Here is a collection of work honoring the hard-to-define aspects of the Goddess:  Aphrodite, Bast, Cajera.

Here are the images!

Bast
Bes
Circe
Druidess
Fire
Hummingbird
Ibis Goddess
Ma'at
Ma'at 2
Sea
Tide
 

In Response To Rita : Grokking The Golden One
by Judy Harrow
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I must have really needed the push. Lady knows I've read stuff before, even
stuff written by Rita, that hasn't set me off on a week long reading jag. I
must have been hungry, real, real, hungry, and not even known it.

Maybe I wasn't the hungry one. Maybe She was hungry for some recognition at
last. I never realized how great a role She has played in my life. I never
much acknowledged Her. I suppose I might beg forgiveness, except that She is
the Lady of This Moment -- and bearing a grudge is as alien to her as any
other frozen emotion.

Aphrodite. The so-called sex goddess. The Playboy bunny of Olympus. How blind
I was! How blind we are!

I set off to write a "resource guide" for Rita - to review the various
materials about Aphrodite that I have around the house (mostly on the unread
shelf, but you know about the unread shelf). What I learned shook me.

Culture blind. THrough all the long years of the Greyface Era, our culture
has given us just two models of sexuality : repressed or corrupt. The Virgin
or the Whore. The good girl or the tramp. We were taught that sex was so
dangerous or evil that only the most severe restriction could render it safe.
We were taught that only sex so tramelled could be blessed. Sex must be either
damned or damned.

And then came the sixties and our rebellion. But our revolution, as in so
many other ways, underreached itself. In making sex free, we very often made
it trivial. In reaction to the demonization, we banalized sex. We made it a
commodity or an advertising technique. Trivial sex, casual sex, hurt people,
and the backlash came. Sex apart from love and pleasure has nothing to do
with Aphrodite.

Because I insist on the freedom to choose in the moment, a friend who feels
safer within limits calls me "promiscuous." Then, seeing the offense on my
face, she softens it to "random." I am neither. Very rarely, and not at all
in the last sixteen years, have I ever had sex with a person I did not love.
Promiscuous meawns corrupt; random means banal. I am neither; but what I am
is simply not visible to Greyface and His followers.

Aphrodite laughs at social rules. All acts of love and pleasure are Her
rituals. Sex in the context of love and pelasure can be both free and sacred.
And Aphrodite is so very much more than a sex Goddess. She is the
transformative power of love and pleasure.

She is the goddess Whose Path is Delight. She is the one who entices us to
grow in the ways of beauty, love and pleasure.

How to serve Her? Sensuality comes first, and health must come before that.
All the r6utine advice about sleep, nutrition, and exercise becomes sacvred
duty for Her priest/esses because Hers is a spirituality of the sensual.
Think about this: if your Path is intellectual and your body is achy or
de-energized, the quantity of your work may be reduced, but the quality
need not. But if your Path is sensual, a body that feels good, has energy
and moves freely is a prerequisite. Similarly, you will need a space that
is pleasing to all the senses, in which to conduct Her rites.

She is the Lady of living in the moment, and all the ephemeral arts belong
to Her. Dancing, flower arranging, conversation, a beautifully set table, all
are Hers. these are the pleasures that you have to care enough about to
create anew each time. And especially Hers is dressing up, combinging art
with nature for the purpose of seduction -- but with caution.

All acts of love and pleasure - and no other acts -- are Her rituals. Acts of
pleasure, of sensuality, are acts that feel good to all participants. To do
Her rites, your body must feel good. So, beware of clothing that hurts,
binds, or restricts movement. Such clothing induces alienation from the body.
No matter how glamourous or sexy it may look, it is not of Aphrodite,
literally not Aphrodisiac. The likes of high heels are blasphemy to Her.

She is the Lady of living in the moment, and of loving the one you're with.
She is unowned. Her time and pleasure are Hers to share with whomever She
will. She gives what She gives for Her own pleasure and the pleasure of Her
chosen partners. What you do in Her name, you must do for the beauty and
love and pleasure of the doing, and for that alone. Any ulterior motive --
money, power, prestige, security -- are blasphemies to Her.

And -- this is very important -- the only way you can share Aphrodite's love
and pleasure is by yourself experiencing it to the point of overflow.
Altruism, charity are not of Her. Any interaction that you must grit your
teeth and bear offends her.

She is the Lady of living in the moment, and what She is about is intensity.
The transformative power of human attraction and contact, And sex is only
one of Her options. Requiring sex is no less a blasphemy to Her than is
forbidding sex. Her service is perfect freedom, for She tolerates no a priori
constraints of any kind. The moments that belong to Aphrodite are moments
of intensity, of contact, of beautym spontaity and love.

And finally I saw it. I don't serve Aphrodite primarily in my bed. In fact,
although my sexual connections are plural, they tend to be long-lasting.
That quality of in-the-moment intensity, beauty, love and pleasure also
fills those moments when I share a person's world in the empathy of
counseling.
Some of those are single encounters, and all of them are sacred. The Lady
of Love the One You're With is the counselor's Goddess, and, on some levels,
this I have always known.

So, at last, I understand the consecrated women of the temple at Corinth, and
those at the older temples of the Fertile Crescent who called Her by other
names. Consecrated sex, healing and transformative, was labeled "temple
prostitution" because that's the only way Greyface culture coudl understand
their activities.

If we allow ourselves to see it, there is plenty of love to go around, not
mere
sufficiency but abundance beyon our belief. Indeed our unbelief is the only
limit. No act that is truly of love and pleasure could ever threaten or hurt.
May Aphrodite continue to live in me -- now that I've caught Her at it!

So, Rita, here's your resource Guide:

Bolen, Jean Shinida. Goddesses in Everywoman. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
   This is the one that clarified the counseling connection.

Christ, Carol P. Laughter of Aphrodite. San Francisco: Harper & Row. 1987.
   A collection of essays. Only the title essay is actually about Aphrodite,
   but contains some wonderful descriptions of rituals.

Downing, Christine. The Goddess. New York: Crossroad. 1984
   Again, only one chapter about Aphrodite, but it is very intense. Talks
   about the risks involved in loving.

Friedrich, Paul. The Menaing of Aphrodite. Chicago: University of Chicago
   Press, 1978. This is teh scholarly source on which all other writers
   seem to draw. Much stuff about historical origins and textual analysis
   of Hesiod, Homer and Sappho. Very interesting and valuable. Not really
   about the applicablity of Aphrodite to my life here and now.

Paris, Ginette.  Pagan Meditations. Dallas: Spring, 1986.
   The best single resource I found. Her section on Aphrodite is over 100
   pages long, and very clear about what it means to live out Aphrodite's
   kind of spirituality,

Qualls-Corbett, Nancy. The Sacred Prostitute. Toronto: Inner City 1988.
   Interetsing but frustrating. The chapters in therapeutic applications are
   very inadequate, especially when compared with Bolen.
 
 

Bast

Also known as Bastet,Bast was an Egyptian goddess originally represented
as a wild jungle cat. Bast's earliest role was as the protector and
avenger of the Pharoah. The popular image of Bast appearing with the
head of a cat, or as a house cat, did not even appear until
approximately 1000 BCE, after the Greeks had invaded. After the
Greek invasion she was relegated to being a goddess of pleasure
(as opposed to the primal wild sensuality of her earlier form) and
a patron of marriage and childbirth. The Greeks considered her to
be equivalent to Demeter.

She was also known as a Goddess of warmth and beneficial aspects of the
sun's heat. In modern times she holds many roles, which include
reverence to her as a protector of animals (especially cats) and
of familiars.

In her earliest form she was very similar to Sekhmet, who she was later
merged with in some parts of Egypt. Her name means "to tear apart".
Appearing as a wild lioness, she is said to be the mother of the lion
god Maahes, by the god Ra. She has also been referred to as the 'eye of
Ra' and coupled with Tefnu. In Memphitic tradition she was said to be
the mother of Anubis.

Her feast day was celebrated with processions, music, dance, a trade
fair, and orgies. The centre of Bast worship in Egypt was Bubastis
(a name by which she herself was referred on occasion) and her
priestesses are said to have dressed in red. Her worship was also
common in Memphis.

She has been associated with hunting, music, dance, animals, and fire.
Her correspondences include the planet Venus, the Strength tarot
card, the symbols of a  box or a basket, the gems obsidian, citrine,
cat's eye and tiger's eye. Her incenses are acacia, frankincense,
myrrh, catnip, cedar, cinnamon, and juniper.

Further information may be found at The Bast Website:
http://radiant.org/bubastis/
 

Mau Bast! Mau Bast!
A Basti, per em setat,
erta-na chu em asui neter sentra semu hena
net'emmit, hetep ab em asui tau heqt.

(translation)
Hail Bast! Hail Bast!
Hail Bast, coming forth from the secret place,
may there be given to me
splendor in the place of incense, herbs,
and love-joys, peace of heart in
the place of bread and beer.
 
 

Cajera: the Crippled Goddess
by Jayne Offenbacker

In a book that begins "Once upon a time . . ." I draw pictures and write a
new story. It is the story of my grandmothers, passed down to my mother and
then to me. One day I will tell this story to my daughters, but for now I
am childless, still a maiden, awaiting my first blood.

We tell this story on the night of the full moon. In a clan of women, it is
our tradition to gather around tall flames and sing in a circle, weaving in
warm air the parts of our bodies we can move. Some of us sit in chairs,
waving our hands above our heads while our legs remain perfectly still.
Some of us listen with our ears, our eyes clouded over with blue. One woman
has no arms, so she perches on the river bank. She bangs a tambourine with
her foot, adorned with jewels. A deaf woman sings with her thin fingers
lifted skyward, tracing lyrics in the air. Another woman is missing her
left breast; she glues red beads where her nipple once grew.

Each woman has a gift. Some bring pots they shaped from clay. Others bring
mats woven from dried reeds. My mother brings a doll she made from corn
husks and bits of colored string. I bring a box of painted stones and a
single conch shell I've saved for this moment. Even the youngest ones bring
something. The poorest among us is never poor. A pretty twig can be the
best gift of all, once it is soaked with love, a woman's tears, or her
monthly flow of sacred blood. There is much laughing. We chatter like bees,
happy drones lapping at honey. We are many: maidens playing with tame birds
or winding flowers in our hair; mothers with swollen bellies or carrying a
bundled baby at their breast; and many crones moving prayerfully among us,
their wrinkled skin smudged with charcoal to emphasize wise-lines. We are
many shades, from opulent white to copper, from olive-tinted to deep
obsidian. We are tall, we are thin, we are short, we are fat, but our
bodies are beautiful, whether hard and slender like branches or thick and
soft like loaves. We love our bodies. We love our sisters' bodies. We adorn
ourselves with beads and flowers. We wear very few clothes. Upon greeting,
we touch each other softly, because we know we are touching the Goddess. We
honor Her belly marked red with stretch marks. We revere Her scars and sing
praises to the wounds all women carry.

We are strong women, made even stronger by the variations in our bodies. In
the other villages our differences are called flaws. In these foreign lands
our kind is scorned, laughed at,kept in dark basements. We laugh at the
names they call our people: lame, crippled, deformed, impaired, handicapped,
physically challenged, misfortunate. Don't they know? In our village, it's
a privilege to carry Her mark, to belong to the Crippled Goddess, Cajera.

Tonight, we honor Her in Festival. The Old Ones call to the Winds, the four
directions, invoking the Spirits to come, to be with us now! Their voices
echo off canyon walls with authority and with joy. Their arms are raised,
their bent fingers point to the skies. I feel the winds splash against my
face like rain. There is singing and dancing. We maidens gather close to
the flames, laughing. We clap our hands,reaching towards thin tips of
tapers. Our bare feet skip over coals and land in wet grass. Wolves howl in
the distance,drawn by the scent of our lusty bodies sweaty with salt or
first blood. Our mothers spin behind us; some wear skirts, others dance
nude. The moon casts light on breasts and faces. We have never been more
beautiful. We have never felt more loved. We cradle our sisters. We cradle
ourselves. We lean on each other, offer all we have to keep our Clan
strong. We are women who know the value of who we are. We have come
to give thanks to She Who Made Us.

Soon, the Winds grow stronger. We are in a frenzy, a wild splendor. Our
voices erupt as One Voice. We are wild,delicious women, speaking in
tongues, chanting our names.There was never a moment we did not know each
other. We pass through many lifetimes, holding the same Sisters dear.

Our voices catch in the fire. Flames spiral tall, sending up heat towards
the mountains. A thick steam rises from the tallest blue peak. It is thick
like cream, like the milk that flows from our breasts after birthing, like
the flow from between our legs when we have found ecstasy.

Out of the steam, we see the image of Her face. She is the One we honor
tonight. How She has blessed us by appearing! The Old Ones rush up the side
of the mountain and carry Her on their shoulders. They bring Her to our
circle and She opens Her arms to hold us. We take turns coming near Her,
placing our gifts in Her large, open lap.

When my turn comes, my small hands tremble. My mother nudges me forward,
"Go child. She is Cajera. She is the One Who Made Us in Her Likeness. She
is the One Who Loves Us."

I move slowly towards Her. I look up. Her face is radiant, a blazing copper
dusted in gold. Her eyes are deep green, outlined in black. Her hair is the
color of blue rain, a pewter blue glinted with white. She wears it in many
fine braids that hang to her full belly. Her breasts are bare, with a gold
ring passing through one nipple. A lioness rests by Her side, licking Her
smooth fingers.

I pass my gifts to Her lap, whisper words of thanks and blessing to Her.
She rests Her hand on my crown and I feel warm surges enter my body, making
my fingers tingle. "Thank you, Child," Her raspy voice sounds clear in my ears.

And then She pulls back Her dark robes and shows me Her twisted legs. They
are thin and blue, a larger version of my own. She guides my hand to touch
them. I feel oil, smooth and fragrant. Instinctively, I touch my oiled
fingers to my lips and receive gifts of Sight, to see things unknown to
Others. I wait a moment, let new visions pass my eyes. I see things in a
dream-state, and know, in a new way, things only our clan-women know.

The next morning, I wake on a mat. My mother is stroking my hair. When she
goes to prepare the daybreak meal, I take out the book of fairy tales I
received while visiting another village. Over the words they've written to
exclude our kind, I write new tales of Cajera's daughters. Over the
pictures of perfect princesses, I draw glorious girls. Girls with crippled
legs, like Cajera's.

Crippled legs, like mine.