Exactly one year ago, on 1st of March 2014, I posted my third ever post on the goddess Athena, my first inspiration for this blog.

Goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare and justice, strength and strategy, mathematics and the arts, crafts, and skill. Who could be a better symbol for choosing your own identity? She has it all: male and female, war and civilization, wisdom and courage, strategy and inspiration. (Blog post from 1st of March, 2014).

Today, I was looking for another figure from mythology or from fairy tales who could lead us through the second year of what if?, and I remembered that as a kid, I used to love the story of “The little mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen.

Strange, since it is a rather cruel story.

A young mermaid who sacrifices her friends, her family ties, her voice, and her beautiful fin for a life as a not quite perfect, because soulless, only “almost human” existence, and the vague hope of having a human prince fall in love with her. But will that happen? Will the prince ever fall in love with her, the mute, foreign girl who can express herself only through dancing (every step hurts after she gave her fin for legs)? Of course not! The first day after he marries another woman, her heart breaks and she becomes foam on the waves vanishing into oblivion.

Would the little mermaid be a good swap for Athena. I don’t think so. The message delivered is too wrong, her identity too broken.

So, I searched again in Greek mythology, I looked through Armenian gods and goddesses, I roamed the internet.

And at last I found Ārohirohi, the goddess of shimmering heat and of mirages in Māori mythology.

She formed the first woman.

She is the goddess of creation.

She will be my inspiration for the upcoming year.

 

Photo credit: Farallon Islands, http://bit.ly/1LXKQST, CC BY-SA 3.0