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Who is the patron god of matches?

While, on the face of it, this question may seem a frivolous one, it's actually asking something much deeper: What would a contemporary pagan society look like?

I recently learned the answer to both questions grâce à my longtime friend and colleague Prudence Priest, the newly-anointed official Ambasadress to the US of Romuva, the Lithuanian pagan movement.

Check out this box of matches that she brought back from a recent trip to the Baltics, which proudly sports the image of Perkunas, Lord of Lightning, the Lithuanian Thunderer. (Note the three leaves from the oak, His sacred tree; it is, of course, oak wood that feeds the ever-burning Fires in His sacred groves.) He drives His thunder-chariot drawn by a matched pair of horses, one black, one white.

This latter detail I find quite striking. Doubtless it refers to Thunder's ambivalent nature: Life-giving/Death-dealing, lord of both rain and lightning-blast. Thunder, after all, rides both by day and by night.

Now, you might think that the patron deity of matches might be whichever Fire god or Hearth goddess is worshiped locally. But, of course, these are the patrons of a fire already burning. It's the Lord of lightning who presides over the striking of Fire.

Today I continue to honor the gods maligned by the atheists' graveyard.  Medeina is deity number 30 from that list and is a Lithuanian forest goddess.  I could not find out much about her so a short prayer is my offering.

Lithuanians tell of
Giltine, the death goddess
Long nose, even longer tongue
dripping deadly venom
Clad in a white sheet
Found in cemeteries
seeking coffins’ contents
her poison’s source
She bites, strangles, suffocates 
a million ways to die
Giltine knows no obstacles
fences mean nothing
doors open themselves
She’s an unseen shadow
but you will hear her whip
cracking thrice in the air
or the clatter of her bone rattle
Feel a sudden shiver
She’s looked you in the face
and moved on…this time
Though a Patroness of healers
do not interfere with her will
tricking her is possible
but all measures are temporary
She will come for you
There is no escaping fate
Look where she stands
to know thy future
foot of the bed, recovery
head of the bed
say your prayers
your life is done.

Europe's last pagan monarch was Gediminas (ca. 1275-1341), Grand Duke of Lithuania. He championed the Old Worship throughout his life, and although he tolerated various forms of Christianity—he even formed a political alliance with the pope against the Teutonic Knights—it was his policy to punish proselytizing with death; he was cremated according to traditional rites (including, allegedly, human sacrifice) in 1342.

Although his heirs eventually decided to throw in their lot with the Roman church, the Gediminid dynasty ruled Lithuania for more than 200 years. History remembers Gediminas as a tolerant and enlightened ruler.

Lithuanian folklore remembers its last pagan prince with fondness. He is credited with the founding of Vilnius, Lithuania's capital city. On a hunting trip he is said to have dreamed of an iron wolf, standing on a hill at the confluence of the Vilnia and Neris, whose howls filled the world. The high priest of Lithuania interpreted this dream to mean that a city built on that hill would be known throughout the world.