Today's Oracle 16th March 2021

 Nymphs (Healing)

The nymph like goddesses of healing springs are sometimes nurturing and soothing, or playfully erotic. They bring healing and loving attention to our physical bodies. Their qualities include the giving and receiving of intimacy.

Invoking the Qualities of Intimate and Loving Attention.

IF YOU ARE DRAWN TO THIS ORACLE, you want to renew your physical well-being. You may have particular physical ailments. Emotional trauma may also be impairing your health and vitality. You may desire more passion and intimacy in your relationships or in your sexual life. You may be preparing for a life transition requiring greater health and stamina.

Healing springs are associated with the healing properties of youthful goddesses, commonly personified as young, playful nymphs. Pilgrims gather around the bubbling waters, making prayers and offerings to a favoured goddess. Children and adults bathe in the curative pools. Women sleep near pools thought to cure barrenness and convey fertility. The best-known nymph is Coventina, who signifies loving and healing attention to our physical needs.

Thousands of curative springs dot the landscape of continental Europe and the British Isles. Like caves, burial mounds, subterranean passages, the shores of lakes, and islands to the west, natural springs are gateways to the Otherworld. Each spring is an orifice - a mouth or vagina - of the mother goddess, a gateway to the realm of the goddess. Though each spring is a repository of the goddess's abundance, the goddess manifests her nature a bit differently in every spring. Like a woman with many attributes to give to life, the attributes conjoined in a single spring are found nowhere else on the surface of the earth.

Natural springs inspired healing and replenishment. Many springs were known to cure barrenness in women, so women went to sleep there, and probably lovers went to the pools together seeking fertility. Some springs in particular were playful meeting places for family and friends, especially in the warm months of summer. Great numbers of pilgrims and relatives prayed at them to propitiate the goddess's favour. The pools near natural springs, particularly thermal springs, also inspired leisure and recreation. When sleeping overnight by the pools, the pilgrims were encouraged to rest and dream the answers to their queries.

In northwest Spain, southern Gaul, and Britain, the spring goddess Coventina was revered, with the height of ritual activity taking place in the late second and early third century, prior to the edict that made such rites illegal in areas under Roman authority. On one stone, Coventina is a nymph, shown resting on waves lapping against a riverbank, waving a water lily playfully in the air with one hand and poising her other arm on an upturned jug of water. At Carrawburgh, along Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, she is portrayed as a triple nymph. Akin to images of the Triple-Mother Goddess, the face of the three images varies slightly, but her imagery otherwise is standard. She appears semi-nude, pouring a jug of water on the ground with one hand and holding another jug aloft in the other. Over sixteen thousand coins have been found in her well, a level of ritual offerings higher than that at the thermal springs at Aquae Sulis in Bath, England. Other offerings found include jewelry, bits of glass, bone, metal, and leather. Supplicants came to offer prayers and petitions, bathe in the pools, drink from the well, and leave offerings to accompany their prayers.

The presence of the playful nymph signals the healing of physical distress and the replenishment of vitality. Key to receiving the gifts of her presence is your willingness to receive intimacy and love and to play and frolic. She wants you to have fun, relax, and enjoy life. A healing vacation near water or at a spa may be especially helpful. If you have the opportunity to move to a new home, you might consider living near a river or stream. Professional activities can certainly recede into the background for a while. Perhaps you have been working too hard. Perhaps at this time in your life you need to pause and refresh your physical resources. Perhaps you are approaching retirement, a change in activities or environment, or preparing to give birth to a child. Whatever your situation, this oracle invites you to renew your physical well-being and restore passion, eroticism, and wonder to the physical and sensual activities of daily life.