Goddess Carna

“Goddess” by ~helushia

“Carna’s themes are health, kinship, change and opportunity. Her symbols are beans and pork. Carna presides over all matters of physical and spiritual health, well-being and wholeness. Carna is also the patroness of the hinge, meaning She can help us open or close any doors in our life.*

Romans traditionally gathered with their family on this day, offering Carna beans and pork to thank her for continued good health. This translates into a meal of pork, beans and bacon with spelt to internalize Her well-being. If you’re a vegetarian, just stick with the beans.

To get Carna’s assistance in getting an opportunity to open up, try this bit of sympathetic magic: Take any bean and go to your door. Stand before the door and say,

‘Carna, help this magic begin; my future turns on your hinge.
Open the way, starting today!’

Open the door as you say ‘open the way’, and put the bean outside in a safe place to draw Carna’s opportunities to you.

To permanently close a chapter in your life, just alter the spell a bit. This time begin with the door open saying,

‘Carna, help me leave the past behind;
by this spell this situation bind.
Away it goes, the door is closed!’

Put the bean outside the door and close it as you say ‘the door is closed,’ leaving the problem outside your life.”

(Patricia Telesco, “365 Goddess: a daily guide to the magic and inspiration of the goddess”.)

“Goddess of Health” by prismadragonfly

“Carna is a protective Roman Goddess, who brings strength of the physical body. Her name is related to the Latin caro, ‘flesh’, and She protects and keeps healthy the vital organs, especially the lungs, liver and heart. At Her festival it was traditional to serve a soup made from bacon and beans; She is also the Goddess who helps the body derive nourishment from food, and to convert it to physical health and strength.

Her festival on the 1st of June was called the Fabrariae Calendae (the ‘Calends of the Beans’, fabae being ‘beans’—which I guess makes ‘fava bean’ redundant), from the offerings made. As mentioned above, the traditional food of the day was a dish of beans and bacon with spelt (a grain which is related to wheat), believed to be an especially strengthening dish, which is quite true, as they all contain a lot of protein. Eating this dish on this day was said to protect one’s internal organs and bring health for the following year. The poet Ovid, though he confuses Her with the Goddess Cardea, says that the association of these simple foods with this Goddess proves Her great antiquity. These offerings were made in a sacred grove in which Carna was said to live, down by the Tiber river, and which was dedicated to the otherwise unknown God Alernus (or Helernus).

Carna had a sanctuary on the Caelian Hill, the most south-eastern of the seven hills, traditionally vowed by L. Junius Brutus, the very first consul (whose surname means “Idiot”, by the by) on the 1st of June at the very beginning of the Roman Republic, which is usually said to have been around 510 BCE. This sanctuary or temple may have stood for a good 700 years, as it is mentioned in the writings of Tertullian, a 3rd century Christian who was trained as a lawyer. However, he calls Her a Hinge-Goddess (that is, Cardea), so perhaps he had the wrong Goddess (and wrong shrine) too.

* Carna is still confused with Cardea, the Goddess of Door-hinges, which is Ovid‘s fault; they are not related at all, merely having similar names. The story I’ve given under Cardea, where She protects a child from vampires with whitethorn, was told of Carna by Ovid; though he hopelessly mixes Them up, the Goddess in the tale does offer the vital organs of a pig as substitute for those of the child attacked by the vampire, so perhaps Carna was meant after all, as the vital organs are Her subject.

Also called: Carnea, Dea Carna.” [1]

Sources:

Took, Thalia. The Obscure Goddess Online Directory, “Carna“.

Suggested Links:

Her Cyclopedia, “Cardea“.

Monaghan, Patricia. Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, “Carna“.

MXTODIS123. An Inner Journey: The Moon, Mythology, and You, “Festival of Carna: June 1“.

Piscinus. Patheos, “Cardea: Blessing the Doorway“.

Took, Thalia. The Obscure Goddess Online Directory, “Cardea“.

Wikipedia, “Cardea“.

Goddess Maia

“Spring Enchantress” by Karl Bang

“Maia’s themes are sexual prowess, playfulness, and wishes.  Her symbols are braided and knotted items.  This Roman Goddess, whose name means ‘mother’, offers all who seek it fulfilment and renewed zest. Maia gave Her name to the month of May. She is the queen of the flowers, and today was one of Her festival days, celebrated suitably with an abundance of blossoms. In later times, Maia became strongly associated with Bona Dea, whose name literally translates as ‘good Goddess’.

As a child, on this day I left bundles of wildflowers anonymously at neighbors’ homes.  As a random act of beauty and kindness, this still holds merit today and certainly honors Maia.

In magical circles people customarily braid wishes into the ribbons of the Maypole and leave them there to germinate and grow until fall. To do this yourself, find three strands of blue ribbon and braid them together so they meet five times, saying:

‘This the month of May, for ______ [health, love, money or whatever]
I wish today Ribbons of blue, help my wish come true.
Braided within, the spell begins.
Bound to and fro, the magic grows.
When in Fall untied, this wish is mine!

 Wear a flowery shirt, skirt, or tie today to welcome Maia and brighten your day.”

(Patricia Telesco, “365 Goddess: a daily guide to the magic and inspiration of the goddess”.)

“In Greek mythology, Maia (pronounced May-ah) is one of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes. The Goddess known as Maia among the Romans may have originated independently, but attracted the myths of Greek Maia because the two figures shared the same name.

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Maia embodied the concept of growth, as Her name was thought to be related to the comparative adjective maius, maior, ‘larger, greater’. Originally, She may have been a homonym independent of the Greek Maia, whose myths She absorbed through the Hellenization of Latin literature and culture.

“Green Goddess of Beltane” by ArwensGrace

In an archaic Roman prayer, She appears as an attribute of Vulcan, in an invocational list of male deities paired with female abstractions representing some aspect of their functionality. She was explicitly identified with Earth (Terra, the Roman counterpart of Gaia) and the Good Goddess (Bona Dea) in at least one tradition.  Her identity became theologically intertwined also with the Goddesses Fauna, Magna Mater (‘Great Goddess’, referring to the Roman form of Cybele but also a cult title for Maia), Ops, Juno, and Carna, as discussed at some length by the late antiquarian writer Macrobius, probably under the influence of the 1st-century BCE scholar Varro, who tended to resolve a great number of Goddesses into one original ‘Terra.’  The association with Juno, whose Etruscan counterpart was Uni, is suggested again by the inscription Uni Mae on the Piacenza Liver. The month of May (Latin Maius) was supposedly named for Maia, though ancient etymologists also connected it to the maiores, ‘ancestors,’ again from the adjective maius, maior, meaning those who are ‘greater’ in terms of generational precedence. On the first day of May, the Lares Praestites were honored as protectors of the city, and the flamen of Vulcan sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia, a customary offering to an earth Goddess that reiterates the link between Vulcan and Maia in the archaic prayer formula. In Roman myth, Mercury (Hermes), the son of Maia, was the father of the twin Lares, a genealogy that sheds light on the collocation of ceremonies on the May Kalends. On May 15, the Ides, Mercury was honored as a patron of merchants and increaser of profit (through an etymological connection with merx, merces, ‘goods, merchandise’), another possible connection with Maia his mother as a Goddess who promoted growth.” [1]

“Goddess of Spring” by Wonderdyke

According to Thalia Took, “Maia is the Oscan Earth-Goddess, and an ancient Roman Goddess of springtime, warmth, and increase. She causes the plants to grow through Her gentle heat, and the month of May is probably named for Her. Her name means ‘She Who is Great’, and is related to Oscan mais and Latin majus, both of which mean “more”. She is also called Maia Maiestas, “Maia the Majestic”, which is essentially a doubling of Her name to indicate Her power, as both ‘Maia’ and ‘Maiestas’ have their roots in latin magnus, “great or powerful”. She was honored by the Romans on the 1st and 15th of May, and at the Volcanalia of August 23rd, the holiday of Her sometimes husband, the Fire-God Vulcan.

“Vulcan and Maia” by Bartholomaeus Spranger

She seems to have been paired with Vulcan because they were both considered Deities of heat: through the increasing warmth of Maia’s spring season flowers and plants sprouted and grew; while Vulcan’s stronger summer heat brought the fruits to ripeness. The flamen Volcanalis, the priest who officially oversaw the rites of Vulcan, sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia on the first day of May. The offering of a pregnant sow was traditionally given to Earth-Goddesses such as Tellus or Ceres and signified both the remarkable fecundity of the Earth (as there are usually between 6 and 12 piglings in a litter) as well as the darker side of the Earth Mother, as sows have been known to eat their young. Rites to Maia were also performed at the August Volcanalia, a festival to ward off the destructive fires that could be caused by the dry weather and burning sun of summertime.

Portrait of Josephine Crane Bradley by Alfons Maria Mucha

In a later period, Maia was confused with a Greek Goddess of the same name. This Maia (whose name in Greek can take such various meanings as ‘midwife’, ‘female doctor’, ‘good mother’, ‘foster mother’, or ‘aunty’) was a nymph and the mother of Hermes, the trickster God of merchants, travellers, and liars; She was also said to have been the eldest and most beautiful of the seven sisters who formed the constellation of the Pleiades, whose heliacal rising (meaning when the constellation is just visible in the east before the sun rises) signalled the beginning of summer. Through this association the Roman Maia became the mother of Mercury, and Her festival on the Ides of May (the 15th) coincided with the festival commemorating the date of the dedication of His temple on the Aventine.

Ovid gives several possibilities as to how the month May got its name, and though he admits confusion, one of the possibilities he gives is that it is named after the personification of Majesty, whom he describes as seated in a place of high honor on Mt. Olympos, clothed in gold and purple. At face value it would seem he simply made this up; but as an alternate name (not just an epithet) of Maia is Maiesta, “Majesty”, he may have been closer than he thought.

Though a Goddess of the merry flowering springtime may seem kinda fluffy-bunny, the roots of Her name point to a powerful and ancient great Goddess of the Earth, growth, fertility and heat. It is rumoured that Maia was the ancient and original name of the Bona Dea (“the Good Goddess”), whose name was so sacred it was forbidden to be spoken aloud; and through this connection Maia was associated with the Goddesses Fauna and Fatua. She was also associated with Ops, the Earth-Goddess who symbolizes the wealth of the Earth, and the eastern Great Mother Cybele.

Alternate names: Maiesta, Maja, Majestas, Majesty.” [2]

Sources:

Took, Thalia. The Obscure Goddess Online Directory, “Maia“.

Wikipedia, “Maia (mythology)“.

 

 

Suggested Links:

Carnaval.com, “May Day“.

A Chapel of Our Mother God, “The Day of Maia“.

Ladd, Stephanie Anderson. Owl & Crow, “The Goddess Maia – Queen of May“.

MXTODIS123. An Inner Journey: The Moon, Mythology, and You, “Maia“.

Revel, Anita. Reconnect with Your Inner Goddess, “Maia“.

Visuddhi, Sr. Dea. Order of Our Lady of Salt, “The Goddess and the Wheel: Maia, the Goddess of May“.