Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Gods That Save
Who's your Savior?
Let me rephrase the question. If the plane were going down, Who would you call to?
The original (i.e. pagan) meaning of salvation had nothing to do with “sin.” As pagan things tend to be, it was actually quite pragmatic; concrete, even.
You're stuck in a bad situation. You need rescuing. What god (or goddess) do you call on?
In most pantheons, there's a specific god, or sometimes several, who gain a reputation as being good at getting people out of jams. These are the Savior gods.
Just Who that might be for you, of course, you would know better than I. For witches, it's Him o' the Horns. It makes sense that the animal god would be most concerned with the doings of animals like us. He's strong, he's quick, and (like all horn-bearers) he fights for his own. That's why he's known to witches as “Red Champion.”
Savior, of course, is a foreign word that came in with a foreign religion.
But before that, the witches had a word of their own: Healand. (It's the same as Old Saxon Heliand and modern German Heiland.) The resemblance to the word heal is, of course, no coincidence.
So: when the plane is going down, Who do you call to?
Who's your Healand?
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