Happy Mother's Day


Guiding Light Mom

Mom, from the time I was really young,
I realized I had someone...you,
who always cared,
who always protected me,
who was always there for me no matter what.
You taught me right from wrong,
and pushed me to do the right thing,
even when it was hard to do.
You took care of me when I was sick,
and your love helped make me well.
You had rules,
and I learned that when I obeyed them,
my life was simpler, better, richer.
You were and are
the guiding light of my life.
My heart is filled with love for you,
my teacher, my friend, my mother.

By Karl and Joanna Fuchs

Mother Goddess

A mother goddess is a goddess who represents, or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.
The mother goddess may also have many different roles. The mother goddess can be distinguished from the Earth Mother (earth goddess), but sometimes the two are confused and their roles tends to blur, as it is the case with Gaea. Gaea was both an Earth Mother and a Mother Goddess.
The Earth Mother is the primal force and the source of all life. She does not necessarily have a maternal or nurturing nature.
The mother goddess is often a protectress of the young. Sometimes, the mother goddess was the mother of ruling tribe of gods. The best example is Rhea, Titan Goddess of Fertility and Mother Goddess of the Original Olympians.

Rhea
Rhea was revealed to be the sweetest and kindest of her six sisters, and was therefore beloved by her entire family, and made her Gaea's favorite daughter. Rhea was able to put those who surround her at total ease, and her very presence alone had a powerful calming effect. She also had a love of animals, though she favored lions. As the Titaness of Motherhood, Rhea naturally adored babies, and so would always help her sisters deliver their children. After she became a mother herself, she earned the title of "The Great Mother” and was shown to love all of her own children dearly (even Hades). In fact, her love for her children was what made her lose her temper for the first time, for witnessing Kronos brutally swallow them was too much for even her exceptionally calm and gentle disposition to tolerate.
Ultimately, Rhea's love for her children was what led her to secretly plot against Kronos, which in turn led to his eventual downfall in the hands of their six children. During the First Titanomachy, she visited every Titan she could, and tried to persuade them to side with her children. Though some opted to remain neutral, Rhea proved persuasive enough to convince nearly all the female Titans to either side with her children or stay out of their way.
Rhea's oldest daughter, Hestia, shares many similarities to her in terms of personality, despite the latter vowing to remain an eternal virgin.
Rhea also passed certain aspects of her looks and personality on to her children:
  • Hestia inherited her warm, comforting personality and her wise traits. All in all, Hestia was most similar to her mother, with the only big difference being that Hestia, unlike the very motherly Rhea, never ever desired to become a mother herself, and chose to remain an eternal virgin.
  • Demeter inherited her love of animals and nature.
  • Hera inherited her bright "sunny" smile, gorgeous beauty, and protective maternal instincts.
  • Hades inherited her long shoulder-length black hair and her tendency to hold long grudges (which she held against Kronos).
  • Poseidon inherited her brilliant green eyes.
  • Zeus inherited her attitude of low tolerance, particularly of injustice.
Most often Rhea's symbol is a pair of lions, the ones that pulled her golden celestial chariot, and were seen often, rampant, one on either side of the gateways through the walls to many cities in the ancient world. The one at Mycenae is most characteristic, with the lions placed on either side of a pillar that symbolizes the great Titaness.Lions have frequently been used to symbolize a wide variety of things, including strength. Since lions were frequently associated with Rhea/Cybele, they might signify that she was the mistress of wild nature, or that her power was so great, that lions became meek, whenever they happened to be in her presence.

The principal seat of her worship, which was always of a very riotous character, was in Crete. At her festivals, which took place at night, the wildest music of flutes, cymbals, and drums resounded, whilst joyful shouts and cries, accompanied by dancing and loud stamping of feet, filled the air.When the Cult of Cybele(Rhea) was in its early stages, only priestesses were allowed to perform the sacred rites. That practice changed dramatically when Crete was overthrown, and the Cretan priests of Zeus, the Curates, migrated to Phrygia, where they joined with the Corybantes and became Galli. Legend tells us that the Corybantes were the half human sons of Cronus. It was their wild dancing, and the loud noises that resulted from the banging of their shields and weapons together, that prevented Cronus from hearing the cries of his infant son Zeus. If Cronus had, indeed, heard the cries of Zeus, he would have swallowed him whole, just as he had done with all of his other children. Cronus swallowed his own children whole as soon as they were born. He saw it as a way of protecting himself from the possibility, that one of them might castrate him, just as he had previously done to his own father, Uranus.

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