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.