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PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
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According to Edred (“Bad Boy of Ásatrú”) Thórsson's ground-breaking 1999 work of revisionist witch history, Witchdom of the True, those seeking Keltic origins for Wicca are barking up the wrong tree of life.
They should instead, he says, be sniffing around the roots of Yggdrasil. Historically speaking, the Lord and Lady of modern Wicca, he holds, are actually none other than Frey and Freyja.
It's a contentious idea, especially among contemporary heathens.
We don't know whether or not the heathen English worshiped Frey and Freyja. It's certainly possible that they did, but we have no proof. (Anglo-Saxonist Stephen Pollington calls the evidence "circumstantial.") Considering how little we know about pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion, the lack of evidence doesn't prove much.
If, however, the Hwicce—the Anglo-Saxon tribe which, according to maverick archaeologist Stephen Yeates, gave rise to modern witchery—did indeed know Frey and Freyja, we can say what they would likely have called them. Both Norse names have cognates in the Old English word-hoard.
As y’all know, I’m working on a ritual for feminine sovereignty, and I’m making some headway – I’ve been researching ancestors to uplift and trying to get more than just names, because to empower them, we need to link them to their deeds. Even before I got much into this, I suspected that this was a Freyja-fueled conspiracy, and even more so now, because the subject of beauty has come up for me, and it is something that I’m not particularly comfortable with. I’m gonna be blunt, and please keep in mind that this is me unpacking my baggage, so if you view beauty differently than me, please feel free to talk about said differences, because it would probably be to my benefit, and maybe that of someone else reading.
For me, beauty isn’t fun. I know women who talk about using their femininity against men, and I have issues with it. On some level, I consider it lazy. (yes, I know that this is a respectability politics thing playing out in my head, but it’s there, so why the f*ck not acknowledge the toxic thoughts?)
...Language shapes our perception of reality, and multiple words for a concept reflect the nuances of that concept. The typical example that most people have heard is that Inuit people have multiple words for snow, because their lives depend on it; its presence in different forms affects their lives in different ways. In English, we just have snow.
And this is not the only word that we only have one word for that another culture has multiple words to express, which brings me to love. English has one word for love, and while I love Loki, I love my child, and I love tacos, each one of those loves is a very different type of love. Ancient Greek had multiple variations on love; bhakti has different types:
...Below is my tribute to Freya, divinity #24 wrongfully placed the atheist's graveyard. This is my continuing effort to learn about and post something on each divinity placed there.
I was chatting with some friends about the discussions about Pagan leadership. There's a conference planned for hard polytheists, and Shauna Aura Knight is writing a series on community building that's good reading (and thanks to Jo for pointing it out to me!). I'm really happy that constructive dialogue is starting up, and I hope that it yields community building and infrastructure in the Pagan and Heathen communities. When I think about my own strengths and weaknesses as a priestess/gythia, and what I'd like to leave as a legacy to my community twenty or fifty years from now, I don't want bickering with monotheists, or other Pagans to be that legacy. I'd like to build a support system for our faith.
Some of that comes from my background as a teacher and speech path; one of the goals in working for ChildFind was to assess both child and family's needs and connect them to government and private resources that would help them improve their lives. What we deeply need, IMO, is the same kind of training and access to resources, because when people seek spiritual counseling and connection, they're often hurting and in need of healing. I am not a healer, but I can help direct someone to the type of healer that they need. Of course, this type of work involves knowing yourself (and oh Gods, we talk about that alllll the time, but HOW do you know yourself?) - that's heavy duty metacognitive work. Just to pick on myself a moment, because modeling often helps people figure out their own processes:
...This Samhain season, I've been reflecting back to this past Candlemas and to the changes that season brought me. For sometime immediately around Imbolc is when I was first contacted by Freyja.
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