Yes, My parents actually named me this.
Once upon a time, few people had ever heard of it.
But nowadays, people into Gaming and Magick
Have seized upon it as something "Mystikal"
To name their Orcs or Goblins or something.
I shouldn't be judgmental,
It's not as if I have a copyright on the name,
Or like I thought of it first,
Or like I shouldn't have to experience what almost
Everyone else does, sharing their name with many others,
But I still resent it.

Andrasta is the Celtic goddess of war.
She was made famous by her follower, the Queen Boadicea,
Who led her Iceni people to a big old bloody war against the Romans.
It was Between AD 61 and AD 63.
Emperor Claudius was in power.
The Iceni Celts had already given up
Their kingdom in East Anglia to the brutish Romans.
But in AD 61, Prasutagus, Boadicea's husband and King of the Iceni died.
A dispute followed during which Boadicea
Was publicly beaten by the soldiers of the emperor, and her two daughters raped.
The Iceni were insulted and rose in revolt led by their queen Boadicea.
Even though they were not the most well-trained army,
And they were frightfully small in number,
They nearly defeated those Roman bastards.
The Romans finally won out, but their ass
Had been thoroughly kicked by Boadiciea.

Boadicea pillaged the Roman settlements
For about two years straight.
She's revered to this day as one of
The greatest of the heroines of Britain.
Apparently, Boadicea was a priestess to Andrasta.
And she allegedly invoked the goddess,
Before immersing herself in the battle.
I'm proud to be named after a goddess
Invoked to kick some oppressive, bully ass.

On my mother's side of the family,
There is this tradition spawning many decades,
Of naming every other daughter Athena.
My mother, Athena, thought that the girls
In-between the Athenas got an unfair deal.
(They always got the Mary, Rebecca & Sara names)
So my folks researched & deliberated,
And named me after the Celtic version of Athena.

Anyone growing up with a freaky name
Knows how lousy it is to be eight years old
And marked with the stamp of the other.
It's not 'till you get to be at least in
Your teens that the notion of being unusual
Has any sort of positive connotation.
I adopted all kinds of nicknames,
Hoping so much to escape that name.
It probably doesn't seem like a big deal,
But some people derive a world of identity
Off what others call them.

Maybe some people can change their names
Without consequence.
I have always felt stalked by mine.
I couldn't seem to hide from it
No matter what I called myself.
It was the one thing I was given
Before my birth,
To identify and describe myself.

I guess part of why I resent the folks
Who adopt the name as some kind of
"Bitchin' Screen Name"
Or the handle they use to play online
Vampire games,
Is that I have lived almost two decades
With the bloody thing,
And I have this perverse sense of sacreligion
When I see it casually adopted.

I realize all of this ranting seems
So terribly inconsequential...
And it is, But it's also a
Reasonably significant explanation of why I am
Such a nut.
And not a terribly good explanation of why I will
Pour sugar in your gas tank if you ask me
If Andrasta is my real name.

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This site is always under construction.
E-mail Me:
Silence Bellows@yahoo.com
Come back and collect your lost marbles...



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