Was the cult of Great Mother exchanged with Jesus?

Worship can exist without representations, for instance, in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, Cynthia Eller writes:

Originally posted by Louise C Worship can exist without representations, for instance, in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, Cynthia Eller writes:   The worship of relatively invisible male deities accompanied by more visible female deities is a pattern found frequently in ancient times.  The iconography of Mycenean Greek religion is overwhelmingly feminine, but written tablets reveal that a host of additional deities - significantly, male deities - were also worshipped.  Similarly, ancient Mesopotamian art is rife with depictions of Ishtar, who is comparatively rare in texts, while numerous male deities discussed in texts have no visual counterparts.

So, where is the proof of that? If there isn't an image, how can one know that it existed at all? Ishtar was depicted exactly because she was worshiped, not the other way around; besides she is far from "rare" in texts. Ishtar was the one who brought Dumuzi from the underworld, as Isis was the one who brought Osiris to life - they are life-givers, direct continuation of the main function of the mother Goddess - giving life.

Btw, the Greek mythology, even in the Olympic period,  was not male oriented - the supreme god is supposed to be Zeus, but in fact he is not - the supreme deities are the 3 Moiras - the Fates, they spun out, measured and cute the thread of life for everyone, and Zeus in all his glory couldn't do anything against them, and submits to them. And they are female; in fact, they are all aspects on the Great Mother, in her 2 aspects - life and death.

I'm not rooting for totally "matriarchal prehistory", btw; but the facts are that the fertility female deities were well documented all over the Mediterranean and Central Europe - and Gumbitas made a good job collecting all that data, no matter if one agrees with her interpretation or not.

While I respect your choice of a source, for me, /and this is my opinion/ Syntia Eller's book has no academic archeological value, and in fact is ideological. Here some quotes from writers who estimated her work:
"... The author does her best to portray this theory (and for her there is only one) as weird, unfounded, extremist, and its proponents as blithely unconcerned about historical veracity. She says that "fm's" want the theory to be true so badly that they will believe it despite all the evidence. Eller is "appalled by the sheer credulousness they demonstrated toward their very dubious version of what happened in Western prehistory." She implies that the evidence preponderates on the side of neolithic patriarchy, and even asserts that "the matriarchal myth fails completely on historical grounds." but as she gets into the meat of her argument, it turns out to be inconclusive, unproven and (by her own admission) unprovable. [Eller, 6, 81, 13-14]..."

 The fact  is that the "matriarchal society" is a straw men tactic; the reality about the hunter-gatherer's cultures is that they were not matriarchal, not patriarchal, but egalitarian. Eller brands as "matriarchal" any society in which women has any power at all, which is not correct, because:
"...All this polarization and oversimplification avoids the real issue, which is not female domination in a reverse of historical female oppression, but the existence of egalitarian human societies: cultures that did not enforce a patriarchal double standard around sexuality, property, public office and space; that did not make females legal minors under the control of fathers, brothers, and husbands, without protection from physical and sexual abuse by same. We know of many societies that did not confine, seclude, veil, or bind female bodies, nor amputate or deform parts of those bodies. We know, as well, that there have been cultures that accorded women public leadership roles and a range of arts and professions, as well as freedom of movement, speech, and rights to make personal decisions. Many have embraced female personifications of the Divine, neither subordinating them to a masculine god, nor debarring masculine deities...."
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller.html

So, waving the banner of "matriarchal myth" is a straw-man, nothing more. For anyone who read Gumbitas' "Civilization of the Goddess" it's clear that this is an academically loaded archeological book, with factological info one can use no matter what one's opinion of the conclusion is; which, IMHO, cannot be said for the "Myth of the Matriarchal Prehistory" which is not a historical research per se, but consists of interviews of historians by someone who is not a historian, nor an archeologist, but a professor in Women Studies.

Besides, of there is a myth here, this is the myth of the Universal Patriarchy, which seems to Eller's theory:
"...There is nothing in the archaeological record that is at odds with an image of prehistoric life as nasty, brutish, short, and male-dominated. . . [although] it could have been blissful, peaceful, long, and matriarchal. Female and male grave goods of equivalent wealth do not prove that men were not dominant, nor does the absence of weapons of war among the material remains . . . mean that there was no warfare. As a leveling tactic, she throws everyone who has written positively on the subject into the same pot and admits: "I make no distinction between the tenured professor examining cuneiform tablets, the novelist spinning out imaginative fantasies about prehistoric Europe, and the New Age practitioner writing. . .about past lives as a priestess. . ." Conveniently, the voices of respected scholars are disregarded as easily as the most fanciful interpretations by New Age writers. ..."
http://www.belili.org/marija/eller_response.html

Patriarchy is not universal, there are plenty of aboriginal societies that are gender-equal, and there are quite a few matriarchal aboriginal societies, like:
"...My second argument is even bolder: that there are in fact matriarchal societies among contemporary, scientifically observed and documented peoples. These are small societies living in horticulture, nevertheless, they are functional, real human societies with long histories. As stated previously, one example would be enough, but I present here three: the Nagovisi of Bougainvillea in the South Pacific, the Khasi of Meghalaya, India, and the Machinguenga of Peru (Johnson and Johnson 1988)...."
http://www.saunalahti.fi/penelope/Feminism/matriarchy.html

So, here it is - equally gendered societies existed and exist even now, so, what is the logic in saying that they never existed in the European prehistory, and hence they were a myth? Again, it is accepted that patriarchal societies started forming with the advent of the agriculture; and this book http://books.google.com/books?id=qcSsoJ0IXawC&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false  states that women became property on men exactly because of their high economic value. This doesn't mean that the societies before that point were "matriarchal" per se - they had gender equality because they were living on the edge of subsistance, there wasn't much surplus to go on - and the Native American societies before the advent of the Europeans were in the same category of gender equality. In fact, some European women who were abducted by Native Americans liked this so much, that after being saved from them, and returned to the patriarchal conditions of the "white women" they ran back to the Narive Americans, or plainly refused to be "saved" from them.

Here is a link to parts of anthropological textbook that deals with maitrilinearity /and patrilinearity, really, but this is besides the point/ and gives examples of such sociaties.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kF-_Pe5WX6UC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=matrilineal+aboriginal+societies&source=bl&ots=TJpswYtlOU&sig=Z81k2I9JW6ufPqi4mDI2iZh4H5k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=obw5T5SXN8bkiALL4O32BQ&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=matrilineal%20aboriginal%20societies&f=false

Anyway, I have no desire to derail this thread - it's about the Great-Mother/Female-Fertility-Goddess cult and it's possible effects on Christianity, not about did the former existed or not - so we are discussing the possibility that it existed; if you want to discuss the supposition that it didn't exist, it will be better if you open a thread on that.


Edited by Don Quixote - 13-Feb-2012 at 21:18

I came upon an article on Cleopatra in the July 2011 issue of the National Geographic, it's about a archeology amateur, Kathleen  Martinez, having a theory that Cleopatra is buried in Taposiris Magna. Anyway, 2 things from the article got my attention:
1. Cleopatra was identifying herself with Isis
"...By Cleopatra's time a cult around the goddess Isis had been spreading across the Mediterranean for hundreds of years. To fortify her position, and like other queens before her, Cleopatra sought to link her identity with the great Isis (and Mark Antony's with Osiris), and to be venerated as a goddess. She had herself depicted in portraits and statues as the universal mother divinity...."
"... It was Cleopatra's intense identification with Isis, and her royal role as the manifestation of the great goddess of motherhood, fertility and magic, that ultimately led Kathleen Martinez to taposiris Magna..."

2. She was playing out the story of Isis and Osiris with herself and Anthony:
"..."What brought me to the conclusion that Taposiris Magna was a possible place for Cleopatra's hidden tomb was the idea that her death was a ritual act of deep religious significance carried out in a very strict, spiritualized ceremony," Martinez says. "Cleopatra negotiated with Octavian to allow her to bury Mark Antony in Egypt. She wanted to be buried with him because she wanted to reenact the legend of Isis and Osiris. The true meaning of the cult of Osiris is that it grants immortality. After their deaths, the gods would allow Cleopatra to live with Antony in another form of existence, so they would have eternal life together."..."
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/cleopatra/brown-text/2

Her identification with Isis also provided a connection with Rome, teh cult of Isis by this time being spread all over the Mediterranean, so identificatyion with Isis meant identification with the other aspects of the Mother Goddess, like Venus:
"...The manner in which Cleopatra attempted to identify herself with Isis was simple, if ostentatious.  An inscription dated to 51 BCE in modern Armant tells of the young queen: “the queen, the Lady of the Two Lands, the goddess who loves her father, rowed the Bull in the barge of Amon to Hermonthis.”  Egyptian tradition holds that only the reincarnation of Isis was permitted to row the scared bull-god Buchis to replace a deceased bull.  The next major link between the queen and the goddess came from an unlikely source,  Julius Caesar.  Upon returning to Rome from a sojourn in Alexandria, Caesar installed a golden bust of Cleopatra in the temple of Venus.  As Venus was the earthly representative of Isis, a chain of association between the three women had been established for Cleopatra to exploit. ..."
http://www.wfu.edu/history/StudentWork/students/mongelli-burns/goddess.html

So, it was as a manifestation of the Mother-Goddess that Cleopatra saw himself and most likely this was the way she was seen by her subjects and others; this was a move with both  political and spiritual reasons and repercussions. This would be useless if the image and the cult of Mother  Goddess wasn't extremely strong and potent in the time and place we are talking about.




Edited by Don Quixote - 14-Feb-2012 at 23:36

You got an answer from Zahi Hawass? That's cool, I would think that he would be less approachable than her, after all she is not exactly a leading Egyptologist, or even a professional archeologist. Hawass takes lots of fire for some of his views, but I kinda like him. Maybe because he looks just like my grandfather



Edited by Don Quixote - 15-Feb-2012 at 02:00

Sorry,here is our Great Mother,project and Egyptian view of Life!

Ka=feature(also character)!NaVNKa=You Offer from decency feature!At least one!Smile or Salute!Man without Ka was equal with Dead one!
Ba=service?Give me words with Ba in Origins!


Edited by medenaywe - 15-Feb-2012 at 04:47

Respected Louise,all cults are built over signs&symbols!The First Her symbols are all around us!Image&other presentations were forbidden with commandments inside Book Of Death!On it came further idolatry hunts in Christianity also.You can find Her here as"+" or "-" meaning,who knows:

Someone had modified "I"=The First Her" in letter that could be first letter of pejorative word today!


Edited by medenaywe - 15-Feb-2012 at 08:23

Originally posted by Louise C If the virgin Mary had been a substitute for some 'Great Goddess' cult, one would have expected to find evidence of this in early Christianity, but instead the cult of the Virgin doesn't seem to have become prominent until Christianity had been well established for hundreds of years.

Christianity deified an ordinary woman with the features of any Mother-Goddess that had been around tor centuries, like "virgin birth" /mythical and unrealistic, hence it couldn't have been done for any rational reason/; why would that be neccessary if not to fulfill  the need to return the holistic Mother-Goddess in Christianity and hence to fulfill the Jungian need of cultural archetype of the mother?

There is plenty of info on the Virgin Mary being the Mother-Goddess, like those  http://www.testimony-magazine.org/back/jun2004/benson1.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Virgin-Mary-Mother-Goddess-Times/dp/0977708349

This is the same process in which pagan god and goddesses were transformed in Christian saints - like Dionysus in the orthodox St. Trifon, and the Celtic Mother-goddess Brigit in the Catholic St. Brigit. One can come up with more examples, but those are telling enough.




Edited by Don Quixote - 16-Feb-2012 at 02:59

Yes, this gesture doesn't make any rational sense otherwise. Btw, this gesture is so archetypal, that even my grandma who was the staunchest communist-and-militaristic-atheist and prided herself of never entering a church in her life made this gesture when my mother had an accident and was in the hospital. This gesture is burned in the back on out hypothalamus, and we do it no matter religious or not, and there is a reason for that - cultural archetyping, following a model that had been around for millenia, and adopted by many religions exactly because it's so part of us, no matter if we realize it or not.

Which picture do you mean?