Blodeuyn
Art, Tea, and Druidry
Month: July 2019
Visit this awesome YouTube channel if you enjoy Nordic music. Per their description:
“Fimbul Live Viking Radio is a stream playing live Viking music, Dark Ambient and Nordic Folk music 24/7.
This project will grow over time, with new artists added. We mainly focus on Dark Viking songs, Ambient music and Scandinavian and Nordic Music, but other styles like Viking war songs are also added regularly.”
The Celtic story of Blodeuwedd has fascinated me since childhood. If you are not familiar with the mythology, Blodeuwedd was created from the flowers of broom, meadowsweet and oak as a wife for Llew, the son of Arianrhod.
To briefly summarize, Llew brought shame upon his mother, resulting in her curse upon him: he could not marry a mortal woman and therefore could not become king. His cousins, Math and Gwydion, created Blodeuwedd for the sole purpose of fulfilling Llew’s destiny. After their marriage, Blodeuwedd took a lover named Gronw and the two plotted the demise of Llew. Tragically, she causes the death, or near death, of both her husband and lover. Llew is wounded, turns into an eagle and flies away, but is found and nurtured back to health by Math and Gwydion. Gronw was not as fortunate, and upon his death Blodeuwedd is turned into an owl (Blodeuwedd means both “flower face” and owl). One might find it strange for a child to bond with such a story, but I was a strange child indeed!
When I started playing video games in my twenties I fell in love with the name Blodeuyn, which means flower and is syntactically related to Blodeuwedd. It felt natural to start using the name as my gaming alias and over the years Blodeuyn has become so familiar to me that it is now part of my identity. The association is so intertwined with my soul that my friends call me Blode more often than Joce or Jocelyn (my birth name).
Blodeuwedd’s story is much more detailed than what I have covered in this post. You can read the entire myth at druidry.org: The legend of Blodeuwedd.
Pronunciation
Blodeuyn: blo-deu-yn
Blodeuwedd: blo-deu-weth
deu pronounced as “day” in English
The Leaden-Eyed by Vachel Lindsay Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.
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