In Hindu and Buddhist philosophy there is a god named Kala, the god of destruction. Like the gargoyles of Notre Dame cathedral, the image of Kala is often placed around buildings, especially near entrances to ward off evil spirits. Both Kala and the gargoyles of Paris remind us that sometimes we have to be fierce, even a little scary, to frighten off our so-called monsters and demons.
Of course in yoga it’s the poses that help us embody this fierce, monster-like quality we sometimes need to cultivate. Here is a brief guide to one of the most formidable poses in the asana canon. Commonly called Lion pose, I personally think of this as either Kala or Gargoyle pose. This is one you can really have fun with, especially if you have little ones.
Begin by sitting on your heels in a kneeling position on the floor. place your hands on your knees or on the floor just in front of you. Make sure your shoulders are relaxed and not lifting up towards your ears. Spread your fingers wide, like claws! Open your eyes and mouth as wide as you can, stick out your tongue, and ROAR! ROAR! ROAR! If you aren’t laughing by now, let go of trying to make the pose look “perfect” and just have fun with it – it’s Halloween, so make all the scary gargoyle faces you can come up with until you’re absolutely sure you’ve scared away any monsters that may have been hiding under the bed!
You may want to wind down with a gentle meditation or
savasana to help settle the now-probably-giggling kiddos.
Remember you can cultivate the fierce lion-esque quality of Kala and the gargoyles any time you need – seriously, try doing this pose the next time you want another helping of that Halloween candy, and you might just decide you don’t need it after all.
Probably the goddess with the worst reputation in our series
is Lilith. If you’ve heard of her, it was likely not in the context of
‘goddess’ anything. I’m going to make this post a short one simply because the
Lilith myths are wide, varying, and deeply involved in language, culture, and
religious texts, that to step towards the deep would be to fall into the abyss
and down the rabbit hole.
Lilith is said to have been Adam’s first ‘wife,’ and the first woman even before Eve. Obviously, this is not in text found in the Christian bible. It is an ancient myth with origins from Mesopotamia and ancient Babylonia and the Kabbalah. As the first woman, Lilith was made from the dust of the earth just as Adam was. Lilith is also the first woman accused of ‘asking too many questions.’ When Adam wanted to ‘lay’ with her, Lilith questioned why she was forced to lay on her back. She wanted a position that embodied the equality between them, where neither was literally above or atop the other. Not only questioning, Lilith actually refused to lay with Adam in the missionary position. Enraged, Adam resorted to name calling, saying she was made from the filth of the land, the manure, while he was made from the pristine earth *insert eye-role.* The couple never found peace together and eventually Lilith deserted Adam and the Garden of Eden. Some say she was cast out, others say she chose to leave.
Another important aspect of the Lilith myth, and the last I’ll touch on here, is Lilith as the serpent. Perhaps Lilith does make an appearance in the Christian Genesis story after all. Many depictions of the serpent in the garden that tempted Eve feature Lilith as the serpent. Some even go so far as to say Eve and Lilith became friends and lovers! In this version of the myth, “… the exiled Lilith is lonely and tries to re-enter the garden. Adam does everything he can to keep her out, inventing wildly untrue stories about how Lilith threatens pregnant women and newborns. One day Eve sees Lilith on the other side of the garden wall and realizes that Lilith is a woman like herself. Swinging on the branch of an apple tree, a curious Eve catapults herself over Eden’s walls where she finds Lilith waiting. As the two women talk, they realize they have much in common, ‘till the bond of sisterhood grew between them.’ The budding friendship between Lilith and Eve puzzles and frightens both man and deity.”[1]
Eve has a bad reputation of her own, as anyone who grew up in the Christian church knows well. As if the menstrual cycle is something to be ashamed of and not the source of woman’s life-giving power, Eve is generally *blamed* for women’s menstrual cycles, pain in childbirth, and the reason *girls don’t like snakes* (I like snakes). Oh, and “original sin.” I imagine Adam screaming, “She made me do it with her feminine wiles!”
With memes that read, “Always be Lilith, never Eve” floating around on social media, Eve seems to get the flack from both sides. She is sometimes painted as innocent, naive, obedient. But is it really fair to call the woman who defied the one rule of Eden obedient? Make no mistake, Eve has a bad bitch energy all her own. Was she bewitched and beguiled by Lilith the serpent? Or did she know exactly what she was doing?
Michaelangelo depicted Lilith as the serpent on the Sistine Chapel
Lilith and Eve inspire us to question the status quo, depreciate ignorance in favor of knowledge and empathy, and to create peace, friendship, and love with those we are taught to compete with. Women are often made to believe we must compete with other women for male attention, beauty, vocation, and more, so normalizing female partnership is an important message for our culture. “Once a source of fear, Lilith has been transformed into an icon of freedom. While some disapprove of this widespread embrace of a former demon, Lilith’s rehabilitation makes sense. The frightening character of Lilith grew, in part, out of repression: repression of sexuality, repression of the free impulse in women, repression of the question ‘what if I left it all behind?’”[2]
Our next story takes us to the cold
north, near the sea, where an Inuit widower lived with his beautiful daughter, Sedna.
Among the most beautiful maidens in the land, the young men perpetually sought
Sedn’s hand in marriage, and were continuously rejected. Most versions of the
story (and there are several) say simply that Sedna was proud. This is
difficult for me to accept. Looking from Sedna’s perspective, any woman could
think of a host of reasons she might want nothing to do with the men of her
community. Whatever the reason, Sedna continued to reject the men. Until one
day, with the warming winds of spring, a handsome stranger arrived. He wooed
Sedna and her father, telling them tales of his beautiful home across the sea,
where Sedna could live in luxury, surrounded by soft, warm furs, and be amply
provided for by his exceptional hunting skills.
Encouraged by her father to begin
her life as a woman, Sedna accepted the handsome stranger and went with him to
his home across the sea. Upon arriving, Sedna realized she had been sorely
deceived. Her lover had transformed from his human skin, which had been a
disguise, into his true form, that of a seabird. His home was not the luxurious
fur covered mansion he had described. Rather, it was a fetid nest of protruding
twigs and bones that jabbed at the skin. The bird-man was not a skilled hunter
and provided only meager, probably regurgitated, fish. In addition, none of the
bird-people wanted anything to do with Sedna. They teased her and rejected her,
and so her loneliness compounded the discomfort of the nest and the pain of
deception. Having nowhere to go and no way to return to her homeland, Sedna
spent the winter hungry and alone.
When the winds again began to warm,
Sedna’s father set out in his boat to visit his daughter. Realizing he had been
swindled, the widower father murdered the bird-man in a violent rage. He took
Sedna back to his boat and they set course for home. At the same time, the
bird-man’s fellows, the other birds, discovered their brother’s corpse and
understood what must have happened. Flapping their wings violently over the
water, the birds caused the winds to cloud the sky and the sea to swell in a
vicious storm. The boat tipped and turned. The widower father became scared and
cowardly and decided to sacrifice his daughter by throwing her overboard in
attempt to appease the indignant sea birds.
Sedna
fought her way through the waves and managed to grab the boat’s edge. Clinging
to life as she clutched the boat, she tried to climb aboard the boat. Still
hoping to save himself, the father cut Sedna’s clinging fingers, one at a time,
joint by joint. As her fingers fell into the salty water, her nails became
fishbone and the flesh around them grew into fish. Still fighting for her life,
Sedna threw her palms over the boat’s edge, holding on with her wrists. Still,
her father cut. As her hands fell away they transformed into seals and
walruses. Again, Sedna fought her way back to the boat, finally throwing her
forearms over the boat’s edge. As the widower father cut her forearms they grew
into whales and swam away. From her blood sprouted more sea creatures. At last,
after a fatal blow to the eye with the boat’s oar, Sedna herself fell to the
bottom of the sea, to Adlivun, the underworld of the sea, where she now resides
in a house made of whalebone and sea rocks.
Those
who have glimpsed Sedna say she lives as a mermaid, the head and torso of a
woman, with fins instead of legs. The goddess and ruler of the sea creatures,
it is Sedna who determines if the sea hunters will be successful in their
hunts. If the community acts immorally or loses its way, Sedna may withhold the
creatures that feed the people until a shaman makes the treacherous journey to
visit her underwater home. The shaman must travel through Adlivun, the land of
the dead. As the shaman nears Sedna’s whalebone home, “There was also an abyss,
in which an ice wheel turned slowly and perpetually; then a caldron full of
boiling seals blocked the way; finally, the horrible dog stood before Sedna’s
door, guarding the knife-thin passageway to her home.”[1]
Once the shaman reaches the goddess, he massages her aching limbs and gently
brushes and braids her long tangled hair. This journey to Sedna is considered
one of the most dangerous a shaman can undertake. But should the shaman prove
worthy, the goddess will be willing to forgive her people for their mistakes
and allow the seals and sea creatures to once again be found by the hunters to
feed the hungry people.
The
story of Sedna has much to teach us. Practically, it is told that grandmothers
warn the children of The Woman Who Lives Under The Sea (one of the many names
attributed to Sedna in her various stories), so that they will stay away from
the dangerous places. Metaphorically, one lesson from Sedna’s story is about
abuse. Carolina De Robertis offers this interpretation: “No, I wanted to say,
he didn’t cut off her hands because he didn’t have to, he had cut them off long
before, with years of keeping all authority in his own palms, all the rules and
all the power and all the answers emanating from him and no one else. And if
you don’t understand that, if you’ve never been in such a family, then you can’t
know the way the mind shackles itself and amputates its own limbs so adeptly
that you never think to miss them, never think that you had anything so obscene
as choice.”[2]
Additionally, the story of Sedna teaches
us that we must sometimes journey as the shaman journeys, deep into our psyche,
our shadow side, to confront and lovingly soothe the aches and pains we acquire
through trauma. Through this compassion, our wounds may transform and flourish
into life-saving nourishment. I leave you with this central Arctic song that is
said to refer to Sedna, the Half-Woman Half-Fish goddess:
Welcome to the first in my goddess series, where I’m diving into the mythology and lore of the goddesses honored around the world. I wanted to start this off with one of the few known goddesses from Norse mythology, Freya.
Freya is a goddess of love, battle, sex, war, wealth, beauty,
death, healing, and magic. Seem controversial? She is!
In Norse mythology, there are two main sects of gods and
goddesses, the Vanir and the Aesir. Freya belonged to the Vanir and was a
Priestess of the Seidr, the most powerful of all Norse witchcraft. A nomad at
heart, Freya roamed the countryside sharing her powerful magic. Extremely
generous, Freya shared her magic even in Asgard, the home of the opposing deity
faction, the Aesir. Unfortunately, the Aesir did not appreciate the gift Freya
bestowed upon them. “The Aesir
were quite taken by her powers and zealously sought her services. But soon they
realized that their values of honor, kin loyalty, and obedience to the law were
being pushed aside by the selfish desires they sought to fulfill with the
witch’s magic. Blaming Freya for their own shortcomings, the Aesir called her “Gullveig” (“Gold-greed”) and attempted to murder
her.”[1] After
torturing her, the Aesir bound her and set her on fire. The aesir successfully
killed her but they underestimated her power. Freya was reborn. Again, they
pierced her skin, tortured, and burned her, and still she was reborn. A third
time, and still she was reborn and finally escaped. Enraged by the Aesir’s
atrocities, the Vanir deities wanted revenge. They demanded the Aesir hand over one of their own powerful goddesses
equal to Freya. Probably lacking any goddess equal to Freya (I opine), the Aesir,
of course, refused. They retorted that Freya had come into Asgard ranting about
“Gold, gold, GOLD! It was all she talked about.”[2]
Freya had not been obedient to the Aesir and now, having thrice tortured and
killed her, were blaming their victim. These events set into motion a
monumental war between the Aesir and Vanir. There are many stories to tell
about that war but for now, suffice to say, the two sides eventually called a
truce, when Freya went to live in Asgard and was made an honorary member of the
Aesir!
As the goddess of love, sex, and fertility, Freya is open
and unabashed in her sexuality. Many of the stories about Freya feature her
sexual exploits. One of the best known stories about Freya is the story of the
Brisingamen necklace. The story goes that Freya, in her travels, happened upon
four dwarves who possessed this beautiful necklace, the Brisingamen necklace.
We already know Freya has often been thought to be somewhat of a “gold-digger.”
Well, as the story is often told, Freya had an immense desire for this exquisite
necklace. Instead of selling it to her for gold or silver, the dwarves wanted
four nights alone with the Goddess. Freya agreed and that is how she acquired
the necklace. Simple story, right? Let’s take a closer look. In Norse
Mythology, four dwarves are known to represent the four elements – earth,
water, fire, and air. “As Freyja slept with each in turn, she gained knowledge
of each direction… This wisdom allowed her to embody the essence of life,
taking it into herself and claiming it as her own. Freyja’s vast life-giving
and revitalizing power is undoubtedly the reason that numerous giants try to
steal her or coax her into marriage and the reason that Loki (the Norse god of
cunning and mischief) tries to steal her necklace for Odin. Freyja’s power is
stored in her necklace, as well as in her body.”[3]
In fact, “…the Old Norse root brisingr
refers to both ‘fire’ and ‘amber,’ it may be that her task was to gather and
return streaming sunlight to the world at the end of a dark, northern winter.
In essence, she encircles the Earth to bring back the circle of the Sun,
represented by the circle of her necklace.”[4]
In The Poetic Edda, an ancient Nordic saga, Freya is at
a party with the Aesir gods, a party to which Loki was not invited. Effectively
“crashing” the party, Loki shows up, uninvited as he is, and proceeds to insult
the gods and goddesses who had failed to invite this god of mischief to their
party. When it is Freya’s turn, he turns to slut-shaming, saying:
Despite Loki’s jealous-sounding words here, in another
story, Freya, ever generous, offers Loki the use of her cloak of feathers which
allows the wearer to shapeshift into a falcon. Freya’s shapeshifting abilities
are probably due to her magical powers as a witch and priestess. As the leader
of the Valkyries, the supernatural women who collect fallen warriors from the
battle fields, her cloak of falcon feathers allows her to swoop in to the
battlefield to gather fallen warriors and carry them away to her great hall in
the other world.
Freya has a deep connection with animals. From her cloak
of feathers, to her chariot pulled by cats, and her boar of golden bristles,
these animals often represent the spirit world, thus showing how easily Freya
move between the worlds as a witch and a goddess.
Freya is generous, sexy, lethal, forgiving, and
unashamed. She is a priestess, a witch, a goddess, an archetype, a myth, a woman,
femme totale. Her story is familiar to those who have themselves been
slut-shamed, and those whose stories have been mangled by their enemies. Freya
reminds us to take our stories back from our oppressors, to be honest and
unashamed of who we are, to find the magic in connection and harmony, to
forgive, and to love deeply.
