Hala Sultan Tekke: Shrine of the Mother's Breast

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried, darlings! HIStory speaks to us - if only we will listen.

While doing the prior posts on the Hind of Hinds and the Ka'bah of Mecca (a/k/a the Goddess Kybele/Cybele and the Vesica Piscis) I came across a reference to the Hala Sultan Tekke. Upon doing further research, as I had no idea what the Hala Sultan Tekke was, I discovered that this third most sacred spot of the Islamic religion (located on Cyprus) is a shrine to Umm Haram, who is accounted, historically, as Mohammed's wet nurse.

The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is so very true in this case. The dome of this shrine is obviously a breast.

Okay, slap my face for being sacriligeous. BUT - early descriptions ascribe the shrine as "the Old Woman's tomb" - and who is the Old Woman but Shaybah - Sheba, the Hind of Hinds, one of the titles of Artemis (see prior posts on Hind of Hinds). A further clue to the pre-Islamic origin of this shrine is that it was considered a sacred spot to Christians as well -- probably a relic from pre-Christian days. We all know that in the presently accepted chronology of HIStory, the Christians pre-dated the Muslims. My conclusion is that this is an ancient sacred place dedicated to a goddess - since it is on Cyprus, probably Artemis or Diana.

The site was/is? also sacred to the Sufis - a "heretic" sect of Islam who worshipped the goddess principle in all creation: The term tekke (convent) applies to a building designed specifically for gatherings of a Sufi brotherhood, or tariqa, and may have referred to an earlier feature of the location. Coincidence? I think not...

"Tariqa" means "path, way, or method" according to this entry at Wikipedia. The early Christians called their system of beliefs "The Way," - but "The Way" is much more ancient than the earliest Christians.

The Way to The Truth is a recurring theme in religion. According to Charles Muses in his essay "The Ageless Way of Goddess; Divine Pregnancy and Higher Birth in Ancient Egypt and China," the "theurgy" (literally, a divine working - theo + urg) - showed the way to a divine rebirth while still carnate, a method of creating an eternal body (he called it a "higher body") that would be available to one upon death. He called it "The Way Home." He stated:

The preparation and technique for that path, which transforms one as one treads it, exist in fragmentary form in the old human recors. But those insturctions, that operational method, are always available in great clarity to those who again reach that place of accessibility in awareness. Then one can start the heroic quest described in these lines from an obscure poet, Kyril Demys, three decades ago (who also wrote "Song of the Far Journey"):

The doors are many
but the key is one ...
that space has room
for a winged and wondrous child
and whirled a little world to being....
That child alone
shall fly the abyss
and reach the Second Sun.

Muses says that in ancient Egypt, this knowledge was incorporated into a system of belief called "The Lion Path," and in ancient China, it was called "The Way of the Tiger."