Evan Lysacek and Olympic Gold - a Dream Come True

Evan Lysacek did it when it counted - last night, on the ice, possibly the greatest performance of his life.  Intense, near perfect, the program perfectly designed to highlight his strengths -- great spins and balance, solid triple jumps, intricately edged footwork, perfect coordination of the choreography with the music and just the right emotional note - not too little, not too hammy. 

The entire routine was balanced between athleticism and artistry - and carefully designed so that in the second half of the program, four jumps (some in combination) were performed for a 10% bonus of the score for each jump/combination.  It is in the second half of the 4:40 minutes that the men skate that their legs are burning and feeling heavy, and it takes extra effort, willpower, strength and conditioning - whatever it takes - to make those jumps and not only make them, but to land them and land them well.  Here is the video (I hope) at NBC's website of Lysacek's gold-winning performance.  I found it mesmerizing. 

Personally, I believe the Goddess had a hand in his victory.  Yes, I know I know, you'll pooh-pooh me, LOL!  But before you dismiss me altogether, consider two design elements that were an integral part - indeed, perhaps the most important part - of his costume.

Do you see them?  They're as plain as day. Two serpents - Goddess symbols! (Photo: USA Today file)  Did the costume designer actually know this, and purposely incorporate those symbols on Lysacek's costume?  I've no idea.  But, Scheherazade, the great, transcendent musical suite of Rimsky-Korsakov, is firmly based in Persian myths and legends from pre-Islamic times.  Barbara Walker, in her discussion of serpent symbolism in The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, says:

Arabian tradition identified the food of immortality with the female uterine blood, colored "royal purple"; and the Mother's uterine garden with the moon temple at Marib in Sheba.  Legend said the serpents of Sheba were purple with the divine essence, and lived in trees; the people were serpentlike, with forked tongues, great wisdom, and longevity. (41)  From Sheba might have come the mysterious life-giving substance called shiba in the Epic of Gilgamesh, dispensed by the wife of Uta-Napishtim (Noah), who had become the only immortal man; his wife therefore was a Goddess.  When this holy matriarch gave shiba to Gilgamesh, he shed his old, diseased skin like a snake, and emerged from it reborn.(42)

Persians also maintained the symbolic connections between menstrual blood and the serpent's secret of longevity.  Mithraists claimed immortality was conferred by the blood of the sacrificial bull, but a serpent was there to collect the blood as it flowed from the bull's body; and this blood was imitation-menstrual blood in that it was "delivered by the moon."(43)

Notes:

41. Thomson, 195.
42. Assy. & Baby. Lit., 360; Hooke, M.E.M., 55.
43. Larousse, 316.

So, maybe I'm not so crazy after all...

New Findings on "Snake Cult"

Oh yes, the Goddess in the form of a serpent rears up and - well - you can read for yourself. Just be sure to substitute feminine pronouns for masculine pronouns, and Goddess for God, and the article will make very good sense. Please also keep in mind that the Iron Age is relatively recent in historical terms. New findings on snake cult challenge Iron Age theories John Henzell Last Updated: July 16. 2009 1:29AM UAE / July 15. 2009 9:29PM GMT New research into a snake cult that lived in the mountains near Masafi during the Iron Age will be presented next week at the world’s leading conference on Arabian archaeology. Initial excavations at the Al Bithnah site, between 2000 and 2004, indicated that it had been the meeting place for a religious cult based around snake iconography between 2,500 and 3,100 years ago. Anne Benoist, the French archaeologist who headed the dig, will tell the Seminar for Arabian Studies in London that a new meeting place has been found near the first, with their proximity challenging theories about territorial organisation, religion and collective life in eastern Arabia during that era of the Iron Age. The artefacts unearthed by Dr Benoist’s group include incense burners and posts decorated with snakes, along with signs that copper had been mined and smelted. They indicated a god symbolised by a snake, in common with iconography found elsewhere on the Arabian peninsula [and much older serpent iconography in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, not to mention well-established serpent-worshipping centers elsewhere in the Middle East], and supported theories that there was an ancient but complex society with separate roles for priests and bureaucrats. At the time, snakes were considered to be symbols of knowledge and prosperity. Similar sites have been found elsewhere in the UAE and in Oman, Yemen, Bahrain and southern Iran, suggesting that there were cultural and trade links during the Iron Age. Dr Benoist’s presentation will be one of dozens at the three-day seminar in the British Museum, which begins next Thursday. Other speakers will address connections between the Levant and Southern Arabian communities in the Pleistocene era, the use of fragments from early Qurans to describe the development of written Arabic, and new methods to investigate sites at the bottom of the Gulf, which was above sea level 18,000 years ago at the last glacial maximum.

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Cf. All the stuff in the Old Testament about the Copper Serpent (a well-established goddess-worshipping cult exported out of Egypt when the Hebrews left for the "Promised Land") For a "far out" take on ancient serpent symbolism in the Middle East, check out "The Gnostic Secret of Solomon's Temple" by none other than Philip Gardiner See also this entry from Ancient Goths, a Google blog, for lots of images of Iron Age serpents and serpent symbolism from the Iron Age See also references to serpent goddesses in When God Was a Woman, by Merlin Stone (couldn't the author come up with a better name than that???), at Google books. The reference to the goddess "She" reminded me so much of my college days when, for some course or other, I ended up reading the classic H. Rider Haggard novel She.

The Eternal Female: Worship of the Mother Goddess

Hola darlings! This is my final post for the time being, and perhaps for the night. I'm hungry and I have fixings downstairs for my infamous stick-to-your spoon, ribs, kidneys, liver and intestines cheeseburger casserole calling out to me. Tomorrow I am going shopping for a new bathroom light fixture for the upstairs bath and some area rugs for the upstairs bedrooms and hallway. If I am successful in finding a reasonably-priced light fixture, I will hunt for a reasonably-priced electrician (har!) to install it! Then it's on to painting. dondelion won't recognize the place when he arrives in May... (Image: Minoan snake goddess, circa 1600-1500 BCE) Talk about synchronicity. I recently posted about the importance of the vulture goddess and the snake goddess in ancient Egypt, and about the serpent goddes symbolism incorporated into one of the most ancient twenty squares game boards ever to be uncovered in the form of intertwined serpents forming the playing surface: the wooden game board from the Burnt City in the borders area of Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan, dating to about 2400 BCE. Tonight I came across this post - it was a headline at The Independent, but I received an error message when searching for the article there. From sci.tech-archive.net. (Seems a rather strange place to have an article about the Mother Goddess, but as I've said before, what do I know?) The eternal female: Worship of the mother goddess From: Jack Linthicum Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:28:34 -0800 (PST) Stonehenge, Crete, Thera, pretty much a tourist's tour of the Bronze Age, and earlier, cultures that honored or featured women. But the author has missed the revelations about the Phaistos Disk. The eternal female: Worship of the mother goddess Thursday, 12 February 2009 Some experts believe megalithic societies were matrilineal, with womenplaced at the apex of the civilisation – not as rulers, but as birth-givers. Perhaps a line can be traced from the Natufian women of Lebanon, or even as far back as the 24,000-year-old Venus ofWillendorf . After all, women were the original seed-gatherers while men went out to hunt. It was they who probably developed the most intimate expertise in agriculture, using instinct and common sense to select the best seeds for the next year's crops, unwittingly instituting what we now call artificial selection. The mother goddess took a variety of different forms. Sometimes she was a snake, or a vulture, or the Moon. Each symbol represented a cycle of death, birth and regeneration: the snake hibernates, then wakes up and sheds her skin; the vulture recycles dead flesh by eating it; and the Moon dies and is reborn every 28 days, mirroring the feminine menstrual cycle. Moon worship was very highly advanced in megalithic times. It has recently been recognised that temples such as Stonehenge were originally built to glorify the Moon as well as the Sun. Every month, shafts of moonlight line up perfectly with gaps in the massive stones, the architects having positioned them precisely to accommodate the subtly shifting patterns of the Moon's rising and setting cycles, that repeat themselves exactly every 18.6 years. The full moon has had historic and religious significance going back thousands of years,since it was by the light of the full moon that many hunter-gathering tribes hunted, providing the best opportunities for a good catch. Matriarch island: The enigmatic civilisation of Minoan Crete Europe's mother goddess culture grew to its climax on the Mediterranean island of Crete in the second millennium BC. Here it also survived longest. Crete thrived on trade routes that linked the Mediterranean with the rest of megalithic Europe and North Africa. The flowering of the island's Minoan civilisation coincided with the growth of the Indus Valley civilisation, from c3300 to 1700 BCE. Homer, a Greek poet who wrote in the eighth century BCE, claimed there were as many as 90 cities on Crete, and archaeologists have found a number of "palaces", including the largest of all at the island's capital, Knossos. The discovery of this ancient island civilisation was chiefly the work of Sir Arthur Evans, an eccentric but meticulous Victorian archaeologist. As soon as he set foot on Crete in 1894, Evans rigorously pursued the mystery of the mythical King Minos, who, legend has it, ruled from a fabulous palace at Knossos which housed an appalling monster, the minotaur. Half-man, half-bull, this beast lived in an impenetrable maze and feasted off the flesh of still-living virgins. Minoan Crete was like a heart pumping at the centre of the Bronze Age trading system. Its trade links stretched as far as Mesopotamia in the east, to Spain in the west. Tin and copper were imported and exported for smelting into bronze, while luxury crops such as bright yellow saffron were grown in the island's fields and exported as flavouring for food. Evans discovered that the people of ancient Crete followed the megalithic tradition. Women and men had equal rights. Wall paintings from the palaces of Knossos and Phaistos show that women were able to express themselves freely. They are depicted as bare-breasted, wearing short-sleeved shirts open to the navel and long, flowing, layere dskirts. Statues, vases and wall paintings show images of sporting contests where women competed equally alongside men. The island's favourite sport was the impossible-sounding bull-vaulting. An acrobat (sometimes female) would grab the horns of a bull and somersault on to its back. Then, in a second somersault, she would leap off its back and land upright, with her feet back on the ground. No wonder Minoan women were the first people known to have worn fitted garments and bodices – essential prerequisites, you would think, for a sport like this. Women did not dominate society, but they did oversee it. Frescoes at the palace of Thera, on the island of Santorini,100km north of Crete, show women standing on balconies overseeing processions of young men who are carrying an animal for sacrifice. Most priests on Minoan Crete were female. In Minoan law, women retained full control of their property. They even had the right to divorce at pleasure. It was a tradition, too, that a mother's brother was responsible for bringing up her children. Customs such as these, which seem strange to us today [what is so strange about a woman having control of her own property and the right to divorce at will? In western civilization, these rights are taken for granted, they are the norm], lingered long in the Mediterranean mind. Minoan palaces were not mighty and dominant like those in Egypt or Sumeria. Rather, they functioned as the region's communal administrative and religious centres, providing a place of work for craftsmen, storage spaces for food and temples for goddess-worship. One look at a model reconstruction of the palace at Knossos and you can understand why Greek invaders might later imagine that the corridors and irrigation channels resembled an impenetrable maze. Like the traders of the Indus Valley and other European megalithic people, the Minoans had their own form of symbolism which shows that their civilisation was culturally and technologically advanced. In 1903, archaeologists excavating the palace of Phaistos, on the southern side of the island, made a discovery which has had historians baffled ever since. The Phaistos Disc, currently on display at the archaeological museumin Herakleion, Crete, is thought to date from some time between 1850 and 1600 BCE. It contains 45 unique symbols arranged in a spiral shape, resembling the swirls found on vases at Knossos, or even in European megalithic tombs such as that at Newgrange in Ireland. No one really knows who made the disc, or what the symbols mean, but it does show that the people of Minoan Crete were artistic, prosperous and highly ingenious. Following excavations at a site called Akrotiri in 1967, the Minoans are now known to have spread to the island of Santorini. There, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a vast, ancient island city which had been buried for thousands of years under thick layers of volcanic ash. Although only the southern tip of the town has so far been examined, houses three storeys high have been unearthed with fine wall paintings, stone staircases, columns and large ceramic storage jars, mills and pottery. Minoan Akrotiri even boasted a highly developed drainage system, featuring the world's first known claypipes with separate channels for hot and cold water supplies. A distinct pattern is discernible from the evidence that has been left by these early civilisations. Stretching from the ancient Indus Valley, right across the mountains of Anatolia, to the islands of the Mediterranean and as far as the topmost island of Orkney in Scotland,what emerges is a series of like-minded civilisations whose temples and graves bear witness to a lifestyle of peace and a veneration for mother nature. Their common belief in the continuous cycle of birth, death and regeneration is personified by their worship of a mother goddess in all her forms: snake, vulture, pregnant woman or moon. Excellence in craftwork, technical skill and exquisite art are some of their legacies, along with a spirit of natural equality. This was not to continue. During the second millennium BC, the last of these early civilisations fell. New power in the form of military might was sweeping across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. [made possible, in no small part, by the invention of the eight-spoked wheel that enabled the invention of a light-weight and swift war chariot, I posted about a day or two ago.] Warriors had worked out how to prey off the profits of others, ushering in an age when human elitism, ruthlessness and terror had their true beginnings.

Jael

Prior post mentioning Jael (and giving the biblical account). I was looking in Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" for other information when I came across an entry on Jael! Jael (var. Jaala) "Wild She-Goat," alternate name for the Israelite queen Deborah as a mate of the scapegoat-god, Baal-Gad or Pan. Ja-El was the same as the Persians' primal Goddess Jahi, adopted by tribal queens of the pre-patriarchal period. Jael sacrificed Sisera in a strange way, nailing his head to the ground (Judges 4:21), which may be likened to the priestesses of Artemis Tauropolos nailing the head os their victims to crosses.(1) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M., 2, 78. ************************************************************************************* Hmmmm, well, I don't know about that. I'm skeptical of the definition Walker gives for Ja-El. "El" is "god" - but no "god" is mentioned in "Wild She Goat." If "El" means god, than Ja means goat woman (as "Ba" means goat man)? So Jehovah (Jah) was actually a female goat goddess - or some hybrid form of goat and woman? Well, that's an interesting supposition, but I'd like to know more about the meanings of these words. The conflating of Deborah and Jael is also interesting. In the biblical account they are definitely two distinct women, although it certainly is possible that the death of Sisera was at the hands of Deborah, the "queen," rather than Jael. Deborah, it will be recalled, prophesied the death of Sisera at the hands of a woman rather than her general, Barach, who evidently showed some doubt about Deborah's prophecy that the Israelite army would be victorious over Sisera's forces! Walker's Encyclopedia also has an entry on Jahi the Whore. What a title, oh my! Persian patriarchal epithet for the Great Mother who brought forth, then mated with, the serpent Ahriman, as Lilith or the pre-Adamic Eve was supposed to have done with the biblical serpent. Zoroastrian scriptures said Jahi brought menstruation into the world, for she menstruated for the first time after mating with her serpent. Jahi also brought sex into the world by seducing the first man in the primal gardne. Jewish patriarchs probably derived their notions of the sinfulness of women (by virtue of their descent from Eve) from Persian ascetics who claimed all women were "whores" because they were descendants of Jahi. [Would this have been during the 70-Year Exile in Babylonia?] Oddly enough, some of the earliest forms of the name of the Jewish God seem to have been masculinized versions of the name of Jahi. Variations included Jahu, Jah, Yahu, Yahweh, Iau, Jaho. Some myths indicate that this God like Ahriman once had a serpent form and may have played the part of the Great Mother's serpent. *************************************************************************************** A serpent and a mother-creator-goddess are among the oldest deities (if not the oldest) in Chinese iconography and myth. The pre-dynastic serpent goddess of Egypt is also extremely old. I'm not too familiar with the religious legends of Sumer, but she's probably there, too.

Treasures from Afghanistan

Here is one of the artifacts from the exhibit:

Ring with an image of Athena, Tillya Tepe, Tomb II, Second quarter of the 1st century AD.Gold.National Museum of AfghanistanPhoto © Thierry Ollivier/Musée Guimet

Notice the serpent fringe that falls around Athena's knees.

Athena in Her Serpent-Trimmed Cloak

Archaeology magazine online has an interesting article about how the ancients painted their sculptures and statues in vibrant color. In the modern world, we are used to the washed-out whitness of the underlying marble or stone used to create the work of art, and so seeing replicas of the originals in full color is breathtaking.

Here's an image of the colorized Athena from the west pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina; Greek, ca. 490-480 B.C.; marble, overall height ca. 340 cm; Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich. Notice how much the serpent heads now stand out from her goatskin cloak with serpent-head fringe. Whoever dismisses Athena as an ancient serpent goddess has not seen this particular sculpture of her!

Read more.

Minerva Lives - in California

Minerva Statue Installed at Inauguration of California Hall of Fame Classical bronze of Roman Goddess of Wisdom Will be Symbol of California Museum for History, Women, the Arts

(PRWEB) December 11, 2007 -- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver will preside at the special unveiling of a life-sized bronze statue of Minerva to take place during the inauguration of a Hall of Fame inside the California Museum for History Women and the Arts.

The statue has been donated by Collie Christensen (CEO of Equus Eleven) and his wife Kira Christensen. Minerva a classical symbol of wisdom features prominently on the Great Seal of the State of California. Since 2004 the California Museum for History Women and the Arts has recognized the distinguished women of California with the annual Minerva Award. The statue valued at $950,000 will be on prominent view at the newly built Minerva exhibit at the museum.

Maria Shriver said speaking in May that Minerva represents the 'ultimate multi-tasker'. Known as Minerva to the ancient Romans and Athena to the Greeks the goddess' deeds were legendary as was her kindness to humanity. When challenged to provide the greatest benefit to earth the goddess is said to have produced the olive tree. Source of oil and emblem of peace olive trees were first planted in California by the Franciscan missionaries.

According to mythology Minerva was the Olympian protector of democracy dedicating herself to law justice and good counsel. She was considered a prudent warrior forcefully protecting the popular assemblies from outside enemies. She encouraged the creativity of men and women in innumerable ways fostering agriculture inventing musical instruments and taking personal delight in the useful and ornamental arts.

The Minerva statue is an exact duplicate in bronze of one of the greatest treasures of the Archaeological Museum in Florence Italy. The nearly life-sized statue represents the Roman goddess in a pose of dignified self-assured conversation. She extends her right arm and hand as if to expound a point. Her other hand is wrapped inside her cloak resting easily on her hip. Her classical attire consists of a cloak known as a himation which covers her left shoulder and is drawn tightly around her body. Its broad form contrasts with the many vertical folds of the robe or chiton which reaches her feet. As a warrior Minerva wears a breastplate with a Gorgon's head and a Corinthian helmet crested with a serpent a symbol of eternity.

The renowned Marinelli Foundry in Florence using plaster molds taken directly from the museum original in the 1930's cast the bronze. Such molds are no longer made today. The antique prototype was discovered in the Arezzo in 1541 and brought to Florence ten years later by Cosmo I Grand Duke of Tuscany. The 'Minerva of Arezzo' is among the most celebrated sculptures of the Etrusco-Roman school generally dated to the second century strongly influenced by Greek classical art.

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This Minerva is a wimped out version of a "classical" Athena, which was already a wimped out version of the archaic Athena. The only remnants of the ancient, powerful serpent goddess who was Athena are the serpent on top of Minerva's warrior's helmet and the "Gorgon" on her "breastplate."