Issue 4 - Autumn 2007

Eating the Flesh of the Goddess: Demeter and the “Bread of Life”

by Harita Meenee

Two stand foremost among humans:
Goddess Demeter—call her Earth if you like—
who nourishes mortals with solid food;
the other one came later, Semele’s son,
who discovered the liquor of the grape,
and brought it to mortals, giving
the poor fellows surcease of sorrow…[1]
Euripides, Bacchae

The Archetype of the Womb - Part II

by Theresa C. Dintino

Womb Ovens

Fascinating artifacts depicting beliefs about the Archetype of the Womb are bread ovens created in the shape of a pregnant human uterus, images of female hips as wide, encircling alchemical ovens and temples of worship that contain bread ovens as a focal point.

Not Right: Part I 

the Modern Failure to Recognise the Iconology of the Palaeolithic Female Figures and Figurines, Viewed in the Light of Insanity

by Michael Bland

by Geraldine Charles

She condemned him
To Hunger —
But infinite, insatiable Hunger,
The agony of Hunger as a frenzy.

From Tales from Ovid, Ted Hughes 

by Tiziana Stupia

In western Sicily, perched high on a steep mountain called Erice, once stood a magnificent and illustrious temple dedicated to the Goddess of Love, known successively as Astarte by the Phoenicians, Aphrodite by the Greeks, and Venus by the Romans. This temple stood for over a thousand years and a sacred fire always burnt from its enclosure, so brightly that sailors used it as a guiding beacon. It was here that the Priestesses of Venus served the Goddess with their bodies throu