Jeff Russell

Thanks much - I've got Lecouteux's book on Household Spirits and have skimmed through it, but it got shelved for my "year of reading dead folks" (Lecouteux is luckily still with us).

Now, on Mary, as JMG might say, hmmmm! You have taken what was already a complex topic and added more (helpful, interesting) complexities! The thought that Mary/Marys might be best associated with the Matronae and/or Disir is a new one to me, but very thought-provoking! It would certainly jive with the different flavors of various localized manifestations (Our Lady of Fatima doesn't seem to be the same as Our Lady of Guadalupe, and so forth). I'm gonna have to give that one a think.

That being said, if we do want to shoot for a Germanic interpretatio of the better-known individual Goddesses, that's also a tough one. In some ways, Mary covers a lot (all?) of the ground that most polytheistic religions covered with multiple Goddesses. If nothing else, the fact that she is both virginal and maternal makes matching her up with either more maidenly Goddesses or more matronly Goddesses harder. If you lean into the "Queen of Heaven, Mother of the Holy Child who is unjustly killed and Whom she mourns", then Frigg seems like a pretty clear choice. On the other hand, if you lean into "Maker/Keeper of the 'Fruit' of eternal life and salvation", Idun begins to make a certain amount of sense. Gunnlodh has some intriguing similarities here - she is the keeper of something magical (and to some degree, immortality-granting), Odin enters into sexual union with her, and he brings that gift forth into the world. Heck, if you decided to focus most on the pieta, then maybe even Freyja's tears for her lost/wandering husband could make a connection.

Frigg and Idun seem like the clear front runners to me, but if you are more concerned with the maiden aspect of things, that's a bit harder, as I'm having trouble finding any Goddesses known for their virginity in Norse/Germanic tradition (I think one of Frigg's handmaidens is said to take on maidens who die virgins, but without necessarily implying she herself is a virgin).

As you've seen, I've made Idun central to my own take on the Rosary, but that is largely for personal reasons rather than a belief that she is the "best" match with Mary. What strikes me as likely most important is that the set of prayers is largely devoted to a feminine power, with some masculine balancing, and perhaps that a core part of the prayer is the idea of "intercession" - asking a divine being with whom you have a close, deeply personal link to help you get in touch with the less accessible, but no less important, bits of the holy world.

At any rate, wild theorizing of this sort is always welcome, as I'll come right back with my own!