Chapter 11 Mystical Malta
by Catherine V. Tucker
Did
you know the first free-standing temples in the world were built to
honor the Great Mother Goddess? Between 3600 and 2600 B.C.E more than
two dozen megalithic temples were built on the Mediterranean islands
of Malta and Gozo. Inside the temples, dozens of statues--with the
self-possessed posture and the generous belly and thighs of an iconic
Earth Mother--were found.
(replica)
We
first see evidence of Goddess worship on Malta around 4500 B.C. In
that period we find shrines inside large huts along with stylized
female figures--similar to the wonderful Cycladic statues which date
fifteen thousand years later. Around 3600 B.C. there seems to have
been an explosion of creativity on Malta and we see the erection of
massive temples built of quarried limestone and megaliths, some
megaliths weighing as much as 50 tons. On the island of Gozo, the
legend was told of a Giantess with a baby at her breast, building the
impressive Temple Ggantija in a single day, to be her abode. These
extraordinary and important temples, built in the rounded shape of
the Goddess, Herself, are unlike anything seen elsewhere in the
world.
Even
more remarkable are the underground temples. The Hypogeum, a World
Heritage Site, is carved three stories down into limestone. Entering
the Hypogeum, one descends through a catacomb-like burial cave, into
a temple mirroring the features of the above ground temples--with
altars, archways, a corballed roofline and ochre paintings. Inside
the Hypogeum, we find a different kind of statue--the famous Sleeping
Lady. Differing from the Mother Goddess statues, the Sleeping Lady is
younger, elegantly clothed, and resting on a decorated couch. Five
niches, considered to be dream incubation chambers, were carved into
the wall of the largest chamber in the Hypogeum. It is believe that
here, under the bones of the ancestors, inside the body of the Earth
Mother, priestesses came to journey in dream-time.
The
Hypogeum was discovered in the early 1900’s when a housing
developer was digging wells. The developer tried to hide the
discovery, but rumors leaked out. One rumor, of “hallucinogenic
vapors” rising from below, gave rise to the hypothesis that the
lowest level of the Hypogeum was used to store grain in such a way as
to produce ergot, a means of facilitating dream-time journeying.
Beyond
the archeology of the temples and statues themselves, we know little
of this culture. We see evidence of a flourishing, spiritual culture,
which revered Divinity in the Female form, and beyond that, we have
our emotional responses. My personal experience, witnessing the
temples and artifacts for the first time, was profound, and led to my
writing a novel set in ancient Malta. When I stood before the
Sleeping Lady statue, I saw a beautiful Sleeping
Goddess,
and instantly the grief I carried, over the suppression of women and
the demise of the Goddess, was eased. I knew in my bones that the
Goddess had never gone away—She was merely “sleeping,” awaiting
reawakening in the hearts of Her children. I was reminded of
Demetra George’s (Mysteries of the Dark Moon) thesis that--just as
the teaching of the Goddess is the spiral of change and continual
renewal—so it is natural that the Goddess, Herself, expresses in
cycles waxing and waning. For most of the last 5000 years, the
Goddess has been in Her waning time, Her dark moon phase, when all
must wait in darkness, trusting Her inevitable return. Now,
blessedly, it is the time of the new moon. The rediscoveries in the
last century, of the Sleeping Goddess, and the temples of Malta, of
Catal Huyuk, and the Venus of Willendorf, are all signs that the time
of the New Moon, Her re-awakening, is here.
Catherine
V. Tucker is the author of The Maltese Dreamer, available in the
Kindle Store. After visiting the Neolithic temples of Malta in 2001,
she committed herself to creating an accessible and inspiring work of
art honoring the Mother Goddess of ancient Malta. She returned to
Malta in 2005 and 2008 to research for her novel.
More
information at www.themaltesedreamer.com
The
Maltese Dreamer available at Amazon
Visit The
Maltese Dreamer on Facebook:
Venus Anadymone
by Drew Hoffman
Still yourself Hold your oxygen And feel my nectar Cascade your throat Such sweet poison A curious mixture Honey and battery acid The ingredients of desire Piercing like an arrow And softer than the swan Emotions shifting Like the white sands of Cyprus Waves that bring love Also bring pain The heartache of separation This unbearable solitude Men are temporary diversions Let in, bled out Opaque like the conch The father never was No arms held you close Eyes that search Cast downward glances Refusing to acknowledge The false dying godman Resurrecting in the seafoam Reaching the crescendo Collapsing in Her embrace Your Mother is here.
Drew Hoffman is the author of "In Fevered Dreams- Poems By Drew Hoffman" available through Amazon and the upcoming poetry collection tentatively titled "Laid Bare". He is a devotee of the Goddess Kali and feels that She fuels his creative process. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida with two cats, Delirium and Cindy Louisiana. Also be sure to check out his Facebook fan page, Kali, The Dark Goddess.
Your 'Artemis Gifts': Being True to Who You Are
by Jamie Walters
Artemis is one of the Goddesses, or Feminine archetypal energies, that I resonate most with. When I glance back to the early days of my life, as a child wandering and exploring the wild hills, I can see the influence of Artemis. She is fearless in the wild places, honoring of her Feminine nature, unhesitating to take action (as long as it's intuitively guided), and has some pretty cool, and very handy, gifts. Let's see if you recognize them in yourself.
Before we get to the gifts, though, let me introduce (or re-introduce) you to Artemis.
You, Meet Artemis. Beloved Artemis, Meet You.
Artemis is the great Goddess of the Hunt, of the Forests, and of the Wilds. She was called Diana by the Romans, and had the great temple at Ephesus -- considered one of the great wonders of the world -- built in her honor. She had devoted followers, and for good reason.
In her earliest incarnations, the Goddess Artemis was a a great, primordial, Lunar-Creatrix Goddess, revealing the Mysteries and our Lunar, or some might say Feminine, gifts of intuition, instinct, clairvoyance and clairsentience, and inner-sight, amongst others.
The Gifts of Artemis
The daughter of the Great God Zeus and the Great Goddess Leto (Latona), and the sister of Apollo, Artemis was asked when just a small girl what gifts she'd like to receive from her father, Zeus. Though very young, Artemis replied with clarity: She wanted a fine bow and arrow made of silver, to be given the 'office of Light', and to always be sovereign. She also asked for a cool saffron-colored tunic to wear, and lots of names like her brother Apollo (she didn't want to be pigeon-holed, this one!). Zeus, being a generous father, gave her a few extra gifts as well. What I love about the story of Artemis is what She may tell us about the 'Artemis Gifts' that live within us. Let's take a look -- see how you resonate with each of these:
• Artemis' fine silver bow and arrow:
Silver is the color associated with the Feminine and the Moon, or Lunar Nature. The bow is a symbol for the crescent moon -- the Maiden, or Creative Goddess. The arrows are the projectiles of focused intention, the equivalent of 'vision seeds' that are an important part of our creative-manifestation process. Because these are so clearly associated with the Feminine, these 'arrows of desire and intention' are intuitively guided, sourced from the deep pool of our own inner, Feminine and Lunar nature.
• Artemis' 'Office of Light':
* Artemis' Gift of Sovereignty:
Sovereignty was ultimately translated to mean 'virginity', which in antiquity and before meant 'whole unto herself', not necessarily one who was uninitiated into the Mysteries of sex.
Artemis' gift of sovereignty means that she is always true to authentic nature and has a deep respect for (and insistence on) respectful, mutual relationship. She sees that quality of relating as a thing of deep beauty. And she is loyal to her own Wild Heart, and the Wild Heart in all.
When she compromises herself, whether in work or love or play, she feels drained of power, off-center, and doesn't function as herself. Only when she's true to herself and requires (and gives) that respect and mutuality in relationship does she feel herself and have access to her full Artemis Mojo.
The Awakening-Power of Stories
The stories of Artemis help to awaken us to her gifts that we may be inspired to embody and express them as they come in and through us. And they remind us of the great gifts that reside within us, within our own Feminine or Lunar nature that can 'see in the dark' and navigate the forests and wilds by way of intuition, instinct, and inner-sight.
If you want to explore these or other gifts and 'Mojos' of the Feminine, and dive more deeply into Artemis and other great ones, join me in co-creative adventure in the Feminine Mojo Mystery School. We're exploring and strengthening our Feminine Mojo Superpowers -- Artemis would approve!
If you want to read a bit more about Artemis, here's another blog post I wrote with her inspiration.
And if you want to explore your Artemis gifts in my new 'Gifts of Artemis' private mentor-coaching series, send along an email.
Feminine Mojo Blessings!
Image Credit: Artemis, attributed to Pan Painter, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, gratis Theoi.com. Artemis with bow and arrow is from an ancient collection, unattributed.
Jamie Walters is the founder and creatrix of Ivy Sea and
The Academy of the Divine Feminine. She is a transformation
doula, intuitive & energyhealer and mentor, and lantern-
holder for engaged or embodied spirituality— including
the embodiment and expression of the Divine Feminine,
and a ‘reconnection’ to your Divine Spark. Jamie can be found
through Ivy Sea Online @ http://www.ivysea.com.
Nine Touchstone of the Goddess Religion
by Carol P. Christ
This discussion of nine touchstones of Goddess religion that "can offer us guidance as we
attempt to live its vision in our world" was published in Carol P. Christ, Rebirth
of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality,
(Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1997), "Mythos and Ethos in Goddess Religion," pp. 165-70.
©Carol P. Christ, not to be reprinted without written permission of the author.The nine touchstones presented are these:
- Nurture life.
- Walk in love and beauty.
- Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.
- Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.
- Take only what you need.
- Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.
- Approach the taking of life with great restraint.
- Practice great generosity.
- Repair the web.
Goddess religion, like all religions, is a mythos, a system of symbols and rituals, that shapes an ethos, providing a sense of what is real and establishing patterns of action. The insight that all beings in the web of life are deeply connected is the central ethical vision of Goddess religion. Native American teacher Dhyani Ywahoo expresses this conception: "The wisdom of our ancestors wherever they came from, basically points to one truth: everything is in relation to you. Native Americans say, 'all my relations,' acknowledging ... connection to everything that is alive."10 This vision is the antithesis of the illusion of dominators that they are superior to other beings and other people.
Those of us who have grown up in dominator cultures must learn again to value the experience of connection. The rituals and symbols of Goddess religion provide this link, bringing experience and deep feeling to consciousness so that they can shape our lives; helping us broaden and deepen our understanding of our interdependence to include all beings and all people; binding us to others and shaping communities in which concern for the earth and all people can be embodied.11
The symbols and rituals of Goddess religion celebrate our connection to the cycles of the moon and the seasons of the sun and our participation in the mysteries of birth, death, and renewal. They encourage us to appreciate diversity and difference: Darkness and light, springtime and winter, all people and all beings are sacred. Goddess symbols honor the body of the Goddess and our own bodies, calling us to embrace embodied life and to care for the earth body. They affirm the sacredness of the earth in its concrete particularity, naming the ground on which we stand as holy. Goddess images resacralize the female body, enabling women to take pride in our female selves, encouraging men to treat women and children with respect and to acknowledge their own connection to the life force. This is the ethos, the sense of what is real and valuable, created by the mythos of Goddess religion.
Ethics is grounded in an ethos, the way of life of a culture, which in turn is shaped by a mythos. Individual choices, such as what to do when a child throws a tantrum or whether to buy a car, are important. But just as crucial are the decisions we make as societies about how we support the nurturers of life and whether public transportation is available. This means that we must always think about the larger context, the mythos and the ethos, in which decisions are made. The larger context in which the ethics of Goddess religion is emerging is shaped by the mythos and ethos of domination. Our ethical decision making thus takes place "within a broken web."12 We are children of violence and this limits our ability to act as we might choose.
One of our tasks is to create a new mythos and a new ethos that can help us resist the values of dominator cultures. Through symbols and rituals we name our values and strengthen our commitment, creating alternatives to the images presented in both higher education and mass media. Changing consciousness will not magically transform the structures of society, as some New Age philosophers imagine. But we will not be able to change the structures of society if we continue to celebrate a mythos that supports the ethos and the structures of domination.
Even if we succeed in creating a new mythos and a new ethos, our capacity for moral reasoning will still be rooted in our bodies. We cannot pretend to have universal knowledge. We can only say how it seems to us when we take the widest perspective we can. Since moral decision making occurs within a world that is constantly changing and where all interests cannot be harmonized, decisions are rarely between right and wrong. More often than not, we must choose to do the best we can in a given situation, knowing that some harm may be done. Moral action always takes place within the context of the "ambiguity" of life.13 Thus Goddess religion cannot provide us with a new Ten Commandments or with universal ethical principles.
Still, we must ask whether Goddess religion can offer us any guidance as we attempt to live its vision in our world. In my life, I have discovered nine touchstones that can help to translate the mythos of Goddess religion into an ethos, a way of ethical living.14 A touchstone is different from a principle or a commandment. Like a beautiful pebble on the shore of the sea, a touchstone is discovered by attending to the concrete. It does not derive from a source outside ourselves, but rather is discovered within the web of life. A touchstone can be consulted for guidance, but it does not tell us precisely what to do in any concrete situation. A touchstone is one among many. Ethical guidelines can never be reduced to a perfect and complete list. They are relative to the situations in which we live. New touchstones can be added as they are discovered. Those that have outlived their usefulness can be discarded.
The touchstones I have found are applicable to individuals, communities, and societies. These nine touchstones of the ethics of Goddess religion are:
- Nurture life.
- Walk in love and beauty.
- Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.
- Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.
- Take only what you need.
- Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.
- Approach the taking of life with great restraint.
- Practice great generosity.
- Repair the web.
To walk in love and beauty is to appreciate the infinite diversity of all beings in the natural world, including ourselves and other human beings, and to sense that everything wants to be loved. This understanding has been conveyed to us in Navajo chants and in the words of Martin Buber, Susan Griffin, and Alice Walker. When we walk in love and beauty, we open our hearts to the world, to all our relations. We are stunned by beauty, and our hearts fill up and spill over with love. A song by Libby Roderick gives a sense of the loss we suffer when those around us do not walk in love and beauty:
How could anyone ever tell you
You are anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you
You are less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
that your love is like a miracle?
How deeply you're connected to my soul.17
The melody to this song is like a lullaby. As it is sung to us, we sense the healing that could occur if we all learned to walk in love and beauty.You are anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you
You are less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
that your love is like a miracle?
How deeply you're connected to my soul.17
To trust the knowledge that comes through the body means to take seriously that our bodies are ourselves and that sensation and feeling are the guardians of life. To experience the joy and pain that come to us through the body. To allow the power of the erotic to lead us to question the denial of pleasure and satisfaction that is inherent in the ethos of domination. To ground ourselves in the earth and to acknowledge our interdependence in the web of life. Trusting body experience also means never giving ourselves over to any authority — no wise man, no guru, no spiritual teacher, no spiritual tradition, no politician, no wise woman, no one. The ethos of domination has encouraged us to put our faith in external authorities, and this has led to great suffering and harm. A prayer called the Charge of the Goddess counters this pattern, reminding us: "If that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without."18 Not trusting authorities does not mean that we cannot learn from others.
Learning from those who have gone before us is part of interdependent life. But nothing should be accepted unquestioningly. Everything must be tested in our own experience.
To speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering means not idealizing life. Not denying the realities of our personal and social lives. For many of us, childhood and other traumas have been intensified because conflict was denied and we were not allowed to feel our pain. Denial is also a social phenomenon. Americans can continue to assert that we live in the "greatest society on earth" only if we deny the violence and ecological destruction that is occurring all around us. Many in Hitler's Germany denied the reality of the gas chambers. Denial is only possible when we sever our minds from our bodies. When we trust the knowledge that comes through our bodies, we feel our own joy and suffering and the suffering and joy of others and the earth body.
Taking only what you need and thinking about the consequences of your actions for seven generations are touchstones that come from the Native Americans.19 The first acknowledges that conflict — taking the lives of other beings — is inherent in human life and thus encourages restraint. The second affirms interconnection and asks us to consider not only our own needs, but those of all our relations for seven generations as we take and give back to the circle of life. Seven generations is a very long time. It is about as far into the future as the human imagination can stretch. We are not asked to hold ourselves to impossible models of perfection, but to consider the consequences of our actions on a scale we can comprehend.
Approaching the taking of life with great restraint is implicit in taking only what we need. I have made it a separate touchstone because those of us who live in industrialized countries take so much more than we really need without thinking of the lives that are lost. And because as individuals, communities, and societies we so readily resort to violence and warfare to resolve personal, ethnic, and national conflicts.
The "spirit of great generosity" advocated by Dhyani Ywahoo is an important guide as we work to transform our cultures and societies. According to Ywahoo, generosity begins with ourselves. If we are to gain the power to act, we must acknowledge that no one of us can take on all the burdens of the world. As we recognize our strengths and forgive our limitations, we can begin to approach others with a generous spirit. Ywahoo asks us to always "speak the best of one another and perceive the best in everything." She adds that "it is a strenuous discipline in these times to practice this."20 We must speak the truth about the harm dominator societies are doing to ourselves, other people, and the web of life. Yet it requires great discipline to understand the harm that white people have done to Native Americans and other people of color without concluding that all white people are mean and that white culture has nothing of value in it. Or to acknowledge the evils of sexism without deciding that all men and everything they have ever done is bad. Or to learn of the roles of Christianity and Judaism in the suppression of Goddess religion and the ethos of interdependence without coming to believe that Judaism and Christianity express no positive ethical values. Or to see the threat that national conflicts present to the human race and the web of life without stating that all of our political leaders are evil. Though great harm has been done, very few people or groups have nothing to commend them. When we polarize situations, we make it difficult for our "adversaries" to change, and we begin to perceive ourselves unrealistically as "all good."
The last touchstone, repair the web, reminds us that we are living in a world where the bonds of relationship and community are broken by violence. Stemming from the Jewish commandment to "repair the world,"21 it calls us to transform our personal relationships, our social and cultural institutions, and our relation to the natural world. In our time, the nurturers of life must work to establish greater harmony, justice, and peace for all beings on earth.
These nine touchstones define the ethos of Goddess religion, providing a framework for ethical decision making but not a blueprint for action. There are still hard decisions which we must make as individuals, communities, and societies. The touchstones of Goddess religion can be embodied in different lifestyles and ethical choices. They do not tell whether individuals or groups are ever justified in resorting to force to defend themselves. Nor do they tell us whether we "need" to eat meat or whether we "need" flush toilets and electricity. But clearly there is no license to justify violence as the ordinary way to defend personal, national, or other interests, to take what others need, or to deplete the earth. Our needs must always be weighed in relation to the needs of other people and other beings for continued life and survival. It is not possible to live in perfect harmony with all people and all beings in the web of life. We cannot live without taking the lives of other living creatures, and we cannot live with other human beings without some degree of conflict. Our choices are always between relative degrees of healing and harming other people and the web of life.
But once we recognize the possibility and value of a life lived in reverence and respect for other people and life in all its diverse forms, it becomes painfully obvious how far modern societies have deviated from this vision. While it may not be easy to decide exactly what "taking only what we need" means in modern technological societies, it is certain that in dominator societies we have been taught that it is our right to take far more than we really need in disregard for the needs of other people and other beings. The violent behavior of individuals and groups and nations is taking too great a toll on human bodies, the body politic, and the earth body. While we may disagree on strategies and priorities for change, if we value the ethos of interdependence, we can agree that those of us living in dominator societies must make radical changes in the way we live.
Notes
10. Dhyani Ywahoo, "Renewing the Sacred Hoop," in Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ, eds., Weaving the Visions: New Patters in Feminist Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 275.11. For depictions of the rituals of Goddess religion, see Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989); and Budapest, Grandmother of Time. Also see Carol P. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), especially chap. 11, and Odyssey with the Goddess (New York: Continuum, 1995). Also see Chapter 1 of this book.
12. See Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Sexism, Separation, and Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).
13. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity [1948], trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Citadel Press, 1970), discussed in Chapter 7.
14. The idea of moral touchstones is taken from Maurice Friedman, Touchstones of Reality: Existential Trust and the Community of Peace (New York: Dutton, 1972). My touchstones are different from his.
15. Ariska Razak, "Toward a Womanist Analysis of Birth," in Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein, eds., Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), p. 172.
16. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
17. Libby Roderick, from the song "How Could Anyone Ever Tell You" on her album entitled "If You See a Dream" (Turtle Island Records).
18. See Starhawk, Spiral Dance, p. 91. The Charge of the Goddess has been attributed to Doreen Valiente; see Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 51.
19. See Ywahoo, "Renewing the Sacred Hoop," p. 276. Also see Brooke Medicine Eagle, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing: The Spirit Song of a Rainbow Medicine Woman (New York: Ballantine, 1991).
20. Ibid., p. 275.
21. See Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), chap. 6, esp. pp. 218-20.
Carol Christ, Ph.D., a pioneer and founding mother of the Goddess,women's spirituality,and feminist theology movements, directs Ariadne Institute. She has been teaching in feminist educational settings in Greece since 1981. Ariadne Institute programs address the mind, body, and spirit, encouraging
"embodied thinking" and personal transformation. Several hundred women of all ages—including artists, writers, educators,students, businesswomen, and homemakers—have participated in our programs since 1993.We are joined in the Ariadne sisterhood and keep in touch through our newsletter Ariadne's Thread.
Carol Christ holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and is the author of the widely reprinted essay, "Why Women Need the Goddess," which has introduced many to the rebirth of the ancient religion of the Goddess. She has written five influential books on women's spirituality and feminist theology: She Who Changes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Rebirth of the Goddess Addison Wesley, 1997,(Routledge, 1998); Odyssey with the Goddess (Continuum, 1995); Laughter of Aphrodite (Harper, 1987); and Diving Deep and Surfacing (Beacon, 1980/1986/1995); with Judith Plaskow she co-edited the classic anthologies Weaving the Visions (1989) and Womanspirit Rising (1979/1989) which have changed women's lives and revolutionized the teaching and study of religion in North America.
Carol has taught at major universities in the United States, including Columbia University, Harvard Divinity School, Pomona College, San Jose State, and the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Carol also offers sacred Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete. For more information,
check our her website : Ariadnes Thread
To read more of Carol’s thoughts, see her regular blogs on www.feminismandreligion.com
The Archetype of the Womb
Part IBy: Theresa C. Dintino
Once there was the archetype of a nurturing womb that lived in the collective human psyche offering comfort and assurance. This archetype was a strong and persistent one. Modern westerners have lost this archetype. The loss of this powerful archetype leaves us with many wounds: a deep sense of isolation, alienation, disconnection and disorientation. We are plagued and haunted by deep, primal fear. This fear drives us, continually leading us in the wrong direction—away from a return to the Archetype of the Womb.
The Archetype of the Womb, the number one in sacred geometry, is one of connectedness, interconnectedness, unity and community. There is a birth from and return to the nurturing womb, rendering blood and darkness a sacred mystery. The mystery is held within the womb. When the universe, kosmos, is viewed as a womb, there is the awareness of a series of nested wombs held within this larger womb image—an infinite nesting of wombs within wombs. Carefully held contained space creates more carefully held contained space.
The universal womb enables the galactic womb, solar system womb, solar and earth womb, ocean womb, community and village womb, mother womb, daughter womb, cellular and quantum womb.
When this archetype has a living presence, there is an organic feeling of belonging—a constant and reliable place to return to, release to, dissolve or melt into. The womb is the place of birth and death, the before-during-and the after. There is a deep trust in knowing that the womb space holds us all, all life, all systems, all realities. There is no outside. All are held within. There is a deeply held within nested safely with within inside even more within.
There is the story of Seth, the god who holds the negative or opposing force in Egyptian tradition breaking through his mother’s womb with his impatience to be born. Perhaps this is the definition of evil: breaking this precious held space. Breaking the web of connectedness and then believing that the broken web is the truth.
The loss of the Archetype of the Womb has led to a loss and devaluation of mothering energy, mothering presence and mothers in general. I doubt any of us know what mothering energy looks like in its purest form. There are so many overlays and projections, mostly negative. Pure mother energy has fierce boundaries. We see this in the animal world. Mothers are not ‘nice’ among birds and bears. Mothers get the job done and the main job of a mother is protection. Many human mothers in the western world feel powerless to protect their children. Rather mothering is the experience of a slow inculcation and preparation of our young to accepting the realities of life in a world of horror.
I believe if the Archetype of the Womb were present there would be no global warming, humans would not be killing species at record rates, and there would be no war. To the mother energy who knows what it takes—the time and energy to create—life is too precious to squander. Pure mother energy also knows how each and every manifestation of life is unique, special and essential to the whole. Pure mother energy does not need to arise only from mothers and females but it is always a female energy.
The Archetype of the Womb is that of the container—contained space, the alchemical space within which transmutation occurs. Within this womb container all arises, transmutes, becomes, and dissolves back into the cauldron of the womb to arise yet again, again transformed, again becoming, again dissolving. A wise woman once said to me life is about transforming matter. When you are down, depressed, feeling lost, go and make something. You’ll feel better. Why? Because you will be participating with the universe in its ultimate purpose.
We westerners envision ourselves as sitting on the outside of an unprotected planet in a dangerous solar system within a meaningless universe. Because of this, we feel acutely alone, at risk and profoundly vulnerable but this is not the truth of our existence.
We are held within countless containers of safety. The earth, our mother, created a variety of systems to enclose us within layers of protection while remaining interactive with our local solar system. The atmosphere and magnetosphere are but two examples of systems created by the earth which repel asteroids and other space debris as well as harmful radiation while allowing other, beneficial matter and light in. Similarly the heliosphere of the sun encloses and holds the solar system within a contained, protected space while interacting with the galaxy as a whole and so on. Layer upon layer of membranes permeable yet protective. This more accurately describes the truth of our existence.
Cosmologist Brian Swimme sites the emergence of the membrane as one of the most crucial developments for the presence of life on earth. “Really dynamic creative emergence requires isolation, removal, separation in order to articulate itself. The membrane protects complexity and creative power.”1 Swimme describes the existence of molecules in the early sea, how in the early earth system complexity is created and then washed away by the ongoing forces of nature. But there is a “moment where a molecular web folds around a complex chemical interaction and that molecular web protects what has been developed.” This is the birth of the cell and all other life forms emerged as a result of this moment of creativity. Membranes also posses the power of discernment, deciding what to allow in and what to keep out for the overall integrity of the cell. Swimme calls this a form of intelligence and notes that human sensitivity is yet another variety of this development created by cells in the early sea. 2
I see the membrane as but another manifestation of the archetype of the womb. It is a womb that folds around that which has been created, to preserve and protect it, like a mother’s arms.
If you believed you were held in a within space which you shared with all the rest of life as you know it would you consider differently how to behave?
The Archetype of the Womb, the number one in sacred geometry, is one of connectedness, interconnectedness, unity and community. There is a birth from and return to the nurturing womb, rendering blood and darkness a sacred mystery. The mystery is held within the womb. When the universe, kosmos, is viewed as a womb, there is the awareness of a series of nested wombs held within this larger womb image—an infinite nesting of wombs within wombs. Carefully held contained space creates more carefully held contained space.
The universal womb enables the galactic womb, solar system womb, solar and earth womb, ocean womb, community and village womb, mother womb, daughter womb, cellular and quantum womb.
When this archetype has a living presence, there is an organic feeling of belonging—a constant and reliable place to return to, release to, dissolve or melt into. The womb is the place of birth and death, the before-during-and the after. There is a deep trust in knowing that the womb space holds us all, all life, all systems, all realities. There is no outside. All are held within. There is a deeply held within nested safely with within inside even more within.
There is the story of Seth, the god who holds the negative or opposing force in Egyptian tradition breaking through his mother’s womb with his impatience to be born. Perhaps this is the definition of evil: breaking this precious held space. Breaking the web of connectedness and then believing that the broken web is the truth.
The loss of the Archetype of the Womb has led to a loss and devaluation of mothering energy, mothering presence and mothers in general. I doubt any of us know what mothering energy looks like in its purest form. There are so many overlays and projections, mostly negative. Pure mother energy has fierce boundaries. We see this in the animal world. Mothers are not ‘nice’ among birds and bears. Mothers get the job done and the main job of a mother is protection. Many human mothers in the western world feel powerless to protect their children. Rather mothering is the experience of a slow inculcation and preparation of our young to accepting the realities of life in a world of horror.
I believe if the Archetype of the Womb were present there would be no global warming, humans would not be killing species at record rates, and there would be no war. To the mother energy who knows what it takes—the time and energy to create—life is too precious to squander. Pure mother energy also knows how each and every manifestation of life is unique, special and essential to the whole. Pure mother energy does not need to arise only from mothers and females but it is always a female energy.
The Archetype of the Womb is that of the container—contained space, the alchemical space within which transmutation occurs. Within this womb container all arises, transmutes, becomes, and dissolves back into the cauldron of the womb to arise yet again, again transformed, again becoming, again dissolving. A wise woman once said to me life is about transforming matter. When you are down, depressed, feeling lost, go and make something. You’ll feel better. Why? Because you will be participating with the universe in its ultimate purpose.
We westerners envision ourselves as sitting on the outside of an unprotected planet in a dangerous solar system within a meaningless universe. Because of this, we feel acutely alone, at risk and profoundly vulnerable but this is not the truth of our existence.
We are held within countless containers of safety. The earth, our mother, created a variety of systems to enclose us within layers of protection while remaining interactive with our local solar system. The atmosphere and magnetosphere are but two examples of systems created by the earth which repel asteroids and other space debris as well as harmful radiation while allowing other, beneficial matter and light in. Similarly the heliosphere of the sun encloses and holds the solar system within a contained, protected space while interacting with the galaxy as a whole and so on. Layer upon layer of membranes permeable yet protective. This more accurately describes the truth of our existence.
Cosmologist Brian Swimme sites the emergence of the membrane as one of the most crucial developments for the presence of life on earth. “Really dynamic creative emergence requires isolation, removal, separation in order to articulate itself. The membrane protects complexity and creative power.”1 Swimme describes the existence of molecules in the early sea, how in the early earth system complexity is created and then washed away by the ongoing forces of nature. But there is a “moment where a molecular web folds around a complex chemical interaction and that molecular web protects what has been developed.” This is the birth of the cell and all other life forms emerged as a result of this moment of creativity. Membranes also posses the power of discernment, deciding what to allow in and what to keep out for the overall integrity of the cell. Swimme calls this a form of intelligence and notes that human sensitivity is yet another variety of this development created by cells in the early sea. 2
I see the membrane as but another manifestation of the archetype of the womb. It is a womb that folds around that which has been created, to preserve and protect it, like a mother’s arms.
If you believed you were held in a within space which you shared with all the rest of life as you know it would you consider differently how to behave?
We have lost the Archetype of Connectedness.
The physical manifestations of the loss of this archetype are everywhere around us. Losing this archetype has allowed us to destroy permeable yet protective membranes. Here we are able to see how the state of our psyches directly affects physical matter. We are destroying the atmosphere, one of the layers of the womb, because we do not believe in it. Because we do not believe in it we are losing it, we are allowing it to be destroyed. We are creating what we believe, deeply. We are literally creating the reality of disconnection and alienation that we carry deep in our psyches.
This archetype of the womb has had many manifestations in human consciousness. Around 10,000 BCE it arose in the human psyche in the form of bucrania (bull head and horns). Throughout the middle east at this time period archeologists begin to find the skulls and horns of wild bulls and cows buried underneath housing, embedded inside the plaster of the walls and benches and used as a decorative motif in association with images of the Goddess. They call this image the bull and male and mostly separate it from the Goddess images. But it is not separate and it is not male. It is yet another image of the Goddess. It is the womb of the Goddess. These Bucranium are images of the horned cow, the Cow Goddess which is a manifestation of the Archetype of the Womb.
African Hathor is a Cow Goddess. From her udders flows the milk that creates and sustains life in the cosmos. Hathor is the Goddess of Papyrus, the opener of wombs, Goddess of love, the Mother. She is the goddess of licentiousness, ecstasy. She is also associated with the sistrum, a tambourine type percussion instrument. Her priestesses were dancers and musicians. Her celebrations were bawdy and sexual. She is Mistress of the Vulva; wooden phalluses were left to her.
Hathor means ‘house of Horus’, her womb housed Horus. Horus is the level of transmutation humans aspired to in Egypt and alchemical traditions. You need the womb within which to be transmuted. No matter how ‘enlightened’ someone is, or a tradition is, if they miss the boat on this one, it is no good. Nothing happens in isolation. No one transforms themself. The container of your life, beliefs, experiences, transforms you. And this is held female space. We are destroying the womb container of the earth. Global warming is nothing other than this. If we destroy the container, nothing can live, meaning nothing can transform. Womb space is generated at the core and then emanates out and around. Womb space comes from within the within, a deeply interior space which creates new deeply interior space.
Hathor is a solar Goddess. If life on earth is transformed sunlight she is the transformer—the one who holds the space within which transmutation occurs, the vessel, container—womb. She is often depicted as a vessel. She wears a sun disc on her head between her horns. Her symbol is the mirror which captures the sun within it and transmutes it, a reflection of the sun, herself reflecting and channeling sun. She is a sky Goddess, often associated with Nut. She is the mother Goddess, the nurturing womb archetype.
It was Dorothy Cameron who originally pointed out that the bucrania image, so omnipresent in the cultures that worshiped the Goddess in prehistory, is a perfect replica of a human woman’s uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries.3
We know that ancient people knew human anatomy because they engaged in the process of excarnation. Excarnation is a process where the bodies of the recently dead were left out in the open air to be exposed to the elements, sun, wind, rain and vultures—their flesh offered up as food. The priest/priestess carrying out the service would have observed the internal organs at certain stages of decomposition; they would have seen the female reproductive organs in various stages of pregnancy. The flesh they offered to the vultures, the sun, the wind, the air for further transmutation. The cleaned and bleached bones they carried back to their shrines, temples, placed them into clay pots or baskets and buried them under the floors of their houses. Undoubtedly there were rituals involving the bucrania that invoked returning them, in the form of their cleaned and prepared bones, to the womb of the Goddess for rebirth.
Bucrania images were often created out of plaster with actual horns. These carefully crafted images protruded from walls of tomb like spaces, adorned alters or the ends of benches. They were painted onto pots and clay vessels as well. Later the image is stylized into the downward facing triangle. The Egyptian hieroglyph for uterus is V.
Barbara G. Walker writes, “Perhaps the most common manifestation of the Great Mother as Preserver was the white, horned, milk-giving Moon-cow, still sacred in India as a symbol of Kali.”4 As Lat, Al-lat, Latona, Lado, Leto, or Leda she was known as the ‘milk giver’. Io, Europa, Hera, Brigid, horned cow Goddesses all. Cow as Creatrix. In shrines uncovered in the Neolithic village of Çatal Hüyük (circa 7th mill. BCE)located in what is now Turkey we find bucranium lining the walls, or protruding from walls underneath painted images of the large spreading wings of vultures, being born from between the legs of the awesome frog Goddess. From Prehistoric Crete are images of bucrania and bulls, often with a labrys, double axe, symbol of cyclical nature of life/death non duality in its head. In Sardinia (circa 4th mill. BCE) in underground, egg shaped tombs images of bucrania hang over doors and entryways as well as emerging from and lining the circular walls within, as a recurring, repeating symbol.
In an astounding image from Egypt in Saqqara—the cemetery site for early dynastic Memphis, (3100-2800 BCE.) 300 Bucrania surround tomb #3504 excavated by Emery. The heads are made of mud but the horns are genuine. They must have been collecting them for some time. These 300 line perfectly the outer wall of the tomb complex. It is a powerful image. The idea of rebirth within the womb of the Goddess exists long before this and worship of Hathor has a powerful and central presence in Egypt at this time and yet in written descriptions of the tomb I find only references to the bull and the kingship.
Hathor is mistress of the west; the netherworld was located in the west. She was well known for her ability to revive the dead. She greets the dead with food to sustain them on their journey. Why is this left out of the interpretation of 300 bucrania surrounding a tomb in early Egypt?
Hathor is a midwife, she is present at birth, she is the opener of wombs, she is the one to go to when one needs help with fertility, sexuality. She is a healer. The active presence of this archetype gives way for physical human manifestations that will embody the archetype.
This archetype of the womb has had many manifestations in human consciousness. Around 10,000 BCE it arose in the human psyche in the form of bucrania (bull head and horns). Throughout the middle east at this time period archeologists begin to find the skulls and horns of wild bulls and cows buried underneath housing, embedded inside the plaster of the walls and benches and used as a decorative motif in association with images of the Goddess. They call this image the bull and male and mostly separate it from the Goddess images. But it is not separate and it is not male. It is yet another image of the Goddess. It is the womb of the Goddess. These Bucranium are images of the horned cow, the Cow Goddess which is a manifestation of the Archetype of the Womb.
African Hathor is a Cow Goddess. From her udders flows the milk that creates and sustains life in the cosmos. Hathor is the Goddess of Papyrus, the opener of wombs, Goddess of love, the Mother. She is the goddess of licentiousness, ecstasy. She is also associated with the sistrum, a tambourine type percussion instrument. Her priestesses were dancers and musicians. Her celebrations were bawdy and sexual. She is Mistress of the Vulva; wooden phalluses were left to her.
Hathor means ‘house of Horus’, her womb housed Horus. Horus is the level of transmutation humans aspired to in Egypt and alchemical traditions. You need the womb within which to be transmuted. No matter how ‘enlightened’ someone is, or a tradition is, if they miss the boat on this one, it is no good. Nothing happens in isolation. No one transforms themself. The container of your life, beliefs, experiences, transforms you. And this is held female space. We are destroying the womb container of the earth. Global warming is nothing other than this. If we destroy the container, nothing can live, meaning nothing can transform. Womb space is generated at the core and then emanates out and around. Womb space comes from within the within, a deeply interior space which creates new deeply interior space.
Hathor is a solar Goddess. If life on earth is transformed sunlight she is the transformer—the one who holds the space within which transmutation occurs, the vessel, container—womb. She is often depicted as a vessel. She wears a sun disc on her head between her horns. Her symbol is the mirror which captures the sun within it and transmutes it, a reflection of the sun, herself reflecting and channeling sun. She is a sky Goddess, often associated with Nut. She is the mother Goddess, the nurturing womb archetype.
It was Dorothy Cameron who originally pointed out that the bucrania image, so omnipresent in the cultures that worshiped the Goddess in prehistory, is a perfect replica of a human woman’s uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries.3
We know that ancient people knew human anatomy because they engaged in the process of excarnation. Excarnation is a process where the bodies of the recently dead were left out in the open air to be exposed to the elements, sun, wind, rain and vultures—their flesh offered up as food. The priest/priestess carrying out the service would have observed the internal organs at certain stages of decomposition; they would have seen the female reproductive organs in various stages of pregnancy. The flesh they offered to the vultures, the sun, the wind, the air for further transmutation. The cleaned and bleached bones they carried back to their shrines, temples, placed them into clay pots or baskets and buried them under the floors of their houses. Undoubtedly there were rituals involving the bucrania that invoked returning them, in the form of their cleaned and prepared bones, to the womb of the Goddess for rebirth.
Bucrania images were often created out of plaster with actual horns. These carefully crafted images protruded from walls of tomb like spaces, adorned alters or the ends of benches. They were painted onto pots and clay vessels as well. Later the image is stylized into the downward facing triangle. The Egyptian hieroglyph for uterus is V.
Barbara G. Walker writes, “Perhaps the most common manifestation of the Great Mother as Preserver was the white, horned, milk-giving Moon-cow, still sacred in India as a symbol of Kali.”4 As Lat, Al-lat, Latona, Lado, Leto, or Leda she was known as the ‘milk giver’. Io, Europa, Hera, Brigid, horned cow Goddesses all. Cow as Creatrix. In shrines uncovered in the Neolithic village of Çatal Hüyük (circa 7th mill. BCE)located in what is now Turkey we find bucranium lining the walls, or protruding from walls underneath painted images of the large spreading wings of vultures, being born from between the legs of the awesome frog Goddess. From Prehistoric Crete are images of bucrania and bulls, often with a labrys, double axe, symbol of cyclical nature of life/death non duality in its head. In Sardinia (circa 4th mill. BCE) in underground, egg shaped tombs images of bucrania hang over doors and entryways as well as emerging from and lining the circular walls within, as a recurring, repeating symbol.
In an astounding image from Egypt in Saqqara—the cemetery site for early dynastic Memphis, (3100-2800 BCE.) 300 Bucrania surround tomb #3504 excavated by Emery. The heads are made of mud but the horns are genuine. They must have been collecting them for some time. These 300 line perfectly the outer wall of the tomb complex. It is a powerful image. The idea of rebirth within the womb of the Goddess exists long before this and worship of Hathor has a powerful and central presence in Egypt at this time and yet in written descriptions of the tomb I find only references to the bull and the kingship.
Hathor is mistress of the west; the netherworld was located in the west. She was well known for her ability to revive the dead. She greets the dead with food to sustain them on their journey. Why is this left out of the interpretation of 300 bucrania surrounding a tomb in early Egypt?
Hathor is a midwife, she is present at birth, she is the opener of wombs, she is the one to go to when one needs help with fertility, sexuality. She is a healer. The active presence of this archetype gives way for physical human manifestations that will embody the archetype.
Hathor as a midwife Goddess, a healer and sage gives way to the wise woman, the midwife, the Strega the Curandera, Witch. Without her, there is no place for these kinds of women. Without her women who embody these particular powers become frightening aberrations.
The swallow is the sacred animal of Hathor. Swallows are associated with the sun and fire. Contrary to most recent Goddess scholarship which places male energy firmly with the sun and female with the moon, the Goddesses of Egypt are mostly sun Goddesses. Osiris is the Moon God who dies and is resurrected. In the mid-east there was the tradition of the sun Goddess and her consort moon God husband/lover/son/who died and resurrected like the moon on a monthly basis. Some say the story of Jesus was yet a continuation of this. The moon God who was sacrificed ritually to ensure fertility and everlasting life.
Studying the Egyptian pantheon does not allow one to make definitive statements. There is an ambiguity, an overlapping, a changeability to their Goddesses and Gods that can be confusing but also instructional especially for us westerners with our often black and white view of the world. The Gods and Goddesses of Egypt inhabit the meaning of both/and. They exchange roles, names, they are at once animals, symbols, words and opposing energies. At different times they are different elements.
One reason for this is the long time span documented of Egyptian belief. Changes in belief are mirrored in the changing roles of Goddesses and Gods. However, this changeability is also indicative of the nondual view of life that the Egyptians held which is also revealed in their views on evil. Things were not evil as in bad or wrong, they were in opposition. They were twins, another part of the totality or whole, another side, another aspect. They embodied energies we now label evil but I do not believe the Egyptians saw it that way. These energies are what we now call the shadow, the repressed and cut off parts of ourselves, but they were not shadows in Egyptian belief. They were out in the open, and they were revered. They were powers humans had access to.
With this in mind it is important to move to the other aspect of Hathor, our womb Goddess, lest we get wrapped up in modern views of mother energy as only a nurturing force. Hathor is another manifestation of Sekhmet, her twin or dual/nondual aspect, and Sekhmet is the fierce Goddess in Egypt. She is a lion, fire, what some would call a destroyer Goddess—the destructive side of creation but also, like Kali, the one who cuts through illusion to truth—the one who will kill you and cut you down to protect that which she loves which is nothing less that all of life itself.
Like Durga, the Hindu fierce Goddess who rides a lion, she is a blood thirsty Goddess. In fact Sekhmet’s story is very similar to Durga’s in that she is invoked to clean up the earth when things are out of control and that it involves the drinking of blood. Sekhmet has been given the task of destroying humans who have forgotten about RA. Her force becomes uncontrollable once unleashed and it seems all of humanity will be destroyed. She is reined in through drinking pomegranate juice laced with beer which she, thinking it is blood, laps up eagerly becoming drunk and passing out.
And yet the Sekhmet in this story, the fierce murderous Goddess to be feared is only one facet of this powerful lion. There is so much more to this Goddess that has been overlooked, most evident in the fact that she is the dual aspect of Hathor, nurturing mother womb. Like the womb itself with its ability to carry and create life as well as its ability to bleed and destroy life, to Hathor’s sparrow is Sekhmet’s lion. The womb is awash with life giving blood.
Sekhmet’s name means “the powerful one.” She is the “dynamo of Divine Light and energy that drives the universe.”5 She too wears the sun disc on her head. The lion’s face is reflection of the sun. Don’t get too close to either.
Intriguing to me is the fact that Sekhmet derives her name from the word sekhem. In Dreams of Isis Normandi Ellis tells of being in the temple of Edfu and seeing an image of a lion headed serpent, tongue thrust forward between her teeth, ‘Buddha-like.’ “She is the goddess of the life-force herself-Sekhmet. She is the fire that arises up in all things the way a flame leaps to a bit of wood to consume it, or the way life essence shoots up through the ground each spring.”6
Sekhem is the life force, the kundalini, the numen, chi. Ellis tells us sekhem literally means ‘the powers.’ Sekhem is the life force generated in and rising out of the womb space. Mother is life force, creatrix/destroyer. This is not a passive force—a subservient, patient force, this is the magic that moves through beings and enlivens them. Mother=life energy. And life energy is a blade that cuts both ways.
If Hathor is pregnancy and birth, Sekhmet is menstruation, menopause and puberty, the woman raging on hormones, the woman who needs some space, in our so called modern world, the madwoman, the shadowed and split off part.
Female lions are the hunters in that species. They know how to take care of themselves and their young. They understand protection. What is the big mystery of the sphinx? If you were the Pharaoh would you choose anyone other to be your protectress in the afterworld? This is an awesome power and it is held in the womb matrix—the archetype of the self-contained self creating universe. This is the part of woman, womb, mother that Christianity and so many western religions left out and why women are so conflicted and split, disconnected. Sekhmet is no ‘nice girl’. She is no doormat. Her boundaries are clear. The Archetype of the Womb is a powerhouse of creativity. Sekhmet. We have a lion in our wombs. No one ever told me that but I knew it all the while. I experience her red liquid every moon.
Sekhmet is associated and depicted with the color red. She is called the ‘scarlet lady.’ She is Lilith of the red sea, Inanna, the whore, Magdalene of the red hair and red dress. She is blood. We ‘see red’ when we are angry. We are angry when our boundaries are violated. Sekhmet is the protective boundary of the membrane saying ‘No!’ We see the Hathor/Sekhmet dual/nondual nature repeated over and over again in the Eve/Lilith, Virgin Mary/Mary Magdalene relationships to name only a couple.
Creation and destruction are dual aspects of this same archetypal energy. Revering and honoring destructive power is a way of being relationship with it rather than hoping that by denying it, it will go away. We must dance with the fires of creativity, we must die to be reborn, we must cut through our egoic tendencies to accomplish any real work on ourselves. In the container of the womb it is the fire, the heat, which transforms.
This dual power is the womb and it holds us all. Even in death we are yet held by the womb. Since there is no outside, all is eternally present. With the presence of Sekhmet in the Archetype of the Womb death is not bad, other or an unexplainable horror. Death, (not gratuitous violence, not war, not out of control rage) is essential to life. It is a gift. The dead are ever present(there is no where else to go). Within the womb container, death is the ultimate transformation. Ancient and indigenous people understand this; the ancestors are interacted with, held close for the good of the living. Death is a realm not an ending.
If our psyches held the archetype of the womb, all aspects of it, would there be less confusion? If we honored the archetypal power of Sekhmet, would we be less inclined to rail against it? Egyptians, fearful Sekhmet would go on the attack again were pious in honoring her. There was the belief that destructive forces can be riled or kept in line through human actions.
When I saw the film, The DaVinci Code, I was struck how many times the theme of Mary Magdalene as the womb was iterated. I had not received that same message when I read the book and yet in the film it seemed to be one the most prominent themes. In the film the sarcophagus is a very potent image. The way it was portrayed—underground, buried—in hiding, hunted and disappeared made me view it as another image of the Archetype of the Womb. In the book, Mary Magdalene and thus her sarcophagus as a metaphor for her, is the literal womb that housed the children and future descendents of Christ. Truly, it is about so much more than that. The Da Vinci Code is about the return of the lost Holy Grail—the Archetype of the Womb. It is about rediscovering the cosmic womb of the Goddess, our place in the Universe, the arising of this archetype once again in human consciousness.
The swallow is the sacred animal of Hathor. Swallows are associated with the sun and fire. Contrary to most recent Goddess scholarship which places male energy firmly with the sun and female with the moon, the Goddesses of Egypt are mostly sun Goddesses. Osiris is the Moon God who dies and is resurrected. In the mid-east there was the tradition of the sun Goddess and her consort moon God husband/lover/son/who died and resurrected like the moon on a monthly basis. Some say the story of Jesus was yet a continuation of this. The moon God who was sacrificed ritually to ensure fertility and everlasting life.
Studying the Egyptian pantheon does not allow one to make definitive statements. There is an ambiguity, an overlapping, a changeability to their Goddesses and Gods that can be confusing but also instructional especially for us westerners with our often black and white view of the world. The Gods and Goddesses of Egypt inhabit the meaning of both/and. They exchange roles, names, they are at once animals, symbols, words and opposing energies. At different times they are different elements.
One reason for this is the long time span documented of Egyptian belief. Changes in belief are mirrored in the changing roles of Goddesses and Gods. However, this changeability is also indicative of the nondual view of life that the Egyptians held which is also revealed in their views on evil. Things were not evil as in bad or wrong, they were in opposition. They were twins, another part of the totality or whole, another side, another aspect. They embodied energies we now label evil but I do not believe the Egyptians saw it that way. These energies are what we now call the shadow, the repressed and cut off parts of ourselves, but they were not shadows in Egyptian belief. They were out in the open, and they were revered. They were powers humans had access to.
With this in mind it is important to move to the other aspect of Hathor, our womb Goddess, lest we get wrapped up in modern views of mother energy as only a nurturing force. Hathor is another manifestation of Sekhmet, her twin or dual/nondual aspect, and Sekhmet is the fierce Goddess in Egypt. She is a lion, fire, what some would call a destroyer Goddess—the destructive side of creation but also, like Kali, the one who cuts through illusion to truth—the one who will kill you and cut you down to protect that which she loves which is nothing less that all of life itself.
Like Durga, the Hindu fierce Goddess who rides a lion, she is a blood thirsty Goddess. In fact Sekhmet’s story is very similar to Durga’s in that she is invoked to clean up the earth when things are out of control and that it involves the drinking of blood. Sekhmet has been given the task of destroying humans who have forgotten about RA. Her force becomes uncontrollable once unleashed and it seems all of humanity will be destroyed. She is reined in through drinking pomegranate juice laced with beer which she, thinking it is blood, laps up eagerly becoming drunk and passing out.
And yet the Sekhmet in this story, the fierce murderous Goddess to be feared is only one facet of this powerful lion. There is so much more to this Goddess that has been overlooked, most evident in the fact that she is the dual aspect of Hathor, nurturing mother womb. Like the womb itself with its ability to carry and create life as well as its ability to bleed and destroy life, to Hathor’s sparrow is Sekhmet’s lion. The womb is awash with life giving blood.
Sekhmet’s name means “the powerful one.” She is the “dynamo of Divine Light and energy that drives the universe.”5 She too wears the sun disc on her head. The lion’s face is reflection of the sun. Don’t get too close to either.
Intriguing to me is the fact that Sekhmet derives her name from the word sekhem. In Dreams of Isis Normandi Ellis tells of being in the temple of Edfu and seeing an image of a lion headed serpent, tongue thrust forward between her teeth, ‘Buddha-like.’ “She is the goddess of the life-force herself-Sekhmet. She is the fire that arises up in all things the way a flame leaps to a bit of wood to consume it, or the way life essence shoots up through the ground each spring.”6
Sekhem is the life force, the kundalini, the numen, chi. Ellis tells us sekhem literally means ‘the powers.’ Sekhem is the life force generated in and rising out of the womb space. Mother is life force, creatrix/destroyer. This is not a passive force—a subservient, patient force, this is the magic that moves through beings and enlivens them. Mother=life energy. And life energy is a blade that cuts both ways.
If Hathor is pregnancy and birth, Sekhmet is menstruation, menopause and puberty, the woman raging on hormones, the woman who needs some space, in our so called modern world, the madwoman, the shadowed and split off part.
Female lions are the hunters in that species. They know how to take care of themselves and their young. They understand protection. What is the big mystery of the sphinx? If you were the Pharaoh would you choose anyone other to be your protectress in the afterworld? This is an awesome power and it is held in the womb matrix—the archetype of the self-contained self creating universe. This is the part of woman, womb, mother that Christianity and so many western religions left out and why women are so conflicted and split, disconnected. Sekhmet is no ‘nice girl’. She is no doormat. Her boundaries are clear. The Archetype of the Womb is a powerhouse of creativity. Sekhmet. We have a lion in our wombs. No one ever told me that but I knew it all the while. I experience her red liquid every moon.
Sekhmet is associated and depicted with the color red. She is called the ‘scarlet lady.’ She is Lilith of the red sea, Inanna, the whore, Magdalene of the red hair and red dress. She is blood. We ‘see red’ when we are angry. We are angry when our boundaries are violated. Sekhmet is the protective boundary of the membrane saying ‘No!’ We see the Hathor/Sekhmet dual/nondual nature repeated over and over again in the Eve/Lilith, Virgin Mary/Mary Magdalene relationships to name only a couple.
Creation and destruction are dual aspects of this same archetypal energy. Revering and honoring destructive power is a way of being relationship with it rather than hoping that by denying it, it will go away. We must dance with the fires of creativity, we must die to be reborn, we must cut through our egoic tendencies to accomplish any real work on ourselves. In the container of the womb it is the fire, the heat, which transforms.
This dual power is the womb and it holds us all. Even in death we are yet held by the womb. Since there is no outside, all is eternally present. With the presence of Sekhmet in the Archetype of the Womb death is not bad, other or an unexplainable horror. Death, (not gratuitous violence, not war, not out of control rage) is essential to life. It is a gift. The dead are ever present(there is no where else to go). Within the womb container, death is the ultimate transformation. Ancient and indigenous people understand this; the ancestors are interacted with, held close for the good of the living. Death is a realm not an ending.
If our psyches held the archetype of the womb, all aspects of it, would there be less confusion? If we honored the archetypal power of Sekhmet, would we be less inclined to rail against it? Egyptians, fearful Sekhmet would go on the attack again were pious in honoring her. There was the belief that destructive forces can be riled or kept in line through human actions.
When I saw the film, The DaVinci Code, I was struck how many times the theme of Mary Magdalene as the womb was iterated. I had not received that same message when I read the book and yet in the film it seemed to be one the most prominent themes. In the film the sarcophagus is a very potent image. The way it was portrayed—underground, buried—in hiding, hunted and disappeared made me view it as another image of the Archetype of the Womb. In the book, Mary Magdalene and thus her sarcophagus as a metaphor for her, is the literal womb that housed the children and future descendents of Christ. Truly, it is about so much more than that. The Da Vinci Code is about the return of the lost Holy Grail—the Archetype of the Womb. It is about rediscovering the cosmic womb of the Goddess, our place in the Universe, the arising of this archetype once again in human consciousness.
1. Notes from a retreat, Powers of the Cosmos, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, CA, October 2002.
2.Video clip, Workshop on Race and Cosmology, Sophia Institute, Holy Names College, Oakland CA, June 2005. http://www.caroline-webb.com/Video.htm
3. D.O. Cameron, Symbols of Birth and of Death in the Neolithic Era, (London:Kenyon-Deane, 1981.)
4. Barbara G. Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1983)p.180
5. Normandi Ellis, Dreams of Isis, (Illinois: Quest Books, 1995) p.180.
6. Ibid., p.179.
Also check out both of her books:
Ode to Minoa Stories They Told Me
The Goddess on Minoan Crete
By Priestess Jean
Our awareness of the Minoan civilization , on the island of Crete, began in the early 20th century, after Sir Arthur Evans discovered the palace of Knossos. Although extensive archeological work has been in progress since then, there still remain many unanswered questions about the Minoans.
To begin with, no evidence has yet been found for any human habitation on the island, prior to about 6000 BCE. This seems to imply that the Minoans were not indigenous to Crete. If in fact they did come from somewhere else, where might it have been ?
One possible explanation is that they arrived on rafts. In that case, the prevailing currents in the Aegean Sea indicate a point of origin somewhere on the western coast of Turkey. The currents run at a rate of about 1 knot, and the distance is about 200 miles, so they might have made such a journey in as little as 8 days. In addition, there are several Cycladic islands which could have provided convenient rest-areas, reducing the trip to a series of shorter movements.
Major currents of the Aegean Sea
In any case, beginning around 6000 BCE we find typical Neolithic settlements on Crete. Agricultural crops such as wheat, barley and lentils are in evidence, as is the domestication of sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. It may be noted that these type of settlements closely resemble those found in Turkey, during the same time period (see Catal Hoyuk, etc). Another interesting aspect of Minoan history is that, from 6000 BCE until as late as 2800 BCE, they had little or no contact with the outside world. They remained in a Neolithic condition throughout that entire period... and of course, were unaffected by the Kurgan invasion. This may explain the complete lack of any male deities in their society.
Beginning around 2800 BCE we find the first evidence, in the form of pottery and some copper objects, of trade with the Cycladic islands, western Turkey, and the Phoenicians of Lebanon. By about 2600 BCE, techniques of weaving and of making bronze began to arrive. With each passing century, contact with these more advanced societies benefitted the Minoans... however, it was not until 2100 BCE that a massive revolution of technology occured, which truly marks the birth of what we now call the "Minoan civilization".
In order to properly understand this great technical revolution, we must take a moment to consider the general situation in the Aegean at the time. The Turks and the Phoenicians clearly had developed very advanced cultures, and were the predominant seafaring powers in the area. The Phoenicians themselves had most probably migrated to Lebanon from Turkey, sometime around 4500 BCE. Although they were surrounded by the Canaanites on three sides, they always remained a distinctly seperate group, closely connected with Turkey... and their societies bore many similarities, such as their advanced seafaring abilities, architecture, artistry, etc.
The Turks, Phoenicians, and Minoans shared a peaceful Goddess-centered philosophy, and by 2100 BCE they had formed well-established cultural ties and friendships. At that time, the invasion of Turkey by the Hittites began, as well as an invasion of Phoenicia by the Amorites. Archeological excavations reveal that habitation of Phoenicia virtually ceased at exactly that time. Their great and thriving cities, such as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos were abandoned. Where did the Phoenicians go ?
Could it have a mere coincidence that exactly at that time, the great changes came to Crete ? Large palaces were built, such as the one at Knossos, which strongly resembles those found in Phoenicia and the Near-East. These palaces featured hot and cold running water, flush-toilets, ventilation and lighting shafts, etc. In addition, public apartments were constructed for the common people, as well as many types of specialty and craft shops.
Furthurmore, two unique systems of writing also appeared at this time. One, known as Linear A , bears an amazing similarity to another script of that general time period, found by Heinrich Schliemann in the ruins of Troy. The other system is known as Cretan hieroglyphs , and also appears to have its origins in Turkey. Unfortunately, neither language has yet been deciphered... but we must ask ourselves, if a system of writing was created by the indigenous Minoans, why would they create two seperate systems, at the same time ?
Further clues come to us when we learn that the use of mountain-tops and caves for religious rites, as well as distinctly Near and Middle-Eastern burial customs, all first appear on Crete at this time. This evidence suggests that both Turks and Phoenicians, fleeing a massive wave of invasion, migrated to Crete around 2100 BCE... bringing with them a highly advanced technology which would become the basis for the golden age of the Minoan civilization.
Between 2100 BCE and 1500 BCE, the Minoans became the dominant seafaring nation in the eastern Mediterranean. Their pottery and bronze products were of the highest quality, and through trade, they accumulated vast fortunes. Moreover, during this entire 600 year period, there is no record of them having any involvement in a war.
The golden age of the Minoans ended abruptly, around 1500 BCE, when a volcanic island known as Thera , located 70 miles north of Crete, exploded. The Thera eruption was one of the worst in recorded history. The island was completely destroyed, and a massive tsunami struck the north coast of Crete, which would have destroyed any ships in port at the time. Volcanic ash then fell on Crete, causing the loss of most of their agricultural crops.
The eruption of Thera, in conjunction with several large earthquakes, severely dammaged the Minoan civilization. In addition, the Mycenaean Greeks, attracted by the great wealth of the Minoans, took advantage of these natural disasters, and launched a series of attacks. Around that time, archeologists tell us that the Minoans seem to have completely disappeared, leaving behind their beautiful palaces and once-thriving cities.
Meanwhile, at Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia, excavations reveal that about 1450 BCE both cities became permanently repopulated, and quickly grew into vibrant centers of trade once more. Another clue comes to us from their system of writing, known as the Phoenician abjad. As Sir Arthur Evans was quick to note, many of the symbols in the abjad are almost identical to those used in the Cretan hieroglyphs.
Could the Minoans, when faced with a volcanic eruption, earthquakes, and an attack by the Mycenaean Greeks, have made the decision to migrate... and might they have chosen to return to those very places with which their ancestors had close historic ties ? It seems probable that some of the Minoans relocated to the western states of Turkey, while a large number of them apparently returned to Phoenicia, which they quickly built into a world-class trading power.
If this theory is correct, it may very well explain why, during the Trojan war in 1200 BCE, when the western states of Turkey and their allies attacked every coastal city in the eastern Mediterranean, there was one significant exception. They never attacked Phoenicia... even though the Phoenician cities were quite wealthy, and lacked any heavy defenses.
Looking back on the Minoan golden age, we see a people whose prosperity was based not on conquest and pillage, but on manufacturing and trade... and who managed to avoid war almost entirely. Although their language still remains a mystery, the many beautiful frescoes in their palaces speak to us of a happy people enjoying a good life. There is not one depiction of warfare, nor a harsh-looking monarch to be found. Indeed, their cities included few fortifications, and no significant cache of weapons or other military equipment has ever been discovered.
Without exception, the Minoan frescoes portray the beauty of the natural world. People and animals are shown in idyllic, pastoral settings. Bright, cheerful colors predominate. There are not many depictions of deities, however a number of scenes do show women who appear to be Priestesses, such as the one below.
The "Blue Ladies" frescoe From the Palace of Knossos, 1600 BCEOur knowledge of Minoan deities comes primarily from depictions on cylinder seals, and
figurines found near intact shrines. All of the deities portrayed are female. Archeologists
continue to debate whether the various images are merely aspects of one Great Goddess,
or are in fact seperate deities. The images are usually described as a fertility goddess, an Earth goddess, a Mother Goddess, a mistress of the animals, or a household goddess, etc.
One image which stands out in my mind was found on a cylinder seal in the palace of Knossos. It depicts a woman standing on a mountain-top, flanked by two lions. Clearly, that is the symbology we have come to associate with the Great Mother Goddess Cybele. This strongly suggests yet another link to Turkey, and indicates that the religion of the Minoans may have been quite similar. Another interesting symbolic object frequently found on Crete is the labrys , or double-edged ax. When depicted in murals, these axes are always held by women, in what appears to be a ceremonial manner. They may have been a mark of royalty, or more likely had a religious significance... for example, as a representation of a Priestess's authority to perform sacrifices, in order to provide food for a community. It may be noted that the labrys was also used as a religious symbol in the Near East, and among the Amazons in particular.
It's clear that the Minoans possessed a peaceful society based on trade, had an advanced level of technology and art, and a religion dominated by female deities and clergy. Their civilization is extremely significant, because it demonstrates that violence and patriarchy are not necessarily a natural result of population increases, or jealousy over material wealth... rather, they are linked to the fundamentally different sort of cultural values that arrived with the Kurgans.
About the Author
Priestess Jean is a 42 year old legal assistant from Boulder, Colorado.
Born into a middle-class Baptist family, she rejected Christianity at an
early age and began to study other religions, especially Eastern ones.
About 7 years ago she began to have a series of dreams and visions,
in which she was called by the Great Mother Goddess to become a
Priestess. She formed the Temple of Cybele in 2007 and now devotes
her time to writing about Goddess history and the modern revival of
the religion.
Check out her website for other great articles, and a social forum at The Temple of Cybele
Check out her website for other great articles, and a social forum at The Temple of Cybele
by Max Dashú
This is an excerpt from a much longer meditation on Goddess philosophies and politics. Here I address academicians’ allergy to Goddess talk, why they are missing the point, and draw some connections.
The Goddess movement affirms a sacral view of the world, the conviction that we are kin within a whole, a flow and circle of life. As Ruth Barrett wrote, for many "the Goddess is not an entity but the web of life itself." (Perhaps the web too is a Being we can hardly perceive because we are within, like cells in a vast body.) Some British Goddess folk have expressed this diverse continuum as "the one and the many." Most of us don’t relate to rigid categories of monotheism vs. polytheism, or transcendent vs. immanent. Some simply say Spirit, the divine spark present in all beings.
Essence is another way of putting it: the source of being from which we all arise. Mary Daly called it Quintessence: that which permeates all Nature, the Spirit that gives life to the universe, the “real source.” Feminists with Buddhist leanings call it Mother Essence or the Mother Luminosity. In ancestor religion it includes the human mothers living and dead, and the mother within us, who swells in our breasts and wombs and blood, whether we have biological children or not, whether we even have wombs or breasts anymore. This experience of the body as sacred and filled with vital force (Indic ojas, Chinese jing, Hawaiian mana) has little in common with the theoretical construct of “essentialism,” to which I’ll return in a moment.
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| Awelye (women's body paint-up) by Kumanjayi Bird Petyarre, Australia |
Most of us conceive of Goddess and the Sacred Woman as a continuum, encompassing living beings, spirits, ancestors, essences, qualities and vast governing principles like Maat, Tao, and Wyrd—Fate being another name for divine Law, the Way. We see parallels in the pagan Gothic Halioruna (“holy mystery”) and the Great Mystery of aboriginal nations in North America. For us Nature is holy, ultimate Reality, and the fount of wisdom.
Goddess feminists are saying that the long-devalued female must be restored, recreated, and redefined in a liberatory way. We embrace positive female story and symbolism as empowering to women, as a potent force in reshaping cultural values and behaviors. We reaffirm embodiment as sacred, in the face of a long history of deprecating the body—especially the female body, whose sacred symbolism has been expropriated, colonized in myriad ways, and reconfigured as “obscene.”
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| Womb Healing, by Max Dashu (1992) |
In academia these reaffirmations have come under attack as “essentialism,” or in other words, biological determinism. But to conflate reclamation of our embodiment with “essentialism” is to deeply misunderstand and distort the Goddess movement. It is not about “essentialism” but Essence: being, immanence, the soulful Nature of things, of matter itself—the pervasive Presence of the Sacred. This goes to the realm of Mystery: real experiences and insights that can’t be explained in words, only perceived by our right-brain consciousness. We don’t reject the rational, but wholeness demands that we learn to reintegrate it with the totality of our awareness, including its mythic and melodic aspects, the dream-consciousness.
Huang! Hu! Vague! Ungraspable! In the center, there are things.
Miao! Ming! Profound! Mysterious! In the center, there are essences, most true essences.
Mmiri di egwu! Water is awesome! —Igbo praise to Ogbuide, Mami Wata |
| Nummo, the vital essence in Dogon philosophy, Mali |
These concepts of vital Essence represent something very different from theoretical “essentialism.” They are foundational to indigenous spiritual philosophy, and glints of them survive even in mainstream religions. They grow from the spiritual ground that predates the consolidation of the “major religions” that people are fighting over now, a division that separated the religious and secular, everyday life, sexuality and death, from the sacred. This splitting severed awareness of the Whole, or in Lakota parlance, the Sacred Hoop.
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| Nammu / Tiamat, by Max Dashu (1986) |
Many academic writers feel impelled to deplore the concept of a “mother goddess” as “essentialist,” although goddesses were directly known by this title in numerous cultures. Isis notwithstanding, Lotte Motz insists that there was never any Mother Goddess, and goes so far as to claim that “mother” has nothing to do with Kybele’s titles of Great Mother (Magna Mater) and Mother of the Gods (Mater Deum). She writes, “no creature [!] could be further from the celebration of biological motherhood, and the title Magna Mater surely designates her as a great queen.” [Motz, Faces of the Goddess, p. 120] This is extreme even for goddess-averse academia, and in line with Motz’s other peculiarities, such as the usage of “men” to mean people, or defining “shaman” as “the man of visionary powers.” [61] But she is in step with the ruling trend of dismissing “mother goddess” as an irrelevant modernism—and a purely “biological” one at that.
Mater Deum is no isolated title, however; it occurs in a broad and deep swath of religious tradition. “Mother of the Gods” is attested for Neith in ancient Egypt, Athirat in the Ugaritic scriptures (Syria), Aditi in the Rg Veda (V 1.111.19), Teteoinan of the Aztecs (or Coatlicue in other accounts), Nana Burukú of Dahomey and beyond, Allat of the Nabataean Arabs, Ninhursag of Sumeria, Kiririsha and Mashta of the Elamites (Iran), or Kasogoanaga of the Chamacoco (Chaco region of South America; in her case, named “mother of the spirits.”) There are also Grandmothers: Hannahanna of the Hurrians, in what is now Turkey, and the Grandmother Creator of the Shawnee, Kokomtheyna.
The title Mother of All is also farflung: Nyame of Ashanti (Ghana); Terra Ops of the ancient Latins; Barbelo and several other Gnostic goddesses (as Mother of the All); Amaná of the Calinya Caribs; Aluna of the Kogi (Colombia); the Uralic Mother of Nature; Wu Sheng Lao Mu in China, or more conceptually, descriptions of the Tao as “creating Mother of whatever exists under heaven.” In Australia, this name belongs to Ngalyod, Mutjingga, and Kunapipi, who is described as “one mother for all people everywhere.” [Peggy Grove, “Myths, Glyphs and Rituals of a Living Goddess Tradition", in Revision, Vol 21 #3, p 12]
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| Spider Grandmother and Corn Mothers, by Max Dashu (2000) |
Such titles could be multiplied—and they often overlap. For example, the Yoruba sea goddess Yemanja is Mother of the Orishas, and also called Mother of All. The Laguna writer Leslie Marmon Silko talks story about Thought Woman as Mother Creator; and with her three sisters, as Mother Creators. [Silko, Yellow Woman and A Beauty of Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996, pp 63-64]
None of this is to say that “mother” is the only signifier for Goddess, or required. There are creator goddesses, fates and lawgivers, immanent powers of land, sea, and sky, of fire or clouds, of animals and birds, and goddesses representing divine principles, cycles, or planets. However, none of these categories are exclusive of “mother,” and in a great many traditions, this attribute mixes freely and frequently with the others—including some, such as warrior or destroyer, that conflict with the more conservative images of what “mother” might signify. If we look to indigenous religions, “mother” is a truly expansive and divine concept.
“The Mothers”
In aboriginal spiritual philosophies, it is extremely common to name spirits and deities as “mothers,” and by other kinship names. In South America, they are described as mothers of waters, of animals, of special power places. The Kamayura speak of the mama’é, mother spirits of animals, fish, and food plants. In Brazil, the Tupà say that that every animal has its own spirit mother, and that Putcha Cy is “mother of animals,” who follow her thunderous roar. She protects them from hunters, and often takes the form of a tortoise or coatá monkey. She lives in the springs at the headwaters of rivers. [Otto Zerries, in Pre-Columbian American Religions, ed. Walter Krickeberg et al, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968, pp 260-1]
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| Golden breastplate from medieval Colombia |
In Colombia, a song of the matrilineal Kogi people (Kagabá) people expresses their veneration of a Mother as the sacred source of everything:
The Mother of Songs, the mother of our whole seed, bore us in the beginning. She is the mother of all races of men [sic] and the mother of all tribes. She is the mother of the thunder, the mother of the rivers, the mother of trees and of all kinds of things. She is the mother of songs and dances. She is the mother of the older brother stones. She is the mother of the grain and the mother of all things. She is the mother of the younger brother Frenchmen and of the strangers. She is the mother of the dance paraphenalia and of all temples, and the only mother we have. She is the mother of the animals, the only one, and the mother of the Milky Way. It was the mother herself who began to baptize. She gave us the limestone coca dish. She is the mother of the rain, the only one we have. She alone is the mother of things, she alone... [in Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother, Princeton University Press, 1972 (1963), p 85. "Men" is likely to be the translator’s interpolation, not the sense conveyed by the original.]
The Kogi speak of a Great Mother as the origin of everything. She is Aluna, a name variously translated as spirit, vitality, awareness, reality, and also described as the primordial sea. The eloquent chant quoted above flatly contradicts pronouncements that no culture ever conceived of a Great Mother. In fact, among aboriginal South Americans, “mother” seems to be a primary way of talking about deity. In Quechua, Mama (“mother”) is also translated in sacral contexts as “goddess,” and similarly for Tata (“father”). Thus, Peruvians invoked and made prayers and offerings to Pachamama, Mother Earth; Mama Quilla, Mother Moon; Saramama, Corn Mother, and so on.
In Paraguay, the Guaranà venerate Ñandecy, “Our Mother,” who lives in the east, beyond the sea, in the Land Without Evil. She is First Woman, who also takes the form of a green snake. After the Spanish invasions, Ñandecy inspired successive Guarani liberation movements seeking to end European domination.
The Calinya Caribs speak of Amaná, a self-conceiving Mother whose essence is Time, existing through eternity, and who has borne all beings. Amaná lives in the waters of the heavens, in the Pleiades, in the form of a woman-serpent. She renews herself continually by sloughing off her skin, and can take any shape. Shamans commune with her and with the mothers of rocks at the headwaters of rivers for visions and healing. Amaná governs all spirits of the waters, and is also called Wala Yumu, “spirit of the kinds.” [Zerries, 245-6]
In the far north, the Inuit speak of Takanakapsaluk, the Sea Mother, who created the great ocean mammals, and the Caribou Mother, who created land animals by speaking magical words of power, and made their skin from her own leather breeches. [Rasmussen, 1929, 69-70; Boas III:122] These Mothers are also old women, like the primary female spirit of the Cheyenne, Old Woman. The monolithic stone women scattered across the steppes of Central Asia are ancestors known as bülbül, “grandmothers.”
Sacred mothers also persisted in parts of Europe, most dramatically among the incompletely-christianized Latvians. They venerated over fifty mates, “mothers” of earthly and heavenly powers: of earth, forests, and fields, sea, waves, rivers, rain, fog, and wind, as well as threshing houses, markets, gardens, roads, linen, wine, flowers, and the dead. Traces remain in the faery faiths, too; the French with their bonnes dames, “good women,” the Germans their holzweibel, “woodwoman,” or in many places, simply “the ladies” who were often sighted near certain rocks or springs.
We could also look to India, where every village has own goddess, and even great cities are named for local goddesses of place: Mumbai (Bombay) and Calcutta (Kalighat, the “river-steps of Kali”). Devdutt Pattanaik writes that the Gramadevi (village goddess) “is perceived as the local manifestation of the cosmic mother-goddess,” an observation repeated by many commentators on rural Indian religion. [Nagar, Shanti Lal, Universal Goddess, Delhi: Atma Ram & Sons, 1988, p 152]
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| Kali Mahavidya, by Max Dashu (2000) |
The pervasive Goddess veneration of India has made itself felt on the regional and national levels, too, on the tongues of seers such as Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar: “The Mother projects the entire world, moment by moment, from her own ecstasy. Simply remember that all comes from her, belongs to her, abides in her, and disappears into her…” [in Hixson, Lex, Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, NY: Larson 1997] (Beware of interpolating “goddess monotheism” here; from the same mouth came the praises of many other forms of deity, although Kali was his most-beloved.)
Africa is one of the strongholds of mother-veneration. The Yoruba speak of awon iya wa, “our mothers,” who are seen on a continuum of deities and ancestors. Awon iya wa is “a collective term for female ancestors, female deities, and for older living women, whose power over the reproductive capacities of all women is held in awe by Yoruba men.” These mothers are also called “the owners of the world.” [Pemberton 1989 “The Carvers of the Northeast,” in Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, edited by Henry John Drewel et al., New York: Harry Abrams. 1989: 210] Their wrath in a patriarchal world must be placated through the masked gelede dances.
African women’s rites of the mothers often function as a base of their identity and empowerment, even in patrilineal and patrilocal societies. In Igbo country, even as Onitsha women married out, they brought with them shrines to “the mothers,” and made conical clay mounds as dwelling places for the Oma spirit of nurturing and maternity. [Amadiume, Ifi, African Matriarchal Foundations: the case of Igbo societies. NY and London: Karnak House and Red Sea Press, 1995 (1987), p 19] Ifi Amadiume lays out the Igbo history of an indigenous matrilineage that preserved veneration of its ancestral goddess under “patriarchal incursion.” Nnobi oral histories feature a hunter, Aho-from-the-wild, who met the divine woman Idemili near a stream and married her. Idemili had more powerful influence than her husband, “and so she spread her idols everywhere.” This is one strand of the tradition.
Over time, writes Amadiume, as the Igbo shifted to a patrilineal and patrilocal order, conflicting themes of female subordination arose: “Thus, the all-powerful goddess Idemili was domesticated and made the wife of a less powerful god, Aho.” And a junior third wife at that. [59-61] Their much-courted daughter married out, taking a ritual pot with her, and she too spread her shrines around. [39] But in spite of the official “domestication” of these female powers under the new order, they remain the central mythic figures of the region.
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| Gwandusu sculpture, Mali |
The Gwandusu statues of the Bamana (“Bambara”) display diverse and multivalent meanings of Goddess, including the kind academics routinely reject as untenably “essentialist” because of their connection to body mysteries: menstruation, pregnancy and lactation. This is “dangerous” terrain, both in animist terms and in the sexual politics of patriarchy. In Bambara culture (as for countless others) it is a terrain of female potency. “For them these statues represent either Mousso Koroni the supernatural female creator, Gouandousou the gifted and powerful historical figure, or female ancestors as a collectivity.” The images also carry meanings of mother, milk-giver, child-bearer and worker. [Imperato, Pascal James, Buffoons, Queens and Wooden Horsemen, NY: Kilimi, 42-43]
A comparable spectrum of spiritual beings exists in Senufo thought: deities, ancestors, and wilderness spirits. Anita Glaze writes, “Central to Senufo religion is the conception of a bipartite deity called Kòlotyölöö in its aspect of divine creator, and Mà lëëö or Kà tyelëëö in its aspect of protective, nurturing being.” The last two names mean “Ancient Mother” and “Ancient Woman.” The creator divinity is remote and cannot be approached directly, only through other deities. [Glaze, Anita, “Woman Power and Art in a Senufo Village,” African Arts, Vol 8, No. 3 (Spring, 1975) p 29]
Linguistic indicators points to a shift that masculinized this creator: “There is some evidence to suggest that Kòlotyölöö was originally considered female in nature (työlöö wii, for example, means ‘woman’ or ‘wife’ in Tyebara), although present usage suggests a neuter or even a paternal image.” [Glaze, 64] If so, it is one of numerous instances of female deity changed over to male within a patriarchal culture-shift. [See Paula Gunn Allen on the displacement of female spirits by males in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, Beacon Press, Boston, 1986, p 41; Tikvah Frymer Kensky on Sumerian goddesses being turned into gods, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Macmillan, Free Press. 1992] In the Senufo context, such a shift may well date to men’s takeover of the Poro society from its female founders, as described in oral histories.
Other considerations
Because of the way that “mother goddess” has become stereotyped, I have to emphasize spiritual feminists’ wariness of restricting Goddess to this form, all the way back to the early 70s. We repudiated the old doctrines that said motherhood was a woman’s only proper place, and that a subordinated one, or necessarily a heterosexual one—but we did not deny the sacral value of motherhood. What we rejected was the coercive pressure to eliminate all other female identities, and the prescriptive colonization of women’s bodies and labor. We refused the idea that the sacred female was a merely a vessel for a superior masculine power: “Let it be done to me according to thy will.”
Marija Gimbutas too explicitly foreswore this patriarchal bracketing, while never denying cultural importance to the mother aspect of deity. For her “Mother Goddess” as a catch-all term was a “misconception.” She wrote, “It is true that there are mother images and protectors of young life, and there was a Mother Earth and Mother of the Dead, but the rest of female images can’t be generalized under the term Mother Goddess.” [Language of the Goddess, p 316. Thanks to Judith Laura for calling my attention to this quote.]
But reacting to pressures to deny any Mother Goddess, as some kind of loyalty oath to anti-essentialism, would be a mistake. We don’t have to affirm the narrow, colonized definition of “mother” insisted on by the dominant culture to recognize the importance of mothering. It represents a shared ground of deep experience, relationship, and love—and does not have to exclude other images of the Sacred Woman. Even the Amazons venerated Artemis the many-breasted Mother of All, and the religion of Magna Mater was the great, pan-cultural competitor of Christianity in antiquity.
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| Auset / Isis of Nubia, by Max Dashu (1987) |
Sherry Glaser evokes a powerfully down-to-earth Goddess as a Jewish mother in her performance “Oh my Goddess.” She features Ma holding forth on the fate of creation since she took a 5000-year-long nap, leaving “your father” in charge of the kids: “He started acting like he’s the only God in the universe… and let you play with guns and bombs and missiles. Not in my house!” [“God’s better half just woke up, and boy is she mad.” Jessica Werner, San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2006] Glaser told an interviewer that “we are way out of whack on earth, so if we restore the mother and serve, honor, protect, pleasure her, everything will be all right. I do believe that.”
In India, Ammachi is spreading her message of “The Awakening of Universal Motherhood” which recalls the aboriginal value placed on social motherhood as the highest good:
Anyone - woman or man - who has the courage to overcome the limitations of the mind can attain the state of universal motherhood. The principle of motherhood is as vast and powerful as the universe. With the power of motherhood within her, a woman can influence the entire world. The love of awakened motherhood is a love and compassion felt not only towards one's own children, but towards all people, animals and plants, rocks and rivers - a love extended to all of nature, all beings. Indeed, to a woman in whom the state of true motherhood has awakened, all creatures are her children. This love, this motherhood, is Divine Love - and that is God. [http://www.amritapuri.org/amma/un2002/awaken3.php]
(Or Goddess, since it was a vision of the Divine Mother that was the crowning turning point in the life of Ammachi.)
Re-enchanting the world
In so-called “Western” culture we are living with the loss of the mythic. Or rather, it has been bound, twisted, displaced, and appropriated for commercial ends. People’s imaginal life is manipulated by the movie industry, TV network heads, advertising and media conglomerates. Coexisting on another misogynist extreme are the fundamentalist religions that demand women stay in their place and submit to male authority. What passes for the marketplace of ideas is not so different, if you look at the handful of women who make it into the New York Review of Books (on terms), or the outnumbered and outshouted females admitted to sit with the white male punditry. These tightly-wound cultural formats are completely man-made, drenched in toxic whiteness, and hurtling toward a dead end. They have no reference to women’s reality, to the experience of most humans on the planet, or to the natural world.
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| Ix Chel, by Max Dashu (1976) |
Lee Maracle of the Stoh:loh nation writes from Canada, “Western society is an alienated society. Its individuals have come to accept the estrangement of spiritual belief, emotional wellness, physical existence, knowledge, and intellectual development from the central fire from which they arise…. Everything is present in a mold that began shaping before the Greco-Roman cultural ascendance some 2,000 years ago.” [“Decolonizing Native Women,” in Daughters of Mother Earth, Westport CT: Greenwood, 2006, p 33] Maracle lays out how colonization has brought this fragmentation to Indian country. One of its most momentous consequences has been the stripping away of the mothers’ authority in these Aboriginal cultures. Such losses are incalculable.
Even in the crucible of modern Western Civ, some visionaries understood how mistaken that cultural and personal fragmentation was. We only know of the philosopher Anne Conway (1631-79) thanks to feminist researchers who resurrected her memory. She wrote a book whose title reaches back beyond the classical authorities to a much older worldview: The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. She wrote, “the distinction between spirit and body is only modal and incremental, not essential and substantial.” [in Paula Findless, “Ideas in the Mind: Gender and Knowledge in the 17th Century”, Hypatia: A Journal of Women and Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 2002, p 191] In other words, reality is a continuum, an energetic field.
Some residues of older European ways survive, for example in the faery faiths. Folk accounts of a banished goddess preserve traces of the long struggle between the christian priesthood and popular animism in Europe. The folklorist Grimm commented on the faery women who often appeared to European country-folk, beseeching them to perform some ritual act to free them from a long-standing curse:
Now the pervading thought in all of this of being banned and longing for release I take to be just this, that the pagan deities are represented as still beautiful, rich, powerful, and benevolent, but outcast and unblest, and only on the hardest terms can they be released from the doom pronounced upon them. [Grimm, 968]
These oral traditions retain a defiant affection for the outlawed deities. They speak to the spiritual uprooting, splitting and severing that was inflicted on European cultures, a legacy we are living with today, and attempting to work through. It’s crucial for those of us who are deracinated Europeans to reclaim our own deep cultural roots, before romanization, christianization, feudalization, industrialization, and find an authentic place to stand, where we are not colonized as females, nor colonizers as whites (or any other conquering ethnicities), in this imperialized global society.
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| Sapiente Sibillia, from the Wisdom Scroll by Max Dashu (2001) |
As the Goddess movement expands and is popularized, we face several challenges. One is to avoid unconsciously reproducing the dominant culture’s biases founded on ethnicity and class and colonization, and on patriarchy itself. It is crucial to address these issues. Without clear, conscious effort to overcome them, these distorted patterns replicate themselves. Another challenge is the intense magnetic field of toxic imagery from mass-media pop culture. This has bled over into posed and pornified “goddess” images. These shallow and colonized scripts of conformist femininity have proliferated alarmingly. They are however a sign of growing pains; the reach toward Goddess is resonating far and wide.
However she is understood, we address what we hold sacred through this mirror of all pervasive Goddess. We know this will create a profound transformative impact on the patriarchal world we live in. The opening of cultural doors that have been slammed shut and tightly locked up for millennia is momentous and hugely significant. Invoking the names and images of Goddess answers a deep hunger in women, and among a growing number of men, to restore balance, truth and justice. This longing is felt beyond pagan circles. It’s a call, a cry mounting even from women in the majoritarian religions, propelling a movement that transcends traditional religious boundaries. It is reunification, it is wisdom, it is realization of our true Nature which is connected with all beings, All-Being.
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| Xi Wang Mu, detail from the Wisdom Scroll by Max Dashu (2001) |
This excerpt comes from a three-part article “The Meanings of Goddess” published in The Goddess Pages, Summer 2008
http://www.goddess-pages.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=459&Itemid=1&ed=11
(Links to the full series at: http://www.maxdashu.net/articlesinter.html )
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By DeAnna L'am © 2011
Do you truly believe nature intended women to suffer monthly?
This is a rather absurd idea, when you think of it this way, since menstruation is an essential component of women's ability to birth life. Without it, women will not be able to conceive...
So how did this happen?
How did a natural process become such a problem?
Lets look at how menstruation is held by the culture at large.
In western cultures women seem to be doomed when the do, and doomed when they don't (bleed, that is). Women are considered to be out of control when they are "on the rag," and out of control when they are in menopause...
Imagine how out of control one might get when their body is tired, their mind fatigued, their emotions exhausted... when every ounce of their being wants to go to sleep, yet they are not allowed to do so.... not only are they denied sleep, they are expected to go to work, be productive, cordial, efficient, and social.... wouldn't you go berserk?
Well, women often do, if we buy into the cultural expectation of having "every day of the month be the same", and push ourselves to prevent menstruation from interfering with our work and life.
On top of this, we are also fed a diet of negativity about our menstrual cycle, from a very young age. A cultural taboo, often not mentioned by name, menstruation is referred to as a "necessary evil," a nuisance, or "the curse."
Now imagine again how you would feel if you were so tired that all you could think of is sleep, yet you were told that your state is "a curse" and you must get over it and get on with your work... Or if you were offered medication to overcome your tiredness, and expected to perform at top notch?
Wouldn't you snap?
Indeed, this is what happens to many women all over the world, in response to years of internalized negativity about menstruation.
This is coupled with the unacknowledged, ignored (and often unconscious) deep yearning to go inward, rest, replenish, and renew, during menstruation.
Add cultural hostility to our denied monthly need to regenerate, and what do you get? Out-of-control-raving-mad-lunatic-raging-bitch! And rightly so! Since this is the ONLY way we can express the tension inside us... Or, perhaps, the only culturally acceptable way... To which society reacts by perpetuating the belief in menstrual "badness."
Not being taught to honor our monthly need for regenerating our emotions, and renewing our spirit (while our body renews itself) we not only loath our menstruation, but start developing symptoms, which will make us slow down, stay in bed, rest...
This whole chain reaction could have been prevented in the first place, had we slowed down and took time out, monthly, without our body having to scream at us via painful symptoms...
This "chain of pain" is passed on collectively by our culture, and individually -- from mother to daughter.
Your Grandma was probably handed negative messages from your great-grandmother, your Mom from your Grandma, you from your mother, and now, is your daughter receiving this painful legacy from you? How about your granddaughter, stepdaughter, niece, or your best friend's daughter?
Do these girls hear you talk about menstruation as something you dread, hate, or can do without? Do they experience the wrath of your mood swings, irritability, or depression when you are menstruating, because you don't take time for yourself?
What message do you think this conveys to them?
And if you could convey another message, wouldn't you?
Yes, you may say, but I can't convey another message since I'm suffering from PMS symptoms...
Here is where I'd like to rock your boat a little (or a lot) by saying: PMS is Not a Requirement!
PMS is your (wise!) body's strategy for getting your attention!
It is your body's way of telling you that you need to slow down, go inward, release any toxins from the month you've lived, and regenerate yourself for the month ahead.
Taking medication for PMS is like taking pills to suppress yawning when you are tired, while all you need to do is go to sleep...
When you start questioning the beliefs you internalized about menstruation, when you start caring for your body and allowing it to naturally renew (rather than suppressing its need to rest) you are going to be able to gradually reclaim your cycle as a source of renewal in your life.
Not only would you reverse your symptoms, but you could stop the legacy, which our culture has been blindly passing down from one generation to another.
Furthermore, you'd be able to model an empowered womanhood to the next generation, starting with your own daughter. She and her peers will, in turn, be able to pass it on to those yet to be born. PMS can stop with you! And together, we can change the world...
*Would you like to live a PMS Free life? Would you like to experience your cycle as a monthly source of inner guidance and spiritual renewal? DeAnna invites you to receive a Free gift, and discover the possibilities, by signing up at: http://www.deannalam.com*
DeAnna L'am (B.A.) speaker, coach, trainer, is author of Becoming Peers - Mentoring Girls Into Womanhood. Her pioneering work has been transforming girls' and women's lives around the world for over 20 years. DeAnna specializes in empowering women to reclaim their cycles as wellsprings of wisdom, intuition and spiritual guidance, inspires mothers to become empowering role models for their girls, and trains women to hold Red Tent in their communities.
Be sure to visit DeAnna's website: DeAnnaLam.com and DeAnna's interactive & inspiring page: Red Tents In Every Neighborhood!
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