Hey sportsfans! It's folklore mondays! For your enjoyment only, I'm going to be running through eight spiritual entities and doing a brief synopsis on what they are about. You can do this too with a little bit of wiki/google/godchecker.com work. Or you can just read my blog and hope for more entries like this .
Tamamo No MaeFirst up is the popular figure from Japanese Noh dramas, Tamamo No Mae. She is a kitsune (japanese shapeshifting fox spirit). Her whole bag is that she seduced an emperor in an attempt to bring down his empire. She was found out, turned back into a fox, and ran off. Only to be murdered and imprisoned in a death stone which has it's own story. Personally I think she was a revolutionary and as with most tricksters was misunderstood.
The next god I have, doesn't really have a picture. And the only reference to her I can find is from Neil Gaiman. But supposedly she is a slavic goddess.
Zorya Polunochnaya
She's the third of the Zorya sisters. The one in charge of midnight. As with most lunar goddesses she is associated with magic, death, rebirth--yada yada. She's kind of a tragic figure in that every night she has to watch the sun die in her arms. But then comical because every morning she sees it resurrected. So maybe she is used to it by now? Other neat tidbits is that she doesn't lie, is a bit wise, pretty generous, and generously pretty. Which makes it so strange that there's no picture of her on the internet that I could find, beyond weird role playing pictures. There's actually some debate that she's not even real. I say she is, even if Gaiman made her up. I should email him and see if he'll drop some knowledge on me. I promise I will have my own drawing of her if nothing else happens by sometime in the future. Just you wait.
EshuNext up is Eshu. Pictured above. Eshu is a pretty cool dude. He's basically a god of the crossroads. He is from the Yoruban mythology. Which makes him an effective vodoun diety to evoke. He's in charge of a lot of things ranging from fortune, misfortune, life, death--and all points in between. He's also a really good messenger between the human and spiritual realms. So forget your priest and learn to pal around with Eshu, and you should be in good shape. He is a trickster god though, and he delights in bringing people trials that eventually strengthen their character. So in that way he's kind of like your dad.
Baba YagaThis scary lady is Baba Yaga. Who if you aren't hip is the wrong lady to mess with. She's the wild witch in the woods all the fairy tales scared you about. She's magical, maniacal, and a child cannibal. She'll definitely be interested in swallowing your soul if she has the chance. That's one way of looking at it. The other though is that she's had a lot of annoying guests and heroes bugging her over the years when all she wants is a little piece and politeness, and that's what has made her mad. Who really knows? I actually kind of dig her. Nobody is all bad, and if you treat her well, you'll probably be the first to do so.
BamapanaBamapana. This is an aboriginal trickster god, who loves foul language and lewd offensive acts. Think of him like a dirty construction worker with too much time on his hands and a hefty porno collection. Bamapana is hard to get ahold of these days because ever since Grand Theft Auto came out he's had no reason to leave his home.
LokiThe original trickster. Loki. Some people think Loki is the Norse Satan. But if you look at all of the tricks he has played, in the end almost all of them resulted in benefits for the gods. I think on the whole he's actually done more for the Norse Pantheon than any other god there. Which is probably why he was tolerated for so long. My favorite Loki story is when he shape-changed into a female horse to tempt a giants horse away from pulling boulders and was then impregenated by said horse, and gave birth to Odin's mystical horse Sleipnir. So in a way Loki predated Thomas Beatie as the first man to be pregnant. And as with Thomas Beatie it didn't make him less of a man, no matter what Bill O'Reilly says.
CoyoteNo, not Wile E. Coyote. Just Coyote. The native american trickster god, whose annoying antics led to the diversification of mankind, the milkway, and lord knows what else. My favorite story involving him is that he loves to impress girls by juggling his eyeballs, and one time he tossed one of his eyes up so high that it got stuck in the sky and became the star Arcturus.
ManabozhoAmazing how many Looney Tune representations of native american dieties there are. Anyways, this is for Manabozho, who I may write a lot more about on Bunniesz. He's the great giant rabbit trickster god of pretty much every rabbit mythology ever done. He's the originator. He's actually the basis for the Brer Rabbit stories. There's not much to really say that you don't already secretly know about him. Basically take all of the Bugs Bunny cartoons you grew up on, and put them into elaborate creation stories, and you're most of the ways there.
If you would like to make your own blog about folk dieties, here's a fantastic link to start with (best site ever? MAYBE!):
Godchecker.com
