Prices on Kavi Collections Have Been Dropped for a Limited Time!

Hello readers of this blog and my work:

The prices on all three of my collections have been reduced at Amazon. This means you can pick up all the eBooks! Lost Love Poems for 1.99, and Emerging Goddess and Ascending Goddess for only 2.99 each. (USD funds). If you've ever been blessed, helped, pleasantly provoked, or would like to otherwise show some appreciation for my work, please stop by this link. Please support the work of this writer as he works his way through poetry school! Thanks! ~~TK

Things Remain Unspoken (new Poem)

Things Remain Unspoken (Poem)
by Tim Kavi

when through all time

I wonder at what was uttered

I realized that the best

things remained unspoken

whether history's deeds

revealed the corrupted kingdoms

growing moss on the muttered

I surmised the most was lest

things remained unspoken

then I sat in the growing
objections to the projections

of enslaved abjections

I realized that promised freedoms

were but vocations given in jest

things remained unspoken

and when I saw what glorious

possessions did break through

and last with due obsessions

then was when I saw your lasting

face washed across existing space

of the revealed woman so blessed

things remained unspoken

things remain unspoken.

More About Goddesses: The Norse Goddess, Freya (New Column)

More About Goddesses: The Norse Goddess Freya

by Tim Kavi

Freya (also commonly spelled Freyja) is the Norse goddess of love, fertility, and sexuality.  Her name is derived from the Old Norse word for “the lady.” In Norse mythology, she is a member of the Vanir deities, together with her brother Freyr (“the lord”), her father Njoror, and her mother, whose identity is unknown.  Her husband is a god named Odr, and partly due to the similarities in name (Odr and Freya, Odin and Frigg), many scholars believe that these two couples are one and the same.

Freya’s afterlife field is known as Folkvangr, and that’s where half of the soldiers killed in battle go to, with the other half going to the god Odin’s Valhalla

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Life of the Party, and Then Some

It can be said that Freya is the “life of the party” among Norse deities, given that she represents the aforementioned love, fertility, and sexuality, and also has a love for material trappings.  One can even say that Freya is a “player” of sorts, in informal terms.  The poem Lokasenna describes how Loki had accused Freya of sleeping with all the gods, and even her own brother Freyr.  But Freya’s seeming proclivity for decadence is just one of the many facets of her personality. 

Freya as a Master of Seidr

Freya is also known as the first to introduce seidr, a form of Norse magic, to the Aesir, also introducing the art to humanity indirectly. Seidr mainly deals with changing the course of destiny, and can be used in a number of ways, including manipulating any human destiny documented in Old Norse mythology.  

Seidr practitioners are known as volvas, and in Viking times, they traveled across different towns, performing this form of magic in exchange for food, shelter, or other types of compensation.  Due to the shamanistic nature of their craft, people reacted to Freya and other volvas with ambivalence, some respecting and exalting her and others treating her with scorn.

Freya and Frigg – Are They the Same?

It has been a much-debated topic as to whether Freya and Frigg are the same goddess, or similar, yet ultimately different goddesses from each other.  Migration Period mythology (400-800 AD) suggests that Freya was Odin’s wife, while Old Norse literature points to Freya’s husband being a god named Odr, which is very close to Odin.  This similarity in name is arguably the main reason why several experts do not differentiate between Freya and Frigg, instead considering them one and the same.

Other similarities include Freya and Frigg both being accused of infidelity while their husbands were away.  Tales such as Frigg sleeping with Odin’s brothers while he was exiled from Asgard refute the belief that Frigg differed from Freya by being more chaste.  Furthermore, the poem Lokasenna clearly shows Frigg as a volva in the same way that Freya is.

Freya after Christianization

The Christianization of Scandinavia resulted in the demonization of the Old Norse gods, though Freya remained revered by people even in modern times.  This was despite her sexual nature going against the epitome of an ideal woman for Christians – a chaste virgin.  Freya was still prayed to as a fertility goddess as recently as the 19^th century, specifically for the purpose of ensuring a prosperous harvest.

About the image: The image is from the painting “Freyja and the Necklace” by James Doyle Penrose (1890)

More About Goddesses: Demeter, Greek Goddess (New Essay)

More About Goddesses: Demeter, Greek Goddess (New Essay)

by Tim Kavi

Demeter is known as the Greek goddess of the harvest and fertility. She is known as a goddess of origin, divine order and giver of food. She is also frequently associated with ruling over unwritten law, the law of nature which defines agriculture and civilized society. This can be implied that she helps to control the cycle of life and death, though not all interpretations of the myth of Demeter include this interpretation. Much of the association with Demeter and life and death stems from the myth of her daughter, Persephone who is featured along with Demeter in the Eleusinian mysteries.

The religious writing around Demeter shows her as taking on a variety of different religious functions.  In ancient history, many worshiped her as the “mother earth” or the Great Goddess who oversees the function of agriculture. Many harvesters would worship her, hoping that Demeter would offer her blessing for the work that they completed. Some areas of Greece have found earlier descriptions of Demeter acting as a poppy goddess with the belief that she was responsible for bringing poppies to Eleusis in Crete.

Demeter’s daughter Persephone was said to have been kidnapped by Hades who was looking for a queen to rule beside him in the underworld. Upon realizing that her daughter had been taken, Demeter fell into a deep sense of grief, causing all life on earth to begin dying. To prevent extinction, Zeus sent Hermes to return Persephone to her mother. To prevent this, Hades tricked Persephone into eating a pomegranate which bound her to the underworld. It was agreed that Persephone would spend a third of the year with Hades in the underworld and the remaining time on earth with her mother. This corresponds to the changing of the seasons. As Persephone leaves to perform her duties in the underworld, Demeter falls sad and life dies away in the winter months.

There were several cults that honor Demeter throughout Greece, Sicily and Crete. The ancient cult of Amphictyony on the coast of Thessaly was one of the most well-known of these cults. There is also the festival of Demeter of Mysia. This festival lasts for seven days and passes the shrine to Demeter as the parade moves from Mycenae to Argos. Only a few ancient texts describing this festival have been found so it is unclear how the deity was honored during the festivities.

Another interetsing fact about Demeter as she is presented in mythology (Demeter, who was also known in other terms as 'Ceres') is that she  never wanted to make her abode with other goddesses on Olympus. Rather, she wanted to be down to Earth and abide with her followers and those close to her, in her own temples, as a goddess with them.--TK

The image above is artwork from the work of a contemporary and interesting artist; Howard David Johnson --who draws goddesses, beautiful women, and mythological figures. ~~TK

More About Goddesses: Publication Announcement

Click Here for Kindle Edition

More About Goddesses: Publication Announcement

My latest eBook is a collection of my columns, More About Goddesses, all together in one place.  The collection also includes new columns that have never appeared here and won't be published on the blog (as well as most of those that have appeared here up to July 2013). So you are getting both new and old content, highly readable, convenient, and an interesting collection of these essays that gets a large amount of traffic on this blog.  Included also are several of my poems with Goddess themes.

These are essays about Goddesses, their stories, traditions, and histories.  If you enjoy Goddess motifs, themes, and implications of the Goddess for personal development, you will enjoy the essays contained in this collection.

Because of its availability as an eBook (first, as an Amazon Kindle Edition, with other ePub editions coming soon to all the usual places), this book will no doubt be discovered by some readers who are seeing these columns for the very first time. All are welcome, as an appreciation of the message and compassion of the Goddess couldn't be more needed than it is today. Thanks for supporting my work, I appreciate YOU!~~TK

NOTE: No worries, future More About Goddesses columns will continue to appear in this blog on a regular basis. Those columns will not be updated to appear in this edition of the eBook, but in future volumes. Volume One includes columns up until July 2013 with some additional columns that only appear in the eBook.

(About the cover image:  from the remnant of the Aphrodite temple in Aphrodisias, Turkey).