ok so the fates have shears for cutting the string of fate/life but wtf is the cleaver and why did MS seem upset MW didn't use one of the regular knives? is there a cleaver in any mythos?
Some people have mentioned in one of these Mother Winter threads that Baba Yaga fits the bill for Mother Winter in many ways, that she used iron dentures, and that she tended to cut up unwanted visitors with a cleaver and eat them in a stew.
Baba Yaga also traveled using a mortar and pestle, and someone suggested that Mother Winter's walking stick was the pestle, and that was why it became painful for MW to travel. In light of that, when Mother Summer takes Harry to the Outer Gates, they step onto a stone in the forest that's about three feet wide. This stone could possibly be the mortar. Or, it could be something entirely different, since Mother Summer was the one traveling with Harry and not Mother Winter. Or, maybe both Mother Summer and Mother Winter, together, make up the stories of Baba Yaga.
I've suggested before that by "our name," Mother Summer meant that she and Mother Winter are known collectively by a single name, as two sides of the same being, and that maybe the name MS was talking about was "Gaea." In the same vein, Mother Winter could also be Nyx(the ancient Greek personification of night) and Mother Summer could be Hemera(the personification of day). Hemera is said to be, variously, the daughter of Nyx and Erebus(darkness); or the daughter of Nyx and Chronos(time); or Nyx's sister, with Chaos as mother
and father of both sisters.
Interestingly, WoJ suggests that titans are imprisoned under Demonreach. In Greek myth, the titans were imprisoned in Tartarus. Tartarus was also the home of Nyx and Hemera(as well as some other primordial gods), with one of them always leaving as the other came in. Which could mean that, one some weird metaphysical level which probably doesn't come up very often, Mother Winter and Mother Summer may live on Demonreach as well. Or across from Demonreach, on the Nevernever side.
