The Lady is the goddess of love and desire, beauty and fertility, wealth and abundance, magic and prophecy, sovereignty, death and battle, grief and renewal. Her nature cannot be reduced to a single domain, for she encompasses the profound fullness of feminine power: the power to love and desire, to create and destroy, to mourn and renew, to give life and to receive the dead.

Her presence may be found not only in the old stories, but in the living landscape and the night sky. Across Scandinavian tradition, her memory has remained attached to stars, plants, animals, and familiar things of country life.

The Lady’s Distaff

The most magnificent of her celestial associations is Orion.

In Scandinavian tradition, Orion’s Belt was known as the Lady’s Distaff. The three stars of the Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka—form the crosspiece of the instrument.

A distaff is a staff or pole, however, and the whole of Orion gives the image its full beauty.

Betelgeuse and Rigel extend the great length of the figure, while the three Belt stars cross it like the projecting bar of a spinning staff.

Thus the heavens themselves may be seen as containing the Lady’s great Distaff:

a long staff stretching through the night, with three brilliant stars forming its crosspiece.

The Lady’s Distaff turns with the turning of the sky. She spins not merely thread, but the great continuities of existence: birth and death, growth and decay, love and loss, winter and spring.

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The Lady’s Hens

The Pleiades are known in Scandinavian tradition as the Lady’s Hens.

The little cluster looks like a hen surrounded by her chicks: a close gathering of small lights rather than a single brilliant star.

There is something wonderfully intimate about this celestial image. The Lady who possesses magic, sovereignty, love, death and battle also has her hens gathered among the stars.

Thus, in the heavens:

the Lady’s Distaff turns, and her Hens gather nearby.

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The Lady’s Star

Venus is the Lady’s Star.

The brilliant planet appears sometimes in the evening and sometimes in the morning, shining brighter than almost any star in the heavens.

Its beauty and its changing place in the sky make it an especially fitting celestial manifestation of the Lady.

Venus is the star of:

love, beauty, desire, attraction, fertility, and sovereignty.

But Venus is also a celestial wanderer. She disappears from the evening sky and returns as the Morning Star, reflecting one of the Lady’s deepest mysteries:

departure and return, loss and renewal, death and rebirth.

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The Lady’s Living Creatures

The Ladybird

The ladybird, or ladybug, is one of the Lady’s earthly creatures.

Traditional Scandinavian folklore preserves the name Freyjuhæna, “Freyja’s hen,” for the ladybird. The association belongs to an older northern tradition in which the small red beetle was connected with the goddess and with the heavenly and solar realms.

The ladybird is a fitting creature of the Lady: tiny, beautiful, harmless to people, and a welcome companion among growing plants.

There is also a beautiful correspondence between earth and sky.

The Lady’s Hens are gathered in the Pleiades.

The Lady’s little Hen walks among the flowers.

The later Christian name ladybird and related names such as “Our Lady’s bird” preserve the memory of this ancient reverence even after the Lady’s identity was transferred to Mary.

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The Lady in the Green World

The Lady’s presence continues upon the earth. Plants have traditionally carried her name and preserved her associations with beauty, love, magic, fertility, and grief.

The Lady’s Hair — Freyjuhár

Freyjuhár, literally “Freyja’s Hair,” is an old Scandinavian plant name, particularly associated in Icelandic tradition with maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris).

The fine, dark stems and delicate fronds give the plant the appearance of luxuriant hair.

Where it grows, the Lady’s hair grows upon the earth.

Her beauty is not something separate from nature.

It is nature.

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The Lady’s Tears — Freyjatár

Freyjatár, “Freyja’s Tears,” is another traditional Scandinavian plant name, associated with common milkwort (Polygala vulgaris).

The name carries the memory of the Lady’s ancient golden tears. Her grief for the absent Óðr is so great that her tears become precious.

Thus the sorrow of the goddess becomes part of the living earth:

her tears fall, and flowers bloom.

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The Lady’s Grass — Friggjargras

Friggjargras, literally “the Lady’s Grass,” is a traditional name associated with an orchid used in love magic.

The name joins together three of the Lady’s powers:

the green world, love, and magic.

Other Scandinavian traditions associate the Lady with lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum), a plant traditionally connected with women, childbirth, and fertility.

Thus the Lady’s botanical presence reaches from love and desire to fertility, motherhood, and birth.

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The Lady Between Heaven and Earth

The old traditions preserve a vision of the Lady that reaches from the stars to the roots of plants.

In the heavens

Orion — the Lady’s Distaff

Betelgeuse and Rigel — the long staff

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka — its crosspiece

The Pleiades — the Lady’s Hens

Venus — the Lady’s Star

Among living creatures

The ladybird — the Lady’s Hen

In the green world

Maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris) — the Lady’s Hair

Common milkwort (Polygala vulgaris) — the Lady’s Tears

Friggjargras — the Lady’s Grass, associated with love and magic

Lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum) — associated with women, fertility, and childbirth

The Lady is therefore not remote from the living world.

Her Distaff turns.

Her Hens gather.

Her Star shines.

Her little Hen walks among the flowers.

Her Hair grows from the earth.

Her Tears become flowers and gold.

Her Grass carries her magic.

She is love and desire, beauty and fertility, abundance and sovereignty. She is magic and prophecy, grief and renewal, death and battle. She can be tender without weakness, sensual without frivolity, powerful without cruelty, and sovereign without being alone.

The heavens bear her image.

The earth bears her name.

The living world knows her.

Hail the Lady.