Later Indo-Europeans (who migrate into Old Europe and eventually subsume some of the traditions) have shared cultural traditions with the Aryans, coming from Central Asia and the aboriginal population of the Indian sub-continent, while the still mysterious ancient Indus civilization acted as a cultural intermediary. “One of the founding myths of Hinduism presents us with a divine male being, sacrificed, cut into pieces, and buried in the earth to make it fertile. For it is the earth that is the Mother: she gives birth, of course, but she takes back into herself what she has given in an unending cyclical process.”6
In the 18th and 19th Centuries when ancient sites were first being excavated by English and European men, this son/lover/consort relationship with the Goddess was not yet understood by male archeologists because it was a vision of life so different from their Victorian socialization. As a result, some Goddess statues found with a small male sitting on a woman’s lap were incorrectly identified as the king sitting on the lap of his nurse! It is now known that the Goddess was always shown as being larger than everyone else, even if those others were adults and even if those adults were males. This stylistic feature is intended to reveal largess in the spiritual or cosmic sense.
The young male lover gave all his beautiful, youthful sexual energy to the Goddess/Queen/Priestess. It was this increase in energy that was highly valued and venerated by erecting tall pillars, trees of life, phallic replicas, for the people to rejoice in, whether they were inside the Temples as decorated pillars or outside as treepoles in springtime or “maypoles” around which young girls danced while women kissed and fondled them, lovingly seeking fecundity.
The Goddess system of governance and spirituality transmit a powerful message to current generations, teaching that egalitarian treatment of the entire population and sacred sexuality between women and men are vital keys to human interaction without resorting to control of one over the other by means of violence.
THE RITES AND SYMBOLS OF THE NEOLITHIC GODDESS
Gimbutas writes, “According to the myriad images that have survived from the great span of human prehistory on the Eurasian continents, it was the sovereign mystery and creative powers of the female as a source of life that developed into the earliest religious experience.”7
This experience becomes the great Mother Goddess on earth, giving birth to all creatures and creating life itself out of the darkness, her womb. Early people had intimate knowledge of and relationship with the cycles of the natural world. The formation of the reverence for the Goddess of creation was enhanced by the cyclical understanding of life as a continuous process: birth of life, then death, and regeneration or re-birth. So the frame of reference was not linear but cyclical – not a straight line (birth, life, death) but a circle – birth, life, death, re-birth/regeneration. Regeneration is birth again, so it is a never-ceasing process. The universal symbol of this circular life process is derived from the physical anatomy of woman: the triangular pubic/vulva area. So it is the symbolic triangle, the V, which becomes the first shorthand representation of the Goddess language and is universally understood by the people across thousands of years and territories.
From as early as 100,000 to 40,000 BCE (the Middle Paleolithic) triangular stones were placed above burial sites and cup marks engraved into the stones. The Goddess was present to ride with them to guide them back into another life on earth or onto life everlasting. Archaeology has also discovered a beautiful proliferation of art in Old Europe between 27,000 and 25,000 BCE through cave paintings, rock carvings, and sculptures depicting seasonal ritual ceremonies, initiations and other, as yet undefined sacred dance behaviors, related to the life cycles.
The ancients were fond of miniature sculptures, perhaps so that many people could have one to hold in times of need. Three thousand miniatures that have been excavated at sites of habitation from present day France to Central Siberia attest to the prevalence of the Goddess in Her many shapes and forms. It was the female, and not the male, who was venerated as the deity of life and creation. Gimbutas clearly states, “there are no traces in Paleolithic Art of a father figure.” She is also clear that the female miniatures were neither “Venus” nor “fertility” charms; they were “more important, the giving and protecting of life, and not subject to denigration as merely the object of male fantasy.”8
The Neolithic is the flowering of art and the invention of ceramics about 6,500 BCE. These appear as thousands of examples of wall paintings, ceramic figurines, miniature temples, and religious articles. Groups of figurines may have been used for reenactments of rituals and ceremonies. From Paleolithic through Neolithic (about 50,000 or more years) in the Western world, there is an unbroken line of unity in the belief of one deity – the Goddess, in her myriad aspects is the earth and the natural world and humanity, all connected, intertwined and sacred.
Based on her archeological work, Gimbutas divided the sculptural aspects of the Goddess into four categories: First, the generative forces of nature of life giving, life stimulating; second, the Death Goddess who takes life away (sculpturally the slender “stiff nude,” symbolically the bird of prey, i.e. Vulture, raven, owl, or poisonous snake); third, the Goddess of Regeneration who controls life in the entire world of nature symbolized by the uterus, pubic triangle, toad, hedgehog, frog, bullhead, bee, butterfly, double triangle or double axe. The Goddess of Death and Regeneration is understood by the people as one deity, inseparable from life itself.
The fourth category represents only 3% to 5% of all sculpture found in the Neolithic: These are male deities. Over the years, many speculations have been offered as to why men in these societies are so under represented with creator deity aspects without any definite conclusions.
The portrayal of the Creatrix Goddess in many art forms represents aspects of Her all inclusiveness. The remnants of these symbols allow us moderns to trace, decipher, and understand how the Goddess lives among us today in myth, legend and allegory. The people are gone who knew the meanings, and there are no words left to explain. But when one sees the ancient symbols once again, we are reminded.
Deer Mother—Among peoples from Scotland and Ireland, through Asia the pregnant deer is the Goddess Mother symbol.
Bear Mother—From 5th Millennium BCE to present day, the Bear Mother with child is the masked Goddess with bear cub; the Greek Goddess Artemis associated with bear and deer; the Celtic worship of Deo Artio in historical times and in Crete, Feb. 2 is celebrated as “Mother of God of the Bear.”
Lions/Leopards—As early as 6,000 BCE in Catal Huyuk leopards and their spots are found as decorative motives nearly everywhere … on interior house walls, in temples and on pottery.
Cow/Bull—The famous bulceranium in Catal Huyuk, where the skullheads of bulls surround the ceremonial room, the bull head skull was identified with the human female reproductive organs of womb and fallopian tubes, the ultimate symbol of life.
Cow Mother—Is separately worshipped as sacred in India, was sacred in Egypt and seen as manifesting the Goddess as Mother in Old Europe.
Bee—Honey bees and their famous food which does not spoil and can be made into delicious alcoholic drink called mead was seen as the fertility/food aspect.
Snakes—There is no single symbol other than the triangle/vulva more synonymous with the Goddess than the snake. Thousands of figurines, paintings and statues portray the Goddess holding snakes, entwined with snakes, with snakes forming headdresses, crowns, necklaces, staffs and girdles around the waist. As an aspect of the transforming Goddess, the snake is able to shed all skin with eyes open, in order to grow, quite a miraculous feat, unknown to other creatures. Some snake relatives have venom which is often poisonous. However, in very small doses, this venom apparently had psychedelic properties which, when ingested, were used to transport the initiated snake Priestesses into the realm of divination, in which she was capable of seeing into the future and then returning to heal human ailments and/or mediate political situations peacefully in the present. This talent bec
ame a source of great power, used for benefit of both individuals and the community.
It may well have been so great a source of power that weapons were unnecessary to keep the community peaceful. In later times this ability to transport oneself into another realm and bring back the information to heal people in the present would be called shamanism, which has been practiced in various forms from Europe, to Siberia, to India, and through the Americas.
“The snake of Old Europe represents the antithesis of Christian, Semitic and Indo European religions. She assures the well being and continuity of life through intimate identification and harmony with the cycles of nature. Through seasonal renewal of vital energy, the snake assures and protects the life of humans and animals.”9 The snake Goddess figures with which we are now most familiar are from Crete from 1600 BCE and represent a developed, sophisticated continuum from the Neolithic nearly 4,000 years earlier. It is a continuum in medicine, healing, divination, life energy, the idea of immortality of utmost importance that persisted over thousands and thousands of years.
Birds/Masked Goddess—Bird masks, owl masks, birds of prey. The owl can see in darkness – one of the shamanic talents of the Goddess priestesses. The eye of the owl is frequently seen on pottery and menhirs. Birds can fly, which reminded the people of another shamanic talent – the Goddess diviners being able to transport themselves mentally to other places while the body stayed in the same earthly place. A Bird Goddess with wings for arms and streams of energy flowing past is seen in a Paleolithic cave painting in France, c. 23000 BCE. Sculptures of masked Neolithic Greek and Macedonian Bird Goddess with neatly braided hair decorated with chevrons, meanders, zig-zag lines and the number three, wearing a large collar necklace and having diagonal lines painted across her cheeks, were discovered from c. 6000 BCE.
Vultures exist in their natural habitats of the Mediterranean, between Spain and Turkey. In Old Europe the birds of prey (death aspect of the Goddess) are predominantly owl, raven, hawk, crow, seagull and jay. Also in Old Europe during the Neolithic, birds of prey, particularly ravens and vultures, were utilized to remove flesh from deceased persons who were laid out on platforms high above the ground, before they were suitable for burial because only the clean, dry whitened bones were presented to the Goddess for Her to regenerate. This integral step in the birth, death, rebirth cycle represents both Her most fearsome and most deeply compassionate aspects.
Water—This is the life force, the wellspring, the element essential to life itself. Springs issuing forth from the sacred earth are sources of worship from the most ancient times to present day. Villages were built around them. Later European churches are often built directly over ancient springs. These were places of worship, part of the sacred Earth aspect of the Goddess and emanations from the Earth energy, nourishing the people, healing and cleansing them. (Chartres Cathedral in France is one of the most famous of these sacred spots, built over a sacred Goddess spring which was used in Roman times by Celtic Druids for their festivals and later taken over by the Christians who built a church dedicated to their Mother of God.) Neolithic pottery is covered with “meanders” which are meant to portray flowing water and, therefore, the life force. This meander form also becomes the letter M. and the word MA.
Tree—The tree of life is the pillar going to sky, the gift of strength, the standing people (to North American Indians), the Druid Temple, the gift of healing, warmth, shelter, food and invisibility. The tree is also the phallic symbol of male energy, and tall poles are found in the middle of Goddess Temples.
Triangle—Vulva yoni female symbol of life-giving channels represent sacred sexuality. The triangle is also the strongest structure. Later the double triangle becomes the double axe – symbol of the Goddess in her full power of life and death, particularly evident in Crete and the Mediterranean.
Pig—All during the early Goddess cultures, for perhaps 8,000 years, the pig was a sacred animal of Mother Earth symbolizing the ability to grow, fatten and reproduce rapidly and abundantly. The young pigs were sacrificed, buried in the earth, and then brought to the temples to be mixed with seed and sown in the earth again to ensure abundant harvest, a very different but original source of using animal remains as fertilizer.10
Mother Earth—The land was worshipped and held deeply sacred as the source of food and mysterious life. The darkness of the earth, the moistness, the caves and springs, contained Her Mysteries most ancient and all pervasive. It is the ordinary people to whom this ancient Mother appears, rekindling awareness.
All religion begins with an experience of mystery. The first and primary human mystery is the ability of women to give life, to regenerate, to bleed and not die. And so the first religions became those honoring this regeneration as a whole process – life, birth, death and new life, or regeneration. Time was a circle, a cycle of life, death and rebirth – all of life followed this naturally observable pattern. Life sprang from female humans, from animals, water creatures (both birds and fish), and the earth Herself in the form of universal food products. This was a true, observable fact. Earth and women were both the Regeneratrix.
The great Neolithic burial mounds of Knowth in New Grange, Ireland, are made in the shape of female wombs, where one enters through a vagina passageway with the dead residing in egg shaped or oval series of chambers. Because these Neolithic people also knew sophisticated astronomy, in addition to being highly skilled architects, a small window opening in the mound is situated so perfectly that the rising sunlight streams in at exactly the time of the spring equinox, shining directly into the grave site, declaring the light of rebirth each spring. The light of the spring equinox cycle is completed every year, millennium after millennium with the Great Goddess watching over all and fulfilling Her promises of protection and life everlasting. These are amazing accomplishments for our ancient ancestors, who used to be condescendingly termed “new stone age” people and relegated to the primitive.
Colors important to the Neolithic peoples were related to function:
Black, the color painted on most pottery and many statues, was the representation of abundance, fertility of black earth, from which grew food for humans and animals. Black is the darkness of the womb from whence came life and the color of caves, grottos, and deep springs which became sacred places for ceremony and seasonal rituals dedicated to the Goddess. Black was the color of the female principle in her pre-birth phase.
Red, the color of blood, was life itself. It was the menstrual blood of women’s mystery, the sacrificial blood of the great Auroch Bull scattered in farm fields to ensure good harvests for the people and sacred to the Goddess as representation of reproduction and great strength. Red ochre, from iron ore deposits, was ground to power and put on the reburied skeletal bones of the dead ancestors, painted on the inside walls and outside entrances of passage grave mounds.
White, the color of death, was taken from the color of bones bleached in the sun after the flesh was removed either by cremation or the defleshing excarnation, courtesy of the birds of prey. Whereas the Goddess statues and paintings showing aspects of living were done with rounded and curved lines, the statues of the death aspect of Goddess were stark, thin, linear and white, made out of marble, bone, white clay, or stones of light color. Even in death these figures have the pubic triangle signifying the cycle of regeneration. Archeology has labeled them “stiff nudes,” but they bear striking resemblance to the current fad of anorexic stick-thin female figures, particularly among the young and affluent, the rich and famous. (Some women of the 21st Century have been sold a concept of attractiveness our ancestors equated only with death, the destruction of the living, and the already long dead.)
The Concept of Regeneration—Regeneration is the foundation of all other beliefs in this culture. Although the symbols of death were synonymous with the totality of the Goddess, death was not the conclusion; it was not the final answer.
The people of the Goddess were far more sophisticated in their understanding of the astrology o
f heaven and the nurturance of earth than we were led to believe even a few generations ago. To them all, living was a circle without end, without termination, without permanent finality so that one was always connected to those who went before and those who come after. Death was a temporary way station between births, and because no human family ever let go of the ancestral ties, the spirit was never abandoned by the Goddess. One came physically from the Mother, lived with the Goddess while breathing, and then was taken back to the sacred womb of the Mother Earth Goddess to be reborn again through Her and the human female as Her manifestation.
Everything was tangible. Birth was human, animal and plant reality. Death was witnessed as being universal for all the living. The reward of all the processes was part of the everyday being of the people, all of whom lived together, communally, sharing the goods, the work, the fruits, the sacred ceremony, and the seasonal rituals of life and regeneration. And so, because life, life, and more life was the reason for existence, nurturance, sustenance, abundance, caring, sharing, and teaching had to be the focus also.
Neolithic Burial Practices—The burials of Neolithic Old Europe deposit purified bones of human skeletal remains (sometimes without skulls) in egg-shaped graves, passage graves, graves under house floors or even in burial urns with the understanding that they are being returned to Mother Earth, Great Goddess, through Her sacred body which is the earth, to join the community of other ancestors and be regenerated into new life. It is the continuum, not the individual human being, which is celebrated. Objects found in these graves are in honor of Her, such as animal antlers, dog skeletons, ox skulls, bits of clay, fabric, needles, or spindle whorls for weaving. They are not offered in great profusion as grave goods showing wealth, but to be carried forward into a newly useful life.
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