whgoddes.txt Ben Blumenberg Reality Software P.O. Box 105 Waldoboro, Me 04572 March 4, 1992 An Introduction to The White Goddess 1 Cosmology: The Primordial Egg 2 Invocation of the Goddess 3 The Richest Sites and Localities 5 Historical Overview 6 <><> <> Life Giving: Chevron and 'V' 9 Life Giving: Zig-zag and 'M' 10 Life Giving: _<_>Meander and Waterbirds 10 Life Giving:< >Breasts of the Goddess 11 Life Giving: _<_>Streams 13 Life Giving: _<_>Eyes of the Goddess 13 Life Giving: The Open Mouth and Beak of the Goddess 15 Life Giving: The< >Goddess as a Giver of Crafts 15 Life Giving: The Goddess and the Ram 18 Life Giving: The Goddess and Nets 19 Life Giving: The Power of Three 21 Life Giving: The Goddess of Birth 22 Life Giving: Deer and Bears as Primaeval Mother Goddess 25 Life Giving: The Snake Goddess 27 Life Giving: The Snake God 30 Renewing and Eternal Mother Earth 31 Renewing and Eternal Earth: The Power of Two 35 Renewing and Eternal Earth: Male Gods 36  Death and Regeneration 39 The Goddess of Death and Regeneration: <>Cosmic Egg 47 The Goddess of Death and Regenertion: Life Columns 50 The Goddess of Death and Regeneration: Womb 58 The Goddess of Death and Regneration: the Mythic Ship of Renewal 64 Frog, Hedgehog and Fish: Death and Life Together 68 Goddess of Death and Regeneration: The Bull, the Bee and the Butterfly 72 The Goddess of Life Energy: the Curved Form 78 Life Energy: The Hands and Feet of the Goddess 85 The Energy Goddess and Megaliths: <>Standing Stones and Circles 86 The 'World' and the Goddess 88 Process and Change 89 Acknowledgement 91 Bibliography 92  {The Goddess' living body is the universe. All living things partake of her divinity; the earth is alive - not 'dust'. The iconography of the Great Goddess arose from a reflection upon and veneration of the laws of Nature. By contrast, Indo-European mythology reflects the social ideals, laws, and political aims of disparate tribes - ethnic units (Campbell in Gimbutas 1989: xiii).} Gimbutas (1982: 89ff) is the first scholar to attempt to discuss the symbolism and iconography of the White Goddess in a systematic organized fashion. She partitioned the cosmology of the White Goddess and the derived iconography into two broad groups. Each group shows an evolutionary progression that is coincident with the transitions from Paleolithic hunter-gathers to early Neolithic agriculturalists,and then to the first urban centers of the Near East. It is fascinating to observe in this historical evolutionary progression that anthropomorphism becomes dominant at the same time as 'high' civilization, in the sense of wealthy urban centers which are socially stratified and 'sophisticated' in their aesthetic expression. In the first of these two basic groups, water and rain symbolism metamorphose into that of the snake and bird, who become transformed in to the Snake and Bird Goddess. In the second grouping, the cross, crescent, horn, caterpillar, egg and fish all evolve into metaphors for the moon, vegetal life cycle, the seasons, and birth and death. Those ritual metaphors, in turn, are transformed into the Goddess of Life, Death and Regeneration - the White or Great Goddess. (The two names are interchangeable and synonymous in my writing.) Snake motifs, which evolve into spirals, are the dominant images of Old Europe reaching a peak of unified symbolic and artistic expression about 5,000 B.C. During the Chalcolithic Period, the Butmir and Cucuteni cultures of the eastern Balkans created large bulbous vessels with snake spirals as a basis for ornamentation. This imagery may be very naturalistic or highly geometric and stylized and is also found on cult vases, lamps, altar tables, hearth panels and house walls. The snake was mythologized as nature's dynamism - spontaneous life energy - and the vehicle for immortality. Its power could move the cosmos. This metaphor expresses itself in the following groupings of symbols when artisans were at work. - Cult vases reveal pairs of snakes with opposed heads 'making the world roll' with the energy of their spiralling bodies. - Snakes are depicted winding across the cosmic egg. - Disc and snake compositions occupy the middle areas of vases associated with belts (upper sky) containing rain clouds, divine dogs and fawns. - Gigantic snakes stretch over the universe, over the sun, moon, stars and rain torrents. - Snakes coil over pregnant women. - Snakes coil upon the rumps and shoulders of bulls. - Snakes coil around the male phallus or bird wings. The phallus, horns, snake, water bird and water itself are closely associated. When viewed anthropomorphically, the snake is transformed into the Snake Goddess whose body may be decorated by stripes or spirals. She may also be entwined by snakes and her arms and legs may also be snakes. Multiplication of images to enhance their power is an age-old ritual belief that cuts across a vast array of cultures and time frames. _<_Cosmology: The Primordial Egg> Paleolithic cosmology likely centered around water, water birds, eggs, does, and women as judged by analogy with the hunter-gatherers of historical times. Within the Egg, resides a germ. Life begins with the orbiting of the egg by two snakes or fawns. Animals are shown in opposition - creative tension - which is also symbolized by an X. Cosmic creativity is further represented by the vulva. The primordial germ within may spout into plant with buds or a seedling with a bean-like appearance. Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu and Greek mythologies preserve universal creation myths as beginning with a cosmic egg, which was created by a cosmic snake or bird, from which the gods arise (or 'heaven' and 'earth'). Extrapolating back to 5,000 B.C., one may postulate a universal creation myth with the following features. First all was water, then there emerged a __cosmic snake with __ horns (or bull or giant) which created the cosmic egg, which then split, forming 'sky' and 'earth'. An alternative myth of equal antiquity would have the cosmic egg laid by a mythical water bird, often a goose. __ Uncreated Nyx (Night) was a great black winged bird hovering over dark, who _{_unmated}, laid an egg from which flew Eros, while the split shell gave rise to Ouranos and Gaia. The genesis of the 'world' from a cosmic egg begins in the Paleolithic and gives rise to an iconography of steatopygous figurines from Magdalenian times onward. These do not represent women with abnormal buttocks, but the Bird Goddess as a fusion of human and avian forms within which is the Cosmic Egg. In the Balkans and Danube region by 6,000 B.C., vessels represent the Bird Goddess carrying an egg or doe (deer). During the Paleolithic, fish such as salmon, represent seasonal regeneration or male sexual force. In the Neolithic, in cultures that relied upon fishing, the fish assumes an egg shape and is also anthropomorphized resulting in half human half fish divinities. The Bird and Snake Goddess lives beyond the upper waters, beyond meandrous labyrinths. She rules over the life giving force of water and thus her image is frequently on water containers. Her eyes stare from the Center of the World, a mythical sphere with a stream at its centre. The Bird and Snake Goddess are one, for she is the goddess of earth and air, yet she also represents divine ambivalence. Her most common manifestations are the water snake, bear, crane, goose, duck or diving bird (Gimbutas 1982: 112ff). _<_Invocation of the Goddess> {Symbolic expression is not simply decorative or a 1:1 code to be intellectually deciphered. Such creations are religious acts, invocation of a deity so that communication may proceed}. There was climate desiccation in Old Europe during the sixth millenium B.C. and water symbolism became all important. Parallel lines, zig zags, V's, chevrons, torrents of water (vertical zig-zags) dominated the iconography. Such symbols appear on zoomorphic pottery lids (likely birds), bear cult vessels, female breasts (rain identified as milk), goddess figurines or isolated as motifs on pottery. Such Snake-Bird Goddess figurines go back to the Magdalenian Period in France. Some sculptures represent women wearing bear or bird masks. Others depict just the mask itself and so hint at ritual. A nude woman seated on a stool (decorated with meanders) with a basin in her lap may represent rain invocation or water divination. The cross appears on some figurines and points to the beginnings of subsuming - fusing - the Bird and Snake Goddess with the White Goddess of Life and Death. The __meander, often double, as with snakes who are occasionally doubled, is a symbol of the __cosmic waters and is the point of origin for the labyrinth (which in Crete was a symbol for the palace of the Mistress of the Labyrinth). The associated divinity is the (Water) Bird Goddess. Meanders occur on pottery masks with snakes.  An altar from the Tisza Culture of Hungary may represent a cosmological myth as do Cucuteni vases c.4,000 B.C. from Roumania. Meanders are often snakes and frequently situated above a triangle (as with the goddess with incised facial features on this altar). They may also be found above two triangles which represent the standing goddess. Meanders are several levels of cosmic waters, with the goddess' abode or birthplace at the lowest level. The altar face suggests horns and the vase goddess is framed by snake spirals. Minoan art shows figures composed of two triangles with bird-clawed hands. Meander and chevron symbolism goes back to the Upper Paleolithic and Magdalenian Culture, particularly in the Ukraine, c.14,000 B.C. Such symbolism appears on ivory figurines of birds, human females and human-bird hybrids. Chevrons indicate