Asase Yaa is the earth goddess of the Asante people in Ghana. She created human beings and receives them back into her body when they die; she is also the mother of the gods. There are no temples to her, for the earth itself is both her body and her temple. There are also no […]
Will Rogers called her “the greatest woman rifle shot the world has ever produced.” The Associated Press dispensed with the female qualifier in her obituary, calling her “perhaps the greatest shooter of all time.” Sitting Bull famously nicknamed her “Little Sure Shot.” Annie Oakley (1860-1926) was born poor, and originally took up shooting as a […]
Marie Laveau (1801?-1881), better known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, is one of the most mysterious figures in American history. Almost all the facts of her life are shrouded in legend and confusion, beginning with the date of her birth (popular sources often cite 1794, but the records indicate 1801). All we can […]
Athena is easily the best-known and most popular Greek goddess. Yet none of the so-called “Athena” costumes for sale out there look remotely like her. Come on, people! She’s Athena! Helmet! Shield! Spear! There were two very important statues of Athena on the acropolis in ancient Athens. The colossal statue inside the Parthenon was 38 […]
Ah, Artemis! Goddess of the wilderness, mistress of the moon, patron of untrammeled womanhood. She races through the hills with her beloved animals, fleet-footed and shining. Artemis is one of the most venerated deities in all of Greek mythology, not to mention one of the most complex. She may be descended from a Neolithic Great […]
Isis is the Egyptian goddess of magic and motherhood, but putting it that way rather understates the case. Isis is simply one of the all-time great goddesses of world civilization. Worshiped by the Egyptians for thousands of years, she also became supremely important in the Hellenistic world. She was everything: mother, savior, redeemer, goddess of […]
Pirates of the Caribbean! Real pirates, that is: Anne Bonny (1690s-?) and Mary Read (1690s-1721). They sailed the high seas with the infamous Calico Jack, and so much has been written about the three of them that we can’t possibly squeeze it in here. We need all the space just to talk about the costumes, […]
Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) was one of the most remarkable visionaries in the history of science. Her friend Charles Babbage invented the Analytical Engine to crunch numbers; it was Ada who realized that it could do much more. She saw that a mechanical device—a computer, if you will—could solve all kinds of analytical problems, as […]
The Vestal Virgins were the six priestesses who tended the sacred flame of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, in ancient Rome. They were far and away the most privileged women in Roman society, and in fact they were the only women who were granted the basic legal rights that male citizens possessed automatically. Unlike other […]
When we first decided to do a costume for Hecate—the goddess of witchcraft, the night, and crossroads—we thought we would do a classic Greek look, the way the ancients saw her. But we ran into an interesting dilemma. Hecate is unusual among ancient goddesses in that she has a fully developed modern iconography that is […]
Queen Mab isn’t just a fairy. She’s a fairy queen, presiding over dreamland, drawn in state by a fairy coach, trailed by attendants and servants. She makes her literary debut in Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio erupts into a fanciful speech about Queen Mab as the ruler of dreams. Her real origin is obscure, since […]
Long ago, before Venus or Aphrodite, before Artemis or Athena, before Demeter or Persephone, there was Inanna. She was the great Mesopotamian Queen of Heaven and Earth, the goddess of love, fertility, and war. Inanna was what the Sumerians called her; their Semitic neighbors, the Akkadians, called her Ishtar. As time went on the Sumerian […]