Where is your name from?
My goodness! As Shirley MacLaine said, "Tell me who you are and I'll know more about who I am." The name given to me by my mother is "Cornelia" (the feminine version of Cornelius). Not a typical name in the USA, but was more common in Britain.
From Latin, cornelia is a color [yellow or horn-colored]. But you made me look it up, Siona! Latin, yes, apparently originating in Rome with the nobel family Cornelii. All chicks born of the Cornelii were named Cornelia. There was a priest, Cornelius, of the Temple of Diana, who helped King Servius Tullius get a big-horned cow to offer to the goddess. So, now, regarding the name definition, I don't know what came first: Cornelius or the Cow!
Ironically, I am my namesake: yellow or horn-colored skin, but w/ rose undertones - a "funny' color according to my dentist. He had a hard time matching a crown to the red undertone of my teeth. That, of course, explains why make-up artists would put foundation on me that was either jaundice yellow for too rosy, I'm both (and, apparently, a lot of folks are either one or the other). When I was in high school, I took Latin and Cornelia was a popular name in our reader, like in the story Cornelia et Nauta [Cornelia and the Sailor....ooooooh.....].
There was a Saint Cornelia. There's a church named after her in Minnesota. Cornelia was also a Christian-African martyr who was burned at the stake (totally expected for my namesake). Her feast day is March 31st.
Scribe Sky is from Mayan. I teach statistics/data analysis and I'm interested in ethnomathematics. The Mayan Empire had female master mathematicians and their likenessess can be found enscribed on clay pots and in codices. A female master will be the full-breasted one with a scroll under her arm and surrounded by numbers of the Mayan system. One such master referred to herself as "Lady Scribe Sky, Lady Jaguar Lord, the Scribe." I found that a fitting way to honor the astounding knowledge of the great priestesses of antiquity. I will not forget.
baboon fibula made into mathematical tool, scientists suggest that marks indicate that a woman may have made this to track the moon/menstral cycle
(ca. 20,000 BCE: Congo, Africa)
Happy International Women's Day!

Wildfire rocked hard - her medium was marble ;). She was inspired to take this route by a sculpture she had seen that reportedly made her exclaim, "I, too, can make a man of stone." She courageously became an artist during America's post-civil war, reconstruction era and faced all sorts of descrimination. Some time after 2 classmates got poisoned at Oberlin College (folks thought Wildfire did it), she moved to Italy and set up her studio and hung out with the likes of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and expatriates in Rome.
Wildfire is known for her 1867 sculpture, "Forever Free," representing the emancipation of her people in the Americas, but the sculpture that I like best is the one from 1876 which let everybody know that Edmonia Wildfire Lewis was a stone-cutter to be reckoned with: "The Death of Cleopatra."

The Death of Cleopatra
(on permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC)
[photo by Chris Busta-Peck - see more views at link]
Cool! Nice detail! Cleopatra, asp in hand, has been eternally captured at the moment of her death by one of our unforgettable women artists.
So, what great goddesses are you pondering this month as we take time out to specifically celebrate mojo a la femme?
Happy Friday the 13th in the Month of Femme!
This is a cool femme shot: a skin canvas of the earth mother! The cosmic womb of creation! The pregnant belly was provided courtesy of Gabrielle Shaffer and photographed by Jon Leidel. Click on Gabby's link to see the painting process.

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