Goddesses and Gods.wps - Welcome to Our Temple

The Witches' Goddess
Aditi: ('Limitless') Hindu Mother Goddess, self-formed, the Cosmic Matrix. Mother of
the Sun God Mitra and the Moon God Varuna.
Ambika: Hindu, 'the generatrix,' wife of Shiva or of Rudra.
Annapurna: Hindu. Goddess who provides food; she lives on top of Mount
Annapurna.
Aphrodite: ('Foam-Born') Greek Goddess of sexual love. She was born of the bloody
foam of the sea where Cronus threw the genitals of his father Uranus after castrating
him. Married, on Zeus's orders, to the lame Smith God Hephaestus, and unfaithful to
him with the war God Ares. She was in fact an ancient East Mediterranean Goddess
and can be equated with Astarte.
Arachne: Greek Spider Goddess. A Lydian girl skilled in weaving, she dared to
challenge Athene to compete with her. The contest was held, and Arachne's work
was faultless: impudently, it portrayed some of the Gods' less reputable deeds,
including Athene's father Zeus abducting Europa. Furious, Athene turned her into a
spider, doomed eternally to spin thread drawn from her own body. But the Spider
Goddess is more archetypal than this story suggests: spinning and weaving the pattern
of destiny like the Moerae or the Norns, and enthroned in the middle of her spiralpathed
stronghold like Arianrhod. Athene here represents Athenian patriarchal
thinking, trying to discipline earlier Goddess-concepts.
Aradia: Italian (Tuscany) Witch Goddess, surviving there into this century. Daughter
of Diana and Diana's brother Lucifer (i.e. of the Moon and Sun), she came to Earth to
teach the witches her mother's magic.
Ariadne: Cretan and Greek. The daughter of King Minos of Crete, who with her
cunning thread helped Theseus find his way into the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur,
and out again. She eloped with him, but he abandoned her on the island of Naxos. She
was consoled by Dionysus, who in her Naxos cult was regarded as her consort.
Arianrhod: ('Silver Wheel') Major Welsh Goddess. Mother of Llew Llau Gyffes by her
brother Gwydion. Her consort Nwyvre ('Sky, Space, Firmament') has survived in
name only. Caer Arianrhod is the circumpolar stars, to which souls withdraw
between incarnations; she is thus a Goddess of reincarnation. Honored at the Full
Moon.