Mars

From Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Mars Rome's "red" war-god Mars was once an Etruscan fertility-savior Maris, worshipped at an ancient shrine in the Apennines, Matiene.(1) At a similar shrine in northwestern Iran, Matiane (Mother Ana), the Medes worshipped the same god who became Martiya to the Persians, a holy "martyr" also called Immanuel or Imanisi. The inscription of Darius at Behistun says the god was incarnate in a sacred king slain by his people.(2) His spirit ruled what Sufis stil call the "fulfilling" death-and-rebirth process, known as mardiyya or martyrdom.(3) An early Phrygian version of the same sacrificial god appears in greek myth as the flayed satyr Marsyas, slain on a pine tree "between heaven and earth" by order of the heavenly father. Mars was "red" because his basic Indo-European prototype was the pre-Vedic flayed god Rudra, father of the Maruts or sacrificial victims, red with their own blood. Rudra "the red one" was born of the three-faced virgin-mother Marici, Goddess of birth, dawn, and the New Year, a manifestation of the ancient feminine Trinity. Thus, Rudra bore the title of Tryambaka, "He Who Belongs to Three Mother Goddesses." In Japan this Goddess was known as Marici-deva or Marishi-ten, whom later patriarchal writers masculinized as a Buddhist monk. However, this alleged monk always wore the garments of a woman.(4) The same Goddess was Marica to the Latins. She gave birth to the god-king Latinus, ancestor of all Latin tribes. Her consort was the flayed goat god of the Lupercalia, Faunus, another incarnation of Mars, who also appeared in bird-soul form as the sacred woodpecker Picus, giving oracles from the top of a phallic pillar in his shrine.(5) The Martian New Year sacrifices took place in the god's month of March, which once began the Roman year; this is why the "Ides of March" were considered dangerous to kings. In the Babylonian sacred calendar, the same New Year month of atonement sacrifices was Marcheshvan.(6) The astrological sign of this month still begins the year, according to astrologers' tradition. In northern Europe, Mars was identified with Tiw, Tyr, or Tig: names derived from Indo-Germanic dieus, "God."(7) Just as Mars was often confused with the sky-father Jupiter [deus-pater], so Tiw was another name for the sky-father Odin. Tiw's sign was a lingam-yoni arrangement of a phallic spear atached to a female disc. As wielder of the spear or lightning bolt of fertility, Mars-Tiw became a god of battle He was the patron of Roman warriors, who called him Marspiter (Father Mars) and honored him with "martial" exercises on the Campus Martius, site of a temple of Maris in Etruscan times. His sacred day was Tuesday, named after Tiw in English, though it is still dies martis in Latin and similarly named in Latinate languages (French mardi). To account for the inevitable story that the Queen of Heaven as Celestial Virgin gave birth to the sacrificial god, Romans claimed the Blessed Virgin Juno spurned the love of her spouse, Jupiter, and to spite him conceived Mars by her own unaided feminine fertility magic, the lily blossom that represented her own yoni.(8) Notes: (1) Hays, 182; J.E. Harrison, 101. (2) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 178. (3) Shah, 394. (4) Larousse, 342, 422. (5) Larousse, 207-8. (6) Assr. & Bab. Lit., 170. (7) H.R.E. Davidson, G.M.V.A., 58. (8) Larousse, 202.

NEWS FLASH! The Venus of Mars - Chesspiece!

From The Telegraph.co.uk
Is Martian figure actually a Danish mermaid?
By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 2:01pm GMT 23/01/2008

Some claim it is Bigfoot, others insist it is just a rock, but now a new theory for the mysterious "Martian" photograph is gaining popularity on the Internet.

The figure captured by a the Nasa explorer Spirit in 2004 is actually a mermaid statue, and is proof that aliens established Denmark, so the theory goes.

The logic for this outlandish explanation comes from striking similarities between the figure and a sculpture in Copenhagen known as the Little Mermaid.
The resemblance has been pointed out on Internet message boards and appears to be one of the many tongue-in-cheek explanations circling cyberspace with the most support.

The Mars statue was "obviously built by an ancient civilisation that later departed Mars and settled Denmark", according to Madurobob on the JREF message board.

Other bloggers have suggested the Martian figure may be the Virgin Mary, or alternatively one of the Sand People - or maybe a Jawa - from the Star Wars films.

Spirit, sent to Mars to capture images from the surface of the planet, is one half of a $820m (£410m) mission, along with its twin explorer, Opportunity.

It landed on Mars in January 2004 for a three month mission to search Gusev Crater, a rock strewn stretch of soil that scientists believe could be the bed of an ancient lake. If Mars once had surface water, it had the potential to support life.

Inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale from which it takes its name, The Little Mermaid statue was erected on the water's edge at Langelinie in the Danish capital in 1913.

The work of sculptor Edvard Eriksen, it has become one of the country's biggest tourist attractions and an unofficial national symbol. According to her unofficial website, the mermaid sits on a boulder looking down into the sea, "dreaming about leaving the big sea to find her Prince and an immortal soul".

Or maybe a return to Mars?
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Note: From watching the video associated with the article, it's clear the image is only recently received from the surface of Mars and is not from 2004. If the images had been knocking around since 2004 I'm sure we would have long since heard about this!

If I have to guess, I'd say this is the Martian equivalent of the Goddess Venus (Roman) or Aphrodite (Greek):) It looks like a female form to me. She is sitting on a stone ridge, with shoulder-length (or possibly longer) hair, and one arm is extended in what appears to be supplication - perhaps mourning the retreat of the waters on the Mars surface to the Martian poles eons and eons ago?

It's not a live being. As a report at the Daily Grail noted, if it was alive, it wouldn't have just "sat there" and allowed the Mars Rover to approach without some kind of reaction. Never flinched an inch! I don't see any keen resemblance between the Martian sculpture and the Danish "Little Mermaid." The form is all wrong. But then, you know those Danes - always trying to take credit for everything! The real corker is that the - whatever it - is perhaps 6 centimeters tall! A good size for a queen chesspiece but certainly not human size!

In short, she's a fine example of an off-planet simulacrum (or is that simulacra???) Whoa - is that a decaying pyramid on the far horizon? I'm surprised no one has spotted that yet!

Mars image from The Planetary Society Weblog, January 23, 2008.