Tag: Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete

The Turtle Goddess from Myrtos in Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ

“As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed.” Song by Faith Rogow. 

The strange and cheerful figure portrayed in this ancient Cretan vessel comes from the site known as Fournou Korifi near Myrtos, in Crete.  Dated before 2000 BCE, she was called the “Goddess of Myrtos” by the excavator, Peter Warren.  This little Goddess was found on an altar in a small room in the ritual area of a complex of small rooms on a hill above the sea that was home to up to 120 people.  The Goddess of Myrtos is a vessel holding a vessel.  In ritual libations, liquid would have been poured from the pitcher she holds onto an altar.

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She is obviously female, with breasts and a sacred triangle. Continue reading “The Turtle Goddess from Myrtos in Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ”

“The Language of the Goddess” In Minoan Crete by Carol P. Christ

While the “war against Marija Gimbutas,” rooted in what my friend Mara Keller calls “theaphobia,” is being waged in the academy, her theories continue to unlock the meaning of hundreds of thousands of artifacts from the culture she named “Old Europe.”

According to Gimbutas, the Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures of Old Europe c. 6500-3500 BCE were peaceful, sedentary, agricultural, matrifocal and probably matrilineal, egalitarian, and worshipped the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in human and all forms of life.  The cultures of the Old Europe contrasted with the Bronze Age cultures of the Indo-Europeans who brought the Indo-European languages and value systems to Europe and India and to all of the European colonies.  The Indo-European cultures were patriarchal, patrilineal, nomadic, horse-riding, and warlike, and worshipped the shining Gods of the sky. 

“The language of the Goddess” includes a series of signs and symbols that the people of Old Europe could “read” as surely as you and I know that a cross on top of a building marks it as Christian or that a woman wearing a star of David pendant is Jewish.  Gimbutas identified the meaning of these symbols through a painstaking process that involved comparison of artifacts, attention to where they were found, and clues from the recurrence of similar symbols in later cultures.  In twenty years of leading Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete, I have found Gimbutas’ theories an indispensible “hermeneutical principle” which unlocks the meanings of the artifacts we encounter.

  Continue reading ““The Language of the Goddess” In Minoan Crete by Carol P. Christ”

“AS WE BLESS THE SOURCE OF LIFE, SO WE ARE BLESSED” by Carol P. Christ

Blessing the Source of Life harks back to the time when shrines were built near springs, the very literal sources of life for plants, animals, and humans.

The prayer “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed,” based on a Hebrew metaphor which refers to a water source and set to music in a Jewish feminist context by Faith Rogow, has become one of the bedrocks of my Goddess practice.

In Minoan Crete, seeds were blessed on the altars of the Goddess and the first fruits of every crop were returned to Her. The ancient Minoans piled their altars high with barley, fruits, nuts, and beans, and poured libations of milk and honey, water and wine, over the offerings they placed on altars. Evidence of these actions is found in the large number of pouring vessels stored near altars.

Recreating these rituals on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, and singing together, “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed,” again and again, we begin to understand that the gestures of our ancestors were based in gratitude for Life itself. They understood that the fruits of the earth, the grain, the wine, and the oil, the cherries, the peas, the olives, and everything else that we eat, are gifts of bounteous Mother Earth. Continue reading ““AS WE BLESS THE SOURCE OF LIFE, SO WE ARE BLESSED” by Carol P. Christ”