Hipta

Hipta (Ippa) is an obscure Anatolian goddess who appears in the Orphic hymns as the nurse of the newborn Dionysus — she who received the divine child rescued from the Titans and bore him upon her head in a sacred winnowing-basket wreathed with a serpent.

Closely linked to the Great Mother, she is one of the many nurturing female powers that surround the vulnerable god of the mysteries in his infancy — the tender care that shelters the divine spark until it can come fully to birth.