Angrboda

In December of 2020, I took part in a Goddess painting challenge. One Goddess per day to Instagram. I am grateful to that challenge, for sending me down this rabbit hole of research into the divine feminine. On Instagram on December 8, 2020, I wrote:

"Hel was today's prompt. In the Eddas, she is the daughter of Angrboda and Loki. She is alternately described as half blue, half black, or half skeletal. I went with blue.

"Here, she is a baby, in a family portrait. Mother Angrboda with her darling children in the Ironwood forest of Jotunheim. Baby Goddess Hel, Jormungandr the baby serpent, and cute little Fenris wolf puppy. How would they have grown up if Odin hadn't separated them from their mother and flung them out to the farthest and most desolate corners of the nine worlds? Would they all still crave the fall of Asgard at Ragnarok? Or would they be happily skiing together to their vacation cabin over the holidays?

Angrboda original painting by Echoing Multiverse, available via Saatchi Art.

Classical mythology was brutal to the Mother Goddess. Today, the Goddess is ascendant. The manosphere backlash will not succeed in holding her down.

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Asherah

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