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Erigone, Plentiful-Offspring.
]RYGONA
Alternate meanings:: Child-of-Strife.
[to Whom the twelfth day of February, day 042, is dedicated]
Geography/Culture: Greek. Marathon and Attica.
Linguistic Note: Her name is sometimes defined as 'Child-of-strife' from the syllable eri- as though Eris, but it's more likely the syllable means plentiful.
Description: Goddess of fertility (especially of the vine), trees and death; She Who is associated with wine and a pastoral economy.
To Whom Sacred: pine-tree (from which, according to Her legend She is said to have hung Herself); dog (see Maera); the constellation Virgo with which She is identified by some; the constellation Bootes (She and Her father became this constellation); human sacrifice; Goddess figurines with moveable limbs (hung from pine or fruit trees); swing.
Festival: the Agora, a vintage festival at which both She and Her father Icarius (whose consort he was I can't find out) were honored and to whom libations were poured. During this festival girls swing on ropes from a pine-tree in the middle of a vinery, their feet resting on small platforms.
Male Associates: Father: Icarius. Decieved by Bacchus [possibly meaning Dionysus]. Some say She bore Tisamenus.
Geography/Culture: Crete, Cyprus.
Linguistic Note: the meaning of Her name is generally given as 'most pure, or holy' from ariagne, but it appears to be of Sumerian origin and breaks down as: ar-ri-an-de, 'high fruitful mother of-the-barley', de meaning barley as in Demeter.
Description: Orgiastic fair-haired Goddess of the moon and fertility; Mistress of the labyrinth and the realm of death; She Who is associated with wine; Mother of the vine-cult tribes.
To Whom Sacred: partridge; The Cretan Crown (i.e. the constellation corona borealis, also called Her `Bridal Chaplet') and its chief star Alpheta; maze dance-floor (the maze pattern represent `spiral-castle' or `Troy-town' where the Sun-king goes after death); the bull-ring; bull-ring dance rites (in which acrobatic dancers, grasping a bull's horns, somersaulted over his shoulders); bell-shaped Goddess doll figurine (hung for fertility on fruit trees perhaps `explained' by the legend that She hung Herself - there may have been four dolls hung from a blossoming fruit tree to face the cardinal points as a fructifying ceremony); fruit-laden branches; rose-wreathed crown of gold with gemmed flowers (which originally belonged to THETIS - when Dionysus set it among the stars it became the corona borealis); ball of thread; male human-sacrifice.
Festival: annual celebration of marriage with Dionysus at which fruit laden boughs were carried in Her honor and from which, perhaps, were hung the Goddess figurines, date unknown. The Cypriots celebrated Her festival on 09/02.
Male Associates: consort Dionysus. Human lover and betrayer of Her priestess incarnation, Theseus. Sons, various eponymous ancestors of Helladic tribes.