Goddess was her original title, it was printed as such in a paper pamphlet distributed at the time of her unveiling. She is our Lady Liberty, her full name, “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
We have many Goddesses of America. The Indigenous peoples Goddesses, and the Goddesses whom were carried in the suitcases and hearts of immigrant men and women.
Lady Liberty was created by a French artist who grew up by the sacred river Seine, and the Seine river’s Goddess Sequana. Both Liberty and Sequana wear a crown, symbolic of the sun. Liberty was a gift, it was 1886, a time when America had just emerged from the civil war.
Lady Liberty is a “beacon of promise” for all who arrive to the USA. She holds the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She welcomes us with these words:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
She lifts a lamp with her right hand, giving us light. In her left hand she holds our constitution. A pledge for democracy.
Goddesses represent the divine and sacred feminine. Rivers, springs, volcanoes, mountains, forests, and the Earth herself are traditionally seen as Goddesses. When the Christian Church marched onto the lands of the Celtic druids, they perceived Goddess as a threat to their power and they condemned her. She was demonized, dismissed, and belittled into fairy belief and myth. To cut her out, and bury her, the Christians’ proclaimed her as evil or fiction. Under Christianity, Goddess was demoralized and destroyed. Well, almost.
Lady Liberty is a Goddess who personifies the qualities of liberty and justice for all. Lady Liberty’s feast day is July 4. We celebrate with picnics and fireworks in the night sky.