New Myths for Nameless Gods

The Names of the Gods Aren’t Their Real Names

~ Camilla Laurentine ~ 20 Comments

There is a phenomena that happens in the mystic sector of our communities that regularly drives a knife into the heart of the mystic – That of suddenly realizing that the Gods you are so close to are not who you expected them to be, which is the very foundation of mysticism. At first it is rending. Then it is uncomfortable. You begin the journey, diving into what we define as syncretism, and you’re met with mixed emotions. You mourn the loss of equilibrium. You fear uncertainty. You mourn what you’ve lost. You doubt your path or your sanity, sometimes both. Sometimes there’s the loss of community or co-religionist friends. It hurts. It’s excruciating.

Meanwhile there’s tickling excitement as you find spots where you discover the familiar in new faces and learn new things. You gain new tools for approaching your beloved Gods. You expand your community of like-minded, same-hearted companions.

This is the very basis of the mystic experience. You grow. Your relationship with the Gods grows. You learn and accept (Eventually? Hopefully?) that, like most relationships, you don’t have full control of the situation. Learning to let go of the reigns, trusting that the beings carrying you on your journey know the way even when you may not, is one of the hardest things that will ever happen in your life.

In the last month or two I’ve been musing over this quite a lot. As believers of Many and not just One, we don’t have as many sources of people historically going through this. Many of us identify with the Abrahamic mystics, who have the luxury of there only being One in their core beliefs. We also learn in school that Gods fit into neat boxes of what they’re in power over, and that construct is not something that simply goes away because we will it. Suddenly the God of your heart does not fit into that box. They tell you that they no longer wish to be called by the name you’ve always known them as. They want to be called something else.

Now I’ve rambled here, trying to get the foundation of what I’m actually wanting to say… And that is this: Those who walk with the Powers with root in the Indo-European traditions are grounded in the very nature of the Gods does not allow for boxes. The names of our Gods were rendered in the languages spoken and carried through time. Words, after all, have power, but power shifts like everything else. Our Gods are many-named, otherwise there would have been no need for titles, epithets, and facets. No need for syncretism and interpretation. Everyone in history would agree. But that is not the case.

Many of our traditions hold that the Gods’ true names are rarely known. These true names hold power. Only the initiated learn them, and they are held as some of the greatest secrets lost in history.

These names cannot be found in primary sources and secondary sources are mere speculation. The only way to find these names now are directly experiencing the Powers. These names were regularly part of Mysteries.

We can find this in the Rig Veda:

As God, the secret names of Gods he utters, to be declared on sacred grass more widely.

– RV 9.95.4

We can find this in regard to Rome:

…and, last and greater than all, Rome herself, whose other name the hallowed mysteries of the sacred rites forbid us to mention without being guilty of the greatest impiety. After it had been long kept buried in secrecy with the strictest fidelity and in respectful and salutary silence, Valerius Soranus dared to divulge it, but soon did he pay the penalty of his rashness.

– Pliny, Natural History, Book 3, Chapter 9

We can find this, dear to my own heart, in Hellenic sources for Apollon:

O fair-beamed Sun, how you have destroyed me

and him here. You are rightly called Apollon among mortals,

whoever knows the divine powers’ unspoken names.

–from M.L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth quoting Euripidies’ Phaethon (225 f. = fr. 781. 12 f.)

If you read chapter 3 of M.L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth, you will find other examples of this reality. Which is exactly what it is: Reality.

Years ago, I came across a database of all the recorded names found for Celtic gods, and I was struck by how many gods had once been worshiped in Europe that were entirely lost save for a single inscription. As far as I can tell, despite lots of searching, the database seems to be gone now, which just painfully reminds me of the ephemeral nature of language and names. Some of the names in the database were simply possible reconstructions of meaning, because the language wasn’t so much lost as it evolved naturally over time. The art of describing the world around us changes, words become taboo, and the sounds that roll across our tongues are ever evolving.

Sometimes at night, when the house is silent and I enjoy a few moments of peace to sit with the Gods, I think of all the Gods that we’ve lost over time. But the reality is that the Gods are immortal. They are deathless. They are waiting for us to find our way back to Them as we reforge what is left of our traditions. Rebuild? No. We will never be able to rebuild the structures that were destroyed, but we can take what has been recorded, discovered, and experienced. And with those pieces, we can listen to the Gods whispering how to melt them and forge them into traditions that build into a strong tool used to come back to the Gods of our Ancestors.

That is Revivalism. That is the job of mystics. When a God tells you that they are not who you thought they were, you’re allowed to feel the wide range of emotions that flood over you. You’re allowed to rage. You’re allowed to cry. To scream. To fight with them. To feel the height of joy as a clue falls into your lap. You are allowed to experience all the frustration that comes with this most holy of Work.

Let it take days. Months. Years… Let it take a decade or more. However long it takes you is just the right amount of time, because you’re on the path to the Gods. Not just greatest who are remembered or even simply recorded, but all the Gods. All of Them.

Let Them give you the names They now wish to be called. Let Them be nameless until They are ready to reveal a name to you as an initiate into Their mysteries. Try to be uncomfortable with Their namelessness with hope that one day you will be far along enough in your path to be given that name, which you will hold dear to your heart from that day on.

There will be new names given. New titles. New ways of engaging with the Powers. Dive into scholarly work. Dive into pop culture. Dive into whatever gets you to that place of understanding and love. Deep, deep love. The indescribable love that itself defies names and leaves you wordless when you are cradled in the love of the Gods.

It is entirely human to demand a labeled box with which to place the mysteries of existence. That’s where language comes from. It’s easy and comfortable to shove the Gods into the boxes that were kept from the destruction of our Ancestors’ traditions. But it’s entirely impious to think that these are the only Gods there are. It is clear that those of us reviving and creating traditions have the same understanding of our Ancestors – That only the initiated know the true names of the Gods, and those names are sacred.

Sacred means of the Gods’ and not of humans. You may be faced with the reality that the names of your Undying Ones are no longer known, though They are waiting to be remembered by a new name that means more to Them now, as it will rebirth them into the present.

Our lives are not static, and neither are our traditions.

Keep walking your path even if your Gods are suddenly nameless. You’re walking the paths of our Ancestors, even if it may not feel like it.

Our traditions depend upon it.

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I Speak to My God in Silence, but I am Not Silent.

~ Camilla Laurentine ~ 27 Comments

Disclaimer: If there is one moment where you can point to this blog and say “And this is where Camilla stepped off the edge with complete faith in her God to catch her; this is it.” (Because you speak with semi-colons rolling off your tongue in my version of the story.)

This, my friends, is the point of no return. This is where I start to shoot off at the mouth (or fingers) about what I’ve learned and been given to work with. As a note, I’m going to try to come back and actually cite things and provide sources, but since this is really just me babbling I may have to follow up with a more, uh, scholarly… Scholarly thing. Yes. Scholarly things. For Revivalism!

(There’s always so much terror in sharing this stuff.  I’m not gonna lie.)

It has been bothering me for a while that, for some reason, it seemed like everyone I know, including my students, prefer to speak aloud to the Gods. Except me. Now that I’m modeling praxis in my home to a 3-year-old, I’m finding myself forced to say with my physical voice. I am perfectly fine saying prayers aloud. But talking, actually having a conversation with my God and occasionally Others? No, I’ve always, always done it in my head.

There are some of you that will say that if I believe the Gods are individuals and not archetypes or facets of my own spirit, then I’m talking to myself. In fact, I’ve had quite a few people kindly explain to me that their Gods require us to physically talk to Them, because that’s what polytheists do.

And I smile, thanking them for the clarification.

And in the back of my head, I’m going “This doesn’t mesh with my experience.”

My experience has been that certain Gods, especially those that are connected to oracular arts, have absolutely no problem hearing me. Or, if a God does not seem to be able to hear me, my God is more than willing to be a translator for me.

This led me to a few different theories…

One, there is quite a bit of Quaker in my ancestry, so maybe there’s something to be said about that and having some natural propensity towards hearing the inner-voice. This has absolutely no backing in my mind, but I’m amused by it enough to mention it here.

Two, slightly less out there, but probably only partially involved… I’m neurodivergent. I’ve got sensory processing disorder and ADHD. Recently it’s been figured out that I fall on the autism spectrum. My brain is simply wired differently, and part of that wiring involves being able to write what is on my mind eloquently and openly… But physically talking is harder. Much harder. Getting words out physically when I’m trying to communicate something important is, more often than not, like swimming in gelatin. It’s possible, but it’s probably going to be ridiculously harder and slower to do. I have no problem assuming that my natural inclination towards a deeper inner-voice than outer voice leads me to be naturally wired towards having an inner-relationship with my Gods.

Except that some people apparently don’t believe that’s possible…

Which was weird to me, and I couldn’t figure out why my experience was so vastly different than others who honor the same Gods as me.

Except, oh right, this God I’m tangled up with has been part of the mysteries I’ve been taught. It’s very much like the Shakti of Kundalini or the Holy Spirit, the breath of life and the Thing that connects everything. Not the air, but the Spirit. When I say He’s not the Divine “One” (if there is such a thing, which even with a decade of exploration I’m still not willing to say yay or nay to), but He is the vehicle from which the very essence of being comes forth on.

He is literally that: inside of me. He is my breath. He is your breath. He is the breath of the world, which is the wind… Because we, in ourselves, are the microcosm of the greater cosmic macrocosm. We are our own universe, and from each of us creation is capable of springing in art, music, and work. We were created, and each of us creates in one way or another, even the simple act of cooking is creation. Our words are creation that come out on breath, and when we cease to breathe, we cease to exist.

He is the Wind-wolf of the Indo-Europeans, though I will likely spend the rest of my life chasing His trail. He is the original psychopomp, carrying up from the Underworld and returning all to that place. He is hiding in many Gods, Gods you and I can both name, but He is, Himself, simply woven through Them as He is through the rest of us.  But when you look at me, you don’t separate my breath into a separate entity from me.  I’m just me to you.  So is my God.  He can be separated, but it’s been so long since anyone has done that that He is honored by many names as a facet of the Gods we know.

And He’s not alone in that, but that’s a story for another day.

What I was talking about was how I realized that perhaps I couldn’t understand that others weren’t having the experience of inner-talking that I do with the Gods, because my life is dedicated to this God, who dwells on the inside as He does on the outside.

So, yeah.

I guess I’m the Quaker version of a polytheist over here…  Not all Gods may be inside of us, but we shouldn’t dismiss that some are.

(insert much throat clearing) Carry on.

Stories the Gods Tell Me

~ Camilla Laurentine ~ 11 Comments

I have dreams.  I’ve always had dreams that were intense and clearly not just dreams.  For a few years after a car accident, I stopped dreaming completely at night.  I’d only dream if I napped.  That went on for quite some time until one day Odin arrived in a dream I still don’t completely remember, and I slowly started to ease into the idea of working with Him.  I knew things would change.

I started dreaming again last summer, after the doctors got the pressure down in my skull.  It started again almost immediately.  Gods showing up and dropping breadcrumbs for me to follow.  I travel to places over and over again, places with names like Chicago, Memphis, Omaha, and Colorado, but they aren’t those places at all.  Sometimes I dream about places I’ve never been, and then later I find out they actually exist.

And then sometimes I experience things in my dreams that are so deeply symbolic that they leave me wondering exactly where the path ahead of me is going…  Even if I know, and I simply don’t want to admit it.

This started a dream.  I woke up with words in my mind that wouldn’t leave.  I could hear my God whispering, “This is a story I need to tell you.  This is a story you must write.”

I ignored it, because I’m too busy being serious and attempting to be a scholar (which, honestly, I am rather dubious about it being one of my talents).  I have spring cleaning to do.  I have tomato starts to water and even more essays to write…  I have mom stuff to do.  Um, I have to wash my hair…

And then I’ll feel a heavy sigh, and somewhere beyond the edge of the physical there’s an eye roll.  He’s patient with me.  I guess it’s worth the wait.

I’ll think I’ve gotten passed the pressure of it.  I’ll sit down to start writing a promised write-up for a student on Ritus Romanus, because she wants to learn the proper way of going about things.  All I find myself able to type is the story He’s been trying to tell me.

By the time I’m done, I’ve written 3 pages and feel exhausted.  All I can do is laugh, and I feel thankful those who know me tend to put up with my eccentricities and tendency to get distracted by these moments.

Then He tells me to share it, and all I can do is hide my face and hit publish.  So, here we go…

New myths for old nameless Gods…

In the beginning there was little. She would dip her fingers into the running water, whispering, “Mother, I want more. I see the potential. I see the spiraling of the stars in each breath of the wind, and I feel, Mother. I feel it all. There is more. There must be more.”

And she desired, though she did not know what it was she desired. She only knew that there was an ache. A calling of some tiny voices singing a cacophony of rioting chaos, which was her song but more. Beyond that there was something greater than the Mother stretched underneath her, ripped and pulled to give the World to the world. There was more. If only she could grasp what this more was.

She would lie with the trees, and they would fall. She would kiss the creatures, and they too would fall to the ground. Their flesh would melt from their bones into the ground. Slowly, slowly, the seconds would pass into eternity, and from their embrace she would birth the mushrooms.

In the beginning there was little and need for more, twirling in the chaos that threatened to burst from the seams of the air. Everywhere she went there was moistness of snow falling under her bare feet as she walked and walked, searching for something she could not grasp.

It was so dark. It was so cold.

She needed warmth.

She needed softness that wasn’t threatened by the crackling of leaves when her body truly settled to the ground. She cursed the mud that stuck to her skin and caked around her ankles as she tried to move freely, to dance in the world around her.

She was alone in the darkness.

So she called to the Waves. She eased into the Ocean and she said, “Come into me, and be my love. We shall embrace. We shall find something beyond this world of nothing and dark.”

And though the Ocean embraced her as she asked, she was not satisfied.

Her belly swelled, fat with potential, but out came the mushrooms and rot. She could sense the secrets she had learned within their smooth flesh, and there was longing there. The longing for something more. Something else. Potential in the chaos of the dark, trembling just beyond her reach.

So she went to the Storm. She laid on a hill one day when it rolled through the sky, marveling in the lightning that licked the plains. The grass blazed. She felt at home, thinking perhaps finally she had found where she could claim completeness.

She called to the Storm, spreading wide for it in offering. The grass crackled in the heat; it moved at first faintly green, then yellow, brown, and finally it was black. Her bare shoulder brushed against a long blade, causing it to crumble into powder on the ground.

She looked about at the destruction as the rain fell, lost to the moment of release as the darkness returned. She was not satisfied.

Around her there were mushrooms crying to her that she was their mother. She gathered them in her skirts and ran. She ran back to the forest that she called home. Her face was wet and hot with tears, which turned cold against the wind. There she stayed, tending to her children, though she longed for them to have arms to wrap about her and lips to kiss her cheeks.

They called her the Mother of Mushrooms.

They called her the Mother of Rot.

She wove those names into a crown. She placed it upon her own head. It was who she became.

And though she loved her children, she still felt swept away by the current of desire for more. Whatever it was clinging to the edges of her reality that she could not touch with her fingers.

There was so little. She simply wanted more.

Her mushroom children were well behaved. They asked for little more than the snow, the rot, and air around them. But she was sure that even they could be more somehow.

She knew there had to be more. Now there was grief, for she was certain she would never find the answer to this undying need. This longing. This anxiety as thin as a knife’s edge that seemed to sit close to her skin but never cut.

Thinking she could take no more, she bound herself. Too tired to wander, wishing to keep herself where she could keep an eye on her children, but compelled to continue in her search, she looped vines about her wrists to hold herself in place. She imprisoned herself, so that she would not roam.

She took a thousand lovers, any who passed by and wished to end their own loneliness. And though they tried, she was not satisfied.

The days and nights were not yet settled. There was only eternity. It stretched out like her Mother’s skin underneath her. She cried as her Mother once did, because perhaps that was what all women were meant to do – Weep and grind down their teeth in longing for something more than what was around them.

She tucked her hope away.

She would not yield to her own desires.

One day a bright light came filtering through the trees. It grew so bright, she was forced to shut her eyes to it. Her curiosity grew, and soon she cracked open one eye to see what this light was.

A man stood there in front of her. His hair was golden, falling in tangles about his ears and moving over his chin. It reminded her of the grass of the plains, dried but not yet burnt away. His blue eyes were peering at her thoughtfully. She felt the warmth radiating from him, felt the snow under her cold feet melt away. She looked down to see grass springing from the dark earth where nothing had ever grown before.

“Who are you?” she whispered, struck suddenly with a longing so great that it scared her.

With gentle hands he reached behind her, untangling her wrists from the vines and pulling her free. He smiled, and she knew warmth. Not the exhausting blaze of fire, but something comforting and lingering. His voice was soothing to the rawness she hadn’t realized she felt as he simply said, “I am the Sun. I am Freedom. I am the Prince who shall be King.”

She did not invite him to take her. Instead she sought out his lips to press against hers. Her arms wrapped about him to pull his body against hers, closing the gap of infinity that awareness had brought about. They became a tangle of limbs as they fell to the forest floor.

She felt pleasure. With each movement she knew that her destiny was spiraling forth. She cried out against the fading chaos as he spilled into her. She was satisfied as they slumped into the soft moss that had grown in their shadows. Their hearts beating in time together, their breath one as they both tried to catch it.

She looked at the world around her, suddenly green and vibrant. Her children safe in the shadows, but hiding amongst plants and blooming flowers that she had never seen before.

She blinked, sitting up to look more, as she asked, “But how did this happen? Who created this?”

His laugh was delighted, that lingering warmth raising goosebumps on her flesh only to be pressed down by his fingertips against it. He kissed her shoulder, whispering, “You did, my Love.”

And she was satisfied.