The Love Goddesses

 If you haven't already read the trance-script of my last hypno-session with Goddess Lola, here's a relevant bit:

 

Aphrodite and Venus in modern form

Oh, so much more

I am Hathor

I am Lada

I am Tlazolteotl

I am every form of Love Goddess that has ever been and shall ever be

Of course

And your task shall be

to research all My former incarnations

And choose all the best aspects of each

So that my next form

shall be even greater

Do you understand?

So, here's the first report on that research:

 

Astarte is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess Ashtart or Athtart  (Northwest Semitic), a deity closely related to Ishtar (East Semitic), worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name is particularly associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians, though she was originally associated with Amorite cities like Ugarit and Emar, as well as Mari and Ebla. She was also celebrated in Egypt, especially during the reign of the Ramessides, following the importation of foreign cults there. Phoenicians introduced her cult in their colonies on the Iberian Peninsula.

Hathor was called "mistress of love", as an extension of her sexual aspect. In the series of love poems from Papyrus Chester Beatty I, from the Twentieth Dynasty (c. 1189–1077 BC), men and women ask Hathor to bring their lovers to them: "I prayed to her [Hathor] and she heard my prayer. She destined my mistress [loved one] for me. And she came of her own free will to see me."

 

 Individuals who went against the traditional gender binary were heavily involved in the cult of Inanna/Ishtar. During Sumerian times, a set of priests known as gala worked in Inanna's temples, where they performed elegies and lamentations. Men who became gala sometimes adopted female names and their songs were composed in the Sumerian eme-sal dialect, which, in literary texts, is normally reserved for the speech of female characters. Some Sumerian proverbs seem to suggest that gala had a reputation for engaging in anal sex with men. During the Akkadian Period, kurgarr? and assinnu were servants of Ishtar who dressed in female clothing and performed war dances in Ishtar's temples. Several Akkadian proverbs seem to suggest that they may have also had homosexual proclivities. Gwendolyn Leick, an anthropologist known for her writings on Mesopotamia, has compared these individuals to the contemporary Indian hijra. In one Akkadian hymn, Ishtar is described as transforming men into women.

 

Although she was worshipped as the goddess of love, Inanna was not the goddess of marriage, nor was she ever viewed as a mother goddess. Andrew R. George goes as far as stating that "According to all mythology, Ištar was not(...) temperamentally disposed" towards such functions. As noted by Joan Goodnick Westenholz, it has even been proposed that Inanna was significant specifically because she was not a mother goddess. As a love goddess, she was commonly invoked in incantations.

 

Lada is the Slavic Goddess of spring, love, and beauty. She was worshipped throughout Russia, Poland, and other areas of Eastern Europe. She is usually depicted as a young woman with long blonde hair. She carries wild roses, and is also known as the ‘Lady of the Flowers’. As Goddess of spring, Lada is associated with love and fertility in both humans and animals. She is said to return from the underworld every year at the Vernal Equinox, bringing the spring with Her.