Merry meet,
It is Nina,
You're watching Fairy Chamber Channel,
Continuing a series on Baldic mythology and today's goddess is very very interesting,
Her name is Austea and she is a Baldic goddess of the bees,
Protector goddess of the bees and if you are familiar with Finno,
Grian Dolce and Sami Dolce,
These are quite important characters in Nordic countries,
There is lots of Dolce related to them so I was quite interested when I started to do my research on Austea,
What all she covers and Austea,
She is very heavily connected to the goddess Semina,
Who is the Baldic goddess of the earth or also referred as the Mother Earth and Austea,
She promotes growth,
Plentifulness and reproductions very much like bees themselves,
They are symbols of fertility as you can probably imagine and Austea,
When it comes to her looks,
She can be a woman and she can be almost a fairy,
I would say her as a fairy,
A fairy like creature and some sources link her name to Lithuanian verb Austi,
Which means to weave and Austiti,
Which means to fly swiftly here and there like bumble bees and to shut and open doors repeatedly,
It's very interesting and this is a metaphor linked to gathering honey and building honeycombs and going from flower to flower but the only bee goddess in the world in Grian Dolce,
There was the goddess Artemid,
Who was also connected to the bees and Artemid,
Not Artemis but Artemid,
She was a protector goddess of motherhood and large families,
Especially mothers who had really many kids and she was also called a bee,
Which in Greece is Melissa and then in Finnish,
She is Päjevadar,
Who is the Samkara,
She is often connected to the bees,
It's very interesting and also in Finnish mythology,
Bees especially and butterflies and birds,
They are also connected to souls and souls and souls re-coordinating,
It's very interesting and also Navecen in some mythology,
She is also connected to bees so definitely in the monothe you go,
If there is a goddess that is with the sun and the summer they are very of the connected to bees as well because they are seen as the goddesses of fertility and when people did sacrifices to Austea,
Things were thrown into the air up towards the ceiling,
It's very interesting and meat must be offered before the wedding dance,
During christening parties meat is also poured and matchmakers offer a toast so that the bees would better get their honey blendfully,
Interesting metaphors Austea,
She is also seen as very much an authority goddess because the symbolism of the queen bee I think this idea of the bee goddess might actually link way back into the totemic era and differs humans especially because we are talking about a goddess who is half human,
Half animal and the thing is,
At least in Finnish paganism and in Latvian paganism we all have Emus and Emu is the first parent of the species,
The first creature of the particular species and Emu can be either men or women or can be any gender so I think you could say that Austea could be in Latvian context the Emu of the bees I don't know,
That is something that came to my mind and when people did offerings for Austea,
They had for example meat and they threw it to the skies in which case they would believe that it would go to the goddess or if they were inside it was thrown to the ceiling so it would go to the goddess,
It's very interesting and if there was for example wedding ceremonies,
The speech keepers,
They would often pray Austea to give lots of good luck for the married couple and they were saying that bees would better gather honey plentiful in your marriage and the celebration to honour Austea was called Soline and this took place in August,
It's the time when the bees were the most busiest and people would wake up really early in the morning and then they would go to gather the honey from the beehives before the bees were all awake,
Because otherwise they would get all stanked and then they would leave offerings of honey for Austea naturally and a very interesting thing is that in the bardic folklore and pagan beliefs bees were seen very much like humans,
They were seen very hard working animals they were seen very sacred in that sense and being very close to humans because they had good work morality and they were the same way,
Plain as men and they are sacred goddess like workers they are here to help us,
So if a bardic person found a dead bee it was,
People had to bury it properly to the ground and trees which bees built their hives were recorded as sacred trees and it was not allowed to quarrel,
Curse or abuse one another or behave disgraceful in the present of the bee because bees were sacred animals and it was believed that bees could talk and they could sing they were very much connected to the sun and it was believed also that bees could understand the human language and they might also even help profits from the future and really people believed that if they would curl or behave badly in the present presence of the bees,
The bees might prevent them or use the information against them so people have to be very respectful around bees this was very interesting okay this was the story of the bees,
Thank you for watching guys if you enjoyed this,
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I will see you on my next video bye
