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QuoteReplyTopic: Was the cult of Great Mother exchanged with Jesus? Posted: 25-May-2013 at 09:56
Here a short video on the Temple of Kibela in Balchik, Bulgaria, dated 280-260 BC. I was there last year and made picts, bt I still haven't found a way to download them here directly, and I cannot use the photobucket now because mu net is so slow...so I'll do it when I get to the states. There is a big marble bowl for baptism among the ruins - an evidence that baptism with water is a symbol of the Great Mother Goddess, long before Chrustanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTABqjAUMCA
Yes, statues of Kibele, and 27 inscriptions, they told me, but the museum in Balchik was in renovation when I was there, so I couldn't see them and take picts. I plan to go there before coming back, and hope to be able to make picts. I tried to find something online, but no luck so far.
"...And Death Shall Have no Dominion..." Dylan Thomas
Prior to the advent of Christianity, females were held in high esteem by all cultures, and female goddesses and priests were common in many cultures.
Christianity deliberately undertook to destroy all of that and subjugate women to second class status, a practice that continues to this day, particularly within the Catholic church and Islam.
Apparently neither Jesus nor Mohammed could stand the competition.
True. Ancient Greece was a very sexist society, notwithstanding that there were female priests. But the Egyptian, the Ethruscan, the Sumerian one weren't sexist, AFAIK, and the Roman one was less so than Greece. However, mainstream Christianity took away from women spirituality, /I don't mean Christ himself, but Paul/ and thus accomplished the final blow on female independence. There was more female independence in some of the "heretical" movements, but to no avail. Islam was modelled on Christianity and Judaism, so here the result. The Judaic society was probably the most sexist one I know of, and it passed that strain to Christianity.
"...And Death Shall Have no Dominion..." Dylan Thomas
Prior to the advent of Christianity, females were held in high esteem by all cultures, and female goddesses and priests were common in many cultures.Christianity deliberately undertook to destroy all of that and subjugate women to second class status, a practice that continues to this day, particularly within the Catholic church and Islam.Apparently neither Jesus nor Mohammed could stand the competition.
Zoroastrianism only allowed male priests. Priestesses in Greek, Roman, Sumerian, etc. religion were restricted (as were the males) to specific deities, and to specific social classes/situations (virgins, widows, daughters of royalty). As for Jesus and Muhammed, it was the cultures that adopted and adapted their teachings that made the religions comply with pre-existing sexist views.
Claiming that Christianity was consciously attempting to destroy a universal belief in the sacred female is IMO teleological and unhistorical. The consequences of a process are not necessarily the reasons for the process being started.
I came upon an article about an Ancient Thracian Temple of the Hymphs - in the village of Kasnakovo near Haskovo in South-West Bulgaria. The article is in Bulgarian, so I cannot link it, but will give here the jist.
It is cut into the rock in front of a small meadow, surrounded by a forest; it consists of 3 half-circlical niches, connected with underground stream, so water runs from them. The temple was a part of a Roman estate - a Roman soldier, Titus Claudius Benutkens Esbenerios was given the land and he and his wife consecrated the place to Aphrodite and the Nymphs - so it says a relief on it.
Later a temple to Saint Spas was made there, and on Spasovden /a Christian holiday 40 days after Easter, it's comes comes from "spasenie" - salvation/. Anyway, there isn't an Orthodox saint called Spas, this name is a eponim of salvation. This point is important because the Church tried to christianise an older, pagan ritual or making a sacrifice to Aphrodite /as one of the aspects of the Great Mother Goddess/; so up to this day of Spasovden people go on this temple and make a kurban /killing an animal and boiling it, then everyone eats as respect to the divinity/, bring there flowers and other gifts /just like in the Greek temples of Afrodite/. So, people are trying to reach salvation through following a ritual that had been done in this place for centuries, long before Christianity came about - this is a striking example of the deep roots of tradition and the mother cult in the collective subconsciousness.
I couldn't load any of the pics here, they were the wrong size or the wrong format...and posting the links to the blog didn't work either...so...I'm sorry...
Edited by Don Quixote - 28-May-2013 at 11:20
"...And Death Shall Have no Dominion..." Dylan Thomas
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