nd all that love green haunts and loneliness.'

She was a goddess alike of the air, the earth, and the underworld, and
representations of her have survived in which her various attributes
are expressed. As goddess of the air, she is represented by a female
figure crowned with doves; as goddess of the underworld, her emblems
are the snakes, which we see twined round the faience figure at
Knossos, or the terra-cotta in the Gournia shrine. Her figure is
often seen upon seals and gems, standing on the top of the rock or
mountain, with guardian lions in attendance, one on either side,
and sometimes with a male votary in the background.

The earliest form of her worship, and one which proved very persistent,
was apparently aniconic. The divinity was not embodied in any graven
image, but was inherent in such objects as the rude natural concretions
found in the House of the Fetish Shrine, or was supposed to dwell
in sacred trees, on which sometimes perch the doves which indicate
that the goddess is present as ruler of the air, or which are twined
with serpents, showing her presence as goddess of the earth and
underworld. In the place of sacred trees we have often sacred pillars,
which seem to have been objects of worship down to Late Minoan
II. at least, since in the Royal Villa at Knossos, dating from
this period, there is a pillar-room similar to the much earlier
pillar-rooms of the Great Palace. The little group of three pillars
found at Knossos evidently represents the divinity in her aspect as
a heavenly goddess, for the pillars have doves perching upon their
capitals. Sometimes, as in the case of the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and
other representations, we have the pillar with the two supporting
lions, an anticipation of the anthropomorphic figure of the goddess
on the rock. It is possible that in some cases the figures of the
Double Axes standing between horns of consecration were also looked
upon as embodiments of the divinity. A similar mode of representing
deity occurs in the earlier stages of many religions, and the sacred
pillar set up by Jacob at Bethel may be instanced as an example
of its presence in the beginnings of the Hebrew worship.

In general the Minoan Great Mother appears to have been looked
upon as a being of beneficence, and as the giver of 'every good
and perfect gift'; but her association with the lion and the snake
shows that there was also a more mysterious and awful side to her
character. When the l