Deity Challenge: XIX to XIII

XIX.
Arianrhod is fierce but mostly amiable with both family and foreigners, and above all independent. She did storm out of Math's castle in shame upon the wand episode, but She definetely has a sense of pride, authority and confidence throughout Her story.

 

Arianrhod is the opposite of a good mother in the consensus of our culture. She delivers, flees and years later She (initially) denies what any mother would have given her child in Her native, medieval, Welsh culture. But that is Her way of challenging, initiating and empowering the kid.

 

XX.

All idols holding a wheel or a labyrinth are Arianrhod to me. Silver rings and pentacles remind me of Her too. So does Spiral artwork, especially the ancient and simple kind.

 

And then there's this:

 

XXI.

http://youtu.be/-TBpLZy1l5k

...and...

http://youtu.be/owNYrD9-Edw

 

XII.

I cannot promise love eternally:

Love finds her food and drink not in our vows.

Often we find the fruit upon her boughs

Vanished away in barren chastity.

Enraptured here we let our bodies sing,

Yearning to fill with love our mutual need.

O let no cruel law nor outworn creed

Untwine the arms or part the lips that cling.

Eternal faith I cannot swear, but still

Under the shadows of the silver grove:

Nine moon-white moments, and the triple will

Is satisfied, for we have offered love.

Come, while the moon along her regal way

Enchants the grove with pale ethereal day.

("The Silver Grove", by Victor Henry Anderson)

...and...

BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the wingèd sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
 
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

("The Two Trees", by William Butler Yeats.)

 

XXIII.
The mind map I prepared for my brief introductory lecture on Arianrhod on World Goddess Day here in Madrid next Sunday (still unfinished though). Sorry, it is in Spanish.