30. ASTARTE

      "And now, as the night was senescent,
       And Star-dials pointed to morn-
       As the star dials hinted of morn-
       At the end of our path a liquescent
       And nebulous lustre was born,  
       Out of which a miraculous crescent
       Arose with a duplicate horn-
       Astarte's bediamonded crescent
       Distinct with its duplicate horn.
              -- Edgar Allan Poe, Ulalume (1847)

                                                       the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, Iraq (570 BCE.)
     Astarte (pronounced : Astarté) is one of the oldest forms of the Goddess in the Middle east, with shrines dating back to the Neolithic, in the ancient Phoenician cities of Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos (in present-day Lebanon), Syria, and the island of Cyprus. She is related to the Sumerian and Assyrian / Akkadian / Babylonian Goddesses, Inanna and Ishtar, respectively, and inspired the later Egyptian worship of Isis, and the Greco-Roman Venus-Aphrodite. Her sacred animals include the bull (whose horns she wears as a headdress), horse, dove, sphinx, sparrow, and  lion. Her sacred flora includes the myrtle, rose, and apple. 

                                                 detail of the Ishtar Gate
     "Astarte ruled all the Spirits of the Dead, who lived in Heaven wearing bodies of light, visible from Earth as Stars. She is the Mother of All Souls, with crescent horns, the Moon surrounded by her Star Children, to whom she gave their "astral" starry bodies. Occultists still speak of the astral body as an invisible double, having forgotten the word's original connotation of starlight."1 
     Thus we re-establish a link defining our Souls as Stardust, and the Body of the Living Goddess as the Starry Firmanent (a.k.a. Heaven) (some 2,300 years before the Old Testament colonized Heaven as strictly Jehovah's domain). Her earthy presence governs the Generation of Life, i.e. "that which issues forth from the womb." An image of Astarte, carved in relief, in gold, appears naked and winged, holding a lotus flower in each hand (the Egyptian blue lotus was revered for its medicinal properties and as a spiritual sacrament, and is a symbol of longevity and immortality) (a 2,000 year-old lotus seed recently taken on a space voyage is rumored to have sprouted!).

     Often depicted with lions at her feet and serpents encircling her waist, Astarte rules the "feminine planets"; Venus (represented by a star within a circle (symbol of the Wiccan faith)), the Moon, and the Earth, and is traditionally a Goddess (and sacred courtesan!) of love, wanton sexuality, fertility, and (distastefully) war (She  presides over "the little Death" (the post-orgasmic state) and escorts Souls to the Great Beyond ("the Big D").

     In Phoenician mythology, while sacredly "wandering", Astarte finds a star fallen from the sky (a meteorite) and consecrates it at Tyre. A stone is said to be "the epiphany of her Presence, and cone-shaped stones or obelisks stood in all her temples."2 Further, "the image of the divinity became a simple white cone or pyramid" and "her coins were stamped with an image of the sacred cone, richly decorated, standing in a temple between two sphinxes as a symbol of Earth's safety."3 A cone-shaped stone? Sounds like an egg! In future generations, Astarte flew north with her basket,  morphing into the Saxon Goddess of Spring, Ostara (a.k.a. Easter), along with her coney-sidekick, the White Rabbit (a multi-cultural symbol of magic and fertility).

     She's not all-peace-love-and-rainbows, however, dramatizing her-quick-to-arouse Shadow-side, Babylonian underworld myth recounts the tale of a vengeful Ishtar, threatening to "bring up the dead to eat the living." And there's no denying the trace of the vampiric on the face of The Queen of the Night, a Mesopotamian terra-cotta relief (originating in southern Iraq, dated 1800 - 1750 BCE.). The large relief portrays a bejeweled Astarte / Inanna / Ishtar, in her underworld form, as Ereshkigal / Lilith. She possesses wing and talons, hovers over supine lions and is flanked by owls, and holds a rod and ring of Justice, symbols of her Divinity.
     Finally, I had only to consult the Barbara Walker Tarot deck's description of the seventeenth card of the Major Arcana, The Star, to gain insight :  
     "A naked woman pours water from two vessels simultaneously into a stream and onto the Earth. Overhead, a large star shines, attended by seven smaller stars. The two feminine elements of earth and water unite in an icon of the Goddess. Her personal priestesses are star-souls, the seven sisters, the Pleiades, or Pillars of Wisdom. The star means renewal of fertility, release of the waters of regeneration, blessings poured out onto the World or within the Soul." 

     Perhaps due to, and in keeping with, her Surprise Entrance within my Soul, on that holy (star-crossed!) evening, "Blessings!" has long become my preferred ritual salutation, greeting the comings and goings of friends and strangers, birthdays and holidays...........

1 Walker, Barbara, The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
2 Baring, Anne, and Cashford, Jules, The Myth of the Goddess
3 Johnson, Buffie, The Lady of the Beasts