The Bona Dea is a very ancient and holy Roman goddess of Women and Healing, who was worshiped exclusively by women. Bona, in Latin, has overtones of worthiness, nobility, honesty, bravery, health, and rightness, as well as connections to wealth. Her true name is sometimes said to be Fauna, which means "She Who Wishes Well." Fauna was considered her secret name, not to be spoken out loud, especially by men. Therefore, she is usually referred to by the name the women called her ~ Bona Dea ~ or the "Good Goddess".

As an Earth Goddess, the Bona Dea protected women through all their changes, and was believed to watch over virgins and matrons especially. She was skilled in healing and herb-lore. Snakes and wine were sacred to her. She blessed women and the earth with fertility, while at the same time, in a seeming paradox, she was considered by the Romans to be a pure virgin ~ chaste and inviolate.

The Bona Dea as Fauna was often linked to Faunus, a fertility god of the fields, woods and animals, who, depending on the story, can be her brother, father or husband. In this role of animal-goddess or Goddess of Fauna, she gave health and fertility to the animals of the forests and fields.

Men were not allowed to know her name, let alone speak it, and they were also forbidden from her secret festival. There were other taboos concerning the worship of the Bona Dea: Neither wine nor myrtle were to be mentioned by name during the secret festival. According to a late legend seeking to explain these prohibitions: Faunus, the God of the Wild (later equated with the Greek Pan), came home once to find his wife, Fauna, had drunk an entire jar of wine. For this transgression, he beat her to death with a myrtle scourge.

Myrtle most famously has long associations with Aphrodite, and was used in Roman weddings; but it was also sacred to Demeter, who like the Bona Dea is a Goddess of the Earth and Fertility--and, most importantly for the Women's Healing-Goddess Bona Dea, myrtle was used as a medicine primarily in the treatment of female ailments. Under the Republic, matrons were not allowed to drink wine, and could be severely punished if caught. By the late Republic this law was no longer in effect, though presumably there was still an air of disgrace to matrons who drank wine. The cult of the Bona Dea is older than the Republic, and wine must have been an element of her worship all along, but by calling it "milk" (which also alludes to the goddess' role as Mother), the ancient and sacred practice could be reconciled with the rules of Roman society.

As Fauna, the Bona Dea was believed to have oracular powers which she revealed only to women, and her prophecies were given at a shrine in a grotto on the Aventine Hill. The Bona Dea's statue in her temple on the same hill was depicted wearing a crown of grape leaves, carrying a scepter (as Queen of the Earth who represented its fertile power), standing next to a large jug of wine. Other representations show the Bona Dea as a seated matron holding a snake and cornucopia, symbolizing abundance and all good things.

Serpents as symbols of renewal, sexuality, fertility and the Underworld were sacred to the Bona Dea, and in her temple tame snakes were allowed the run of the place; one special serpent was kept near her statue. Her temple also hosted a shop that sold healing herbs, and may have had a clinic of sorts there as well, for it is known that the high priestess dispensed medicines from the temple.

In Ostia, the Bona Dea had both a temple complex and a sanctuary across town, and according to the inscription, the Mayor of Ostia paid for the complex to be built with his own money, which shows that though she was a women's goddess, the men honored her too.

A small shrine, known only from inscriptions, was set up to the Bona Dea to overlook the Insula Bolani. An insula is a glommed-together city building that usually has shops on the ground floor and apartments above, and is sometimes as large as an entire city block, though usually several insulae make up a block. This shrine was to watch over and keep healthy a fairly small area or part of a neighborhood, and it has been suggested that the Bona Dea may have possessed many such small local shrines or statues, indicating a real and personal relationship with the people, not surprising when it is also considered that she was most famous for healing eye and ear disorders or infections, a not-uncommon problem, especially in children.

The Bona Dea had a festival on the first of May that commemorated the date her temple was founded. The temple was decorated with vine branches, and other plants and flowers (although myrtle was not permitted). At the ceremony prayers were made to her to avert earthquakes. She also had a secret festival that was attended only by women, that took place overnight on the Kalends of May. It was held during the Faunalia, and was referred to as the sacra opertum, ("the secret or hidden sacrifice"). Ritual sacrifices were made for the benefit of all the people of Rome, something proper to the realm of a Mother or Earth Goddess who is concerned with the well-being of all of her children. On this night the festival was held in the house of the consul (the chief elected official), and no men were allowed. This taboo extended even to paintings or statues of men, which were required to be covered during the rites. The Vestal Virgins officiated, led by the wife of the consul, and the house was decorated like a temple with garlands of leaves and flowers of all kinds, except for myrtle of course, and the women wore wreaths of grape leaves. A great jar of wine was placed in the room, which was referred to as "milk", and the jar itself was called a mellarium ("honey jar"). A sow was sacrificed, and after making libations to the Goddess, music was played and the women drank and danced.

Another ceremony was held in early December in honor of the Bona Dea. The rites were conducted annually by the wife of the senior magistrate present in Rome in his home. She was assisted by the Vestal Virgins. The December rite was interesting because unlike the festival in May, it was not held in the goddess' temple, not paid for by the state and the night of its celebration was not fixed. Unlike the May celebration, the December ceremony was an invitation only affair and fairly exclusive.

The celebrations for the Bona Dea seem to have been in the nature of a mystery cult. Men were strictly forbidden and the details that we have of the ceremony are from a late source, Macrobius. The worship seems to have been agricultural in origin and the careful exclusion of myrtle (associated with flagellation) may actually suggest origins as a purification ceremony.

In the year 62 BCE, the celebration was held in the home of Julius Caesar, then praetor and Pontifex Maximus, on December 3rd. His wife Pompeia and his mother, Aurelia, were in charge. A notorious Roman politician, Publius Clodius, dressed up as a woman and sneaked into the house. He was eventually caught by Caesar's mother and kicked out. The ceremony had to be performed anew. Caesar divorced his wife over it (claiming even she had to be above suspicion). Publius Clodius was sued and at his trial Cicero blew his alibi. The two became mortal enemies over the affair. The rites seemed to have fallen into disrepute over the events, and by the early empire, Juvenal suggested that it was nothing but a drunken orgy for girls.

The Bona Dea's association with wine and dance connects her with enlightenment and ecstasy of a Dionysian kind, and with the eternal life-force and yearly resurrection that is represented by the grape vine. Perhaps aspects of his popular cult were taken into hers at a later date; although her chthonian nature is original to her, in Imperial times it was said that her festivals had "degenerated" into wild and extravagant affairs of the Oriental (i.e. Greek mystical) kind. This could just be a reflection of Roman conservatism. Nonetheless, it was the divine female life-force of the earth and within woman that was celebrated for the benefit and blessing of all the people.