Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 8: Dione

Sources and Influences

BAM: Dione:

Thealogy

Dione is a somewhat obscure Greek Goddess whose name is the feminine equivalent of Zeus. At Dodona she had a cult under the name of Naia beside that of Zeus Naius, and only limited veneration elsewhere (Simon Price and Emily Kearns (editors): The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.).
In the Iliad she is named, perhaps significantly as she impacts on the idea of the Great Mother of the Charge, as the mother of Aphrodite, and her comforting words to her daughter are recorded:

‘...In Dione’s lap
Aphrodite sank down, and her dear mother
Held and caressed her, whispering in her ear:
“Who did this to you, darling child? In heaven
Who could have been so rude and wild,
As though you had committed open wrong?”
[Aphrodite tells her mother who it was]
“There, child, patience, even in such distress.
Many of us who live upon Olympos
Have taken hurt from men, and hurt each other.”’
(Homer (translated by Robert Fitzgerald): The Iliad. Everyman’s Library, London, 1992, p. 121.) 

And Dione, pictured as a healing Goddess, soothes away Aphrodite’s hurt.
Gardner equates Dione with Diana, as the wife of Janus, worshipped in Britain by refugees from the fall of Troy (Gerald Gardner: The Meaning of Witchcraft. Weiser Books, York Beach, 2004.):  an interesting syncretism, since it means that three of the Goddesses named in the Charge – Artemis, Diana, and Aphrodite – are actually the same divinity, underlining the theme of the Charge, that ‘all Goddesses are one Goddess,’ known under many names.