The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

A Dream
They form a circle. The She cats. Graceful and filled with power, though realizing the danger.
They are protecting the birthing one in the center. The phone rings. I am watching them as they
have chosen my living room as their place of ritual. I dare not leave them, sensing the danger. The
phone rings again. They are humming, chanting a birth song, in harmony with the moaning and
“mauwing” of the birthing cat. I feel one with them and grateful. The phone rings a third time and
I leave the room to answer. I talk for a while about mundane problems and become distracted from
my chosen task. Then I hear a scream, the horrible cry of the She-cats. I run into the room finding
there the group of He-cats, standing straight in a row, throwing the newborn infant from spear to
spear, before they eat her. The cries and the moaning of the She-cats are unbearable to my ears.
Their graceful power has transformed into indescribably sorrow and a thirst for revenge. Why did
I answer the phone? They trusted me! I can feel my own hatred for the He-cats grow and my
hunger for revenge is born.
The powerful and peaceful goddess of childbirth, of fertility and fecundity,
goddess of weaving and singing, poetry and seiður, as well as death and regeneration, for
some reason or probably a number of reasons, took on the image and role of the
warrioress and the demon. The mistress of animals became the witch. Her power animal,
the cat, was persecuted along with her in Europe, burned in baskets or roasted on spits.
By that time those represented by the He-cats in my dream had lost all memory of her as
the great giver of all; Great Mountain Mother, Kybele, with the lions; as Fjörgyn 74 , the
one who gives life, Gefn, our mother earth.
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