Was The Neolithic A Golden Age Of Goddess Worship?

Willendorf.

 

Lol, duly noted

 

I have no doubt that femininity and mothers have played an important role in society and religion. Jung and his disciple Joseph Campbell have probably done the most to make us aware of how the animus and anima both play a role in our psychic development. Even if we are skeptical of the anthropologists who tell us primitive humans didn't know that sex causes babies, it is undoubtedly true that we all start our lives in the womb, come into the world through a small opening in our mothers, and are then nurtured at our mother's breasts. Even the most obtuse male archaeologists would have trouble not seeing the reverence for females in Paleolithic and Neolithic figurines. I think it's interesting that despite all the railing by the Yaweh only prophets against the "abominations" of Asherah and Astoreth, that elimniating goddess worship seems to have been a constant battle among the prophets. Raphael Patai made us aware that ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah, who was His consort. Francesca Stavrakropouou, senior lecturer The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. Amulets, figurines, and inscriptions and ancient texts, indicate that she was once worshiped in the Temple, to the dismay of the Deuteronomists.

 

Before the rebellion of the masculine against the feminine, the Queen ruled over many such societies. The harlots (the temple prostitutes) held high positions in socieities.

 

Coming up with those queens is the challenge. One of the problems with the theory is that it deals mostly with prehistory, so we have to make inferences from artifacts, which is always a judgment call. The hunter gatherers seem to have been really egalitarian, and it seems reasonable to conclude that the increasing power of women in the first half of the Neolithic brought political power, as well. Women have long been associated with fertility, and the Neolithic religions seem to have been fertility cults. Of course, it takes two to tango, but the male was typically the less prominent partner. In some Neolithic societies, there was a tradition of the Harvest Lord or Corn King who was sacrificed after performing his assigned function, in the manner of black widows. According to Merlin Stone, there were also kings for a period of time, after which they also were sacrificed and mourned. And goddesses were always important. In Pre-Dynastic Egypt the cow goddess seems to have been the closest thing to a nurturing Great Mother. In Upper Egypt, this was Bat. In Lower Egypt, it was Hathor. When the two regions were united, the two goddesses merged in a confusing double identity goddess, but the Egyptians were able to deal with it. And it certainly is true that in Egypt women had greaer independence and status than we find in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, like you, I'm pressed for time, but this is an interesting subject. We also need to get into the protector goddesses: Serkat, the socrpion goddess; Nekhbet, the vulture goddess, in Upper Egypt;andWadjet, the cobra goddess of Lower Egypt. But it's still hard to find direct evidence of matriarchy or even clearly matristic governance.

 

About 5 years ago researchers published a report that Stonehenge is a representation of the vulva. Though this has been suggested before, they came up with the strognest evidence of such.

 

No---there is definitive proof-----check out P. 48 of H.G.Well's book, The Time Machine.


(I'm joking)

 

It's interesting that the earliest Egyptian kings had goddesses as their patrons, although they weren't the passive Blanche Dubois type females. Two kings or chieftans of predynastic Upper Egypt, Scorpions I & II (celebrated by the Dwayne Johnson movie), The name may refer to the scorpion goddess Selket, although some Egyptologists think it was to early for her. In Mesopotamia, Sargon of Akkad claimed the patronage of the goddess Ishtar, whom he later identified with the Sumerian goddess Innana after he conquered Sumer. He claimed to have been visited by Ishtar in a dream and assured by her of his imperial destiny. Sargon appointed his daughter Enheduanna as high pristess for life of the moon god at Ur and the sky god at Uruk. She became the world's first known theologian and author of written poetry, composing 42 hymns, some quite warlike, calling for people to pull together for the unity of the empire. She was considered to be the virtual embodiment of her (and Sargon's) patron deity Ishtar/Innana, the nymphomaniac-amazonian goddess of sex and war, who was the very prototype of the castrating female. Ishtar's husband was Dummuzi (aka, Tammuz), kind of a pathetic, long suffereing dweeb who was seasonally resurrected as part of a deal Ishtar made with the god of the underworld to get herself out by putting him and her sister in (he'd spend part of the year there, and her sister would spend the rest, in rotation.

Some of these goddesses had a dark side. Innana/Ishtar/Astarte demanded that their male followers make the sacrifice of castration, which became convenient for guardians of female temple prostitutes. Even the Great Mother, Cybele, in her Phrygian rendition, required a similar offering, which her ecstatic male followers gladly offered during religious rituals, and then became male prostitutes.

Even gentle Hathor could be fierce in defense of her father Ra. In the Heavenly Book of the Cow, Ra learns that humans are plotting rebellion against him. He sends Hathor to destroy them. Hathor, taking the form of the lioness goddess Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra, slaughters humans in such great numbers that she becomes literally blood thirsty. Ra decides to call off the destruction, but in order to calm Hathor down he has to pour red beer looking like blood on the ground. Hathor drinks it, gets drunk, and returns to her mellow self.

 

Thanks for this. These, as I understand them, are advanced spiritual concepts of yoga and Buddhist meditiation, historically derived from the Great Mother as the perfection of transcendent wisdom, tracing back historically to Indonesian goddess Tara, the Tibetan Yum Chenmo, and the bodhisattva Prajnaparamita, mother of Buddhas. To me, there's a intriguing connection to the Jewish "Wisdom" literature given a feminine personification as "Sophia" but reflecting a kinder, gentler side of the Alpha Male Yahweh. The Christian Gnostics were into this, but the patriarchal bishops who won out at Nicea were not impressed. I certainly think Jung's archetype of the Great Mother is alive and well--at least in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox devotion to the Blessed Virgin and female saints. Certainly something to explore. So much to lean, so little time!

 

This book talks about Eloah, Yahweh's consort.





http://www.amazon.com/Eloah-Mother-David-Bruce-Clark/dp/1449594182/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462210285&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=the+hidden+goddess+by+david+clark

 

Thanks. I thought Ashera was His consort. I think Eloah (god) is singular of Elohim (gods). But the Shekinah (glory) of Yahweh (an aspect of His being) is a feminine word in Hebrew, and His Wisdom (Sophia) is separtely pesonified as an another aspect.

 

It's been a while since I read the book. I'm not much into the subject. A friend wrote it and I remembered it.

 

Yahweh was the consort of Ashera, or depending on the location, either Astarte, or Astoreth---I forget which. Like all other male gods in the Middle East, his annual rebirth (or what was a metaphor for the annual vegetative cycle) was by the grace of the Goddess. The male GOd would die and be reborn, the Goddess was eternal (which makes sense because the earth is constant while the sky (the seasons) change. Though this was not understood in every culture it was pretty universal in concept.)

I have another book which is packed away somewhere right now---The Goddess Culture of the Hebrews, or the Hebrew Goddess Cults, or some such thing----I haven't seen it for years, but it is very good. I can't remember the title at all.

But this is why I have trouble with the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. It represents the god sacrificing himself to himself and returning to life of himself, which is not a Middle Eastern tradition. It is very Indo-European and even happens in the oldest Indo-European scripture, The Rig Veda.

Even the motifs are very Indo-European---being born under a lone star. Dying on the cross (stauron in Ancient Greek)which is the Tree of Life, or World Tree as the lone star (stauros), a cross that is placed on top of the hill where the skull of Adam is buried, i.e. the World Tree placed on top of the Skull of Adam. These motifs all mean more to a people of a bit higher lattitude than the Middle East. These are clearly Indo-European motifs.

 

In the Creation Hymns of The Rig Veda there is the hymn of Visvakarman (The All-Maker). Verse 10.81.5 ends with, "You who follow your own laws, sacrifice your body yourself, making it grow great. Then in the next verse, 10.81.6 All-Maker, grown great through the oblation, sacrifice the earth and sky yourself. Let other men go astray all around; let us here have a rich and generous patron."

Also in 10.90, Purusa-Sukta (The Hymn of Man), Purusa (the Cosmic Giant) is dismembered in a manner that is typical of shamanic initiatory death and rebirth, a motif that was not only Indo-European, but stretched clear across Eurasia. This was the first sacrifice--10.90.16 "With the sacrifice, the gods sacrificed to the sacrifice. These were the first ritual laws. These very powers reached the dome of the sky where dwell the Sadhyas, the ancient gods." The footnote to this verse states that Purusa was both the object and subject of the sacrifice. Earlier, in verse 2, we see that Purusa became the ruler of immortality when he grew beyond everything through food (the food of the sacrifice). In verse 6 we see that when this primeval sacrifice was born, it became the model for the human sages.

 

As I understand it Astarte ( עשתרת ,aka Astoreth, Inanna, Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven) and Ashera (אֲשֵׁרָה‎ aka Athirat)were two different goddesses, albeit with certain similarities, and it was only Asherah for whom there is evidence of being thought to be the consort of Yahweh. The goddesses are separately condemned in the Old Testament, indicating they were different entities. Inanna was the sex and war goddess discussed in my Post 31, who started out in Sumer, was taken over as Ishtar by the Akkadians and later the Babylonians, and then by the Phonecians at Sidon and Tyre, as Astarte and by Canaanites as Astoreth. (Judg 10:6; 1 Kgs 11:5, 33; 2 Kgs 23:13) A Ugaritic text specifically equates her with Ishtar. Her consort was Tammuz (aka Dummuzi, Adonis), who fits the profile of the dying, rising god you mentioned. Ezekiel specifically describes the worship of Tammuz in the Temple of at Jerusalam. Being promiscuous and with her husband gone to the realm of the dead half the year, Astoreth probably had more than her share of extra-marital affairs, but to the best of our knowledge, Yahweh wasn't one of them. (On the subject of Jesus, Christians point out that He only died and was resurrected once--not an insignificant difference. As for the very "indo-Euroean" character of it all, intuitively the sacrifice of Xipe Totec in Mesoamerican theology bears comparison.)

Ashera was the Canaanite mother goddess and apparently Mother Nature, portrayed with a garland of leaves on her head. Trees and the Ashera pole representing trees were her principal symbol. In Scripture, prophets complained she was worshiped under every green tree. She was also Lady Ashera of the Sea and She Who Treads on the Sea--possibly a reference to waling on water or a victory over Yam, the serpent Sea God. Anyhow, she was the consort of El, the Canaanite High God who put the "el" in Israel. Later, when Yahweh first revealed Himself to Moses, He said that He was the God who was known to Abraham as El Shaddai. Inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud, Shephelah of Judah, and Khirbet el-Qom to "Yawheh and His Asherah" confirm the union and name change.

Not that this was accepted by the "Yahweh only" crowd who wrote the Bible. Both goddesses are roundly denounced as abominations. King Josiah desecrated the altars that Kin Solomon had built ...for the worship of disgusting idols--Astarte the goddess of Sidon..etc (2 Kings23:13);" he also burned the image of Ashera (2 Kings 23:15) But apparently this wasn't successful. Jeremiah tells us that the continued worship of Asherah brought down Yahweh's wrath (Jeremiah 7:18-19 ).

 

No, I think they were thr. ;-)

I lose track of them---but they are all a part of a bigger complex of a Goddess concept that includes Aphrodite and Isis.

 

I can see how people can get them confused, especially when you throw the Phrygian deities Cybele and Attis into the mix. I guess it's not so important unless we're worshiping them. Like Astarte, Cybele and her followers mourned her lost lover Attis who died after castrating himself and became one with a tree that sprouted from the blood. Unlike Dummuzi, he did not come back to life, but was able to move a finger. Like Astarte worshipers, the sacrifice demanded of his priests, the galli, was self-castration. Ouch! And they say Yahweh is violent!

 

I have an article tucked away somewhere from 2007 or 2008 or so, that tells about something pulled out of a dig near Israel that indicated that Yahweh was also a consort of Astarte. I forget what it was that indicated this, and I don't know where the article is---other than in boxes in my storage room. I don't even remember where I got the article from, though I seem to recall that I printed it off of Newscientist.com

 

By the way, I have a little clay statue of Astarte. It came from a dig in the Middle East, and was dated at around 2500 BC. There is a loop on her back so I imagine it was worn as a necklace. It is about 5 inches tall, and has outstretched arms, and breasts. But it is a fairly basic design.

Actually, as I hold it in my hand, I picture it worn between two beautiful naked supple breasts... Auuuughhhhhhmmmmmmngnngnng...

I'm joking, and seriously I can't hold it in my hand-----it too is packed in my storage room. When my stepdaghter moved back home temporarily, I lost my office, and there are still quite a few things from my office packed away...