Araasi
Queen of the Gods. Goddess of Hearth and Home.
Araasi sits at the top of the pantheon. Considered the queen of all deities, as well as the Goddess of Hearth and Home, she is one of the more widely-worshipped deities alongside the High Mother. She has a king who is equally as powerful, but where Araasi is the welcomer of departed souls, Jalaane is the doom of anyone found unworthy. Those who found themselves in Jalaane’s embrace are said to face an eternity of suffering in the icy depths of their version of hell, known simply as the Forgotten Place.
One tale of Araasi revolves around the Potter, the goddess of craft, who is considered to have once been her mortal lover. The tale goes that Araasi was supposedly intrigued by the beauty of a woman’s artistic craft and entered the mortal realm in disguise to watch her work up close, spending a great deal of time in the woman’s presence and, eventually, they fell in love.
Jalaane caught wind of their affair and chased after the woman, seeking to remove her from existence, but his wife was always one step ahead and would hide her lover from his grasp. The tale goes that the chase continued for years, with various versions insisting it was decades, until there was nowhere in the world left for the woman to hide.
Being unwilling to relinquish her lover, Araasi turned the woman into a ball of fire and mounted it atop her crown. And, according to religious text, she’s still there, hovering above the queen’s brow for all eternity, returning to human form whenever they are alone. Whilst her name is rarely uttered due to superstition it will invite Jalaane’s wrath, she is often referred to as the first Eternal Flame.
Whilst some pictures and statues vary over the design of her crown, if they depict it at all, she is always shown with the flame. Inside temples, this flame is often wrought by magic and priestesses maintain it in shifts.
Jalaane caught wind of their affair and chased after the woman, seeking to remove her from existence, but his wife was always one step ahead and would hide her lover from his grasp. The tale goes that the chase continued for years, with various versions insisting it was decades, until there was nowhere in the world left for the woman to hide.
Being unwilling to relinquish her lover, Araasi turned the woman into a ball of fire and mounted it atop her crown. And, according to religious text, she’s still there, hovering above the queen’s brow for all eternity, returning to human form whenever they are alone. Whilst her name is rarely uttered due to superstition it will invite Jalaane’s wrath, she is often referred to as the first Eternal Flame.
Whilst some pictures and statues vary over the design of her crown, if they depict it at all, she is always shown with the flame. Inside temples, this flame is often wrought by magic and priestesses maintain it in shifts.
Araasi by Aldrea Alien
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