By Shannon Sloan-Spice, Ph.D. Ireland has a farming history that stretches back past 6,000 years with portal tombs, passageways, and “thin places” that honor the movement of light through the seasons. On the Celtic Wheel of the Year, there are eight sabbats, or celebrations, that help to mark the seasonal and planting cycles which fall on the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarters of those cosmic events. Every six weeks, there is new energy to work with. The Celtic New Year

Dating back at least four millennia, the Sumerian/Akkadian myth of the “Descent of Inanna” tells the story of how Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, descends to the Underworld realm of her sister Ereshkigal to attend the funeral of Ereshkigal’s husband. Inanna is stripped of her clothing and jewelry—all the trappings of her status—as she passes through the gates to the underworld, until she stands naked before her sister. Ereshkigal looks at her with the “eyes of death,” and Inanna

The Sumerian deity Inanna is becoming one of the goddess zeitgeists of our current moment. She was buried underground in what is modern day Iraq for nearly 4,000 years. But now Her rediscovery and reawakening in the popular imagination foretells of Inanna’s myth becoming reality: Her descent into the Underworld and eventual rebirth mirror our current historical moment. I agree with Sylvia Bretton Perera’s assessment that the timing of Inanna’s return from the literal undergro

In the pantheon of ancient goddesses, Artemis remains one of the most complex and enduring figures. She traverses the margins of myth and history, sovereignty and service, wilderness and civilization. Her presence in the ancient world was vast, and her mythology and worship rich with complexity, spanning forests, cities, rivers, mountains, and thresholds. Daughter of Leto and Zeus, and twin sister of Apollo, Artemis emerges in Homeric literature as a huntress, roaming the mou

Image Source Theoi : Persephone, Triptolemus and Demeter, Athenian red-figure skyphos C5th B.C., British Museum Persephone as Underworld...