ix

EE very woman wants to feel like a goddess. Strong. Wise.Brave. Loving. Who better than powerful goddesses to

be role models? Goddesses for Every Day presents a collectionof goddesses, diverse examples of the Divine Femininethrough time and across cultures. This book of days holds upa mirror so you can try on a new goddess every day, seeing yourown nature reflected through timeless examples of women’swisdom and feminine power. These goddesses are meant toact as daily guides, way-showers through the passages of life,engaging the sacred feminine within you.

Goddesses for Every Day is arranged as a loop, a medita-tive journey through the year, with the goddesses organizedwithin the zodiac signs. Every culture on earth has markedtime by tracking the motions of the moon and the paths of theplanets against the background of the stars. The Babylonians

PREFACE

and Egyptians used the zodiac thousands of years ago. Thiscircle of stars, which has been called the Girdle of the God-dess, seemed an appropriate frame for the year. The goddessesare also linked with seasonal cycles. Goddesses of dawn andnew beginnings are aligned with spring, goddesses of birthwith summer, goddesses of the harvest with autumn, and god-desses who preside over death with the dark time of year inthe Northern Hemisphere.

Sacred feminine symbols such as birds, trees, serpents, andspirals are found in almost all cultures around the world, andI perceived that these icons are aligned with the familiar twelvezodiac signs. Because this book chronicles feminine power, Ichose one of these symbols to represent each zodiac sign. Forexample, Libra is symbolized by the Dove, and Taurus is rep-resented by the Tree of Life. I call these goddess signs. A shortexplanation precedes each chapter’s list, briefly describing thecharacteristics of the sign, why I chose the particular symboland goddess sign, and why the specific goddesses were selectedfor that section.

The many facets and myriad manifestations of the goddessembody a seeming paradox. Like life itself, her expressions canbe alternately gentle or fierce, nurturing or punishing, or cre-ative or destructive. The goddesses who appear in this bookare often complex, even contradictory, so they did not alwaysconveniently fit into one zodiac sign. I placed them where theyresonated most, based on what I perceived to be their domi-nant quality.

Women understand cycles because our lives are framed bythem, and there is an intrinsic ebb and flow to the feminine ex-perience. The stages of a woman’s life are demarcations of men-struation: prepuberty, the childbearing years, and the cessationof menstrual flow. Each month of an adult woman’s life is a

x Goddesses for Every Day

complete cycle of birth and death, a microcosm of life itself. Aswomen age, their cycles change and life takes on a differentcharacter. The wheel of the year symbolically relates to thestages of women’s lives, commonly expressed as the triple god-dess: maiden, mother, and crone or elder. This trinity of the sa-cred feminine existed in ancient cultures long before the maletrinity we recognize from the Bible. The triple goddess wassymbolized by a triple crown that was formed by the phases ofthe moon: waxing crescent, full orb, and waning crescent. Thiscrown, worn by Isis and many others, was the symbol of cre-ation, generation, and regeneration. Most ancient cultures hon-ored the crone or elder as a woman who had come fully intoher power. In Western culture we seem to revere youth and fearage, and in this way we lose the wise voice of experience.

Goddesses for Every Day relates the myths of goddesses.The word myth comes from the root word for “mouth,” as sto-rytelling was originally an oral tradition. Myths are sacred sto-ries, and they have been the way that people transmitted theirholiest truths, their understanding of our relationship to theDivine, for thousands of years. The well-known Swiss psy-choanalyst Carl Jung observed that archetypes — the intrin-sic patterns of human consciousness such as maiden, mother,and crone, queen and princess — do not cease to exist if we ignore or devalue them. Rather, they become submerged inwhat Jung termed the collective unconscious, becoming strongforces that emerge in dreams, complexes, or even psychoses.Archetypes are building blocks of human nature. Myths, leg-ends, and fairy tales, which contain principles and morals, arestructured with the symbolic language of archetypes.

In Western culture we have devalued, even demonized, as-pects of the feminine for nearly four thousand years, effectivelypushing these archetypes beneath our conscious awareness.

Preface xi

Serious scholars of myth have noticed that the tenor of the sto-ries began to change nearly four millennia ago. Symptoms ofthis shift in Greek myths included an increasing glorificationof war, accompanied by a deteriorating value assigned to agri-culture and cyclical time. The importance of the Great God-dess diminished and has been essentially buried for fourmillennia. The loss of half of the Divine has resulted in a rup-ture between mind and heart that has reverberated throughcenturies, evidenced by violence, alienation, and growing en-vironmental devastation. Western culture no longer moves inharmony with natural cycles, and I believe our lack of balancewith the natural seasons of earth and sky has brought us to aprecarious place.

Humanity has a deep need to revere the feminine side ofthe Divine, and this unmet need is resurfacing in our time insuch examples as the phenomenal popularity of the film TheDa Vinci Code. Apparitions of Mary, mother of Jesus, are onthe rise around the world. One of the best-documented in-stances in recent times took place in Zeitoun, Egypt, wherehundreds of thousands of people of diverse beliefs stood side by side over a period of twenty-three years, watching asMary appeared over a small church in a suburb of Cairo. Mil-lions make annual pilgrimages to Fatima, Lourdes, and thebasilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico each year. Thesite in Mexico is the second-most-visited Catholic site; onlythe Vatican draws greater numbers. The tremendous out-pouring of love and concern in response to the death of Diana,Princess of Wales, also spoke to our need to revere a femininearchetype.

Writing this book has been a profound journey for me, apersonal reunion with the Divine Feminine. The process hasbeen a labor of love that taught me a great deal about the nature

xii Goddesses for Every Day

of guidance. Hundreds of goddesses revealed their deep wis-dom about the quality of feminine power, speaking in the time-less language of symbols, myths, and archetypes. I have beenamazed by the depth and breadth of wisdom I discovered andam continually awed by a creative process that has drawn mealong as a willing, if sometimes dazzled, participant.

As I researched and wrote this book, I was often sponta-neously transported into an altered state, where I experienceda different realm of awareness. Sometimes a goddess declaredher intention to be included in the circle by drawing me to abook. As if by magic, or by the mysterious mechanism of synchronicity, my eyes were drawn to a previously unknowngoddess who aligned perfectly with the place in the calendar Iwas working on. At other times, guidance came through aprovocative dream. Sometimes the goddesses seemed to cometo life and move around the wheel, revealing something deeperabout their natures than I had originally perceived. In thisspirit, Goddesses for Every Day can be used as an oracle by set-ting an intention, or asking a specific question, and letting thepages fall open in a seemingly random way, allowing a god-dess to speak to you.

The predominant view in religion today is of God as a sin-gular, authoritarian father figure, although many gods fill themyths of the world. It is my hope and prayer that Goddessesfor Every Day will serve in some way to restore the overarch-ing principle of the goddess to her rightful place as the femi-nine half of the Divine. She has been known as Queen ofHeaven and Great Mother in many cultures, and it seems rightfor her to reclaim the throne. I invite you to enter this sacredcircle and embrace this ancient wisdom, taking these truthsinto your heart and soul. I hope you will get to know the pow-erful feminine beings represented here. Ancient Egyptians said

Preface xiii

every woman was a nutrit, a “little goddess” who partook ofthe nature of the powerful goddess Nut. And, as you embarkon your own journey around the sacred wheel, I hope you willbe empowered to become the goddess you are, consciouslyembodying love, strength, courage, compassion, inner beauty,and receptivity. That’s the way we’ll save the world: one em-powered woman at a time.

xiv Goddesses for Every Day

xv

TT he astronomical phenomenon known as precession ofthe equinoxes, apparently caused by the earth’s wob-

ble on its axis, gives us the great wheel of the astrological ages.This slow movement of the heavens has always been under-stood as a vast circle of time, and it lasts approximately twenty-six thousand years. As the wheel turns, time cycles througheach of the ages, coloring each period of roughly twenty thou-sand years with the overarching energy of the prevailing zo-diac sign. At this point on the wheel, we are leaving the age ofPisces and moving into the age of Aquarius.

Five thousand years ago, during the age of Taurus, cul-tures were more agricultural, and fertility and the earth’s grow-ing cycle were held in high esteem. Time was experienced as circular, and daily, monthly, and yearly cycles repeated. Sexuality was seen as sacred, and all aspects of fertility were

SIGNS AND SEASONS

honored where the Great Goddess was revered. Seasonal fes-tivals celebrated the annual ebb and flow of life, and peoplemoved in conscious resonance with shifting cycles of light anddark, life and death. In ages past, women were revered asgivers of life, and the beginning of each stage of a woman’slife was viewed as an important crossroad, or rite of passage.Ceremonies and rites of initiation were conducted to usher awoman into the next phase.

Every year, earth makes a full circle around the sun.Earth’s orbital motion causes the sun to appear to move in thesky in a path called the ecliptic. Astronomically, the zodiac isa circular band of sky, ranging from eight degrees above toeight degrees below the ecliptic, that contains the familiar zodiac constellations, from the Ram to the Fishes. Temporally,the zodiac also marks the apparent journey of the sun, based onour motion relative to the sun, and it has four main subdivi-sions. These are the so-called cardinal points of the year, theequinoxes and solstices. Although Western astrology now usesa measure of time that begins at the spring equinox in theNorthern Hemisphere, the names of the zodiac signs are stillthe same as those of the constellations from which they origi-nally drew their names.

The twelve signs of astrology are organized into what are termed the four “elements,” or phases of expression, andarranged according to the three ways these elements act: initi-ating, consolidating, or alternating. According to tradition,the elements are fire, earth, air, and water, and the modes of expression are cardinal, fixed, and mutable. The elements aresaid to describe phases of expression, from pure energy to mat-ter, in the same way that water can be a liquid, solid, or gas.Each of the twelve signs combines one element and one qual-ity. For example, Aries is said to be a cardinal fire sign, intense

xvi Goddesses for Every Day

and initiating. The zodiac is a cycle of experience that providesthe template of evolution through which earth receives the in-fluences of the sun and planets.

This constantly repeating circle of the year is separatedinto twelve equal divisions, which represent successive phasesof experience. The borders, or divisions, of the zodiac signsare not consistent every year. I used the dates that occurredmost frequently over the past ten years, so at times the signsand dates may not match certain birthdays. Because the sea-sons of the year actually shift a bit from year to year, a personborn at the cusp of two signs may find that his or her birthdayfalls in the preceding or following sign in the book. And justas the energies of the two signs blend at the cusp, so do thequalities of the goddesses, so call on both, instead of one, tobless the day of your birth.

The book is organized according to the calendar and be-gins with January . However, the sign of Capricorn begins atthe winter solstice, December , so for the sake of conven-ience the introduction to the goddess sign of Capricorn ap-pears both at the beginning of the year and again beforeDecember .

The zodiac signs have been described as being like stained-glass windows that “color” the solar and planetary influences.I have endeavored to present the goddesses, and what they rep-resent, within this ancient frame, as well as in a new light.

Signs and Seasons xvii

CC apricorn anchors the winter solstice and combines theprinciples of cardinal initiating energies with the ground-

ing influence of earth. In this sign, matter organizes itself intoperfect forms. Capricorn’s energy expresses itself as govern-ing and conserving, focused on achievement, integrity, recog-nition, and responsibility. Capricorn natives are fueled bytremendous ambition, and their lessons stem from learning themotive that underlies their drive to climb. Capricorn is thetenth sign, and it represents the stage of the spiritual journeyin which our aspiration turns inward to the clear mountain airof our spiritual nature. It also represents the principle of am-bition, whether this is directed outwardly to the world of ac-complishment or turned toward the spiritual path.

The goddess sign for Capricorn is the Spinning Wheel,

CAPRICORN GODDESSESThe Spinning Wheel

THREADS OF DESTINY ARE SPUN

BY CHOICES AND DEEDS

Goddesses for Every Day

representing crone goddesses who are weavers of fate. Spin-ning, weaving, and looms are the province of wise elder god-desses who pronounce our destiny and measure and cut thethreads of our lives. While Scorpio spins the threads out of thesubstance of the goddess’s belly, it is in Capricorn, the sign ofform, that the threads take shape and are woven into the tap-estry of our lives. Mountains symbolize the spiritual quest innumerous traditions, so Capricorn is traditionally symbolizedby the Sea Goat, a mountain goat with the tail of a fish or dol-phin. And so, ancient mountain goddesses are included inCapricorn, along with goddesses who embody structure, or-ganization, time or duration, endings, the dark of winter, andthe wisdom of old age.

From the book Goddesses for Every Day. Copyright © 2008, 2011 by Julie Loar. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA.

www.newworldlibrary.com or 800/972-6657 ext. 52.