Seven Ages of the Goddess

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Contents

Ancient Goddess

Stone Age Goddess ~ Scott Irvine

She drifted aimlessly in the dark void; a dark mist of energy not knowing whether She was awake or asleep. She only knew that she existed. Then, very slowly at first She became aware of a pull on her energy from somewhere else that was attracted to Her and She knew that their coming together was imminent. She was filled with pleasure at the thought of merging with a new energy and felt a new force emerging in her consciousness; the force of LOVE. She and He combined causing them to expand creating Space and Time and the birth of the Universe. ~ An Ancient creation story.

I had been looking forward to this moment for a while; ever since I booked up a month in advance for a guided tour of the ancient underground goddess temple in the heart of Malta, the Hypogeum.

I was here because of a 12 centimetre long figurine made of terracotta discovered at this site 200 years ago. 'The Sleeping Lady' had sparked my interest and the fact that this tiny Mediterranean island and nearby Gozo had the largest concentration of goddess temples in Europe. I discovered there where over 40 goddess temples on the two islands constructed between 4,500 and 2,500 BCE. At the nearby Tarxien Temple, built 5,000 years ago the bottom half of a standing female figure carved in stone dominates the site. It is estimated to stand three metres tall if the top half was not missing.

The Hypogeum is cut into the top of a limestone hill using only stone mallets and antler picks and spread over three levels of interconnecting chambers linked by passages and stairways. The cool air inside was a relief from the hot Maltese sun. Controlled lights brought the chambers alive adding to the strangeness of the tunnels with their oracle holes, pits and spiral markings giving a sense of vulnerability mixed with a mild dread within the atmosphere of wonder and mystery.

When the goddess temples were in use Malta was an island at peace; a Stone Age Mediterranean paradise. According to archaeologist J. D. Evans life must have been easy otherwise they would scarcely have had the time or energy to spare to 'elaborate their strange cults and build and adorn their temples'. The temple builders and the population vanished abruptly around 2,500 BCE with no evidence of conquest or natural disaster. Where did the goddess and her followers go, and just as important, where did they come from? I needed to go back to the beginning of the Stone Age to where it all began.

The Stone Age is so named because it marked the moment when evidence of humans first manipulated the natural world for their own benefit using a thinking rational mind to create new things. Their skill, working in stone, to make everyday life easier improved throughout the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) era.

The Stone Age began around 400,000 years ago with the Lower Palaeolithic Period during which the ice age advanced and retreated continuously covering half the northern hemisphere for thousands of years at a time.

The people of the time, the Homo erectus (upright man), who had migrated out of Africa were family tribes working as a group to survive the cold conditions. These early humans had been around for the past 1.5 million years. They communicated in a guttural language and were the first hominoids to work flint utilizing its sharp edges alongside hand axes and bone hammers to make their lives easier. They lived in caves in the winter and temporary shelters in the summer when they followed the migrating herds of mammoth and elephants north, as did the lions, bears, wolves and hyenas. They took advantage of ripe fruits, nuts and plants they found as they traveled across the newly freed land from the ice. The earliest evidence of human created tools in Western Europe were discovered in Suffolk, England, when flint blades were found amongst human and animal bones dated to around 400,000 BCE.

The Middle Palaeolithic Period arrived around 200,000 years ago with Europe still in the grip of continuous waves of ice ages. A new race following Homo erectus out of Africa was the stockier larger brained Neanderthal whose existence lasted pretty much the length of the Middle Palaeolithic era. Arriving with them was the control of fire, enabling humanity to populate the colder northern realms of the world.

The majority of people today would consider the Stone Age as a harsh and savage environment but archaeological evidence suggests that early humans were sociable, capable and very tuned in to the rhythms of the universe. Both Homo erectus and Neanderthal would have had a very high perception of their world to survive the conditions, after all they had been roaming the land for hundreds of thousands of years and would have had a history handed down to them through the generations. Their consciousness was totally focused on the workings of not only the physical world but also the spiritual realm. John Mitchell in his book The Earth Spirit: Its Ways, Shrines and Mysteries describes the people of Old Stone Age as 'wandering under the direct guidance and protection of an earth spirit. Nature and all things in it drew their strength from the earth spirit. The spirit was life and was nourished by the stars, and in turn gave nourishment to everything in the land that required it'.

To the Stone Age people, the earth was seen as sacred and ruled by unseen spirits. Trees, hills, rivers, and springs were recognized as receptacles that contained the earth spirit. They saw the whole earth as a single living entity and would have been aware that it received fertility from the heat and light of the sun, becoming pregnant and giving birth to all life. Early humans saw that everything in the physical realm was a duality of opposing forces, a dynamic they understood to be at the essence of all creative processes.

There is evidence of ritual practices by Neanderthal in burying their dead in graves with stone tools and shells indicating their understanding of an afterlife or otherworld for the newly released spirit to journey to.

The Upper Palaeolithic Period is defined by the arrival of modern humans into Europe arriving from the Near East around 40,000 years ago. Originally from Africa but rather than follow the western coastal route into Spain like the races before, Homo sapiens (wise man) traveled east around the Mediterranean through Egypt, Palestine and Turkey into Greece. They brought with them a Stone Age Renaissance of art, ritual and magic, and with expanding language skills had improved social organisation and an understanding of symbolic thought. They saw the land as a blank canvas for new ideas and creativity. At the same time, Neanderthal went into decline and Homo erectus disappeared altogether.

The climate was getting warmer and the ice sheets less severe opening a fresh new world for the wanderers to discover, exploring and hunting further north than they had ever done before. Homo sapiens were aware of a higher force, greater than themselves existing in an invisible spirit world. To them everything cooperated towards balancing the whole such as dark and light, winter and summer, female and male. They saw the world of spirit as real and as important as the material world in which they existed. Natural born seers were chosen and highly trained as medicine men and women: shamans that could communicate with the spirits in order to guide the tribe, heal the sick and interpret dreams. Shamans were the intermediaries between the visible world and the hidden realm of the spirits.

The tribal communities were aware of the yearly cycle of the seasons and practiced a symbolic interaction between the tribe and the land where the tribe represented the masculine energy of the sky, and the land represented the feminine energy of the earth. Seasonal rituals were performed in honor of Mother Earth and Father Sun for the bounty they supplied and the continued fertility of both the tribe and the land. Humans began to carve objects in stone, reindeer antler, mammoth tusk and animal bone for the first time. A 40,000 year old sculpture of a lion was discovered carved from a mammoth tusk in Germany in 1931. Most of the earliest human-made figures are representations of the pregnant earth goddess. The 'Venus' of Willendorf, tinted in red ochre, the symbolic blood of rebirth, found in Austria was dated to around 24,000 BCE and the Kostenki 'Venus' from Russia was found to be carved about 23,000 BCE. According to Rachel Pollack in The Body of the Goddess 'man-made objects served as votive offerings, devotional objects for the Great Goddess'.

Human and animal birth was one of the great mysteries of the Old Stone Age. According to Peter Lancaster Brown in Megaliths, Myths and Men:

The 'Venus' figures could have reflected the biological miracle of birth and be a symbolic meaning of birth and rebirth. They reflected the cyclic nature of the universe; the creation, the sustaining and the death of all things. It would not have gone unnoticed that the lunar cycle and the menstrual cycle had a similar time span.

These and thousands of other goddess figures have been found across Europe and the Near East which shows mankind were aware of the workings of the goddess in nature and symbolically brought her into the material world to dwell within the sculpture and cave art giving a physical form to the spirit presence. Goddess figurines were carved and their symbols painted on cave walls to venerate and instil goddess energy in the physical world. In The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas, 'early cave painters signified the goddess symbolically portraying breasts, vulvas, pubic triangles, cup marks and spirals on the walls.' The earliest cave art dates from 30,000 years ago reaching a pinnacle with the cave paintings at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain created around 17,000 years ago.

With a warming climate and retreating ice sheets opening up great tracts of fruitful land the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age) arrived with great promise and optimism around 12,000 BCE. Great forests of lime, oak, elm, birch, pine and hornbeam rich with wildlife and provisions dominated the landscape of Europe. Stone Age people were now making smaller flint tools: microliths used for sewing hide and boring holes in shells for jewellery.

At this time there existed a social order in which men and women had equal status, lived in harmony with nature with life centering on the worship of the Great Mother Goddess. The Earth was revered as the embodiment of the goddess and death was seen as a return to her womb. Egg shaped graves discovered in Slovakia around 7,000 BCE were believed to represent the dead reborn to the Earth Goddess. The Mesolithic people saw no division between the past and future or between life and death because the Goddess was all these things; this was indeed the Golden Age.

The land between Britain and the rest of Europe was a rich fertile oasis called Doggerland and home to hundreds of tribes living peacefully together according to science writer Laura Spinney:

These tribes would come together for an annual social event to hunt and feast. Young men and women from different tribes would find mates and the elders would exchange information. It would have been a simple life if childhood was survived. These people knew where they were in the landscape and in the universe and the role of the goddess in all of it.

Tens of thousands of figurines and other representations of the goddess, along with highly ornate pottery have been unearthed at sites all across Europe from the Mesolithic period. At Catal Huyuk, also known as Çatalhöyük, in Turkey, dated around 6,000 BCE shrines were dedicated to the Goddess. The site showed that rituals were conducted by priestesses while priests played only a minor role within the community. At the same time the construction of over 40 goddess temples began on the small island of Malta.

It was around this time, after millennia of slowly rising waters due to the massive release of melting ice, sea levels began to rise causing the tribes of Doggerland to migrate to higher land. A landslip on the sea floor off the coast of Norway triggered a tsunami that flooded the lowlands leaving Britain an island in the process.

Between 4,300 and 2,800 BCE the stability of the Golden Age came under threat from Middle Eastern tribes settling across Europe and gradually eroding the ancient cultural values of Old Europe. Early farming communities spread across the land and before long the goddess became a symbol of agricultural enterprise as the hunter gatherers began to settle in one place.

The Neolithic Period (New Stone Age) arrived around 4,000 BCE with a purpose never before seen introducing the Goddess worshippers into a new way of thinking. Making pottery and learning new farming skills, the Neolithic people found they no longer needed to roam the land in search of food. Tribes found a suitable place to settle down and stay forming larger societies and the need for hierarchies and control. The new settlers brought with them powerful priestesses who served as communicators between the spirit and material worlds releasing the community to clear the land of trees, quarry large blocks of stone and build stone monuments to honor the Goddess.

Long Barrow in Gloucester, UK, was built around 3,000 BCE which had stone walls leading to an entrance that resembled the open legs of the Goddess with the entrance made to look like a vulva. Other long barrows across Britain were representations of the lower half of the Goddess with a central chamber representing the uterus and the antechamber the vagina.

Also in the UK, discovered in a flint mine at Grime's Graves, East Anglia was an altar of flints with carefully placed pick axes made from deer antlers heaped around it. Set in front were chalk carvings of a pregnant woman, a phallus and chalk balls. Were these placed here to appease the Earth Goddess? To the New Stone Age mind every part of the earth was inhabited and directly ruled by the spirits. To harm the land in any way was like cutting into the Great Mother herself who as a result needed to be placated in some way. This was done by conducting a ritual to gain the blessings of the earth spirits and leaving an offering in the hope of avoiding her wrath. An enormous amount of building work took place in the landscape at this time including Silbury Hill, Wiltshire with Avebury stone circle rising shortly after.

Towards the end of the Neolithic Period another group of settlers arrived in Britain from the East around 2,000 BCE. We call them the Beaker People because of the style of their pottery. They were traders in goods and knowledge and brought with them their Sun and Nature God, Bel. Priest Kings replaced the priestesses in maintaining the spiritual well-being of the community, seducing them with ceremony and magic. Mankind began to believe that the material world was the only reality and the spiritual realm a mere reflection of the material.

The power of the Great Mother began to decline when men became aware of their role in creating babies thanks to their observation and skills in animal husbandry which led man to take control of his own destiny.

Stone Age thought was replaced by the nature of the male dominated conquest-seeking Bronze Age that arrived around 1,500 BCE. The Great Mother became the Babylonian Goddess Tiamat, a self-existing boundless watery mass. It was She who gave birth to space and time, heaven and earth and all life. Her world was an external cycle of creation, duration and destruction; a living entity with a primary purpose to manifest potential in humanity. She possessed the Tablets of Destiny which gave her the power of control over the order of the Universe. After a fierce battle with the Babylonian Chief God, Marduk killed the Goddess cutting her body into pieces and scattered them across the world while taking the Tablets of Destiny for himself.

When God took control of the well-being of the masses, compassion became pity, love became dependence and spirituality became religion and dominance. Male assertiveness, direct action and intellect replaced female nurturing, sensitivity and intuition, Moon time was replaced by Sun time and the cyclic nature of the Goddess became the linear reality of the God. In time, Neolithic people came to live in obedience to God's command and laws.

The Mother Goddess was divided into separate and individual parts with each part having different personalities and power in an attempt to keep her hidden or at the very least subdued and inferior to the new Gods. But like the cyclic nature of the Stone Age Goddess, what goes around, comes around.

Cybele ~ Mat Auryn

Peering through the sands of time we find the Great Mother Goddess' roots stemming all the way to the prehistory of mankind's oldest settlements. The goddess Cybele is perhaps the oldest deity in Earth's history. Reaching all the way back from neo-Paleolithic prehistory to her height of worship in the classical period, we see her reverence even today among many modern day pagans and occultists. Despite strong attempts to wipe out her existence and her devotees by various patriarchal regimes, she persists.