Wednesday, 20 March 2013

The Power of Ostara


The Easter holiday is coming soon now. Most people understand Easter is usually associated with bunnies, chicks and decourated easter eggs. This season has pagan origins, and some of you are well aware of that. Easter as a name derives from the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre. This goddess is also named Ostara. For pagans and Heathens it's the time of goddess Ostara. I've covered that in previous posts. I also mentioned the etymology of Ostara and Eostre, it's PIE root word and linked to ancient Sanscrit names that branched off. It basically says "Maiden of the East" or "Eastern Maiden of the Day". That name Ostara and Eostre has developed in different angles and languages.

The name "Ostara"

I researched the name again and had a second opinion. I also explained this in detail in my post "Hidden Within the Norse Gods part 1" under Ostara. Ostara and Eostre as a name itself is related to the following other names and words:
Astra (goddess)
Astraea (goddess)
Ana and Anna (goddess)
Artio (goddess)
Astarte (goddess)
Artemis (goddess)
Danu (goddess)
Dione (goddess)
Diana (goddess)
Ishtar (goddess)
Sita (goddess)
Tara (goddess)

The Goddess

Ostara is mainly associated with springtime, flowers and light. I consider Ostara as more of a celestial goddess rather than an earth bound goddess.

Her name "OSTARA" includes the word star. Her name reflects both the East, stars and light. The name Ostara can be traced to other goddesses with names that all mean "star", "spring time, star" and "east".

Ostara appears when the flowers grow. She's a powerful goddess that arrives during spring. It might be worth noting here that in spring, the constellation of Virgo becomes visible. Virgo means The Maiden, and represents maidenly (sometimes virginal) goddesses. "At first the constellation doesn't look like a person, until you realize she is lying down! Her head is towards the east". Windows to the Universe - Virgo

Ostara is a goddess of the stars who looks towards the east. She's the constellation of Virgo.

The ancient people knew very much about astronomy and they regarded Ostara and Eostre in a different way than what we do today. They were fascinated by the planets and stars. They knew the movements of space. The arrival of Virgo in the stars during spring coincided with the appearance of flowers and wild animals, such as fertile hares. It was this time round that the ancients looked upon Virgo as the Goddess of Stars. Her names are: Ostara, Eostre, Tara, Ishtar, Astra, Artemis... going back to the list again.

Have a wonderful Ostara!

For other info on Ostara:

Wikipedia - Eostre
Goddess Gift - Ostara and Easter

The picture is "Goddess Ostara" by Mickie Mueller

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Tree roots, meat and water

So how did hunter gatherers survive the rest of the year when fruits, nuts and vegetables didn't appear? What if they couldn't find enough meat? The answer is, they ate a rich diet of tree roots, insects, fish and eggs, and then meat (the prize), fruit, nuts and vegetables in limited times. I'll give a scenario of what it could've been like alone without hunting skills.

It's okay to eat tree roots as long as it's cooked, especially boiled. Any germs or toxins will be killed off in the heat anyway. Most tree roots, bulbs and tubers are safe to eat when its cooked.

Here are good edible plant roots:

Boabab trees
Cuipo trees
Horseradish trees
Banana and Plantai trees
Kapok or cotton trees
Canna Lilly
Iceland Moss
Marsh Marigold
Reindeer Moss
Rock Tripe
Sheep Sorrel
Wood Sorrel

I've written here a story about a girl on her own in the wilderness, and harsh reality bites. It's set after the Ice Age, but before the spread of farming.

"Lost in the Stone Age"

By Rayna a.k.a. Rana Ulfa

Her name was Sky and she found herself alone again, this time without the help of her brothers and their dog. They were all lost during a terrible disaster with forest fires and cracks opening in the ground. She ran and ran, not thinking if they were with her. It wasn't until she escaped the region, entering a new terrain of rocks and grass that she realised her loss. For days she'd been walking, tired and hungry. It hadn't even rained. Her stomach ached. Most of the time she slept under her fur coat, or she continued walking away from the angry zone. Sky was sure she'd find someone again. As days went by, she couldn't walk anymore. Exhausted, burning, tired and pains in her body, she sat down beside a rock and fell into another of her day sleeps. Then something hit her. It was rainfall, with big heavy drops pelting her. She felt excited and raised out her cupped hands. Tiny pools of water formed in her hands which she drank She needed a bowl and a cup but didn't have any. She started drinking from the stony surface of the rocks. She made a little semi circle of stones in the hope that this would contain enough rain water to drink more. She tried again and again but water seeped out through the gaps. So she dug a small hole in the dirty ground. Then she pushed in a lot of stones to cover the dirt, until a tiny pool of rain water collected in there. This was how she managed to keep water for a while, but soon the rain stopped.

Sky left the place to move on. She planned to build little water pools in future until she could make her own wooden bowl. So far, she hadn't come across any trees. Filled by the water, this kept her going a while. Then one day the stomach pains returned, so did the tiredness. She slept beneath her fur coat on open grass under a cold starlit sky. She woke shivering in the frosty morning, despite her fur blanket. She put on her fur coat, laced up her boots and set off. She was so cold that the only thing to do was exercise, and she ran. This made her build some sweat but after a while it made her feel unwell. Then she noticed a thing move near some brambles. It was a calf. Her heart pounded and she got closer. She could smell the creature's warmth but it noticed her and was frightened of Sky. It ran away and she was too weak to catch up. So Sky kept low and the calf returned through the bushes, but not close enough for her to grab. She waited calmly, but the calf didn't get near. It didn't see her. Sky followed it wherever it went. She'd followed the calf for hours going across hillocks, mud, grassy terrain and through a new place with trees. She didn't care about the that for now. She wanted to eat this calf. Sky ended up stalking the calf until nightfall. The calf entered a clearing through the woods and this was full of large horned beasts. They were mostly adults and these were ferocious aurochs. Sky panicked. She couldn't get anywhere near the calf anymore, and so she retreated into the woods. She didn't want to be cold, and she covered herself over with the fur coat and plenty of leaves.

The following morning wasn't so cold. Sky listened to some birds, and she climbed a small tree with low branches. She wanted to reach the birds nest and steal the eggs for food. Then a fierce mother eagle swooped down and attacked her. Sky screamed and fell off the tree. She managed to get away but she'd broken her ankle. Sky knew she was close to death.

She found herself by a stream and couldn't see any fish. She cried herself to sleep. When she woke up, she followed her instincts now. She went over to a small bushy plant and pulled it up. The roots came out of the earth. She thanked the earth mother. She picked off the brambles, twigs and leaves, keeping only the roots, biting some of the thin stalks off. Then she kept the roots and decided to cook it as this was the only way she was able to eat it. Her brothers cooked the tree roots into mash. She needed to make a small fire first. She'd seen her brothers do this. She found two sticks, then made a hollow, rimming it with some stones and she rubbed the sticks together, blowing. When little flames caught, she added the pieces of the shrub she'd picked off earlier to make the fire grow bigger. Then she made herself warm. For days, Sky lived in the woods, making fires and cooking roots of trees and shrubs. She'd found fallen pieces of wood and from those she carved out bowls. She used sharp stones and obsidian to help her make things. Sky learned a lot from her brothers and while she survived in the woods, she hoped to see them again one day. Sky didn't want to be there anymore so she carried her tools with her and went off to find a cave to keep sheltered from the elements. Sky continued on under the moonlight, following the delicious scent of meat in the hope also she would catch up with that auroch.

The End        

So my view is that the most people ate long ago, was simply Tree roots, meat and water They had to if there was nothing else available. If no meat was there, the bark, twigs and roots of a tree were eaten. .

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Iron the legendary weapon

In folklore, fairies hate iron. Fairies, ghosts, goblins, pixies and even witches, any beng that is supernatural hate iron. The stories are very ancient. All over the world, supernatural beings stay away from iron as it's like poison to them. So people use iron as a form of protection against the paranormal. Horseshoes made of iron were placed above doors in peoples houses. Some wear pendants made form iron. Iron fences are found enclosing graveyards and cemeteries to keep the dead inside. Why is that? Why are supernatural entities frightened of iron? Where does this idea come from?

It's possible that these stories originate with the idea that different tribes used iron weapons against their enemies. It may come from the Iron Age itself when humans started being cut off from nature, and this is symbolic. Iron (humanity) vs the supernatural. Is there more to it? Why iron? Well other elements are good to ward off ghosts, monsters and fairies, such as silver and salt. Silver bullets put an end to demonic entities and ordinary bullets have little effect, according to legend. Iron seems the oldest protector against magical, elemental and paranormal things. When I hunt around for more info, checking out sites and forums on fairies, the paranormal, ghosts and so on, all I get is "iron protects against them" but no actual evidence. I don't want to think of this as just symbolic made by people telling stories or that it is just another telling of barbarians using axes and swords against weaker people! I need facts. I haven't found it but I did my own digging.

By the way, I've been reading some exciting novels about fairy folk but there's just one problem I have with them. I'm disappointed with the authors (I'm not mentioning who they are as these are talented writers, to be fair) because they didn't do much research. Some of the fairy folk (and in some books, beings who are similar) all hate iron because it's poisonous to them. Yet the characters have a regular diet of things that I know contains iron in real life! Oops. I look for little things like that because I'm being practical and can't help it. Why do these modern day fairies eat iron stuff if the cold iron metal hurts them? I'd love to ask one of these fictional fairies why. Sorry but to me, fairies don't eat anything we eat. However, another thing to consider is that fairies might be just like us. Yet where does the iron myth still come from?

Iron is a vital sustenance but at low levels. Iron is found in red meat, liver, turkey, chicken, egg yolk, spinach, dried fruit, broccoli, mollusks, beans and artichokes. Too much iron may cause illnesses. I didn't really look in the fairy paranormal subject for an answer to the origins of iron being their poison. I looked deep for clues into the subject of iron as a metal. I researched this element and found a host of things that gave me a very important clue as to the origins of the fairy and iron idea.

Iron is a heavy metal. It resides in the earth at it's centre, and every animal has some traces of iron. There is iron in blood, red ochre and plants. Too much iron production within the body is lethal. A recent case of a doctor who died of the Black Death was also suffering a hereditary condition called hemochromatosis, that is genetic and a disease that causes too much build up of iron. This disease is often common amongst people who are a cross section of north European people from the Irish to the Swedish. Why this abundance of iron mainly appears in Nordics could be because of ancestral genetic history, from diet to industry and surviving plagues. The body has had to build up an immunity with its own drawbacks.

For more info on that read "The Iron in Our Blood that Keeps and Kills Us".

Now iron is said to come from outer space.There is meteoric iron, and these are meteorites that are made of iron. Unlike other meteorites made of rock, meteoric iron is considered "resistant to weathering" and don't break up in the atmosphere as easily as others. They can enter the earth's atmosphere as huge chunks! Meteoric iron has been used to forge into weapons. Meteoric iron has caused the orange bands across the earth's atmosphere on entry (source).

Images HERE showing a crater with iron fragments, caused by a huge iron meteor. Ancient people were afraid of the "sky falling". Perhaps in early history, impacts from large asteroids and meteorites could've started the chain going. When people found that fragments of some meteors contained iron, and smelted them as tools and weapons, against other tribes and animals, it makes sense. History passed down orally distorted into folklore.

Also what I found was that iron kills stars. Check out this fantastic article about the subject here called "Iron: the most dangerous element." It heads one paragraph with "What do stars and faeries have in common." When stars and suns produce iron, it grows like a cancer and degrades the energies of stars and suns. Eventually the stars and suns will die. Stars have a lifespan. They're made of plasma with an iron centre. It lives by a nuclear fusion that is like blood circulation, that generates a power. A young star omits hydrogen. Then later in life, it produces helium when hydrogen has finished its cycle. Later in a stars life, after the helium cycle will be other types of energy such as carbon, neon and silicon. At the end, iron is what's left and this alone degrades the star completely.

In other words, a star begins its life as a protostar in a nebula. The baby star is born as a small brown dwarf. It's developing stage of life with fusion ignition makes it grow into main sequence star, and then a mature red giant star. Then the star becomes a cold white dwarf star with low energy. A dying sun is a black dwarf star because it's not able to produce light or energy and is what remains of a luminous star.

Now onto the subject of fairies not liking iron, I've concluded that the paranormal (which consists of energy) reacts near a piece of iron. Either to recognise that iron is potentially lethal and could seriously damage, weaken or harm these beings as iron will eventually destroy the sun. And iron is found in certain meteorites that are more dangerous because they retain their size on entry. Perhaps the supernatural beings in folklore memory is just a distant genetic memory we have of a time when iron meant death.  

Rayna (a.k. Rana Ulfa)
She Wolf Night