Today is Friday. What does that even mean?
A common theme in this COVID-19 era is that without our established productivity-driven schedules, our accepted concept of time is deteriorating. We’re accustomed to living from day to day, treating each one as merely a stepping stone to the next.
Ancient cultures, some much more reflective than our own, saw each of the seven days as possessing a unique quality of its own, like a color in the rainbow or a note in the scale. In this series, I look at the gods for whom the days were named and how connecting to these archetypes can add meaning to our daily lives.
Friday — The Day of Frigg and Freyja
The word Friday come from Frīgedæg, meaning Day of Frigg in Old English. In Norse mythology, Frigg and Freyja are two distinct goddesses but the similarities between them suggest that they may be derived from a single earlier goddess. In the Roman calendar, Friday is Dies Veneris, the Day of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.
Mother Love
Frigg is the revered wife of Odin and mother of many sons by him. Like her husband, she possesses great wisdom and the gift of prophecy.
One day she and her son Baldr both began to dream that Baldr’s death was looming. To protect her son, Frigg elicited promises from every plant…