Amaterasu: She is the Sun Goddess of Japan. "Of all the religions currently practiced by significant numbers of people, the only one whose chief divinitiy is female is Japanese Shinto, based on the worship of the sun goddess Amaterasu ('great shining heaven'). In her simple shrines...Amaterasu is honored as the ruler of all deities, as the guardian of Japan's people, and as the symbol of Japanese cultural unity. Her emblem, the rising sun, still flied on Japan's flag."

The main story of Amaterasu is about the Goddess fleeing to a cave (after many stressful occurance). She refuses to emerge, and the world plunges into darkness. "The shaman Uzume, goddess of merriment, finally took matters into her hands. She turned over a washtub, climbed on top, and began dancing and singing and screaming bawdy remarks. Soon the dance became a striptease. When she had shed all her clothes, Uzume began dancing so wildly and obscenely that the eight million gods and goddesses started to shout with delight." Amaterasu is very curious and cracks the cave door open. When she does, she spies her own reflection in a mirror (placed outside the cave by the gods and goddesses) and is so dazzled by her own beauty that the others take the opportunity to open the cave door all the way and bring her back out to light the world again.

Aphrodite: the ancient Greek Goddess of love. Well known by many, She isn’t originally Greek, but was an ancient earth goddess of the eastern Mediterranean. She was “born” in the Greek myth from the “foam” of her father Uranus’ castrated penis, in the ocean. Her name “aphros” means “seafoam”. While she is famous for being a love goddess, I wanted to focus on the seafoam element, and used colours to represent that.

Baba Yaga: A Crone Goddess, a "Wild Woman of the Woods" of the Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe. She is about the harvest, the autumn, the forest, the hermit in the woods, the archetypal wise woman who works with animals and plants, who lives uninhibited and free of worldly desires.
I have two Baba Yaga colourways - "blue" and "gold". Blue is more a focus on the earth and forest and water sides of her landscape. Gold is to to reflect the autumn harvest side.

Bast: Bast "originated in the Nile delta, but by 930 B.C.E., the power of Bast was acknowledged by all Egyptians, even those a thousand miles south of her original home. At first she was a lion goddess of the sunset, symbolizing the fertilizing force of the sun's rays. Later her image became tamer: she became a cat carrying the sun, or a cat-headed woman who bore on her breastplate the lion of her former self. Bast ruled pleasure and dancing, music and joy. At the city of Bubastis ('house of Bast'), the center of her worship, great celebrations were held.... As part of Bast's worship, Egyptians honored live cats....When they died, the cats were mummified and buried in the vast cat cemetery at Babastis."

Bisal-Mariamna: Bismal is a Sun Goddess in India. The "Shakti of sunlight in Mysore, India, is symbolized by a brass pot full of water called the Kunna-Kannadi or 'eye mirror'. Pepper leaves and coconut flowers are put into this pot; a small metal mirror leans against it. One of seven sister goddesses, Bismal-Mariamna is worshiped in an unroofed shrine into which sunlight pours."

Blodewedd: The flower Maiden Goddess of Welsh myths isn't a terribly sweet gal - she was "made from nine kinds of wildflowers....(piling) blossom upon blossom to create 'Flowerface'. The beautiful Blodewedd was also treacherous." Blodewedd was created to be the wife of Welsh hero Llew Llaw (who could only die by a certain, unusual method), and so she sets out to perform/trick Llew Llaw into a dare of those strange circumstances that would kill him. Her lover does the deed when Llew Llaw is vulnerable. She is found out, and turned into an owl by the magicians that created her.
"This strange legend, which parallels the Irish story of Blathmat and the Semitic Delilah, seems to record an ancient legend of the goddess, the clues to which are now lost. Some...see Blodewedd as a type of May Queen, wedded ritually to the king who would eventually be sacrificed to her. Others see her as a flowery rebel, an image of women's opposition to patriarchal bondage. But it is also possible that the flower goddess of betrayal was simply the goddess of life and death, a form of the earth goddess who, like Ishtar or Cybele, both love and devoured the living."

Carya: She is a Maiden goddess and a goddess of the walnut tree. She is very similiar to Callisto and other goddesses in the areas that became Greece. I brought in the greens of the foliage of the walnut tree and the dark brown/black of the walnut. "Like Callisto, this goddess lost her independent identity as the religion of the great Artemis swept over the Greek provinces. In southern Laconia, of which Sparta was the capital in classical times, the pre-Hellenic settlers perceived the force of nature in trees, which their goddesses (Helen being one) were embodied. But the invading Greeks assimilated these tree divinities into their own Artemis, spirit of the wildwood. The memory of the era's social upheaval was preserved in the legend that Carya ('walnut') died and was transformed into a walnut tree. Artemis then carried the news north that the Laconian 'woman' was dead. For this simple task, she was awarded the title of Caryatis ('she of the walnut tree') in a transparent tale of the assimilation of an indigenous goddess' cult."

Demeter: the ancient Greek Earth Mother Goddess (yes, the Greeks had lots of Earth Mother Goddesses!). Demeter is the mother of Persephone, who is stolen away by Hades to the Underworld. She symbolizes the autumn harvest and the dying of the plants and then into the dark days of winter as She grieves for her daughter. Persephone is stuck below ground until Spring when she may return, and the happiness of Demeter brings the life back to the land.

Diana: "Today we confuse Diana with the Greek Artemis, seeing both in the familiar picture of the lightly clad, bow-bearing goddess who rides the moon or strides through the forest with her nymphs....Diana was originally queen of the open sky, worshiped only outdoors, where her domain stretched overhead. Possibly she was ruler of the sun as well as the moon, for the early Italians had no sun god and had adopt Apollo for that role. Diana's name comes from the word for 'light'; probably she was the original Italian ruler of the sun."

Echo: She is "an elemental of the mountains, one of the Oreads (sweet-singing nymphs of mountains and rocks of Greek myths), Echo became an attendant of the sky goddess Hera. But Zeus, ruler of Olympus and Hera's mate, liked to confide in the nymph; he filled Echo's ears with tales of his philandering. Hera, to prefect her strained marriage from becoming the laughingstock of heaven, struck Echo mute....The beautiful, silent woman was the lover of the wilderness god Pan, by whom she had two daughters, Iambe and Iynx. But she left the god to fall in love with a pretty mortal named Narcissus. The vain young man, however, would not sleep with her. In retribution, Narcissus was condemned to fall in love with his image in a forest pool. He pined away by the pool, eventually becoming a flower. And Echo, still trying to catch his attention, became a rock by the poolside."

Ereskegal: the Ancient Sumerian Underworld or Death Goddess. This colourway, like the Goddess herself, is no shrinking violet. She is bold and dark, "surrounded by rainbow gardens" of bright colour.