The Swan Knight

What could be more chessly than a knight - this one in swan's feathers. First, the "traditional" take on the Swan Knight, a brief summary from Wikipedia: The story of the Knight of the Swan, or Swan Knight, is a medieval tale about a mysterious rescuer who comes in a swan-drawn boat to defend a damsel, his only condition being that he must never be asked his name. Today, the story is probably best known as that of Lohengrin, son of the Grail knight Percival. The Lohengrin version forms the plot of Richard Wagner's opera of that name, which is based on the medieval German romance Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach. However, the Knight of the Swan tale was originally attached to the family of Godfrey of Bouillon, first conqueror of Jerusalem in 1099, in the French chansons de geste known as the "Crusade cycle".[1] In Brabant the name of the Knight of the Swan is Helias. Notes: 1. Holböck, Married Saints and Blesseds, p. 147. ************************************************************************************** Now, from "The Woman's Encyclopedia" - the real scoop, not watered down poop! Swan An ancient, universal shamanic practice of wearing swan-feather cloaks created numerous muths of deities ableto transform themselves into swans. The Heavenly Nymphs (Apsaras) of Hindu mythology were swan maidens. As a phallic god sporting with these sexual angels of the Vedic heaven, Krisna became a swan knight. Multiplied forms of his Goddess were sometimes swan-houris, sometimes milkmaids, the Gopis. Kalmuck tales of the Siddhi Kur, translated from Sanskrit, made Krishna a swan knight who courted the Triple Goddess in the guise of three milkmaids, daughters of the Old Woman (Kali).(1) [Notes: for triple goddess, see prior post on the Hind of Hinds and the shrine to the triple goddess at Mecca; see post on Kelle earlier this evening for information on Kali.] The same Indo-European lore surfaced in Scandanavian myth as the swan incarnations of the Valkyries, who wore magic swan-feather cloaks to transmorm themselves. Kali or Kauri became the Valkyrie Kara, who flew in her swan feathers above battlefields and sang magic charms to deprive the enemy of strength. Legends insisted that if a man could steal a Valyrie's costume of swan feathers, she would be forced to grant his every wish.(2) The swan knight Krishna reappeared in classic Greek myth as Zeus in swan feathers, disguising himself as a swan to seduce the Goddess Leda, who gave birth to the World Egg, which suggests that she too was a totemic swan. Sometimes she was confused with the Goddess Nemisis to whom Zeus's very life was subjec: Leda or "Lady" being only her title.(3) Northern mythology also identified her with the Valkyrie Brunnhilde, whose seven children or Seven Dwarves were transformed into the seven swans of the fairy tale.(4) Zeus's swan form can be traced also to the Vedic image of Brahma in his special vahana ("vehicle," animal incarnation): a swan.(5) Swan maidens and swan knights associated with the Old Religion were common in European folklore throughout the Christian era. A certain order of knights connected with the legendary Temple of the Grail and the defense of women claimed descent from a divine swan-hereo. The families of Gelders and Cleves bore a san on their arms, to honor their ancestor "the Knight of the Swan, servant of women," in whose memory Duke Adolph held a tournament in 1453.(6) This Knight was sometimes called Lohengrin, a savior of women like the British hero Lancelot-Galahad. After the classic pattern, Lohengrin floated in a mystic vessel on the sea in his infancy, and was found and raised by a great queen in a foreign land. After his death he was reborn or reincarnated as his own son.(7) When Lohengrin became one of the Knights Templar of the Grail, he was sent from the Grail castle at Montsalvatch to champion the cause of Duchess Else of Brabant, who had been unjustly imprisoned for exercising the ancient right of noblewomen to choose a lover from among men of inferior rank. [Note: Wow! I have heard of the droit du seigneur. So, this is sort of the reverse practice! Hear hear! Information at Brittanica online: (Droit du Seigneur: French: “right of the lord”), a feudal right said to have existed in medieval Europe giving the lord to whom it belonged the right to sleep the first night with the bride of any one of his vassals. The custom is paralleled in various primitive societies, but the evidence of its existence in Europe is all indirect, involving records of redemption dues paid by the vassal to avoid enforcement of some lordly rights. Many intellectual investigations have been devoted to the problem. A considerable number of feudal rights were related to the vassal’s marriage, particularly the lord’s right to select a bride for his vassal, but these were almost invariably redeemed by a money payment, or “avail”; and it seems likely that the droit du seigneur amounted, in effect, only to another tax of this sort.] Having overcome Else's enemies, Lohengrin married her. According to one version of the story, probably drawn from the myth of Psyche and Eros, Else was forbidden to ask her husband's real name, but couldn't help insisting on it; so, sorrowfully revealing his name, Lohengrin was obliged to leae Else and return to the Mount of Paradise. Other versions of the story said he took her with him to Montsalvatch, where they lived happily ever after.(8) Other stories said Lohengrin appeared in his swan-feather costume to defend Clarissa, Duchess of Bouillon, against the Count of Frankfort, who tried to steal her duchy. Or, he took up the cause of Beatrice of Cleves, whose property rights wre threatened by hostile barons.(9) Though he salled forth to the rescue of several ladies in distress, the Swan-knight's real home was always "the mountain where Venus lives in the Grail."(1) Notes: (1) Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 568. (2) Larousse, 278-79. (3) Baring Gould, C.M.M.A., 579. (3) Graves, G.M. 1, 207-8. (4) Baring Gould, C.M.M.A., 571, 579. (5) Ross, 36. (6) Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 600. (7) Rank, 62. (8) Guerber, L.M.A., 202-3. (9) Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 600. (10) Jung & von Franz, 121. **************************************************************************************** I remembered some remnants of this fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm that I read as a child - most of the tales were more like nightmares, including this tale about a devoted sister and her six bewitched brothers. The Six Swans.

Friday Night Miscellany

Hola! Whew, what a week at the office. End of year in our practice is always the busiest time of the year and I'm exhausted. After my candlelit aroma-therapy bath ritual later this evening, I'll be calling it a night early. Tomorrow promises to be absolutely horrid outside weather-wise. In the morning, temperatures in the teens with snow starting, changing later on when a "warm front" comes through to freezing rain and sleet. By Sunday morning we may have an inch or more of ice over 4 inches of snow on the ground. Great. Just great. Unfortunately, I have to be out in it for several hours in the morning, and hope to be back home before the worst of it hits. (Please, Weather Goddess, let it be so...) I stopped at the supermarket tonight on the way home from work - like about a kajillion other people - to stock up on essentials in anticipation of the storm. Does everyone in the world have ill-tempered, screaming, nasty bratty children - and why, oh why, do they have to haul their sorry butts to the grocery store where, after a long, hard day at the office, I am subjected to their non-stop screaming, whining and conniption fits in the middle of the aisles? Some of the little monsters even THROW things at people - swoop they pluck something off a shelf and you have to duck for your life! And don't you DARE say anything to the oblivious parent about their precious little darling's behavior. One of these days, I'm going to throw my own conniption fit right in the middle of the meat aisle - I will scream at the top of my lungs, jump up and down, fling myself down and flail my arms and legs, and curse the day the Goddess created children. We'd be much better off if we hatched out of eggs fully grown and matured. Anyway, I stocked up on the essentials - nuts for the squirrels, delicacies for myself, croissants for breakfast for the next few days, and double-dark chocolate coated Pepperidge Farm cookies. I have coffee, wine, Christian Bros. (HAR!) egg nog stocked and my fireplace is ready to go. Plus, I have a new flat screen LCD HDTV. What an amazing thing. No giant tube sticking out the back; the TV is perhaps 3 inches deep. It's sitting on top of the fireplace mantle, which is 12 inches deep, with lots of room to spare. Perfect! And Absolutely Amazing. So I'm more or less ready for whatever winter throws at me this weekend, as long as the electricity stays on. Man, it was cold as hell walking home from the supermarket in the dark - and it wasn't even windy! It felt like near zero. We are cursed this week with a "clipper" from Canada. Curse the Canadians and their clippers! How will I survive when it drops to below zero with 40 below windchills? To cheer myself up, I've done some Christmas shopping online. I love shopping online, and one of my favorite places to shop is Wine Country Gift Baskets - they make it so easy to order multiple baskets and you can designate individual shipping instructions for each basket, all in one order. I ordered four gifts from Wine Country - shipping rates in the US are quite reasonable. As I've ordered from Wine Country before, I can attest to the quality of their products. When unwrapped from their protective shipping packaging, the towers I've ordered come in individually stacked, decorated gift boxes, five high, wrapped in ribbon, loaded with all sorts of delicious goodies. I've also done a good deed at the start of this Christmas season, I'll be getting a gift for a young person who requested a chess set through the "Giving Tree" program. Okay - to work here. If you are a religious Christian, you may not want to read this: The Nine Most (bleep) Bible Verses. I laughed my head off - and I'm religious! But then, I've always been a strange one...a blend of Pagan and Christian and Animist and lots of other stuff. That's what happens when you let your children read without supervision, parents, and THEN let them attend night-school at a state-funded college in order to earn a college diploma. Be warned! You may end up with a child like - MOI! Quel horreurs! On a sad note, Richard Leigh, one of the co-authors of the best-selling work The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail (with Michael Baigent and Henry Lincoln) died at age 64 on November 21, 2007. There is an obituary published on The Daily Grail, posted on November 29, 2007. The authors brought a law suit against mega best-selling author Dan Brown for plagarism (The Da Vinci Code), but they lost the suit. Still, the law suit, along with Brown's novel, kindled renewed interest in The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail and introduced an entirely new generation to an intersting hypothesis about the Priory of Scion and the bloodline allegedly produced by the marriage of Jesus Christ (who did NOT die after all) and Mary Magdelene. For those interested in geology, new research from geoscientists at the University of Michigan and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln calls into question the accepted timeline/scenario about when and how the great pan-continent called "Pangea" began to split apart, forming the present continents we all see on modern maps of the world today (for the map challenged, that's seven continents, darlings, although actually "Europe" and "Asia" are joined together at the waist, and are not really separate at all). Traditional theory holds (allegedly supported by geomagnetic evidence) that the portion of the ancient supercontinent of Pangea that is now the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah shifted more than 1,300 miles north during a 100-million-year span that ended about 200 million years ago in the early Jurassic Period, when Pangea began to break up. However, the new research says the area must have remained at the equator during the time in question. The scientists cannot reconcile the conflicting evidence. "It's a conundrum" they say. "Further research is needed", they say, in order to reconcile the conflicting evidence. They have no idea how that may happen. Ha ha ha! Maybe their entire "Pangea" continent theory is a lot of hog-wash - ohhhh, slap my face for even thinking such a thing! These silly people. If "God" supposedly dies in The Golden Compass book/film, what does this say about the faith these so-called "Christians" have - and the faith they are supposed to be passing along to their children? If they really had faith, they'd know that obviously Phillip Pullman's books are pure fantasy, because - as a FUNDAMENTAL element of faith - GODDESS can NEVER die. She is everlasting, without beginning, without end. A Mystery, as it were. Accept it - or not. And just shut up already, hey? I'm really sick of their whining. They're all as bad as their nasty, ill-manner kids they haul along to the supermarket! "Source: KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and swords and beating drums, burned pictures of a British teacher Friday and demanded her execution for insulting Islam by letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad." These people need to do some seriously chilling-out. How about dancing around a bonfire to "Boogey Wonderland?" while drinking lots of fire-water. Oh - sorry - that might possibly be construed as a racist comment. Should I add a disclaimer? Should I say what I REALLY think about these people? [White Angel, sitting on Jan's right shoulder is now saying "Now Jan, you know better than that. Where is your charity? Where is your forebearance and tolerance?" Red Devil sitting on Jan's left shoulder is saying "Go for it Hot Momma, blast those suckas. Tell it like it really is." At which point I interject to Red Devil that while I am Hot (particularly with my new "do"), I am NOT a momma. Heaven Forbid!] Oh, geez, just had a hot flash! Now I know I'm on the right track (hot flashes are signs from Goddess, you know). So, all those Sudanese "Muslims" who supposedly believe in the Koran, but who can't read or write and are utterly depending upon the "imans" giving them The Word (rather like Christians were dependent upon "The Church" feeding them their own Word prior to the invention of the printing press) should gather around gigantic bonfires shaped like a woman's reproductive tract (that's what the Ka'bah is, after all, a gigantic Goddess symbol embodied in a carved meteorite - do some research on the subject if you don't believe me), and do a jig in honor of the Arabic Triple Goddess whose sacred shrine underlies the most sacred site in Mecca. The ancient Arabic tribes prayed to the Triple Goddess three times a day, and the Muslims continue the tradition today, although they don't know it. See what "unsupervised" reading can do for a woman? Tsk, tsk. GODDESS POWER!