@amber.of.the.sea
Tannhäuser was a mythological medieval Minnesänger, a poet-musician who sojourned a while in the Venusberg, or the Mountain of Ven
Tannhäuser was a mythological medieval Minnesänger, a poet-musician who sojourned a while in the Venusberg, or the Mountain of Venus. After leaving, Tannhäuser is overcome by remorse and asks Pope Urban IV to absolve him of his sins. The Pope replied that forgiveness was as possible as for his staff to bloom with flowers. Tannhäuser returned to the Venusberg, but after three days the Pope’s staff blossomed with flowers, and he sent messengers to retrieve Tannhäuser, but it was too late:, he had already entered the mountain, never to return.
Barbara Walker wrote of how the story of Tannhäuser “hints at the existence of a real high priestess powerful enough to defy the pope, and serving under the goddess under the name of Queen Sybil. The Goddess still resisted in the megalithic temples of Western Europe, which were old before the Greeks invaded Greece. Although her rites were forbidden, her worship was celebrated on magical mountains throughout Europe. She came to be confused with the classical goddess Venus, and her magic mountains were called Venusbergs in Germany [although] her worship was celebrated at several real mountains.” Indeed, Claude Lecouteux wrote of how “Pope Gregory XI threatened to excommunicate those who tried to visit the Sibylline Mountains, and he had the entrance to the cave there walled up. In the seventeenth century, the Jesuit Martín Del Río reported that the Pope put guards on watch to prevent people from visiting the Sibyl of Norcia.”, while in Andrea de Barberino’s romance Wretched Guerrin, Guerrin enters a mountain through a labyrinthine cavern until he arrivesd at the gate to the fairy’s kingdom where it is written: “He who enters here will remain one full year without leaving. He will remain alive until the Day of the Last Judgment, then lose both his soul and his body, and be damned for eternity.”
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Extract from my book The Silver Bough
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Artwork: Bathing Numph by Carl Spitzweg
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#fineart #folklore #goddess #magicalart
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2026-03-22 | 10,273 likes | 29 comments
