Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete – Page 6

What Is Love? by Jassy Watson

I asked this question at the family dinner table, on facebook, and by e-mail. Many heartfelt responses were offered, all insightful. Some spoke of romantic love, sexual love (eros), self-love, spiritual love, the love a parent has for a child, unconditional love (agape), primal love, authentic love, universal love, divine love, the source of love, friendship (philia), love of nature, and love of a pet, while others considered the destructive nature of love. What was demonstrated by these conversations was that not only are the possibilities of love’s expressions endless, but there can ultimately be no right or wrong answer when it comes to the meaning of love. Our cultural, familial, religious and spiritual backgrounds all play a part in the way we think and feel about love.

I was raised in a secular, middle-class, two parent, two children, cat, and sometimes a dog kind of family. Despite the usual ups and downs, our family life was full of love. I remember having feelings of love as a child that were so incredibly overwhelming I would be brought to tears. I loved everything and everybody. Mum still reminds me that if I could have, I would have brought every elderly person along with every stray animal home to look after. After reading about the process view in Carol Christ’s book She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the Divine in the World, I see now that this love I felt was born out of feelings of deep sympathy.

Because we did not have a religious or spiritual background, I had no idea what divine love meant. My idea of the divine was the male, Christian, biblical God that our family rejected. It is said that Christian love is selfless and is best seen in actions such as compassion and kindness. This may be so. But selflessness, compassion and kindness are not limited to Christian values. They are human values. In his book The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama says that “love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive”. All religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions speak of the values of love. They say that love encompass compassion, kindness, selflessness, acceptance, gratitude, sympathy, sharing, grace, justice, charity, and liberation. They also speak of tension, wrath, discomfort, unkindness, loss, and judgement. For me, love is all these things and more.

Ancient myths address these values of love through tales of passion and devotion. Diane Wolkstein celebrates some of these myths in her book The First Love Stories. Each story expresses a distinct aspect of love. For instance: the tale of Isis and Osiris represents love that is stronger than the forces of nature, Innana and Dumuzi expresses the cyclical quality of love; Shiva and Sati reveals the eruption of passion and the taming of the mind; the Song of Songs celebrates love’s yearning; the story of Psyche and Eros portrays the forging of the self. All of these stories emphasize the sacred nature of love.

For me, having children awakened a love so very deep within. When I gazed into the eyes of my first born son at the tender age of 18, I was so overwhelmed by love I thought my heart would burst. I now have four children a husband and a loving extended family and friends who all teach me much about the true nature of love. They teach me above all else that love is patient, non-judgmental, and unconditional. It is through the growing awareness of my spiritual being and my journey with the Goddess that love has become something deeper than I ever thought possible. Love, for me has become a union with something higher than my individual self. My love extends beyond the family to include every living being on this planet and beyond. It is not just all about giving and receiving, but rather it is a state of being. It is personal yet universal and comes from deep within my sub-conscious. Love for me, not unlike the tales woven in ancient myth, is profoundly sacred.

Embodied with love I set out to create my next painting. Out of this portal of love:

Aphrodite, Goddess of love, pleasure and relationships, in all her glory was born. Continue reading “What Is Love? by Jassy Watson”

Gratitude and Sharing: Two Fundamental Principles of Goddess Spirituality by Carol P. Christ

The more I practice the spirituality of the Goddess, the more I understand that earth-based spiritualities are rooted in two fundamental principles: gratitude and sharing. We give thanks to the earth for the gift of life. As we recognize our interdependence and interconnection in the web of life, we are moved to share what has been given to us with others. *

When I first began to lead Goddess Pilgrimages in Crete, I was inspired by a line in Homer to begin a pilgrimage tradition of pouring libations of milk, honey, water, and wine on ancient stones. At first I knew the form, but not its deeper meaning. It gradually dawned on me as I thought about the large number of pouring vessels in the museums, the altar stones, and the Procession Fresco from Knossos, that an important part of Minoan rituals involved processions in which people offered first fruits back to the Mother whose body had produced them, and poured libations on altars.

Over twenty years of performing the ritual of pouring libations has convinced me that this was not “a” but “the” central Minoan ritual. Its purpose is to thank Mother Earth for the bounty She has bestowed on us. Continue reading “Gratitude and Sharing: Two Fundamental Principles of Goddess Spirituality by Carol P. Christ”

Miracles Of The Great Mother by Jassy Watson

I was brought up in a household where attitudes to God and church were quite negative. My Nanna, however, was deeply religious, and I can still remember sitting in her dining room as a very young child staring up in awe at a painting of ‘The Last Supper.’ I was completely mesmerised, there was something haunting about that painting that left a lifelong impression. Art became a passion very early on in life, and whenever I came into contact with images of a religious nature emotions stirred. I was spellbound by divine mystery. The most profound feelings were engendered when I met with images of Mother Mary and the infant Jesus. Continue reading “Miracles Of The Great Mother by Jassy Watson”

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.

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”