Tempestas, the ancient Roman Goddess of Storms, made her way to Dark Goddess Collective to teach us about more than just the destruction that storms can leave behind. While we can agree that storms can be destructive, the fact that she had a temple dedicated to her by Cornelius Scipio (after being granted safe passage through her storm) is a great tribute to her facet of creation.
Understanding the Storm
A great lesson in connecting with this essence that is Tempestas is connecting with the elements and the Earth. Over the last month, in the Northern Hemisphere, we have seen and have been impacted by large storms of rain, snow, and ice. Destructive? Yes. Aligned with purpose? Also, yes. This Earth is not a thing, it is an organism that is living, like your body. Certain processes must happen. The same storm with water that flooded a neighborhood (as unfortunate and tragic as this is – make no mistake that grief and loss is very real) also sank deeply into the soil, softening the hulls of seeds that will break out and provide food to other animals while simultaneously carrying nutrients to the roots of trees that are needing it for the next season. We are not the only living things here. We are not the only ones worthy of survival.
“The seed has no idea why it must break out, but it knows it cannot remain in that too tiny spot, it has other shit to do because the essence it contains says it must be so and it happens. And the universe, in this great symphony of wholeness conspires at a causal level to help this essence along its journey down here at the effect level – it brings the winter storms.” ~ Kaycee, Tempestas, Leveraging Storms
The Elements of Creation
Many cultures, religions, and communities make meaning of the world around and within them through patterns. The seasons, the moon phases, planets being visible or not, and correlating one pattern to the patterns present in other areas. We assign virtues, signatures, and how these correspond to the greater pattern of life. Tempestas and the storms she brings, as actual storms or moments in our personal lives, makes more sense once we get aligned to the elements of creation. Like the moment of creation of our universe, she has the capacity to bring all of the elements together: Air, Fire, Water, and Earth with an essence.
An interesting note here is that her temple was connected to the temples of Mars and Minerva. Why does this matter? Tempestas was associated with Water, Mars with Fire, Minerva with Air, and brought to form (earth element) – again the architecture of creation and wholeness repeated.
Personal Storms
Tempestas came to teach me a few things too: how the storms outside translate to the storms we experience in relation to each other and ourselves.
While I aligned myself, the lesson that sticks for me is that Tempestas and the storms are unbothered. Truly unbothered that our home might have been in that spot where 4 feet of water cover the nothingness that now sits in that spot. It is heartbreaking that we’ve watched this play out.
Especially when we see it so close and personal, right?
However, receiving that energy in its true nature allows us passage into this collective and universal consciousness that transforms the whole of the storm (and any storm we face in relationship to each other) as we draw it down. We can transform it from being an unbothered/unstoppable force in destruction to being able to use it to become an equal storm, one that is unf**kwithable and unstoppable, but as a force in creation. Such as being compelled into action that creates magnificent change in our communities and lives – that’s the nature of the destruction/creation polarity of storms and using magic in alignment with it through a desire.
Correspondences
| Element | Water |
| Zodiacal/Planets | Pisces (Jupiter, Neptune) |
| Offerings | Black Sheep |
| Seasons | Autumn/Winter |
| Plants | Gotu Kola, Calamus, Milky Oats, Vervain, Mugwort |
| Direction | West |
A Call to Tempestas
What I love about our private community is the deep giving and receiving, the collaboration, and the true creativity that arises from a place of deep belonging in such a sacred container. This is original prose from Lynne Rabchuk, an amazing Sovereign within DGC:
Goddess of the water, from rivers, streams, and oceans
Queen of our healing, and all human emotions
Reflected in the Moon, so ruled by planet Cancer
Teaching us to flow free, while waves wash every dancer
Mixing flames and water, she causes a commotion
Never one to stagnate, she feels every emotion
Tempestas, a goddess, of storms and sudden weather
She knows human growth must be eternal, not tethered
~Inner Light 1/12/2023
The Black Sheep
In working with Tempestas, I found it interesting that the sacrifice to her temple was often a black sheep. Why?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the Black Sheep was a euphemism for someone who brings shame upon their family or are considered bad. Typically we can find euphemisms or sayings that have historical reference and so I start with a definition. But that doesn’t explain why a black sheep (the actual animal, not a human) would be sacrificed to a Goddess of Storms in return for her favor (as most ancient Roman rites to the Gods/Goddesses were done in return for their favor). Why would they sacrifice for favor something considered “bad”?
The Ancient Roman Religion vs. Abrahamic Religions
Dimitrios Mantzilas (here and here) discusses some of reasons for specific animal sacrifices. Notably, that many animal sacrifices were chosen to match gender/color of the God/Goddesses. When I think of Tempestas, I do think of the dark storm clouds, however, there is also the Chthonic aspect of that color wherein we think of the Black Madonnas representing wisdom and the dark rich nurturing soil (also, sheep tail points down vs goat pointing skyward – again, Chthonic signature).
When we think of Romans and the influx of Abrahamic Religion, especially the heavy and disdainful connotations of Black Sheep within their holy book – it begins to make sense that the deep, dark, feminine that by simply being able to take energetic force and bring it to form (in every aspect of life) would be shunned if it didn’t allow for the rising of power of patriarchal systems. Those systems still stand but, we are making progress towards balance.
A part of doing this is awareness in the language we use and fostering the energetic and nourishing force behind the ways it appears to take form.
Take this into consideration, by Bert Hellinger:
“The so-called black sheep of the family are, in fact, hunters born of paths of liberation into the family tree.
The members of a tree who do not conform to the norms or traditions of the family system, those who since childhood have constantly sought to revolutionise beliefs, going against the paths marked by family traditions, those criticised, judged and even rejected, these are usually called to free the tree of repetitive stories that frustrate entire generations.
The black sheep, those who do not adapt, those who cry rebelliously, play a basic role within each family system, they repair, pick up and create new and unfold branches in the family tree.
Thanks to these members, our trees renew their roots. Its rebellion is fertile soil, its madness is water that nourishes, its stubbornness is new air, its passion is fire that re-ignites the light of the heart of the ancestors.
Uncountable repressed desires, unfulfilled dreams, the frustrated talents of our ancestors are manifested in the rebelliousness of these black sheep seeking fulfilment. The genealogical tree, by inertia will want to continue to maintain the castrating and toxic course of its trunk, which makes the task of our sheep a difficult and conflicting work.
However, who would bring new flowers to our tree if it were not for them? Who would create new branches? Without them, the unfulfilled dreams of those who support the tree generations ago would die buried beneath their own roots.
Let no one cause you to doubt, take care of your rarity as the most precious flower of your tree.
You are the dream of all your ancestors.”
Going Deeper
I am deeply moved by the way in which the language of life, of the tree, of ancestry, of the ROOTS are all brought into this writing by Bert Hellinger. It asks that we stop, in this moment, in the Season of the Seeds:
When you think about your own seeds, the way in which you’re nourishing the essence contained within those seeds, what language are you using to give them life?
How will they root in the current language we’re using surrounding them?
May we always align with the storm, it too is a key!
A Candle & A Key,
Kaycee
References
John Edwin Sandys, “Epigraphy”, in A Companion to Latin Studies (ed. John Edwin Sandys), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1913
Review Scipio’s Epitaph: https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/1126076
Book 6 of Fasti, by Ovid: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidFastiBkSix.php#highlightfasti
