Images of the goddesses

Images of goddesses, clothed child, sleeping Lady, Fishman, Trinity of childbird, Madonna

I saw pater Arseni in Valamo Karelia, which is a Greek orthodox monastery in Finland. He is an artist and he paints icons. When finishing an icon he compared the image with her own in a mirror. It is of course easier to paint with a living model and he happens to look like our general image of Jesus ... When I truly mirror myself the mirror is nature itself and it is my other part. Nowadays it hurts too much, when I feel humankind is torturing nature.

Other had an amulet in a string around the neck. Malta Siberia approximately 15000 years old and it could have been made to day. The Sumerian literature and sagas about the beginning of civilisation may seem naive and primitive. In fact many people are found of fairy tales and sagas. I suppose it is the kind and gentle world and the simple life and the happy end. Then there is often the clear wisdom as sense of moral that is everlasting.

In my youth I very fast experienced that fight is a very hard work and still one has the peace talk afterwards. Being friends at once is far easier. In our days it seems to be the American way to first have a fight. I suppose it is the lack of friendly words and manners in the primitive American society. Last time I noticed it was when I heard that they convict children for crimes that are adults' responsibility.

However, the Sumerians were least of all primitive and dumb. When one goes deep in their literature and methods, the picture is that they were highly clever, wise and wily. The evidence is of course all they invented that are the essential matters in civilisation time division, language, myths and so on.

Sumerian texts inspire my animation as well as what we may find of symbolic figures from the early days. Amulets and figurines usually are personal and supposed to be gifts to a beloved or as magic symbols. Here I mean for an example the magic when waiting a child. One cannot just wait but want some symbol and magic that it all might go on successfully. Icons and idols of society are much more sacred. We have to understand that behind carvings, relief and other pictures is an assembly inferring a common decision. What should be the motive in common places like caves, passage graves and many rock carvings are questions for an assembly.

In early days before the Bronze Age we may expect a ritual society and what we see are ritual laws and sacred icons symbolising the important principles in their society. That is easy to understand when we have ancient temples and understand it at once. It is not that easy in simpler caves and passage graves or at open rocks. We have to understand the message in their icons.

A naked woman as icon is something more than a sexual symbol. If you are a real lover, you want to give your coat to her. From my youth I remember how caring and big I felt when I wrapped my coat around my lass a normal cold evening in spring.

Lady Madeleine, the naked is sleeping in a cave in France and at Malta is found a sleepy lady too. Thus, the Naked is an urge to clothe her. In sacred words it is the principle of humanity and in analogy soon the caring for all naked on Earth. Fertility was soon connected even to the new moon. Perhaps because the waters in herbs rise during new moons and the herbs make a jump of growth if other needed conditions are present.

Besides the naked is the clothed child almost the same urge. It means that we have to clothe the child as a negative logic compared to the naked. It is the dualism we often see as an example when Celts have a reverse word order or the Spanish use negative logic in their languages. Here in Sweden the northern dialects sometimes start a sentence as "No, that you love me?" thus urging for a positive answer.

When I puzzled together my story about the sacred idols of the Old World, I compared the European figures with fragments in the Sumerian literature. I found that the sleeping lady in the Underworld is the mother of Ninazu, the orphan without clothes and left to take care of.

On Malta is a collection of fragments of iconic statues and some reliefs. The civilisation is about the same age as Carnac, i.e. fifth and fourth millenniums BC. We can describe them as the Naked, the Clothed, the Sleeping, the Nurse, the Pastor, the Snake, the Tree, the Urn. Some of them have directly their parallel in sky and we can connect them to the myth of the growing season and the Urn as the store. To these we may add the invisible lady in the underground. In a handmade temple is an arrangement like an ear probably that of the Sibyl. There folk could get an answer from the oracle.  

Not easy to be god

In Lappland the Sames had normally four goddesses. One was old mama Earth and the others were trinity of childbirth. The Midwife holds the delivering woman in her arms, as the normal was to sit on the heels and give birth. The second was "partera" as they say in Spanish and she took the baby and parted her from the mother and what else has to be done at the moment.

The third was the watching one also called light woman standing at the door. She gave the child small gifts. If a boy it was a small arrow and a bow that he may at once know the man's world. If a girl she got a little ring to look thorough to the otherworld which mostly was world of men. We also know these three from the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian world and sometimes with other duties than childbirth.

Sources to knowledge are place-names and words still in use. One language is not enough so we have to look at whole Europe if we want a clear picture. In Danish and Norse they call the midwife = earth-mother, in Swedish child-mother, in German hebamma (that is to lift) and in Spain is another word comadre or help-mother.

The Danish word brings us to the very roots and is a parallel to the icon Mother Earth. On rock carvings they normally show the Mother Earth with a big cupmark as the vulva of the earth. The three other wives are in the sky the Virgin, the Scale and the Scorpio with other names in different languages the three summer moons.

To his we may add the idea of the godmother a sort of parallelism that was usual in the thinking in the Celtic-Scandinavian society. The first word "god" brings us long back. In reality they meant that the idea god is another world that becomes real if the parents die. Then the godparents take the responsibility of the child. They had an unspoken Otherworld as a parallel to the real world. Not far from Christianity as I remember my Danish grandma often talking with her God.

Ah, Mankind!

Now we may connect the latest known idols with those known from Southern Europe and also Egypt and Sumer as the best sources. From Egypt we have probably got "The Mother and Child" or Isis with Horus (that is the new Time). Her stars were Aurigae and the Child was the three stars below Capella. Her myth has the motive that she is searching and we find it in place-names in Denmark as an example.

Sumer gave us Inanna the Moon Maid with her other aspect the Virgin and in early myths her sister Erehskigal in the underworld. In the Aegean world we see two women with a child and we may suggest that it is a parallel to the Inanna myth. Although Inanna/Ishtar was the first known city goddess of Uruk. However her myth was so strong that it becomes the main myth in the Old World including Europe. Her aspect is the woman ready to give birth and she purified every spring for a new season and to give birth.

Observe virgin does not stand for innocence but for "ready and pure to give birth" as the main role for woman and nature was to give birth. It was pure rationalism that they had only one myth of fertility for man, animal, crops and the whole nature.

There are songs of Inanna, Ishtar and Isis and good pictures of early mothers. She also digs up unknown women out of history like the Queen Boudica of Celts that gathered people to give the Romans the biggest defeat in England