Basics: the Clarene (Names)

For the next few weeks, we’ll be delving into the 30 Days of Devotion, a devotional writing project that helps us explore the gods we worship. We will do each of these for each of the Four Gods. If you are an Other Person or exploring the Four Gods, feel free to add your own comments – or join in!

If you have another topic you would like to see written on, you can email me (aine@daoineile.com) or message me on Facebook – but my writing will likely go to one of my other blogs, as we’re focusing on the Otherfaith at this blog for the time being.

Epithets & Names

On our masterpost, we see the Clarene’s various epithets. Each of these speak to her stories, to who she is, and using specific names brings her to us in specific ways.

We know, from myths, that her ‘name’ is Claire Clarice Clarene. This name is meant to flow, to ring in a certain way. But if we use it, we call not to the Clarene but a child-god, the god she was before she matured. The child-god her mother raised. If the name is split, we see even more sides to our God-King.

Claire is the young lover, longing and wishful and idealistic. Clarice is older, a bit bitter, carrying the pain of rejection and heartbreak. And using Clarene brings the whole weight of the god with her, but as King of the Other People.

Her epithets are many, of course. One we should be very aware of is the Orchard-Picker. Used before her name was given, this summons to mind only part of her self: that of the cultivator of the land. We see her laden with raspberries, with walnuts, with applies and peaches and more. We see her close to the wild, along the edge, the bridge between worlds. She is green and full of leaves.

We see her more urban connections as she is called ‘skyscraper’ and ‘bare city’. She is house as well as forest, and we see her as subtler, more restrained, and more cunning in the city. The fields are her domain, as is the city, but in the city she must play with the Dierne. In the orchard, she is life and death itself, but in the city she is not so plain. She beats in the heart of every skyline, in the concrete. She is there, always. But her movements are slower, are placed in ways we do not see until years later. She trips up the Dierne, even.

Her epithets of ‘gunpowder mother’ and ‘Mother Slaughter’ show us the bridge between rural and urban. The animals in the West are slaughtered in the fields, but they are brought into the city for food. Her gunpowder is grown in the fields, and it is used there – but so too in the city. Without the interconnection of rural and urban, there would be a fracture, and the world would splinter apart. Her epithet of ‘fire catcher’ is tied to this too. She catches the Laetha, turns his wild flames into hearth fire and lamps. When he splits from the land, the land itself is split and crumbles.

And for all that she is – cultivator, tender, creator of beasts and men – she cannot weave her son together again.

She is, unlike the other three gods, wingless. She is earthbound, ‘unfeathered’. She flies instead with spaceships, with rockets and planes. She is a ‘star-spearer’, piercing them rather than flying upon wings to dwell with them. And she is a giant, not a winged faery, as large as a mountain and just as strong.

Each of her epithets holds a story, but the only way we can truly know that story is to use them. The only way we can find more is to reach out to her and learn her stories and learn who she is, and give name that what we find. And she is the book-hoarder, the one who loves words – so that naming is something we should do, something we should hold as sacred as every other one of her names.

Previous Posts

Basics: the Clarene (Masterpost)
Basics: the Clarene (Origins)
Basics: the Clarene (Symbols)
Basics: the Clarene (Myths)
Basics: the Clarene (Family)
Basics: the Clarene (Spirits) 

*

Want to participate in the 30 Days of Devotion? Here’s a great link with all the prompts.

We are holding an Otherfaith discussion group every first Sunday of the month. Click here for more details, and send me a message or leave a comment if you would like to join!

New visitor and a little confused where to start? Head over to our About and Otherfaith pages, and then meander over to the beginning of our ‘basics‘ series. Any questions can be directed to my email aine@daoineile.com.

[Want more of the blog? Follow through RSS and Facebook to receive consistent updates!]