Editing Rhea

Rhea was the Titan mother of the gods, and goddess of female fertility, motherhood, and generation. Her name means "flow" and "ease." As the wife of Cronus (Time), she represented the eternal flow of time and generations; as the great Mother, the "flow" was menstrual blood, birth waters, and milk. She was also a goddess of comfort and ease, a blessing reflected in the common Homeric phrase "the gods who live at their ease (rhea)."

In myth, Rhea was the wife of the Titan Cronus and Queen of Heaven. When her husband heard a prophecy that he would be deposed by one of his children, he took to swallowing each of them as soon as they were born. But Rhea bore her youngest, Zeus, in secret and hid him away in a cave in Crete guarded by shield-clashing Curetes. In his stead she presented Cronos with a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes which he promptly devoured.

Rhea was closely identified with the Anatolian mother-goddess Cybele. They were both depicted as matronly women, usually wearing a turret crown, and attended by lions.


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