White Goddess: Remember Those Who Passed

 

 

Samhain; the Final Harvest, the Day of the Dead, Spirit Night, November Eve, Ancestor Night, Apple Fest, All Hallow’s Eve, Pagan New Year’s Eve, Halloween.  We honor our ancestors this night. 

For Celts, it was a time of slating the meat.  It is the day of the snow goddess, and I do not remember a Halloween night when it did not snow in areas where it snows.  It is a time when it is believed that the veil is thin and spirits mingle with the living.  Loved ones come close and draw near to our fires.  In many cultures, food is left out for them, and gifts of things they loved during their lifetime.  It is a time for personal reflection on lost ones.  It is a time for us to recognize our faults and to fix them.  Tonight is a time to light your biggest bonfire and settle in for some deep thought.  Pumpkins, lanterns, apples, nuts, and your sage should be lit.  Black cats, bats, ghost, scarecrows are strung up. 

This is the time of the Crone, the White Goddess, a night of sandalwood, sweetgrass, new black and white candles to be lit.  Black is for the nights’ past and white symbolizing the White Goddess of a new year. Autumn leaves scatter to keep out of the fray.  Gingerbreads, nut breads, apple everything and pumpkin everything is baked.  

Take this night for yourself.  Think of family and friends who have passed.  Grieve if you must, but know that grieving cause them to stop what they are doing elsewhere and come to try to find out why you grieve.  They are at a better place and do not really wish to be drawn to your tears.  Make sure you remember that this physical reality is not all there is to all.  The soul never dies.  Energy is exchanged.  I witnessed this for myself when my father passed in 1979.  I felt his energy pass from his hand to and through mine.  I have no other explanation but that there is energy that leaves the body when the body dies.  We are left by our loved ones to finish off some of what they left for us to do.  I am very conscious of this.  I will be focusing on my paternal father who I never met.  There are only my brother and I of his blood left.  We have been talking about that, lately.  It is amazing and we are grateful to have each other. 

This movie touched me deeply when I saw it when it first came out.  We were in Yuma and we went together to see it.  Talk about weep.  It is touching. 

Persephone: Decaying Things

 

 

 

 

“I love autumn", Emily said to me. "It wins you over with its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.”  - Nicholas Sparks, Two By Two

Persephone, the abducted daughter of Demeter, is the Goddess Queen of the Underworld.  She became the wife of Hades and is the goddess of Spring that we await every year.  She fulfills a duty of helping those who pass to go up the stairs her mother lights for them.  When she was stolen, she was a simple naive little girl who became torn between her mother and her beloved husband.  The painful loss of daughter has often been seen and heard in the myths.  An ordeal I have never had to experience other than separation by choice or through tough love.  Even having a daughter marry is a separation of sorts.  Then, as well, there is the loss of our childhood.

Persephone would not et when she was first abducted.  Hades could not get her to eat one bite.  Finally, she succumbed to the beauty of a handful of pomegranate seeds, though, but she only ate 6.  Her fate was sealed by those 6 seeds and it was destined  that she would spend half her life with her mother and half her life with her husband.  Each time she leaves Demeter, the earth is shorn of its spring and summer beauty and fall and winter comes to symbolize Demeter’s sorrow, again and again forever. 

Persephone is also the Goddess of Mercy.  She was given the infant Adonis to raise and protect for a time and when time came to give him back, she refused.  So, again, there was separation.  It was decreed that Adonis would spend 1/3 of his time with Persephone and one third with whomever he chose. 

Persephone stayed with Hades and was faithful to him and she made sure he was faithful to her.  She would thwart his temptations, Minthe and Leuce into a mint plant and to a white popular tree.  Her absence causes decay.  Her presence in her half time on earth, things rejuvenate, transform, are reborn. She was not something bartered by either her husband or her mother, she made choices.   Who she became was not because she was abducted or whether she had chosen for herself who to live with and how long.  She taught that all things come and all things end, only to return again.  She reminds us life and death are only part of a cycle.  We age.  We die.  We rise.  We are child again. 

Her season is spring when she returns again and again.  She is associated with the torch, reeds, river, springs, waterfalls.  The animals associated with her are the monkeys, the birds that can speak, the ram and the bat.  Of course, the pomegranate is her plant.  Amethyst, crystal, black onyx, tourmaline and the colors green, black, magenta, yellow, blue and purple.  Place these things on your altar or near you somewhere. 

http://thisenchantedpixie.org/2013/09/22/the-story-of-persephone-and-the-pomegranate-seeds/

©Carol Desjarlais 10.30.21

Cerridwen: The Hermit In Us

 

 

“A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.”  - Will Cuppy

Cerridwen is a Welsh Goddess (Celt) who had a monster son and a beautiful daughter.  She is another underworld Goddess of knowledge, rebirth, regeneration, inspiration, herbs, astrology, enchantment and is known as a White Goddess.  She is a Hermit Goddess. 

Her devotion to her malformed son led her to experiment with potions to help him be knowledgeable and wise.  She spent one whole year and a day trying to make a certain potion and had added herbs at certain astrological times.  She gave her son three drops, also on the proper days and hour.  It was working, so she made more and more and had a mail servant helping her keep the mixture prepared.  But something happened, and some of the potion bubbled out of the pot on to his thumb and he stuck his thumb in his mouth to cool it, as anyone of us would.  Immediately, he gained all the wisdom and talents the son should have had.    The servant knew, if Cerridwen found out, she would kill him. 

Quickly, he used one of his borrowed powers and turned himself into a hare.  And Cerridwen changed herself into a hound and the chase was on.  He changed himself into a fish and Cerridwen changed herself into an otter.  He thought he was quite smart when he turned himself into a tiny bird.  Cerridwen changed herself into a hawk.  Yes, the chase was on.  He finally thought of his best idea.  He changed himself into a kernel of corn.  But Cerridwen had no trouble finding him and gobbling him up.  Well, this started a whole new problem.

You see, the potion was very long lasting.  And he was able to travel into her womb.  Well, when Cerridwen figured out she was pregnant, she knew exactly what had happened.  When he was born, she wrapped him in swaddling and threw him into the ocean because he was so beautiful, she could not bear to kill him.  She left her family and chose to live alone.

Well, now, see, the boy was still empowered.  Fairy man found him and brought him home to his wife.  They were childless, as it happens, and so they took him as their son.  They raised him and he became the greatest Welsh Poet that was ever born.  And everyone lived happily ever after.

Part of this ancient story speaks to the change of seasons, they way we change through the cycles of life.  The need that we must constantly change.  The Goddess reminds us that we must not be who does not serve the world.  We must let things go; some things that must die must go.  It is the way it is and we will change to meet that change.  You see, the ultimate lesson is that, when we let one thing go, something better comes along. 

Sometimes we need to ‘go live in a forest’.  Alone.  We all need moments of solitude.  Grief is a solitude.  Losing things leaves us with a type of solitude.  Some chose to stay there after a change.  Maybe something horrible caused us to withdraw for a time.  Some guard their privacy very deeply.  For some, emotions overwhelm us.  It is best for us to withdraw for a time.  It is comfortable, for small times of being alone.  Sometimes we do not want to contribute to anything outside of our own little world, for a time. Some withdraw from others because of feelings of inadequacy, and withdrawing helps them to maintain this belief.  “For a time” is the important phrase.  For more than ‘a time’ can lead to serious problems.

When we feel a need to just be alone, do it.  It is your whole body saying that you need to change and that change can only come about by being alone and dealing with the things you need to let go of.  Maybe we get tired of pleasing everyone else but ourselves and we simply want to please ourselves for a time.  During some alone time, really look at what you really need (not want and desire) want.  We need to stay in a position, though, that, if others need us, we can be there, if it is really important or they are important to us.  You still have to care about the world around you.  We still need a tribe.  We still need a gathering once in a while. 

Cerridwen is reminding us to go within, to take some alone time to know, with innate intuitive ways, what needs to change about you, about how you should go on from letting things go.  It can be done.  There are a lot of widows and widowers out there who have learned to be alone, but have never realized that they have needed a hug, some conversation, some company.  Some will transfer this longing on to different activities.  Some will choose relationships, but that alone time that comes, like a tsunami, reminds them what truly alone feels like.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.29.21