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The Modern Antiquarian Forum » "The" Goddess |
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 08, 2003, 16:04
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I'm sure that most here would agree that it is historically inaccurate to speak of "The" Goddess. Such talk implies a monotheistic way of thought when one of the defining characteristics of paganism (that is historical paganism from the stone age not neo-paganism) is pantheism. Established archaeological opinion suggests that the deities of stone-age people were local - that each tribe had its gods and that those gods were different to those of neighbouring tribes. The ancient world, in all likelihood, had a vast multitude of deities - a far cry from talk of "The" Goddess. Yet I believe that there is a sense in which it is meaningful to speak of "The" Goddess. Its well known that the people of the ancient world understood that there were a great many similarities between the gods of various tribes. Look at the Romans, for instance, who set up their altars in Britain on the sites of previous (native) temples and altars. A great many Roman altars feature the name of a British deity on one side and the name of a Roman deity on the other in recognition of the fact that both deities were in fact the same, just called by different names. I'm always banging on about how its important, when it comes to the gods, to distinguish between the symbol and the thing symbolised. It's my view that confusion over this issue muddies the waters in the debate surrounding "The" Goddess. If you look at the symbols alone then it is, of course, meaningless to speak of "The" Goddess of the stone age - there are millions of such symbols, such goddesses. But if you look beyond the various symbols then it becomes much easier to argue that the thing symbolised in many ways always remains the same. Is "The" Goddess a metaphor, an archetype, that lives in the human brain? Is talk of "The" Goddess, whilst nonsensical in an historical context, meaningful in a psychological one?
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Rhiannon 5291 posts |
Jul 08, 2003, 16:48
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TomBo, I think you're so right when you speak about people confusing the symbol and the archetype. I think probably there's been a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness over the centuries as a result of this. In my youthful 'Richard Dawkins knows everything' phase I chucked out the idea of the 'collective unconscious' without even looking into it, assuming it just meant some dodgy inherited information or a mystical etheric library, I just poohpoohed it and didn't think about it for the last ten years. Recently I picked up an inspiring picture-stuffed book of essays by Jung and his colleagues, and the penny dropped. In fact, if anything the whole idea of the collective unconscious dripping with rich archetypes and symbolism is (to my mind) utterly Darwinian - perhaps it's the accumulated instincts of the human brain, distilled as we evolved. Of course we're all human, so we're bound to share fundamental understanding of profoundly important concepts about life and death. Well that's my current idea at least. So to get to the point, I undoubtedly think we (in this culture and in cultures around the world over time) are likely to have an idea of 'the goddess' - or rather, the symbol of 'the' goddess, but that this is just a symbol of an underlying wealth of meaning underneath it relating to femaleness and birth and shoeshopping etc. When people jumped on the post-druid bandwagon and came up with all this 'prehistoric goddess' stuff they probably did unearth lots of evidence for people respecting and acknowledging a creative female aspect to life which was squashed with the rise of christianity and good for them, but perhaps like (I think) you're saying, maybe they missed the point a bit and saw the symbol and not the symbolised. I don't think that's contributed much to a discussion but it's made my mind fractionally clearer! Sorry!
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Shestu 373 posts |
Jul 08, 2003, 17:34
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I really hope I don't end up regretting a post here! I feel that the goddessES had specialties and each aspect was called upon for different tasks. Though I currently am of the mind that it was within the framework of "The" feminine Archetype whatever people prefer to call it.
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Jul 08, 2003, 22:12
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I would say that you've just said what I've been saying all along, but without the frustration :-) Thank TomBo! Dem Romans: There are many contemporary Roman texts that talk of things like: In Gaul they have statues at cross roads of one of their gods that is like Apollo (a chicken?), so we'll erect a temple to him there! The Romans were very good at assimulating (resistance is futile) the gods of the folks they conquered.
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Shestu 373 posts |
Jul 08, 2003, 22:29
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I do not know what Cope or anyone else has stated about a world wide Mother Goddess.... or however it was stated. I would like to think that female artifacts carvings etc., were held as sacred because they symbolized the ability to create new life. I don't know about any of you but I still marvel at the magic of a new born child, a tiny seed becoming a new born plant, tree etc. Seems to me that some divine intervention orchestrated it. I hope there was a reverence about hovering between life and death. Since I and my son almost died while trying to birth him, I always wonder how many women or children died in this process. (Could be talking shite and they knew how to perform a C-section.) Could it be that this is the reason for these figurines all over the world in one form or another. By the way I currently believe in past and future lives... Don't believe that anyone who wants to experience birthing a child has not been able, in one life or another. I think this is just the cloak I am wearing this time around. Namaste Shestu
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pure joy 334 posts |
Jul 08, 2003, 22:46
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I can just about follow the two posts - which I'm quite proud of because I know little about this, but like to read about new things. And I rememebr the collective unconscious from my O/A level Pyschology (there's a sort of pun in there somewhere). Ok, so this isn't much of a post, but I'm learning....which is good.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jul 09, 2003, 08:26
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I have a profound level of ignorance in these matters, as She knows. As usual, this doesn’t inhibit me from offering my tuppence worth, which is this: First, a Pan-European Mother Goddess, or thousands of local deities? Doesn’t the former pre-suppose a sustained Pan-European culture involving a high level of communication or even control, sufficient to stifle the natural human tendency to splinter locally? Could such a thing have existed? If so, apart from the obvious lack of evidence of a power centre and means to sustain close control, why is there evidence that other aspects of culture varied greatly? A Pan-European theocratic dictatorship imposed on self governing communities? A Pope of the Stones? Secondly, local deities tend to be similar, and female – why? It’s possible to dismiss this as evidence that they were local variants of a universally held belief, by substituting another thought – that “folks are just folks”. Doesn’t the earth hold itself up as female in every way – creator, sustainer, protector? Wouldn’t this be self-evident to people everywhere? Wouldn’t the thought be reinforced by the fact that landscape itself is self-evidently female?
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 09, 2003, 14:22
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Thanks Rhiannon - that's put a slightly different perspective on this for me. I hadn't thought of the way that symbols can refer to other symbols. Here's what I mean... Take any picture of a deity - let's say a picture of Horus, ancient Egypt's hawk-headed god. This picture of Horus (discovered on a dusty temple wall, you know) is a symbol. What is it a symbol of? Of an archetype in the subconscious mind. I would take it one step further than that, though. This Horus-like archetype in the subconscious mind (shall we call it the sky-god archetype?) is itself a symbol. What does it symbolise? This is the bit that really interests me - it symbolises a power, a law of nature, at work in the universe around us. Such symbolic images in our minds are our inner representation of the world around us (we humans have a mysterious and ineradicable capacity for mythologising the world we live in). They are the place where our inner world meets the world we live in.
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Jul 09, 2003, 14:41
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Mankind's desire to label or symbolise everything is its own worst trait. Why do we do it? Why can we not accept things as just *being so*? Anything else just complicates things unnecessarily. And because of this you will never find the Tao :-)
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cHARLIE 2607 posts |
Jul 09, 2003, 14:44
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I knew you were one of them I just knew it! Yali-agnosTic-dick*
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