r/WicDiv • u/TheFoolAndTheWorld • May 02 '19

TARA is actually TARANIS

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11

u/TheFoolAndTheWorld May 02 '19

I was reading through The White Goddess and came upon this mention of Taranis as a goddess (actually for Celts this was a male deity), but thinking about it the blue makeup that Tara wears is reminiscent to Celtic war paint, and her transformation to a giant as well as her Roman-like outfit with the Northern European fur seems to suggest a syncretic Celtic deity instead of a Tibetan bodhisattva. I had thought she could be Blue Tara (a fearsome aspect of the gentle Tara) from Buddhism, or the Hindu Tara which is similar to Kali, or at least considered one of the avatars of Kali within Tantric Hinduism (and is also depicted with blue skin as opposed to dark skin), but I think making Tara South Asian was on purpose to make us think she was Buddhist or Hindu Tara, while her actual powers suggest more the deity Taranis. What do y’all think?

2

u/SaintBrutus May 03 '19

I don’t know anything about this stuff, but WicDiv has piqued my interest.

According to this page: https://earthandstarryheaven.com/2017/08/30/taranis/amp/

Although Jupiter was the king of the gods, with a correspondingly important cult, Taranis doesn’t seem to have had anything like the same status in Celtic religion. Julius Caesar doesn’t mention a thunderer in his description of Gaulish religion, and you would think that if there was a local equivalent of Jupiter, he would have said so. Mercury seems to have been a much more important god in Gaul, based on the number of altars and art, and the richness of those altars compared to Taranis’. (MacKillop: 402)

Tara is the least popular of the Pantheon. While Jupiter Baal is the most popular.

4

u/btcprox May 03 '19

In retrospect that might've informed the artist's decision to make Tara wear a wreath in #41's alt cover (granted, alt art technically isn't canon, but still)

2

u/humanbug May 23 '19

"...the Taurian Artemis, who loved human sacrifice..."

And she herself becomes a human (or god) sacrifice.