Romi Kumu - South American Goddess of Renewal

Romi Kumu is a major Goddess to the Baransama people of southeastern Colombia in South America.  Here she is considered to be the Great Mother who created the world as well as everything in it.  As such, she ruled the trees, the night, the earth, and of air. 

She was also the Mother of all people and a great female shaman who made a great grill out of clay which she placed in the mountains.  The grill became the sky.  When she opened the "water door" to the sky, water come gushing onto the earth ... and as a result, Romi Kumu created all of the creatures.

Spiders and Arachne

Spiders both fascinate me as well as cause an instant dislike.  Red backs, white tails, wolf and huntsmen are best found outside and when this occurs, we have a lovely relationship.  I watch black house spiders with great suspicion, and abmit that Daddy long legs are probably the only member of arachnids that I am happy to share my home with, more to the fact that they tend to keep the other “nasties” at bay, than anything else.

Hel - Norse Goddess of the Afterworld

One of the Goddesses we will be exploring during this year's Encountering the Dark Goddess workshop comes from the wintery north - that being the Nordic Goddess Hel.

The 13th century Prose Edda described Hel as being half alive (flesh coloured) and half dead (coloured black), with a “gloomy down-cast appearance”, and the bones on one side of her face exposed.  With the wave of her hand, Hel is able to cause death, decay and disease; and indeed, when the “Black Death” epidemic of the Middle Ages depopulated villages across Scandinavia, Hel was thought to have been responsible.