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Arnemetia [Archive] - MysticWicks Online Pagan Community and Spiritual Sanctuary

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Aikaterine
April 30th, 2005, 02:54 AM
Going from the success of Bloduewedd i've been working on another *Deity* but very little is known of her.

Arnemetia

"She Who Dwells At the Sacred Grove".

The main part of Arnemetia's name when broking down is Nemet. Nemet is a grove many would consider it to be a sacred grove.
Within British Celtic mythology, Arnemetia was a water goddess whos shrine resides at Aquae Arnemetiae, modern Buxton in Derbyshire, England. ( Aquae *meaning 'of the waters'* Arnemetiae was the Roman baths in Buxton).
It is said that there was two springs the Celts saw to be sacred, their goddess presided over them, and those who drank her waters were cured of wasting disease and sickness.
Today and for many centuries the healing spring now seen today as St Anne's Well was a attraction to people who came to try the waters in hope to cure such ailments.

St Annes well, the change of name is thought to have happened when monks of the celtic church, bring they're faith to Derbyshire, came across the spring, Now we all know that quite a few previous Pagan sites have been renamed or built upon by the Church. Infact, it is said they openly carried on the time honoured practice of the 'Fathers of the Church' by taking over pagan beliefs and practices (please correct me if i'm wrong there). There is no proof that Arnemetia got just confused with the Christian saint, or they sought to show that the goddess was really St Anne under another name.

The only said to be mark of a temple to this Goddess is a Podium (22.5 ft wide, 46ft in length and 4 ft tall.) of well-dressed stone with a clay infill, which was reseached in 1787. Iron nails and roofing might suggest that it was originally timber, But again there is no hard evidence of it being for Arnemetia. The suspected temple was postioned north-south and faced towards the Roman baths at St Anne's Well which are only roughly 80 ft away.

The only other recognised town in Roman Britain that could be seen as being linked is Aquae Sulis (Bath, Avon), which is also a known Nemeton grove.

unfortunitly this post is mainly about the spring and things linked with Arnemetia but this is due to the lack of information on the Goddess herself. Over to you lot

ancestral_lee
April 30th, 2005, 06:40 AM
well, seeing as i was on the Blodeuwedd thread, i fugured i should join in here too :)

Arnemetia is a new one on me, seems from what you are saying is she is certainly more 'local' and perhaps more tenous when you go to other places like Aque Sulis - which is a site dedicated to Sulis i think - i should check.

my personal opinion is in case like this, if two similar sites have different goddesses associated with them, then its most likely that they are different goddesses and are the local goddesses for those areas. this would certainly corroborate when you consider that 2000 years ago Britain was tribal and each tribe would have thier own gods, perhaps they would have seen similarities between thier respective goddesses if they had the chance to sit down and chat together, but for those similarities they would also probably agree that they are different.

i tell you what, i will go do some reading around this and get back.

lee