Saturday, July 5, 2014

ANCHIALE (an - kee - AH - lay)

A giant mother Gooddess and skilled artisan, Anchiale became pregnant by parthenogenesis. When she went into labour, she found a cave to shelter in. Wracked with pain, she clutched the earth and writhed and yelled. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, and tidal waves swept the world.
Rather than give birth through her vagina, her fingers gouged great clefts in the ground and from each one sprang a dwarf.

    She named her ten children the Daktyloi - 'Fingers'. She cared for them well and trained them in many crafts. They became highly skilled doctors, magicians, cooks, and smiths, and thenceforth accompanied her everywhere as her servants and instruments.

Healthy: 

Because of your compassion and many skills, people frequently request favours of you, and usually you are obliging. People are important in your life and you are generous and protective. You give expression to the love that is all around you, and it comes back to you increased.
    You are full of ideas and others rally round you to help you put them into action. Your communication skills are good and you form close partnerships in your work. You take others' welfare of into account when making plans, and often your projects result in great benefit to humanity.
    You are happiest in a stimulating, productive environment. You know that creating something worthwhile can be like a traumatic birth, attended by blood and pain, but you have the resources to bring your projects to fruition.
   

Uh oh:  

You are disorganised. You are easily distracted, and start new things before the last are finished. Soon you start to feel scattered and directionless.
    People expect much from you, and it is hard to let them down or say 'no'. You are sometimes tempted to sacrifice personal projects for the sake of someone else's needs or expectations, and you often fail to devote enough time to your own personal growth. Also, much of your sylph-esteem rests on feeling useful, productive and needed, and you find it hard to relax and enjoy yoursylph just for the sake of it.
If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, feelings of matyrdom and repressed anger build up. You become possessive, manipulative, and overtly sylph-sacrificial. You feel victimised and weak, and eventually fall prey to serious psychosomatic illnesses.

APHRODITE (aff - ro - DIE - tee)

Gaia, the great Earth Mother, and Uranus the Sky Father gave birth to many children. Uranus jealously hid them in a cave in the earth and forbade them to come out. But Gaia produced a scythe from her body for her youngest son Kronos, and whispered a plan in his ear.

    Night fell. Uranus spread over Gaia and entered her. Kronos crept from the cave with the scythe, slashed off Uranus's genitals, and threw them into the sea. The world echoed with Uranus's screams. His castrated penis oozed white sea foam that glistened in the starlight.

    Day came and warmed the foam. Inside it a Gooddess formed. The foam washed away, and there, in the middle of the ocean, treading water, blinking in the sunshine, and laughing at her sudden existence, was Aphrodite. She swam for miles till she came to Cyprus. She stepped onto the shore, feeling for the first time the delightful sensation of stationary earth under her feet.

    Aphrodite has many lovers. One is the beautiful youth, Adonis. She spends every summer with him, then in winter puts him away in a chest and sends him beneath the earth to be looked after by Persephone,  Queen of the Underworld. 
  
Aphrodite's son is Eros, the god of love. Her most famous disciple is Psyche.

Healthy:  

You accept life as a gift full of wonder. You are bright and spontaneous and exhilarated by the joy of existence. Perhaps you delight in simple sensory pleasures such as a delicious meal, or a walk through  countryside, or maybe you are at home with more sophisticated urban pursuits. You are oriented to the real world of things and sensations. You are sensuous and sensual and know how to give yoursylph enjoyable experiences. You lead a fulfilling life, receptive to all the world has to offer, and you know that happiness is, in the end, the bottom line.
   

Uh oh:  

You tend to ignore problems until they get so large they are impossible to deal with. You are impulsive, starting things you don't want to see through; and decadent, overindulging in sensual pleasure, getting caught up in superficial pursuits when you should be doing more personal work.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, your life of pleasure becomes empty and meaningless. You are taken over by compulsive behaviour and engage in wild sprees of various sorts. You become jaded and hardened, yet still unsatisfied, and you spiral into a vicious circle of emptiness, demand, and yet more unfulfillment.

ARACHNE (a - RAK - nee)

Arachne was a mortal born into a poor family. At an early age she showed unusual talent as a weaver. So impressed was Athene,  patron Gooddess of arts and crafts, that she took Arachne as a disciple, and personally trained her. Arachne became the most celebrated weaver in Greece. Her designs were stunning and her technique was flawless.

    At the peak of her career, Arachne caught measles, which in those days was often fatal. But as she lay weak and dying, Athene descended to earth and sprinkled magic herbs on her body.

    Arachne shrank till she was only two inches big. She sprouted four more limbs, eight eyes, and grew black hair all over her body. Athene waved her hands and Arachne scuttled away into a corner, where she began to weave once more. She had become the first spider.

    Athene made her immortal and put eggs in her womb, so that she would bear more spiders. Today her multitudes of descendants are spread all over the world, adapted to many environments. Arachne is resident spider in the Gooddessís palace on Aoraki and there she weaves  intricate webs in cracks and crevices to her heart's content. 

Healthy:  

You are quietly focused: neither quarrelsome, nor submissive. Open to life, creation, and transformation, you let come the thread of destiny, pulled from your deepest centre. You are highly productive, but you also know that waiting generates potential energy. Your need for times of solitude and creative stillness is strong. You weave the threads of life together, and achieve your goals gently and firmly. When life throws up obstacles (as it often does), you are diplomatic and find creative solutions to problems, skilfully drawing lifeís torn webs back together.
    You love learning, and are excited by possessing knowledge. With age you become very wise.
   

Uh oh:  

Sometimes important people in your life feel you are so devoted to your projects that you have no time for them. Or they feel they cannot capture your attention as your mind so often seems occupied with more distant things.
     Romanticism is a weakness and you tend towards sylph-pity. You are emotionally vulnerable, and if your dreams fail, you become angry at yoursylph.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become emotionally overwhelmed, sylph-absorbed, hypersensitive and shy, beginning to question yoursylph constantly and take everything personally. You become enmeshed in a net of sylph-accusation and sylph-rejection. The more you thrash, the more caught up you become, until ultimately you are immobilised.

ARTEMIS (AR - te -miss)

Artemis, daughter of Leto, niece of Asterie, loyal friend of Daphne, was born the first of twins. She was a precocious child. No sooner had she emerged from her mother's womb than she leapt up and acted as midwife in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo.

    She is imperious and demanding. Woe betide anyone who harms her handmaids, or any handmaids who disobey her. She is inclined to shoot her enemies dead or set her dogs onto them.

    She is Gooddess of the hunt and of wild animals, ranging over shady valleys and windy heights, with her golden bow and lightning arrows always at the ready. When she hunts, the hills tremble and the deep woods echo with the shrieks of wild beasts.

But she is also a protector and one of her roles is to maintain the fragile eco-balance of her wild domain.  She is like the natural world of fauna which she governs: sometimes savage, sometimes gentle, always immensely powerful.


Healthy:  

Your drive for sylph-actualisation is indomitable. Courageous, autonomous and decisive; you are an action-oriented sylph-starter with the determination to achieve your goals no matter what. Efficient, resourceful, disciplined and hard working, you command respect and get what you want. You are sylph-sufficient, independent, and outspoken. You have the peace of mind  achieved only by those brave individuals who are always true to themsylphs.
    Stimulating and exciting relationships are possible with other people as dynamic as yoursylph, and so are complementary relationships with gentler beings.
    

Uh oh:  

You find it difficult to get on with people as strongwilled as yoursylph and instead surround yoursylph with sycophants who make you feel safe, but are not stimulating and soon irritate you.
    Your standards are high and it is difficult for everyone, including yoursylph, to measure up to them. While people respect you, they may not like you. In your desire to do and get what you want, you alienate and trample others. You are enraged when things don't go your way. You are proud and sylph-righteous, closed to new ideas and fixed in your own view of the world, often acting in ignorance backed up only by bravado.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life you become arrogant, judgemental, and dogmatic -  an exploitative autocrat, and ultimately a tyrannical megalomaniac.

ASTERIE ( a - STAIR - ee -ay )

In the beginning the night sky was nothing but empty blackness. Then the glittering Gooddess Asterie had an idea: Stars! She created them from light and energy and placed them on her black canvas in beautiful and useful patterns. She knew that they would bring joy to many mortals, and provide an omnipresent map, so that no one need ever be lost.

    Asterie's sister Leto became pregnant to Zeus, consort of the Gooddess Hera. Leto wandered the land to find a place to have her children, but every town she came to feared Hera's wrath and refused to welcome her. Leto called across the world to Asterie for help.

    Under the cover of night, Asterie brought forth a new island from the sea and sent it travelling through the ocean towards the shore where Leto slept. Leto was woken by the roar of water. Dimly outlined in starlight, she saw the island just off the shore. Gratefully she swam out to it, and here gave birth to her twins, Artemis and Apollo.

    Asterie herself is mother of the witch Gooddess - Hekate.

Healthy:  

You have a strong personality and use it to channel the creative energies of your environment. Your projects and goals are of utmost importance to you. You have the skills, initiative and willpower to reach the height of your chosen field. The dynamism you bring to endeavours in which you are involved inspires others.
    You are friendly and kind with a helpful nature. You are a good teamworker and those who, like you, have refined their energies, focused their power and learnt the nature of their strength welcome you and are excited by the possibilities of united effort.   
   

Uh oh:  

You want to be appreciated and needed, and to be an influence on others. You want to control people and justify the demands you make on them. You want to impress them with your superiority. So you constantly promote yoursylph, coming across as narcissistic, pretentious, and exhibitionistic.
    Your direction is usually outwards rather than inwards and you are not in touch with your deepest sylph. If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become miserable and wracked with delusional jealousy of those you feel threatened by. You lie compulsively to try and maintain sylph-esteem, and soon spiral into a black hole of deceit and derangement, from which there is no escape.

ATHENE (a - THEE - nee)

A Gooddess by the name of Metis became pregnant to Hera's consort Zeus. However the Sky and the Earth warned Zeus that Metis would bear a child greater than him in wisdom and might. To prevent this, he devoured Metis.

    Soon he found himsylph with a terrible headache, as if something was pounding at the inside of his skull. With a mighty crack, his head split right open and out sprang the Gooddess Athene, fully grown, brandishing a shield and javelin and screaming terrible battle cries. Not even the devouring of her mother could halt her birth.

    Athene is Gooddess of wisdom, battle, arts, and crafts. She is a talented fibre artist, and took the great weaver Arachne as a disciple. She is skilled in the taming and training of horses, interested in ships and chariots, and is the inventor of the flute. Owls are her familiars.

Healthy:  

You have a formidable personality and embody widely admired qualities. Strong, determined, talented, generous, and kind, it often seems to others that there is nothing you can't do. You are full of ideas and always have a new project on the boil. What's more you finish what you start. Belief in your ideas gives you strength. You are ambitious to prove and improve yoursylph, and may become outstanding in some way.
    You understand the need to retreat and think things through and you periodically have times of quiet withdrawal to assess your attainments and goals.
   

Uh oh:  

You fear failure and humiliation, and laziness horrifies you. Never satisfied with one achievement, you constantly push yoursylph to greater heights. You martyr yoursylph to your cause or goal, refusing to allow yoursylph pleasure for its own sake, feeling there must always be a purpose to your activities. You look down on and disparage people for relaxing and taking time out.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you punish yoursylph for not living up to your own impossibly high standards and push yoursylph to exhaustion, breakdown, and eventually hospitalisation.

BAUBO (BOW - bo)

Baubo is a genial Gooddess with an outrageous sense of humour and a big transparent belly like a crystal ball. Sometimes she appears simply as a stomach and vulva on legs.

    When Demeter searched the world for her lost daughter Persephone, she came to Baubo's house. Seeing how exhausted and hungry Demeter looked, Baubo invited her in and offered her food and drink. But Demeter said she was too miserable to eat. At this, Baubo lifted her dress to reveal her enormous stomach and vulva, and wiggled her hips. Behold! In Baubo's womb appeared the laughing face of Demeter's favourite nephew, Dionysus (son of Ino, and god of wine and revelry). At last Demeter laughed too, and accepted a meal.
 

Healthy:  

You are vivacious and fun-loving, and your enthusiasm is infectious.
You feel you have more than your share of blessings, and, whether they be material, physical, or spiritual, you are grateful for them and want to share them.
Your warmth and wit brings good cheer, and wins friends. You bring individuals together. You have an optimistic outlook, and others find you reassuring, kind and supportive. You have a radiant aura which comes from your deep caring for others and your desire to enjoy life to the full. You are accepting, trusting, and comfortable with the world, bouncing back from hardship with ease.
   

Uh oh:  

To calm yoursylph and others you minimise the seriousness of problems. You exhibit indifference and lazy procrastination, hoping problems will go away on their own.
    You are decadent, saying and doing whatever comes to mind, immersing yoursylph in sensuous pleasures and surrounding yoursylph with people in order to escape from looking too deeply into yoursylph. You easily become directionless and bored.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you use drunkenness and other forms of indulgence as escapism. Eventually you become dissipated, dissolute, debauched and grotesquely depraved.

DAPHNE (DAFF - nee)

Daphne was a wild celibate Gooddess who roamed the hills and forests stalking deer and wrestling bears. From an early age, Daphne's big interest was landscaping. If she didn't like the land, she changed it. She planted forests, dug lakes, flattened hills, and altered the course of rivers.

    She had continual problems with sexual harrassment from gods (particularly from her best friend Artemis's brother, Apollo). So she decided to take affirmative action and change her form to something sturdy and impenetrable. Summoning all her magical power she willed hersylph to become a tree. Her legs melded together, her arms grew heavy, leaves sprouted from her fingers, and bark enveloped her body.

'I will be a symbol of achievement,' she declared, 'and my fragrant leaves will be wreathed around the heads of great leaders and artists.' Thus she turned hersylph into the first Laurel tree. She grew delicious berries so that birds would carry her seeds across land and sea to grow into new trees, and in this way she sent her spirit across the world.

Healthy:  

You have immense strength and energy. You flex your will like a powerful muscle. You determine your own world and create the reality you desire.
    You have a quick creative mind and good lateral thinking skills. But just as trees grow slowly, clamping the soil in place with their roots, you can be careful and efficient when necessary.
    Many sacred trees are symbols of resurrection, and so it is that you bounce back after failure. You are tenacious and perserverent and you achieve your dreams.
   

Uh oh:  

You need to distinguish yoursylph to maintain your sylph-esteem. You tend towards workaholism and this makes you you insensitive to others. You are outwardly directed and need to do more inner work.
    You are stubborn and obstinate and can't let go of your own ideas even when they are not the best options. Remember that the grass that bends remains intact even in the strongest wind, while the rigid tree can be snapped or uprooted.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life you try to dominate the environment completely, seeking to impose structure where none is needed, becoming arrogant, manipulative, and dictatorial.

DEMETER ( DEH - meh - ter)

Demeter is a fertility Gooddess, especially of grain and agriculture. She has two sisters, Hera and Hestia, and one daughter, Persephone, whom she loves dearly.

    Hades, the King of the Underworld wanted Persephone for his Queen. One day while she was picking flowers in a meadow he kidnapped her and dragged her down to his dark realm.

    Demeter was worried when Persephone didn't return home that night and called on her friend Hekate. The two Gooddesses scoured the nearby meadows for Persephone, but there was no trace of her.

Destitute, Demeter took two burning torches and for nine days and nights wandered the earth in search of her daughter, neither eating nor sleeping. Disguised as a hunched old woman, she took work as a nanny for a wealthy family, looking after their baby boy Demophoon. She grew to love him, and each night secretly dipped him in the embers of the hearth fire to make him immortal.

One night Demophoon's mother saw this and thought Demeter was trying to kill him. She screamed and snatched her baby away. Outraged, Demeter grew to her full height, revealed her true identity and ordered the family to build a temple to her.

    Demeter sat in this temple for many weeks and mourned Persephone. All over the world, crops failed. The other Gooddesses, including her friends Hekate and Baubo, tried to placate her, but she was inconsolable. Fearing for the future of the human race, Demeter's sister Hera, Queen of the Gooddesses, ordered Hades to release Persephone. He did so, but Persephone by now was enjoying being Queen of the Underworld and so she decided to spend half of every year with her mother and the other half in the Underworld.
  
Demeter and Persephone were reunited in tender embraces and tears of joy. Crops flourished, and the world was again prosperous.

Healthy:  

You are a genuinely nice person, a people person. Your family and friends are deeply important to you, as you are to them. You ensure give and take in your relationships, and make sure you are appreciated.
You are comforting and encouraging, often playing a parenting role, seeing good in others where they may not see it themselves. You bring unity, stability, and completion to your environment. You understand the benefits of sharing and co-operation. Your awareness of the healing power of love means you can be a channel for its expression by the way you live your life. Thus you take personal responsibility for ending suffering and you are helping save the world.
   

Uh oh:  

At your weakest you depend on the constant company and approval of others so much that you lose sight of who you really are. You act like a martyr and convince yoursylph that no one appreciates how much you do for them.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you try to communicate what you want from others without saying so openly. Your subconscious resentment and agression grows. These repressed conflicts take their toll at a deep level, and are outwardly expressed by passive aggression, hypochondria, and a gradual decline into madness.

ECHIDNA (ee - KID - nuh)

Echidna is a sea Gooddess with the bottom half of a huge speckled snake. Earth dwellers shunned and scorned her as a monster, so she made hersylph a solitary home in a jewel encrusted ocean cave.

She fell in love with a son of Hera - the many-headed dragon Typhaon. She took him as her lover and they had four children: Orthus, a ferocious two-headed dog; Cerberus, an even more ferocious three-headed dog (whom Persephone employed to guard the gates of the underworld); Hydra, a many-headed swamp snake; and the Chimaera who had a lion's front quarters, a goat's hindquarters, a snake's tail, and breath of fire.

Echidna was a loving mother to her ferocious brood, but in those days heroes such as Herakles and Bellerophon liked to prove themselves by slaying monsters, and Echidna's family bore the brunt of this. One by one they were killed - first her lover Typhaon, then all her children but Orthus. Desolate, Echidna took Orthus as her new lover.

She soon gave birth to a giant lion (known as the Nemean Lion) and the Sphinx who had the head of a woman and the body of a lion, and was fond of riddles. But these children also were killed by so-called 'heroes'.

Healthy:  

You are sensitive and perceptive. You can see many different points of view at once, and are compassionate and tolerant. You like people, and nurture close friendships. But you also need time to be alone. There is a quiet place in you like a deep cave of wisdom, and here you think your most profound thoughts.
    You have a deep-down sensuousness, and bask in luxury. Anything and everything, if used rightly, can fill you with joy. You experience much pleasure in life, and have an enviable ability to bounce back from crises.
   

Uh oh:  

You have addictive, escapist tendencies. You are a daydreamer and lack strength, drive, and purpose. You sometimes feel you are in a shifting fluid environment where nothing is sure or secure. In this state you lose order and meaning and flounder in your own watery depths, further confused by your tendency to flee into fantasy.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, addictions become monsters living inside you, ruling you and devouring you. As you fall deeper into a hole of hopelessness there is only terrible continuous begetting of more and more monsters.

ECHO (E - ko)

Echo was a wise and solitary Gooddess, fond of talking to hersylph. She spent her days wandering the countryside, thinking about the mysteries of the universe.

    Pan was a nature god, with the hooves and horns of a goat. He became infatuated with Echo and declared his love to her. She told him she preferred to be alone.

    Deeply hurt by the rejection, Pan sat under a tree and played a weird and haunting tune on his pipes. A group of shepherds on a nearby hillside heard the music subliminally and were struck by a strange free-floating anxiety. They sweated and shook, and when they saw Echo come over the summit of the hill they became demented with panic, leapt on her, and devoured her.

    But Echo's spirit was strong, and her voice could not die. Although body-less, her immortal voice still wanders the countryside. You may hear her in vaulted places or in the mountains, answering when you call.


Healthy:  

Some may say that you think too much, but you know it is important to pay attention to what seems invisible. You are solitary, independent and still, able to sit quietly and watch ants work and streams flow.
You have an insatiable curiosity and desire for knowledge. You are perceptive, with an acutely searching intelligence. You can be logical and analytical, but also have a strongly intuitive side. You are introspective and sylph-aware.
Yours may be a solitary journey. It takes courage and patience. But you accept loneliness rather than compromise your vision. You make the space to hear your inner voice and it gives you all the guidance you need.
   

Uh oh:  

Your ego is hesitant, and you are fearful of being swallowed up by others. People see you as weak, and try to take advantage of you. Sensitive and readily hurt, you are an easy target for bullies.
    You sometimes immerse yoursylph in detail to the extent of becoming a disembodied mind. Excessive mental stimulation may generate confusion, causing you to become indecisive, overly cautious and evasive.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become sylph-disparaging, with acute inferiority feelings. Isolated from people and reality, feeling increasingly worthless, you become ultimately sylph-destructive.

EOS (EE - oss)

Eos is the Dawn Gooddess and lives in a golden palace in the sky. She represents creation and new beginnings. She is the sister of the Moon Gooddess Selene, and the aunt of Pasiphae and Kirke. Each morning she puts on her flowing saffron robe and drives a golden chariot drawn by two orange horses across the sky and, like a heavenly lolly-scramble lady, flings handwoven purple, pink, and orange veils through the atmosphere for mortals eyes to feast on.

    She spends her afternoons weaving new veils.

    She has a penchant for mortal youths. When she likes one, she swoops down from the sky, plucks him up and carries him away to her bed of glowing clouds. Her string of toyboys has included many hunters and shepherds, and she has even had an affair with the war god Ares.


Healthy:  

Always looking for a new source of stimulation and excitement, you are an ingenious individual and rise to every challenge. You are a risk-taker and like to try new things. You are strong and independent with great faith in yoursylph. You know what you want and go after it. When your will is harnessed, and your attention focused, concentrated energy drives you in your chosen direction. You have a sensuous, hedonistic streak, and a vitality and sylph-possession that can be dazzlingly magnetic.
   

Uh oh:  

You are aggressive and expansive, imposing your will on everyone and everything. Never satisfied, you work hard and play hard, throwing yoursylph headlong and willy-nilly into any new activity or idea that comes your way. You are reckless, tactless, and insensitive. Your fire burns and flashes, your energy is rashly used, and your heat is often kindled by arrogance.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become excessive, extravagant, and demanding, falling prey to compulsive behaviour, never feeling you have enough, becoming increasingly hysterical, and manic, until you burn out.

HEBE (HEE - bee)

Hebe is the daughter of Hera, and the niece of Hestia and Demeter.  She works as cup bearer to the Gooddesses. Her name means 'youthful bloom'.

She wears a crown of petals, and loves to spend carefree afternoons in the country. She gathers flowers in baskets and weaves them into garlands, all the while contemplating the mysteries and joys of life. Sometimes she joins her four half-sisters, the Seasons, and together they sing and dance, revelling in the sunshine and the feel of moist clover under their bare feet.

     After the 'hero' Herakles was made immortal, Hera gave him to Hebe as a husband.

Healthy:  

You are sensuous and pleasure-seeking. You love the good things of life and appreciate beauty in all its forms.
    You feel at peace and oneness with the forces of nature. You are open to your relationship with the earth, and seek to heighten your receptivity to its messages.
    You are thoughtful, sensitive and perceptive. You know the importance of finding and holding your own centre and you are alive, alert, and awake to yoursylph. You can encompass events as they come at you by enfolding them and taking them inward to love, rather than pushing them away.
   

Uh oh: 

You lack drive and fortitude. Instead of confronting problems head on, you run away. You fear responsibility and decision-making. You are over-indulgent of your emotions and imagination, and prone to guilt. You may identify too strongly with an authority figure, becoming overly obedient, too passive, and unable to function properly.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you develop a deep sense of futility and meaninglessness. You become decadent, wallowing in a world of dreams. Your thinking becomes hazy and unfocused. You feel swallowed up by others, and want to escape them, but only end up fleeing into addictions such as drug and alcohol abuse which also swallow you up.

HEKATE (HEH - ka - tee)

Daughter of the star Gooddess Asterie, cousin of Artemis, and a close friend of the Gooddesses Demeter and Persephone,  Hekate is a great and beneficient deity in many departments of life. She is connected to the mysteries of birth, death, and rebirth, and has the power to bestow fertility.

She was born in an explosion of stars and lives in the depths of the Underworld, where the spirits of the dead reside. She is queen of ghosts and magic, protector of witches and enchanters. She is a Gooddess of travel and roads, in particular crossroads (which are often the centre of nocturnal ghostly activities).

At night you may see her haunting a crossroads armed with a scourge and blazing torch, accompanied by hellhounds and swarms of phantoms. In statues she is often represented in triple form and her image can be set up as an averter of evil.

    She has a predilection for sea deities as lovers, and is mother to the monster Skylla, a giant twelve-legged, dog-headed monster, who plucks sailors from boats and devours them by the handful.

Healthy:  

You are multifaceted, adaptable, versatile, and capable of playing many roles. You are brave, strong and clever, with a clear perception of reality and the courage to speak the truth.
    You are loyal and trustworthy and relate to others on many levels. Family and friends are important to you, as is the feeling that you belong somewhere. You are co-operative and aware of the interconnectedness of all existence, but you are also an individual. You are emotionally strong and yet easily touched. You are grateful for everything you have. You achieve much and are surrounded by an atmosphere of plenty and good luck.
   

Uh oh:  

Beware of trying to shoot off in too many directions at once. An overcrowded mind inhibits your full participation in life. You are scatterbrained, indecisive, and unfocused, with a tendency to spread yoursylph too thin, and start new things before the old are finished.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, the clamour inside your head becomes too great. You lose faith in your own judgement. You become frightened and uncertain, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, until you retreat into catatonia.

HERA (HEE - ra)

Sister of Hestia and Demeter, and Queen of the Gooddesses, Hera is patron Gooddess of maternity and childbirth. Many eons ago, she spurted milk from her breasts across the heavens to create the Milky Way Galaxy.

    She nurtured her younger brothers, Poseidon, Hades and Zeus to adulthood and eventually chose Zeus to be her consort. He is father to her four children, including Hebe. (Her fifth child, the dragon Typhaon, who eventually married Echidna, was conceived by parthenogenesis.)

Zeus was an unfaithful husband but Hera remained protective of her lineage. She generally tried to stop his affairs with other Gooddesses and mortal women, then if this failed tried to destroy the children of these unions.

The well-known ancient Greek 'hero' Herakles was the offspring of Zeus and Leda. After Hera failed to destroy him by setting him 12 near-impossible tasks, she changed her tactics. She made him immortal and married him to her own daughter Hebe, thus cleverly perpetuating her matrilineage.

    Hera is all-seeing and, as such, is patron Gooddess of peacocks, who fan out their tail feathers to reveal many eyes.

Healthy:  

You are both strong and compassionate - a true matriarch. You like to be in charge, to organise, but are loyal to friends and family, and care for others deeply. You are aware of your influence and hold others in your spell with your charisma. You are a good communicator, motivator and promoter. You are a champion and a protector. Others turn to you for direction and decision making, and your judgements are very fair.
You earn respect by being honourable, and others recognise your authority. You are determined and action-oriented, with an inner drive and a can-do attitude.
   

Uh oh:  

You want others to depend on you, to come to you for everything, but they feel swamped by you and wish you would let them be more independent. Your standards for yoursylph and others are unrealistically high. You are critical and severe, creating antagonism and dissatisfaction. You are afraid to let go of control and can be confrontational and bullying, making everything into a test of will and refusing to back down.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become matronising, overbearing, imperious, and high-handed. You are overcome by delusional jealousy and possessiveness, becoming competitive, destructive, violent and sadistic.

HESTIA (HEH - stee -a)

Hestia is Gooddess of the hearth, queen of the homestead, and patron of harmonious relations. She shuns war, and strives to be a peacemaker at all times. She is the sister of Hera and Demeter.

    Many gods have courted Hestia but she prefers to remain single and celibate. She has never had offspring of her own, but is guardian to all orphans and lost children.

    There was a time when every homestead in Greece kept a small fire burning in her honour. Now, when we sit in front of a cosy blaze in winter, or around a bonfire on the beach in summer, we feel warm and at peace with ourselves and others, and know that Hestia is near.

Healthy:  

You are at one with yoursylph, and so can form profound relationships with others. You study human nature and have a quick instinct for predicting how others will behave. You are discrete, sensitive, caring and empathetic.
You are a good listener, and others often come to you with their problems. You are a unifier and have a soothing, healing influence, harmonising groups and bringing people together. Loving and thoughtful, you are helpful even when it means going out of your way.
    You think deeply about complex ideas. While you enjoy the company of others, you also need time and space to be alone. You are approaching deep sylph-knowing and have the potential to be very wise. 
   

Uh oh:  

You sometimes feel that you have to be all good to be a worthy person. Beware of becoming a doormat. You tend towards martyrdom, and pretend to be totally unsylphish, denying aggressions and mixed motives, and servicing others in an atmosphere of resentment. You accommodate others too much, and lack the courage to stand up for yoursylph and your own needs. You don't have the drive to achieve your goals, and may become unfocused and unfulfilled.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become passive, repressed, and helpless. You disassociate from anything threatening, and eventually become disoriented, depersonalised and immobilised.

INO / LEUCOTHEIA (EE - no / loo - CO - thay - a)

Ino began life as a mortal queen. Her sister, Semele, had an affair with Hera's consort, Zeus, and gave birth to the god Dionysus. Frightened of Hera's wrath, Semele begged Ino to take Dionysus and bring him up as one of her own. Ino knew it wouldn't be easy bringing up a god-child, especially on top of looking after her two sons, two step-daughters, and difficult husband, but she agreed.

    As an adult Dionysus became the charismatic and powerful leader of an ecstatic religious cult. To the disapproval of the rest of her family, Ino became prominent in her adopted son's movement. During the orgiastic Dionysian rites she felt free from the demands and strictures of her day-to-day life.

One night, during a torch-light ritual on a cliff top, Ino worked hersylph into such an ecstatic frenzy that she leapt from the cliff into the sea. On the way down she inexplicably transformed into the sea Gooddess Leucotheia. From then on, her life was much more peaceful, and she spent her days weaving magic scarves of seafoam to give to shipwrecked sailors to buoy them up until they reached land.
    Her son Dionysus pops up briefly in Baubo's story.

Healthy:  

You are a comforter and sustainer, appreciated by others. You are adaptable and compliant and remain centred while experiencing a vibrant and enduring relationship with the world around you.
You are creative and have the powers of aesthetic response, communion and enfoldment. You appreciate beauty in all its forms. The intuitive, inward-looking aspect of your character is powerful. Your inner vision will lead to superior intellectual and emotional attainment.
   

Uh oh:  

You let others take advantage of your easygoing nature, and end up feeling victimised by their ingratitude and abuse. Complacency, inertia and a tendency to fall into ruts are weaknesses. You are lazy and look for magic solutions to solve problems without effort.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you feel feeble, helpless and ineffectual. Racked with sylph-contempt and sylph-hatred, tormented by your failure, you stop caring and follow your insane side into the depths. Emotional breakdown and personality fragmentation are ultimate possibilities.

IRIS (EYE - riss)

Iris is Gooddess of the rainbow, and harbinger of moisture and fertility. She is fleet-footed, with great multicoloured wings, and serves the other Gooddesses as a messenger.

    In the beginning neither mortal nor deity could see colour. Indeed, the concept of colour was not even invented. The world seemed black and white and everyone wondered why they felt so depressed.

The Gooddess Iris, seeking to remedy the melancholy around her, realised that light came in many wavelengths, and that if we could perceive these wavelengths in some way, the world would be a happier place.

After much research and experimentation she placed three chemical pigments in the photoreceptors of the retina of her own eyes. She found that when these pigments were acted upon by different wavelengths, they initiated nerve impulses which travelled along her optic nerve to her brain. The result was a glorious sensation that she named 'colour'.

Soon everyone, mortals and immortals alike, wanted pigments in their photoreceptors, and Iris obligingly installed them. Today colour vision is hereditary in the human race, and most people take it for granted.

    Sometimes when the weather is bleak and damp, Iris appears in the sky proudly trailing a multicoloured ribbon behind her to remind us of her great work.

Healthy:  

You are kind and compassionate. Your radiant smile flashes through the blackest clouds of upset or bad temper and those around you cannot help but be positively affected.
You are sympathetic, empathetic, and bring harmony wherever you go. You have a vivid imagination, an inventive mind, and a great productive capacity. You feel intensely and give vibrant expression to your feelings. This process may be stressful or violent, but it brings relief and calm like the aftermath of a storm. You find peace in knowing you are able to translate even negative feelings into something positive.
   

Uh oh:  

Beware of a lack of focus, a scattering of emotion, and living too much in your own mind.
    You desperately want to be liked and admired, and fear being inadequate or defective. You are un-assertive and others take advantage of your good nature. You bottle up tensions, letting them gradually build until they return to plague you in the form of anxiety and illness.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you start to wallow in a world of fantasy. You  despair of actualising yoursylph, and reproach yoursylph cruelly. You come to hate yoursylph, and unless you get the professional help you need you may go utterly mad.

KALYPSO (ka - LIP - so)

Kalypso is the daughter of the Sea Gooddess, Tethys.

    She lives alone on her own idyllic island and makes her home in a large cavern in a forest clearing at the centre of the island. The mouth of her cave is overhung with grapevines, and four glittering fountains flow just outside. Often she goes diving to visit her friends the octopusses who live in solitary undersea hollows around her islands.

    Now and then she is delighted to find that Tethys has washed a shipwrecked sailor or two onto her shore. She takes pleasure in nursing them back to health and keeping them on her island for a while as her lovers. When she tires of them she helps them make a raft and sends them on their way again.

Healthy:  

You have a lively mind: intuitive and sensitive, but also capable of analytical thought, and speculating about highly complex ideas. You want to understand everything, and are an independent, innovative thinker.
    You have a sylph-indulgent side, and enjoy pampering yoursylph. You like to surround yoursylph with beautiful things. Your senses are highly receptive and you respond intensely to colour, taste, texture, fragrance, and sound. You are peace-loving and like to be on your own. There is great containment and quietness in you, a place of groundedness from which you deal with the difficulties and threats of the outside world, and dream up important schemes for the future.
   

Uh oh:  

You are neglectful, irresponsible and scatty; careless with money and tactless with people. You lack the strength or drive to fully achieve your goals, and are disorganised and easily distracted, going off on tangents, and not seeing tasks to completion. You wallow in dreams and romanticism, withdrawing from the real world, becoming unproductive, and overly sylph-indulgent.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you feel ashamed of yoursylph and criticise yoursylph constantly. You feel alienated from others, and become increasingly strange, secretive, and unstable.

KIRKE (KER - kee)

Kirke (AKA Circe) is a great sorcerer. She is daughter of Helios, the sun, and neice of the moon Gooddess Selene and the dawn Gooddess Eos. She is sister of Pasiphae, and aunt of Medea. She  lives in a stone house in a forest clearing on her own island.

    Not uncommonly, sailors are shipwrecked there. Cold and starving, they are usually lured to Kirke's house by the inviting sight of smoke rising from a chimney above the trees.

After welcoming them in, Kirke, if she is in a mischievous mood, gives them drugged wine to turn them into farm animals, and drives them into pens in her back yard with all her other enchanted pigs, dogs, goats and sheep. But if she feels like a party she leaves them in human form and lets them stay with her for a few months, providing them with ample food and wine, enjoying their company, and taking one or two as lovers.

Healthy:  

You are strong, dynamic, and forthright. Uninhibited and outspoken, you often say what others wish they had the nerve to. Your wit, verve, and generosity make you popular and respected. Others fall easily under the spell of your personality.
    You have powerful appetites and enjoy life to the full. You love thrills and excitement, hate to be bored and are adept at making your own fun. Your life never lacks variety. You are accomplished and multi-talented. There is a strong creative urge within you, and you seek interesting channels for its expression.
   

Uh oh:  

You are egotistic, smug, tactless, and lack humility. You are a stirrer, deliberately creating situations of conflict to get the excitement you crave. Introspection provokes anxiety within you, and so you try to stay on the go, indulging in infantile escapism, never stopping for long enough to examine yoursylph too deeply.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you flee from yoursylph into compulsions, addictions and frantic activity. You act out impulses rather than dealing with anxiety, and lose control of yoursylph. You fall prey to erratic volatile moodswings, and eventually insanity.

MAIA (MY - a)

Maia is a shy independent Gooddess who lives alone in a shadowy cave, shunning the company of other immortals. She is an expert magician and the chambers of her cavern are full of steaming cauldrons on their tripods, in which she cooks up potions for nourishment, medicine, magic, and recreation.

    One evening she decided to to create a son. Into her largest cauldron she put animals' entrails, blood, and magic herbs. She stirred the mixture over a fire and chanted incantations all night. At the crack of dawn, she felt something dragging on the stick. She took a huge ladle and out of the steaming pot, she scooped a dripping red-faced baby. She named him Hermes.

    She washed him and put him to bed, but he wouldn't sleep or stay still. By midday he had taught himsylph to play the lyre; by evening he had set off to steal the god Apollo's cattle.

    Maia, of course, was delighted with this clever independent child who needed so little attention. To this day they are good friends.

Healthy:  

Individual, introspective, solitary, and sylph-aware, you have vigorous mental powers and are in touch with your feelings. From the stirrings of your mind's unconscious emerge new impulses of creativity and understanding. You love those occasions when insights, solutions and resolutions arise out of you in a great and unplanned AHA.
    You are practical and productive. You have mental and emotional riches in abundance and the sylph-discipline to bring your projects to fruition. You spark your own fire and generate the necessary energy within yoursylph to realise your projects.
   

Uh oh:  

You are a proud egocentric but you are also introverted, socially awkward, and sylph-conscious. You feel you are a misfit, cut off from the world. You are envious of those who seem more easygoing and able to fit in than yoursylph. Sometimes you are beset by a vast dark loneliness, and feel deeply misunderstood.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you often direct anger and guilt inwards, feeling that you are emotionally damaged, that everyone else is happier than you, and that your own life is full of pain. If you direct your anger outwards, you decide that everyone else is stupid and ignorant and that you alone possess the truth.

MEDEA (meh - DEE - a)

  Medea is the granddaughter of the sun. She is a cunning trickster and a notorious enchantress, as skilled in sorcery as her aunts Kirke and Pasiphae. As some carry a pocket knife, Medea takes a small black box of magic everywhere. It contains herbs, juices, and ointments which she uses for such purposes as protection from fire, sending enemies to sleep, and bringing the dead back to life.

    She took a handsome prince called Jason as her husband, and helped him kill his corrupt step-father, the King of Iolkos: She showed the King's daughters how a ram could be turned into a lamb by chopping it up, putting it in a cauldron, and boiling it with magic herbs. She further demonstrated the efficacy of this technique by using it to rejuvenate various members of the court. The King was eager to regain his lost youth and willingly submitted to his daughters giving him this treatment. However Medea deliberately gave them the wrong herbs and the experiment led only to his death.

    Medea and Jason took the throne and had two children. But it was not long before Jason began an affair with a young princess from another kingdom, named Glauke. Glauke was gentle and subservient and Jason found her relaxing compared to the charismatic and fearsomely clever Medea.

When Jason divorced her to marry Glauke, Medea was determined he would regret it. She sent her children to give a beautiful robe to Glauke as a wedding gift. But when the new bride put it on, the magic ointment which Medea had smeared it with burned her to death. Medea then killed her two children as a final act of vengeance and, in a chariot drawn by winged dragons, galloped away to her grandfather's palace in the sky.

Healthy:  

You enjoy adventure and love a challenge. You have a strong personality which you use to channel the creative energies of your environment.
    You enjoy solitude: Taking time for unconscious impulses to surface into consciousness is useful to you. It is at these times that you produce valuable original ideas. You are independent, creative, efficient, and highly individualistic. You have important goals and the determination to put them into practice. You know that no art or craft can reach its full flowering without discipline. You are hardworking and conscientious and are an example of spiritual determination to achieve your highest ideal.
   

Uh oh:  

You are proud and sylph-righteous. You have no patience with those who don't measure up to your expectations, and are often as unfairly harsh on yoursylph as on others.
    You sylphishly trample others in your hurry to attain your goals. You are obsessively concerned with proving your superiority. You are ruthless and hardhearted, and may have delusional ideas about yoursylph, feeling invincible, invulnerable, and omnipotent.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become increasingly brutal and reckless, finally destroying everything that does not conform to your will, becoming sociopathic, barbarous, even murderous.

MNEMOSYNE (mne - MOZ - in - ee)

Mnemosyne is the Gooddess of creativity and fertile memory. She is equally at home in the shadowy depths of the Underworld as in the sunny light of earth. When in the Underworld she rules over the River of Forgetfulness, because creativity brings a forgetting of worries and cares. When on Earth, she lives on the lushly forested Mt Helikon, presiding over the twin springs of inspiration - Hippokrene and Aganippe.

    Wanting to produce children, she borrowed Hera's consort Zeus as a lover for nine nights. Nine months later she gave birth to the nine muses. Their name means 'The Reminders'.

    Each of the muses represents a different area of art. Calliope presides over Epic poetry; Clio, history and lyre playing; Euterpe, lyric poetry and flute playing; Melpomene, Tragedy; Terpsichore, choral dancing; Erato, love poetry and hymns to the Gooddesses; Polyhymnia, sacred music and dancing; Urania, astronomy; and Thaleia, Comedy. Music is named after the muses.

Healthy:  

You are always capable of occupying yoursylph, and need never be bored. Whether you have many interests and skills or one very special talent, the drive to create is the primary force in your life. You have the enviable ability to create something lasting outside yoursylph, often from next to nothing. You are a lateral thinker and find unexpected solutions to problems. You appreciate beauty in all things and transform every experience into something valuable. It gives you great joy to feel the creative impulses you nurture begin to realise their potential.
   

Uh oh:  

You daydream. If something bores you, your mind wanders to more exciting things. You lack direction and drive. You find it impossible to work to a set routine. Or you produce constantly without taking time to regroup your inner forces, soak in the life around you, and gain the refreshment of rest.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become sylphish, thoughtless, and obsessed with your projects. You get so wrapped up in your work that you isolate people you need and become lonely, disillusioned and hermit-like.

NEMESIS (NE - me - siss)

Nemesis is Gooddess of justice and retribution. She is often seen as a winged giant armed with sword and scales. Her name means 'the distributor', and she is the one who metes out each mortal's share of joy and hardship.

She can be monstrous and ferocious, but also compassionate and generous. She makes an effort to chasten those who are over-fortunate and give to those who are underprivileged.

By those with guilty consciences, her strike is as feared as a bolt of lightning. Not surprisingly, the patriarchy have usually pictured her as a dark angel of the apocalypse.
   
Now and then we hear unseen wings beating, and know that Nemesis is near.

Healthy:  

Sometimes you are like a living whirlwind; cheering, scolding, organising, placating, making sure everything is running smoothly and according to plan. Your vital energy is forceful and you know that when an objective is kept in mind, progress can be made every day. You are constantly active, dreaming up ideas and actioning them.
You are strong, generous, and perceptive, able to provide emotional security for yoursylph and those around you. You have great integrity and, also because of your mercy and compassion, make a good mediator. You are a clear-headed vigorous thinker, and enjoy the stimulation of mental activity.
   

Uh oh:  

You drive yoursylph to do things you should postpone, or even cancel. You forget to relax and wear yoursylph out with exhaustion.
You need to be needed, and others may see you as hovering and meddling, interfering with their business under the guise of being a good friend. Beware of martyrdom, matronising others or feeling that, by giving, you are storing up merit.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you feel unappreciated and become manipulative, undermining others, playing on their guilt and weakness. As your resentment grows you increasingly strike out at those who don't respond as you wish, getting violent, maybe even murderous.

OMPHALE (om - FA - lay)

Omphale was born from the glittering water of Iardonos, a river that ran thick with gold. She founded the city of Lydia beside Iardonos and proclaimed hersylph Queen. Under her rule Lydia become powerful and prosperous, a spectacular metropolis where everyone wore clothes of spun gold and lived in golden houses.

    Omphale took the nearby mountain Tmolos as her consort and held a great wedding on his lushly forested slopes. She built hersylph a golden palace at his summit, and revelled in the view of her glorious city spread beneath her.

    In later years Omphale captured the well-known 'hero' Herakles and took him as a slave. She made him wear women's clothes and set him to work for her, cleaning and spinning, while she strode around her palace wearing his lion skin and carrying his club.

Healthy:  

You are determined, energetic, and autonomous. You have a forceful personality, and stand up for your wants and needs.
    You are not afraid of hard work, but also enjoy luxury and the pleasures of life. You abhor boredom and can breathe life into the dullest situation. Whatever you are involved in, business or pleasure, you give it your all. You are receptive to the world around you and there is much that you find exciting and invigorating. You are buoyant and jovial, full of fun, and always optimistic.
   

Uh oh:  

You have addictive tendencies and a poor relationship with your unconscious depths. You don't want to face up to negative feelings about yoursylph and others. You try to heighten stimulation and excitement by staying in perpetual motion, always distracting yoursylph with something fun and new, refusing to look too deeply inside yoursylph.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become sylph-serving, spoilt, manipulative, and abusive as you demand whatever you need to keep yoursylph busy and distracted. Aggressive lust, in its broadest sense, takes over your life, until your desire to possess and control spells your ruin.

PASIPHAE (PASS - i - fye)

Pasiphae is daughter of the sun, sister of the witch Kirke,  neice of the Gooddesses Selene and Eos, and aunt of Medea. From the moment she was born in a flare of solar rays, she glowed with an inner radiance as if she contained a fireball.

    She came down to earth to be Queen of the Island of Crete and took the mortal man Minos as her consort. As a wedding present, Poseidon, god of the ocean, sent the couple a prize white sea-bull. Day after day Pasiphae gazed infatuated at this bull as he paced the paddock and tossed his head. His skin shone with sweat in the sunlight and his muscles surged like water. The longer she watched him, the more she desired him. And so she conceived a plan. She constructed a hollow artificial cow, hid in it, and seduced him.

From this liaison she became pregnant, and gave birth to the Minotaur - a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Outraged, her husband seized the monster-child and locked it away in a labyrinth.

Pasiphae was skilled in herbalism and magic. In later years, Minos had many affairs, so she cast a spell on him so that when he reached orgasm, snakes, scorpions and millipedes came squirming from every orifice of his body. After Minos died she returned to her family's golden palace in the sky where she lived until she travelled with the other Gooddesses to New Zealand.

Healthy:  

You are brilliant, radiant, and full of joie de vivre. You have a deep creative and sensuous sylph-awareness. You know that pleasure is an essential aspect of aliveness, and are bright and passionate. You are full of ideas and know how to make your own fun. You also channel your passion into constructive projects, and allow anguish to fall away in order to touch the powers that lie deeper within. You know when to store energy and when to expend it. You are talented, ingenious, and productive.
 

Uh oh: 

You want to manipulate life by some sort of magic, and get things done as easily as possible. You are lazy, undisciplined, and decadent. You find it hard to say no to yoursylph, to deny yoursylph anything. But there is no satisfaction for your compulsive hungers because you take no responsibility for them.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you lose control. The passion of your inner fire drags you towards destruction, until it engulfs and devours your identity like the maw of a nuclear explosion.

PERSEPHONE (purr - SEFF - o - nee)

Persephone was picking flowers in a meadow when the earth started to shake and roar. A chasm opened in the ground, and out thundered Hades, King of the Underworld. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her down to his dark realm to be his Queen.

Persephone came to relish this role, and her husband was disconcerted to find she soon became an even greater and more fearsome deity than he. However Persephone's mother, the fertility Gooddess Demeter, was miserable in the upper world without her daughter, so Persephone agreed to spend every spring and summer with her mother and return to the Underworld for autumn and winter.

Now, when she is in the upper world she is a gentle, thoughtful young woman known as Kore. But when she goes back to the Underworld, where the spirits of the dead reside, she becomes Persephone the Destroyer. She is the mother of the Styx, the icy river that flows through the Underworld. Snake headed women are her bodyguards, and seductive Sirens are her minions on earth, luring luckless seafarers to their doom.

Every autumn Aphrodite sends her lover Adonis down to the Underworld in a wooden chest, and Persephone looks after the beautiful youth until spring comes round again.


Healthy:  

You gain strength from your knowledge and understanding. You are sylph-reliant, adaptable, determined, and energetic. Sensitive to different situations, you know when to be aggressive, and when to be restrained. You are goal-oriented, and efficient. You are also clever and calculating, knowing when to lie low. By combining intuitive insight and revelation with reasoned discipline, you achieve much.
   

Uh oh:  

You are egotistical and sylph-absorbed, wanting to impress others with your superiority. You try to fix things so that you are in control. You want others to be in awe of you. You may experience a sense of isolation, becoming involved in your own development to the exclusion of the world around you.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become obsessive about proving and improving yoursylph. You fall prey to delusions of grandeur, becoming narcissistic and sylph-centred. A split personality is an ultimate possibility.

PSYCHE (SY - kee)

A Queen was dying. She had one young daughter named Psyche - 'soul'. She wanted to make sure Psyche grew up to be a learned scholar, so in her will she asked that Psyche be sealed inside a vast dark castle with a huge library of books. This was done.

    Psyche's way was lit by torches carried by invisible hands, and invisible servants brought her bread and water. There were no windows or doors in this castle, but at the top of the highest tower was an opening that led out onto the roof, high above the earth.

    Psyche spent many hours reading in the library, but she also loved to climb out onto the roof and breathe in fresh air and gaze at the world below. Every day at dawn she watched as Eros, the winged cherub of love, flew overhead on his way to make his day's quota of mischief. Psyche had read much about his mother, Aphrodite, the sensuous Gooddess of pleasure and, as the years passed, her longing to escape the castle and meet her increased.

    One morning, as Eros flew particularly low overhead, Psyche jumped up and grabbed onto his leg. The cherub tried to shake her off, and then to scrape her off against treetops, but she held on, and cried, 'I won't let go, until you take me to your mother.' Eros had no choice but to fly back to Mt Olympus and introduce Psyche to Aphrodite, whereupon Psyche begged Aphrodite to take her as a disciple.

    Aphrodite, impressed and flattered by this determined princess, agreed. She spent 10 years introducing her to all the pleasures the world had to offer, and at the end of this time Aphrodite was so pleased with Psyche that she made her immortal.

    Psyche then returned to her castle, cut doors and windows in it so that light flooded in, and opened the library to everyone. She lived forever after as librarian to the immortals.

Healthy:  

You are happy in both the external world of objects and sensations, and in the inner world of feelings and ideas. You are a discoverer, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. You know that both intuition and cold, hard vision are necessary to growth. You are resourceful, sylph-possessed, and resolute, but you can be gentle and adaptable when appropriate.
    You are sensuous and sensual and enjoy luxury. You are capable of prolonged periods of hard work when necessary, but setting enough time aside for pleasure and relaxation will always be important to you.
   

Uh oh:  

You are shy. You keep people at arm's length, and consequently become lonely. You are unhappy and flee the responsibilities of relationships. Infantile escapism is a danger.
You are pious, intolerant, and dogmatic, defensively convincing yoursylph you are superior to others, when in fact you feel inferior. You are sylphish, demanding, and impatient when you don't get what you want.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you feel rejected and entirely shut off from others, and begin to suck yoursylph into the dark vortex of your own mind, where terrifying shadows lurk that ultimately drive you mad.

SELENE (se - LEE - nee)

Selene is Gooddess of the Moon. She is the sister of Eos the Dawn, and Helios the sun, and aunt to the Gooddesses Kirke and Pasiphae. Each night she yokes her team of winged white horses and drives them across the sky.

    Many millennia ago Selene worked every night of the year. She became exhausted and her normally bright and voluptuous disc of light faded to a dull sliver. One night she fell asleep at the reins. Her horses went out of control and crashed down from the sky into some trees.

The nature god Pan, who had admired Selene from afar for many centuries, found her lying wounded on the ground, her chariot broken around her. He wrapped her in sheepskins and carried her to a forest clearing, where he nursed her back to health. He made her promise to take one night of every month off, which she has done ever since.

    Selene's lover is a handsome shepherd called Endymion. From the moment she saw him tending his flocks on the hills she wanted him. She cast him into a deep sleep, gave him eternal youth, and carried him to a forest cave, where she set him gently down on a pile of leaves, so she would always be able to find him and make love to him at the end of her night's work.

Healthy:  

You are full of contradictions. Opposites, like light and dark, repose within your soul. You live your life by cycles, large and small. One minute outgoing and action-oriented, the next introverted and thoughtful; and hard-working and self-indulgent by turns. You need security and organise your life by sylph-imposed routines. All the contradictions inside you make sense within the context of your routines and cycles. Despite your changeability there is great stability in your life. One might say there is method in your madness.
You are ambitious streak, but you know that sensitivity is at times more important. You need periods of stillness. You are unsylphconscious and deeply receptive. Others feel comfortable in the sincere accepting light of your personality.
   

Uh oh:  

There is a rigidity in the way you believe things should be done that borders on narrow-mindedness. You are closed to new ideas, fixed in your own view of the world, excessively structured in your approach and unable to move with the tides of change. You are bound by fear of the unfamiliar.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, over-structured mental attitudes imprison you and you try to impose these ideas on others too. You lack adequate ways to express yoursylph and become emotionally blocked, leading to frustration and mental paralysis.

TETHYS (TETH - iss)

Tethys is Gooddess of the Ocean, protector of dolphins and sea monsters. She rules over gentle swells and violent tsunamis, over foaming surf and dark deeps, and carries a trident as a symbol of her sovreignty. She roars and moans, whispers and sings. Her relentless pounding wears away the hardest rock.

She has a violent temper that can flare at any time. She demands respect, and can wreak havoc if she doesn't get it. But she also sends rivers branching across the Earth, donating her life-giving moisture to communities all over the world. She loves to dive and play in the currents, and is patron Gooddess of summer beaches and aquatic sports.

Tethys is the mother of Kalypso.

Healthy:  

You have determination and willpower, and you achieve much. You are a stabilising nourishing influence in your environment and create warm bonds with others. Because of your strength and compassion you often find yoursylph in a protecting or leading role. Others respect and like you, and in return you are loyal and trustworthy. You often go out of your way to help others, but you value yoursylph and always ensure you have time and energy for your own personal pursuits.
All work and no play is not for you. You enjoy life and make the most of opportunities for pleasure.
   

Uh oh:  

You are demanding and tend to swamp others with the force and unpredictability of your moods. You have compulsive tendencies. You avoid looking too deep inside yoursylph and fail to plumb the depths of your soul. You find solitude dark, cold, and oppressive; and when you turn inwards you find thin ice and confusing reflections.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you feel drawn to engulf every outer experience and eat up your inner sylph out of a deep deadly hunger, a sense of negative emptiness. As your appetites increase, you become an avid consumer, an acquisitive materialist, and a sensation seeker. You try to ignore and suppress problems until, like the overwhelming violence of a burst dam, they flood your life, twice as dangerous as before.

THALEIA (tha - LAY - a)

Thaleia is one of Mnemosyne's  nine daughters. She is the Muse of Comedy, sometimes called the 'Lady of Masks'. Her name means 'Plenty' and wherever she goes, laughter and joy go with her. She lives with her mother and eight sisters on Mt Helikon by the twin springs of inspiration - Aganippe and Hippokrene.

Like her sisters she has the power to inspire whomever she pleases. Although her special department is comedy, her talents are many. She is a musician and poet. When she and her sisters sing, the sound seems to come from everywhere. It seeps up through the earth and echoes around the firmament. The stars, rivers and oceans stop still to listen and the mountains grow higher in rapture.

At night she and her sisters cloak themselves in mist and drift across the world sending swarms of dreams to mortals.

When we see great comedians at work, we know that they are blessed by Thaleia.

Healthy:  

You love people and good times. And with your lively imagination, quick wit, and pleasure-seeking propensities you are a wonderful companion. You are often uninhibited, flamboyant, and full of high spirits. You are charming, friendly, playful, and able to elicit strong emotional reactions from others. You create human, reciprocal and satisfying relationships. You make the most of life and live it to the full. You are clever, talented and productive, and capable of creative problem solving.
   

Uh oh:  

You dawdle and are easily distracted. You waste time and end up feeling that you have done much but achieved little. You joke and wisecrack, and throw yoursylph into new projects in order to avoid the need for introspection.
    If you do not let the Gooddesses into your life, you become overly image conscious, leading to fragile sylph-esteem. You walk away from conflicts, and sweep problems under the rug, desperately trying to avoid sylph-examination, until one day you realise your escapist world of fantasy and indulgence is empty and meaningless, and you are plunged into deepest despair.