The goddess Persephone was the Greek goddess of innocence and receptivity and Queen of the Underworld. She was the daughter of Demeter, Greek goddess of the harvest and Zeus, ruler of all the Olympian deities. During her childhood, she was known as Kore, meaning, the maiden.

She had an ideal lifestyle, being raised by a mother who was known as the nurturing spirit, and a powerful father. She was able to play with her fathers other daughters, Athena and Aphrodite. Very well-behaved and complacent, she was a parents dream. Many women, today, can relate to such good behavior, because such women are or were very good children as well.

The Goddess Persephone Lives Two Lives
The life of the goddess Persephone took quite a turn when she was taken to the Underworld by its king, Hades. Kidnapped, hungry and refusing to eat anything Hades offered, Persephone secretly took a few pomegranate seeds and ate them. Hades soon discovered this and used it as the bargaining chip that would ultimately win him Persephones presence in the Underworld six months out of each year.

Many women today will find Persephone to be their goddess archetype. If this is you, you should begin researching the life of the Goddess Persephone because it is so rich with stories, myth and important information about her personality. You can stand to learn a lot from Persephone.

Goddess books are great resources for learning about goddesses. You can learn all about your favorite goddesses by reading a few books that detail the lives and the myths surrounding these most amazing deities. Chances are, you will find a few goddesses to which you can whole-heartedly relate.

While goddesses are divine, they still possess many of the traits that regular mortals do. Goddesses are known to be rebellious, generous, nurturing, sexual, and conceited. Of course, these are just a few of the traits that can be used to describe many of the Greek, Egyptian and Celtic goddesses that have lived over the years.

Goddess Books Can Teach You a Lot
Today, many people read goddess books, both as a leisure activity and also as a learning experience. Each person has a goddess archetype. This goddess is the one who most closely resembles you in personality and mentality. From your archetype, you will be able to learn a lot about your own strengths and weaknesses and such knowledge will ultimately make you a stronger person!

The goddess Hecate is one of the minor Greek goddesses, and you may remember her from the play Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare. Hecate was known as the goddess of many different things, depending on the story or play you are reading. Some refer to her as the goddess of the household. Others call her the protector of children. She was also known as the goddess of the crossroads. Then there are the stories about her being the goddess of witchcraft. This is how she is depicted in Macbeth.

The goddess Hecate is often included in the stories with the Goddess Demeter and her daughter the goddess Persephone. If you remember the stories, Persephone was abducted by Hades and taken to the Underworld. Hecate witnessed the abduction and told Demeter what had happened. Persephone ate a piece of fruit because she was hungry. This cursed her to have to spend half of each year in the Underworld with Hades for the rest of her life.

The goddess Hecate helped Persephone to adjust to the Underworld by becoming her friend and comforting her. Hades was happy with Hecate for this and gave her permission to come into his kingdom any time she liked. Zeus was also very fond of Hecate. He gave her the ability to be able to grant any wish she wanted to humans or to use magic for trickery on those she did not like.

Survival of the Goddess Hecate
Hecate often kept to herself in the stories. She also was called the Queen of the Night, and hellacious creatures and ghosts sometimes were seen walking alongside her. She looked after the dying and helped them with their journey into the spirit world when they passed on. She was also said to help prepare souls to come back into the world in their next life.

The goddess Tara was one of the Greek goddesses, and was known as the goddess of peace and protection. In some of the Greek goddess books, Tara is said to have brought gifts to humans of peace, good health and a long life. There is also a Tara among the Buddhist goddesses, who was called the enlightened one and brought wisdom and compassion.

The goddess Tara is actually one of the universal goddesses worshipped and celebrated by many different religions and cultures. She is commonly depicted as the mother of the earth, full of wisdom. She is also represented as a fierce protector and giver of life. The name Tara means star in the ancient Sanskrit. There are many Tibetan statues of this goddess.

The goddess Tara is sometimes called the green goddess and other times called the white goddess. These names show two different sides of her personality. The green was the protector, who could terrify those causing harm. The white was the woman who represented peace, purity and spiritualism.

Cultures That Celebrate the Goddess Tara
Tara is talked about in the mythology books from many different cultures. As mentioned above, she was celebrated by the Greeks, Hindus, and Buddhists, including the Tibetans. She is also found in Egyptian myths and is called IshTar, the one who had her divine people bring wisdom to the common people by marrying them. You can also find signs of her name in South American lore, where she was called Tarahumara, the mother goddess.

The Roman goddess Ceres is the Italian representation of the Greek goddess Demeter. Both women were the goddesses of harvest or agriculture, but the names are different in ancient Roman and Greek mythology. Other gods who were the same, but with different names in each of the two religions included Zeus (Greek), Jupiter (Roman), and Hercules (Greek) and Heracles (Roman). It was common for Roman myths to be based on the Greek ones, but with different names for the gods and goddesses.

In the stories of Roman mythology, the Roman goddess Ceres was the daughter of Saturn and Ops. She was also Jupiters sister and she had a daughter named Proserpine, who was fathered by Jupiter. Jupiter is the Roman version of Zeus, as mentioned above, and Proserpine is the Roman equivalence of the goddess Persephone.

The story of the Roman goddess Ceres and her daughter is almost identical to the Greek story of Demeter and her daughter. The Greek god of the Underworld, Hades, is called Pluto in the Roman mythology. When Pluto took Proserpine, Ceres went to look for her. She soon found out that Jupiter actually gave Pluto permission to kidnap and marry their daughter. She grew very angry and made all of the plants stop growing, which caused a severe famine.

Story of Roman Goddess Ceres
Jupiter soon realized everyone was starving and worked out a deal with Pluto to let his daughter go back to her mother. Pluto was sneaky, however, and fed Proserpine a piece of fruit before she could leave. She was unaware that if you eat in the Underworld, you cannot leave. Jupiter worked out a negotiation to allow Proserpine to return to her mother for the spring and summer, but to go back to Pluto every winter. In Roman mythology, Ceress sadness of missing her daughter during the winter is the reason crops cannot grow at that time.