My primary goddess is Freya. That has been true all along, as the gods have recently affirmed for me, even when Freya gave me to Sigyn for a while. Sigyn was who I needed at the point in my life when I was dealing with caregiving and then death and its aftermath. As long time readers of this blog know, last year I started my Monster Powers journey (see my posts titled Monster Powers.) As my Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) medicine got my health under control and I started losing weight, I found myself vaulted into the world of perfumes, and began exploring new aspects of beauty which I had never considered before. That was when the goddess Frigga told me my primary goddess was still Freya and always would be. Later I affirmed that with Freya herself.

Long ago, in my 20s, my natural body was thin and beautiful and strong and capable. It was also dying, bleeding to death. I tried a medicine to attempt to make that stop, Depo-Provera, which didn't work and caused me to gain 60 lbs. in 3 months and become severely depressed before I went off of it and started trying other medicines over the course of the next year, none of which really worked, but I survived. In trying to deal with my new body, I began making art of Stone Age goddesses such as the Goddess of Willendorf and the Goddess and Laussel. I shifted my personal beauty standard to the Stone Age and identified as goddess shaped. I realized the rest of the world took that as a joke, and went with it, as I went with it any time my most serious and personal expressions came across as funny. For 30 years, I embraced Stone Age beauty, even as I tried, and failed, to get my natural body back.

Now I think it's finally within reach. Thanks to my Monster Powers.

As I recently related on this blog, I took the statue of the Goddess of Willendorf off of my home altar and set up an artwork of Freya in a modern mode of beauty. I had a ritual of letting go of the old way and embracing the new way. I'm exploring the idea of modern beauty rather than historical beauty. I recently started letting go of my renfaire garb and sf costumes as well, as I let go of other clothes that no longer fit me. I'm going to embrace a new modern look, but also bring forward those aspects of historical dress and beauty that I want to keep, and transform them into something new, even as I look backwards to my natural body and forwards to whatever I am transforming into next. Possibly a Monster. How exciting!

In the midst of gearing up with Magical, my new perfumes and products company, I googled perfume conventions in Las Vegas, which is my local area. All the results were about beauty conventions and beauty companies and beauty shops.

I thought, I don't make beauty products. Soaps are basic necessities of life, but mine are made fun. They're to enjoy. Fragrances in perfume and lotion and soap are experiences, little joys to enjoy. They're for you. They're for you to enjoy for yourself because you want to. They aren't made for you to put on to please other people. They're for you to please yourself. Therefore they aren't beauty products.

Or are they?

Was my initial reaction to the concept of beauty mistaken? What is beauty? What if beauty is not about attracting anyone? What if beauty is also just for you? For you to enjoy for yourself, for your own sake and for its own sake?

Do I not wear beautiful jewelry when I'm not planning to leave the house, just because I enjoy it? Yes, I do. Do I not wear delightful clothing just for me? I do. So, the fact that I wear perfume just for me, enjoy perfumed soaps and lotions and sunscreen and even makeup just for me, does not necessarily mean those are not things of beauty. They are, and can be, things of beauty.

Even the ones that smell like petrichor, or smoke, or mushrooms, and surely would not make me seem attractive to anyone else. Those are art. But they are also beauty, in their own way. As a storm is beautiful. As a stone is beautiful.

Attractiveness is one aspect of beauty but far from its totality. All art is beauty, even the repellent and the horrifying. Even as Freya is the embodiment of beauty even as she walks on the battlefield at the head of a host of valkyries reaping the souls of the dead. Even as she walks in the smoke and ruin and mud, it is rose scented smoke and glistening ruin and the same mud one could put on one's face to make one beautiful, in another frame of the same movie called Earth. Her sharp gleaming sword is beauty, and her chariot is pulled by cats, nature's perfect predators, with fangs and claws and long sinews with which to leap upon prey. The light shines from her heart, and her light shines from mine.

That is beauty.

That is art.

That is Freya.