Deity of the Day

Artemis

The Greek Goddess

Areas of Influence: Artemis the Greek Goddess of the hunt, nature and birth.

The descriptions of this Goddess include. Goddess of the night, Lady of the Beast, Woodland Goddess and Pheobe which translates as the bright one.

Several of this Goddesses roles may appear incompatible in nature. An example of this is that she is associated both with death, brought swiftly through her arrows and healing. She is also both Goddess of the hunt and the protector of wild animals. These contradictions are in reality just a reflection of the cycles of life, death and rebirth.

Artemis is also a bird Goddess as she is linked to  several wild birds including guinea fowl, buzzards and an unidentified sea bird.

She was also known as a moon Goddess. Where she represents the new moon. As such Artemis is an important archetypal figure for young independent and unmarried woman in the form of the maiden goddess.

Birth and Genealogy: Born to Leto and Zeus, she is also the twin sister to Apollo, whom according to myth, she helped her mother to deliver. This is why she was traditionally called upon by woman to ease the pains of childbirth.

Strengths: Independence, courage, confidence and physical strength.

When this Goddess is only three years old she asks her father, Zeus for her own bow and arrow.

Her independence and free spirited nature is not appreciated however by all the Goddesses.  Aphrodite  has no control over her as she is not interested in love. The Queen of the Gods,  Hera  is also forced into confronting her when Artemis sides with the Trojans during the war.

Weaknesses: Vengeful, impulsive and aloof.

Like many of the Greek Goddesses she does not like to be beaten. When Agamemnon kills a stag and boasts that she could not have done it better, she is swift in seeking her revenge, holding back the winds and preventing his fleet from sailing.

Roman Equivalent   Diana

Artemis’s Symbolism

Symbolism: Her bow and arrow that were a present from Zeus.

She is often drawn wearing a short functional tunic. One of the oldest representations of her  also depicts her as a winged Goddess holding a stag and a leopard or lion.

Other works of art illustrate her riding a chariot drawn by four stags.

Sacred Animals: Deer, bears and hunting dogs.

Sacred Birds: Guinea fowl and Buzzards were associated with this bird Goddess.

Sacred Plants: Cypress, almond, fir, walnut and willow trees. Amaranth, daisy, wormwood. Like her brother she was also associated with laurels.

Artemis’s Archetypes

The Child of Nature :

This stereotype feels most at home outside bonding and communicating with the forces of nature. The Child of Nature is often emotionally very sensitive and prefers solace and the company of animals to being with people. They are often independent and physically fit.

The shadow aspect abuses animals and destroys the environment around them.

Artemis embodies this role as she is the Goddess of wild animals. As the huntress she becomes the shadow attribute of this stereotype, killing the animals and attacking anyone who tries to take away her dignity.

The Virgin :

This Archetype represents the desire to remain sexually pure and uncorrupted, maintaining your energy for other projects. It can also symbolize a deep desire to create brand new ideas and methods of working.

The shadow virgin, resists her sexuality due to fear and revolution of sex and the loss of innocence it symbolizes.

This Goddess is a prime example of this chaste Archetype as she asked her father, Zeus to grant her eternal virginity. All her companions were also virgins and she was extremely protective of her purity. When a hunter saw the Goddess and her nymphs bathing, one myth says she turned him into a stag and set his dogs upon him.

 

How To Work With These Archetypes

The Child of Nature:

To have this particular Archetype you need more than a love of nature. Your health and well-being is affected if you are unable to spend time outside working with animals, plants and other nature spirits. Your idea of hell is likely to be working in a busy office in the center of town.

People who possess the shadow aspect are cruel to animals and have no interest in preserving the natural world.

The Virgin:

The Virgin is one of your main Archetypes, if you are continually preserving your vital energies, for spiritual pursuits. The Virgin may also represent a desire to explore virgin territory; inventing refreshing, new ideas and ways of doing things.

On the shadow side, fear and disgust caused by bad past experiences could be preventing you from exploring your sexuality.

 

Source:

Goddess-guide.com

Deity of the Day

Ceres

Goddess of Agriculture

 

Areas of Influence: Ceres was the Roman Goddess of agriculture and grain. The word cereal is derived from her name. She is accredited with the discovery of spelt, an ancient strain of wheat and the knowledge of how to grow, fertilize and harvest cereal crops.

After a terrible famine in 496 B.C. the Sibylline books were consulted and a recommendation made that Rome adopt of the Greek Deities Demeter, Dionyisus and Persephone. Their identities were changed to Ceres, Liber and Libera. Together they formed the Avertine triad.

This Goddess also adopted Demeter’s mythology as she also lost her daughter to the God of the underworld, for six months of the year.

Her early Italian cult was similar to that of Tellus the Earth Goddess. She was aided in her agricultural duties by twelve minor Gods and Goddesses.

Ceres was also Goddess of law and order. At first this may appear a strange area of influence for this grain goddess however, she was accredited with the founding of agriculture and a move away from a nomadic hunter gatherer society. This necessitated a need for new laws to divide the land and protect property ownership as settlements grew into villages, towns and cities.

This Goddess was also Goddess of transitions, protecting woman at the vulnerable points in their lives: between girlhood and womanhood and the time of change between unmarried life, marriage and motherhood.

Her main temple is situated on Aventine Hill, one of seven hill tops that surrounded ancient Rome.

Origins and Genealogy: In Roman mythology she was the daughter of Saturn and Ops. She had several brothers and sisters: Juno, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto and Vesta. She married her brother Jupiter and together they had a daughter named Proserpina.

Strengths: Fertility, abundance and endurance.

Weaknesses: Lived her life through her daughter.

Greek Equivalent: Demeter, other Harvest Goddesses

 Symbolism

Pictured carrying a scepter or a farming tool in one hand and a basket of fruit or grain in the other.

Sacred Animal: Pigs. Ants were used in her temples to predict the weather and the future.

Sacred Plants: The chaste trees, corn and pumpkins. She was also offered the first fruits of the harvest. Poppies were her emblem as the grow in cornfields. All other flowers were banned as she had lost her daughter to the underworld when she was out picking flowers.

Festivals: Her festivals marked the different stages of the agricultural calendar. At the Paganalia festival when the seeds were sown,  a pregnant sow was sacrificed to her and the earth goddess Tellus to ensure an abundant crop yield. Her main festival, the Cerealia was celebrated over seven days in late April. This encouraged the ripening of the crops and prevented pests and diseases. This Goddess was also celebrated both by communities and households in the Ambarvalia which was held each May.

Ceres Archetypes

The Mother:

The Mother Archetype is a life-giver and the source of nurturing, devotion, patience and unconditional love. The ability to forgive and provide for her children and put them before herself is the essence of a good mother.

In its shadow aspect the Mother can be devouring, abusive and abandoning. The shadow Mother can also make her children feel guilty about becoming independent and leaving her.

Ceres is a grain Goddess who teaches people how to nurture and harvest her crops. Later she also takes on the Mother role of her Greek counterpart Demeter.

Rescuer:

The Rescuer provides strength and support to others in crisis. They act out of love with no expectation of a reward.

The shadow Rescuer expects the rescued party to be grateful and will often try to keep that person needy.

Ceres is distraught when her daughter goes missing and does not rest until she has found her. She is frustrated as she is unable to save her daughter and is forced to compromise.

 

How To Work With These Archetypes

The Mother:

It is not necessary to be a biological mother to have this Archetype. It can refer to anyone who has a lifelong pattern of nurturing and devotion to living things.

You are exhibiting the features of the shadow Mother if you smother your children and are over protective. Encourage independence and allow children to make mistakes but be available to give care and advice when it’s needed.

The other shadow Mother is the one that abandons her children, or is so busy that she has no time for nurturing her young.

Rescuer:

The Rescuer is one of your Archetypes if you are always trying to save and help people.

What you need to ask yourself is what motivates you to act this way? Are you expecting a reward for your trouble or do you love helping others?

 

Source:

Goddess-Guide.com

Deity of the Day

Bellona

Bellona was an Ancient Roman goddess of war. Her main attribute is the military helmet worn on her head; she often holds a sword, spear or shield, and brandishes a torch or whip as she rides into battle in a four-horse chariot. Her iconography was further extended by painters and sculptors following the Renaissance.

Originally named Duellona in the Italic languages, Bellona was an ancient Sabine goddess of war, identified with Nerio, the consort of the war god Mars, and later with her Greek equivalent Enyo. Her first temple in Rome was dedicated in 296 BCE, where her festival was celebrated on June 3. Her priests were known as Bellonarii and used to wound their own arms or legs as a blood sacrifice to her. These rites took place on the 24 March, called the day of blood (dies sanguinis) after the ceremony. In consequence of this practice, which approximated to the rites dedicated to Cybele in Asia Minor, both Enyo and Bellona became identified with her Cappadocian aspect,Ma.

The Roman Campus Martius area in which Bellona’s temple was sited had extraterritorial status. Ambassadors from foreign states, who were not allowed to enter the city proper, stayed in this complex. The area around the temple of Bellona was considered to symbolize foreign soil, and there the Senate met with ambassadors and received victorious generals prior to their Triumphs. And it was here too that Roman Senate meetings relating to foreign war were conducted. Beside the temple was the war column (columna bellica), which represented the boundary of Rome. To declare war on a distant state, a javelin was thrown over the column by one of the priests concerned with friends. (fetiales) from Roman territory towards the direction of the enemy land and this symbolical attack was considered the opening of war.

In the military cult of Bellona, she was associated with Virtus, the personification of valour. She then travelled outside Rome with the imperial legions and her temples have been recorded in France, Germany, Britain and North Africa.

Bellona is commonly portrayed wearing a plumed helmet and dressed in armour, or at least a breastplate with a skirt beneath. In her hand she carries a spear, shield, or other weapons, and occasionally sounds a trumpet for the attack. Anciently she was associated with the winged Victory holding a laurel crown in her hand, a statue of whom she sometimes carries; when she appears on war memorials she may hold that attribute herself.

Examples of such an armoured figure appear in the 1633 painting attributed to Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the statues by Johann Baptist Straub(1770) and Johann Wilhelm Beyer (1773–80). In the latter she appears with the god Janus, since both were associated with the Roman ceremonies of declaring war. In the case of Janus, the doors to his temple were left open during the whole period of hostilities.

Straub’s statue has a gorgon’s head on her shield to instil terror in her enemies, as does the Rembrandt painting, although this was added later, probably as a response to other examples of this new iconographical departure. In the bust by Bertram Mackennal she wears a gorgon mounted on her helmet, while in other depictions it is on the breastplate. Another common innovation was Bellona’s association with cannons, as in the drawing by Hans Krieg (1590–1645)  and the 1700 ceiling fresco at Hammerschloss Schmidmühlen by Hans Georg Asam (1649–1711). An early Dutch engraving in a series of prints depicting Personifications of Industrial and Professional Life suggests that it is this goddess who inspires the invention of war material, showing her seated in a factory workshop with all manner of arms at her feet. In the fresco by Constantino Brumidi in the U.S. Capitol (1855–60) her image is updated. There she is shown standing next to an artillery piece and has the stars and stripes on her shield.

Not all representations of Bellona wear armour. The statues by Alvise Tagliapietra at St Petersburg (c.1710) and the J. Paul Getty Museum’s by Augustin Pajou (1775/85)are largely naked, although otherwise wearing or carrying some of the goddess’ other attributes. There are Classical references that sanction this, however. In Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, for example, appears the description “Bellona with bare flank, her brazen weapons clanging as she moved” (3. 60). A further poetic reference taken up by a painter occurs in Louis Jean François Lagrenée’s “Bellona Presenting the Reins of his Horses to Mars” (1766). This illustrates a speech from Claudian’s In Ruffinumwhere Mars requests “Let Bellona bring my helmet and Terror guide the reins” (Fer galleam Bellona mihi, nexusque rotarum tende Pavor).^[19] Jan van Mieris’ allegorical painting of “Wisdom restraining Bellona” (1685) is also poetic. There the seated figure of Wisdom clasps the right hand of the helmeted goddess, who is turning to leave, her cloak fluttering behind her and her shield held high in her outstretched left hand.

 

Source

Wikipedia