Hours of the Tide: Fortune's Day
It's Fortuna's day. Specifically, the Roman goddess. But I admit, Fortuna didn't keep her old clothes when she crossed the pond. Like all the gods who came to America, she transformed a bit. Fortuna, these days, is usually just called Lady Luck. The personification of fickle fortune and the blind wheel that turns all our times. We will rule, we rule, we have ruled, and we do not rule again. That is her law, that is her way-- and it's natures way because that is simply the way of things. Luck isn't fair and Fortune favors at random, no matter what the old adage says, because life and nature and the cosmos isn't fair. She may wink at the bold, but whom she favors is a mystery eternal.
Much like Lady Justice and Liberty in the post-Classical age, Fortuna also personified in the divine feminine here in the West as simply "Luck" or "Fortune". And like Justicia and Libertas-- the old Roman divine personifications of those very concepts, her image is an established part of our own short history, culture and mythos. We pray to them without knowing it sometimes. We hold these concepts as gospel sometimes. Even Christian judges will have a statue of Justice in their hall, with her sword ready and her scales held high. Luck's name is ubiquitous with wealth, gain, fear and loss. There are songs about her. There are rituals for her. Are Fortuna and Lady luck the same entity? Depends on your point of view. My culture derived the concept of Lady Luck from the Roman Fortuna so that's how I've always seen her.
Lady Luck, she's an obvious favorite of mine. I am particularly fond of entities which personify very specific subject; and when those personifications cross seas and interweave with cultures and metamorphosis with the tides of time, they create these incredible stories. Lady Luck as a general concept is a globally popular one, and is different anywhere you go.
In the States, Lady Luck is a blind broad tossing coins, spinning a wheel and making asses of us all for our hubris-- or sometimes-- blessing us with blind gain. She could be your best mate or your worst foe. Truth is she's neither. Ever. She has many modern temples; they're called Casinos and her names are uttered in every single one with plea and ploy. We drink to her and toast to her beauty and grace. Or, we catharsis by cursing her name and her very existence. She doesn't care either way. She has dedicated sacred sites too, where pilgrims march by the millions annually; Los Vegas, Atlantic City. Men and women beg and plead for her. They blow over dice and pray over cards. They grip their tickets in madness and zealotry. I attend services at the local temple on occasion; BINGO night and slots mostly. She seems especially blind to me at the poker table.
And for others, those who do not worship by gambling, she simply whispers and nods. For those ones, Lady Luck is that desperate wait for a promotion. Or she is that hope that one's teenager will pass their driving test. Or that joyous feeling on a wedding day when the sacred contract is made (one of her older domains of protection).
Sometimes she stills the wheel, sometimes she spins it madly. She's an idea of something we can almost grasp, that we may grasp, that we have grasped, and that we may never grasp again. Sum Sine Regno and all that jazz. So, on this tide, I honor Fortuna yet again; with honeyed milk and fresh poppies, with wheat grains and barley, with coins and companions. All I ask is that you smile a little on me, while I reign, until I cannot reign again.
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