Helen of Troy

Interesting information from Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" about Helen of Troy: Incarnation of the Virgin Moon-goddess, daughter of Queen Hecuba, or Hecate, who embodied the Crone. Helen was also called Helle or Selene. She was worshipped as an orgiastic deity at the Spartan festival Helenphoria, featuring sexual symbols carried in a special fetish-basket, the helene.(1). Trojan Helen married Menelaus, "Moon-king," who was promised immortality because he made a sacred marriage.(2) However, Helen left him and went home with her new Trojan lover Paris, so Menelaus lost both his immortality and the Trojan fiefs that Helen's "matrimony" brought. He sailed with his armies to get her back, and this was the start of the legendary Trojan War which pitted patriarchal Greeks against matriarchal Trojans.(3) [It was all about the money, darlings! Menelaus didn't give a rat's butt about Helen.] As Elen, Elaine, or Hel-Aine, the same Moon-virgin became the queen of pagan Britain, a "Lily Maid" who made the first alliances with emperors of Rome. (See Elaine.) The oldest British histories said the first British king was a Trojan named Brutus, Helen's relative.(4) After Troy fell, he sailed west to the island of Albion [probably meaning "white island", named for the white chalk cliffs of Dover] and founded a city, New Troy, later renamed Lugdunum (London) after his descendant, the god Lug.(5) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M. 1, 208-9. (2) Knight, S.L., 125. (3) Graves, G.M. 2, 276. (4) Briffault 3, 431. (5) Guerber, L.M.A., 309. Related is Helice: "Willow," a title of Hecate in her virgin form as the new moon and the Helicon or "willow-stream" surrounding the Mountain of the Muses. Like Artemis, Helice the Willow-maid was associated with both the moon and Ursa Major, eternally circling the pole, known as Helice's Axle.(1) Witches thought a willow wand a microcosmic axis mundi. See Willow. Notes: (1) Lindsay, O.A., 251. Following the lead: Willow Water and willows represented the Goddess Helice, "Willow," virgin form of Hecate with her willow-witye grain-basket.(1) Willow wants invoked the Muses, whose mountain was encircled by the Helicon, "Willow-stream." The Dionysian thyrsus, like the later withche's wand, was willow. As Dionysus was once a major god of Jerusalem, the willow figured prominently in municipal ceremonies there. A "Great Day" of the Feast of Tabernacles was known as the Day of Willows, with rites honoring fire and water.(2) Willow wands gave protectin in the underworld, where Orpheus carried one to show the way.(3) Willow wands were sacred to the Moon-goddess as late as the 17th century A.D., when an English herbal said the moon owns the willow. Witches used willow bark to treat rheumatism and fevers; i9t was the source of salicylic acid (aspirin), one of Hecate's cures. Some said wicca or "witchcraft" evolved from a word meaning willow, cognate with "wicher" (willow-withe weaving). Magic cats were supposed to grow from pussy-willows or "catkins," to become witches' malkins (familiars): hence the saying that all cats were gray in the beginning. The catkins were harbingers of spring, appearing on the willow as graymalkins. (See Cat.) Winding up for tonight, Elaine: (Var. Elen, Hel-Aine, Eileen) Britain's "Lily Maid," the virgin Moon-goddess bearing the same name as Helen of Troy; British tradition claimed the ilsand were colonized by Trojans. According to the bards, the Roman emperor acquired Britain only by marrying its queen, Elen. The people agreed to help build Roman roads because she ordered them, and the roads were called Roads of Elen of the Hosts: "The men of the Island of Britain would not have made those great hostings for any save for her."(1) Elen or Elaine became the mother-bride of Lancelot-Galahad in Arthurian romance. Lancelot the father begot on her his own reincarnation, Galahad the son [I believe this is just a retelling of the ancient legend of Seraimis, the Queen of the original city of Babylon, married to Nimrod, the first king and builder of cities according to the Bible]; but Lancelot in his youth had been named Galahad, and his mother was Queen Elaine. The Lily Maid gave Lancelot her sexual-symbolic charm to make him invicible: her pearl-bedewed sleeve of red silk. The womb-symbol of the Holy Grail was displayed in her castle, tendered by her dove-soul, Colombe. Galahad saw this vision again in his last moments, as he expired at the altar in ancient sacred-king style.(2) Notes: (1) Mabinogion, 85. (2) Malory 1, 377; 2, 268.

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The Lily and the Dove can be traced back to the ancient Middle East, and probably more specifically, to ancient Egypt. Both symbols figure prominently in the pages of the Bible, which borrowed much imagery (and prayers/paeons) from the Egyptians. The lily is most likely the Egyptian lotus (also prominent in Indian iconography), embodied in later versions of iconic art such as the fleur-de-lis and trefoil, which came to represent the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity of Father-Son-Holy Spirit or Sophia (representing the hidden female aspect of creation - the fathers of the church did not want to give it a name or a sex, but everyone knew it was Sophia and, in later years, the Virgin Mary, the "Holy Mother of God.")

Lily

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Lily The flower of Lilith, Sumero-Babylonian Goddess of creation; the lilu or "lotus" of her genital magic. The lily often represented the virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess, while the rose represented her maternal aspect. The lily was sacred to Astarte, who was also Lilith; northern Europeans called her Ostara or Eostre, the Goddess of "Easter" lilies.(1) Because of its pagan associations with virgin motherhood, the lily was used to symbolize impregnantion of the virgin Mary. Some authorities claimed the lily in Gabriel's hand filtered God's semen which entered Mary's body through her ear.(2) [Huh?] Mary's cult also inherited the lily of the Blessed Virgin Juno, who conceived her savior-son Mars with her own magic lily, without any male aid.(3) This myth reflected an early belief in the self-fertilizing power of the yoni (vulva), which the lily symbolized and Juno personified. Her name descended from the pre-Roman Uni, a Triple Goddess represented by the three-lobed lily or fleur-de-lis, her name stemming from the Sanskrit yoni, source of the Uni-verse. In 656 A.D., the 10th Council of Toledo officially adopted the holy day of Juno's miraculous conception of Mars into the Christian canon, renaming it the Festival of the Mother of God, or Lady Day, insisting that it commemorated Mary's miraculous conception of Jesus with the aid of a lily.(4) Christian artists showed the angel Gabriel holding out to Mary a scepter surmounted by a fleur-de-lis on a lily stalk. A scroll usually issued from Gabriel's mouth, with the words Ave Maria gratia plena, the seminal "Word," which made Mary "full." Aphrodite's dove, that other yonic symbol, hovered above the scene.(5) Celtic and Gallo-Roman tribes called the virgin mother Lily Maid. Her yonic emblem appeared not only as the French fleu-de-lis but also as the Irish shamrock, which was not originally Irish but a sacred symbol among Indus Valley people some 6000 years before the Christian era. Christianized France identified the Lily Maid with the virgin Mary, but she was never completely dissociated from the pagan image of Juno. Among the people, Lady Day was known as Notre Dame de Mars.(6) The Easter lily was the medieval pas-flower, from Latin passus, to step or pass over, cognate of pascha, the Passover. The lily was also called Pash-flower, Paschal flower, Pasque flower, or Passion flower. Pagans understood that it represented the spring passion of the god, like Heracles, for union in love-death with the Virgin Queen of Heaven, Hera-Hebe, or Juno, or Venus, all of whom claimed the lily. When Hera's milk spurted from her breasts to form the Milky Way, the drops that fell to the ground became lilies.(7) Sometimes, the Easter flower was not a white lily but a scarlet or purple anemone, emblem of Adonis's passion and called identical with his bride Venus.(8) Notes: (1) H. Smith, 201. (2) Simmons, 103. (3) Larousse, 202. (4) Brewster, 146. (5) Cavendish, V.H.H., 68. (6) Brewster, 146. (7) Guthrie, 71. (8) Agrippa, 103.

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.