Mother Goddess, Mother Goose

These regal images of the Goddesses Aphrodite and Devi on swans and geese stand worlds apart from those in yesterday's post of Mother Goose. While the Goddesses are proud and healthy, Mother Goose is foully fat, abnormally thin, and/or abject and arthritic.

While Aphrodite and Devi gaze at us proudly and full of purpose, Mother Goose gazes at us with apologies.

While the Goddesses are pleasingly proportioned, Mother Goose has a gruesome chin, a grotesque nose, and, in one instance, a humped back.

Just what one might expect if Mother Goose is an anagram for Mother Goddess. Just what one might expect if Mother Goose is our ancestress' clever disguise for their sacred deity, a disguise designed to deliver Her safely through a poisonous past and into the arms of us, their future children.

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All images come from Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Images of the Goddess and her Sacred Animals, 1981, Buffie Johnson, Harper & Row.