Astarte

Astarte was worshipped as many things, to the Egyptians, she was honoured as a Goddess of War and tenacity, to the Semites, She was a Goddess of Love and Fertility. Among the Greeks She was transposed into the Goddess of Love Aphrodite.

Known in the ancient Levant as Ashtart and in the Hebrew Bible as Ashtereth, the beautiful Astarte may owe many of her characteristics to Mesopotamian Ishtar, as the similarity in their names proclaims. Like Ishtar, Astarte seems to have had strong connections with both war and love/sexuality. In historical times, she received offerings in ancient Ugarit in Syria; her name appears forty-six times in texts from that city. One of her main centres was Byblos, where she was identified with Egyptian goddesses Hathor and Isis. In the second millennium BCE, Astarte was, like Anat, a war goddess of the Egyptians (Patai 1990:56). Large numbers of ancient Israelites revered her, and versions of her name occur at least nine times in the Hebrew Bible. She was also an important deity of the Phoenician towns of Tyre and Sidon, whence she and her veneration spread with Phoenician merchants throughout the Mediterranean (Patai 1990:55-66).

The Phoenicians portrayed Astarte with cow horns, representing fertility. The Assyrians and Babylonians pictured her caressing a child. She was associated with the moon and called the Mother of the Universe, giver of all live on Earth. She ruled all spirits of the dead residing in heaven, visible from earth as stars; hence came her name Astroarche, "Queen of the Stars." She was called the mother of souls in heaven, the Moon surrounded by her star-children, to whom she gave their "astral" (starry) bodies. Some pagans still refer to the astral body as the invisible double, without remembering the term's original connotation of starlight.

In her warrior queen aspect, she wore the horns of a bull and rode into battle behind her horses and chariots. She was also the Greek goddess of love and fertility, fire and productivity, war and victory and sexual prowess. 

Astarte was at once maiden and mother goddess whose energy is greatest at the time of a crescent moon.

Gemstones: Rose Quartz, Garnet, Smoky Quartz, Fire Agate