Sunday, August 07, 2005

Goddess - Pele

Recently, I’ve been reading about Gods and Goddesses as I have noticed that a few people mention the names of the ones that they follow. As most Neo-Pagans today seem to follow a somewhat “Celtic” path, I started reading up on the myths and legends of that culture’s Gods. I picked up a few “encyclopedias” of Gods and started paging through them reading about one that I had heard of before.

Although not of Celtic Mythos, the Goddess Pele interested me as I paged through these books. I started to read everything that I could find in the books and also looked online. I’m not sure why the stories about Pele interested me more than the other stories that I was looking at, but I find myself drawn to them.

Pele, a Polynesian goddess, is a version of Goddess as Mother-Destroyer. It is said that she stomps her feet in anger at human insults causing the earth to shake and lava to flow from volcanoes. She can be calmed only with proper incantations and offerings. She seems to need to be constantly placated, as her anger is well known. But a good thing comes from her anger – the cooled lava, obsidian, is to be used for healing.

There are many stories that abound about Pele. Instead of rewriting the stories or other information about Pele, I will link you to a few websites so you may read them if you would like.

Pele - Goddess of Fire
Wikipedia
Hawaii and Pele
Don’t steal Pele’s “children”

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