Andraste, Andrasta, Andred The Warrior Goddess.  The Celtic Warrior Goddess, the patron Goddess of the Iceni Tribe, the Goddess of Victory, of ravens and of battles, similar in many ways to the Irish War Goddess Morrigan. Her name was thought to mean ‘The invincible one 'or‘ She who has not fallen'. Her presence was evoked at the eve of the battle, as a good omen. As a Goddess of Divination, she was probably called upon to divine the outcome of battles and war. She was venerated in woodland groves throughout Southern Britain, with a ‘sacred grove' dedicated to Andraste somewhere in Epping Forest. Her symbol was a hare. As Andred, her Romanised name is Andraste, she was a lunar mother-goddess figure associated with fertility and love. She was also associated principally with warfare and specifically with victory. She is sometimes compared to the Goddess Andarte, a God worshipped by the Voconti in Gaul, equated with Magna Mater, please see other parts of the site. The Icenti Queen Boudicca, the Latin name of Boadicea, leader of the rebellion against the Roman Occupation, is said to have sought the support of Andraste in her battles against the Romans by releasing a hare as an act of appeasement. In ‘The White Goddess', Robert Graves speaks of a ‘taboo' against hunting hares in Britain, as killing a hare might afflict the hunter with cowardice. He considers that the releasing of a hare by Boudicca was in hope that the Romans might kill the animal and loose their courage. Queen Boudicca's army sacked the cities of Camulodunum; Colchester, Londinium; London, Verlanium, St. Albans. The sacking was particularly barbarous, according to the Roman Historian Tacitus, the Roman Women were herded into a grove that was dedicated to the worship of the Celtic War Goddess Andraste, where they were butchered and murdered, having their breast cut off and stuffed into their mouths, and were then impaled on large skewers. The sacred grove was known to the Britons as Andraste's Grove, and is thought to have been in part of Epping Forest. Boudicca's army burned Londinium to the ground, and an estimated 70,000-80,000 people were killed. The revolt was so severe that Roman Emperor Nero briefly considered withdrawing Roman forces from Britain, before their defeat at an unknown site, probably some where in the West Midlands, although some legends put it at Battle Bridge Road, at King's Cross London, and Boudicca herself being buried under platform 10 at king's Cross railway station.  There is a possible Celtic Goddess Link, by the Welsh ‘budd' meaning ‘victory', the name may have been given during the her early uprising. This would give Boudicca a position of both Tribal Leader and a Druid or Celtic Goddess. She was also identified with Brigantia, the War Goddess of the Brigantes, the Romans called ‘Brigantia', ‘Victory' and even by 200AD alters were still being erected to her, She his linked with Morrigan known as the ‘Great Queen' in Ireland. She is also associated with the ‘Triple War Goddess'; Nemain (Frenzy), Badb Catha (Battle Raven) and Macha (Crow) whose sacred birds were with and allowed to feed upon the heads of the slaughtered in battle, which were impaled on stakes. The Goddess Andrasta was invoked by Boudicca, by sacrificing her enemies defeated in battle,by taking no prisoners. She was therefore not Boudicca as named by birth, but named Boudicca after the Goddess by her followers. This would explain the ‘fight to the death' of followers from many tribes, and the unusual willingness other tribes than her own, and their fanatical following of a woman into battle. Another observation by the Roman author of Boudicca releasing a hare before battle, suggests this is a priestess seeking assistance and communicating with the supernatural. The mutilation of the dead and their sacrificial killings to the Celtic Goddess Andrasta, shows Boudicca was a priestess to the Goddess. Boudicca's speech before the last battle;- ‘It is not as a women descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people, that I am avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters. Roman lust has gone so far that not our very persons, nor even age or virginity are left unpolluted.' ‘But heaven is on the side of the righteous vengeance; a legion which dared to fight has perished; the rest are hiding themselves in their camp, or are thinking anxiously of flight. They will sustain even the din and the shout of so many thousands, much less our charge and our blows.' If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and the causes of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve. As for the men, they may live and be slaves!' The above gives an insight to the Goddess, which we know very little, of the Andraste warrior Goddess of the Iceni tribe, to whom sacrifices of humans and hares were offered. Andraste represented the very darkest and demanding aspects of warfare, called upon only in times of extreme circumstances and appeased only by the ultimate sacrifice of blood, considered to be the most potent magic of all. Boudicca was in her darkest aspect, seen as speaking through her ancestors, the dim light of prehistoric times, the controllers of the metaphorical threads of life of every mortal and immortal from birth to death, the one to whom all return. Seen as, not so strange, in the context that death is part of warfare. This dark side is tempered by her representation of Andred the local Warrior Goddess of the Weald, and the lunar Mother-Goddess of fertility and love, the creator and bringer of life, and possibly worshipped as a maiden, and her youthfulness, and as Goddess of the Hunt. The veneration of the significance of her triad composition of divine figures of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Lunar Goddess.
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