Inanna is a Sumerian goddess of love. She is known as the Queen of Heaven and is part of a well known Descent to the Underworld myth. Like Kore/Persephone, Inanna traveled to the underworld and by doing so, caused radical changes in the environment.
Kwan Yin is an East Asian goddess of mercy. She is a Bodhisattva, which in Buddhism I believe one who has attained enlightenment. She is most often associated with infertility and other types of physical suffering.
This week’s Tuesday Tarot is a big one for me. While you’re reading this, I’ll be at the birth of my first granddaughter. (I promise there’ll be cute baby pictures to follow!) It seems fitting that this is the week we’ll be discussing the mother card, the Empress. Continue reading
I really identify with Freya. We share a Norse background and affinity for cats, although I don’t think any of the cats I’ve lived with would be willing to pull a chariot for me. Freya is a mother goddess for love, fertility, beauty and sex. She is also a war goddess, and half of those who die in battle come to her afterlife domain of Fólkvangr. (The other half go to Odin’s Valhalla.)
I don’t work with many Egyptian goddesses. I had a coven sister years ago who claimed Sekhmet as her matron, and I’ve worked with Isis a little bit. I decided yesterday to try drawing a card from the Goddess Oracle to see who I should write about next and I drew Hathor.
Hathor is a cow headed mother goddess, and is known to be placid and loving. She is associated with the sky, and especially the Milky Way galaxy. She is also associated with the hippopotamus, vultures, snakes and lions.
Oh Marie Laveau! Anybody whose ever been the least bit interested in New Orleans voodoo has heard the many legends of Marie Laveau. She led huge dances is Congo Square that scandalized all of white New Orleans. She led enormous rituals at the shores of Lake Pontchartrain every St John’s Eve (the night before midsummer, or the summer solstice). At one of these rituals, she was taken by the lake, never to be seen again except for the type of glimpses usually reserved for ghost stories.
Trying to trace the historical Marie Laveau is a tricky business. She was actually two people: Marie Laveau (1794 – 1881) and her daughter, Marie Laveau II (1827 – 1895?), who sometimes went by the name of her father, Paris.
Once upon a time, many and many a year ago when I was a young single mother, strange things began to happen to me. I could smell the ocean all the time, even though I lived far from any coast. I had vivid dreams of hanging out on a beach with a motherly woman: fleshy but not fat, powerful and comforting. She wore a blue dress with a full skirt that had white frilly things underneath. Whenever I was faced with any kind of new baby dilemma, I would get these odd intuitions telling me what to do. Not really a voice in my head; more like somebody beaming ideas directly into my brain. At one point I noticed that all my clothes were blue.
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When I began practicing witchcraft 25 years ago (ooft!) the first pantheon I worked with was the Greeks. I had been reading Edith Hamilton and Robert Graves pretty much from the moment I could understand them, and those myths were my favorite fairy tales. Many of my beginning rituals revolved around the trinity of Kore/Persephone as Maiden, Demeter as Mother and Hecate as Crone. Therefore I thought it would be fitting that my first few posts be about these Ladies. Today I’m writing about Demeter, up to the Eleusian Mysteries, which I think deserves a post of its own.
Demeter is the Greek earth goddess, representing fertility and grain of all types, especially barley. She’s one of the Olympians as a daughter of Cronos and Rhea. Her siblings include Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia and Hera.
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Lucina's Cauldron 