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.
“Hey,” said Shadow. “Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.”
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side and it stared at him with bright eyes.
“Say ‘Nevermore'”, said Shadow.
“Fuck you,” said the raven. It said nothing else as they went through the woodland together.
Artemis is a Greek maiden goddess of nature and the moon. A fairly solitary goddess, she is sometimes seen in the company of her twin brother Apollo or her collection of maiden huntresses. She is also sometimes known as the leader of the Wild Hunt, a Celtic legend.
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.
I love Lakshmi! She is a goddess of all good things. Her main attribution is wealth, but not just in a financial sense. Lakshmi is the embodiment of wealth in all things: money, yes, but also love, contentment, friendship, understanding, and anything one could hope to be wealthy in!
I hate the cold. I just can’t deal with it. In the winter I only leave the house when I absolutely cannot help it. I hibernate, as regular readers may have noticed: sometime around Samhain I just disappear. It’s a terrible thing to do, and I know that even as I’m doing it, but I just can’t seem to get my shit together in the winter.
Hooray for Summer, then! I usually begin to really get my mojo back around Beltane, and especially now, around the official astrological beginning of summer. So to celebrate, I’m pushing back my next mythology post (sorry, Lakshmi, if you can hang on until next week, I promise I’ll do you right) and examining the sabbat.
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.
Lucina's Cauldron 