A Closer Look At St. George

Hola Darlings!

This house thing is driving me nuts.  I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I will be doing something...

Meanwhile, back at the Goddesschess Ranch.  After posting that fascinating article last night on Orthodox Christian Palestinians and their reverence for St. George, I turned to Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" and checked to see if there was an entry for St. George.  There was.  But I was too weary to type it all in last night.

So, here it is, but first, I would like you to read yesterday's post on the Christian Palestinians and St. George, because you will find many points of similar references in Walker's take on the subject of St. George. I have liberally sprinkled in my own "Notes"  and commentary and also added highlights,

George, Saint

Fictitious patron saint of England.  St. George's Day was known to the Romans as the Feast of Pales, a fertility festival [Note: Pales, a blatant phallic symbol.  Interestingly, the word "pale" is still used in English today.  It is a rounded stake or pole made of wood.]  Medieval custom honored St. George on Easter Monday, the Moon-day following the Sun-day of the Christian hero.  Folklore named the pagan savior Green George, a spirit of spring.(1)  His image was common in old church carvings, a human head surrounded by leaves or looking out of a tree trunk.  Some called him the witches' god, a confused idea of something between a tree and a man," or "the devil in the shape of a trunk of a tree ...with some form of a human face."(2) [Note: Also known as the "Green Man."  The Arabic word for green translated into English:  green / a-kh-dh-ar /.  Cf. Village of Khadar that features prominently in the article on St. George and the Palestinian Christians.]

St. George the Dragon-slayer apparently evolved from a mythic meld of Green George with an Arian bishop of Alexandria who opposed St. Athanasius, and put to death an orthodox Master of the Mint named Dracontius, "Dragon." (3) [Note: Ripe for further research.  I've no idea who St. Athanasius or the Master of the Mint Dracontius were!]

St. George's emblem was a vesica piscis, a prime fertility symbol because it represented the Goddess's yoni; but Christian authorities preferred to interpret it as a "shield." [Note: The vesica piscis is a well-known geometric form (basically, an oval formed by the intersection of two circles).  Roman Catholics are familiar with the form as the "fish" of Jesus -- a vesica piscis. Astrologists and magi are familiar, of course, with "Pisces, the Fish" as an astrological symbol.]  Still, George was so shamelessly involved in fertility rites that the church discredited him and began calling him the "imaginary saint."  An old English ballad said "Some say there was no George; some, that there no Dragon was; pray God, there was at least a maid." (4)

(Footnotes:)

(1)  Frazer, G.B., 145-146.
(2)  Knight, D.W.P., 221, 229.
(3)  Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 269.
(4)  Brewster, 209-10.

And, for your added viewing pleasure:



Christian symbol for Christ, in Greek ,"Ichthys."
Source.

A vesica piscis:

If you don't know what a yoni looks like, you need to find out for yourself, darlings... Well, okay, her[e] is a clue.  I'm really giving away the entire game here, because this ancient stone yoni resembles some ancient board games (or an ancient Egyptian offering table and, in later dynastic tombs, the sacred doors, ahem) with which you all should be familiar by now:

Do you get it yet?

Goddess: Tamar, Georgian Goddess of the Sky

In Georgian mythology, Tamar was a Georgian sky goddess who controlled the weather patterns. Tamar enslaved Dilis Varskvlavi, the Morning Star, who was master of winter; whenever he escaped, snow began to fall, but annually she captured him and brought summer back to the land. She was an eternal virgin who rode through the air on a serpent saddled and bridled with gold. This serpent-riding sky goddess is also identified with the Georgian goddess Lamara - "eye of the Earth." Lamara is probably a cognate of Lamia. According to Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets": Lamia Greek name for the Libyan serpent-goddess -- Medusa, Neith, Athene, Anatha, or Buto.(1) Lamia was probably a variant of Babylonian Lamashtu, "Mother of Gods" worshipped at Der as a serpent with a woman's head. Though Lamashtu was feared as a Kali-like Destroyer, yet she was also revered as a supreme goddess, called Daughter of Heaven and Great Lady.(2) Greek myth made her another rival of Hera. The Latin Vulgate Bible gave "Lamia" as a translation of Hebrew Lilith, Adam's recalcitrant first wife. The Authorized Version rendered lamia as a screech owl [the owl was Greek goddess Athena's totem animal and is a carry-over from the archaic eye-goddess tradition of paleothic times, where the bird represented a shaman's ability to fly through the three realms of reality: the Earth, the Underworld, and the Heavens]. The Revised Version translated the same word as "night monster." During the Middle Ages, lamia became a general term for a witch. A 15th-century German professor of theology stated authoritatively that lamiae were "demons in the shape of old women."(3) See Vagina Dentata. Notes: (1) Graves, G.M., 1, 205. (2) Budge, A.T., 117. (3) Robbins, 295-96. Medusa - archaic Greek goddess of life and death; Neith - archaic goddess of Upper Egypt who, despite her warrior aspects and control over life and death, introduced weaving and other domestic arts to the proto-Egyptians; Athene - archaic Athene was a fierce killing goddess who sent people deemed worthy to death to be born again, in later Greece she was "domesticated" to a thematic warrior goddess but primarily identified with Wisdom, who in totemic form rode on her shoulder in the shape of an owl; Anatha - archaic mother goddess of the greater Middle East controlling life and death through fertility (cognates: Inanna, Anath); Buto - archaic serpent goddess of the delta region of pre-dynastic Egypt, a goddess of fertility and resurrection and an icon of protection for the pharaohs. You can probably figure out what Vagina Dentata signifies! Hint: Think about the chewing gum "Dentine" and the word "dentist." Both words spring from the proto-Indo-European root word -'den.' Oh, what the heck - here's Barbara's Walker entry on the chomping vagina. Think about the imagery of a backgammon board with all of those "pointy monster teeth"... Vagina Dentata "Toothed vagina," the classic symbol of men's fear of sex, expressing the unconscious belief that a woman may eat or castrate her partner during intercourse. Freud said "Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of the female genitals."(1) But he had the reason wrong. The real reason for this "terrifying shock" is mouth-symbolism, now recognized universally in myth and fantasy: "It is well known in psychiatry that both males and females fantasize as a mouth the female's entranceway to the vagina."(2) The more patriarchal the society [right now I'm hearing the Village People's "Macho Man" playing through the strains of my mind...] the more fear seems to be aroused by the fantasy. I'm not going to copy the entire entry, which is lengthy but filled with fascinating information: Stories of the devouring Mother are ubiquitous in myths, representing the death-fear which the male psyche often transformed into a sex-fear. Ancient writings describe the male sexual function not as "taking" or "possessing" the female, but rather "being taken," or "putting forth."(7) Ejaculation was viewed s a loss of a man's vital force, which was "eaten" by a woman. The Greek sema or "semen" meant both "seed" and "food." Sexual "consummation" was the same as consuming (the male). [We now see the deep psychological roots for rape, which is not a crime of passion but a crime of fear, a desprate attempt to overcome fear by "domination." And who has not heard the old "wisdom" that a male athlete is not to have sex with a female before a major event, because it will "sap" his energy?"] Distinction between mouths and female genitals was blurred by the Greek idea of the lamiae - lustful she-demons, born of the Libyan snake-goddess Lamia. Their name meant either "lecherous vaginas" or "gluttonous gullets."(9) Lamia was a Greek name for the divine female serpent called Kundalini in India, Uraeus or Per-Uatchet [Buto] in Egypt, and Lamashtu in Babylon. Her Babylonian consort was Pazuzu [Damuzi, Tammuz], he of the serpent penis. Lamia's legend, with its notion that males are born to be eaten, led to Pliny's report on the sexual life of snakes that was widely believe dthorughout Europe even iup to the 20th century: a male snake fertizlizes the female snake by putting his head into her mouth and allowing himself to be eaten.(10) [Too bad so much of western culture is based upon "Greek" ideas - they've really screwed things up, haven't they.] Sioux Indians told a tale similar to that of the Lamia. A beautiful seductive woman accepted the love of a young warrior and united with him inside a cloud. When the cloud lifted, the woman stood alone. The man was a heap of bones being gnawed by snakes at her feet.(11) Mouth and vulva were equated in many Egyptian myths. Ma-Nu, the western gate whereby the sun god daily re-entered his Mother, was sometimes a "cleft" (yoni) and sometimes a "mouth."(12) According to Philostratus, magical women "by arousing sexual desire seek to devour whom they wish."(15) To the patriarchal Persians and Moslems this seemed a distinct possibility. Viewing women's mouths as either obscene, dangerous, or overly seductive, they insisted on veiling them. Yet men's mouths, which look no different, were not viewed as threatening. [I make exception here - as far as I can tell from their art, pre-Islamic Persian women did not wear veils; in fact, they dressed much as Persian men did, in loose-fitting trousers and tight sleeved blouses with over-vests resting at the waist.] "Mouth" comes from the same root as "mother" - Anglo-Saxon muth, also related to the Egyptian Goddess Mut. Vulvas have labiae, "lips," and many men have believed that behind the lips lie teeth. [Gee, how did we ever manage to survive as a race if men were/are so afraid of having sex? Is that why alcohol, in its earliest forms of beer and wine, was invented???] Well, you get the picture :) I'll leave you with this thought: Moslems attributed all kinds of dread powers to a vulva. It could "bite off" a man's eye-beam, resulting in blindness for any man who looked into its cavity. A sultan of Damascus was said to have lost his sight in this manner. Christian legend claimed he went to Sardinia to be cured of his blindness by a maraculous idol of the virgin Mary - wh0, being eternally virgin, had her door-mouth permanently closed by a veil-hymen.(20) Okay, so just why is it that male pilgrims in Mecca kiss a yoni-shaped silver-lipped idol which is part of a meteorite built into Islam's holiest site but was worshipped as a symbol of the Mother Goddess before the advent of Mohammed?

Goddess Mari (known by many names)

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Mari Basic name of the Goddess known to the Chaldeans as Marratu, to the Jews as Marah, to the Persians as Mariham, to the Christians as Mary; as well as Marian, Miriam, Mariamne, Myrrhine, Myrtea, Myrrha, Maria, and Marina. Her blue robe and pearl necklace wre classic symbols of the sea, edged with pearly foam.(1) Many place names evolved from Marian shrines. Among them were Amari or Ay-Mari, the Cyrprian home of Aphrodite Marina; Marib, City of the Moon, seat of the queens of Sheba; Marea in western Egypt; Maronea near Lake Ismaris; Maru, mother-city of the Medes; Sa-Maria, a country whose name meant literally "holy blood of Mary." (2) One of the entrances to her underworld womb, a sacred cave accessible only by sea, was Mar-Mari, "Mother Sea."(3) The Goddess's Amorite city of Mari was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Its six-acre temple-palace astonished archeologists who uncovered i in the 1930s. Mari dominated the area now known as the Holy Land until it fell to the armies of Hammurabi in 1700 B.C.(4) Semites worshipped an adrogynous combination of Goddess and God called Mari-El [biblical Mariel] (Mary-God) corresponding to the Egyptian Meri-Ra which combined the feminine principle of water with the masculine principle of the sun.(5) Sometimes the deity was named simply Mere, an Egyptian word for both "waers" and "mother-love."(6) Mer was also a component of the names of Egyptian queens in the first dynasty. One of Egypt's oldest names was Ta-Mera, Land of the Waters, which could also be interpreted as Land of the Great Mothers.(7) The Syrian version of Mari or Meri was worshipped in combination with her serpent-consort Yamm, derived from Yama, the Hindu Lord of Death. Yamm alternated with Baal, "the Lord," as the Goddess' favorite and a sovereign over heaven and the abyss. Indian Yama was one of the consorts of Kel-Mari, as Kali was called in the south.(8) Tantric Buddhists still speak of the "Slayer of the Death King," Yama-Mari, who was identified with the Dalai Lama.(9) [The Dalai Lama is currently in the news because of the riots in Tibet and environs peopled by ethnic Tibetans in China, and the brutal Chinese suppression of the "unrest."] Jews and early Christians used the smae combinatin of names, Mari-Yamm or Mariam, for the mother of Jesus.(1) The spirit of the archaic Mari entered into Bablonian diviners known as mare baruti, sea-mothers, who operated in the bit mummu or womb-chamber, where statues of the gods were said to be "born" (made animate).(11) In similar womb-chambers the Hindu goddess was worshipped as Kau-Mari or Kel-Mari.(12) She is still invoked as Marici-Tara, the Diamond Sow on the lotus Throne, "Glorious One, the sun of happiness." She is the Goddess "whose mayik vesture is the sun," forerunner of the Gospels' "woman clothed with the sun' (Revelation 12:1), who was identified with the virgin Mary.(13) Northern Europe knew the same Goddess as Maerin, wedded to Thor at her shrine in Trondheim.(14) To the Saxons she was Wudo-Maer: literally, a Wood-Mary, or Goddess of the Grove. To the Celts she was Maid Marian, beloved by Robin, the witches' Horned God. Their greenwood cult caused church authorities considerable trouble in the 14th century.(15) Mari was the same Merian or Merjan worshipped in Persia as Queen of the Peris (Fairies).(16) Iran had its mother goddess Mariana from very ancient times.(17) She might be traced to the land of Akkad, created by a Goddess called the Lady Marri, Mother of the World.(18) A king of Mari in 2500 B.C., united with the Goddess, took the royal name of Lamki-Mari.(19) She was also the Great Fish who gave birth to the gods, later the Mermaid, Mare-mynd, mareminde, marraminde, maraeman, or mereminne.(20) [Also the "Great Fish" that symbolically swallowed Jonah in the biblical account, where he stayed for parts of 3 days and nights, just as Christ spent parts of 3 days and nights in Hell talking with the lost souls after his death]. In short, she was always Mother Sea. Her Latin name was Maria, "the Seas." ["Mare" - "sea of" - was used extensively in naming various sections of the Moon, a rather appropriate usage, I must say.] St. Peter Chrysologus [Peter Golden-word, 5th century bishop of Revenna, friend of Pope Leo the Great] called her Christian incarnation, the virgin Mary, "the gathering together of the waters."(21) But she was also the earth ahd heavens, since her earliest form was a trinity. She was worshipped in pre-Roman Latium as Marica, mother of the first king Latinus, who was also her priapic goat-footed consort Faunus. She was probably the same Goddess worshipped by the Slavs under the name of Marzanna (Mari-Anna), who "fostered the growth of fruits."(22) Mari and her pagan consort were incongruously canonized as a pair of Christian saints, Addai and Mari (Adonis and Aphrodite-Mari). Their legends called them "bishops" dispatched to Aphrodite's cult center at Edessa, probably because their portraits appered there, and it was easier to Christianize them than to destroy them. Their cult began with Nestorian Christians who called them "Holy Apostles Addai and Mari."(23) Another Christianization was St. Maura, from the Goddesses' Fate-name Moera, "older than Time."(24) As the Fate-spinner who held men's denstines in her hand, she generated a taboo: on St. Maura's day, women were forbidden to spin or sew.(25) [My guess is that Moera, Fate-spinner, is a direct link to the old proto-Indo-European and later Hindu belief about an astral Spider spinning out the creation of the Universe and its fate. I believe this concept is directly related to the "ashtapada" (eight limbs) game board on which some say proto-chess was first invented]. Medieval Spain knew the Goddess Mari as a "Lady" or "Mistress" who lived in a magic cave and rode through the night sky as a ball of fire.(26) This may have meant the red harvest moon, or possibly the moon in eclipse - always a dire omen. [Or possibly literal balls of fire - meteors, or the more mysterious "light balls" that appear hovering above the horizon, similar to but not satisfactorily explained as "St. Elmo's Fire."] The Goddess Mari was said to give gifts of fairy gold and precious stones, which might turn into worthless lumps of coal by the light of day.(27) In later centuries, the same worthless gifts were given to "bad" children by St. Nicholas at Christmas. The island of Inis Maree had a ruined temple, sacred to a certain "St. Mourie" - none other than the Goddess Mari for whom the island was named. In 1678 the Presbytery of Dingwall "disciplined" some people who sacrificed bulls to the divinity of Loch Maree on the 25th of August, a day dedicated to Aphrodite-Mari for more than 1500 years.(28). Notes: (1) Graves, W.G., 438. (2) Graves, W.G., 410-11; Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 179; Herodotus, 41, 400. (3) Hughes, 159. (4) Keller, 46-49. (5) Budge, G.E., 1, 86; Book of the Dead, 602. (6) Budge, E.L., 76. (7) Budge, D.N. 160. (8) Briffault, 1, 474. (9) Waddell, 364. (10) Ashe, 48. (11) Lindsay, O.A., 41. (12) Mahanirvanatantra, 149. (13) Waddell, 218, 361; Mahanirvanatantra, x1. (14) Turville-Petre, 91. (15) Graves, W.G., 441. (16) Keightley, 22. (17) Thomson, 135. (18) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 287. (19) Albright, 98. (20) Steenstrup, 105. (21) Ashe, 147. (22) Larousee, 208, 291. (23) Attwater, 31. (24) Bachofen, 57. (25) Lawson, 175. (26) Lederer, 210. (27) Baorja, 238. (28) Spence, 37.

Kingship: The Ritual Murder of Absalom

See tonight's earlier blog on Abishag for background about ritual sacrifice and the substitute sacrifice for the king. This information is also from Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Absalom The Bible presents Absalom as either David's son or David's neighbor (2 Samuel 12:11) because biblical writers couldn't decide just where he came from. He was important only as a surrogate "king" of the Jews. His name, Father Salm [from abra- father and salom- peace], was a widely distributed sacred-king name, also rendered Salma, Salem, Salomon, or Solomon; in Assyria, Shalmaneser; in Crete, the "son of God" Salmoneus.(1) The name meant Prince of Peace, which was synonymous with Lord of Death because "Peace" was the Lord's word of farewell as he descended into the underworld. [Note: I don't buy this explanation that Prince of Peace and Lord of Death are synonymous. I think her explanation is rather ingenious, actually, since we today link "death" with "peace", but give me some Semite etymology that links the two concepts.] Canaanites worshipped Father Salm at the city of Salem, whose Palestinian counterpart was Jeru-salem, "House of Salem." Kings of David's ancestral tribe, the Kenites, took the sacred name when ruling in Jerusalem. [Note: I thought "bethel" was the word for house in Hebrew - what is this Jeru stuff?] Probably several of these kings were called Solomon, including the biblical one whose real name was Jedidiah, according to 2 Samuel 12:25. Absalom received the sacred name and died as a surrogate for the incumbent king, David, whose mourning for him was really a liturgical formula. he called Absalom "my son, my son," and cried "Would God I had died for thee" to disguise the fact that the victim really had died in his place. Among ancient Semites generally, someone had to die for the king at regular intervals, to preserve the fertility of the soil and the people with his blood. See Kingship. Time-honored precedent dictated the format of the drama. The chosen victim sat on the throne, and publicly copulated with the royal women under a marriage canopy (2 Samuel 16:22). See Huppah. [Note: Being totally irreverent here, is this the etymological root for the concept of "hubba hubba?" -okay, never mind...] After this, Absalom was declared a god and his phallic spirit was immortalized by an erect pillar (2 Samuel 18:18). He was hung on a sacred oak "between heaven and earth," like all victims offered to deities of the air and sky.(2) He was pierced through the heart by three darts, like the Egyptian god Set. He was dismembered by ten men in priests' livery (2 Samuel 18:14-15). According to the old custom, pieces of him were then distributed to the fields and vineyards to encourage the growth of crops. Notes: (1) Graves, W.G., 363-64. (2) Angus, 173. ******************************************************************************* Interesting bit at the end - sounds rather like the death and cutting up of Osiris and the "salting" of his body parts around the "nomes" of Egypt, doesn't it? Except the great goddess Isis came along and ruined everything by putting "Humpty Dumpty" back together again, despite all the King's horses and all the King's men's best efforts to prevent her from doing so. And thus Osiris was resurrected and restored to life (well, at least a form of life - he's King of the Egyptian Underworld and by some accounts can only come out into daylight in the sacred sungod chariot where he flies across the arc of the sky) - that's something that Walker did not talk about in her Absalom tale, the fact that king sacrifice was intimately linked with the concept of resurrection/rebirth. I'm much more intrigued about the biblical account of the rape of Absalom's beautiful sister, Tamar, by Absalom's half-brother Amnon. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Amnon was born to King David's first wife; Absalom was David's third-born son but, evidently, quite a favorite with the people of the day. Jewish tradition traces "Jewishness" through the line of the mother: if your mother is a Jew, you are a Jew. This echoes and appears to be a somewhat faded remembrance of the ancient right of matrineal "king" succession that held sway from earliest recorded history throughout the middle east and in Egypt. Kingship was determined by THE MOTHER, not order of birth. I'm certainly no scholar when it comes to matrineal descent! But it is not a stretch to believe that Absalom may have been the heir presumptive despite being David's third son, because Absalom's mother's descent may have given him the heads-up. Therefore, if Amnon (rather sounds like an Egyptian name, doesn't it?) coveted David's throne for himself, he had to get rid of the heir presumptive (Absalom). And so he schemed and came up with a way to send Absalom over the edge. He raped Absalom's beloved sister, the beautiful and highly desirable Tamar. Perhaps the rape was a two-edged sword because by raping Tamar, Amnon may have been asserting a direct right to the throne through Tamar, not just "egging on" Absalom to attempt to take revenge against him. The biblical narrative relates the eventual outcome of Tamar's rape, but it takes some time to unfold. Ultimately, Amnon is killed at the hands of Absalom's agents, and Absalom flees from David's wrath. Eventually, a civil war ensues, and Absalom is killed. Here is the account from the Catholic Encyclopedia: Shielded by a forest, David's men proceed and meet Absalom's unguarded forces on the edge of the woods which fringe the circular plain at a point marked by the present site (presumably) of Mukaah. A frightful slaughter ensues, and the disorganized rebel party is quickly routed. Absalom madly flies. Suddenly he finds himself stunned by a blow while his head is caught in the fork of the low hanging branches of a terebinth tree. At the same time his long loose hair becomes entangled in the thick foliage, whilst the frightened animal beneath him rushes on, leaving him suspended above the ground. Before he is able to extricate himself he is espied by one of the soldiers, who, mindful of the King's words, "Spare me the life of Absalom", directs Joab's attention to the plight of the hapless youth. The old general, less scrupulous, and eager to rid his master of so dangerous a foe, thrice pierces the body of Absalom with his javelin. When the news of Absalom's death is brought to David, he is inconsolable. "My son Absalom, Absalom my son: would to God that I might die for thee, Absalom my son, my son Absalom." One of the old forms and symbol of the goddess was a sacred tree, and her places of worship was often sited in a grove of trees. So, it appears that in the case of Amnon and Absalom, the goddess got back her own and Barbara Walker's Woman's Encyclopedia offers some amazing insight. One other note tonight, for it's very late and I'm very tired, and I have to be up at 6 to meet the new day, yikes! Mukaah. is this a cognant of Maacha? According to the Catholic Encyclopedia entry cited above, [Absalom's] mother was Maacha, daughter of Tholmai, King of Gessur. I don't know where this is - just wondering if it could possibly be related to Mecca? Mecca was a very ancient site of worship of the triple goddess in pre-Islamic times, and the sacred shrine of the goddess, the Kaabah (various spellings), survives to this day as a holy shrine of Islam, where worshippers (mostly male) kiss the sacred black stone of the goddess, conveniently outlined in the form of a yoni symbol of the goddess upon which the worshippers center their smooches. I find this topic fascinating. I will continue with more on sacred kingship as time permits.