Rhea : The Great Mother

Wazzup Pilipinas!

RHEA was the Titanis mother of the gods, and a goddess of female fertility, motherhood, and generation. Her name means "flow" and "ease."

As the wife of Kronos (Time), she represented the eternal flow of time and generations; as the great Mother (Meter Megale), the "flow" was menstrual blood, birth waters, and milk. She was also a goddess of 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 Kronos 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 Krete guarded by shield-clashing Kouretes. In his stead she presented Kronos with a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes which he promptly devoured.

It’s better to be late than never. That’s what Rhea showed us all. In the end, the essence of being a mother reigned and her grief of losing not just one child but 5. I was totally in awe of her. She was one of a kind, simply because she did her best to be a mother to her children even if Kronos never wanted them at the first place.



Contributed by Japheth Avelino