My Hel Project

The Black Cat is sacred to Hel, so I chose to knit a washcloth with a cat design out of black yarn. I found the pattern online. (Notice, I didn't want a "Halloween cat", so this is a "proper, posed" cat design.) It's hard to make out the cat design, but it was done with knit and purl stitches.

The Goddess Hel

Hel is the child of Loki and Angrboda. Goddess of the Underworld, she is often portrayed as a "horrible hag, half alive and half dead, with a gloomy and grim expression. Her face and body are those of a living woman, but her thighs and legs are those of a corpse, mottled and moldering" (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hel.html). Although another source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hel_(being)) describes her differently. Wikipedia says, "Half of her body is a beautiful woman, while the other half is of a disgusting, decayed corpse; she enjoys forcing men to sleep with her, as she seems enchanted so that they find her living side unbelievably beautiful, but her dead side just as disgusting, so that they are mentally destroyed by looking at her. Women are less affected by her powers."

It is also suggested on the Wikipedia site that Hel is a later Goddess, and that she originally only held authority over the shadows. She currently is believed to have authority over those who don't die gloriously in battle.

Goddess Hel, there area few battles here for me to die.
I believe you to be a Goddess of the Shadow.
Help me learn the secrets of the the darkness.
Let my life be a reminder to look beyond the surface for what people can teach us.