On the magical necklace, I meant to mention a point that might allow for further digging, but I'm not sure what exactly the implications for comparison might be. There's a theory that Freyja is actually the Goddess Dawn (Eos in Greek, Eostre in Old English, Ushas in Sanskrit), since "Freyja" is just a title meaning "Lady/Beloved." The evidence goes something like this: She's associated with sexuality, life, and magic, She's much beloved and revered, while the Norse don't seem to have the widely-known and beloved Dawn of other IE traditions, and a few other things.
If right, one (naturalistic, which I know you mostly disdain) explanation for her wondrous necklace, the Brisingamen, is the lovely ring of light around the horizon near dawn. This might help make some sense of Her trading sex with four dwarves for the necklace, as the Norse also believed four dwarves (the four cardinal directions) held up the sky.
1) I can't remember enough about the Europa myth to know if there's many parallels here (and Her being carried off to the West seems unfortunate for comparisons with Dawn), and 2) if you'd like, I can track down the link that went through the point-by-point comparisons (it was a discussion on Jive Talk hosted by Tom Rowsell of Survive the Jive with a couple of regular forum commenters without their own writing outlet).
For what it's worth, in my own practice, I've been treating Eostre and Frige as separate Goddesses, as I've learned to be wary of over collapsing "similar" Gods and Goddesses (Frigg and Frige seemed to be "obvious" divergences of an original single Goddess, but They let me know that treating Them as one wasn't right for my own worship), but I find the theory interesting.
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If right, one (naturalistic, which I know you mostly disdain) explanation for her wondrous necklace, the Brisingamen, is the lovely ring of light around the horizon near dawn. This might help make some sense of Her trading sex with four dwarves for the necklace, as the Norse also believed four dwarves (the four cardinal directions) held up the sky.
1) I can't remember enough about the Europa myth to know if there's many parallels here (and Her being carried off to the West seems unfortunate for comparisons with Dawn), and 2) if you'd like, I can track down the link that went through the point-by-point comparisons (it was a discussion on Jive Talk hosted by Tom Rowsell of Survive the Jive with a couple of regular forum commenters without their own writing outlet).
For what it's worth, in my own practice, I've been treating Eostre and Frige as separate Goddesses, as I've learned to be wary of over collapsing "similar" Gods and Goddesses (Frigg and Frige seemed to be "obvious" divergences of an original single Goddess, but They let me know that treating Them as one wasn't right for my own worship), but I find the theory interesting.
Cheers,
Jeff