The Great Mother Goddess and Goddesses

This paper examines the Dyonisian and Orphic symbolic and ritual iconographical aspects of a Centuripe vase from Southern Italy from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Measuring 70.5 by 34.5 centimeters, the basic form of the vase is that of a bell krater without handles set on a high foot and surmounted by a domed lid ending in an egg-shaped finial (Richter 188), formed of separate sections that have been assembled in production. The vase has been assembled from broken pieces, showing little surface damage. In order to facilitate description and analysis, two very similar Centuripe vases, one in New York, the other in Princeton, are  referred to.
A.Description of the iconographic and decorative aspects of the vase, which depicts a scene of three woman and a man in a ritual scene. One woman holds a thyrsus and tympaneum and there is a tripod.
B. Analysis of the elements in relation to the history and development of Greek vase art. Mayo has observed that ‘’death, marriage, and the mysteries is a frequent triad in South Italian and Sicilian vase-painting’’ (283). These aspects will be examined, in the context of feminine themes, to see if they can shed light on the imagery and function of the vase.
1. Feminine aspects
2. Marriage aspects
3. Funerary aspects
4. Dyonisian aspects
5. Orphic aspects
C. Interpretation.  Ariadne has often been linked  with Aphrodite (Otto 182-85).  Figure 29 (de Grummond 92)  is a wall painting from Pompeii depicting Dionysus and Ariadne watching a contest between Pan and Eros, aptly illustrating the combination of the worlds of Dionysus and Aphrodite. Figure 30 (Lissarague in Masks 21),  from a fifth century Bell krater, depicting what could be a puberty initiation scene,  illustrates  Dionysus and Ariadne in a ritual context. The Maenad holding the rabbit, a well-known fertility symbol could be an aspect linking Ariadne to Aphrodite. 
The portrait on the Montreal Centuripe vase could serve to indicate that the deceased identified herself with Ariadne, as her features resembles the Ariadne figure on the body. The head can be related to the ascension of Aphrodite in a  role of chthonian goddess (Calinescu in Mayo 143), and possibly related to Ariadne’s divinization after her revival  by Dionysus, where Zeus placed her crown in the heavens (Seyffert 64). As shown in figures 11-14, Centuripe imagery has been related to the Dionysus and Ariadne figures of the frieze of the Villa of Mysteries.

Luego del políptico de La comunidad de los espectros, un nuevo comienzo se torna necesario. Un giro en el filosofar atento al espesor metafísico de la subversión epocal en curso en todo el orbe. Esa misma crisis revela ahora como insuficientes los métodos más osados de las Humanidades del siglo XX. Un punto de partida: el relato acerca de un supuesto proceso judicial por vampirismo acaecido en un remoto cantón de Hungría a principios del siglo XVIII.
Con el discurrir de las hipótesis aquí propuestas, las relaciones con la licantropía se volverán centrales y ambos fenómenos deberán ser objeto de una minuciosa ultra-historia que acompaña al lector hasta los tiempos paleolíticos del culto de la Gran Madre. Pero esto es sólo el comienzo de un viaje metafísico que, bajo las formas de la sangre, el sacrificio y la metamorfosis, nos conduce hasta el origen mismo de la vida-muerte sobre la Tierra como estación necesaria para una meditación sobre el futuro cosmológico de los seres hablantes. El Vampiro y el Hombre lobo son las figuras filosófico-conceptuales que, una vez desentrañadas, nos muestran la vía regia hacia una forma completamente nueva de rehabilitación del pensamiento especulativo bajo la forma de una “ontología analéptica”.
Desde los inmemoriales rituales del sacrificio antiguo, hasta la teología política inversa del vampirismo, pasando por una inédita filosofía de los virus, se delinea ante nuestros ojos el subsuelo a partir del cual se revelan las condiciones de posibilidad de todo pensamiento acerca del Ser y la actual obsolescencia de todas las formas en las que este último ha sido previamente mentado. De este modo, un tenebroso y enjundioso proceso judicial, hoy caído en el olvido, nos muestra que custodiaba, sin saberlo, los secretos supremos de todo lo existente que la inveterada tradición ha dignificado con el nombre de Cosmos. Se anuncia, así, el comienzo de la Segunda Era Metafísica.
Publicado por Miño y Dávila Editores, Buenos Aires / Barcelona, 2022.
www.minoydavila.com [envíos a todo el mundo]

Amen exposes the foundation of all religious myths and conspiracy theories that are based on the existence of a global and Divine Plan for mankind. Amen reveals the truth about the Knights Templar, the Baphomet, Jesus, the Great Mother, the Dragons and the Grail Bloodline.

PowerPoint presentation at the MYTH AND THE AUDIOVISUAL CREATION international conference, Madrid, 2018
ABSTRACT:
Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017): The disturbing power of syncretic mythical paradigms
Metka Zupančič, Professor Emerita, University of Alabama

Darren Aronofsky, Mother! (2017): An almost impotent Poet/Orpheus who cannot be content with domestic happiness and needs drama to become productive, willfully ignoring the destructiveness of his behavior. A diaphanous young woman akin to Hestia, dedicating her life to (earthly) creations (rebuilding a house, a hearth, a universe) and to motherhood, both in caring for her egomaniac husband and in giving birth to their child. A massive disruption in the self-contained system, with the intrusion of bigger and bigger crowds that make the Poet into a godly figure, with a Christ-like obsessive cult attached to him, which will lead to an apocalyptic collapse of this universe. A cannibalistic sparagmos of the newborn baby, this omophagy combined with a certain Eucharist (all the while the Poet remains intact, “delegating” his most beloved to be sacrificed in his stead). The young woman’s demise in self-immolation; with the final gift, to her husband, of her crystalized heart, from which a new cycle of existence might be born, as in the tradition of Dionysus Zagreus… An overwhelming abundance of mythical schemes—paradigms in which one could see an allegory, a controversial modern parable, extremely hard to decode and interpret, because of director’s deliberate choice to create a disturbing and overwhelming cinematographic experience for his audiences. In this completely SYNCRETIC MYTHICAL ENVIRONMENT, the main question is to establish the esthetic, emotional, intellectual and spiritual FUNCTION of the mythical paradigms such as integrated in this film. How do we recognize the mythical schemes, how do we perceive their overlapping and their interactions? In this particular audio-visual setting, and more generally in all audio-visual productions, how do mythical schemes combine into NEW MYTHICAL NARRATIVES? How do they AFFECT the audiences? In other words, what is the difference in their IMPACT, in comparison with a written text that we need to reactivate through our imagination? Clearly, on a large screen, these elements hit us with their IMMEDIACY and might thus be much more powerful—under the condition that they are indeed destined to carry “mythical” dimensions—when they manage to escape the expected, the easily anticipated, which is definitely the case with this Aronofsky’s film.

The revised essay published in Myth and Audiovisual Creation, José Manuel Losada & Antonella Lipscomb (eds.), Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2019 (103-114).

The available information on the belief system of Thracians is mainly from Hellenic literature and arts. The Hellenic colonization that took place in ca. 750-550 BC resulted in the Hellenic influence to penetrate deep into inland Thrace. The Thracians associated their indigenous gods and goddesses with the Greek gods and goddesses which they thought had similar characteristics and continued to worship their deities using Greek names. The interpretation of the Thracian pantheon has therefore become more complicated; but the occasionally added local epithets and the recurring features in Hellenic form provide important clues to understand it. This article aims to establish the links of the indigenous Thracian goddesses of Bendis, Kotytto/Kotys, Phosphoros, Aksiokersa, Hepta/Hipta, Perke/Thrake and the mountain goddesses of Rheskynthis/Zerynthia and Ganea, whose names are known from cult studies in Thrace, to the Mother Goddess cult.

Fads and fancies come and go not only among the general public but within the academic community as well. One of the latest of these popular with some feminist scholars and New Age groupies, is the cult of the Mother Goddess.
Marija Gimbutas of the University of California at Los Angeles is a principal advocate for this cult, having worked at Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in central Europe for decades.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41766076

Focusing on gynocentric issues, Fay Weldon’s Puffball is a text open to many types of feminist readings but one that has yet to be explored is a metaphysical reading of the novel focusing on the divine feminine. Although the novel seems to portray everyday characters, the allusions to biblical, mythical, and mystical elements allow for this type of an analysis. The ebb and flow between the protagonist Liffey and antagonist Mabs, who are experiencing various stages of womanhood, portray two very different types of mothers. Yet, in tune with Neumann’s Great Mother archetype, both women ironically complement each other through these contradictions. The transformations Liffey and Mabs undergo inherently balances the text offering a dualistic yet unified approach. This unification through contradictions is most illustrative in the ancient gnostic text dubbed Thunder: Perfect Mind, where a divine feminine voice describes herself through clashing images. By reading Puffball through the lens of Thunder, it becomes possible to see how opposing forces may be considered as aspects of a whole. In this vein, this paper suggests that Weldon’s Puffball resonates with ancient gnostic discourses specifically with the Thunder text where otherwise discordant aspects are fused in the image of the divine feminine.

Based on recent fieldwork among Vietnamese Americans in California, this paper explores the meanings of the mirror that spirit mediums gaze into, and why it is a required object on altars to the Vietnamese “Mother Goddesses" (Đạo Mẫu), whose worship has recently had a great resurgence in diasporic California communities.  It looks at religious ways of mediating displacement and re-forming an identity in the reflected glory of the imperial past.

Ci sono storie note e meno note, ci sono storie sconosciute ma che meritano di essere raccontate; ci sono luoghi mitici e leggendari, come Rennes-Le-Chateau, che accendono le più sfrenate fantasie e altri di cui quasi niente si sa, ma che non hanno nulla da invidiare a quelli più famosi.

The publication of a dedication to Basileia offers the opportunity to explore in a well documented context the significance of the concept of ‘Queen’ in the cults of the Mother. The dedication has been found in Iasos during the excavation in the West Stoa, together with epigraphic and archaeological evidence relating to the cult of the Mother of Gods. An inscription from the sanctuary of the Çanacık Tepe, near Iasos, makes it possible to identify Basileia with the Mother of Gods. Among the documents found in the West Stoa excavation is the diagraphe for the sale of the priesthood of the Mother of the Gods published by G. Maddoli in this volume. An important feature of this text is that it clearly distinguishes the cult of the Mother of the Gods from the cult of the Phrygian Mother (Cybele is still not mentioned in the evidence from Iasos), while making implicitly clear that the two cults were practised in the same sanctuary. The cult of the Mother Phrygia was already known in Iasos thanks to a Hellenistic stele, containing a list of people – all with Anatolian names – who contributed to the construction of an unknown building (I.Iasos 229). The Mother features as ‘Queen’ also in figurative art, notably on the double naiskoi votive reliefs, found mostly in Athens, but also near to Iasos, in Miletus. Locally, the official epithet Basileia would be transparent and unambiguous and would refer to the most venerand cult (in Iasos the cult of the Mother of the Gods). The royal iconography, on the other hand, was useful in the flexible strategies of distinction required by a double cult: among the two goddesses worshipped in the same sanctuary, the individual offerers were free to identify as Queen the Mother to which they were most closely related.

C'era un tempo in cui uomini e dei camminavano fianco a fianco, un tempo in cui le parole non servivano. Era il tempo di Ilio, dei viaggi di Odisseo e di Enea, il tempo degli eroi e delle imprese. Ma nulla può esistere se è perfetto, la vita richiede vibrante imperfezione per esprimersi. Poco a poco, molti smisero di fidarsi di loro e le idee del cosmo li abbandonarono. Gli dei continuarono a camminare sulla terra, ma l'uomo smise di seguirli, di vederli, di sentirli e piombò nella nostalgia, generatrice di lingue e di idiomi. Solo qualcuno conservava ancora il cuore puro abbastanza da udire quelle voci lontane, isolati e inascoltati profeti le cui orecchie percepivano il sussurro dei non più visibili numi.
Poi, non ve ne furono più. Le voci si fecero tanto lontane e indistinte che, solo appoggiando l'orecchio, opportunamente allenato, nel punto più adatto, si poteva ancora sperare di percepirne i sussurri.

Forcible conversion of the Kalash in NE Afghanistan. Dizani and Křumâi. Festivals, hymns, sanctuaries, and stories. Horned ritual headdresses of Kalasha women. Other goddesses and the vetr / fairies. Islamicization, hidden icons, and religious supercession.

Llamamos paradigma o cosmovisión «antropo-teo-cósmico» al esquema de comprensión que toda cultura se hace sobre la identidad y las relaciones de los tres elementos más básicos: «los humanos, la naturaleza y lo misterioso o trascendente que el ser humano ha percibido desde siempre. No hay cultura, filosofía ni pueblo primitivo que no tenga su propia cosmovisión sobre esos tres elementos básicos.
    Hasta ahora los occidentales, pensábamos que en este campo no se podía ir más allá de lo que el pensamiento griego o la religión israelita habían establecido. Más atrás del siglo VIII de nuestra era (por Grecia y por Israel) todo lo anterior era pensamiento balbuciente, o idolatría, mera fantasía primitiva, nada digno de estudio.
    Descubrimientos de la arqueología, que nos han trasladado a 5 y 6 milenios más atrás de Grecia y de Israel, nos han descubierto un mundo que trastueca muchos supuestos hasta ahora vigentes. Tenemos un pasado mucho más amplio, profundo, elocuente, y de una creatividad espiritual desconcertante. Descubrir esto nos lleva a mirar con más amplitud y libertad lo griego y lo judeocristiano, que no son el punto de partida, el inicio de todo, como hasta ahora pensábamos. «Lo Divino» es mucho más antiguo y más amplio... y se reveló a los seres humanos mucho antes de lo que pensábamos. 
    Reconsiderando el paradigma antropocosmoteándrico, en cuya evolución milenaria ahora redescubrimos también un nuevo y más profundo valor revelatorio, se nos caen muchas escamas dogmáticas de nuestros ojos, pero  adquirimos una libertad nueva, imprescindible para poder ser religiosos con sentido en este nuevo «tiempo axial».

SI PUÒ PARLARE OGGI DI ARCHETIPO E PRINCIPIO FEMMINILE? TALE CONCETTO è ANCORA ATTUALE? SI MANIFESTA? SE Sì, COME?

Il mio lavoro cerca di rispondere a queste domande attraverso un viaggio nell’Arte – specchio fedele della società – per un periodo di tempo che va dagli anni ’70 sino ai giorni nostri. Oltre a basarsi sullo studio di vari, importanti, testi, questa ricerca si basa principalmente su "Il linguaggio della Dea" (The Language of the Goddess) dell’archeologa Marija Gimbutas, in quanto in questa opera, più che in altre, ho riscontrato un completo ed esauriente sviluppo dei vari aspetti in cui l’archetipo femminile si manifesta.

Tesi di Storia dell'Arte. Diploma Quadriennale in Pittura.
Accademia delle Belle Arti di Torino, IT. 2008.
Relatori: Prof Antonio Musiari; Prof Franco Fanelli.

The question of whether Malta was a place for the veneration of a Mother Goddess during Neolithic times brought with it many controversial issues. This article presents results from the now historical "Malta Conference on Archaeology and Fertility Cultˮ held at the University of Malta in 1985. It includes a descriptive analysis of the various anthropomorphic sculptures found during excavations from different Neolithic temples and presents interpretations by some archaeologists who do not agree with the theory that worship of a 'Mother Goddess' existed. This article also includes interpretations by scholars who maintain that a 'Mother Goddess' existed in Malta more than 5,000 years ago and that the early Maltese practiced some sort of religion due to the quantity of similar figurines found in different temples on the islands.

The Luwian ritual texts known as the Songs of Istanuwa and the Songs of the Men of Lallupiya are shown to be at once the earliest textual references to the cult of Cybele and also the Anatolian instantiation of the ancient Near Eastern genre of the city lament. The Bronze Age antiquity of the institution of the transgender lamentation priest in Anatolia—the antecedent of the Greek gallos and Roman gallus and the counterpart of the Mesopotamian GALA—is also demonstrated.

This thesis will examine the re-emerging interest that modern western society has with the practice of sacred sexuality, what it is; who are the practitioners; and what services are being offered.  Historical research of Hieros Gamos or ‘sacred marriage’ rituals that occurred in the Goddess religions of the past and other ancient cultures, provide the basis from which I compare and contrast what influence those practices had (if any) on attitudes, values and behaviours of contemporary practitioners.  In seeking out the modern day sacred prostitute, I uncover the new religious movement known as Goddess Spirituality and investigate its emergence from the womens’ feminist movement and chart its growth.  The interviews of five women who I deem to be modern day sacred prostitutes are reported and I explore their personal stories.  Wider attitudes to any sexual service that receives a payment attracts a social stigma.  I intend to explore how these women see themselves placed within this social context, how they distinguish their services and if they view their work as creating social change.  I strive to discover the links between the practices of the Goddess temples, the rituals and sexual attitudes of the ancient past and attempt find them manifest in the modern day practitioner

This article was supposed to be a simple review of the book by Baldini La strada dai molti canti. Filosofia e sciamanesimo greco (The road of many chants. Philosophy and Greek shamanism), but after reading it, it developed into something different and more extensive, I would say an ‘extended’ review. When I bought it, I thought I would read a book that combined philosophy and anthropology, but after a few pages it was clear to me that it did not speak about neither of them, and that I  was  confronted  with  a  book  of  a  religious  nature,  impregnated  with  profound  mysticism.  Baldini  inscribes  his  research  into  that  religious  movement  known  as  Neo-Paganism,  which  also  includes  Neo-Shamanism,  the  Movement  of  the  Goddess,  Wicca,  etc.,  but  which  has  its  roots  in  the  European  mystical,  esoteric  and  traditionalist  intellectual  currents,  American  trascendentalism, joined by forms of oriental mysticism, Hindu universalism, as well as Native American  and  Central  Asian/Siberian  neo-shamanism.  In  the  1960s-1970s  these  currents  formed the New Age, that is what Bloom calls Californian orphism, a minority but important current of the post-Christian West, which has influenced both part of the feminist movement and a number of counter-cultural intellectuals and grass roots as well. Keywords: matriarcato, femminismo, Grande Dea, Grande Madre, Movimento della Dea, sciamanesimo siberiano, nativi americani, neo-sciamanesimo, New Age, Eliade, sciamanesimo greco, Parmenide, Filosofia Perenne.

Argumenta:
In the small mountain villages and countryside of Southern Italy, there still lives a magical female tradition shrouded in mystery. These women are called Janare (singular Janara), and in popular folklore they are considered witches, devoted to the darkest and most evil of practices.
This dark reputation is mainly because of the Catholic Inquisition, and the works of a C17th Jewish doctor, who described them as devil worshippers. But in actuality, these women were, and still are above all, peasant healers and seers, capable of entering the world of invisible things. But as free women, the Janare have been seen historically as dangerous for the patriarchal peasant society of southern Italy.
(Article pubblished on Sacred Hoop Magazine - issue 111, March 2021)

Key words: witchcraft, folklore, cultural studies, janare, traditions, paesant magic

Peterson’s  philosophy, as expounded in “Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief”, departs radically from views held in depth psychology and theology but has much in common with Hegel. The world of consciousness is greatly overestimated. His exaggerated intellectualism leads to deep symbols being over-rationalized, producing meager and sterile interpretations. The article contributes to the understanding of myth and religion.

Keywords: identification, psychic integration, symbolic meaning, transcendence, evil, heroism, Magna Mater, Osiris, resurrection, alchemy, Hegel, Carl Jung, M-L von Franz, Nietzsche, St Augustine.

This paper explores Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna’s system of worshipping the Twenty-One Tārās based on evidence of newly recovered Tibetan manuscripts.  No Indian who visited Tibet in the past one thousand years had a greater impact on the Buddhism there than Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (982–1054). Atiśa is renowned for his devotion to the goddess Tārā who appeared in his dreams and visions, and bestowed predictions upon him throughout his life. His charismatic devotion to the goddess was the impetus for the faithful worship of Tārā in Tibetan Buddhist culture. Atiśa’s lineage tradition of Tārā is the most distinguished among the five teaching traditions of Tārā in Tibet. The entire ritual edifice of worshipping Tārā in Tibet is built upon Atiśa’s major works on the goddess. Atiśa’s praise of the “Twenty-One Tārās” is iconographically one of the most popular in Tibetan painting, yet the mantras in the ritual evocation of these forms of Tārā have yet to be discussed in publication. This paper presents the mantras for evoking Tārā in Atiśa’s system based on recently recovered manuscripts. The paper provides an initial overview of recently recovered manuscripts of Atiśa’s system of the twenty-one Tārās. The paper then focuses upon a brief text entitled “The Cycle of Prophecies granted by Tārā to Atiśa." Based on this recently published work, the mantras for evoking the twenty-one Tārās and their accompanying hand gestures (mudrās) are described and analyzed for the first time in relation to the iconographic system of Atiśa’s Twenty-One Tārās.

Like previous entries in the Goddesses Unknown series, the present article focuses on heretofore little-studied goddesses in the Germanic corpus, in this case the obscure Old Norse goddess Hlín and her association with the widely attested Germanic goddess Frigg.

For a century a notion of a prehistoric Mother Goddess has infused some perceptions of ancient Europe, whatever the realities of developing archaeological knowledge. With the reverent respect now being given to Marija Gimbutas, and her special vision of a perfect matriarchy in Old Europe, a daughter-goddess is now being made, bearer of a holy spirit
in our own time, to be set alongside the wise mother of old.

Introduction -The immemorial timeworn creation myths of the world, of the Supreme Creator-God of the Sky, the Great Mother-Goddess of the Earth, the birth of the young Sun-God, myths of the Moon that gets to the earth and turns into a cow, conception of the months as divine creatures, etc., gave us the notion of the beginning of the time, the emergence of the order from the chaos. These primordial beliefs have the central role in each nation collective conscience. In that unknown early epoch, when the antediluvian ancestors of the Macedonians were still one with the mythological Pelasgians, Boreans and Hyperboreans, they were worshipers of the primordial gods of nature, animals and woods, members of the ancient Aryan Pantheon. These primordial myths that have deep roots that stretch out to the prehistoric times, have survived numerous conquerors and influences of various religions, showing sturdy vitality, which is engraved deeply into the subconscious collective memory and traditions of the people. They have nothing in common with the modern day religions, such as the Christianity or Judaism, but they are rather based in the phylogenetic archetypes which are same in all cultures. Indigenism (Continuity Theory) proved behind any doubt that these strong primordial myths were transmitted throughout millennia. Above: early Neolithic goddess figurine from the prehistoric palisade-settlement on the banks of the river Drim near Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia 14 Upper Macedonia; along the river Vardar valley, today mostly in Republic of Macedonia. 15 A term given to women under the ecstatic spell of Dionysus. 16 Bacchus, another name for Dionysus.

This essay deals with the cult of the Sacred Marriage with respect to its three aspects (fertility cult, legitimation of the king, sanctification of the heir to the throne), thus stressing the political nature of this cult. Furthermore, the text delineates the basic lines of a development which led to the devaluation and, eventually, the elimination of the goddess, starting with the prehistoric belief in a monogenetically creating Primordial Mother and leading via various polytheistic constructions to the belief in a monogenetically creating supreme male god.

The Bronze Age is a new stage in the prehistory, which brings many novelties. The cultural reach of the Bronze Age communities has been increased to a new level. One of the many reasons for that is the contacts they have made with the more developed and advanced regions. Although, this period is relatively poor with the level of research in our country, the Kumanovo region with its outstanding sites, provides really important data, which greatly contribute to the cognition and study of the Bronze Age cultures in this part of our country. This region, closely connected with the Vranje-Bujanovac valley, exchanges the contacts with the northern areas. On the other hand, along the immediate close Axios river, float the influences from the flourishing south. In the following article, a chronological survey of the Bronze Age sites in the Kumanovo region is made, along with the contacts made by their bearers with other cultures, by observing the mobile material and determining its closer and (or) more distant analogies.

Today, great interest in the Ancient Goddess cult is still being revived. With the way the Goddess manifests herself as symbolizing an earthly and cosmic source to the universe, some women have found refuge in the symbolical image of the Mother Goddess. The impetus towards the Goddess movement came from an archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas. With the return of the Goddess, the new power of the feminine is being expressed in all areas of life. Other major women writers and exponents of the Goddess religion expressed the self-transformation and empowerment and various aspects of feminist social vision of women in their work. In this paper I will also focus on the archetypal image of the Great Mother Goddess which is expressed in rituals, art, mythology and dreams. In Jungian parlance the Mother Archetype resides in every human psyche and is a symbol of protection and fertility and regeneration. This concept also belongs to the field of comparative religion and embraces widely varying types of the mother-goddess. The discussion of ‘Feminist Archetypal Psychology’ shows that the Great Mother Goddess archetype is activated and is returning to consciousness. The Great Mother Goddess archetype was very important in the Western world from the dawn of prehistory throughout the pre-Indo-European time periods, as it still is in many traditional cultures today.
Keywords: Archaeology, Art, Great Mother Goddess, Marija Gimbutas, C.G. Jung, Feminist Archetypal Psychology.
1.1

Paper presented at XX IAAP Congress Kyoto 2016 Kyoto 2016
Published in  Anima Mundi in Transition: Cultural,Clinical, Professional Challanges, 2017

XX IAAP Congress Kyoto Proceedings edited by Emilija Kiehl and Margaret Klenck
Daimon Verlag 2017 pp.491/515

The symbol of Babylon has been interpreted with a common worldview in mind, the Great Mother concept. Although this concept comes from Neolithic times, its written sources appeared in Sumerian literature. This article considers some Sumerian myths of the goddess Inanna/Ishtar in the evaluation of Revelation 17. In the comparison of Inanna/Ishtar myths with Revelation 17, the analysis demonstrates that perhaps John echoes the Great Mother concept and some Inanna/Ishtar characteristics ironically. John presents the mistaken belief that the religiopolitical union would bring peace and prosperity to the nation and, unlike those ancient myths, the beast/kings will resurrect to die forever.

In this article, I review recent work on figurines from Neolithic southeastern Europe and suggest an alternative approach. I argue that we should abandon searches for explanation and for meanings of figurines as pieces of the past. The alternative is to work with figurine material in the present, disarticulated from prehistory, and to make new work that recognizes figurines’ position in the present.

הקשורי  במאמר זה אשרטט כמה תופעות ומבנים בתפיסת האם הגדולה אצל הרמב"ן. המטרה שלי תהיה כפולה:
א. לשרטט בקווים  קצרים את ההקשרים העיקריים שבהם בולטת תפיסת האם הגדולה אצל הרמב"ן - זהו תיאור פנומנולוגי ביסודו. 
ב. לתאר את הצומת ההיסטורית בספרד של המאה הי"ג, שבה עברה תפיסה זו זעזוע עמוק ותהליכי פרשנות שונים הקשורים במאבק תיאולוגי וחברתי, אשר שינו את  מיקומה התרבותי.

We find ourselves at a critical threshold, a time when grave ecological destruction abounds while many life forms are under increasing threat by human hands; hope can be a scarce resource, as grief swells and the meaning behind immanent devastation is unfathomable.  Yet, when mundane meaning making fails, mythology—with its vast archetypal view—can lend symbolic insight.  That is, myth tending through contemplation, active imagination (Jung), dreamwork, attention to synchronicity, or cultivating an “archetypal eye” (Hillman) may offer guidance as we strive to find adequate responses to our current crises.  The world’s mythological traditions provide illuminating perspectives on our relationship with the Earth at this time. 
In this essay, initially compelled by an exploration of personal myth (Jung; see also Chalquist)—that is, the depth psychological premise that we can find certain mythic stories and figures that resonate deeply with our life experiences and sense of self—I turned to the goddess figures of the Greek pantheon that intimate wholeness, containing the totality of life and death.  Specifically, I was drawn into the myths of Gaia, Persephone-Demeter, and Ariadne in their particular yet interweaving forms.  In what follows, I share the ways in which the mythic complexes of these goddesses emerged in my study and imaginal life as inextricable threads of one tapestry.  Honoring each in turn, I hope to give voice to some of their unique and intersecting lessons as I experienced them.  In so doing, I offer an example of the ways we can discover the mythic dimension of our personal lives and the relevant wisdom this discovery may grant us at the ecological crossroads we face today.

In 2000 BC great mother goddess worship disappears and takes its place the religion of the masculine divinity. This is an important change in the history of human thought: in great mother religion life was sacred and there was a balance between masculine and feminine principles, whereas in masculine god religion, creatures remain separated from creator, and there is no place for the sacred female. Feminine dimension of divinity was lost, yet it has been recovered in some religious manifestations, as mysticism. In order to prove this idea we will analyse mystic literary texts of the three monotheistic religions.
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En el año 2000 a. C. desaparece el culto de la gran diosa madre y surge en su lugar la religión de la divinidad masculina. Esto supone un importante cambio en la historia del pensamiento, ya que de una cosmovisión donde la vida era sagrada y existía un equilibrio entre los principios masculino y femenino, se pasa a otra donde un abismo separa a creador y criatura, y no hay lugar para la feminidad sagrada. El aspecto femenino de la divinidad es desterrado. No obstante, un ámbito en el que tiene lugar la recuperación de la dimensión femenina de lo sagrado es la mística, como veremos al analizar diferentes textos literarios pertenecientes a corrientes místicas de las Tres Culturas.

The short bibliography presented in this paper relates to the critique to the "Great Goddess", a notion that several scholars, first of all Marija Gimbutas, believed to be present and well rooted in many different and distant in time and space prehistoric civilizations, as a sort of "feminine archetype".