patriarchy

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Freya: A Goddess of Love or Not?

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have heard that Freya is a goddess of love. Usually, it just ends there. But in my years of working with her, I’ve come to understand so much more about this wonderful goddess, and how she has often been reduced to a misogynistic soundbite. Well, no more.

So, where in the lore does it say that Freya is a goddess of love? Well, in just one small reference, actually. In Gylfaginning, it is said that “She loves poetry, she is good to invoke about love.” [1] That’s pretty much it when it comes to the mention of love.

Freya is a goddess of sexuality, and in relation, fertility and sensuality. Her brother, Freyr, is more about fertility than Freya, in my opinion. Freya is about the sensuous nature of life, of how to live it pleasurably and to its fullest. She does not really concern herself with fertility, per se, though she is sometimes invoked in birthing, which may be due to her role as a lady of life. Her two daughters are called Hnoss (Jewel) and Gersimi (gem). Are these actual daughters or just a kenning for some of the things she loves the most?

Freya’s power is in her own sovereignty. She chooses how to live her life, and will not let anyone tell her otherwise. She takes on lovers as she wills, but then, so do other goddesses and gods in Norse mythology. It’s not uncommon, really. Loki derides many goddesses and tries to tarnish them with the brush of harlot in Lokasenna. Is this simply a Christian gloss created by those who were writing down these myths? This piece of the lore derides pretty much all of the pagan and magical practices of the gods, and makes it a very suspect piece in my view.

Some will say that Freya’s everlasting search for Óðr demonstrates an aspect of her as a goddess of love. But let’s take a closer look at what the word Óðr means. As a noun, it means “agitation, skill in poetry, poetry, intellect”. [2] As an adjective,, it means “furious, mad, terrible and even mentally disordered”[3]. Many believe that Freya and the god Óðin have a relationship, and that is it he that she longs for. But is this just looking at the surface, and not delving any deeper into who Freya actually is and what she represents?

Freya was the one who taught the art of seiðr to the gods. She was the original witch. In the magic of seiðr, we often come across a trance practice of walking between the worlds or calling in the spirits. This work can fall into the category of an ecstatic practice, and therefore could it not be that Freya is seeking the ecstasy that comes with magic, poetry, divination, sexual activity and more? What she longs for is to break free from the bonds of “normality” and shows us just how to do so, to reclaim our own power.

Freya is known by many names, including Mardöll (shining of the sea), Hörn (flax), Gefn (the giving), Sýr (the sow, or to shield/protect) and Vanadis (the woman of the Vanir) among others. She is thought to be the witch, Gullveig, whom the Aesir lusted after so much that it began a war. She is also thought to be Mengelöd, a healing goddess atop Lyfjaberg. She is also known as Val-Freya, the chooser of the dead. For when the valiant warriors die, Freya gets first choice of them to come and live with her in her great hall, Sessrumnir, in Folkvang. Odin gets the leftovers. That’s something the television shows and movies neglect to mention.

A teacher of mine told me that Freya is not a goddess of love, per se, but rather a goddess that loves life.[4] She is life itself. So why has she been reduced to a mere soundbite as a goddess of love, time and time again?

Well, Freya is not the first powerful woman to be belittled and demeaned in such a way. It is rife in our culture and society. At the time of writing this article, the misogyny of the British Parliament is coming into light, with over 50 cases of sexual misconduct by Members of Parliament currently being investigated.[5] Our own Prime Minister as the then editor of The Spectator in 2001 printed a cover page article written by now Cabinet minister Michael Gove that deplores men doing “women’s work” such as changing nappies and housework while the woman maintains the position of wage earner.[6] The article was titled: “”The male eunuch – what the wimpy British can learn from the chauvinism of the French”. In the US, the Supreme Court plans to overturn a case which gives women autonomy over their own bodies with regards to Pro-Choice rights.[7] The patriarchy and the misogyny are not just something of the past, but are here and now affecting women all over the world.

We know that the Prose Edda was written by Snorri Sturluson, an historian, poet and politician. The old ways had passed on two hundred years earlier, and Iceland was firmly in the Christian camp. The Poetic Edda may have been written earlier, but both have roots in an oral tradition of poetry that was passed down from generation to generation. And we know how stories can change when a different storyteller is telling the tale. The sovereign goddesses of the Viking Age and earlier are now labelled as “witches” and “harlots”.  This label has carried on for centuries. Look at Hilary Clinton, labelled “The Wicked Witch of the Left”, or Anne Boleyn even[8]. Women in politics, whether it is with Republicans or Kings, face such slander when they rise to positions of power. It doesn’t just stop at the Middle Ages, oh no. It has carried through to the present day. Women have been objectified for so long, that it is entrenched in the social fabric of the present day. We have MPs watching porn in the Commons.[9] The whore or witch label is still firmly entrenched upon women in order to keep them from their own power. And so it is with Freya. Or at least, it is still being attempted.

But we know differently. We can see beneath the slurs and slanders and the Christian patriarchal gloss that covers her stories. We know that she is an independent and sovereign entity unto herself. She is beholden to no one. She does as she pleases. And she is there for us. The lore tells us that Freya is the closest to humanity – she reaches out to us when we call for her. She is there for us. And just as we need to reinstate the divine feminine in our own societies as we see women’s rights and sovereignty being stripped away in ever-increasing numbers despite progressive movements, we need to take back the stories and the memories of Freya, The Lady. We need to reclaim her as something more than a goddess of love.

Freya is life, the pleasure of it and the quest for sovereignty of the self. Let’s change our current narrative so that it can truly reflect the nature of this great goddess. And in doing so, we might just change the world too.

[1] Gylfaginning 24

[2] Näsström, B. Freya: The Great Goddess of the North, Clock and Rose (2003) p. 63

[3] Ibid

[4] Zindra Andersson.  Courses now held in Sweden and Germany: https://www.hexenkram.at/en/article/der-pfad-der-vlva-jahresausbildung-mit-zindra-andersson-2022-23/812a89fa-51f9-4d19-bacd-9e0974c1d578

[5] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/56-mps-face-sexual-misconduct-claims-znv2m9x8s

[6] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-michael-gove-sexist-article-male-chauvinism-b2070874.html

[7] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/roe-v-wade-protest-latest-abortion-overturned-b2071255.html

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/07/cursed-from-circe-to-clinton-why-women-are-cast-as-witches

[9] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/apr/30/calls-for-neil-parish-to-resign-after-being-named-as-mp-who-watched-porn-in-commons-uk-politics-live

Witches and Brooms – Sex Magic/Sexual Fantasy Or Something Far Greater?
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Witches and Brooms – Sex Magic/Sexual Fantasy Or Something Far Greater?

Over the years I’ve heard quite a few people equate the riding of the broom by a witch to a sexual experience. Often these folks state that the witch used a hallucinogenic ointment which was rubbed onto the broom, and then inserted in a sexual manner which made her think she was “flying”. I can tell you, there are a lot easier ways to get high.

This theory comes from a few confessions extracted during the dreadful times of the witch hunts across Europe. What is often forgotten or purposefully left out is the fact that these so-called confessions were extracted under torture. Europe and Scotland had absolutely awful methods of torturing so-called witches to extract information from them, usually with questions led by the examiner to produce a consistent result among the captives. In England, torture was illegal, however, they still kept their victims awake and used sleep deprivation to get what they wanted, as well as having the person kept in one position for hours at a time without being able to move. That’s torture too.

If we are to believe that what was said under torture is factually correct, then we must also believe what else was said alongside this confession. We must believe that these people had sexual congress with goats, or the Devil himself. We must believe that these people suckled their familiars (animal helpers) with their own blood. We must believe a host of other outrageous stories that were created to instil fear and hatred, dividing a populace and creating a space where the old, the weak, the poor and the independent thinkers were targeted against the power of the Church and patriarchy.

It is my firm belief that the sexual imagery of the witch “riding” her broom is the result of the sexually repressed minds of the witch hunters themselves. It is only one of many sexual fantasies created by these men who were paid to bring people in for prosecution. This was their job, and they made money from it. You would have to be quite a horrible type of person to want to do this sort of job in the first place. Just saying.

In fact, the witch riding her broom comes from a long heritage of witches working with staffs, stangs, wands and distaffs. We can trace this work in Europe back to the völva (plural völur), a type of Norse shamanistic practitioner of magic and divination. Völva actually means “staff carrier”. Usually a woman, she always had a staff, sometimes wood, sometimes an ornamental iron distaff. We know this from the many burials found across Scandinavia which have these women buried with the tools of their trade.

I’ve even heard some folks say that the practice of the völva was seen as shameful in Viking society. They use the sexual fantasy imagery and overlay it against the profession of the völva, claiming that this is what she did with her staff, like a witch riding her broom covered in the flying ointment. First, let’s look at the “shameful” aspect.

For women, it was not considered shameful to practice magic, except from a Christian point of view. For men to practice the magic of the völva, known as seidr, it was seen in Viking times as “ergi”, often translated as shameful. For a man to do women’s work was seen as unmanly, though we do have to remember that the sources from which we get this information were written after the Viking period by the patriarchal Christian monks. We also see women warriors, buried with their weapons, and so the question of men’s work and women’s work is even more circumspect. We see in the myths of the gods and goddesses a couple of the gods doing womanly things: Odin learns the art of seidr from the goddess Freya (he’s not seen as unmanly), Thor dresses up as a woman to get into a giant’s hall (still not unmanly) and Loki turns himself into a mare to have sex with another horse (still not called out as unmanly and actually producing Odin’s steed, Sleipnir, in the process).

(Artwork from: https://www.deviantart.com/briannacherrygarcia/gallery)

Add on top of that the fact that all the burials found of the women who are considered to be völur are high status burials, and the question of shame seems absurd. The Osberg ship burial, perhaps one of the most famous Viking ship burials, had the body of a völva laid to rest with with a host of beautiful treasures (what was left of them, for the burial had been broken into a long time before, with many of the goods stolen). No person who was considered shameful would be given such a send off.

The question of drugs does come into play when looking at the ancestors of the more modern-day version of the broom riding witch. Many of the burials were found to have pouches of hallucinogenic herbs on the body, such as henbane or cannabis seeds. These seeds, when thrown onto hot coals would produce a smoke that, when inhaled, would most definitely get you “high”, but not in the way that the sexual fantasy of the witch riding a broomstick would by the witch hunters. The clue is in the staff itself, and what it symbolises.

The word seidr is thought to derive from spinning or weaving. The völur were those who could see the way that fate was woven or spun through their contact with the spirit world. Their distaffs were their link to that ability. For those graves wherein a wooden staff was found, the link lies more with the World Tree that one can use to travel to the nine worlds in Norse cosmology. Through the staff there is a sympathetic link created with the World Tree, with Yggdrasil, and it can be used to “ride” between the worlds.

And this is where the descendant of the völur appears today, in the form of hedge riding, an aspect of Hedgewitchcraft. Riding the staff/stang/broom/whatever you have to hand that resembles the world tree helps you to travel between the worlds in order to find the information that you require in your Craft. Most Hedgewitches today do not use hallucinogens, being able to perform the working through trance states that are induced by other means.

So, in conclusion, the equating of broom riding and sex seems more like a far-fetched fantasy than the actual reality when we dig a little deeper into the history and the ancestry of witchcraft. That it is continuing to be spread today only helps to demean and undermine the power of women in working magic, turning something extremely symbolic and important into a sexually repressed fantasy created by the patriarchy. When a witch is riding her broom, or using her staff, stang or wand in ritual, the lineage is far greater than most people can ever assume, and is far more powerful than any witch hunter could ever dream of.

For a great video on the staff of the völva, see Freya’s video below:

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Reblog: Women in Druidry

This is a reblog from my post on SageWoman’s channel at Witches and Pagans…

Emma Restall Orr

Within Paganism, there appear to be an equal number of women and men in leadership roles. One of the most popular Druids today is Emma Restall Orr, one of the most popular Wiccans is Starhawk. Heathenry has Galina Grasskova and Diana L Paxon. There are countless others in all pagan paths and traditions that stand alongside the men in equal roles of leadership, teaching and more.

We know historically that there were female Druids, often termed as Druidesses. The Greeks and Romans were fascinated by Celtic society, so very different to their own when it came to power women held in their everyday lives. Yet we have snippets; tantalising few extracts from those who decided to include women in their accounts of Celtic society, whether they were from Greece, Rome or followers of subsequent Christian faiths.

Druidry may have suffered more than most when it comes to an overtly and also subverting taint of patriarchy over equality. This has much to do with the 18th and 19th century Revivalists, who were operating out of a culture and society in Western Europe that held women back from all kinds of authority positions. All the artwork we see from this period show older, mostly bearded men in togas occasionally swanning about collecting mistletoe or performing ritual sacrifice. Women are noticeably absent from these paintings and drawings. In the writing that we have, taken from other patriarchal cultures such as Rome and the latter Christian faith, the absence of women is again noted. We have to look deep within the stories to find out what the real role of women was in a particular myth, for example…

To read more, please click HERE

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Reblog: Not Giving It Up

This is a reblog from my channel at SageWoman on Witches & Pagans. To see the full article, click HERE.

Everybody wants you

Everybody wants your love

I’d just like to make you mine all mine

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

Baby give it up

Give it up, Baby give it up

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

Baby give it up

Give it up, Baby give it up

Everybody sees you

Everybody looks and stares

I’d just like to make you mine all mine

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

Baby give it up

Give it up, Baby give it up

Lyrics to a popular song by KC and the Sunshine Band.  Most of us know it. Most of us have bopped to it in our lives. Have any of us really listened to the lyrics?

Upon hearing this song on Radio Two the other day, I thought “Here we go- another piece of 80’s electronic music – drivel. Oh well, might as well listen to the lyrics and see if there is any inspiration there”.

There wasn’t.

What I did find was someone who wanted to own a woman, who only saw her as a sexual object, who was trying to convince her to have sex with him. Am I reading too much into it? I don’t think so – the lyrics are right there, saying just that.

The woman in this piece is an object. Everyone wants to own her for her physical beauty. Everyone wants to have sex with her. But where is the woman herself in this piece? Surely she is more than what is offered between her thighs.  People are only seeing the surface. And then responding to that surface, with sexual overtures.  How would you feel if you were the woman in this song? Everyone seeing you, everyone looking and staring, everyone wanting to “make you theirs”.

Sounds a bit predatory, doesn’t it…

(cont’d at DruidHeart on SageWoman)