A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter I

Ilithyia

Mythology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Goddess of childbirth and labor pains, daughter of Zeus and Hera (or variant genealogies). Also called Eileithyia, she could hasten or delay births at Hera's command.

Detailed Definition
Ilithyia, presiding over childbirth in Greek mythology, symbolises both the pain and hopeful promise of new beginnings in poetry, blending physical intensity with life's regenerative cycles in verses on motherhood, creation, and transition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ilithyia, goddess of childbirth, symbolises labour and new beginnings; A poet may invoke Ilithyia in birth hymns; In maternal elegy, she represents fragile hope; Her presence sanctifies arrival into life.
Additional Notes
Ilithyia (or Eileithyia) serves as goddess of childbirth and labor pains, invoked by women during the dangerous process of giving birth in ancient Greece, where maternal and infant mortality rates were high. As daughter of Zeus and Hera (in most traditions), she possessed the power to ease or prolong labor, making her favor crucial. Homer depicts her as subject to Hera's control, as when Hera delays Heracles' birth by having Ilithyia hold back his delivery. Her cult was widespread throughout Greece, with particularly ancient sanctuaries in Crete claiming origins in Minoan religion. For students analyzing Greek religion and women's experience, Ilithyia represents the divine power over specifically female biological experience, and her worship reflects women's religious community and concerns separate from male-dominated civic cult. The goddess embodies both the promise of successful delivery and the threat of fatal complication, personifying the precarious threshold between life and death that childbirth represented. References to Ilithyia appear frequently in poetry dealing with birth, particularly in prayers and invocations by laboring women or those assisting them. Understanding her role illuminates the religious dimension of Greek women's lives and the ways mythology addressed universal human experiences like birth, danger, and the hope for divine protection. Her cult demonstrates how Greeks personified crucial life processes as divine beings who required propitiation and proper honor.
Also Known As
Ilithyia|Eileithyia Eilithyia Eileithyia
Skip to main content