Great Seal of California Great Seal of California The Great Seal of the State of California was adopted at the California state Constitutional Convention of 1849 and has undergone minor design changes since then, the last being the standardization of the seal in 1937. The seal shows the Roman goddess Minerva (Athena in Greek mythology), the goddess of wisdom and war, because she was born an adult, and California was never a territory; a California grizzly bear (the official state animal) feeding on grape vines, representing California's wine production; a sheaf of grain, representing agriculture; a miner, representing the California Gold Rush and the
Goddess movement of the Greek mythology such as the ritual year and annual sacrifice of the king were adopted as the basis to describe the goddess' aging and rejuvenation with the seasons. Myths from ancient cultures are often reinterpreted as new evidence comes to light. Reinterpretation becomes necessary because myths from religions that included goddesses, those after the Bronze Age, including Greek and Roman mythology, are believed to have a patriarchal bias. These new interpretations by Goddess movement authors and women scholars help to provide a truer mirror of the social set up of the period in which the story was written.