The Multiple Goddess Hesperides

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Hesperides, Western-Ones.
H]SP=RYDAS
Alternate meanings: Numphs-of-the-West, Redlands, Evening-Ones.
[to Whom the twentieth day of May, day 140, is dedicated]

Geography/Culture: Greek.
Description: Multiple sweet-singing maiden Goddesses of the west, sunset, evening, the moon, death and immortality; Guardians of the tree of golden apples; Keepers of sacred objects; Those Who intimate that death may be desirable.
To Whom Sacred: apple-tree and fruit; golden-apple (symbol of love and fruitfulness, and/or may represent the sun as it re-appears each day); five-pointed star (as in a transversely cut apple); melon; Garden of the Hesperides (paradiscal apple-orchard/garden); wild-geese; sheep.
Festival: secret rites with music, held at nightfall.
Male Associate: Ladon, ---, the serpent who lay coiled round the golden-apple tree at the center of the Garden. <<<>>>
Usually supposed to be three:
Aigle, Dazzling-Light, Erytheia, Red-Land, Hespera `Evening', see below.
<<<>>>
But sometimes there are more, including:
Arethusa, Waterer, linked with Alphito and Hestia, Hearth linked with Vesta.
<<<>>>

Titles/Variants, etc:

The Golden-Apple Tree belongs to Hera.
Some say Daughters of Hesperis, see below.
Some say Daughters of Nyx, Night, linked with Car, by Erebus.
Sometimes called Phorcides, (Daughters of Ceto), linked with Marpessa.
Some say Daughters of Themis, by Zeus.

Source: EBv13/408; GMv1/34, 129-30.

Aigle, Dazzling-Light.
IGLA
Alternate meanings: Bright, Radiant, Sun-Like.
Geography/Culture: Greek.
Linguistic Note: 1. The light of the sun, radiance. Later simply, daylight. 2. Any dazzling light, lustre, gleam.
Description: Goddess as intimation of a pleasurable afterlife, the west, death.
To Whom Sacred: apples of immortality.
Male Associate: She is sometimes said to be the Daughter of Asclepius.

Titles/Variants, etc:

Perhaps Daughter of Epione, Whose consort is Asclepius.
One person of the Triple Goddess Hesperides, Western-Ones, qv.
One person of the Multiple Goddess Heliades.
Transcription variant: Aegle.

Source: Graves GMv2 index; IGEL/19.

Erytheia, Red-land.
=RÜ3A1
Geography/Culture: Greek.
Description: Eponym of an island. {And a country ?}
Male Associate: Geryon, King of Erythia (Cadiz), was Her father {1 can find no reference to Her Mother}. Her consort: was Hermes, H=RMAS, Boundary-Post.

Titles/Variants, etc:

Her island was sacred to Hera.
Variant: Erytheis, Crimson.
The Gorgones Who came to Greece from Libya, had a grove on the island Erytheia.
One person of the triple Hesperides.
Daughter of Hesperis, and ---

Source: GMv1/127; GMv2/143; WWGRM/93.

Hespera, Evening-Twilight.
H]SP=R1
Alternate meaning: Evening.
Geography/Culture: Greek.
Linguistic Note: {presumed rough breath}-epsilon-sigma-pi-epsilon-omega-sigma, `of, or at, evening'.
Description: Mother of the stars; She Who announces, with Her appearance, the safe arrival of the sun on the western shores of Ocean.
To Whom Sacred: the evening-star (Venus).

Under variant: Hespere, H]SP=RA, `Evening', She is one of the Hesperides.
Variant: Hesperethusa.
Variant: Hesperia.
Under the variant: Hesperis, with consort Atlas, She is Mother of the Hesperides.
Variant: Hesperusa.
Third person of the Triple Titone, linked under Eos.

Source: IGEL 318.

worked on: July 12, 1990; August 3, 1991 ; August 6, 1991; May 1995.
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