BAALAT: ('The Lady') Phoenician general name for a goddess (as Baal, 'Lord', was for a god), particularly of a town or locality; e.g. the Baalat of Byblos, who overlaps with the Egyptian HATHOR; she is portrayed with a disc-and-horns headdress. See also BELTIS. BAAU: Phoenician. Personified primordial substance, and night. Mother of the gods. The Phoenician creation legend calls her the wife of the wind god Kolpia and the mother of Aion ('Life') and Protogonos ('Firstborn'). See also BAU. BABELAH: Babylonian. Goddess personifying Babylon (also in the Hebrew Bible). Regarded by Moslems as the personification of black magic. Some connection with TIAMAT. BACHUE: Colombia. Water goddess, protectress of vegetation and harvests. BADHBH, BADB: ('Scald-crow') Irish war goddess, wife of Net, war god; daughter of ERNMAS and Delbaeth and sister of MACHA, MORRIGAN and ANU. In some contexts, Anu, Badhbh and Macha appear as a Triple Goddess of Fate, collectively known as the Morrigan. Badhbh was known in Gaul as CAUTH BODVA. BAHU: ('Abundant') Hindu. The Creative Mother, seen as the constellation Leo or the star Denebola. BALTIS: see DIONE. BANANA-MAIDEN, THE: Celebes. Represents the transitory principle, in contrast to her sister the Rock-Maiden, representing the durable. BANBHA: Irish, one of the three queens of the Tuatha De Danann, daughters of the Dagda, who asked that Ireland be named after them. Wife of Mac Cuill, Son of the Hazel, 'whose god was the sea '. According to one version, she was the first woman who found Ireland before the Flood; according to another, she came over with CESARA. She told Amergin: 'I am older than Noe; on a peak of a mountain was I in the Flood.' (The Witches Goddess page 33.) BANSHEE: (Bean sidhe, 'Woman Fairy') Irish. Attached to old Irish families ('the O's and the Mac's'), she can be heard keening sorrowfully near the house when a member of the family is about to die. Still very much believed in, and heard. We have heard her ourselves in Co. Wexford; next day the neighbours would be asking each other whom the Banshee had been crying for, and finding out who had in fact died during the night. One of our witches, born and raised in Co. Donegal, has a Banshee attached to his family and has heard her often at the appropriate times. BAST, BASTET: Egyptian cat goddess of Bubastis in the Delta as early as the 2nd Dynasty, about 3200 BC; when Bubastis was the capital in the 22nd Dynasty, about 950 BC, she became a national deity. Originally lion-headed, she represented the beneficent power of the Sun, in contrast to SEKHMET who personified its destructive power. Cats were domesticated very early by the Egyptians, being valued as snake-destroyers (the Delta in particular was infested with snakes). They became much loved, and sacred, often being carefully mummified at death; Bubastis had a huge cat cemetery. (One Roman visitor to Bubastis who unwisely killed a cat was lynched by the horrified citizens.) One tradition said Bast accompanied by the Sun god Ra's 'boat of a million years' on its daily journey through the sky, and at night fought Ra's enemy, the serpent Apep. She was said to be Ra's daughter (or sister) and wife, bearing him the lion-headed god Maahes. A kindly goddess of joy, music aud dancing; her rituals included light-hearted barge processions and orgiastic ceremonies. She also protected men against contagious diseases and evil spirits. Like SEKHMET (whom, as other-self, she sometimes overlaps) she became wife of Ptah of Memphis; their son Nefertum completing the Memphis Triad. She is depicted as a cat-headed woman, carrying a sistrum and basket, or as a whole cat. Often, in either form, there are kittens at her feet. Her city of Bubastis is mentioned as Pi-beseth in Ezekiel xxx: 17. BASULI: Hindu. An aboriginal Goddess of Orissa, represented in the Kandagir caves as standing nude on a lotus. BAU, BOHU, BAHU, GUR: Chaldaean and Assyro-Babylonian primeval goddess, the Dark Waters of the Deep. Mother of the Water god Ea (Enki). Later regarded as the wife of the irrigation god Ningirsu (Ninurta); their marriage was celebrated at the Babylonian New Year, at the end of harvest. Name also sometimes given to the Earth goddess GA-TUM-DUG. See also BAAU. BAUBO: Ptolemaic Egyptian. A fertility figure depicted displaying her genitals in the attitude of a SHEILA-NA-GIG. Baubos were found in women's rooms, apparently connected with a Bubastis women's fecundity and childbirth cult. BEAN-NIGHE ('Washing Woman'): Scottish and Irish. Haunts lonely streams washing the bloodstained garments of those about to die. A Bean-Nighe is said to be the spirit of a woman who has died in childbirth, fated to act thus until the day she would have died normally. BEFANA: ('Epiphany') Italian witch-fairy who flies her broomstick on Twelfth Night to come down chimneys and bring presents to children. BELILI: An early Sumerian Underworld goddess, subordinate to ERESHKIGAL. Also a goddess of the Moon and of love. Sister and Wife of Tammuz. See also BELTIS. BELISMA: British and Continental Celtic lake or river goddess. Ptolemy gives her name to the River Ribble in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Equated by the Romans with MINERVA. BELIT-ILANIT: Chaldaean goddess of love, who draws men and women together. Erotic, kind, and peaceful. An evening star goddess. BELIT-ILl: Assyro-Babylonian protectress of newborn babies. Also called Nintud. BELIT-SHERI, NIN-EDIN: ('Lady of the Wilderness') Assyro-Babylonian scribe goddess, who sat with ERESHKIGAL in the Underworld and kept the records of the dead. BELLONA: Roman battle goddess, wife or sister of Mars. She had a shrine at York. Festivals: 24 March (Dies Sanguinis, the Day of Blood) and 3 June. BELTIS: ('The Lady') Assyro-Babylonian, originally Sumerian. Wife of Bel, of which the name is a feminine form; she thus overlaps BAALAT, and also BELILI, BELIT-ILI and BELIT-SHERI. Variously a goddess of the Moon, of love, of the planet Venus, of the Underworld, of wells and springs, and of trees. Invoked when a building was completed. Depicted full-face, heavily built especially the hips, almost naked, cupping her breasts with her hands and wearing a fan-shaped headdress. BENDIS: Greek, Thracian Hellespont. A Moon goddess, wife of the Sun god Sabazius. Worshipped with orgiastic rites. Thracians made her popular in Attica, and in 430/429 BC her cult became a state ceremonial in Athens, with torch-races at the Piraeus. BENE: Apparently a Carthaginian name for VENUS, applied to their own TANIT. Durdin-Robertson (Goddesses ofChaldaea, p.138) points out the similarity to the Irish word bean (woman). Other similarities include tine (Carthaginian) and teine (Irish) for fire, and the gods Baal (Carthaginian), Bel or Beli (Welsh) and Balor (Irish). Bealtaine (the fire of Balor) may well have a Carthaginian root, or at least a common source. [BACK]       [NEXT] This document can be re-published only as long as no information is lost or changed, credit is given to the author, and it is provided or used without cost to others. ©1987 Janet & Stewart Farrar