She is the embodiment of good and ill luck, as well as the
ruler of destiny, fortune, and divination.
Her presence has a beneficial impact on all aspects of life,
and she bestows fertility on gardens and couples in love.
Fortuna is the patroness of bathhouses and is often
portrayed blind and veiled.
Her rule encompasses everything from commercial prosperity
to gaming luck.
She is sometimes pictured alongside Nemesis, who balances
the distribution of Tyche's blessings, while she oversees the world's financial
issues.
Wine and food are offered in her honor, symbolizing the earth's abundant bounty.
She's seen holding a cornucopia full of fruits, grains, and gold money.
The Roman goddess of plenty is called Copia.
Her name has extra connotations that include "resources," "wealth," and "opportunity," as well as "plenty" or "plenty."
The cornucopia, also known as the "horn of abundance," was a large goat's horn that was filled with money and food. It was most often used to represent coopia.
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| A sculpture by Antoine Coysevox called L'Abondance par Coysevox is located at the Palace of Versailles. |
There was a town in southern Italy named Sybaris that the Greeks had founded in the eighth century BCE as a component of their colony known as Magna Graecia ("Greater Greece").
The Greeks made Sybaris renowned for its lavish customs; the area was at the time highly fruitful, and the inhabitants there prospered to the extent that the term "sybarite" has come to mean someone who enjoys luxury and sensual pleasures.
Although the city itself was on the Crathis River, it was established close to a river of the same name.
The ancients gave the Sybaris River (also known as the Crathis) certain peculiar powers, such as the ability to make sheep and cow pelts black while only changing the color of human hair to white or yellow.
Some people describe this outcome as "gilding" the hair, which sounds like the river was speckled with gold dust, but possibly it had to do with the water's chemical makeup, which effectively bleached the hair.
Additionally, it was said that animals that drank from the waters would grow timid and that the waters made horses sneeze.
All of that, however, can be interpreted as metaphors for the city and the way in which its inhabitants were perceived—as timid, vain (with bleached hair), rich, and unmanly—even though there must have been some recognition of the benefits of luxury since the waters of the Crathis were also thought to have therapeutic qualities.
Only 200 years after its establishment, Sybaris was destroyed by an army from the nearby city of Crotona, who even went so far as to divert the Crathis to flow over its remains in order to prevent its quick resettlement.
What does Copia, our goddess of plenty, have to do with all of this? Well, when the Romans founded a colony at the ancient location of Sybaris several hundred years later, they gave the city the name Copia in recognition of its former distinction.
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| Romanized version of a Greek statue of Fortuna from the fourth century BC |
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| Salvator Rosa's 1658 work, Allegory of Fortune, features the horn of abundance as Fortuna, the goddess of luck. |
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| Personifying the Americas as the New World by using an alligator, a parrot, and a cornucopia |
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| A North Carolina state seal depicting a Cornucopia. |
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| Columbia's Coat Of Arms |
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| Chile's Coat Of Arms |
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| Seal Of The Philippines |
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| Kharkiv, Ukraine's Coat Of Arms |
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| Harpocrates with a cornucopia, a figurine from the Hellenistic era, is shown at Dion's Archaeological Museum (Dion, Greece) |
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| Rubens' allegorical representation of the Roman goddess Abundantia holding a cornucopia (ca. 1630) |
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| Girolamo Campagna's bronze Allegory of Peace, created in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and based on designs from about 1585–86 |
When a Baltic Finn family moved, they brought the beam with
them to guarantee Haltia's blessings would continue.
Women pray to her for fertility blessings for their wombs
and farms.
She is shown with six arms carrying holy artifacts and
mudras, and is supposed to represent the Hindu Lakshmi's counterpart.
Her name means "She Who Dispenses," and she
punishes those who have undeserved happiness or an abundance of good fortune.
Nemesis is the Greek goddess of karma, who chases out the
wicked in order to dispense justice.
The sword and the scales are her emblems.
Abundantia is a Roman goddess of plenty, luck, and wealth.
She aids the departed on their journey to the underworld by
bestowing magical flowers of peace on them.
She is thought to reside in the moon and brings good fortune
to the living.
She is the embodiment of the ocean, which is the source of
all creation in the cosmos.
She cleanses the land by creating streams and rivers, and
she bestows good fortune on anyone seeking riches in her depths.
She is mostly associated with the
winter season, and is said to bless the goodhearted while punishing the weak
and indolent.
With legends of Holda coming to abduct or punish them,
children were scared into good conduct.
Holda is a goddess of nature who is in charge of
manipulating snowfall and fog.
She is represented as a lovely lady dressed in red and
white, and it is thought that she rides the wind at Yuletide to bring good
fortune and health to those who revere her.
The sun is frequently described as a male emblem, associated with reason, consciousness, and benevolence. The antagonism between the ‘‘masculine" sun and the ‘‘feminine" moon, the latter embodying such attributes as emotion and irrationality (‘‘lunacy" is derived from the Latin word for moon) is commonly described by writers influenced by essentialist views of gender. However, cross-cultural mythical comparisons do not support such arguments.
The sun has been regarded as a goddess by more cultures than as a deity. The Celts, pre-Hellenic Greeks, Baltic peoples such as Lithuanians and Latvians, Finns and related Hungarians, Scandinavians and Germans, and Slavic peoples all saw the sun as female in Europe (see Saul, Sól, Beiwe and Xatel-Ekwa, and Solntse in those sections, respectively).
In Arabia (Al-Lat), Australia (Bila, Walo), India (Bisal-Mariamna, Bomong, Kn Sgni), and Sri Lanka (Pattin); among the Hittites (Wurusemu), Egyptians (Hathor, Sekhmet), and Babylonians (Shapash); in Native America (Unelanuhi), Natchez (Wal Sil), I The sun goddess is frequently pictured as benevolent and maternal, willingly dispersing her warmth among her earthly children. n. Along the Baltic Sea coasts, Lithuanians imagined the sun as Saul, the adored sun-mother who danced in silver shoes on the hilltops on summer nights.
The sun as a spinner or weaver, a lady who casts light strands over the s, is a similar picture. Sól, a Scandinavian, was said to sit at the edge of the globe every dawn, weaving a net of sunlight.
The sun goddess was portrayed as active in providing for her children's needs, much like a mother in a subsistence economy. This would be food and clothes in the case of a human mother; in the case of the sun, the goddess gives the light that helps plants to grow and therefore supplies us nourishment. These sun goddesses were sometimes connected with birth, both because of the sun's mother character and because a child sees the sun for the first time at birth; Roman Lucina, "light," was one such goddess, as was Baltic Sa.
Sun goddesses may express a variety of emotions, not just maternal love.
Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of earthly pleasures, especially the arts and crafts, was represented as a cat. Sekhmet, a kindred goddess, portrayed the luminary's most frightening characteristics, since she could become as enraged and destructive against humankind as the furious desert sun.
The daughter of the Hungarian sun goddess XatelEkwa, who baked young males she considered attractive, combines violence and desire. Myths interpret the sun's departure in the winter as a transgression, often an incestuous Saul's Meita, daughter of the Baltic sun goddess, was defiled by her father, the moon.
Malina, the Inuit sun goddess, was defiled by her brother and tore off one breast before soaring into the sky to leave him; she became the sun, while he became the moon. Her brother threatened the Khasi goddess Ka Sgni with incest, but she escaped by searing his face with ashes, which may still be seen on the moon today (see image below).
The legendary motif is sometimes not rape but the threat of violent violence, such as when the Finnish sun goddess Päivätär was kidnapped from the sky by the winter-winter gods. After being threatened with death by gremlins, the Saami Akanidi (see Finno-Ugric) withdrew from earth.
Sometimes, like in the example of the Japanese Amaterasu, who hid in a cave after being insulted by her brother, the sun retreats on her own own. Similarly, the yearly disappearance of the Siberian Kaja é was seen as the goddess's yearly absence.
A different version of the disappearance narrative may be found in South America, where the sun-woman Akewa was abandoned in the sky when her sister suns descended to the earth because they were curious about the men who had taken her place. The sun ladies were stuck on earth after a hairy earthling bit the solar ladder in half, and they became moms. As a result, themes of withdrawal and loss are part of the sun goddess. s mythology.
From the dawn of time, stories about the sun shifting its location have been told. Miwok Hekoolas, who was stranded on one side of the sky, was hauled into her curre. Among the Cherokee, Kanene Ski Amai Yehi, the spider goddess, was the only animal capable of bringing the sun to this side of the globe in a hand-held vessel. But she placed it too near to the ground, and the animal elders had to push the sun away. Tso, the Tunica sun goddess, relocated herself after realizing she was roasting people with her heat (see North America).
Sun goddesses are associated with death and ultimate rebirth, since the luminary fades into darkness each evening but reappears the next morning.
The British Sul was personified in hot springs in Bath, where she was said to descend at nightfall to go underneath the ground, heating the thermal waters as she travelled through. Those who bathed at her temple were said to absorb the power and endurance of a goddess who might appear to die again every day. Finally, the eye is a frequent emblem for the sun goddess, as the goddess is pictured as an eye in the sky, able to view everything. She is sometimes connected with fortune reading because of her height, which allows her to view the past, present, and future. Hittite Wurusemu was linked with such activities, as were other sun goddesses; she was also a goddess of fate, regulating everyone's fate.
Despite the fact that goddesses inextricably linked to the sun may be found in many civilizations, scholarly prejudice in favor of the solar masculine has led to the misinterpretation of many goddesses with solar connotations.
The well-known image of the Greek Medusa, whose snake-crowned countenance resembles the rayed sun, has been characterized as representing Several Irish characters, such as Griánne and ine, have solar affinities but are not generally referred to as such.
As a result, determining which goddesses may be classified as solar divinities is a worthwhile endeavor.
You may also want to read more about Goddess Symbolism here.
After earth, the symbol most commonly associated with goddesses is water, both as the fresh water of rivers and streams, and as the oceans salty waves.
The gendering of water as feminine is not invariable, however.
Some mythologies describe the oceans as masculine.
The Greeks had a sea god, Poseidon, while a similar figure among the Irish was Manannan mac Lir.
In both cases, the ocean was defined as masculine, as dis tinguished from fresh water, which was feminine.
Among the Greeks, who despite see ing the ocean as masculine pictured its waves as the innumerable feminine Oceanids, we find the freshwater Nymphs called the Nereids.
The Irish knew many river god desses such as Sınann, Berba, and Boand, while outside Ireland we find dozens of Celtic water goddesses including Abnoba, Aveta, Coventina, Natosuelta, and Sabrina.
This salt and fresh water distinction, however, is not universal.
Some goddesses were described as ruling the oceans, including the Scandinavian Ran who ruled the northern sea, and Chermiss Bu¨t aba and Finnic Mere-Ama (see Finno-Ugric), whose domains were similarly in the arctic waters.
Hebrew Miriam (see Eastern Mediterra nean) was connected with the ‘‘bitter waters or the salty seas, although a freshwater stream created by her brother Moses also bore her name.
The connection between the oceans salt water and female fertility is emphasized in the Hindu myth of Prakrti (see India), whose amniotic fluid became the oceans after she gave birth to the gods.
In many cultures, an ocean goddess controls the fish and mammals that live in her waters and on which humans depend for food.
An important example of such a figure is Inuit Sedna (see Circumpolar) who, thrown into the water as a sacrifice, thereafter receives sacrifices herself as the ‘‘great food-dish.
Finnish Vellamo (see Finno Ugric), too, is an ocean goddess who determines how many fish humans can take from her waters, taking advice from her many daughters, the waves of the sea.
Similarly, the South American sea-mother Mama Cocha brings fish and sea-mammals close to peo ple so that they can be harvested for food.
Fishermen often fall under the rulership of ocean goddesses, who like Ma-tsu (see China) protects them when they are faring on the waves.
In some cases, the oceanic goddess is depicted as a primordial mother or creatrix, one from whose depths life was born, as with Babylonian Tiaˆmat (see Eastern Mediterranean).
Finno-Ugric Luonotar, while not the ocean itself, is intimately con nected with it, having spent much of eternity floating on cosmic waters.
The sky woman of the American Iroquois, Ataensic, floated on the oceans waters until earth was created (see North America).
Wherever the waters of the Wintu goddess Mem Loimis fell, the earth grew fertile, while areas not endowed with her watery gift were left as desert (see North America).
Ocean goddesses could be charming and delightful.
Lithuanian Amberella tossed pieces of amber to the shore, to reward those who honored her, and Greek Aphrodite was ravishingly beautiful even when fickle.
But they could also be dangerous.
Mer maids and sirens, which appear in many mythologies as ocean-dwelling women of great beauty, are threatening water divinities who lure sailors to their death.
Such fig ures guarded the boundaries between water and land, like Siberian Sug Eezi (see Circumpolar) who like other mermaids had long hair that mimicked the rippling streams that she inhabited.
Celtic Korrigans danced each night, drawing victims to themselves and drowning them.
Greek Aphrodite was born of the oceans waves and, although beautiful, could also be pitiless, for love is never without possible threat of loss.
In China, the primary goddess Xiwang Mu controlled the worlds waters and was invoked when floods threatened, showing that the activities of such cosmic god desses could be damaging to humanity were she not ritually appeased.
Thus ocean goddesses represent both creative possibility and danger.
Goddesses associated with fresh water are powers of fertility.
Such watershed god desses can be seen as divinities of the land as well as the rivers that drain it.
In India, many rivers are imagined as goddesses of earthly abundance, none more so than the Ganges, whose powerful river drains much of the subcontinent and is seen as the actual body of the goddess Gan ga.
In Egypt, where the annual inundation of the land by the river Nile was typically associated with the god Osiris, we find the water goddess Anu ket representing the connection between water and the lands increased fertility.
In Africa, major rivers were goddesses (Yemaja, Oshun, O ya) who were sometimes in conflict with each other over their shared consort.
Such river goddesses were typically maternal forces, providing their human children with sustenance.
A similar goddess in Russia, Mokosh (see Slavic), was a motherly figure whose presence was most actively felt in budding springtime.
Smaller water sources such as springs and creeks could be seen as threatening rather than helpful.
In Slavic lands, supernatural women, once human, haunted quick-flowing streams.
Deprived by early death of a chance to have children, the Rusalki drowned sweet babies or fertile young people.
The Scandinavian Nixies were similarly danger ous.
In tribal India, the Nippong especially targeted young pregnant women, whom they caused to miscarry.
Such spirits were often most active in spring and may re present the possibility of flash floods.
Tribal Indian Bai Tanki, another destructive river goddess, spreads disease through her water—a mythic narrative with a firm basis in science, for polluted water can indeed spread disease.
Fountains and bedrock springs were often seen as locations of inspiration because of the goddesses who inhabited them.
The Greek Musae are still known as an image of the force that causes artists to create.
In India, the river goddess Sarasvatı was the source of inspiration as well as a cosmic creatrix.
Such inspiration could be legal and organizational as well as artistic.
Among the Roman water nymphs called the Camenae was Egeria, who oracularly dictated the first laws of Rome and whose name is still used to describe a wise woman advisor.
Freshwater goddesses, endowed with the gift of seeing the future, could help those who wished to practice the oracular arts.
Babylonian Nanshe (see Eastern Mediterra nean) was a fortune-tellers goddess celebrated at waterborne festivals.
Prophecy was not always seen as a gift; the Greek water Nymph Telphusa killed anyone who drank her prophetic waters.
Yet most often, prophecy was a positive act, connected with heal ing because the ill and infirm turn to oracles in hopes of receiving predictions of pos itive change.
So common was the connection between springs and healing among the Celts that the names of many of their goddesses have been lost, for they were renamed ‘‘Minerva Medici after the Roman goddess of healing, during Imperial occupation.
Healing was a common part of the domain of the freshwater goddess, a tradition that continues today with the prayerful use of water from the well at Lourdes, France, dedicated to the virgin Mary (see Eastern Mediterranean).
In Africa, we find the lake goddess Idemili and the water spirit Mammywata, both of whom offered healing to their worshipers.
The Hindu goddess Narmada (see India) was especially powerful against snakebite, while the healing offered by Gan ga extended beyond this life, for those who died in her waters were freed from the cycle of rebirth.
Some important goddesses controlled all water, whether found in rivers or in oceans.
Anahita, one of the most important Persian divinities (see Eastern Mediterra nean), ruled everything fluid in the universe, even those of the human body.
Similarly, among the Lithuanians (see Baltic), the water mother Jurat˙e controlled all the earths waters.
Aztec Chalchihuitlicue (see Mesoamerican) could be found in lakes, rivers, and the ocean.
Finally, some goddesses could be described as divinities of what science calls the water cycle, for they ruled the rain that falls on the land, the bodies of water (above ground and underground) that gather the rain and return it to the ocean, and the ocean where clouds are born to return water to the land.
Such goddesses connect air and water like the African sky woman Andriana who descended to earth to become a water goddess.
Rainbows, those bridges between sky and earth formed by water vapor, often symbolize such goddesses.
In Australia, the primal serpent Julunggul ruled ocean, rivers (especially waterfalls), and rain; she was embodied in the rainbow.
A similar rainbow-water-snake spirit found in Haiti was Aida Wedo (see African Diaspora).
You can learn more about Goddess Symbolism here.
Enoshima Jinja 江島神社
Kanagawa-ken, Fujisawa-shi, Enoshima 2-3-8
神奈川県藤沢市江の島2-3-8
Zeniarai Benzaiten Ugafuku jinja 銭洗弁財天宇賀福神社
Kanagawa-ken, Kamakura-shi, Sasuke 2-25-16
神奈川県鎌倉市佐助2-25-16
Kiyomizu Benzaiten Sha 清水弁財天社
Nagano-ken, Saku-shi, Iwamurada
長野県佐久市岩村田
Tenkawa DaiBenzaiten Sha 天河大辯財天社
Nara-ken, Yoshino-gun, Tenkawa-mura Tsubo-no-uchi 107
奈良県吉野郡天川村坪内107
Sanskrit: Oṃ Sarasvatyai svāhāJapanese: On Sorasobateiei sowakaHiragana: おん そらそばていえい そわか[25]
