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QuoteReplyTopic: Was there ever a Mother-Goddess society? Posted: 26-Nov-2008 at 17:37
My point was that the male role in reproduction was not recognized in any mainstream religion (hence, in public opinion) until sometime after the beginning of the mother goddess agricultural society some 11,000 years ago. It most likely arose among the herding people who developed their Gimbutas-described male-god, male-fertility religion more like 8,000 years ago. The patriarchal-monogamous (sort-of) societies that began some 5,000 years ago all recognized the male role!
Arguably the male role in reproduction was known but often considered less important. And as we are it, it's worth checking the ancient Egyptian cosmogony where Nut was the mother goddess of the sky, while Geb was the male god of the earth ( http://www.tulane.edu/~danny/shu.gif Geb and Nut separated by Shu, a god of air).
I agree at large with the above considerations on agriculture and woman's role, however that's only a part of that society. It was a society where magic (religion) played a big role, and in that respect women could easily compete with men (probably even often getting the upper hand, that text from Pliny deals mostly woman's menstruation and nudity)
My take on the prehistory is that the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, India civilizations were based on a new patriarchal system that had a balance of female gods as well as a sort of father god (sun god). I see it as resulting from the herders out in the land too dry for agriculture who adopted the male god concept and grew powerful on an all-male panthion. They grew strong enough to feudalize much of the mother goddes beliving system. This evolved into the religion-bonded societies of Egypt and the others.
I consider all belief including magic as part of their beliefs system and that includes its technology. The female god who they thought punished them if they planted seeds at the wrong depth was the whole bases for their technology. To them, it was the cause and effect of agriculture. In our time, scientific belief is the technology of our secular belief system (but merged---compromised by---the old religions).
Since, IN THE MAINSTREAM, the male role in reproduction was still unknown, this meant the men had very little status left.
That's a good observation and I think there's something to it. They didn't entirely misunderstand it ... they seemed to know men played some part ... but I don't think they understood the actual process, if you look at the religious beliefs (eg Dumuzi etc) it seems more like they thought males made women fertile, rather than directly pregnant. The latter seems to have been seen as something that happened by itself when women reached a sufficient level of fertility.
We can say that the idea of male fertility evolved. It appeared with animal husbandry but was subversive to the mother-goddess female-fertility system and the tight control it would have had on public opinion. Instead, it developed with the people who provided meat to the agricultural fem-fertility societies. These herding people were Gimbutas's "Kurgans" who developed the opposite idea to the female religion. They figured they produced babies and that the women just incubated them for them! This would be the logical extreme except also that the Alpha males had all the best women. The rest had none!
I have a personal opinion, on purely aesthetic grounds, that 'earth mother' dominated religions are associated with cultures that develop in settled river regions where populations are (relatively) dense, while 'sky father' dominated religions develop in less inhabited regions, whether that results from a desert environment, a mountainous one or a nomadic one.
Of course you get mixtures, especially where sky father 'barbarians' invade and conquer earth mother 'civilisations' (only in their turn to be assimilated).
Anyone know a 'sky mother' or 'earth father' culture? Even the phrases sound odd to the ear.
My take on the prehistory is that the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, India civilizations were based on a new patriarchal system that had a balance of female gods as well as a sort of father god (sun god). I see it as resulting from the herders out in the land too dry for agriculture who adopted the male god concept and grew powerful on an all-male panthion. They grew strong enough to feudalize much of the mother goddes beliving system. This evolved into the religion-bonded societies of Egypt and the others.
I consider all belief including magic as part of their beliefs system and that includes its technology. The female god who they thought punished them if they planted seeds at the wrong depth was the whole bases for their technology. To them, it was the cause and effect of agriculture. In our time, scientific belief is the technology of our secular belief system (but merged---compromised by---the old religions).
As I hope you noticed in my earlier reply, the Egyptian cosmology has the gender roles in reverse, the sky god is female while the chtonic god is male.
It's worth to note that the Egyptian Nile god, Hapi was somehow hermaphrodite: male with breasts (I assume the latter a symbol of fertility)
My take on the prehistory is that the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, India civilizations were based on a new patriarchal system that had a balance of female gods as well as a sort of father god (sun god). I see it as resulting from the herders out in the land too dry for agriculture who adopted the male god concept and grew powerful on an all-male panthion. They grew strong enough to feudalize much of the mother goddes beliving system. This evolved into the religion-bonded societies of Egypt and the others.
I consider all belief including magic as part of their beliefs system and that includes its technology. The female god who they thought punished them if they planted seeds at the wrong depth was the whole bases for their technology. To them, it was the cause and effect of agriculture. In our time, scientific belief is the technology of our secular belief system (but merged---compromised by---the old religions).
As I hope you noticed in my earlier reply, the Egyptian cosmology has the gender roles in reverse, the sky god is female while the chtonic god is male.
It's worth to note that the Egyptian Nile god, Hapi was somehow hermaphrodite: male with breasts (I assume the latter a symbol of fertility)
Nut was goddess of the sky, but then Diana was the goddess of the Moon (which is often seen as female, though not in Egypt). The dominant Egyptian sky figure is Ra, Nut's grandfather.
The major Egyptian divinity ultimately however is Isis, who fits the earth goddess role pretty perfectly, as I wold expect in a densely populated river culture.
'Chthonic', whatever its etymology, pertains to the underworld, not the earth. In Egypt the chief figure associated with the underworld is Osiris, who is male, but that is also common. He is certainly not an 'earth father'.
Graham, I don't think I'm in mood to always engage with your personal and often misunderstood concepts (like you proved earlier in the thread with the anthropology). Chthonic pertains to the underworld and the earth (etymologically related to being in the earth, not just at the surface). Demeter or Gaia are also chthonic gods. If you really have read those scholars you listed earlier you should have known that.
Nut was a mother goddess, for she gave birth to all stars and to several important gods (Isis, Osiris, Set). The Nut and Geb couple is paralleled in Greek mythology with Uranus and Gaia. The Roman Diana was a virgin, a goddess of the moon, of the wild nature, of the hunt, but also of chastity, she has nothing to do with motherhood.
To hopefully anticipate and clarify other terminological issues, I''ll use an article accesible via JStor: Susan Tower Hollis, "Women of Ancient Egypt and the Sky Goddess Nut" in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 398, 1987. At page 497 it can be read "Nut is not envisioned as a chthonic deity as are virtually all mother goddesses".
I have a personal opinion, on purely aesthetic grounds, that 'earth mother' dominated religions are associated with cultures that develop in settled river regions where populations are (relatively) dense, while 'sky father' dominated religions develop in less inhabited regions, whether that results from a desert environment, a mountainous one or a nomadic one.
Of course you get mixtures, especially where sky father 'barbarians' invade and conquer earth mother 'civilisations' (only in their turn to be assimilated).
Anyone know a 'sky mother' or 'earth father' culture? Even the phrases sound odd to the ear.
The religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt had several thousand different gods each. The top Egyptian gods were sun gods. In some of the Mesopotamian lore, the old mother goddess was represented by the moon. After all, it revolved around a 28 day (menstrual) cycle! The name "Allah" came from the pre-Islamic goddess of the moon. That explains why the faith is represented by the star and crescent (moon). The most sacred Muslim temple is the Khaba and in its wall is the "black stone" which is revered above all and kissed by those who circle around it by the tens of thousands if not millions annually. It has a cleft in it that seems to have represented to the pre-Islamic people the female sexual cleft (vagina). That is why when the cleft enlarged and the stone broke into, they glued and wired it back together.
Remind me not to write this sort of thing about old religions! I have done it about Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism as well. I make too many enemies! You ought see what I wrote about Marxism!
The name "Allah" came from the pre-Islamic goddess of the moon. That explains why the faith is represented by the star and crescent (moon). The most sacred Muslim temple is the Khaba and in its wall is the "black stone" which is revered above all and kissed by those who circle around it by the tens of thousands if not millions annually. It has a cleft in it that seems to have represented to the pre-Islamic people the female sexual cleft (vagina). That is why when the cleft enlarged and the stone broke into, they glued and wired it back together.
You are mistaken there....the crescent was not an early Muslim symbol but was made so by the Turks who conquered a large chunk of the Muslim world.
And Allah was one of the important deities of pagan Arabia, made to the one God by Mohamed.
I don't have a clue about what you claim about Kaaba though. Care to provide a link or source?
In some of the Mesopotamian lore, the old mother goddess was represented by the moon. After all, it revolved around a 28 day (menstrual) cycle!
But moon and menstruation were related (even etymologically, int Latin menstruus, -a, -um was an adjective meaning 'monthly'), though not all moon goddesses were mother goddesses, being assigned later with this role (like I said earlier Artemis/Diana was a virgin!)
2nd century is ... about 8000 years after the transition to agriculture! It's closer to our time than it is to the very earliest agricultural groups, much closer.
In physical time yes, in mentality who can say?
However, as I argued further and if I understand correctly RedClay too, menstruation is easy to notice (or perhaps even anticipate) and easy to associate with fertility. When the primitive man acknowledged that pregnancy is related to menstruation, then the fertility of women became a certainty as image, as symbol, as concept.
And as a side note, in agriculture shouldn't the seed get planted in a fertile soil for a good crop?
I don't doubt they understood the menstrual cycle at all, but did they understand that semen was seed - or did they think it was more like watering the soil?
Anyone know a 'sky mother' or 'earth father' culture? Even the phrases sound odd to the ear.
Japan. Amaterasu is the sun goddess, and the head of the Shinto pantheon. I have to say, I'm not at all sold on the sky-male-husbandry/earth-female-agriculture dichotomy. It seems a little too clean and ideological a way of defining ancient societies.
I don't doubt they understood the menstrual cycle at all, but did they understand that semen was seed - or did they think it was more like watering the soil?
I honestly do not know. But as in some ancient societies we find also male patrons of earth and even agricultural fertility, it may be that sometimes male's semen was regarded to be more than just watering.
And of course, we must not fall in the trap to consider all deities as purely human males or females. Sometimes gods were androgyne, hermaphrodyte, or only partially anthropomorphized.
Anyone know a 'sky mother' or 'earth father' culture? Even the phrases sound odd to the ear.
Japan. Amaterasu is the sun goddess, and the head of the Shinto pantheon. I have to say, I'm not at all sold on the sky-male-husbandry/earth-female-agriculture dichotomy. It seems a little too clean and ideological a way of defining ancient societies.
I think it presents an accurate picture of the time because it was a way for them to explain agriculture which developed from "gathering" (hunting/gathering) and a woman-fertility thing.
It should been thought of as an ideology which explained agriculture to them; it was logical to them for what they knew then. Thus, it encased their major technology just as hunting and herding developed male-god ideologies that explained and hence encased their technology, that of hunting and/or herding. These were early ideological steps up in the chain of social evolution that has brought the human race to where it is today.
I honestly do not know. But as in some ancient societies we find also male patrons of earth and even agricultural fertility, it may be that sometimes male's semen was regarded to be more than just watering.
Well, most of these early agrarian civilizations with the cyclical deities are in flood plains, and usually the male fertility deities are associated with, of course, the flood. Enki, for instance. Note also that the Sumerian word for water - simply, "a" - is the same as the word for semen.
And of course, we must not fall in the trap to consider all deities as purely human males or females. Sometimes gods were androgyne, hermaphrodyte, or only partially anthropomorphized.
Well that's quite true, there are even some hermaphrodytic (or, more accurately, dual-gender) fertility deities. But it's possible that this is just an intermediate stage, as female fertility deities are transformed into male deities (case in point: Centeotl, who went from female, to dual aspect, to fully male)
Graham, I don't think I'm in mood to always engage with your personal and often misunderstood concepts (like you proved earlier in the thread with the anthropology).
Then don't. I was very careful to write "for purely aesthetic reasons". So if you want to criticise do so on aesthetic grounds.
Chthonic pertains to the underworld and the earth (etymologically related to being in the earth, not just at the surface). Demeter or Gaia are also chthonic gods. If you really have read those scholars you listed earlier you should have known that.
I don't agree that Demeter/Gaia were chthonic goddesses. Or, if you want to use chthonic in that broad sense, then you need another term for the gods and goddesses of the underworld - 'chthonic' in the normal sense.
If you want to claim Persephone as chthonic you have a better case.
Nut was a mother goddess, for she gave birth to all stars and to several important gods (Isis, Osiris, Set).
Agreed, but you miss the point. She was never the dominant figure in the Egyptian pantheon, the way Isis became.
The Nut and Geb couple is paralleled in Greek mythology with Uranus and Gaia. The Roman Diana was a virgin, a goddess of the moon, of the wild nature, of the hunt, but also of chastity, she has nothing to do with motherhood.
Which is exactly why I quoted her.
To hopefully anticipate and clarify other terminological issues, I''ll use an article accesible via JStor: Susan Tower Hollis, "Women of Ancient Egypt and the Sky Goddess Nut" in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 398, 1987. At page 497 it can be read "Nut is not envisioned as a chthonic deity as are virtually all mother goddesses".
I don't have JSTOR. Hollis is noted for a feminist approach to interpreting subjects like sovereignty but that probably isn't relevant to this particular quote. I just think she isn't using 'chthonic' properly. There's a major distinction between gods/goddesses of the underworld and gods/goddesses of earth and fertility, and this use of 'chthonic' is failing to draw it.
Then don't. I was very careful to write "for purely aesthetic reasons". So if you want to criticise do so on aesthetic grounds.
There are no such approach on archaeology and anthropology like "aesthetic". They are scholarly fields, they are disciplines. Either you understand what they are about, or you don't.
Besides, scripta manent. You didn't write such a thing as you claim now (search the thread!), however you ludicrously claimed the following:
"That's not so true of Gimbutas, who had a respectable career as an archaeologist, but I'm unaware that she did any significant work as an anthropologist"
"Incidentally I tend to think of anthropologists as people who study existing peoples and archaeologists as people who study extinct ones. I accept though that's a personal view, albeit one I think useful."
Therefore my criticism is correct, you used a personal concept of yours ("personal view" in your own wording) which shows rather a misunderstanding. It may be useful for you, but this thread is not about you and how you understand things, but about mother goddesses.
I don't agree that Demeter/Gaia were chthonic goddesses. Or, if you want to use chthonic in that broad sense, then you need another term for the gods and goddesses of the underworld - 'chthonic' in the normal sense.
If you want to claim Persephone as chthonic you have a better case.
You don't know what chtonic means, therefore you can't say what sense is normal or not. Demeter was also known as Chthonia! See below for more scholarly references on chthonic.
Agreed, but you miss the point. She was never the dominant figure in the Egyptian pantheon, the way Isis became.
You're the one missing my point (it was my position which you attacked). Our dialogue was roughly: Me: Nut was mother goddess You: But she wasn't a dominant goddess.
Which is exactly why I quoted her.
And I argued that was irrelevant to the topic at hand. Nut was a mother goddess, Diana wasn't.
I don't have JSTOR. Hollis is noted for a feminist approach to interpreting subjects like sovereignty but that probably isn't relevant to this particular quote. I just think she isn't using 'chthonic' properly. There's a major distinction between gods/goddesses of the underworld and gods/goddesses of earth and fertility, and this use of 'chthonic' is failing to draw it.
And I am sure you don't know what chthonic means. I didn't intend to draw such distinction (it was my remark, I know infinitely better than you what I meant), only to present the difference sky gods vs earth gods. And if you have doubts that an author misses the point because of feminism, let's browse some more scholars, shall we?
http://books.google.com/books?id=YxKlRxXsY58C&pg=PA135 "Geb was the chief earth god and the mate of the sky goddess Nut. [...] Like other chthonic deities, Geb could be a terrifying god, responsible for destructive earthquakes"
http://books.google.com/books?id=_tMUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA84 "According to the Hesiodean tradition the child-Zeus was brought up by Gaia who took him from Rhea and kept him in a deep cave. It does not seem necessary to insist that Gaia, being chthonic, and not Rhea, should be his real mother."
http://books.google.com/books?id=cvSiWE0KQsYC&pg=PA47 "The Minoan god with whom the Hellenic Zeus was identified was doubtless a chthonic god of generation and fertility, the divine son and consort of the great Cretan earth-goddess"
http://books.google.com/books?id=kWU33X4gPmUC&pg=PA164 "A majority of scholars agree that Saturn must at some time have been a chthonic deity, somehow connected with agriculture, and more specifically with the corn harvest. According to some of them his chthonic nature involved more gloomy aspects as well: connections with death and the underworld."
http://books.google.com/books?id=vcMUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA73 "In matriarchal religion the [...] chthonic, Demetriac element predominates ..." "All this was influenced by the female tendency towards adopting chthonic cults and insisting on the connection between woman and Mother Earth."
http://books.google.com/books?id=pSdaNuIaUUEC&pg=RA1-PA410 "... worship of chthonic deities such as Mother Earth ..." "Conversely, the chthonic deities frequently combine two functions in primarily agrarian cultures: they control the harvest, thus granting wealth, and they are also the masters of the dead who have been laid to rest in the earth."
http://books.google.com/books?id=1-es5ErSgkUC&pg=PA146 "The worship of chthonic deities, especially the godess Demeter, by native wives was an important part of the societal melding in many Greek colonies and Cyrene was no exception. Chthonic divinites typically have a wide-range of agrarian and funerary interests"
http://books.google.com/books?id=Qm8lsx9L_coC&pg=PA90 "Deities whose functions included the earth itself (such as agriculture), or whose functions involved the dead, were considered chthonic. Thus Demeter, too, had a chthonic aspect as a fertility goddess, since seeeds are planted in the earth and were seen as representing death and renewal (burial and rebirth), and so she was sometimes referred to as Chthonia. And deities who dwelled in the underworld and rarely ventured outside it are regularly referred to as chthonic."
From JStor, I will quote also from Arthur Fairbanks, "The Chthonic Gods of Greek Religion" published in The American Journal of Philology, 21.3/1900. Fairbanks tries to impose a more restrictive usage of the adjective "chthonic" to some "gods of the souls" (and I guess we can say he failed considering the scholarship I exemplified above), emphasizing the usage of the term in Greek poetry. However he makes a lot of interesting arguments and fair presentations e.g. "The idea of chthonic gods starts with the epic division of the universe into what is above the earth and what is below the earth." and after browsing some testimonies from ancient Greek authors he concludes about the "two meanings of the term 'chthonic' as applied to the gods - (a) a poetic term to denote a god associated with the souls, and (b) a cultus term to denote a god of agriculture"
Not long after, in HSCP 19/1908, in a response to Fairbanks, J. W. Hewitt provided a new definition: http://books.google.com/books?id=bnASAAAAIAAJ&q=chthonic&pgis=1 "My definition of a chthonic god shall be the simplest possible. I employ the term to include all divine or semi-divine being supposed to dwell beneath the earth's surface, whether as gods of the dead or of the agriculture as the souls of the dead and such heroes as were conceived to dwell under the earth."
Now, let's review our positions:
You: 'Chthonic', whatever its etymology, pertains to the underworld, not the earth Me: Chthonic pertains to the underworld and the earth (etymologically related to being in the earth, not just at the surface).
I think by now is obvious that I used the term properly and Hollis did too. It is obvious that we used the term "in the normal sense". The only abnormal, unreasonable, unjustifiable and arguably ignorant position was yours when you asserted that "chthonic ... pertains .... not [to] the earth".
Well, most of these early agrarian civilizations with the cyclical deities are in flood plains, and usually the male fertility deities are associated with, of course, the flood. Enki, for instance. Note also that the Sumerian word for water - simply, "a" - is the same as the word for semen.
However, in some particular cases like Geb and even the Semitic Dagan, the metaphors seem more substantial, more "solid". Of Geb it was said that cereals grow from his ribs. True, I don't know if any of these relates directly to semen, but it's more than watering.
Well that's quite true, there are even some hermaphrodytic (or, more accurately, dual-gender) fertility deities. But it's possible that this is just an intermediate stage, as female fertility deities are transformed into male deities (case in point: Centeotl, who went from female, to dual aspect, to fully male)
It is a possibility. Unfortunately we have little evidence from the "pre-history" of these male agricultural gods.
Then don't. I was very careful to write "for purely aesthetic reasons". So if you want to criticise do so on aesthetic grounds.
There are no such approach on archaeology and anthropology like "aesthetic". They are scholarly fields, they are disciplines. Either you understand what they are about, or you don't.
Either you have some feeling for aesthetics or you don't. Religion is specifically relevant to aesthetic appreciation.
Besides, scripta manent. You didn't write such a thing as you claim now (search the thread!),
Yes I did.
Originally posted by gcle2003 27-Nov-2008 at 15:16 CET - IP: 88.207.198.82
I have a personal opinion, on purely aesthetic grounds....
however you ludicrously claimed the following:
"That's not so true of Gimbutas, who had a respectable career as an archaeologist, but I'm unaware that she did any significant work as an anthropologist"
"Incidentally I tend to think of anthropologists as people who study existing peoples and archaeologists as people who study extinct ones. I accept though that's a personal view, albeit one I think useful."
Therefore my criticism is correct, you used a personal concept of yours ("personal view" in your own wording) which shows rather a misunderstanding. It may be useful for you, but this thread is not about you and how you understand things, but about mother goddesses.
This particular subthread is one I raised. It's certainly relevant to mother goddesses. The whole concept of 'mother' in religion is an aesthetic concept.
I also fail entirely to see that my recognising something as a personal opinion (on how best to discriminate between the fields I would call 'anthropology' and 'archaeology') shows misunderstanding. That we should distinguish between studying extant live cultures and deducing social structures and beliefs from archaeological traces should surely be a given: to use the same word for both is therefore counterproductive.
I don't agree that Demeter/Gaia were chthonic goddesses. Or, if you want to use chthonic in that broad sense, then you need another term for the gods and goddesses of the underworld - 'chthonic' in the normal sense.
If you want to claim Persephone as chthonic you have a better case.
You don't know what chtonic means, therefore you can't say what sense is normal or not. Demeter was also known as Chthonia! See below for more scholarly references on chthonic.
I also wrote "whatever its etymology". (Same date, 15:48 CET if you feel like another challenge like the earlier one.)
Again the point is there is a need to distinguish between divinities associated with the underworld (i.e. the world of the dead) and those associated with the fertility of the earth. It's pure happenstance that the Greeks, inter alia, thought the dead dwelt somewhere underground: most religions don't believe that. To blindly use 'chthonic' for both groups is therefore to generalise what is a specifically Greek situation. Hades and Demeter don't fall into the same category.
Agreed, but you miss the point. She was never the dominant figure in the Egyptian pantheon, the way Isis became.
You're the one missing my point (it was my position which you attacked). Our dialogue was roughly: Me: Nut was mother goddess You: But she wasn't a dominant goddess.
So? And this didn't start with me attacking your position, it started with your objecting to my post introducing (to this thread) the concept of a dichotomy between sky father and earth mother.
Which is exactly why I quoted her.
And I argued that was irrelevant to the topic at hand. Nut was a mother goddess, Diana wasn't.
I don't have JSTOR. Hollis is noted for a feminist approach to interpreting subjects like sovereignty but that probably isn't relevant to this particular quote. I just think she isn't using 'chthonic' properly. There's a major distinction between gods/goddesses of the underworld and gods/goddesses of earth and fertility, and this use of 'chthonic' is failing to draw it.
And I am sure you don't know what chthonic means. I didn't intend to draw such distinction (it was my remark, I know infinitely better than you what I meant), only to present the difference sky gods vs earth gods. And if you have doubts that an author misses the point because of feminism, let's browse some more scholars, shall we?
http://books.google.com/books?id=YxKlRxXsY58C&pg=PA135 "Geb was the chief earth god and the mate of the sky goddess Nut. [...] Like other chthonic deities, Geb could be a terrifying god, responsible for destructive earthquakes"
http://books.google.com/books?id=_tMUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA84 "According to the Hesiodean tradition the child-Zeus was brought up by Gaia who took him from Rhea and kept him in a deep cave. It does not seem necessary to insist that Gaia, being chthonic, and not Rhea, should be his real mother."
http://books.google.com/books?id=cvSiWE0KQsYC&pg=PA47 "The Minoan god with whom the Hellenic Zeus was identified was doubtless a chthonic god of generation and fertility, the divine son and consort of the great Cretan earth-goddess"
http://books.google.com/books?id=kWU33X4gPmUC&pg=PA164 "A majority of scholars agree that Saturn must at some time have been a chthonic deity, somehow connected with agriculture, and more specifically with the corn harvest. According to some of them his chthonic nature involved more gloomy aspects as well: connections with death and the underworld."
http://books.google.com/books?id=vcMUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA73 "In matriarchal religion the [...] chthonic, Demetriac element predominates ..." "All this was influenced by the female tendency towards adopting chthonic cults and insisting on the connection between woman and Mother Earth."
http://books.google.com/books?id=pSdaNuIaUUEC&pg=RA1-PA410 "... worship of chthonic deities such as Mother Earth ..." "Conversely, the chthonic deities frequently combine two functions in primarily agrarian cultures: they control the harvest, thus granting wealth, and they are also the masters of the dead who have been laid to rest in the earth."
http://books.google.com/books?id=1-es5ErSgkUC&pg=PA146 "The worship of chthonic deities, especially the godess Demeter, by native wives was an important part of the societal melding in many Greek colonies and Cyrene was no exception. Chthonic divinites typically have a wide-range of agrarian and funerary interests"
http://books.google.com/books?id=Qm8lsx9L_coC&pg=PA90 "Deities whose functions included the earth itself (such as agriculture), or whose functions involved the dead, were considered chthonic. Thus Demeter, too, had a chthonic aspect as a fertility goddess, since seeeds are planted in the earth and were seen as representing death and renewal (burial and rebirth), and so she was sometimes referred to as Chthonia. And deities who dwelled in the underworld and rarely ventured outside it are regularly referred to as chthonic."
From JStor, I will quote also from Arthur Fairbanks, "The Chthonic Gods of Greek Religion" published in The American Journal of Philology, 21.3/1900. Fairbanks tries to impose a more restrictive usage of the adjective "chthonic" to some "gods of the souls" (and I guess we can say he failed considering the scholarship I exemplified above), emphasizing the usage of the term in Greek poetry. However he makes a lot of interesting arguments and fair presentations e.g. "The idea of chthonic gods starts with the epic division of the universe into what is above the earth and what is below the earth." and after browsing some testimonies from ancient Greek authors he concludes about the "two meanings of the term 'chthonic' as applied to the gods - (a) a poetic term to denote a god associated with the souls, and (b) a cultus term to denote a god of agriculture"
Not long after, in HSCP 19/1908, in a response to Fairbanks, J. W. Hewitt provided a new definition: http://books.google.com/books?id=bnASAAAAIAAJ&q=chthonic&pgis=1 "My definition of a chthonic god shall be the simplest possible. I employ the term to include all divine or semi-divine being supposed to dwell beneath the earth's surface, whether as gods of the dead or of the agriculture as the souls of the dead and such heroes as were conceived to dwell under the earth."
Now, let's review our positions:
You: 'Chthonic', whatever its etymology, pertains to the underworld, not the earth Me: Chthonic pertains to the underworld and the earth (etymologically related to being in the earth, not just at the surface).
I think by now is obvious that I used the term properly and Hollis did too. It is obvious that we used the term "in the normal sense". The only abnormal, unreasonable, unjustifiable and arguably ignorant position was yours when you asserted that "chthonic ... pertains .... not [to] the earth".
There seems to be agreement that the word is used in two senses. That's what I'm objecting to. If no-one was doing it, I wouldn't be objecting. Using the same term to cover two different categories simply because of an accident in how the Greeks happened to view the underworld is confusing and should be avoided no matter who is doing it.
(I accept of course that the reverse of my position - using 'chthonic' to refer to fertilitiy divinities and not to underworld ones - would be just as logical. It's confusing the two that is, well, confusing.)
Either you have some feeling for aesthetics or you don't. Religion is specifically relevant to aesthetic appreciation.
But not the topic at hand which is a discussion about mother goddesses, and certainly not the points I was making and you were replying to.
Yes I did.
No, you did not write on the difference between anthropology and archaeology "on purely aesthetic grounds", you did not write about how to understand the 'chthonic' "on purely aesthetic grounds" and this is to what I referred when I said "I don't think I'm in mood to always engage with your personal and often misunderstood concepts". It seems you're unable to track a simple discussion of few replies, let alone discuss something more serious.
This particular subthread is one I raised. It's certainly relevant to mother goddesses. The whole concept of 'mother' in religion is an aesthetic concept.
I did not reply to that 'subthread' of yours but now since you brought it up, I must say I find it a groundless, stupid statement. However I'll wait until we settle (if we will) the current issues, before addressing it in more detail.
I also fail entirely to see that my recognising something as a personal opinion (on how best to discriminate between the fields I would call 'anthropology' and 'archaeology') shows misunderstanding. That we should distinguish between studying extant live cultures and deducing social structures and beliefs from archaeological traces should surely be a given: to use the same word for both is therefore counterproductive.
It is certainly not counterproductive, as the wealth of anthropological research shows. If you feel this 'need', perhaps it is your own failure of understanding (and perhaps that's also why you 'fail entirely to see'). James Frazer, a name you dared to brag about (probably unknowing much of him and his work), researched long ago dead cultures (read The Golden Bough for instance). However he's an anthropologist, not an archaeologist. I don't think one can read Frazer and then affirm that he tends "to think of anthropologists as people who study existing peoples and archaeologists as people who study extinct ones".
So? And this didn't start with me attacking your position, it started with your objecting to my post introducing (to this thread) the concept of a dichotomy between sky father and earth mother.
Before your reply addressed to me on 27 Nov, I was discussing with Charlesbrough and Edgewaters, not with you. My post was about the reversed roles in Egyptian cosmology and was addressed to Charlesbrough. Your reply to me was about Nut not being a dominant god and other dominant Egyptian gods (irrelevant), about Roman Diana (irrelevant) and a complete misunderstanding of the term 'chthonic'.
I also wrote "whatever its etymology". (Same date, 15:48 CET if you feel like another challenge like the earlier one.)
Perhaps you need to improve your reading skills because in the same post you replied to I said: "You: 'Chthonic', whatever its etymology, pertains to the underworld, not the earth". I also instructed with "see below" (I noticed for a long while that you often reply before you actually finish reading).
Again the point is there is a need to distinguish between divinities associated with the underworld (i.e. the world of the dead) and those associated with the fertility of the earth. It's pure happenstance that the Greeks, inter alia, thought the dead dwelt somewhere underground: most religions don't believe that. To blindly use 'chthonic' for both groups is therefore to generalise what is a specifically Greek situation. Hades and Demeter don't fall into the same category.
There was not such a need in my discourse and certainly not in the bunch of scholarly works I quoted from. The term 'chthonic' is already traditional in scholarship, it is not blindly used, on the contrary it is properly defined (some of my quotes were actually definitions). Hades and Demeter fall in the same category that of gods of the Earth. In particular Demeter was also known as Chthonia ( http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Chthonia.html ). The term 'chthonic' means more or less 'earthly', most religions have 'earthly gods', i.e. deities living in the earth, under earth's surface.
There seems to be agreement that the word is used in two senses. That's what I'm objecting to. If no-one was doing it, I wouldn't be objecting. Using the same term to cover two different categories simply because of an accident in how the Greeks happened to view the underworld is confusing and should be avoided no matter who is doing it.
(I accept of course that the reverse of my position - using 'chthonic' to refer to fertilitiy divinities and not to underworld ones - would be just as logical. It's confusing the two that is, well, confusing.)
It is confusing for you, because you don't understand. The word is not used in two senses, but only one, referring to those gods (also in extension demigods, heroes, etc.) who live under the earth. A good part of the scholarly terminology is derived from Greek and Latin. 'Chthonic' comes from Greek, but 'religion' comes from Latin. They are mere words, but their meanings cover worldwide phenomena, unbounded by some Mediterranean focus.
Your objection is ultimately irrelevant as long as it comes from someone manifesting deep ignorance and unfamiliarity with the relevant scholarship. The world does not revolve around you, it will never will. I and also the most of the scholars will use the term 'chthonic' as we see fit, no access of aggressive misunderstanding will change that.
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Topic: Was there ever a Mother-Goddess society?
