I have to say, making my 2017 resolution to create a drawing of a Goddess a day has been rewarding, challenging, fun, and illuminating. I've had a great time sharing images of goddesses on my Facebook page every day, receiving feedback on my drawings, and getting ideas for new ones. I thought for today's Blog post, I'd write about Turan, a Goddess of ancient Etruria, or what today is known as Tuscany. The Etrurians are more commonly referred to as the Etruscans, which is how I will refer to them here.
There are a great many things about the Etruscans which still remain a mystery in the twenty-first century, mostly because their language has been only partially deciphered. What we can do is look at the art they created and see visually the things that mattered most to them.
If the Old Gods exist—I would contend that they do—one would expect them to show themselves differently to different peoples in different times and places.
And that, in fact, is exactly what we find.
Forthwith, in this season of Dawn, a tantalizing glimpse of a non-Indo-European Dawn.
In their well-favored land by the Tyrrhenian (“Etruscan”) Sea, the ancient Tuscans called her Thesan, a goddess whose sister-selves include Vedic Ushas, Greek Eos, Latin Aurora, and English Easter.
Uni is the supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon. She is part of a ruling triad together with her husband, Tinia, and the goddess Menrva. The Etruscans were distinct culture that occupied a region north of Rome. They were most likely an aboriginal people conquered by a Near Eastern culture which was then influenced by Greek traders (as I understand it any way). Originally they overshadowed their Roman neighbors who took on a lot of the Etruscan culture, especially religiously. Eventually the Etruscans became subordinate to the Romans and essentially disappeared into the Roman Empire.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...