The True Origins of the Koran

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets"

(Image: The Goddess Kore, from the PARTHENON, temple of the goddess Athena on the Acropolis. From the 6th century BCE.
Photo Greek National Museum, Athens. Notice the artistry - are those just braids in her hair, or are they intertwined with serpents?)

Koran
Mohammedan scriptures, often erroneously thought to have been written by Mohammed. Moslems don't believe this.(1) But many don't know the Koran was an enlarged, revised version of the ancient Word of the Goddess Kore, revered by Mohammed's tribe, the Koreshites (Children of Kore), who guarded her shrine at Mecca.

The original writing was done long before Mohammed's time by holy imams, a word related to Semitic ima, "mother."(2) Like the original mahatmas or "great mothers" in India,the original imams were probably priestesses of the old Arabian matiarchate. It was said they took the scriptures from a prototype that existed in heaven from the beginning of eternity, "Mother of the Book" - i.e., the Goddess herself, wearing the Book of Fate on her breast as Mother Tiamat wore the Tablets of Destiny. Sometimes the celestial Koran was called the Preserved Tablet.(3) There was some resemblance between this and other legendary books of divine origin, such as the Ur-text, the Book of Thoth and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.

As in the case of the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Koran was much rewritten to support new patiarchal laws and to obliterate the figures of the Goddess andher priestesses. See Arabia.

Notes:
(1) Encyc. Brit., "Mohammed."
(2) Campbell, Oc.M., 443.
(3) Budge, A.T., 52.
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Kore
Greek Holy Virgin, inner soul of Mother Earth [Demeter - The Divine Mother, she of the mare's head whose mane was entwined with serpents -- see earlier entry on Delphi]; a name so widespread, that it must have been one of the earliest designations of the World Shakti or female spirit of the universe. Variations include Ker, Car, Q're, Cara, Kher, Ceres, Core, Sanskrit Kaur or Kauri, alternate names for the Goddess Kali.

Neolithic Asia knew a mysterious Goddess Ker, or Car, ancestress of the Carians.(1) Her city in the Chersonese was Cardia "the Goddess Car." Kardia became the Greek word for "heart," as cor became the Latin; both descended from the Goddess who was the world-heart. The same syllable is found in words for maternal blood relationships: Gaelic cairdean, kinship; Turkish kardes, maternal siblings.(2) The Goddess became Kardia ton kosmos: "Heart of the World."(3)

Shrines of Karnak in Egypt and Carnac in Brittany were sites of gigantic temples and funerary complexes over 5000 years ago, dedicated to Kar or Kore. France had similar shrines in similarly-named locations, Kerlescan, Kercado, Kermario.(4) The last name combined the pagan Virgin with the Goddess Mari, who was sometimes her daughter, her mother, or herself, like Kali embodied in Kel-Mari.(5) Inhabitants of Carnac, and of Carnantum on the Danube, called themselves in Roman times the Carnutes, "people born of the Goddess Car."(6)

In Egypt's early dynastic period there was a place called Kerma (Mother Ker) in Nubia, where mass sacrifices took place. A similar name, Kara, was held in reverence by several early Egyptian rulers. Egyptians spoke of an eastern land called Kher [possibly - Kehmet? -- land of the Mother Kar?], and called Palestine the country of Kharu.(7)

Car or Carna was known to the Romans as "a Goddess of the olden time," whose archaic worship was connected with Karneia festivals of Sparta and the classic Roman Carnival.(8) Sometimes she was Carmenta, "the Mind of Car," who invented the Roman alphabet.(9) An extremely old temple on the Caelian Hill was dedicated to her.(1) A later variation of her name was Ceres, origin of such words as cereal, corn, kernel, core, carnal, cardiac.

In the east this ancient Goddess was everywhere. Some said she was Artemis Caryatis, mother of the Caryatides of the Laconian temple of Caryae.(11) The Tyrian seaport of Caraalis (modern Cagliari) was sacred to her.(12) One of Israel's oldest shrines, the "garden" called Mount Carmel, was her place and that of her baalim (gods).(13)

Kore was a great power in Coptic religion, with a flourishing cult at Alexandria in the 4th century A.D. Her festival, the Koreion, was held each January 6 , later assimilated to Christianity as the feast of Epiphany. [I believe this is the date the Holy Spirit in the form of "tongues of fire" was said to have descended upon the heads of loyal disciples of the LORD Jesus Christ who had gathered together in a room in Jerusalem to commemerate the 40th day after his death. This is an extremely ancient tradition that pre-dates Christianity and Islam. We have seen recently in Iran that people gather together to mourn the loss of a decedent 40 days after his or her death. The number "40" is mentioned several times in the Bible - according to Jewish tradition, this denotes a "long indeterminate period of time" but this is probably a later gloss-over of this number sacred to the Goddess]. Kore's festival celebrated the birth of the new year god Aeon to the Virgin, whose naked image was carried seven times around the temple, decorated with gold stars and the sign of the cross. The priests announced to the public that the Virgin had brought forth the Aeon.(14)

The Koreion passed into British tradition as the Kirn, or Feast of Ingathering, which the church later changed to the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy. Kirn was a cognate of the Greek kern or sacred womb-vase in which the grain god was reborn.(15) [I assume this is also related to cairn, sacred burial place of the dead, and to the word corn - a food of the gods in the New World, and related words such as kernel. I find it very interesting that earlier this evening I blogged an article about an intact Elamite "jar burial" -- perhaps another ancient tradition that is related to this equally old Mother Goddess.] Here again, the Kore or Ker was a virgin mother. The Goddess's harvest instrument, a moon-sicle, represented even the Christian versin of the festival.(16)

The classic myth of Kore's abduction by Pluto was another instance of a god's usurpation of the Goddess's power, according to Gnostic sources. "Plutonius Zeus...does not possess the nourishment for all mortal living creatures, for it is Kore who bears the fruit."(17)

Kore's resurrection represented the seasonal return of vegetation. She was also the World Soul animating each human soul, and looking out of the eyes. Reflection in the pupil of an eye was known as the Kore or "Maiden" in the eye. To the Arabs, it was the "baby" in the eye. The Bible calls either a daughter or a soul "the apple of thine eye" (Proverbs 7:2); and of course, every apple had a Kore. [Perhaps this belief is the source for the phrase in Bryan Adams' mega-hit song from "Don Juan DeMarco" When You Really Love a Woman, "...when you can see your unborn children in her eyes, you know you really love a woman... ."

Notes:
(1) Graves, W.G., 373.
(2) Farh, W.P., 144.
(3) Cumont, A.R.R.P., 72.
(4) Encyc. Brit., "Carnac."
(5) Braffault I, 474.
(6) J.H. Smith, D.C.P., 39.
(7) Erman, 228, 278.
(8) Dume'zl, 386, 389.
(9) Graves, G.M., 1, 280; 2, 137.
(10) Encyc. Brit., "Carna."
(11) Graves, W.G., 372.
(12) Masa, 43.
(13) Encyc. Brit., "Carmel."
(14) Campbell, M.I., 34.
(15) Neumann, G. M., 132.
(16) Brewster, 424.
(17) Robinson, 305.