In the 1728 version of the poem, the goddess Dulness notes that " Time himself stands still at her command ,/ Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land " ( Dunciad 1728, i, 69 – 70 ).

The story is that of the goddess Dulness choosing a new Avatar.

In his Dunciad Variorum of 1732, he makes John Rich the angel of the goddess Dulness:

The poem celebrates the goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Shadwell is the spiritual son of Flecknoe, an obscure Irish poet of low fame, and he takes his place as the favorite of the goddess Dulness.

Pope takes this idea of the personified goddess of Dulness being at war with reason, darkness at war with light, and extends it to a full Aeneid parody.

Additionally, Pope's goddess of Dulness begins the poem already controlling state poetry, odes, and political writing, so Theobald as King of Dunces is the man who can lead her to control the stage as well.

The poem opens, in fact, with the goddess Dulness noting that " Still Dunce the second rules like Dunce the first ," which is an exceptionally daring reference to George II, who had come to the throne earlier in the year.

Dulness, the goddess, appears at a Lord Mayor's Day in 1724 and notes that her king, Elkannah Settle, has died.

The goddess Dulness appears to him in a fog and drops a sheet of Thule ( a poem by Ambrose Philips that was supposed to be an epic, but which only appeared as a single sheet ) on the fire, extinguishing it with the poem's perpetually wet ink.

The story is that of the goddess Dulness choosing a new Avatar.

Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while " some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, derived from the Old Irish Samuin meaning " summer's end ".

Athenaeus ( writing in the 1st or 2nd century BCE, and drawing on the etymological speculation of Apollodorus of Athens ) notes that the red mullet is sacred to Hecate, " on account of the resemblance of their names ; for that the goddess is trimorphos, of a triple form ".

" Simek notes that the second part of the valkyrie name Geiravör may be identical with the name of the goddess Vör ( and would therefore mean " spear-goddess "), or simple be identical with a frequently found suffix appearing in personal names.

Scholar Jesse Byock notes that the goddess Skaði is also associated with winter and hunting, and that the episode in Volsunga saga involving the male Skaði, Sigi, and Breði has been theorized as stemming from an otherwise lost myth.

Davidson also notes a further connection between fertility and apples in Norse mythology ; in chapter 2 of the Völsunga saga when the major goddess Frigg sends King Rerir an apple after he prays to Odin for a child, Frigg's messenger ( in the guise of a crow ) drops the apple in his lap as he sits atop a mound.

Further, Davidson notes that the potentially Germanic goddess Nehalennia is sometimes depicted with apples and parallels exist in early Irish stories.

Davidson further links the motif of the ship associated with Nehalennia with the Germanic Vanir pair of Freyr and Freyja, as well as the Germanic goddess Nerthus and notes that Nehalennia features some of the same attributes as the Matres.

Enheduanna's authorship raises the issue of female literacy in ancient Mesopotamia ; in addition to Enheduanna royal wives are known to have commissioned or perhaps composed poetry and the goddess Nindaba acted as a scribe: As Leick notes " to some extent the descriptive epithets of Mesopotamian goddesses reveal the cultural perception of women and their role in ancient society ".

and the three seasons of the ancient Greek year, and notes that " he matriarchal goddess may well have reflected the three stages of a woman's life.

He explicitly connects the goddess to Hekate but notes that Argive practice makes for an interesting comparison with Eilioneia, or the birth goddess Eileithyia.

Both the festival and the goddess had become obscure even to the Romans of the Late Republic ; Varro ( mid-1st century BC ) notes that few people in his day even know her name.

Another contemporary record notes that the " goddess of sovereignty, of her own accord, selected him as her husband, having in succession discarded all other princes.

Then a goddess, sometimes accompanied by a god notes the devastation and weeps bitterly with a dirge about the destructive storm and an entreats to the gods to return to the sanctuaries.

The Anauroch supplement notes that Selûne is known to the Bedine as Elah, their moon goddess.

Bede notes that Hrēþmōnaþ occurs between Solmōnaþ ( February ), so named due to the offerings of cakes to the gods during the month, and Ēostermōnaþ ( April ), named after the goddess Ēostre.

Those famous lines of the Greek Anthology with which a fading beauty dedicates her mirror at the shrine of a goddess reveal a wise attitude: `` Venus, take my votive glass, Since I am not what I was, What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see ''.

Since some of the Roman months were named in honor of divinities, and as April was sacred to the goddess Venus, the Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her equivalent Greek goddess name Aphrodite ( Aphros ), or from the Etruscan name Apru.

In another version of her origin, she was considered a daughter of Zeus and Dione, the mother goddess whose oracle was at Dodona.

Hephaestus was overjoyed at being married to the goddess of beauty and forged her beautiful jewelry, including the cestus, a girdle that made her even more irresistible to men.

Whereas Bachofen saw the switch to paternity on Athena's behalf as an increase of power, Freud on the contrary perceived Athena as an " original mother goddess divested of her power ".

In honor of her memory, he asked the Senate to deify her as a goddess, and authorised the construction of a temple to be built in the Roman Forum in her name, with priestesses serving in her temple.

Amethystos prayed to the gods to remain chaste, a prayer which the goddess Artemis answered, transforming her into a white stone.

* In the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess uses " ambrosian oil " as perfume, " divinely sweet, and made fragrant for her sake.

Alcaeus himself seems to underscore the difference between his own ' down-to-earth ' style and Sappho's more ' celestial ' qualities when he describes her almost as a goddess ( as cited above ), and yet it has been argued that both poets were concerned with a balance between the divine and the profane, each emphasising different elements in that balance.

After seven days and nights in agony, Alcmene stretched out her arms and called upon Lucina, the goddess of childbirth ( the Roman equivalent of Eileithyia ).

After Andromeda's death, as Euripides had promised Athena at the end of his Andromeda, produced in 412 BCE, the goddess placed her among the constellations in the northern sky, near Perseus and Cassiopeia ; the constellation Andromeda, so known since antiquity, is named after her.

When the Olympian deities overtook the older deities of Greece and she was born of Metis ( inside Zeus who had swallowed the goddess ) and " re-born " through the head of Zeus fully clothed, Athena already wore her typical garments.

A poem of Callimachus to the goddess " who amuses herself on mountains with archery " imagines some charming vignettes: according to Callimachus, at three years old, Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin ; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo ; to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer ; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt ; to have sixty " daughters of Okeanos ", all nine years of age, to be her choir ; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested.

In Roman mythology, Diana ( lt. " heavenly " or " divine ") was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals.

It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as ' serpent power '.

Because of Skuld's lack of magic power, Noble Scarlet lacked the full unequivocal obedience an angel must have for her goddess.

Between the eighth to the sixth centuries El became identified with Yahweh, Yahweh-El became the husband of the goddess Asherah, and the other gods and the divine messengers gradually became mere expressions of Yahweh's power.

Drow society is primarily matriarchal, with priestesses of their evil spider goddess Lolth ( sometimes spelled Lloth ) in the highest seats of power.

Amalthea's skin, or that of her goat, killed and skinned by the grown Zeus, became the protective Aegis in some traditions, a vivid enough metaphor for the transfer of power to this Olympian god from that of the goddess who preceded his cult.

* Xochiquetzal is a goddess of sexual power, patroness of prostitutes and artisans involved in the manufacture of luxury items.

The yoni is the creative power of nature and represents the goddess Shakti.

Her associations with hawks, lions, and the very stone of the wild, mountainous Anatolian landscape, suggest her as mother of the land and its wild, untrammeled nature, with power to dominate, moderate or soften its latent ferocity, and control its potential threats to a settled, civilised life ; thus, her enrollment as a protective goddess of the state by Anatolian elites, possibly concurrent with some form of ruler-cult.

At the same time, her power " transcended any purely political usage and spoke directly to the goddess ' followers from all walks of life ".

Indicative of the power exercised by Tethys, one myth relates that the prominent goddess of the Olympians, Hera, was not pleased with the placement of Callisto and Arcas in the sky, as the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, so she asked her nurse Tethys to help.

Depending on local climate, the transfer of power between the winter goddess and the summer goddess is celebrated any time between Là Fhèill Brìghde ( 1 February ) at the earliest, Latha na Cailliche ( 25 March ), or Bealltainn ( 1 May ) at the latest, and the local festivals marking the arrival of the first signs of spring may be named after either the Cailleach or Brìghde.

The cornucopia became the attribute of several Greek and Roman deities, particularly those associated with the harvest, prosperity, or spiritual abundance, such as personifications of Earth ( Gaia or Terra ); the nymph Maia ; and Fortuna, the goddess of luck, who had the power to grant prosperity.

Retrieved September 1, 2012, from link was a goddess associated with concepts of fertility, beauty, and female sexual power, serving as a protector of young mothers and a patroness of pregnancy, childbirth, and the crafts practised by women such as weaving and embroidery.

Mama Quilla ( Quechua: Mama Killa or Mama Kilya ), in Inca mythology and religion, was the third power and goddess of the moon.

" Elsewhere at Edfu, for example, Nephthys is a goddess who gives the Pharaoh power to see " that which is hidden by moonlight.

Sekhmet is the subject of " Lionheart " a song about the goddess by the symphonic power metal band, Amberian Dawn from their The Clouds of Northland Thunder album.

Eventually, her position as patron and protector of Lower Egypt led to her being identified with the more substantial goddess Mut, whose cult had risen to power with that of Amun, and eventually being syncretized with her as Mut-Wadjet-Bast.

Maat was the goddess of harmony, justice, and truth represented as a young woman, sitting or standing, holding a was scepter, the symbol of power, in one hand and an ankh, the symbol of eternal life, in the other.

The connection between Sirius and a dog may reflect the stars association with the destructive power of the goddess, universally symbolised by various predators of feline or canine origin ( lions, tigers, panthers, wolves and hunting dogs in particular ).

At the top of the Hindu philosophy is the formless, undefined Brahman, from whom / which come the different forms and deities, the foremost of which is the Trimurti: Brahma ( the creator ), Vishnu ( the sustainer ) and Shiva ( the destroyer ), and their individual ' Shakti ' ( commonly defined as their wives, but also goddesses in their own right ): Saraswati the goddess of learning, Lakshmi the goddess of all forms of wealth, and Parvati ( also known as Durga, Shakti, Ambika ) the goddess of courage and power.