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Channing Memorial Church January 6, 2002 Belief in the Great Mother Goddess began before our very early ancestors left Africa because we find similar beliefs all over the world. Perhaps it began this way: Women formed small groups, perhaps mother and daughters, to help each other with pregnancy and child care, and the oldest woman passed on her knowledge and wisdom to younger women and children. When children and adults asked the grandmother, "Where did everything come from?" Her natural answer was that there was a Great Mother who had given birth to everything long, long ago, and had given females of each kind of animals some of Her power so they could continue to have babies. This Great Mother knew everything. Some grandmothers knew how to talk to her and learned more than others. These special woman should be listened to and everyone should do as they asked. This is all speculation as a background to the little we know about those ancient times. The earliest figurine of a woman we have found was made over 233,000 years ago. However, hundreds of small feminine figures from 31,000 to 25,000 years old have been found all the way from Mongolia to Spain. They usually show an obese woman with no distinctive facial features - as if to portray an abstract idea rather than an individual and must represent a widely-held belief. (The statue beside me is an enlarged copy of one found at Dolni Vestonice. The original is about 28,000 years old.) When people settled down to farming about 10,000 years ago they left more remains so we know more about this Neolithic Age. In southeastern Europe, Pottery models of their temples have survived, as well as remains of the buildings. The temples were used for baking bread, weaving and pottery, as well as for religious rituals. Perhaps only priestesses were taught these skills and the rituals appropriate to them. Some pottery models of these temples look like incense burners because they have an openings in the top and large "window" holes around the bottom. Other have open tops and contain miniature female figures, sometimes decorated, grinding stones, ovens and other tools. Perhaps these models were used to teach new initiates the rituals. In the Middle East, we have literally tons of written records because clay was the only convenient writing material and the tablets were dried in the hot sun. We have been able to decipher them because autocratic rulers had records of their deeds in several languages carved in prominent places, thus making multi-language dictionaries. Some fragments include prayers and hymns to Ishtar or Innana as they called the Goddess. So our ancestors believed in a Great Goddess for many thousands of years. What did they belief? They cannot speak to us across the millennia, but we can infer some things:
This Golden Age came to a gradual end, beginning about 4,500 years ago when tribes of horseherders were forced out of the steppes of southern Europe by population pressure. Their nomadic life and frequent fighting for each other's herds had led to autocratic government by a male chief, and they had come to believe in a fierce male God of the Shining Sky. Women were little better than their brood mares, and the idea of a Goddess must, judging from the Old Testament, have been particularly bad. The peaceful people of Old Europe had no defense against these skilled warriors. Some tribes simply destroyed everyone and everything, as in Israel. Others saw the conquered people as useful workers. Their chiefs married the High Priestesses in the old religious rituals and took over the government. Their priests gradually changed the religious stories, just as Hermann Goebbels did for Hitler, to demote Her to the consort of their male god, and finally to an evil spirit whom the male god killed or banished. This progression is documented on clay tablets. But this defamation was not effective even in Israel. There are frequent Old Testament denunciations of those who worshipped Her; and of the Kings and Queens who built temples to Astarte and worshipped Her openly. In other places, many people continued to worship the Goddess openly in temples built to Astarte, Ashteroh, Isis, Diana or other names. On Malta, a small island almost in the middle of the Mediterranean, the soil isn't very fertile and could never have supported a population of more than 10,000 people. However, a huge building boom began about 5,500 years ago, a thousand years before the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt! Forty-three temples and underground cemeteries were built during the next 1000 years. Why were so many temples needed for such a small number of people; and how were they built? The stone is easy to work but they had to quarry it with stone and bone tools, move the blocks, some weighing 50 tons, to the site and erect them. If Malta was a religious center for the whole Mediterranean, as Rome is today, different ethnic groups might have sent construction workers and supplied them with food and tools as a religious duty. Larger temples might have been used for major seasonal rituals and smaller ones for different ethnic groups. About 4,500 years ago, temple building stopped and the entire population vanished. Perhaps the invaders saw this center of the Old Ways as a threat and destroyed it, killing the people and throwing their bodies into the sea to clean up. Later inhabitants quarried the temples for their own buildings. Inhabitants of the large island of Crete, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean produced pottery and figurines like those found in mainland sites of the Goddess culture. They escaped the horseherding invaders of Europe for many years and developed Her culture and religion to their highest points. Beginning about 4000 years ago, these people built large administrative and religious centers such as the one at Knossos which was two to three stories high and covered five acres. They also built many smaller shrines, some in caves or on mountain tops. Vivid frescos in Knossos and other places show goddesses and priestesses in various rituals. Men are shown adoring these goddesses and bringing offerings. (They got that right!) They seem to have lived together peacefully because none of their cities have defensive walls. Lifelike figurines of the snake Goddess have been pictured in most history books about this period. But, about 2450 years ago the invaders came, burning and destroying everything as they usually did. The mainland of Greece and Anatolia took the brunt of several waves of Indo-European invaders, beginning over 4,000 years ago, who followed the usual practice of systematically degrading the various goddesses and making them consorts or children of the fierce male gods. However, belief in these goddesses and rituals in their honor lived on. We are fortunate that their myths were recorded, with as much of the rituals as men were allowed to know. By reading critically, we can remove the invaders' denigration and recover much of the original stories. In Italy, the Etruscan Goddess lovers were overcome by invaders who came to call themselves Romans. Here, again, Her worship lived on even into the Christian era. In fact the last temple, to Isis was not closed until about 1,500 years ago. The Celts preserved many traditions of the Goddess in Her various aspects. Irish priests recorded these stories so they have been preserved until the present. Since Irish women fought beside their men, one goddess, The Morrigan was a terrible warrior who might intervene to decide a battle. Another goddess, Medeb represented the land and a man could not become King of Ireland unless he slept with her, or probably with her priestess. Brigid, "Bride" in Scotland, is the patroness of healing herbs and waters, metalcraft and writing. She is the closest Celtic equivalent to the Great Goddess. Her annual festival is on Imbolc, the Quarter Day between Yule and the Vernal Equinox. This day is now called St. Bridget's Day and some of the old customs are still observed in Ireland. (We will celebrate Imbolc on Saturday afternoon, February second beginning at 1 PM.) The Basques, alone, escaped the barbarian invasions. They still speak an Old European language unlike Indo-European ones. Until the 1800's women owned the property which descended to their daughters. Women and men are equal in their laws today. The Goddess, Andre Mari (Andre means lady), was worshipped in remote communities even in the 20th century. This overlaps the resurgence of belief in Her which began in England in the 1930's. It is interesting to compare belief in the Goddess which must have begun more than 31,000 years ago and has continued, sometimes in secret, to the major religions we know today.
These dates mean that belief in the Goddess is about:
An older belief is not necessarily a better one, but in the cultures of believers in the Great Goddess, people lived together peacefully without fighting and without a leader and noble class telling them what to do. Modern expressions of belief in the Goddess take many and varied forms, some open to all, and some requiring instruction and initiation, like Wicca. Some groups have a coequal male god, in others, the Goddess reigns supreme. There are also many individuals who left one of the younger religions, to develop their own ways and have found peace and comfort in them. My daughters tell me that I have changed and become more mellow. Speaking for myself, I have found serenity, tolerance, concern for others and help in accepting a great loss.
Further Reading Gimbutas, Marija, The Living Goddesses, edited by Miriam Robbins Dexter, University of California Press, Berkeley CA 94720 Stone, Merlin, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, Beacon Press, Boston MA Stone, Merlin, When God Was a Woman, Harcourt Brace & Company, San Diego, CA |