Happy Birthday, Estelanui!

[whiteling]

*dashes in just in time to wish Estelanui a happy birthday*

Happy Birthday, dear Francesca! :-)

I hope you are having an enjoyable day full of pleasant happenings. *hugs*

And look - those lovely ladies have come, bearing gifts for you:

Comments

[mechtild]

Whiteling, what a great article, and so thorough considering it wasn't that long. I forgot about the three virgins entirely, concentrating on mothers or the three ages. I just love to see the resilience of these symbols, perhaps giving hope that what they stand for or mediate might be just as resilient.

I thought the writer made an important point here, all the more after reading Eisler's book about her reconstructed Neolithic Europe:

There are efforts especially by feministic groups to revive the cult of the Bethen. Representative for those groups is the author Erni Kutter (see bibliography). These groups claim that the Bethen carry features of the Great Mother goddess who was venerated in the originally matriarchal societies across Europe. The female mysteries were then suppressed with the upcoming of male dominated societies and totally eradicated with the arrival of Christianity. Thus, these groups say, the Bethen represent the suppressed original matriarchy and their worship would be an act of female liberation. [...] I acknowledge the existence of gender mysteries, but doubt that the Bethen cult was originally reserved to women. If the Bethen incorporated aspects of the goddess of the land, they did so for everybody.

"If the Bethen [and other forms of the female in people's concept and worship of the divine] incorporated aspects of the goddess of the land, they did so for everybody." That puts the finger on something that has always made me unenthusiastic about the efforts to revive goddess religion or aspects of it. They do so as groups of women, for women, as if the goddesses were only concerned with or presided over the affairs of women and not the world. I'd like to see these feminine aspects of God lifted up, but to do so through most extant women's groups seems to further ghetto-ize, even trivialize the matter, so that it is easily dismissed as "something those nutty [frustrated/faddish/radicalized/you-name-it] women do", romantically dancing around naked trying to recreate pagan rites. As if they were religious equivalents of the red hat ladies (light-hearted social groups for women here, through which women encourage and console each other about getting older).

[whiteling]

I hadn't heard of the 'red hat ladies' before - thanks for giving me that name and info, it sounds good. But yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding the tunnel vision of certain feministic groups, to think the goddess (aka the feminine aspects of God) would belong only women.
Do you remember my post many, many moons ago, in which I reported of the art project of a friend of mine who want people make "Goddesses for Mannheim"? She never ever planned that exclusively women should take part in this action. It was clear that the Mother of the Land IS for everybody.
(I should ask her at the next opportunity how the project is going; it's been a while since I heard from her)

[mechtild]

The red hat ladies must be an American thing. Here's a picture I found of some online:
http://www.adoptasoldierplatoon.org/images/400_queens.jpg

Also, while looking for a photo I found they actually have a website!
http://www.redhatsociety.com/

I can't remember the details of that post, only the fact of it. Let me look it up....
http://whiteling.livejournal.com/19406.html

Ah, the clay work! Yes, what happened with that project?

[whiteling]

Those red hat ladies look as if they had a really good time. :-)
They say on their website that "the red is spreading to all corners of the globe", but so far not to Germany, I'm afraid. ;-) I guess though it will be coming... *puts on red hat*

Mechtild, I was further thinking on the connections that the article above described from the "Bethen" to the Matronae to the holy Virgins. I remembered a Titian painting that almost looks like a Matronesque scenery in christian Renaissance disguise:

http://www.aiwaz.net/panopticon/madonna-with-a-rabbit/gi3808c207
Madonna and Child with St Catherine and a Rabbit

It seems so aptly to the triple goddess topic, as the Matrons' attributes were trees and fruits; the rabbit and the sheep fit in too. And the shepherd could be a worshipper.

(And thanks for excarvating my clay work post! I will let you know what has become of the project so far.)

[mechtild]

That's *excellent*. Yes, at least as illustrated by paintings and sculpture, the roles of these goddesses have simply been subsumed into historical personages of the Christian story. In doing that, the historical personages themselves have been changed, becoming new manifestations of more ancient religious figures, and ancient goddess figures with no Christian counterparts have emerged as wholly legendary saints, whose tales and images carry over their signs and symbols. I always wondered what 'Mary, Queen of Heaven' had to do with the young Jewish girl who bore an infant that, marvellously, would be revealed as the Redeemer. That she was the fulfillment of the biblical "daughter of Zion" - finally faithful to God - I could easily see, and thus the type of the believer. But who was this iconic woman enthroned with her holy child on her lap, who stood on serpents, who ruled the heavens and received the intercessions of millions of people over the millenia, and to whom huge churches were built all over Europe? These studies in art, myth and cultural beginnings tell me what I already knew: that young girl has nothing to do with her. The 'Queen of Heaven' and 'Mother of God' is the Christian face of the older goddess, who keeps emerging, no matter what, continuing to drawing soul and hearts to her in a form acceptable to the prevailing norm.