Chava; The Great Queen

⇝ Poetic Epithets ⇜

God The Mother; the Great Queen; Solar Queen; Mistress of the Forge of Creation; Spark of Creation; Lady of the Well; The Veiled Consort; Boundarykeeper; Key-Bearer; Serpent-Wife; Serpent-Bearer; Thorn-Blooded Queen; Solar Bull; Em Kol Chai; The Lady; Creatrix and Initiatrix.

The Left Face of the Divine Hermaphrodite is the feminine, Cultivative force of God the Mother: Chava: The Veiled Consort to Adam, The Unknown King.

As Veiled Consort she is the Boundarykeeper and Key-bearer who tends to the Garden; Mother of the Earth and the Verdant Host. Thus her nature is that of Cultivation and Nurture: That which is provided; the Present.

As Creatrix and Initiatrix she is also the Lady of the Well and Guardian of the Wellspring; she who judges those worthy and brings them into the mysteries; a mirror, reflecting back a thousand shards of iridescent scintillations- each another lesson taught.

Thus She is Her to whom all come forth, and Her from whom all go forth: The End and the Beginning; The Alpha and the Omega; The Judge and Jury (and, if need be, the Executioner who severs the connection to the Wellspring should its powers be abused).

*Cultivative is different than Nurturing; these are not one and the same.

The ‘aspects of the Goddess’- [those of] Birth, Initiation, Consummation, Repose and Death- are those suggested in Graves’ ‘White Goddess’ […] It should be emphasized [… however] that these do not mean the birth and death of the Goddess herself […] but the face which she shows to the God and to her worshippers as the year turns; she does not undergo the experiences so much as preside over them.

— A Witches’ Bible: The Complete Witches’ Handbook
Stewart and Janet Farrar

When The Great Queen is above-ground tending to the Garden, she is Bull-Horned as the image of the Great Cultivator. Crowned in Gold, in Summer’s full glory, she bears the Solar Disc. But when she dons the Veil and Crown of Thorns come winter as a Widow, she becomes Stag-Antlered as she retires to the Great Temple Underground in mourning of The Unknown King’s sacrifice to the land. divider

She is created from the bones of Adam while he is asleep, as HaShem searches for the perfect partner for him (having failed to provide the perfect partner in all other manners of usual creation). And while he still slumbers, she- the most beautiful and wisest of Women- is braided, crowned, and decorated in jewels, and, once he is awakened, led to him beneath the Chuppa to be betrothed. After, she befriends the Serpent and the Serpent convinces her to eat of the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil She feeds the fruit to Adam, too. They are punished with mortality and hardship in life, and exiled from Gan-Eden, never to return.

In exile they create a New Eden for themselves. One hard won on baren ground. With time she bares children from her womb, alone, as self-Midwife. But soon her relationship with Adam grows strained. After time, they are reconciled with a greater intensity than previously known- but not without hardship. And when Adam is on his death bed, she and her son Seth travel back to Gan-Eden to attempt to convince the Angels to allow him respite: Oil from the Tree of Life and Death. But they are turned away empty handed. Adam is enraged at her failure and they are no more reconciled in his death than they truly were in life.

Nothing is said of her after Adam's death. Only that her burial is the Place of Matriarchs; the identity of The Great Queen is tied only to her Husband's, even as the Mother of All Living.