Alpandia

I've been thinking a lot of late about magickal names. Probably because DW's set a date for dedications in July. I've been using "Pandora" a lot for a pseudo magickal name. It's the name I give people who I meet in magickal circles.

Pandora's a name I've been using since high school. Part of this was due to my obsession with Anne Rice - everyone in my group of friends had a "vampire" name based on which vampires we were like in the books. But, of course, like any name that comes to you, it sometimes fits you better than you would like. I'd definately have peeked inside the box!

In college it got shortened to Pandy or Pandie. I became PandyBear, or sometimes Pandie the (fill in the blank) Bear, where the blank could be anything depending on my mood and the situation. More people knew my nick name in college than my real name, and most of my college friends still refer to me by the nick name, even though there were no other "Stacy"'s in our group of friends.

But in magickal work, I'd use Pandora. Pandie always seemed too juvenile and familiar a name to use. You use that with friends. When working serious magick, you don't want to be flaky.

I use Pandie to post on bulletin boards typically. It's a familiar name, I'm used to it, and it's a name that's typically available. I started participating in the Stregheria board that Maggie ran before handing the stregheria.com domain over to Raven, and I used Pandie as my name. It seemed to fit there, as Maggie was Feast of the Magi, and I was Pandie, the inquisitive little student. And Maggie, in typical Maggie fashion, typoed my name to be Pandia. After this happened several times, I decided to see if there was anything behind it.

Imagine my suprise when I found Pandia in the book "Goddesses and Heroines"! It says that her name means "all goddess" or "goddess of all". It's not known if she was a powerful goddess whose legend was lost or mearly a local form of the Moon goddess Selene. In other legends, she's the goddess of the Brightness, the eternally bright one, and was the daughter of Selene. She my also have been the Goddess of the Full Moon, as she was the mate of Zeus Pandion, the Full Moon God.

I was really flabergasted, as I wasn't expecting to find anything. When I shared this with Maggie, she just laughed and said "Of course that's what the name means! I was talking about you!" How funny - the Universe kept throwing this name at me through Maggie, my teacher and friend.

Everytime I've meditated on a magickal name over the last few months, Pandia keeps coming up. Hell, I even got more Moon-vibes this weekend when I drew a spirit bag at the EMLC retreat that had "The Moon" as my tarot card! But I keep getting the feeling that there's something missing - like its a little too fluff. I guess because it's so similiar to Pandie. While I don't mind being light and light hearted, I think there needs to be anchoring and balance. A little bit of darkness to balance all that "eternal brightness".

As I was surfing the internet looking for information on Etruscan deities, I found a list of some that I'd never seen before. Among the names I found Alpan. Alpan is the goddess of love and is one of the lasas. She was also the ruler of the Underworld. I felt drawn to this name as I stared at the list. It was the first one I clicked on to find out who this strange Goddess was - and that's not just because she was towards the top of the list!

Then I thought - Alpandia. It combines the darkness of the Underworld with the eternal brightness. Plus there's a water connection - both with the Underworld and the Moon. I think it's a good balance. Alpandia. I'm not pretentiously taking on a goddess name. Not that there's anything wrong with calling yourself by a goddess' name that you are close with, but I feel, as I'm still developing, I'm not at the point yet where I want to invoke that sort of strong energy right off into myself. I've creating a name by joining the names, including aspects of each.

Al-PAN-di-ah. I like the ring of it.

It's been playing in my head for a while now, and drawing that Moon card in my spirit bag just seems like more of a message to me. Writing it down gives it more legitimacy.

I think I kinda like it.