Ladies of the Season

There are so many signs of the season and so many people have written extensively on them. I can only do  patch up of them. The truth is, there isn’t a need for me to reinvent the wheel by talking about them all over again, but they are worth talking about. On my Facebook I’e featured, for every day of Advent a person or thing sacred to this season, and maybe here we can begin to go through a few, even if not in order.

            Not in order because I’ve been reading Danielle at GatherVictoria's piece on Doe a Deer, a Female Deer which is on the Reindeer. She points out that Santa’s winter reindeer are actually all females, for not only to female reindeer have horns, but they keep those wonderful cradling seats all year while the males loose theirs and it is they who guide the great sleigh not only of the shaman, but of the Goddess Beavi, the Winter Sun. The Sami, who live in that coldest part of the world are brilliant psychologists in the truest sense of the word and know that winter is the time of depression, isolation, where the wolf insanity is at the door. Offerings to this Goddess remember that she carries healing in her and the reindeer who bear her in their horns carry healing in those antlers.

            Last night I dwelt on the Winter Hag, Le Befana, the Baba Yaga, Frau Holle. Of course, their (Her) time is not only now. Her time is really just approaching. She is all of winter. LeBefana is the other side of the Goddess Strenia as Frau Holle is a face and phase of Freya and the Hag of he alluring Lady. All are faces of the bright Sun Saule or Beavi, for the ancients know that everything, especially the gods,  has more than one face, and even the rough face of a thing can contain beauty, power and blessing.

            But if, at this time, we see the difference faces of Devi, of Goddess, making peace, then there is also the differing face of the Ancestral Woman, our Human Mother. In other societies the link between Ancestress and Divinity is well known, but with us it is a little more covered up. The original mother is the mistakenly  called “sinful” Eve, the Mother of All. Say one of the saint’s liturgies, the Virgin Mary, greeted by the angel Gabriel, “Ave Maria” turns “Eva to Ave.” The luminous Virgin of Hope, the Mother of he new creation, and the old Eve who is said to have brought down a creation we never knew any other way, are the same.