The Mother Goddess in Her Queen of Heaven Dove Form

Hola darlings!

Soooo sorry for being absent for so long!  This new old house I downsized to is taking up way too much of my time -- but it's now all decked out for the holiday season and I am sitting back and enjoying it for the next few months.  I'll eventually get around to packing away all "Christmas" decor near the end of February :)

I celebrate the Winter Solstice (a/k/a the Festival of Lights, under its various names), not Christmas, per se, but since Christmas is a Christian expropriation of this ancient Goddess celebration (despite the Romans trying to turn it into a male god thing), I'll take it.  Check out my newest "Christmas" decoration -- the Queen of Heaven:

Do you see her?  She's a crowned dove, and I've got her up on the highest spot I could in the living room, where She is overlooking everything!  She is sparkly white with a gold crown.  I tried to get some close-ups but, frankly, I'm not very good at taking photos and my camera is nearly an antique now, purchased in 2005 (I use that, and my shaky hands, as excuses for crappy photos).  Here are a couple more looks at her, just because:

Please excuse the pea green "metallic" accent wall, I did not paint it that way, it came with the house.  It will disappear as if by magic during the spring of 2015 when I can once again have windows open to air-out paint fumes.

You probably already intuited that when I saw this beautiful crowned dove, I just had to buy her, because I was thinking of the entire criscrossed web of herstory, including: (1) the ancient bird (or eye) goddesses from prehistoric times:

Alabaster eye icon from Tel Brak

(2) the cross-cultural transfers that took place over thousands of years through migration and trade that transformed the ancient bird (or eye) goddesses into iconic goddesses such as Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Isis, Artemis, etc.:

Bird Goddess, predynastic Egypt, c.
4000-3500 BCE, Brooklyn Museum

Goddess Artemis in her "Lady of the Beasts"
form (notice the wings) and checkerboard
gown, from Francois Vase. c. 570-560 BCE Greece

(3) the Christian Church's transformation of the Mother Goddess into the Mother of God who was still, somehow, on a lesser footing worship wise than the god she gave birth to whom would not have existed, but for her, LOL!; and (4) those pesky Egyptian Coptic Christians, who keep materializing the Queen of Heaven every so often in the form of white doves flying around church steeples, just to remind everyone that Isis never dies, she just transforms herself into the latest version of goddess chic :)

"Virgin Mary" apparition with dove, appeared outside a
Coptic church, Cairo, Egypt, 1960s.

I am very much looking forward to December 21st, because after that day passes, the days will incrementally begin to get longer once again, and there will be more light.  I am, most definitely, a creature of the Light. So, during this period of celebration of the ancient Festival of Lights (in all of its various forms) which, in this Newton household, is about three months long, I wish you all blessings, joy and prosperity for the fast-approaching new year.  Meanwhile, I am eating too much rich food, drinking too much liquored-up egg nog, far too much wine and hot toddies, burning way too many candles and using far too much electricity lighting a ridiculous amount of Christmas lights around the home and thus contributing to the world's carbon footprint, and spending way too much money on gifts to charities and friends and chessly endeavors.  Oh well.  What the hell, why not!

God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible - Almost

This is old news to anyone who has ever actually read the Old Testament :) References to Asherah and the "Queen of Heaven" (long before the Virgin Mary appeared on the scene) as well as scenes mentioning sacred poles (trees) and groves where pagan rituals took place in mountain-top sanctuaries, as well as the women who celebrated a certain unnamed but evil HOLY DAY around the Spring Equinox every year by baking the fore-runners of hot cross buns, are all references to THE GREAT EVIL ONE - GOD'S WIFE! GASP!

From Discovery News
God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible -- Almost
God's wife, Asherah, was a powerful fertility goddess, according to a theologian
By Jennifer Viegas
Fri Mar 18, 2011 07:00 AM ET

God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.

Information presented in Stavrakopoulou's books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection.

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe."

"After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife."

Also significant, Stavrakopoulou believes, "is the Bible's admission that the goddess Asherah was worshiped in Yahweh's Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her."

J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News that he agrees several Hebrew inscriptions mention "Yahweh and his Asherah."

"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

Asherah -- known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar -- was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing," Wright continued.

"Many English translations prefer to translate 'Asherah' as 'Sacred Tree,'" Wright said. "This seems to be in part driven by a modern desire, clearly inspired by the Biblical narratives, to hide Asherah behind a veil once again."

"Mentions of the goddess Asherah in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are rare and have been heavily edited by the ancient authors who gathered the texts together," Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, said.

Asherah as a tree symbol was even said to have been "chopped down and burned outside the Temple in acts of certain rulers who were trying to 'purify' the cult, and focus on the worship of a single male god, Yahweh," he added.

The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody told Discovery News, "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 B.C." In that year, an elite community within Judea was exiled to Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This, Brody said, led to "a more universal vision of strict monotheism: one god not only for Judah, but for all of the nations."

There are several articles about Asherah or mentioning Asherah in ancient Israel at the website for BAR (Biblical Archaeology Review) - every single one of them informative and entertaining - or absolutely shocking and revolting, depending upon your point of view.  You can type in search words at the link provided and explore to your heart's content!

Shin-Mu

Also called Shing-Mu, various spellings - Queen of Heaven.  Hislop (The Two Babylons) equated her with Ma-Tsoopo, a sea goddess worshipped in "Fuh-kien" China.  People have all kinds of opinions about Hislop, but I won't say he's wrong for tracing out similarities in word-sounds to ancient meanings from long before writing was invented.  He wrote: 

The name of Shing Moo, applied by the Chinese to their "Holy Mother," compared with another name of the same goddess in another province of China, strongly favours the conclusion that Shing Moo is just a synonym for one of the well-known names of the goddess-mother of Babylon. Gillespie (in his Land of Sinim, p. 64) states that the Chinese goddess-mother, or "Queen of Heaven," in the province of Fuh-kien, is worshipped by seafaring people under the name of Ma Tsoopo. Now, "Ama Tzupah" signifies the "Gazing Mother;" and there is much reason to believe that Shing Moo signifies the same; for Mu was one of the forms in which Mut or Maut, the name of the great mother, appeared in Egypt (BUNSEN'S Vocabulary, vol. i. p. 471); and Shngh, in Chaldee, signifies "to look" or "gaze." The Egyptian Mu or Maut was symbolised either by a vulture, or an eye surrounded by a vulture's wings (WILKINSON, vol. v. p. 203.) The symbolic meaning of the vulture may be learned from the Scriptural expression: "There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen" (Job xxviii.7). The vulture was noted for its sharp sight, and hence, the eye surrounded by the vulture's wings showed that, for some reason or other, the great mother of the gods in Egypt had been known as "The gazer." But the idea contained in the Egyptian symbol had evidently been borrowed from Chaldea; for Rheia, one of the most noted names of the Babylonian mother of the gods, is just the Chaldee form of the Hebrew Rhaah, which signifies at once "a gazing woman" and a "vulture." The Hebrew Rhaah itself is also, according to a dialectical variation, legitimately pronounced Rheah; and hence the name of the great goddess-mother of Assyria was sometimes Rhea, and sometimes Rheia. In Greece, the same idea was evidently attached to the Mother of the children of the sun (see ante, p. 20, Note), For one of her distinguishing titles was Ophthalmitis (SMITH'S Classical Dictionary, "Athena," p. 101), thereby pointing her out as the goddess of "the eye." It was no doubt to indicate the same thing that, as the Egyptian Maut wore a vulture on her head, so the Athenian Minerva was represented as wearing a helmet with two eyes, or eye-holes, in the front of the helmet.--(VAUX'S Antiquities, p. 186.)

I was looking in Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets to see if she had an entry under sisters (she doesn't) when I came across her entry on Shin-Mu:

"Mother of Perfect Intelligence," China's Holy Virgin, who miraculously conceived her firstborn son, a Savior and spirit of the grain.  Her infant "came like a lamb, with no bursting or rending, with no hurt or harm," and was tenderly adored by sheep and oxen.(1)  [Sound familiar?]

After producing this child, Shin-Mu resumed her archaic Great Mother character and gave birth to 33,333 creatures.  Patriarchal myths deprived her of a vagina, and so insisted all these creatures were born from her arms or breast.  A Christian traveller in China explained Shin-Mu's miraculous motherhood: she had "no place on her body whence to bring Them forth as other women of the world, whom for sin God hath subjected to filthiness of corruption, to show how filthy sin is."(2)

After she was virginized and even deprived of a vagina, Shin-Mu's only remaining connection with sexuality was similar to the virgin Mary's: she continued to be the divine patroness of whores.(3)

Persians diabolized her and called her Shimnu, the "Great Devil," so called in a Manichean Confession-Prayer found at Turfan and in the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas, at Tun-huang.(4) [Tocharians???]

Notes:

(1) Hays, 241.
(2) Briffault 3, 171.
(3) Briffault 3, 177.
(4) Legge 2, 334-35.

Further Explorations of the Word MA

Prior post on the topic: "Ma." Hola darlings! On this Good Friday, I'm going to write what Barbara Walker had to say about Maat in "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends": Maat Egyptian Goddess as personification of "Truth" or "Justice"; the original name based on the universal Indo-European mother-syllable meant simply "Mother." Maat's symbol was the feather against which she weighed each man's heart-soul (ab) in her underground Hall of Judgment. Thus the Plume of Maat itself became a hieroglyph for "truth."(1) The same feathers of Truth were worn by other aspects of the Goddess, such as Isis, who was the same lawgiving Mother. The gods themselves were constrained to "live by Maat." Her law governed all three worlds ruled by her trinity as "Lady of heaven, queen of the earth, and mistress of the underworld."(2) As the lawgiver of archaic Egypt, Maat was comparable to Babylonian Tiamat who gave the sacred tablets to the first king of gods. Maat's laws were notably benevolent, compared to the harsh commands of later patriarchal gods, backed up by savage threats like those of Deuteronomy 28:15-68. An Egyptian was expected to recite the famous Negative Confession in the presence of Maat and Thoth (or Anubis) to show he had obeyed Maat's rules of behavior: I have not been a man of anger. I have done no evil to mankind. I have not inflicted pain. I have made none to weep. I have done violence to no man. I have not done harm unto animals. I have not robbed the poor. I have not fouled water. I have not trampled fields. I have not behaved with insolence. I have not judged hastily. I have not stirred up strife. I have not made any man to commit murder for me. I have not insisted that excessive work be done for me daily. I have not borne false witness. I have not stolen land. I have not cheated in measuring the bushel. I have allowed no man to suffer hunger. I have not increased my wealth except with such things as are my own possessions. I have not seized wrongfully the property of others. I have not taken milk from the mouths of babes.(3) Those who lived by the laws of Maat took a sacramental drink, comparable to the Hindus' Soma or its Persian counterpart Haoma, which conferred ritual purity in the same sense as the Christian "washing in the blood of the Lamb." Egyptian scribes of the 3rd millenium B.C. wrote: "My inward parts have been washed in the liquor of Maat." Like baptismal water of life, Maat's potion brought life after-death to the peaceful, but death overtook violent persons.(4) Egyptian moral precepts were of a high order, many of them turning up centuries later in the Bible: Take heed not to rob the poor, and be not cruel to the destitute.... If thou canst answer the man who attacks thee, do him no injury. Let the evildoer alone; he will destroy himself. We must help the sinner, for may we not become like him?...Crusts of bread and a loving heart are better than rich food and contention.... Learn to be content with what thou hast. Treasure obtained by fraud will not stay with thee; thou hast it today, tomorrow it has departed.... The approval of man is better than riches.(5) Under the feudal disorders of the 12th dynasty [c. 1991 - 1783 BCE], old rules began to break down along with the matrilineal clan system that supported them, and educated Egyptians deplored the disruptions of society. A Heliopolitan priest wrote: "Maat is cast out, iniquity is in the midst of the council hall.... [T]he poor man has no strength to save hmself from him that is stronger than he."(6) Sometimes kinsman murdered kinsman, in violation of the clan's most sacred rule. One writer unfavorably compared his countrymen to the Maat-worshipping tribes of Nubia: "The Matoi, who are friendly towards Egypt, say: 'How could there be a man that would slay his brother?'"(7) Maat was more than a judge of the dead. She was a stand-in for all Egyptian Goddesses, including Hathor, Mut, Isis, Neith, Nekhbet, etc. The sun god was told: "The goddess Maat embraceth thee both at morn and at eve." As a birth-giver, she was sometimes Metet, the Morning Boat of the Sun, translated "becoming strong" and corresponding to the Greco-Roman mother of the dawn, Mater Matuta.(8) She was worshipped in lands other than Egypt. Northern Syria was called by the Hittites, Mat Hatti: that is, Mother of Hatti.(9) Egyptian priests drew the Feather of Maat on their tongues in green dye, to give their words a Logos-like power of Truth so their verbal magic could create reality.(1) Similarly in northern Europe the divine bard Bragi had this power because of the runes engraved on his tongue by the Goddess Idun. African Pygmies still know Maat by the name she bore in Sumeria as "womb" and "underworld": Matu. She was the first woman, and the mother of God. Like her Egyptian counterpart she was sometimes cat-headed.(11) Notes: (1) Budge, E.L., 68. (2) Budge, G.E 1, 418. (3) Budge, D.N., 254; Hallet, 411. (4) H. Smith, 49-51. (5) Budge, D.N., 258-60. (6) H. Smith, 50. (7) Erman, 43, 107. (8) Budge, G.E. 1, 323, 417. (9) Mendenhall, 157. (10) Seligmann, 39. (11) Hallet, 95. **************************************************************************** Wow! Where do I even start to comment? How about this: THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the movie which I remember from earliest times watching every Easter Sunday, will be on commercial television TOMORROW NIGHT, instead of Sunday Night! Darlings, this is absolutely, positively the END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Watching THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, with Charleton Heston as Moses, Anne Baxter as the best Neferteri I ever saw, and that incredibly sexy, magnetic Yul Brynner as Rameses, is a must see for everyone. Indeed, there's something in this movie for everyone, which is why so many people continue to watch it year after year. Anyway, tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. will find me comfortably ensconced in my recliner (yes, I have one - go suck Easter Eggs if you're laughing) with a large supply of Wine and Fritos close to hand, to once again watch the Grand Epic and laugh at Charleton Heston's really bad acting. But I have to give it to the man, he was a hunk back in his day. Whoa! From THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, we now turn to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS - the real ones (allegedly), which were passed to Moses by Yahweh himself. While I certainly believe that anyone and everyone can experience supernatural events/happenings/revelations, or whatever one wishes to call such an event, I do not believe how THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (I think they were originally referred to as THE TEN WORDS) mysteriously multipled whilst residing in the Ark of the Covenant and turned into several thousand burdensome and petty rules, governing the minutest part of life. As a consequence, the followers of Yahweh became a people of rules rather than what Yahweh intended them to be, a people guided by a short list of principles to live by. Rules come and go, but principles are forever. Perhaps this is a lesson we need to revisit these days in the USA. I am pretty sure that if we had been a people of principles rather than legalistic rules, the CRASH OF 2008 would not have happened. Well, be that as it may, anyone who reads Abovethelaw.com these days and who absolutely HATES lawyers or wannabe lawyers is laughing their butts off! If you thought Wall Street types were totally self-absorbed, you haven't yet been introduced to the world of the 3L. Goddess, to think that I was once in that world - but thank Goddess, I wasn't like that - Maat, I've got a positive negative confession to make! That's why I got the hell out of the profession after five years. Overall, I haven't regretted it, but I sure wish I could figure out a way to make a lot of money without selling my soul to SATAN. Ha! That's not gonna happen, darlings. And just as well. I think I have a Napoleonic Complex... So glad the Goddess thumped me on the head one day and said - ENOUGH! And, cutting things short here because I've been at work all day and it's nearly 8 PM and I'm hungry and I want to make a casserole and TOP MODEL is coming on, I am SO glad I finally know where that famous saying came from - about taking the milk out of the mouth of babes. We STILL use it today. WOW! Ancient Egypt - the Negative Confessions - the Goddess Maat! ROCK ON MAAT!

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.

The Hind of Hinds - Continued

With or without Mohammed, Islam succeeded in becoming completely male-dominated, making no place for women except in slavery or in the seclusion of the harem. Islamic mosques still bear signs reading: "Women and dogs and other impure animals are not permitted to enter."(14) Nevertheless, traces of the Goddess proved ineradicable. Like the virgin Mary, Arabia’s Queen of Heaven received a mortal form and a subordinate position as Fatima, Mohammed’s "daughter." But she was no real daughter. She was known as Mother of her Father, and Source of the Sun: "the illumination that separates Light and Darkness; the Tree of Paradise; the Red Cow who suckles all the children of the earth; Fate; the Night, the World, the Moon; the Pure Essence of being."(15) Like her western counterpart Mary, she was compared to the Burning Bush, and the Night of Power; "she personified the center of the genealogical mystery."(16) Fatima’s name means The Creatress. A Shi’a text, Omm-al-Kitab, said she appeared "at the creation of the material world," crowned, seated on a throne, holding a sword, and "ornamented with a million varicolored shimmering lights" which illuminated the entire garden of Paradise. She was the first to occupy the Seat of Dominion, "the resting place of Allah, the Most High."(17) Her symbol as Holy Virgin, the crescent moon, still appears on Islamic flags.(18) She is called Al-Zahra, "Bright-Blooming," a former title of the Great Mother. It is said the symbol of her hand, surmounting the solar disc, "represents the whole religion of Islam."(19) Within Islam, deviant sects like Shi’ites or Sufis carried on Tantric worship of the female principle, maintaining that the feminine powers of sexuality and maternity were the powers that held the universe together.(20) The greatest medieval poet of Sufism, Ibn al-Farid, was known as "the sultan of lovers."(21) He said true divinity was female, and Mecca was the womb of the earth. As woman-worshipping minstrels of medieval Europe were attacked for their devotion to the Goddess of Love, so the Sufis were attacked for their "voluptuous libertinism." Ibn El-Arabi, the "greatest master" of Sufi mystics, was accused of blasphemy because he said the godhead is female.(22) [Side Note: Shi’ites – Minority sect of Islam, tracing descent of a sacred caliphate from Mohammed’s daughter Fatima and her husband ‘Ali. One line of Shi’ites established the powerful Fatimid caliphate, now represented by the Khojas, Bohras, and the Druze of Syria.] Shi’ites split off from orthodox Islam and claimed to follow a purer line of imams directly descended from the Fatimids. In the 11th century they united under Hasan ibn al-Sabbah, i.e., Hasan ben-Shaybah, another "son of the Matriarch." Hasan seized the fortress of Alamut and made it the headquarters of a brotherhood of warriors, the hashishim or "Assassins" (see Aladdin). The fortress fell to the concerted attacks of Mongols and mamelukes in 1256, after having waged war on Turks and Christian crusaders alike for more than a century.(23) Still the Shi’ite sect survived to the present, awaiting the coming of the Virgin named Paradise (Pairidaeza), who wil give birth to the Mahdi, the "moon-guided" Redeemer, whose title in Europe was the Desired Knight.(24) One of the hidden secrets of medieval bardic romance is the Arabian origin of the Waste Land motif, most prominent in the Holy Grail cycle of tales. Despite monkish efforts to convert it into a Christian chalice, the Grail was generally recognized as a female symbol, whose loss implied fear for the fertility of the earth. Crusaders had seen for themselves the desolation of Arabia Deserta, one of the most lifeless regions on earth. They heard the Shi’ite heretics’ explanation for it: Islam had offended the Great Goddess, and she had cursed the land and departed. Now nothing would grow there. Western mystics thought the same calamity would strike Europe if the spirit of the Mother were not brought back from the limbo to which the Christian church consigned her. This may have been a reason for the frenzy of cathedral-building in honor of "Our Lady," the Queen of Heaven, during the 12th and 13th centuries. The Waste Land theme haunted the collective psyche of the early Renaissance with a threat of conditions actually realized in the land of the infidel. (Not sure what she means; is this an allusion to the Black Plague, or to some sustained period of drought?) Traces of the matriarchate survived to the present among some of the Arabs of North Africa, ancient home of "Libyan Amazons."(25) Targi and Tuareg Berber women remained free of many sexual restrictions. Virginity was not prized. On remarriage, a woman could command twice the bridge-price of a young virgin. Men of the Walad ‘Abdi tribe insisted the success of their crops depended on the sexual freedom of their women, whom the French labeled common prostitutes. Hassanyeh Arabs of the White Nile allowed wives to be unfaithful on certain days of the week, according to the marriage contract drawn up by the bride’s mother – who took pride in preserving her daughter’s sexual liberties.(27) Most of Islam, however, restricted women as much as possible. Many Islamic theologians said women couldn’t enter paradise, and must not receive religious instruction because it might bring them "too near their masters."(28) Notes: I’d be happy to provide you with a PDF of the Bibliography if you email me – you can find the contact info at Goddesschess. (1) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 120. (2) de Riencourt, 193. (3) Sobol, 55. (4) Harding. 41. (5) Pritchard, S.S., 96. (6) Shah, 390. (7) Briffault 3, 80. (8) de Riencourt, 188. (9) Briffault 3, 80. (10) Briffalt 1, 377. (11) de Rienourt, 187-89. (12) Beard, pp. 293-94. (13) de Camp, A.E., 153. (14) Farb, W.P., 144. (15) Lederer, 181. (16) Campbell, Oc.M, 446. (17) Campbell, Oc.M., 445-46. (18) Briffault 2, 630. (19) Budge, A.T., 469. (20) Bullough, 150. (21) Encyc. Brit., "Sufism." (22) Shah, 263, 391. (23) Encyc. Brit., "Assassins." (24) Lederer, 181. (25) Wendt, 52. (26) Briffault 1, 286; 3, 200, 314. (27) Hartley, 166. (28) Crawley 1, 58.

More Chess Lessons from Ancient History

See prior posts:

August 8, 2007: Chess Lessons from Ancient History

August 9, 2007: More Chess Lessons from Ancient History

September 4, 2007: The Priestesses of Mary

It has been said that chess is a game of archetypes. One of those archetypes is the concept of rulership, as embodied in the throne. The throne is a woman. As far back as we have datable archaeological artifacts, the throne is a woman (more on this later). This isn't a feminist manifesto of uterine power - it's just the plain ol' simple truth. Jan, August 9, 2007

I’m saving a lot of good stuff for an eventual big, long and scholarly (cough, cough) article for Goddesschess, but I realized I owed a post here based on the "more on this later" comment I made in my August 9, 2007 post referenced above.

There is a big gap, time-wise, between the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis, the Ashdoda, and Mary, Queen of Heaven. In between are many women/throne combination artifacts that have been excavated over the years, all across the Middle East, the Aegean, and Central Asia. By way of example, several thousand years before Isis, there was the "Leopard Queen" discovered at Katul Hoyuk, who is perhaps the oldest representation of a woman upon a throne; the Vinca culture, represented by recent excavations at Plocnik, dates to about 5000 BCE (photo: a headless goddess sits on a chair, with hands resting on rounded belly, perhaps pregnant, Vinca culture, Plocknik); Isis dates to about 3400-3200 BCE. There is a chronological and cultural progression of worship of the Queen of Heaven during all that time, right down to the 3rd century CE, when the Collyridians worshipped the Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven.

Epiphanius states that the "priestesses of Mary" worshipped her as a goddess in her own right, the Queen of Heaven, with rituals far older than Christianity, and "adorn a chair or square throne, spread a cloth over it, and at a certain solemn time, place bread on it and offer it in the name of Mary." The worshippers also partook of the sacred cakes.

In the Bible, this harkens back to reports made by the prophets in the Old Testament regarding worship of a much more ancient Queen of Heaven than the Virgin Mary, who was worshipped in Palestine and Phoenicia thousands of years before Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, was conceived. The worshippers of Ashtoreth, Asherah and Ishtar all celebrated their revered Goddesses by baking specially marked "cakes" (various types of flat and risen breads) and consuming them at special feast times. The custom passed all the way down to modern times, in the form of "Hot Cross Buns" which are served on Easter Sunday, the holiday of the Germanic Mother Goddess Eostre.

Despite the Church Fathers’ best efforts to suppress the "heresy" of worship of the Mother Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, they failed. Finally, they capitulated (perhaps in the nature of "if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…) The Council of Ephesus in 431 CE formally sanctioned devotion to the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God, (literally, God bearer), allowing the creation of icons bearing the images of the Virgin and Child. Devotion to Mary was, however, already widespread by this point. Early representations showed Mary as the "Throne of Heaven" with Mary and the Child Jesus both crowned as royalty. These are, though, just a reiteration of the 3000 years earlier representations of Isis with Horus on her lap.

Like Isis with the infant Horus was in her day, Mary as the Queen of Heaven (both crowned and uncrowned) with the infant Jesus on her lap was a particularly popular theme among Medieval and Renaissance artists.

I yet need to provide a link between "Mary, Queen of Heaven" and the game of chess – beyond the rather esoteric and yet ancient concept of " woman as throne" that I previously mentioned. Stay tuned…

The Priestesses of Mary

While doing some research on the serpent-worshippping Ophites, I came across a reference to the Kollyridians - and found out some fascinating information about the now obscure sect.

The name Kollyridians (also Collyridians) comes from Greek collyris, a little cake. Leontius of Byzance had a different name for them. He called them "Philomarianites", meaning Mary-lovers (PG 87, 1364). (Image: Mary in the Notre Dame du Cap, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, Canada. Crowned in 1904 at the orders of Pope Pius X, it is the only statue of Mary to be crowned in all of Canada. The title of Queen of Heaven can also be found in scripture, but not in reference to Mary).

From Epiphanius we learn the group was composed mainly of women and led by women priestesses. The sect may have originated in Thrace, and had extended to Upper Scythia (roughly to the west and north of the Black Sea) and into Arabia by the fourth century, but it could have roots in Syria (Astarte) or Asia Minor (Ceres).

The sect was perhaps inspired by the Gospel events, combined with an Elias-type legend of Mary's purity and "non-death." Epiphanius states that the "priestesses of Mary" worshipped her as a goddess in her own right, the Queen of Heaven, with rituals far older than Christianity, and "adorn a chair or square throne, spread a cloth over it, and at a certain solemn time, place bread on it and offer it in the name of Mary." The worshippers also partook of the sacred cakes (sounds rather like "Holy Communion" where believing Christians partake of the "bread" of "Christ's body").

Recalling the Jews condemned by the Prophet Jeremiah who made similar offerings to the "Queen of Heaven" (Astarte/Ashtoreth/Asherah/Ceres), Epiphanius warned against the worship of the Virgin. This is the seventy-ninth heresy in a long list, challenged by Epiphanius, a religion harking back to the ancient pagan worship of the Goddess, under her new manifestation: "Mary."

According to Jonathan Kirsch: "[In] the Book of Jeremiah, a community of Jews in Egypt worshipped a goddess that he calls the 'Queen of Heaven,' a deity that scholars identify with Anath or Astarte, both of them goddesses in the pantheon of the ancient Near East. Like other goddess worshippers, the Jewish women in the Egyptian diaspora light altar fires to the Queen of Heaven, bake and eat 'crescent-cakes marked with her image' (Jer. 44.19) (NEB), pour out libations as drink offerings to the goddess, and burn incense or perhaps even sacrificial animals in her honor. They are joined in these rituals by their menfolk--'And is it we that offer to the Queen of Heaven without our husbands?' they taunt the old prophet (Jer. 44:19)--but it is clearly the women who serve as priestesses. And when Jeremiah calls on them to return to orthodoxy at the risk of their lives--'High and low alike will die by sword or by famine,' he quotes God as saying, 'and will be an object of execration and horror, of ridicule and reproach' (Jer. 44:12) (NEB)--they boldly and flatly refuse."

Geoffrey Ashe puts forward in his book The Virgin the opinion that the Collyridians represented a parallel Marian religion to Christianity, founded by first-generation followers of the Virgin Mary, whose doctrines were later subsumed by the Church at the Council of Ephesus in 432.

Like other "heretical" sects, the Kollyridians were stamped out - or, as Ashe argues, subsumed into the Roman Catholic Church as it adopted into its tenets many of the pagan beliefs about the "Mother of God" and the "Queen of Heaven," and pragmatic pagans were baptized and became nominal "Christians."

Today, of course, it is quite acceptable for Roman Catholics, approximately 1 billion strong, to worship their Mother of God, even if they no longer offer her sacred bread from the seat of a "chair or throne."

See http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-chess-lessons-from-ancient-history.html#links;

http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2007/08/chess-lessons-from-ancient-history.html#links; and

http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2007/08/goddess-sighting-our-lady-of-guadalupe.html#links.

Information on the Kollyridians compiled from the following sources:

http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/COLLYRID.TXT Patrick Madrid, October, 1994 issue of "This Rock"

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian church, Vol 4, Ch 3

A dictionary of Christian biography and literature to the end of the sixth century a.d., Henry Wace, Collyridians, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodict.html?term=Collyridians

Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyridians

The Woman Who Laughed at God: The Untold History of The Jewish People, by Johnathan Kirsch, http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00CbuJ