Deity Descriptions
Goddesses
Here you will find information on some of
the many goddesses that exist throughout the world.
What color is your inner goddess?
To learn about more Goddesses visit Inner Goddess,
the source of many of the following descriptions.
Aine  Cailleach Bhuerle Callisto Ceres Chilseong-je Epona Fortuna Freya Iambe Ix Chel Kuan Yin Mielikki Rhiannon Selket Goddesses & Their Familiars
Freya
From Inner Goddess
Suggested Mantra: Passion
If you feel awed by the wonder of veins in leaves
in the lush green trees and feel your knees go weak at
the joy of being alive, the passionate goddess of love is
working in you. Freja’s gifts are those that make us
overjoyed to be alive!
Suggested Affirmations:
I live in love
I fly with love
I am right here
I stand in complete satisfaction
I embrace life in its absolute fullness
At this moment, I have all that I need
Each moment is a precious gift in beingness
Related Essences: Rose, cedar, sandalwood, cypress, myrtle
Related Gemstones: Rose quartz, pink tourmaline, emerald, and all other pink or green stones.
It is from the Nordic Goddess of love and fertility’s name
that we derived the name “Friday.” Freja loves all things
that give pleasure; she indulges in love, romance,
and lovemaking – always walking in harmony and beauty.
Her power brings men and women together to create new
life, and she is the gentle goddess who ends life in
order to perpetuate the circle of life with love and
trust. According to Nordic myth, she was also the
Warrior Goddess who was hostess to fallen war heroes
in her great hall.
Freja represents passion: Passion in love, passion in war,
and passion for the things in life that bring us pure joy.
She lets us be moved to tears with gratitude for what we see
around us, her gifts are tenderness, grace, compassion,
delight and laughter.
If you are feeling that you are living your life without
intention, stop for a while. Devote this Friday to her
namesake, and spend at least a minute with your eyes closed,
listening to your breathing. Notice every noise around
you and every smell that comes your way. If you feel anxious,
use a couple drops of Agrimony in Bach Flower Remedies.
Savor them under your tongue as you mentally list 5 things
that you are grateful for. Build on this list to think
about your passions – have you been ignoring them lately?
Well, Friday is the day to get back to your passion,
and to get your passion back!
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Iambe
From Inner Goddess
Suggested Mantra: Playfulness
Through creativity and humour, sexual liberty and carefree joy,
playful Iambe soars free from judgement. She relishes laughter,
merriment and mirth to restore female strength and connection to her
inner self.
Suggested Affirmations:
I am joyful
My big hips are sexy!
I am healthy and happy
I am alive with sexuality
I adore my womanly shape
I feel absolutely supercharged
I have abundant energy and vitality
My vital energy resurfaces with laughter
Related essences: Vanilla, almond, oriental lily, bergamot
Related gemstones: Carnelian, coral, agate, brown jaspar (orange
stones)
In Greek stories, Iambe was a wild goddess of sacred sexuality,
(related to Baubo), who used poetry and witty comebacks to cheer
Demeter up. Iambe is credited with creating the iambic pentameter
verse (a metered verse with two distinct accents - rent a Shakespeare
video to get into the iambic mood!).
She represents the goddess energy of life, death and fertility. Her
irreverent joy and liberation towards sexuality reminds us to delight
in laughter, love and lust.
It is in the relief of female sadness or fear that female sexuality
and joy is restored. Always laughing and joyful, Iambe could always
say "Let's celebrate! We have our wombs, our centres, our vulvas,
our life - let's dance!"
Try this today...wrap yourself in an orange scarf to stimulate your
womb chakra, and watch a Shakespeare comedy such as A Midsummer
Nights Dream, or Much Ado About Nothing. Rock in time to the iambic
pentameter beat, feel the connection to the earth's rhythm as you
rock to and fro, becoming lighter and lighter on your feet. Remember
to laugh. Always remember to laugh.
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Ix Chel
From Inner Goddess
Suggested Mantra: I am woman
Mayan moon goddess Ix Chel is the mystery and joy of our
female sexuality, mother of earth and all life, patroness
of the healing arts, weaving, childbirth, and destiny.
Suggested Affirmations:
I am joyful
My big hips are sexy!
I am healthy and happy
I am alive with sexuality
I adore my womanly shape
I feel absolutely supercharged
My life path reveals itself to me
I have abundant energy and vitality
Related Essences: Marigold, vanilla, almond, oriental lily, bergamot
Related Gemstones: Carnelian, coral, agate, brown jasper, and other orange stones.
Ix Chel, Mayan moon goddess, sometimes called “Lady Rainbow,” is often
pictured as a serpent crone wearing a skirt and crossbones. She carries
an upside-down vessel in her hands that represents the nourishing gift of
water, our most essential life-giving element. She wears a serpent on her
head representing her transformation from the winter to spring energy –
shedding her winter skin in order to blossom anew into spring, to a new
and fresh stage in the life cycle.
Ix Chel is a shape-shifter, consorting with the rabbit in spring (fertility
and life giving abundance). She is, at once, maiden (goddess of fertility
and life, protector of women in childbirth), and a crone – the serpent
reflects her status as a wise woman dispensing healing visions. She is
the keeper of the life cycle, goddess of all new life and keeper of the
bones and souls of the dead.
As fertility goddess, her power waxes and wanes with the phases of the moon,
mirroring the fertility cycle in the bodies of women. At this time, when the
refreshing energy of spring coincides with a new moon, invoke Ix Chel’s
transformational fertile energy to shake off the winter slumber and launch into spring.
Imagine being nurtured inside Ix Chel’s life giving womb, or that you are
wiping the tears of your own inner child’s pain. Honor the burdens and pain,
then, release them. Prepare to laugh and leap your way into your new phase of
joyful celebration that will come with your rebirth.
Now is the time to celebrate life and love. Renew and affirm your sensuality,
kindle the fire of romance. Make love by the light of a bonfire, the glow of
red candles, or just the full moon’s radiance. Dance with your love in bare
feet connecting to the earth. Make a list of three things that you are going
to create or manifest between now and the next full moon. Let the items on
your list be the seeds to help you germinate a new start for the new phase
in this life cycle.
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Kuan Yin
From Inner Goddess
Suggested Mantra: Compassion
Kuan Yin’s esoteric attributes are those of compassion, healing, and centering.
She lives in the heart chakra, standing in full acceptance, suspended in tranquility,
relishing joy in the silence.
Suggested Affirmations:
I radiate love
I am tolerant of everyone around me
I have great joy, and, therefore, great energy
My peace is shared peace
I am weightless and free of burden
Related Essences: rose, musk, jonquil, orange flowers
Related Gemstones: Rose quartz, pink tourmaline, emerald, and other pink and green stones
Kuan Yin, Mother of Compassion in ancient Chinese culture, blows gently into your life,
and should be welcomed as an eternal source of comfort and peace. Kuan Yin’s values
are about co-operation, sharing, balance, harmony, and partnership; she is highly
sensitive and aware. Kuan Yin is light and weightlessness – the qualities that result
from highly tuned values of tolerance and acceptance.
What a joy to have Kuan Yin visit you today. Try closing your eyes and visualizing
Kuan Yin resting with the worlds on one shoulder, her cheek resting against it. She
sees you, and you are drawn to the love radiating from her heart. She shows you how
to take the world from your shoulders, hold it in your hands, and dance in joyful,
carefree circles. You see the earth’s water rippling, the leaves in the trees blowing,
the birds soaring without effort. Know this is happening purely thanks to your joy.
When you walk through each day, remember Kuan Yin’s presence whenever you see the
soaring birds, the rustling leaves, and the rippling waters. Use these triggers
as a reminder to take the worlds off your shoulders, and to dance with abandon,
with your face to the skies and your arms in the air.
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Mielikki
Goddess of forests and autumn, protector of forest creatures, and patroness
of rangers and dryads, Finnish goddess of game.
From The Book of Goddesses and Heroines
by Patricia Monaghan – pg. 61:
The Finnish-Ugrian mythologies tell of a Tapio (Dark Beard), who was the god of water and woods.
He was the consort of Mielikki, the goddess of the forest and woods. Tapio was said to wear a hat
of fir and a moss cloak; he was invoked by the ancient Finnish people to supply an abundance of
game for hunting. There are also stories of Pellervoinen, the god who protected the fields, trees, and plants.
From Lord of Light and Shadow: The Many Faces of God by DJ Conway – Mielikki:
The evidence of Mielikki as a Goddess of the Forest occurs in the Magick Songs of the
Finns, and in the Kalevala. The image of Mielikki bears a surprising resemblance to the
Greek Goddess Artemis, as the protector of animals of the woods and as the Goddess of the
Hunt. The references to Mielikki nurturing the bear may be associated with the ancient
Finnish custom of placing a bear skull in the forest as a sacred totem. This reverence
of the bear appears all across Ural-Altaic speaking regions of the Arctic and raises
questions about the bear rituals for Artemis, and the relationship between Artemis and
the Bear Goddess Kallisto.
Mistress of the Forest,
Fair and bountiful Lady,
Nurtured the bear cub
With the honey of the bees,
Yet it is Mielikki who allows the woods
To grow gray and shabby
When the snow of winter melt away,
Even as the skull of ancestral bear
Sits high upon a branch in the forest,
Facing the rising sun,
In the hollow where light pierces
Through the roof of heaven touching leaves.
Delighted by the magick sound of flute,
Mielikki then dons her golden bracelets,
Slips gold rings into her ears,
Threads golden beads around her throat
And takes her seat
In the mansion of golden windows
Where she watches over the creatures of the woods,
Providing game only to the worthy,
Directing the maiden spirits,
The fleet metsanhaltigas of the forest,
To open the mansion doors –
Only to those who know that Mielikki dwells within.
Far off in distant realms, connected to Suomi (Finland) by spirit and heart,
lay a forest dripping with golden honey. The trees swayed gently in the constant
wind, the sound of their creaking comforted all creatures who walked under the
thick canopy of needles and leaves. For all woodland creatures were safe in the
lands of Tapiola, protected and guarded from harm; and the reindeer and the bird,
the elk and the wolf waked under the swaying boughs knowing that Mielikki, Goddess
of the Forest, would keep them safe.
Now, Mielikki was a peaceful Goddess, usually, and together with Tapio, the Lord of the
Woodland, she guarded the borders of Tapiola and watched over all who walked through her
forests. Hunters would pray to her before they went out on their hunts and she meted out
game as she saw fit.
It happened one day that Mielikki was walking through her lands, resting after a long season
of planting crops. The sun gleamed golden through the canopy of green boughs, casting a glowing
hue, the color of Peridot, on everyone and everything in the glade. The bees had been busy;
their hives dappled the forest like shaggy patches of moss clinging to the sides of the birch
trees. Some of the trunks glistened with long strands of amber liquid as it dropped down their sides.
Mielikki was especially fond of the sweet nectar, and occasionally she would stop to sample honey
from one hive or another, and the bees swarmed around her as if she were their Queen.
As she licked her fingers, sampling one especially good batch made from wildflowers,
Mielikki looked around and smiled. Once, again, there was more honey than they needed,
much more than the Metsanhaltigas (the wood spirits who called Mielikki their queen) could
eat, and so it had been every year for years on end now.
It was such a pleasant afternoon that Mielikki settled in under a tree near one of the
myriad of streams that run through Tapiola. The babbling water eased her mind. After
so much activity during the spring, Mielikki was feeling worn out and in need of something
new. But, she couldn’t decide what to do, so she pulled out her sewing bag and found a
thick hank of brown wool. Tapio, her beloved, needed a new cap. Every year Mielikki made
him a new cloak of the velvet moss he loved so much, and then would knit a brown cap to go with it.
But, as she was fiddling with the wool, twisting it this way and that, Mielikki suddenly
had a vision. She saw a new animal, one she could create from the wool. It would be furry
and huge, both lovable and fierce. Excited now, the goddess stretched out the wool and
carefully examined the dark thatch of fur.
She fell to work immediately, for the vision was so strong that she could not think of
anything else. Mielikki worked the thread strand by strand, weaving it between her fingers.
The animal would be large, for Mielikki loved large animals, and its coat would be dense,
to withstand the icy winters that blanketed the forest lands with snow. She stopped for a
moment while fashioning its stomach, then decided that creature would be omnivorous, so that
it wouldn’t starve if a lack of game should come upon the land, or a drought choked off the vegetation.
Mielikki provided it with a strong sense of smell, so strong that there wasn’t enough
creation energy left to give it good eyesight and so the animal’s eyes became weak, but
with its ability to sniff out food, the handicap seemed really very slight.
It would hibernate through the winters, she decided. Too many animals died during the
harsh storms when they could not find food, and something about this new creature had
already touched Mielikki’s heart in a way that few others had before. She wanted very
much for it to survive.
While she was weaving its ears, a drop of honey from the tree above her fell onto the
animal’s snout and, with a little cry of laughter, Mielikki smeared some of the honey
on its lips, decreeing that it would share her love for the sweet liqueur.
And so, at last, Mielikki came to its claws and teeth. These she would not fashion
herself, for only Ukko-Jumala, the Ancient Father Who Rules the Heavens, could give
the creature such potentially dangerous weapons.
So Mielikki left Tapiola, taking her new animal with her, and traveled far on the
Puhuri, the North Wind, to the high peaks from where Ukko-Jamala ruled over all of
Kalevala and Suomi-land. There, she knelt before the Father God and presented her creation.
Ukko circled the animal. He peered in its eyes and stroked the soft, wooly fur that
now covered the great beast. He played with its ears and tickled the fat, jiggling
belly that would keep it safe through the long winters.
Finally, the Sky Father turned to Mielikki and said, “It is of hardy stock, Forest Daughter.
You have done well. I will allow it claws with which to climb trees and catch fish, and teeth
with which to grind its food. But, first, it must promise never to use these weapons for evil.
It must never align itself with the realms of evil.”
Mielikki bowed her head. “I understand, Old Father. If it will not promise these things,
then I will destroy my creation.” A tremor ran through her heart as she spoke. Mielikki
already loved the creature and to destroy it would wound her deeply.
Ukko knelt by the animal. He held its paw and said, “Do you pledge to never use your
fangs or claws for the sake of evil? Will you abide by the rule of Mielikki, Goddess
of the Hunt, and live under her rules, as she lives under mine?
The creature squinted at them, for in truth, its eyes were very weak. When it spoke,
its voice was gruff but clear, and all of Mielikki’s fears drained away.
“I will abide by you r rules and never raise my paws in evil against the world.
This I pledge to the Forest Mistress and the Sky Father.”
And so Mielikki held out her hand and Ukko took a sliver of her fingernail and
from it he fashioned the first claws and teeth for the animal. When he had finished,
he turned to the goddess and said, “What will you name this creature?”
Mielikki thought for a while and finally said, “He will be my darling Otso, beloved
of Mielikki. He will wander freely through my forests and eat honey and fish and berries.”
She took Otso home with her and introduced him to the forest. The, after she had
fashioned a mate for him, fort he pledge Otso had given Ukko aligned all bears, he
being the father of his kind, she left them alone to multiply and thrive. In time,
Mielikki introduced the bears into Suomi, where they spread to other lands and grew in numbers.
So it was that the bear was created by Mielikki, Goddess of the Forest and the Hunt.
And so it is that a bear will never raise its paw in evil intent, for all bears remember
the original pledge that Otso, who still lives with t he Forest Mistress, gave to Ukko.
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Rhiannon
From Inner Goddess
Suggested Mantra: Inspiration
Wise and magickal goddess of the moon, Rhiannon, hears our wishes and
guides us on the path of inspiration – but only if we learn how to ask!
Suggested Affirmations:
I ask and therefore I receive
I welcome change in my life
I see the path intended for me
My future is full of possibilities
I invite new choices into my life
My goals are becoming manifest
I deserve to have my dreams realized
Related Essences: Bayberry, cedar, pine, and rosemary
Related Gemstones: Cat’s-eye, ruby and moonstone
Rhiannon (Great Queen) is the lunar Welsh Goddess of fertility and rebirth,
transformation, wisdom, and magick. Goddess of ethereal beauty, she was born
with the first moonrise, Muse of poets, source of artistic inspiration, she
was worshipped outside amidst the trees, at woodland altars, and under the moonlight.
As goddess of fertility, Rhiannon gave birth to a son, Pryderi, at Yule – the Winter
Solstice being a significant reminder that the ultimate product of death is rebirth.
(Centuries later, in 273 C.E. {Common Era}, Christians adopted this time of Yule as
Jesus’ birth). Her son was abducted one night while she slept, and as punishment she
was tied to the town gates and forced to bear visitors on her back as though she were
a horse. Her dignified strength and perseverance during this time serve to remind us
what all women are, and will continue to be.
In her death goddess aspect, she is symbolized by an unearthly white mare and three birds
that sang so sweetly they could raise the dead. According to bardic folklore, she later
becomes Vivien, the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian myth, honored for granting the wishes of
those who could ask for what they wanted, and scorning those who could not, or would not.
This aspect is also a possible source for the Grail Quest of Arthurian legend.
Rhiannon carried the souls of the once living on her white mare to the Underworld, which,
according to Celtic legend, is where the soul exists in a similar way to that in our world.
They did not see a difference between the spiritual world and the material world, the natural
and the super-natural. After a “life cycle” in the Underworld, the souls die and are reborn
into this world again, perpetuating the cycle of birth and death, renewal and destruction.
As we pass the Winter Solstice, and head into the phase of rebirth and renewal, we welcome
new inspiration and Rhiannon’s energy into our lives. At the next full moon, honor Rhiannon’s
by lighting four candles (one each of red, green, gold, and silver) and make your wish known to
her. With the joyful energy that renewal brings, have a little fun invoking Rhiannon with the
Anglo-Celtic nursery rhyme:
“Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross
to see a fine lady upon a white horse,
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
she shall have music wherever she goes.”
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Goddess Selket
The Lady of healing and Medicines,
Mistress of Magic,
Her realm is that place that exists, between life and death,
known to most of us as "Akasha"
the place between the physical and astral plane,
Protector of those who travel out side there bodies,
referred to in the old hieroglyphic text, as the dead.
The power of the heart Is to determine the Will
Can the will mind Emotion
Are her words Internal or is it External
Know how to determine The inner and the outer
Seek the path of your Heart
For in the Realm Your Beauty is Formed
Wait on the Spirit of our True Self
At the Ending of the 8th of 3 nine's
Looking to the four 9’s, to await the 10th
To them who walk the path of a Goddess
Power and Trust
The Awakening Has Begun
One key times three.
One of Creation of our Physical
One of Creation of our Spirit
One to connect between the Two
Of others that are their power to be
that of who, and Witch they be
Mother Goddess of Creation
To her daughter of Passage
Awoke the Mother of her Daughter
To create a vessel to pass into Learning
That trust and Power
Will come in the awakening of our true Existence
- Written by Tom Forfar
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