Göbekli Tepe - The Oldest Temple in the World

[johanna_hypatia]

Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey, is a site now being excavated that bridges the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Dating back to 11,500 BCE, it is the earliest known candidate for the origins of both agriculture and institutional religion. It contains as many as 20 stone circles composed of sculpted megaliths of 10 to 50 tons each.

Göbek is

Comments

[futabachan]

Wow, that's very exciting. Thanks!

[johanna_hypatia]

the image of a woman with wild cats, the "Mistress of Animals."

For a contemporary literary spin on this concept, see "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch" by Neil Gaiman. Now out in comic book form.

[mysticactive]

Thank you so much for sharing this. Anatloian spirituality in every form from ancient to modern has really touched my life and it is now a major theme in my doctoral research. I remember that when I went to Konya to make pilgrimage to Mevlana Rumi's tomb, I was struck by the way that I registered the place. There was the presence of Mevalana of course, but the earth felt so sacred and there was such a powerful Goddess-energy that I had a lucid dream for the first and only time in my life there, as soon as I took a nap after arrival.

More and more I am seeing that an appreciation of these ancient lines of spirituality need not ultimately contradict the basic divine unity that I am cultivating as a dervish. To the contrary, I believe that many more have drawn on the great well of feminine power than we know. I saw evidence of it even in Konya.

[johanna_hypatia]

I remember that when I went to Konya to make pilgrimage to Mevlana Rumi's tomb, I was struck by the way that I registered the place. There was the presence of Mevalana of course, but the earth felt so sacred and there was such a powerful Goddess-energy that I had a lucid dream for the first and only time in my life there, as soon as I took a nap after arrival.

Mevlana shares the Konya Plain with Çatalhöyük... they're practically neighbors. That part of the world is just one civilization built on top of another, on top of another, on top of another... No wonder we're drawn to it, so many human layers all adding up... Loreena McKennitt gave a sense of this in her song "Under a Phrygian Sky" which expresses her feelings about the sweep of human history during a visit to Anatolia.

[mysticactive]

I don't know if I have ever heard that song but I like her. I will look it up. In all of those layers of human experience perhaps we are trying to find ourselves.

[catskillmarina]

Thank you for sharing this with us.

--- M