GODDESS SHOPPING

A Goddess is no more real than a poem. Graspable as a wisp of smoke, she dissipates when you try to hold too tight. There are all kinds of theories, and on the sunniest days, you want to debunk them all and just remember that God spelled backward is Dog.

But When I step into circle alone, I know someone else is there. Maybe that's not the same as those God/esses you have to invoke with the right kind of stone and the right offering, a touch of wine and a white rose.

I'm just saying ...  If it's all made up anyway, how can you get it wrong?

First time I stepped into a formal circle for a Goddess, I tried to make Her fit the only God I'd ever been given. "To the North I turn... the Rock of Salvation endureth forever."

I lit a candle and poured wine, blackberry Merlot, only wine on the place. "The breath of life, the fire of Pentecost, the living water and the Holy, Holy Spirit dwells within this space, within this place between the worlds. So Be It and Amen."

Some such words. I don't recall exactly.

Blackberry Merlot and a borrowed book and soon I knew that Bridgid was the Goddess of poetry. She loved fire and blackberries, kept a healing well where water quenches a fever fast and in the forge of her fire, smithcraft and poetry carry a power to transform.

Bride, as she is called, had a father, the good god, Dagha. And in the same pantheon, Cerridwen stirred a  wisdom brew and Gwion … (but that story is told elsewhere).

The laughing God, the dancing God, the poet God, the Mother Goddess, Virgin, Mother, Crone.... and all this on a Blackberry wine. And years clicked by...

Mother of All-Mother,

Mother of us all,

We seek to walk lightly,

Your wisdom to keep,

To follow the way of the Earth,

And then the Runes called and Heimdall coaxed with a Dagaz rune, my symbol. Year of the Snake, Death and Regeneration, and even the Mayan astrologer agreed. Hints and notions. So this God of transformation cast his rainbows in my peripheral view.

And when snows fell deep and the world filled with that kind of silence that winter brings, a Goddess named Skathi, came to whisper the blue of twilight in January.

Then came the Spinner. Card the wool and spin and ply. My hands found the way my mind couldn’t see. And as I learned these skills, stories wove themselves into the wool. Her name is Frigga, the Hearth Queen, the Spinner. And with her are the twelve Handmaidens, Saga, Eir, Fulla, Geifion, Syn, Hlin, Syofn, Lofn, Vor, Var, Snotra, and Gna. Little tokens found their way to my hand and they flooded my pages with words.

I'd been Goddess shopping for a long time when Frigga came along. Now I'm wondering who shopped for whom?

If you're shopping for a Goddess, pay attention. One will find you by and by.

Author: Keldarune
http://cozycauldron.blogspot.com/
May be reproduced without change with this notice