{"id":2656,"date":"2011-06-04T09:45:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T15:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/paganportal\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2011-06-04T09:45:50","modified_gmt":"2011-06-04T15:45:50","slug":"wyrd-designs-exploring-our-gods-and-goddesses-sigyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pantheon\/2011\/06\/wyrd-designs-exploring-our-gods-and-goddesses-sigyn\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyrd Designs &#8211; Exploring Our Gods And Goddesses &#8211; Sigyn"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>We know very little about the Goddess Sigyn. Not much has survived from  the pre-Christian era about this Goddess.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/82\/Loki_and_Sigyn_by_Gebhardt.jpg\" alt=\"Gebhardt's Loki &amp; Sigyn\" width=\"393\" height=\"565\"><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Her name, appears to etymologically derive from two  Old Norse words, sigr (victory) and vina (meaning girl-friend). This  will cause some modern-day practitioners to hail Her in rites as  \u201cVictory Bringer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Appearances in Lore<\/strong>: Volupsa, Gylfaginning, Skaldskaparmal, Haustlong, Pulur, \u00de\u00f3rsdr\u00e1pa<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>she was counted among the Asyngr (the name given to the Goddesses among the Aesir).<\/li>\n<li>She was wed to Loki, and with him had two sons<\/li>\n<li>As  described in the lore, Loki\u2019s two sons were slain, one forced to kill  the other. The intestines of her son was then used to bind Loki.\u00a0 Sigyn stood at his side in her grief, and held up a vessel  to catch the poison that burned like acid, that dripped from the snake fixed above Him.<\/li>\n<li>One of her by-names, or kennings is \u201cIncantation-Fetter\u201d (used briefly in passing in \u00de\u00f3rsdr\u00e1pa).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because  she\u2019s mentioned in Haustlong (an older text and one of the few actually  written by a pagan skald, and not a Christian scholar) I\u2019ve seen scholary theory that she may be a Goddess from the older Germanic tradition, which  carried into the later appearing Norse culture.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Appearance in Archaeology<\/strong>:  Outside of these references in the ancient lore, we do have one believed  artistic depiction of her in archaeology, specifically on the Gosforth  Cross depicted in conjunction with a bound Loki (the art is very  primitive and certainly not detailed).<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 180px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images-mediawiki-sites.thefullwiki.org\/09\/7\/1\/2\/4352811531204150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"180\" height=\"374\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This depiction from the Gosforth Cross is believed to represent the scene of Sigyn holding the bowl to catch the snake's venom as Loki lays bound.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Correcting A Misperception<\/strong>: For the longest time I was  perplexed by an odd modern trend where people are talking  about this  Goddess as an abused wife, as someone abused by Loki. There\u2019s   absolutely no reference in the lore to this ANYWHERE. So I was left  wondering, why does this misinformation continue to crop up?<\/p>\n<p>Apparently  it\u2019s a simple case of mistaken identity. Some folks are confusing Sigyn  with the various Signys that  appear in  the lore. Each and ever  occurrence of a Signy is conveying a  human,  mortal woman. Several of  these women were raped, suffered  injustices,  and the like.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, I would not be surprised if part of the reason why Sigyn is described sometimes as an abused wife, is because some of those who perceive Loki as evil incarnate, automatically assume that He must also be abusive. But we have nothing to suggest that he has ever been abusive to his wife, and in fact as we see in the ancient law codes (<cite>Gula\u00feing Law, etc.)<\/cite>, a woman could divorce a husband if he struck her, and while more difficult, could also divorce because she was unhappy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So How Does This Help Us Learn About Her<\/strong>: If we look at the etymology of her name Victory Girlfriend, and then her kenning of incantation-fetter, we see this Goddess begin to take on associations with both battle and magic. This suggests to me that she is skilled at the ability to magically ward and protect. Possibly also that she has in her nature, the ability to help to tame the wildness of Loki. Love can make a man who enjoyed sowing his oats settle down if its with the right woman.<\/p>\n<p>We also can see that She is a Goddess that is a mother, and I have personally found her to be an excellent Goddess to call upon when someone is working vigil on a sick loved one, be it a child, a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a parent, etc. She is a Goddess who endures. For those who enjoy the musings, prayers, poems, rituals, etc. from others who have worked with this Goddess, you may find the Devotional text <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sigyn-Staying-Power-Galina-Krasskova\/dp\/0578031051\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Sigyn: Our Lady of the Staying Power<\/a>, to be of interest. Or perhaps a poem I wrote a while ago: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/paganportal\/2010\/07\/09\/wyrd-designs-poetry-sigyn\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Do Her Cries Fill Your Ears<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Or if you\u2019re so inclined you can set aside an hour\u2019s worth of time, raid the kitchen for a large mixing bowl, and then fill it up with water. Then try just standing there, holding the water-filled bowl before you for that hour while you think and meditate upon Her.<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone have their own insights to share about Her?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We know very little about the Goddess Sigyn. Not much has survived from the pre-Christian era about this Goddess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,29,45],"tags":[199,712,721,746,769,874,964,1043,1151,1589,1591,1599,1779,1780,1858,1870],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asatru","category-heathen","category-paganism","tag-asyngr","tag-goddess","tag-gosforth-cross","tag-gylfaginning","tag-haustlong","tag-incantation-fetter","tag-kenning","tag-loki","tag-mother","tag-signy","tag-sigyn","tag-skaldskaparmal","tag-thorsdrapa","tag-thulur","tag-victory-girlfriend","tag-volupsa"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wyrd Designs - Exploring Our Gods And Goddesses - Sigyn<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We know very little about the Goddess Sigyn. 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