Echoing Multiverse

  The Cailleach is a divine hag, creator deity, weather deity, and ancestor deity.  In modern Scottish folklore studies, she is also known as Beira, Queen of Winter.  She rules the winter, while Brigid rules the summer. Her name is pronounced coyluck, but also like you're clearing your throat.  When I painted The Cailleach as part of a Goddess painting challenge, at the beginning of my painting journey, that was about all I knew about her.  I painted her in blue with white and silver - winter colors, in contrast to  Sunna , who I had painted in yellow two days early.  I added ski tracks. The Cailleach, original painting by Echoing Multiverse.  Available via Saatchi Art .  Stickers, greeting cards, and other merch available through RedBubble or Fine Art America . Since the original Goddess painting challenge, I have discovered some excellent sources for more detailed information, including Barbara G. Walker's very well researched Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. 

 The Sun is a Goddess.  In Japan she is called Amaterasu.  In Hinduism, Aditi.  In Ancient Arabia, Atthar.  The Celts had a Sun Goddess named Sulis, from suil, meaning both "eye" and "sun."  Germans called her Sunna.  Norwegians called her Sol.  The Hittites called her Arinniti or Wurunšemu.  She is Unelanuhi to the Cherokee.  The Wotjobaluk Aboriginal people of south-eastern Australia know her as Gnowee. Sunna, Goddess of the Sun original painting by Echoing Multiverse.  Available via Saatchi Art .  Stickers, prints, and other merch available through RedBubble or Fine Art America .

Happy (Belated) Saint Lucy / Lucia Day!  In Sweden, Saint Lucia is a young girl in a candle head dress bringing the light.  Light is celebrated on Saint Lucy / Lucia Day because on the former calendar, December 13 was the winter solstice.  In Italy, Lucy is a martyr who put out her own eyes to avoid seeing evil deeds, also celebrated on December 13. Saint Lucy / Lucia Day Procession, original painting by Echoing Multiverse, available via Saatchi Art .  Greeting cards, stickers, and other merch available through RedBubble or Fine Art America . While in Italy, Lucy carries her eyeballs on a platter, in Sweden, the platter is traditionally covered with Lussikatter, curled up cat shaped saffron buns with raisin eyes. Which makes total sense as Freya and her cat sleigh preceded Santa and his reindeer. Lussikatter Freya's Cat Chariot - first published in 1865 "For the Pre-Christian Pagans of Europe, it was not Santa Claus but Goddess Freyja who arrived on Christmas Eve. Until 18th

 For NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) my teen started working on a queer YA retelling of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  We did some YouTube research about the Four Horsemen and the Book of Revelations, also getting sucked in to the History Channel's Secrets of the Bible - surprisingly well done.  The sequence of videos skewed our next sets of YouTube recommendations somewhat, and we ended up watching a PBS video about Baba Yaga...and her Horsemen.  Whoa. In Revelations Chapter 6, the lamb opens seven seals on a special scroll.  When the first seal is opened, a white horse and rider appear.  2nd seal:  Red horse and rider.  3rd seal:  Black horse and rider.  4th seal:  Death with a pale-green horse In the popular Russian folk tale of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa, on her journey to get fire from Baba Yaga, Vasilisa first encounters Baba Yaga's white horseman, then her red horseman, then her black horseman, and finally, Baba Yaga herself - the folk tale - ified Great Godd

 We recently visited the U.K., researching schools for the progeny.  We put almost 1600 miles on the rental car, visited 7 campuses from Edinburgh to the tip of Cornwall, and splurged on admission to Shakespeare's Birthplace. Shakespeare's Birthplace There, we learned that Shakepeare's dad was a glover.  A prosperous tradesman with several apprentices and a relatively luxurious home.  Father Shakespeare was well respected in the community, being named community ale taster.  The family was solidly middle class, perhaps even upper middle class.  While most paintings and other sources of information on historical fashions focus on the clothing of the elite, the visitor center museum at Shakespeare's Birthplace had an exhibit focusing on clothing of the middle class during Shakespeare's lifetime (1564 - 1616).   Looking at the exhibit, it was striking to see how drastically styles changed during Shakespeare's lifetime.  The fashions of the middle class in the late 1

Word vs. Image.  The earliest forms of writing were cunieform in Mesopotamia and hieroglyphs in Egypt.  In Mesopotamia, the creation of cunieform was credited to the Goddess Nisaba .  In Egypt, Seshat was the Goddess of scribes, and created hieroglyphs.  Both cunieform and hieroglyphs took time to learn.  They each contained hundreds of symbols and were mostly studied by "the literary elite".  They were based on images.   In between Egypt and Mesopotamia, scripts surfaced that were hybrids of the two forms.  The peoples who lived between Egypt and Mesopotamia included Midianites, semi-nomadic camel caravaneers, Serite miners working copper quarries, Phoenician sea traders, and Canaanites with their terraced vineyards and olive groves.  To the north was the land of the Assyrians, and to the south stood the fabled city of Jericho.  Leonard Shlain, in The Alphabet Vs. The Goddess writes, "Wandering throughout these lands were groups of herders seeking pastures for their g

I've been rereading The Alphabet vs The Goddess , by Leonard Shlain.  Published in 1998, it was inspired by a 1991 tour of ancient Greek sites led by a University of Athens professor.  At every site toured in Greece, Crete, and Turkey, the professor explained how the site had originally been consecrated to a Goddess and later was repurposed for a male deity.  Leonard Shlain was a brain surgeon.  On the way home from his trip, he was contemplating what could have caused such a widespread cataclysmic change in human culture.  He hypothesized that the development of alphabetic writing may have had enough of an effect on human brains that it moved our societies from being peaceful and Goddess focused, valuing the feminine, to being patriarchal and violent, valuing the masculine.  He spent the next seven years researching and then published his national bestseller. It's a fascinating book, especially in light of recent debates over differences between male and female brains. Before

 Pandora is the first woman of Greek mythology.  The Greek equivalent of Eve.  Eve has an apple, while Pandora has a box.  Both the apple and the box release misery onto the world of men.  Both Eve and Pandora are punished.  Like Eve, Pandora and all of her daughters are sentenced to "experience difficult childbirth.  Having demonstrated the untrustworthiness of her gender, she--and all women yet unborn--were to be dominated by their fathers and then by their husbands." (Quote source:  Shlain ). I recently began reading Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser, a book published in 2020, with the subtitle "When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes".  Part I of the book discusses origin stories.  Chapter 1 focuses on Eve, Chapter 2 focuses on Pandora.  The quote at the beginning of Pandora's chapter is from Polly Young-Eisendrath who writes, "Both Eve and Pandora bring death into the world.  This is a curious reversal of the fact that women bring

 I painted Athena in December 2020 as part of a Goddess painting challenge, at the very beginning of my deep-dive into Goddess traditions.  I painted her as a mean girl, inspired by Regina George.  I had never liked Athena, and the result was an unflattering portrait. Athena, the Mean Girl, original painting by Echoing Multiverse, December 2020 Inspiration:  The pop culture Mean Girl, Regina George My perception of Athena was based on the story of her punishment of Medusa.  I had recently seen a YouTube video from Medusa's perspective.  I wasn't yet aware of the complexity of Greek mythology, especially with respect to representations of the divine feminine.  Later I learned that this story of Medusa was written by Ovid, a Roman poet, around 8 AD, well after the classical period of Greek mythology. From Robert Graves, I read that Plato identified Athene with the Libyan Goddess Neith, "who belonged to an epoch when fatherhood was unrecognized...Virgin priestesses of Neith

 The song I needed this week was supplied to me by YouTube Music's AI. Mother by Meghan Trainor. Inspired by all the men telling her what to write, what career choices to make, and that having a baby would end her career. And just plain talking down to her as if she was worth less. The best lyric: "You with your God complex, But you can't even make life, bitch" Which goes out from me to all of the men who think I am worth less, as a woman, and as a woman who has chosen to be a stay at home mom. "I am your mother You listen to me Stop all that mansplainin', no one's listening..." Fan art based on the video. Thank you, Meghan Trainor. Full lyrics: I am your mother (I am your mother) You listen to me (you listen to me) Stop all that mansplainin', no one's listening Tell me who gave you the permission to speak? I am your mother (I am your mother) You listen to me Mr. Big boy, pullin' up in your big toy Sayin' all that blah-blah-blah, maki

 In Northumbria, in the U.K., near the North Sea coastline, is an archaeological site near the town of Loftus.  It contains a circular enclosure of post holes surrounding a raised center, dated to 2200 BCE.  It is thought to have been a ritual site.  Other structures at the site include the "Oldest House", which predates Stonehenge.   In addition the Neolithic ceremonial site, the area was also the site of an Iron Age settlement.  Superimposed, cutting through the Iron Age houses, 109 early medieval graves have been found.  "Each was dug carefully into the ground to allow enough room for a body to be laid in the foetal position on its side....Beads, scraps of metal, parts of eroded weapons all suggested that these burials were not Iron Age, but more recent....more excitingly still, they seemed to date from a period when this part of the north of England was undergoing an ideological revolution.  They dated from when Christianity was putting its first roots down along the