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 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.
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.
There are eight earth centric festivals that make up the "Wheel of the Year" which celebrate the journey through the seasons.
In Dancing the Sacred Wheel: A Journey through the Southern Sabbats, the author take the reader on a journey through this seasonal Wheel. Incorporating traditional Pagan myth and folklore, history with ritual, the author also shares her own personal experience in developing an underlying relationship to her local environment.
By looking deeper at our own spiritual practices in order to re-connect with the land on which we reside, we are able to gain a greater level of knowledge and understanding in order to celebrate the "Wheel of the year". Dancing the Sacred Wheel: A Journey through the Southern Sabbats provides invaluable ideas on how we are able to achieve this.
Exhortation of Isis
You are She in the dust of whose feet is the hosts of Heaven,
Whose body encircles the Universe,
Who turns the Earth in its orb,
Who gives light to the Sun,
Who rules the World.
You tread death underfoot.
To Thee, the stars are responsive,
To Thee the seasons turn and the Gods rejoice
And the elements are in subjugation.
You are She that is the natural Mother of all things,
Mistress and governor of all elements,
The initial progeny of worlds,
Chief of Divine powers,
Queen of Heaven,
Principle of all the Gods celestial and the light of Goddesses.
At Your will are disposed the planets of the air,
The wholesome winds of the seas
And the silences of the unseen world.
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. 
