In her complex role as mother-daughter-bride, the Great Goddess presided over birth and death, growth and decay, and so she wielded supreme power: she could breathe life back into the scattered remains of her sacred partner and strike down others without mercy.

The earliest deities we have records of tended to be associated with the essential components of the physical Universe—the sky, the Sun, bodies of water—and the most basic of life’s needs and functions—safety, shelter, success on a hunt. The Sumerian sky god Anu is one of the earliest known examples, though there are doubtless older ones which are

People often think of the Goddess as a fertility deity only. Not at all—she’s the muse. She’s the inspirer of poetry. She’s the inspirer of the spirit. So, she has three functions: one, to give us life; two, to be the one who receives us in death; and three, to inspire our spiritual, poetic realization.