Worshiped exclusively by women, the Bona Dea is a very ancient and holy Roman goddess. In Latin, Bona has connotations 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 is 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 protects women through all their changes, and is believed to watch over virgins and matrons especially. She is skilled in healing and herb-lore. Snakes and wine are sacred to her. She blesses women and the earth with fertility, while at the same time, in a seeming paradox, the Rome consider her to be chaste and inviolate ~ a pure virgin.

The Bona Dea as Fauna is 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 gives health and fertility to the animals of the forests and fields.

Men are not allowed to know her name, let alone speak it, and are also forbidden from her secret festival. There are other taboos concerning the worship of the Bona Dea: Neither wine nor myrtle are 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 is used in Roman weddings; but it is 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 is used as a medicine primarily in the treatment of female ailments. Under the Republic, matrons are not allowed to drink wine, and can 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 By the late Republic this law was no longer in effect, though presumably there was still an air of disgrace to matrons who drank wine.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 is believed to have oracular powers which she revealed only to women. Her prophecies are given at a temple shrine in a grotto on the Aventine Hill. The statue in her temple there depicts her 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 are sacred to the Bona Dea, and in her temple tame snakes are allowed the run of the place; one special serpent is kept near her statue. Her temple also houses a shop that sells healing herbs, and may have had a clinic of sorts there as well, for it is known that the High Priestess dispenses medicines from the temple.

In Ostia, the Bona Dea has 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 is to watch over and keep healthy a fairly small area or part of a neighborhood; 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 is most famous for healing eye and ear disorders or infections, a common problem, especially in children.

The Bona Dea has a festival on the first of May that commemorated the date her temple was founded. The temple is decorated with vine branches, and other plants and flowers (again, myrtle is not permitted). At the ceremony, prayers are made to her to avert earthquakes. She also has a secret festival that is attended only by women; it takes place overnight on the Kalends of May. It is held during the Faunalia, and is referred to as the sacra opertum, ("the secret or hidden sacrifice"). Ritual sacrifices are 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 is held in the house of the consul (the chief elected official), and no men are allowed. This taboo extended even to paintings or statues of men, which are required to be covered during the rites. The Vestal Virgins officiate, led by the wife of the consul, and the house is decorated like a temple with garlands of leaves and flowers of all kinds, except for myrtle of course, and the women wear wreaths of grape leaves. A great jar of wine is placed in the room, which is referred to as "milk", and the jar itself is called a mellarium ("honey jar"). A sow is sacrificed, and after making libations to the Goddess, music is played, and the women drink and dance.

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

The celebrations for the Bona Dea seem to have the nature of a mystery cult. Men are strictly forbidden (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 as a woman and gained entry to the house. He was eventually caught by Caesar's mother and kicked out. The ceremony had to be performed anew. Supposedly, 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 is the divine female life-force of the earth and within woman that is celebrated for the benefit and blessing of all the people.