the children of Nut and Geb: Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.)

Tefnut was an important deity to the ancient Egyptians.  Their country is mostly desert, with only the Nile to give any kind of sustainability to human civilization.  Water was incredibly important, and the goddess of moisture was likewise important.

She shared a role with other goddesses as the protector of the sun god and an Eye of Ra.  This is where her connection to the sun and moon come in.  As a goddess of moisture she can be the absence of moisture (dried from the sun) or the abundance of moisture (connected to the moon).  While Tefnut shared the sun aspect with other goddesses, she was actually considered to be both the Eyes of Ra, the left (moon) and the right (sun), and seems to have held the moon aspect in her own right.

One myth says that Tefnut became angry with her father Atum/Ra while he ruled on earth.  She was so angry that she went to Nubia and took all the moisture of Egypt with her.  She rampaged across Nubia as a lioness while Egypt dried up.  Atum/Ra sent Thoth and Shu after her to placate her and bring her back.  They succeeded, and on her way back Tefnut visited every village in Egypt and brought great rejoicing.

Another myth says that Tefnut and Shu went into the waters of Nun (chaos).  Atum/Ra thought he had lost them forever, and sent his eye to find them.  But Tefnut and Shu returned from chaos, and Atumwas so happy to find them alive that he wept.  His tears became the first humans.

Light and Dark Side

Considering the desert that is Egypt, a goddess of moisture is something of a fertility deity.  She helps to not only bring life but sustain it.  In the last myth, where Amen’s tears create the first humans, it could be argued that actually this is due to Tefnut–tears are moisture, and she would have had control over that moisture.  Her life-giving/fertility nature gives her a boost to the Light side of the deity spectrum.

However, in the tradition of ancient deities, Tefnut is somewhat petty at times.  When she had a spat with her father, she took it out not only on him but all of Egypt, harming innocents in her quarrel with Atum.  Then she rampages through a country that has done her no harm and had no part in the original quarrel in the first place.  Such petty actions, and the fact that she harms innocents with her actions, gives her a Darker aspect.  Another Dark side is the ability to control the moisture so that there is drought or flood.  We have already seen her do this–she caused a drought in Egypt and a flood in Nubia.  She likely would be prone to such things again (and since floods and droughts are common natural events, she probably did).

Overall, Tefnut is a Light goddess, because of her ability to give life.  But the Dark aspects are worth considering as well.

Weekly Deity: Chac

Chac is an ancient Mayan deity.  He was the god of fertility, rain, lightning, and farming.  His name could also be spelled Chaac.  A surprising amount of information is known about the Mayan gods given that only four of their many texts have survived.  Given the lack of ancient material, there is still only so much we know about individual deities.

Attributes

His form was reptilian in nature, with fangs and a droopy snout.  He also had hair that was always tangled and knotted.  He carried a lightning axe.

Mythology

Chac was both one god and many gods in Mayan belief.  There was the main Chac but there was also a Chac for each cardinal direction, the only differences between them being their corresponding colors: red for east, white for north, yellow for south, and black for west.  All Chacs were rain and lightning gods, and held prominence during the rainy season as young, virile gods but withered to terrestrial/subterranean old men during the dry season, to be rejuvenated by the ocean in between.   This was called the Great Water Cycle.

Frogs were probably a sacred animal to Chac.  There is a record of a rain ritual which featured four boys acting as four frogs.

An apparently well-known myth shows these rain gods as patrons of agriculture, as they were involved in the opening the mountain in which maize was hidden (and corn has long been a staple crop for the Mayan and Aztec peoples).  Another myth tells of Chocl (Chac, ‘Cloud’) as the brother of Sun, and together they defeat their aging adoptive mother and her lover.  But later on, Chocl sleeps with Sun’s wife and is punished, and his tears are the origin of rain.  Various versions apparently show Chac in a war-like fury as he pursues Sun and Moon and attacks them with lightning.  Another version says that he simply weeps, and he gave the secrets of farming away to humans as a kindness and with no strings attached.

Light and Dark Sides

Variations of Chac seem to be divided along Mayan tribal lines.  Some see him as a benevolent rain god who likes humans and handed them the keys to farming.  Others see him as an adulterer and an angry god.  Nevertheless, he seems to be largely a good guy.  His role as a fertility god means he promotes life, and balanced life at that since he’s only a dominant god during the rainy season.  He reminds me, in a way, of Greek Persephone, in that both rise for only part of the year and both bring fertility and abundance in their wake.