Originally a Minoan or Mycenaean household goddess, Athena represents the essence of the family bond. She rules the implements of domestic crafts: the spindle, the pot and the loom. She is the guardian of the ruler’s home, the goddess of the palace and the symbol of the community itself. As the Minoan civilization declined, a maiden goddess, Pallas, a warrior protector of the tribe, arrived with the Greeks and merged with Athena to become Pallas Athena. Each year at midsummer Athena’s magnificent statue was taken from her temple on the Acropolis and brought ceremoniously down to the sea. Renewed in strength and purity from this ritual bath she was then adorned in a newly sewn gown made by the city’s best craftswomen.

Diana was originally queen of the open sky, worshipped only outdoors, where her domain stretched overhead. Possibly, she was the ruler of the sun as well as the moon, for the early Italians had no sun god and had to adopt Apollo for that role. Diana’s name comes from the word for “light”; probably she was the original Italian ruler of the sun.

Today we confuse Diana with the Greek Artemis, seeing both in the familiar picture of the lightly clad, bow-bearing goddess who rides the moon or strides through the forest with her nymphs. And in later Roman times, Diana was pictured like this but only after the original Italian goddess was assimilated into the powerful figure of Artemis, the goddess of the conquered Greeks.

The Lady of the Beasts, Diana watches over the young and vulnerable of all species. Diana is the goddess of solitude, comfortable in wilderness and in the vast silences of nature. Particularly a goddess of women, she cares for all the steps in their existence: infancy, menstruation, childbirth, nursing, menopause and death. Her feast day is August 15th which is today the Catholic feast day of Mary’s assumption into heaven. To this day, people continue to flock to her shrine on the Aventine Hill in Rome for ritual hair washing and invocations for aid in childbed. Diana stands for that part of us which is instinctive, primitive and primal.

In this modern day we have come to know Venus from the very familiar image of ‘Venus on the half shell’. In fact, this image is confusion with the Greek Aphrodite rising from the sea. Our confusion goes way back for the Roman themselves identified their kitchen-garden goddess with the great goddess of love and sexuality, Aphrodite. The Roman Goddess was originally a spirit of charm and beauty, a goddess of wild strawberries and herbs, of pine cones and cypress trees, served by virgin priests and priestesses. Wherever a large stone rested near a tall tree, there was Venus’ sanctuary; there her altar could be erected for bloodless sacrifices. In this early Italian form, Venus was far less complex than the goddess with whom she was merged. She was a delicate, delightful, and, winsome goddess of a youthful kind of love, the kind that took place on berry-picking excursions and in flirtations in Venus’ own kitchen-gardens. Aphrodite, however, was born of sea foam and is associated with the ocean and its capacity to bring new, or renewed life and hope. She is a wholly feminine goddess of love, both spiritual and physical. She joins us one to another.

The ancient Welsh triple goddess (maiden, mother, crone) came almost undisguised into Arthurian legend. In some tales, King Arthur was said to have married three women, all named Griever; this recalls the ancient tradition that the king must “marry” the earth’s triple goddess to be fully invested with kingship. In another version of the ancient tradition, Guinevere betrayed Arthur by sleeping with a younger man; this was a common part of stories of such goddesses who both made and unmade kings and heroes.

I will never forget the moment when my Ancient Greek history teacher first spoke of the Amazons. I was completely captivated and could see them standing before me in a forest grove wearing tunics that draped over one breast leaving the other bare…bow and arrow slung over their backs…horses grazing all around them… Their independence and self sufficiency was both familiar and inspiring to me.

The Amazons were a tribe of warrior women living in the part of Asia Minor along the shores of the Black Sea. They had two queens, one for defense and one for domestic affairs, that shared sovereignty. As warriors they carried ivy shaped shields and double-bladed battle-axes. At home they lived peacefully in a self-sufficient economy and even created artistic treasures much coveted outside their borders.

Once or twice a year they would hold fertility rites with the men from surrounding tribes. They would keep their daughters and return their sons to the mans tribe.

Hyppolita, the ‘stamping mare’ was one of the greatest queens of the Amazon’s. She was one of the most beautiful and strongest women of her times. Her father, the war god Ares, gifted her the golden belt of Amazonian queen ship. This belt was greatly coveted by the Greeks to the south. The legends differ. One says that Hercules led the raid to rob this belt. Hyppolita fancied Hercules. As was tradition, in order to test her potential lover’s strength thereby ensuring offspring of great strength, Hyppolita wrestled with Hercules. Her loyal retainers, thinking Hercules was attacking their queen, sprang to arms. Unfortunately the women were defeated. Another legend says that Hyppolita was taken hostage and brought to Athens’ king, Theseus, to be his concubine. Others still say Theseus led the raid and still another tells that Queen Antiope was taken hostage to Athens and her sister, Hyppolita, led the Amazons to regain her. Defeated, Hyppolita led the Amazons back home only to die of grief en route.

Whether the Amazons actually existed is still argued to this day by scholars but regardless of this their stories continue to inspire generation after generation. As for me, I know they existed.

The vestige that still remains of Juno’s worship in today’s culture is that of brides still choosing to marry in the month of June, thus assuring themselves of her blessings for June was named after this goddess. Under her different names Juno ruled not only marriage but the entire reproductive life of each woman. She is the ruler of femininity.

A very ancient Italian goddess, Juno was long recognized as one of the predominant Roman divinities. Juno ruled along with Minerva and Jupiter to make up the trinity that ruled Rome. She was Regina, “the queen”. One of her most famous names was Moneta or “warner” earned many times over. Once when her sacred geese set up such a squawking that the city was warned of invading Gauls, another time when an earthquake threatened and Juno’s voice from heaven alerted the city, and finally when the under funded Roman generals came to Juno’s temple for advice and were told that any war fought ethically would find popular and financial support. This last warning made her the matron of the Roman mint, which was located in her temple and turned her title into a word for “money”.

Most of all, Juno was the goddess of time. As the daughter of Saturn, she was a symbol of the menstrual cycle as the marking of time. Goddess of the new moon, she was worshipped by Roman women on Calends, or the first, of each lunar month. In addition to these monthly celebrations, Juno was honored in two festivals: the unrestrained Nonae Caprotinae on July 7, when serving girls staged mock fights under a wild fig tree; and the more sedate Matronalia on March 1, when married women demanded money from their husbands to offer to the goddess of womanhood.

Her story is one of the best-know British folk tales. Lady Godiva was the wife to the earl of Mercia, Leonfric. Once, when he put such huge taxes on his people they were starving in order to keep their payments up, it was Lady Godiva who pleaded for mercy on their behalf. Leonfric responded to her plea cruelly and casually: If Lady Godiva would ride naked through the town of Coventry, he would do away with the taxes.

And so she did! Lady Godiva ordered that all windows should be covered at noon on a specific day and everyone should remain indoors and not look out. The appointed day arrived and Lady Godiva made her legendary horse-ride through town, her long hair being her only garment. Shaming her husband, Leonfric lifted the taxes.

Another part of this story is less well know. One single person defied the ban on looking at the passing Lady Godiva. His name was Peeping Tom. He was struck blind the instant he gazed upon her nakedness. This is not a power normal to a mere mortal and reveals the fact that Lady Godiva is a folkloric remembrance of a powerful goddess, the horse goddess Epona. At Southam, a Godiva festival took place until the eighteenth century, which required two semi-nude women, one wearing white lace, the other black lace, who rode on horseback through town. The festival was to encourage agricultural abundance. This parallels with the Godiva legend as the people of Coventry, after her famous ride, were able to keep more of their land’s produce for themselves.

She is best known to us now as Demeter’s daughter, abducted by Hades, lord of the underworld. This Greek version of her myth refers to the natural cycle of death and rebirth, for when Persephone is underground, plants wither and when she returns, they bloom. But the Greeks’ patriarchal mythmaking usurps he ancient mysteries: since the earliest of times, Persephone has been the goddess of the dead. She is the goddess of dark, discomforting wisdom and frightening powers. She teaches us mastery over our most fearful aspects.

In Indian Hinduism, Tara is known as the star goddess. She is seen as a beautiful, self-combusting star representing the unquenchable hunger that propels all life. Amongst Buddhists and Jains and Tibetan Lamaism, Tara is a symbol of spiritual hunger for release from the physical world. She is the Goddess of self-mastery and mysticism and is invoked by each of her 108 names on rosaries of 108 beads. She is also seen as a playful adolescent because she sees life as a game. What do adolescents wear? T-shirts! Hence Tara’s t-shirt.

Her home is the ocean, the womb of creation and source of unfathomable wisdom. Supremely glamorous, forever combing her hair, just beyond reach, the elusively desirable mermaid offers the adventurous the challenge of the unknown and the promise of wild, forbidden pleasures. Behind this seductive image, however, the ‘sea enchantress’ lurks as a symbol of death. Enticed by her voluptuous promises, generations of the unwary have been lured to their certain doom. A proliferation of mermaid sightings throughout the ages testifies to her existence, if only deep in our collective unconscious.

Yemanja holds a special place in my heart and soul. She is the ocean goddess of the crescent moon in the Brazilian Macumba tradition. She parallels Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in the Christian tradition. On February 2nd, in Bahia in the north of Brazil, everyone - and I mean everyone! - processes to the beach at night with lit candles. Entire villages gather, spreading along the shore, watching silently, prayerfully as their offerings of flowers, perfume, jewelry, even lingerie - all things to adorn their beloved Goddess - are taken out in small boats and tossed into the sea amidst floating candles!

The daughter of Mohammed is not a goddess in Islam, any more that the Virgin Mary is a goddess in Christianity. However, each of these ‘human’ women occupies a unique position in their patriarchal religions – as surrogate goddesses, figures to whom the power granted to goddesses in polytheistic cultures accrues. Fatima was married to Ali, and when her father died, he expected to succeed to the Prophet’s position as leader of the people. But the first three caliphs kept Ali from assuming that position – which caused the first Islamic schism, resulting in the establishment of Shiite Islam in the area that is now Iran. There, a quasi-mythic status was given to Fatima, who was said to be mistress of waters (thus the Koranic verse, “Water is the source of all life,” is held to refer to her) as well as mistress of salt.