Of course my sweet! 🙂
Elen of the Ways is a little known and pretty ancient British Goddess. There is not much written about her and i think that is the way she likes it. You have to experience her, you have to go out into the wild places and find her.
Many people who i have spoken to who know Elen feel they have known her all their lives but never quite knew who she was until they met other who knew her and then everything just fell into place.
This is how i first met and experienced Elen.
I was lucky enough to have spent a lot of my childhood out playing in the woods by myself. That is really the roots of Pagan me but that’s another story.
I always felt aware of a very gentle feminine energy in the woods with me, guiding me and keeping me safe.
As i got older and started exploring Paganism i realised that the energy i felt was probably the Goddess. I searched for a long time to try and find a name for my Goddess, i tried so many, Artemis, Diana, Selena etc but none of them felt quite right, so i just accepted that i wasn’t suppose to know yet and carried on just calling her Goddess.
It was about a year ago now that i was researching British deities and i came across the name Elen. It was just a couple of sentences really.
“Elen – an ancient british Goddess of the woodland. A deer Goddess.”
And pow! i knew that was it, that was the name of my mystery Goddess.
I researched her more and found a few blog posts, an article or two but nothing much really until i found and spoke to other who knew her. Since then i have made some brilliant friends and been on retreats dedicated to Elen. I have joined the Temple of Elen and become a devotee of hers (even though i kind of always was).
She is most often depicted as a red headed woman dressed in greens and browns with antlers on her head. ONe of my friends described her as Mrs Herne which i quite like :). She is a deer Goddess of the woods and also often appears as a deer.
“But wait!” i hear you say “Female deer don’t have antlers, so why would a Goddess have them?”
That is where the ancient bit comes in, female reindeer have antlers and tend to keep them through the winter long after the males antler’s have dropped. (yes kiddies, rudolph is a girl!).
It is well documented that reindeer were abundant in the British Isles at the end of the last ice age. It is believed this is where Elen first came into being, maybe not with that name but her energy would have been recognised by the people who relied on the reindeer for survival. They would have followed their migratory roots every year.
Reindeer are returning to the British Isles now, with a few isolated herds in the far north of Scotland.
If you like to have lots of reliable historical evidence to base your worship or relationships with deities on, i’m afraid that just won’t be the case with Elen. You have to build your own relationship with her, make up your own mind and find out things for yourself.
That said there are a few sources that can give you a starting point.
Down the Forest path– Introducing Elen
Elen is Helen, brought over from Italy during the invasions and wars, originally from Greece and Hecate, who is the Goddess of the ways. Also dogs are her animal, not deer. Try The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
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