Tag Archives: Jacob Grimm

Spring’s Victory: the Goddess Hretha

Two weeks ago I wrote about the goddess Eostre, who gave her name to the Easter festival. In Anglo-Saxon times, Eostre’s festival was in April, while March belonged to another goddess, Hretha.

If we know very little about Eostre, we know even less about Hretha. The only source we have for either of them is the Venerable Bede‘s book on the calendar, where he lists the names of the Anglo-Saxon months in England, with brief explanations of each name. I think you’ll agree his descriptions are terse:

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What’s in a Name? Defining Eostre as a Goddess

Last week I reblogged an article about how Eostre, the Easter goddess, was not the same as the Middle Eastern goddess Ishtar. No doubt some of you were wondering who exactly Eostre was, and how she was connected to Easter (apart from their names sounding similar).

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Zisa: the Augsburg Goddess or Invented Tradition?

You’ll sometimes see Cisa or Zisa listed among the Germanic goddesses, usually with some statement to the effect that she is the partner of Tiw/Ziu, a god the Romans saw as similar to Mars. Nigel Pennick mentions her in his works, calling her an earth-goddess, and Jacob Grimm devoted several pages to her in his Teutonic Mythology.

Urglaawe, a branch of Heathenry that incorporates Pennsylvania Dutch folklore, considers Zisa one of their deities, with the 28th of September as her day, and the pinecone as her symbol. They draw their inspiration from the legend of a goddess Zisa or Cisa who gave her name to the city of Augsburg and protected it from an attack by the Romans.

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Why Is Tyr Such an Unimportant God?

Some Norse gods are famous – Odin, Loki and Thor, for example. Others, like Forseti or Magni, are only known to the cognoscenti. Tyr isn’t quite as obscure as those two, but he can’t compete with the big three. It seems strange that a god whose name means “god” should be so little-known. Did he fade away, or is there another explanation?

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Perchta, Holda and the Wild Hunt

When we think of the Wild Hunt, we think of Odin, or his Germanic counterpart Woden. However, he was not the Hunt’s only leader. In this post I want to look at Perchta and Holda, and the specially feminine spin they gave their midwinter rout.

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Who is the Birch Goddess?

Berkana, or Birch, the 18th rune, is often said to be named after the birch goddess. I think however the “goddess” part is modern mythology. Before I go any further I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with that – that’s how mythology gets made. It is interesting to see how ideas get put together and grow into something new.

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