{"id":3816,"date":"2011-12-18T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-18T05:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3816"},"modified":"2011-12-18T09:37:41","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T14:37:41","slug":"eponas-day-time-for-rest-and-roses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/eponas-day-time-for-rest-and-roses.html","title":{"rendered":"Epona’s day: time for rest and roses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Epona at Thizy, site of a sacred spring in Burgundy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Put your feet up for a while today, smell the roses, \u00a0and give a thought to Epona, whose day (December 18) this is, in the Roman calendar. Epona was the great horse goddess of the Celts, and the only Celtic deity who won a place in the Roman ritual cycle. On her special day – the second day of the festival of Saturnalia – horses and other hooved animals were released from their labors, in her honor.<\/p>\n

Epona’s name comes from the Gaulish word \u00a0epos <\/em>(\u201chorse\u201d). She was worshipped not only as patroness of horses but also as a giver of life, health, fertility and plenty, and as a protectress of humans on the journey through death and on the Other Side.<\/p>\n

Pilgrims traveled to her sacred springs, especially in Burgundy, to pray for healing.<\/p>\n

Her role as a psychopomp, or guide of souls, is clear from the way she is depicted in Gaulish cemeteries.\u00a0At La Horge-au-Sablon, a burial ground of the Medioatrici at Metz, in eastern Gaul, images of Epona were offered by relatives of the deceased; one depicts the goddess on her mare, leading a mortal to the Otherworld.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere she is shown with a key and a mappa<\/em>, a napkin-like cloth used as a starter\u2019s signal for a Roman horse-race. Miranda Green comments in Animals in Celtic Life and Myth<\/em> that this is \u201csuggestive of Epona\u2019s role as a presider over the beginning of life, just as her key may be indicative of death and the afterlife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epona is depicted by one or more horses in iconography. She is usually depicted riding side-saddle on a mare or between twin horses. She was hugely popular in Gaul and the Rhineland, but was also known inBritain. She was regarded as a patron by cavalrymen, including the Aedui, used as auxiliaries by Julius Caesar, and soldiers prayed to her to protect their horses (and themselves) in battle. No doubt it was the reverence of the cavalrymen that won Epona her day in the Roman calendar.<\/p>\n

To the wider community, she was a Mother Goddess, and her imagery often suggests fertility; on a stone relief of Epona at Brazey in Burgundy, a foal is beneath the mare she is riding, possibly suckling. She often appears carrying baskets of fruit or loaves of bread.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Her devotees garlanded images of Epona with roses. One such garland, on a statue of Epona in a niche, \u00a0is described in the famous Golden Ass<\/em> of Apuleius, whose hero (having fallen under the spell of an incompetent witch’s apprentice) can only stop being an ass when he eats roses. So, in the midst of holiday shopping or end-of-year chores, don’t be an ass: pause today for rest and come up roses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Put your feet up for a while today, smell the roses, \u00a0and give a thought to Epona, whose day (December 18) this is, in the Roman calendar. Epona was the great horse goddess of the Celts, and the only Celtic deity who won a place in the Roman ritual cycle. On her special day –…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,38,20,36],"tags":[398,856,402,854,855,857],"class_list":["post-3816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancestral-traditions","category-ancient-religions","category-history-of-dreaming","category-myth","tag-epona","tag-gaul","tag-horse-goddess","tag-ritual-calendar","tag-roman-festival","tag-roses"],"yoast_head":"\nEpona's day: time for rest and roses - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/eponas-day-time-for-rest-and-roses.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Epona's day: time for rest and roses - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Put your feet up for a while today, smell the roses, \u00a0and give a thought to Epona, whose day (December 18) this is, in the Roman calendar. Epona was the great horse goddess of the Celts, and the only Celtic deity who won a place in the Roman ritual cycle. On her special day –…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/eponas-day-time-for-rest-and-roses.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-18T05:01:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-12-18T14:37:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/12\/Epona-Thizy-225x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Epona's day: time for rest and roses - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/eponas-day-time-for-rest-and-roses.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Epona's day: time for rest and roses - Dream Gates","og_description":"Put your feet up for a while today, smell the roses, \u00a0and give a thought to Epona, whose day (December 18) this is, in the Roman calendar. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3816"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3825,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3816\/revisions\/3825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}