Skadi - "Destroyer" Goddess

From Barbara G. Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Skadi

The Celto-Teutonic Goddess in her "Destroyer" aspect. Like the Greek Persephone, "Destroyer," she was Queen of the Shades, Mother Death. Her name was the root of Gothic skadus, Old English sceadu, "shadow, shade." She was the Shadow into which all the gods went at doomsday, called Gotterdammerung, or Going-Into-the-Shadow-of-the-Gods.(1) As Scotia, she was the Dark Goddess - like Black Kali, the Caillech - after whom Scotland was named.(2)

Like Kali, Skadi had to be propitiated each year with an outpouring of male blood in primitive sacrificial rites. Her annual victim was assimilated to the god Loki, who became a "savior" by fertilizing Skadi with his blood. Loki's genitals were attached by a rope to a goat, and a tug-of-war ensued, until Loki's flesh gave way and he fell into Skadi's lap, thus bathing her loins in his blood. The gods watched anxiously to see if Skadi smiled; and when she did, it means spring could return once more to the land.(3)

Similar blood-rites were practiced all over the ancient world, when men sought godhood by giving their blood to the Goddess, before animal sacrifices replaced human ones, and even afterward. It was not uncommon for priestesses representing the Goddess to bathe in sacrificial blood, like the women who sacrificed Apis the bull-god in Egypt, hoisting their skirts as they dismembered him so his spurting blood would quicken their wombs.(4)   Like many death-goddess figures, Skadi collected the penises of her castrated heroes, and in this character she was named Mornir, "troll-woman."(5)

Remnants of the bloody sacrifice of Loki and the goat could still be found in Norway and Sweden in the late 17th century. Churchmen vainly denounced the masquerades, sexual promiscuity, and "goat games" associated with Easter and other religious festivals.(6)

Skadi was a dark twin of Freya, therefore virtually identical with the underground Goddess Hel. She was once all the Earth, birth-giver and devourer of her children. The entire land mass of Scandinavia was named after her. Originally, it was Scadin-auja, the land of Skadi.(7)

A variation of her name, Skuld, was given to the third of the three Fates, or Norns, in the role of destroying Crone. Naturally she became the patroness of witches, whose activities came to be called "skulduggery."

To the Celts, she was Scatha or Scath. Her underground realm of the dead was "the Land of Scath." Like Persephone's underworld within seven loops of the Styx, the Land of Scath was a city of seven walls.(8)   It was variously located under the earth, or in heaven, or far away over the sea on a western island, the land of "Sky." Cu Chulainn and other Celtic heroes learned magic skill in martial arts from a visit to Queen Scatha's island of Skye. She kept the hero for a "year and a day," the usual mythic image of the old 13-month lunar year with its intercalary day. When she had taught a man all she knew, she sent him back to earth a fey man, set apart and sacer, fated to do great deeds and die a sacrificial death.(9)   The legend suggests that the real island of Skye was a cult center of the Goddess, and warriors went there to be initiated into their heroic profession.

Skadi is still invoked by place named in Sweden, such as Skadave (Skadi's temple) and Skadalungr (Skadi's grove).(10)

Notes:

1.  Turville-Petre, 164.
2.  Graves, G.M. 1, 72.
3.  Oxenstierna, 213.
4.  Graves, G.M. 1, 255.
5.  Turville-Petre, 257.
6.  Oxenstierna, 216.
7.  Branston, 164.
8.  Lethuly, 163.
9.  Goodrich, 187.
10.  Turville-Petre, 165.

See also Walker's entries on Scotia and Caillech:

Scotia
Latin form of the "Dark Aphrodite" after whom Scotland was named; in her native land she was the Death-goddess Scatha, or Skadi.(1)  She was the mother of Caledonia; some said she was identical with the Caillech, or Crone, who created the world.

Notes:

1.  Graves, G.M. 1, 72.

Caillech
Old Celtic name for Kali-the-Crone, the Great Goddess in her Destroyer aspect.  Like Kali, the Caillech was a black Mother who founded many races of people and outlived many husbands.  She was also a creatress.  She made the world, building mountain ranges of stones that dropped from her apron.(1)

Scotland was once called Caledonia: the land given by Kali, or Cale, or the Caillech.  "Scotland" came from Scotia, the same Goddess, known to Romans as a "dark Aphrodite"; to Celts as Scatha or Scyth; and to Scandinavians as Skadi.(2)

Like the Hindus' destroying Kalika, the Caillech was known as a spirit of disease.  One manifestation of her was a famous idol of carved and painted wood, kept by an old family in County Cork, and described as the Goddess of Smallpox.  As diseased persons in India sacrificed to the appropriate incarnation of the Kalika, so in Ireland those afflicted by smallpox sacrified sheep to this image.(3)  It can hardly be doubted that Kalika and Caillech were the same word.

According to various interpretations, caillech meant either an old woman, or a hag, or a nun, or a "veiled one."(4)  This last apparently referred to the Goddess's most mysterious manifestation as the future, Fate, and Death - ever veiled from the sight of men, since no man could know the manner of his own death.

In medieval legend the Caillech became the Black Queen who ruled a western paradise in the Indies, where men were used in Amazonian fashion for breeding purposes only, then slain.  Spaniards called her Califa, whose territory was rich in gold, silver, and gems.  Spanish explorers later gave her name to their newly discovered paradise on the Pacific shore of North America, which is how the state of California came to be named after Kali.

In the present century, Irish and Scottish descendants of the Celtic "creatress" still use the word caillech as a synonym for "old woman." (5)

Notes:

1.  Rees, 41.
2.  Graves, W.G., 131.
3.  Squire, 413.
4.  Joyce 1, 316.
5.  Frazer, G.B., 467.

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I am pretty sure I read some time ago that Scatha/Scotia was closely associated with the practice of finger divination by the Celts.  I will see if I can find my notes - I know they're on one of my three computers (geez!) 

Scota and - Uri Geller???

No less than The Wall Street Journal published this article that was on page 1 today.  What is the world coming to?

AUGUST 23, 2010

Uri Geller's Mind-Bender: Egyptian Loot in Scotland
He Claims an Island He Owns Is Stuffed With It; Neighbors Dubious
By JAMES HOOKWAY

NORTH BERWICK, Scotland—When Uri Geller saw a rocky lump off Scotland's eastern coast was for sale a couple of years ago, the famed spoon-bender says he knew he had to have it.

"I didn't know why. I was somehow drawn to it," Mr. Geller recalls. He put in a successful £30,000, or about $46,000, offer.

Today, the 63-year-old paranormalist says he now understands why he bought the uninhabited, 100 yard-by-50 yard Lamb Island. Buried inside, he says, is an Egyptian treasure including relics supposedly brought there by a pharaoh's daughter some 3,500 years ago.

Mr. Geller was once one of the most famous people in the world in the 1970s, regularly appearing on television and baffling audiences with his spoon-bending exploits. He continues to draw a crowd, and his sudden interest in "The Lamb," as it's known locally, is raising eyebrows among skeptical Scots.

Tales of Scotland's ties to ancient Egypt date back to the 15th century, but many regard them as a bit of nonsense. According to the legend, King Tutankhamen's half-sister, Princess Scota, fell out with her family and fled to Ireland and then Scotland, thereby giving the country its name. Some say the alignment of the Lamb and two nearby islands closely mirrors the layout of the pyramids at Giza, near Cairo, not to mention the three main stars in the Orion's Belt constellation.

"Tosh!" says Edinburgh-based historian and author Stuart McHardy. Mr. McHardy and other historians reckon the Egyptian connection evolved to provide Scotland with a fresh identity while English invaders were claiming the whole British Isles were named after Brutus, a Roman consul supposedly descended from the Trojan hero Aeneas.

"That, of course, meant we had to have an equally 'ancient' story," Mr. McHardy says.

Many locals in the nearby town of North Berwick are baffled by the island's new-found historical provenance. Previously, the salt-sprayed area was best known for witch trials in the 1590s and its sandy beaches, which Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have recreated in his novel "Treasure Island."

The Egyptian treasure "isn't even an old fisherman's tale," says Graham Kinniburgh, manager of a wine and whisky store on the town's main street. He sells malt whiskies named after three other local islands, but not Mr. Geller's Lamb.

"Before Uri came along I don't think anybody had ever heard of all this Egyptian stuff," says 55-year-old Drew McAdam, who grew up in North Berwick idolizing Mr. Geller. Inspired by Mr. Geller's 1973 performance on the British Broadcasting Corp., Mr. McAdam himself now travels Britain and Europe bending spoons and performing other feats.

Mr. Geller got interested in the Lamb in 2008, when he saw on the Internet that it was for sale, and the idea of owning an island appealed to him. Not even the island's status as a protected seabird colony ruffles his feathers: Mr. Geller is a vegetarian.

Buying property in Scotland, however, wasn't all plain sailing. Some Scots best know the Israeli-born Mr. Geller, who lives in England, for claiming to determine the outcome of a Scotland versus England soccer match in 1996 by using his telekinetic powers to nudge the ball just as Scotland's captain was about to strike a penalty kick. Scotland lost the game. "I received around 11,000 hate mails for that," Mr. Geller says.

Now that Mr. Geller is the best-known landowner in this corner of Scotland, 26 miles east of the capital, Edinburgh, he is eager to improve his reputation.

On his first trip to North Berwick in March, Mr. Geller ran up a local landmark, a 613-foot-tall hill called "The Law," in a bid to endear himself to locals.

He then lunched on a baked potato with ketchup at the Scottish Seabird Center. He impressed staff by apparently using his mental powers to bend some teaspoons, several of which are still in drawers in the center's kitchen.

In the evening, he gave another performance, at one point producing mustard seeds that suddenly sprouted when he handed them to a member of the audience. "He had everybody eating out of his hand," says Lynda Dalgliesh, who works at the center.

"He made a big impression on everybody, even my mother," says Mr. McAdam, who Mr. Geller invited to perform.

The next day, Mr. Geller chugged the ten minutes to the island on a fishing boat to spend a night on the Lamb, among tens of thousands of seabirds and an English adventurer. "It was excruciatingly cold, with not a single flat spot to lay a sleeping bag," Mr. Geller says.

Some local businesses are beginning to wake up to the island's allure since Mr. Geller turned up. Some boat operators, for instance, take tourists around the Lamb and recount folklore surrounding the island.

"A wee bit of bulls— doesn't hurt anybody," says Dougie Ferguson, a 52-year-old skipper.

Another skipper, Cameron Small, says Mr. Geller's purchase has generated enough interest for him to advertise trips around "Uri Geller's Lamb Island."

For his next trick, Mr. Geller hopes to really astonish the locals by locating the ancient trinkets he thinks are buried within the volcanic rock of the Lamb.

Using dowsing—a technique Mr. Geller says he previously used to detect oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico—he reckons he has pin-pointed a place on his island where treasure might be buried.

He hopes to excavate if he can secure permission from the Scottish authorities—and only if it doesn't offend the Lamb's legions of gulls, cormorants and shags.

Rob Sinclair at the local council's planning department says Mr. Geller doesn't need legal approval to dig on his land. "But he might like to talk to our Council archaeologist about whether it would be worth his time and energy," Mr. Sinclair says.

"I'm certain there are ancient Egyptian artifacts there," Mr. Geller says. "It's only a matter of time until we find them."

And if there wasn't any treasure on the Lamb before, there is now. Mr. Geller says he has strengthened the island's mystical powers by burying a crystal orb that once belonged to Albert Einstein.
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There are several different versions of the story of how Scota came to Scotland.  Many versions agree that (1) an Egyptian princess was involved (2) Scota was what she was called - a title of some sort - but her name has been lost to history and (3) the Scythians or Scythia is involved.

Scotland's Namesake - from Carothers-Carruthers.com (an interesting genealogy website devoted to the Carothers and Carruthers families in America and Scotland)

Scota: Namesake of Scotland - from ufodigest.com - yes, I know I know, LOL!  But actually the article is quite factual, setting forth several different versions of the Scota legend. 

Scotland's Past Links with Ancient Egypt - sacredconnections.co.uk