Sarahkka: The Sami Goddess of Childbirth and the Hearth
Pitch a Sámi tent and the first thing you set is the fire. The poles go up around the hearthstones,…
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Hel: The Norse Goddess Who Rules the Ordinary Dead
Most Norse gods want you to die well. Odin takes half the battle-slain to Valhalla, Freya takes the other half…
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Boann: Irish Goddess of the River Boyne
There was one well in Ireland nobody was allowed to look at. Boann walked up to it and circled it…
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Cliodhna: Irish Goddess of Love, Beauty, and the Sea
The tide at Glandore has a woman’s name. Twice a day it comes up the harbor in County Cork, and…
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Nantosuelta: Gaulish Goddess of Home and Nature
She carries a house on a stick. On a carved stone from Sarrebourg, in the hills of eastern France, a…
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Persephone: Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld
Every spring, the story goes, she comes back up. Persephone is the girl who was carried down into the dark…
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Mattarahkka: The Sami Ancestral Mother Goddess
The goddess who gave you your body lived a few feet under the place where you slept. In a Sámi…
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Idun: Norse Goddess of Youth and the Golden Apples
The gods of Asgard aged like anyone else. Odin, Thor, Freyja, the whole war-band of the north went gray on…
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Shakti: The Divine Feminine Power of Hinduism
Every great god in Hinduism has a goddess beside him, and the theology is blunt about why she is there….
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Olokun: Orisha of the Deep Sea
Somewhere below the last of the light, the water goes still. That is where Olokun lives: the floor of the…
