Archaeology – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Echoes of Mesopotamia by Molly

Echoes of Mesopotamia
small figures from ancient places
ancient times
and ancient faces
ancient words
and ancient wisdom
still flowing in my veins

Clay in my hands
clay in her hands
running on the rivers of time
spiraling in the mysteries of being
spinning in the eddies and ripples of eternity…

I have a strong emotional connection to ancient Paleolithic and Neolithic goddess sculptures. I do not find that I feel as personally connected to later goddess imagery, but very ancient figures call to something deep and powerful within me. I have a sculpture of the Goddess of Willendorf at a central point on my altar. Sometimes I hold her and wonder and muse about who carved the original. I almost feel a thread that reaches out and continues to connect us to that nearly lost past—all the culture and society and how very much we don’t know about early human history. There is such a solid power to these early figures and to me they speak of the numinous, non-personified, Great Goddess weaving her way throughout time and space. Continue reading “Echoes of Mesopotamia by Molly”

Of Birds, Angels, and Tidings of Great Joy by Carol P. Christ

A link to a video of a European Hooded Crow sliding down a snow-covered rooftop on a mayonnaise-lid sled appeared on my Facebook timeline a few days ago. For me this crow expresses the “spirit of the season” as aptly as anything I can think of. She brings a smile to my face on a grey and cold morning. She makes me want to climb up on the rooftop and slide down with her. She reminds me that we humans are not alone–we share the world with a vast multitude of other intelligent creatures. She tells me that there is nothing more sacred than the joy of life.

The ancient Cretans believed that the capacity to enjoy life was not limited to human beings–they believed that animals enjoy life as much as we do, and they expressed this sensibility in their art. They also celebrated birds because their arrival in spring announces the beginning of the growing season. This early pot in the shape of a bird or duck opening its mouth to–as we kids used to say–“drink the rain” cannot help but evoke a smile. Continue reading “Of Birds, Angels, and Tidings of Great Joy by Carol P. Christ”

IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES? by Carol P. Christ

At a coffee shop in Agios Thomas, Crete last month a perfect stranger offered to pay for the coffees and sodas of the 16 women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This spirit of great generosity is rarely experienced in the United States or other parts of Europe, but it is still common in rural Crete and some parts of Greece.

In fact our group was in Agios Thomas because our bus driver Babis, also in a spirit of great generosity, insisted on stopping to show us his village when we were passing nearby. He guided us to see Roman rock cut tombs and arranged for the early Byzantine church to be opened. At the end of the our pilgrimage, Babis stopped the bus at a wooded glen beside a small church where he offered us his own homemake raki, wine, and olives, accompanied by local sheep cheese he had purchased while we were climbing a mountain. After every meal that we ate in local tavernas, we were offered bottles of cold raki, fruit, and sweets.

This spirit of great generosity has long been commented on by travelers in Greece, who often speak of it as unexpected (for them) hospitality to the stranger or traveler. That it is, of course. Through the work of Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, I now understand that the famous Greek hospitality to the stranger has deep roots in matriarchal cultures. According to Goettner-Abendroth, equality of wealth is assured through the widely-practiced custom of gift-giving in matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES? by Carol P. Christ”

WOMEN ARTISTS AND RITUALISTS IN THE GREAT CAVES: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF INDOLENT ASSUMPTIONS by Carol P. Christ

In an earlier blog, I suggested that women might have blown red ocher around their hands to leave their marks in prehistoric caves.

At the time I thought this was a rather bold suggestion.

Had I been asked why I thought the images were made by women, I might have said that people have understood caves to be the womb of the Great Mother, the Source of All Life, from time immemorial. I might have added that those who performed rituals in the caves cannot have been performing simple “hunting magic,” but must also have been thanking the Source of Life for making life possible for them and for the great beasts they hunted. Still I am not certain that I imagined women as the artists in the Paleolithic caves.

In recent days the news wires have been carrying a story titled “First Cave Artists May Have Been Women, New Study Suggests.” According to retired anthropological archaeologist Dean Snow, the handprints made by Paleolithic ancestors 40,000-20,000 years ago may have been made primarily by women. Snow spent a decade gathering and analyzing photographs of the handprints left in caves. The scientific fact that women’s first and ring fingers are generally of the same length, while men’s ring fingers are generally longer their index fingers, led him to the conclusion that ¾ of the handprints in the caves were made by women! If women were painting their hands on the caves in larger numbers than men, then isn’t likely that they were also painting the images of the great beasts on the walls of the caves? Continue reading “WOMEN ARTISTS AND RITUALISTS IN THE GREAT CAVES: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF INDOLENT ASSUMPTIONS by Carol P. Christ”

A New Glossary for Crete: The Power of Naming and the Study of History by Carol P. Christ

The words we use affect our thinking. In the case of ancient Crete the repetition of the terms “Palace,” “Palace of Knossos,” “King Minos,” “Minoan,” “Priest-King,” and “Prince of the Lilies” shape the way we understand history–even when we ourselves know these terms are incorrect. We must engage in “new naming.”

Ariadne. May have been a name of the Goddess of pre-patriarchal Crete. The ending “ne” signifies that Ariadne is not of Greek or Indo-European origin and thus predates the later Greek myths.

Ariadnian. The name I have given to the Old European pre-patriarchal culture of Crete, from arrival of the Neolithic settlers from Anatolia c.7000 BCE to the Mycenaean invasion c.1450 BCE. Arthur Evans named the Bronze Age (c.3000-1450 BCE) culture of Crete “Minoan” after King Minos of Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Europa, husband of Pasiphae, father of Ariadne, whose gift of the secret of the labyrinth to Theseus led to the downfall of her culture. Evans assumed that Minoan Crete was ruled by a King.

This image I call “Ariadne Dancing” could become the new “icon” of Ariadnian Crete.

It could and should replace the “icon” of the “Priest-King” Arthur Evans’ “imaginatively” reconstructed and named the “Prince of the Lilies.”

Once we remove the crown which probably belonged to a Sphinx, the figure’s white color and athletic body suggests it was intended to portray a young female bull-leaper leading a bull. Continue reading “A New Glossary for Crete: The Power of Naming and the Study of History by Carol P. Christ”

GODDESS AND SACRED COW: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SACRED BULL by Carol P. Christ

Most archaeologists and visitors to museums assume that when they see a horned bovine, they are faced with the image of the male God or the image of the bull sacrifice. In the minds of many, these two are one, as we have been taught that the male God who was the consort or son-lover of the Goddess was sacrificed. Yet horned Goddesses are not infrequent in the history of religions and Hindus still revere the sacred cow.

Cattle have played an important role in human life from the beginning of agriculture. Cows provide milk which is also turned into butter, cheese, and yogurt. Most of the young males and some of the females are killed for meat or leather, while a few males are kept to impregnate the females. Though the “raging bull” is the lens through which most of us think about mature male bovines, I have been told by a friend who raised cattle that in fact bulls are for the most part gentle and even sweet–though of course they are also potentially dangerous.

Before the industrial revolution, there was also a third category of bovines, the castrated males, known as oxen, who were used as “beasts of burden”–to pull plows, litters, and after the invention of the wheel, wheeled vehicles. Many people assume that only bulls have horns. This is not the case. Recently a friend who was raised on a dairy farm described to me the pain experienced by young female cows when their horns are burned out. So let us think again about the images of the horned bovines found in museums. Given that cows and oxen were long-term companions of early “man” and early “woman,” why should we assume that all horned bovines are bulls? Continue reading “GODDESS AND SACRED COW: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SACRED BULL by Carol P. Christ”

THE LABRYS: A RIVER OF BIRDS IN MIGRATION by Carol P. Christ

“There’s a river of birds in migration, a nation of women with wings.” —Goddess chant, Libana

On the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, I explain that many of the names given to “Minoan” (c. 3000-1450 BCE) Cretan artifacts and architecture are products of patriarchal and Eurocentric imaginations, and as such, are misleading. For example the name “Minoan” was given to the culture of Bronze Age Crete in honor of “King Minos,” who was said to have ruled in Crete a few generations before the Trojan War–several hundred years after the end of the culture to which his name was attached. In fact, despite his eagerness to find evidence that King Minos ruled at Knossos, the excavator Sir Arthur Evans finally had to concede that the best he could do was to produce a fresco of a “Prince of the Lilies” which he identifed as the image of the male ruler of the culture he called “Minoan.” Evans’ Prince had white skin, a fact that Evans conveniently overlooked–because according to his own interpretation of “Minoan” iconography, white skin would mark the figure as female. Mark Cameron, who reviewed Evans’ reconstruction of the fresco, suggested that the Prince is more likely to be a young woman who is perhaps leading a bull to take part in the bull-leaping games. He also stated that the “crown” belonged to another fresco altogether.

Evans’ failure to find evidence of a King or for that matter a Queen at the complex of buildings he called “The Palace of Knossos” calls into question his idea that these structures were palaces. Nanno Marinatos argued that the “palace” was instead a ritual center for the surrounding village, as well as a community gathering place, a place for storing grain, wine, and oil in a sacred way, and a place where ritual objects were fashioned of clay, bronze, stone, and gold. Following her lead, I renamed the “Palaces” “Sacred Centers.” In this blog I will experiment with renaming the “Minoan” culture “Ariadnian,” after the pre-Greek name Ariadne, which may be one of the names of the Goddess of Bronze Age Crete.

One of the most pervasive–and many would say–most enigmatic symbols of the Ariadnian culture is the labrys. Continue reading “THE LABRYS: A RIVER OF BIRDS IN MIGRATION by Carol P. Christ”

St. Thecla: Transvestite Saint and Woman Apostle by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

The story of Thecla is an intriguing one – it is above all a story that demonstrates a woman in active ministry – a story that shows a woman as an Apostle. The story found is found in the apocryphal literature called Acts of Thecla (sometimes found in “The Acts of St. Paul and Thecla) and seemed to attract the ire of Tertullian and the writers of the Pastoral Epistles. In fact, some of the names in this story also appear in the New Testament writings. Thecla used to be a Saint in the Catholic Church, and is still a Saint in the Byzantine Rite. Please note that what I say here is not my original work but a compilation of various interpretations of stories about St. Thecla.

St. Paul was travelling in Iconium with his two companions, Demas and Hermogenes. They were offered hospitality at the house of Onesiphorus. Paul was giving a sermon praising virginity, stating that eternal reward awaits anyone who lives a chaste life. Thecla overheard his sermon from her window and became enamoured by his teaching to the point that she was unable to move from her window for three days and three nights. Continue reading “St. Thecla: Transvestite Saint and Woman Apostle by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Exciting New Research on Matriarchal Societies By Carol P. Christ

The following is a guest post written by Carol Christ, Ph.D., a pioneer and founding mother of the Goddess, women’s spirituality, and feminist theology movements, and director of the Ariadne Institute. She is also the author of multiple books including Rebirth of the Goddess.

Although there are some of us who disagree, the “party line” in the fields of Religious Studies and Archaeology—even among feminists– is that there never were any matriarchies and that claims about peaceful, matrifocal, sedentary, agricultural, Goddess-worshipping societies in Old Europe or elsewhere have been manufactured out of utopian longing.

I myself and most other English-speaking scholars defending Marija Gimbutas’s theories about Old Europe have studiously avoided the word “matriarchy” (speaking rather of “matrifocal, matrilineal, and matrilocal” societies) because the very word “matriarchy” conjures up the image of female-dominated societies where women ruled, waged wars, held men as slaves, and raped and abused men and boys. In fact, this fantasy tells us far more about patriarchy than about it does about matriarchy. Continue reading “Exciting New Research on Matriarchal Societies By Carol P. Christ”