Great Goddesses: Life Lessons From Myths and Monsters

by Nikita Gill

Overview

Bestselling poet, writer, and Instagram sensation Nikita Gill returns with a collection of poetry and prose retelling the legends of the Goddesses, both great and small, in their own words.

With lyrical prose and striking verse, beloved poet Nikita Gill (Fierce Fairytales, Wild Embers) uses the history of Ancient Greece and beyond to explore and share the stories of the mothers, warriors, creators, survivors, and destroyers who shook the world. In pieces that burn with empathy and admiration for these women, Gill unearths the power and glory of the very foundations of mythology and culture that have been too-often ignored or pushed aside. 

Complete with beautiful hand-drawn illustrations, Gill's poetry and stories weave old and forgotten tales of might and love into an empowering collection for the modern woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593085646
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	77,508
Product dimensions:	5.35(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

Nikita Gill is a British-Indian writer and poet living in the south of England. With a huge online following, her words have entranced hearts and minds all over the world.

Read an Excerpt

I lost a God once. It’s easier done than people think. Forget a prayer once in a while or simply grow grief in your kitchen window along with the basil and rosemary. Somewhere inside my heart, I misplaced my faith, misunderstood my own origin story, became a person half tragedy, more misery, and I started to relish it. I revelled in this losing of everything that I thought I was, the lack of self-care; the drowning becomes such a needful thing when you think there is nothing left to look forward to. When my faith came back to me, like the forgiving water of a river to the pebbles that it smooths by constant weather and wear, I asked myself, what happens to the Gods when their people forget how to know them? What happens to their fearsome might when the fervent belief fades?

Do you think they are still powerful when they become less than a memory?

Or do you think without the power of prayer everything that makes them immortal is nothing but a façade?

The Primordial Goddesses

 

‘Verily at the first Khaos (Chaos, the Chasm) [Air] came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia (Gaea, Earth), the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos . . .’

—Hesiod,Theogony 116

Chaos

Edward Lorenz, the mathematician,

father of chaos theory, defines chaos as:

‘When the present determines the future,

but the approximate present does not

approximately determine the future.’

Which loosely translated means:

No one knows how the consequences

of our actions will truly play out,

and try as we might, we will never

be the masters of our destiny.

And Chaos, who has been listening, as she

always does to each of her creations,

laughs because what else does the Ancient Being

Who Created Creation do when a small, impatient

primitive species that insists on quantifying everything

tries to quantify the unfathomable by their small terms?

And as she laughs, the cosmos ripples,

And whole galaxies fall apart.

Eurynome: The Mother of All Things

 

This is a lesser known story.

It is a genesis entirely woman-whispered

in the shadows when we meet

in secret, plotting escapes

from unwanted marriages or to untangle

darker devil-deemed desires.

They murmur, in the beginning of everything;

from the bones of Chaos, rose a girl

who built the universe, the stars,

the planets, all because she was looking

for a place to dance. And she waltzed

the earth awake and the rhythm of her feet

fermented the stars alive,

the synchronised sorcery of her fingers

brought the solar system to life,

and the flow of her arms looped

aro

Editorial Reviews

A New York Times Book Review New & Noteworthy Pick

"Powerful...we all grew up to the sounds of sweet bedtime tales, captivated by the stories of Gods, monsters, princes and distressed damsels....Indeed, these heroines aren’t distressed, they’re depressed—and they need someone to give them a voice. That person is Gill. –Vanity Fair

"This empowering collection sheds light on women who are often misunderstood and is a piece of 'modern feminst magic.'" —Book Riot

From the Publisher