Kali vs. Aphrodite

I can hear the announcer now - and he sounds like the guy who does the commercials for premier league football (soccer) in the UK.

"Kali-Ma V. Aphrodite; The dark Hindu Goddess matches up with the Greek Goddess of Love. Will Aphrodite mesmerize the crowd with her beauty or will Kali come out on top and covered in blood? Find out this week-END on Sky Sports."

Well that's what I hear anyway. Check out the poll - 2 posts down. It seems like there is a bit of battling going on. Every time I check in Kali and Aphrodite are neck and neck. It's like watching a really strange auction on Ebay.

Demeter It Is...

I've let the poll go to 20 votes and Demeter has won with 9 of them. Thanks to everyone who voted. I honestly appreciate your input. Now I have to turn some focus to the Great, Greek, Earth Mother Goddess Demeter and see where she leads me. If anyone else has musings on this face of the Goddess please feel free to get a conversation started.

I'm still looking for historical proof of the laws of Demeter - or the Thesmoi of Demeter. If anyone could point me in the right direction on that I would be eternally grateful.

I have posted a new poll leaving Brigid, Kali, and Isis in place as options and adding Aphrodite to the list. Don't let Aphrodite fool you. She is much more than your average Goddess of Love. So let the voting continue and when Demeter's temple is done a new one can be started immediately.

Vote here or check the sidebar at the right.

Poll: The Next Temple

I'm struggling with which Goddess to devote the next virtual temple to. So I've created a poll so you guys can help me out. All of these Goddesses are calling to me, but the two who seem to be in my thoughts the most these days are Kali and Demeter.

Why I'm having trouble deciding:
I have a book on Kali coming soon that I am hoping will give me lots to think about when creating her temple. She calls to me in a strong way. I already have an ample amount of info on Demeter, but her image seems so much clearer to me through Persephone - who I just did a temple to. Both existing temples are Greek in nature. So, should we move on to another pantheon for a bit? Or should we stick with the Greeks until they are all done? Brigid for me is the Great Goddess in Ireland - a land I have long since been connected with. Should I move "home" for a while with her? And Isis is such a Great Queen Goddess that I have always been fascinated by her and all her incarnations.

So you can see why this is hard for me right now. I would love to know what readers are looking to see so that I can be swayed one way or the other to start working on a new temple (or two). I also need to finish the meditation on Persephone. Or maybe not... maybe she doesn't call for one. I'm not sure.

Thanks in advance to everyone who votes. You can vote here on this post or there is a static poll in the sidebar under Virtual Temples. Just click the link up top to go there.

Temple of Persephone

The Temple isn't exactly complete because I haven't been inspired to write the meditation yet. Everything is there though - most of which you may have already read in previous posts. Check it out and hopefully enjoy!

Virtual Temple of Persephone

Temple of Merope

So this is what I've been working on over the last couple of days. I've started a new project that I hope will be both informative and spiritually beneficial. I guess only people who visit it can tell me for sure. Personally, it's already enriched my experience of the Goddess.

I guess you could say I am doing it as much for me (probably more so) than for anyone else. I went looking for virtual Goddess temples and didn't really find what I was looking for. This virtual temple project is the result of that desire.

So, if you have the time please leave me some comments on this post and let me know what you think about the content of the Temple of Merope. More temples are in the works. Persephone and Demeter should be coming soon and at that time I will build an index page to house all the temples.

Connecting with the Goddess: Musings
(from Panthea's Temple of Merope)

We don't know for sure what her name was or what exactly her rituals might've entailed, but remnants of the Great Bee Goddess can be seen in recovered artifacts and the mytholgy of the Greek descendents of the Minoans. Though much of this Goddess is lost to antiquity, I believe versions of her (stripped of her Great Goddess stature) are found throughout later Greek mythology under the name Merope. But these may just be tiny pieces of her story.

I personally believe that Demeter herself is a later incarnation of the Great Bee Goddess. Demeter's priestesses were called Melissae (Bees) and some sources report that the priestesses believed they would be reincarnated as bees in the afterlife. Where did these ideas originate?

The Bee Goddess of Crete, of the Minoans, was intimately tied to the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth. Regeneration or transformation seem to be one of her primary functions. Most, if not all, Great Goddess figures can be given this distinction. Demeter and her various faces as Triple Goddess can certainly be equated with regenerative properties. Could Ancient Merope have also been a Triple Goddess?

Somehow this Goddess (an ancient and sacred face of Mother Demeter) found her way into my life. She settled down into my heart as if it were her hive and made a nice cozy home there. I have rather syncretically equated the Minoan Bee Goddess with the pleiadian star and the myth surrounding the Goddess it is named for. Though this star happens to be in the Pleiades, a constellation popular with the new age crowd, I don't feel anything is being "channeled" down to me. I simply feel her looking down from her hiding place in the vast blanket of stars above. Though her light is the faintest of the other six sisters, I feel it shining on me as the brightest star in the heavens.

Perhaps she has honored me as a modern version of one of her Melissae; her priestess. Since the bee is a common symbol for this Goddess, and thus a possible metaphor to be looked at allegorically, I wonder what the bee can teach me? I wonder what this little creature of the natural world can tell me about how to live and how to honor the Goddess? Might I be a worker bee? Or can I embrace the Queen within?

In this virtual sacred place I invite you to take on the title of Melissae yourself, and let your soul be opened up to this little known but largely felt face of the Goddess.