Hearthside

 What do Hinduism and Heathenry have in common? Proto-Indo-European roots and the potential for “Holy Cow” jokes!  One figure in Nordic mythology that I always find fascinating is Auðumbla. Who is this cow, and how did she become a part of the creation story? Is Auðumbla a goddess? Where did she come from? And if she is a cow, why does she have horns? First of all, it seems like there is something funny going on here. Auðumbla is a cow in so far as she is female, but she is no domesticated cow. In fact, she is most likely an auroch, hence the horns. You may have heard of aurochs before if you have done some delving into the runes (or not). Basically, they were wild cattle with huge horns that lived in the forests of Northern Europe. Sadly, they are now extinct.  How did the elder Heathens view aurochs? They associated them with the forests, and wild energy. They also saw them as strong and persevering. So then, it makes sense that Auðumbla, an auroch, was seen as a powerf...

So I finished my last post on Nerthus and Jörð. I had been working at it for over a week but in the end it was one of those pieces that became all-consuming until I finally completed it. The writing took on its own life quite separate from the original direction I had thought I was going with it. With that completed I thought, finally I will get some sleep… And I fell hard, into a dream about the Thunderer in the Proto-Indo-European myths. Perk w unos awoke in my mind, forming a thundercloud that loomed over everything. When I finally pulled myself out of the dream it was past my alarm, and outside the Sky showered the Earth with rain. It is thunderstorm season here. I admit that Thor has been on my mind, since I associate the midsummer blot with Thor. The coming of the storms brings the water needed for the crops in their big growth time before the harvest. There are also the hot and humid summer evenings when all you can do is sit with a cool drink on a patio and tell stories until ...

It is not uncommon for me to pull from other sources for my Heathenry, looking at Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Baltic, or Slavic traditions to see if I can fill in some of the missing gaps in the Nordic sources. My interest lately has been going into pre-history, looking at the Proto-Indo-European root myths. In this case, I want to try to flesh out the Nordic “goddess.” There is so little preserved about goddesses, because I believe the Christians tried to intentionally erase them to take power away from Nordic women. Now I cannot reconstruct every goddess this way but I feel it is a solid way to construct the mother goddess, the earth goddess. In the Hellenic tradition she is the one known as Gaia. In Nordic traditions I would see her as Nerthus, and also as Jörð. Over time they became separate deities, but I think their roots both lie in the Proto-Indo-European goddess, Dʰéǵʰōm (earth) or Pleth₂wih (broad one). There is a huge problem in the Lore with goddesses being labelled as Jötunn, in ...