For nearly two thousand
years we as a society have allowed ourselves to live a lie. We have struggled
to stamp out and forget the roots of our first spirituality. Christ has
died torturously only to rise again, but upon his resurrection our Mother
has fallen,
crucified through centuries
thereafter. Priests don robes just as their ancient brothers did,
yet do not tell us why. They malign our kind with words such as "whore"
and "demoness", and recite countless commandments speaking the filth of
our sacred blood. In the streets,
they hurl epithets like
"bitch" and "cunt", to rob us of their true meaning. As women, we have
worn the thorns, we have been and sold not as priceless jewels, but as
chattel. We have been raped, outcast, burned, we have been torn open, cut
out and sewn up. We have given, and given, and given, until we have had
enough. Now, we look back across time, between the lines of the history
books that are littered with the names of great men. We crawl under the
dust of ravished temples and remember. Once, we sat on
high thrones, once we received all offering. Once, we had the power to
grant prayers. As women, we were the first deities ever worshipped. We
were the rulers of the world.
The Gorgons
/ Kali / Pele / Lilith
/ Sheela-na-Gigs / Hecate
/ Mary Magdalene / Baubo
Most everyone in the world
has heard tell of the Gorgons, in particular Medusa, whose head was cut
off by the God-favoured Perseus, and whose visages had the power to turn
men to stone. Note the omission of 'people' - when do you ever hear of
a womyn being turned to stone by the Gorgons terrible glare?
The Gorgon is also the image
we have chosen for this site. Why would we want to choose a hideous hag
womyn, with writhing snakes for hair, and a gaze so horrible it can petrify
men at a glance? Because within mythology every aspect has a deep significance,
a symbolism of its own, and the Gorgons and their ferocious glares are
symbolic of the rage of womyn, especially when affronted by man. The three
Gorgons wereStheino ("Strength"), Euryale ("Wide Roaming") and, of course,
Medusa ("The Cunning One"). With their singular fearsome power they defeated
those who would destroy them. Womyn of today can learn a lot from the Gorgon.
Emily Culpepper says "The Gorgon has much vital, literally life-saving
, information to teach women about anger, rage, [and] power....needed for
survival." and she relates a story where she confronts and subdues an attacker
by turning her face to that of a "Gorgon, a Medusa". All womyn have a Gorgon
mask of their own. Today they have been relcaimed in lesbian feminism.
In "They Will Know Me by My Teeth", a book of poetry by Elana Dykewomon,
the Gorgon is a signifier of lesbian-feminism and particularly of lesbian
separatism. Gorgons are the embodiment of uniquely female anger and rage,
which does not destroy and annihilate, but freezes in its tracks, those
dangers which face it - namely, men. In Freudian Psychology, this glare
is (naturally!) symbolic of castration, of the slicing of male power at
its root. Barbara Deming writes, in a powerful anti-war poem:
"This is a song for Gorgons
Whose dreaded glances can
in fact bless
The men who would be gods
we turn
Not to stone but to mortal
flesh and blood and bone
If we could stare them into
accepting this
The world could live at
peace"
Unmask your Inner Gorgon,
girls.
Probably the most complete
representation of the Dark Goddess in religions world-wide, Kali's powerful
impact spreads far and wide, striking chords with womyn everywhere. For
she is all things that womyn and nature are - womb and tomb, the
giver of life and the devourer of her children. The Dark Goddess is a figure
found in most ancient religions, for it is understood there can be no life
without death and vice versa - one is imperative to the other. Kali encompasses
it all - the destructive warrior goddess, the beloved and gentle mother.
A patron of warrior and thieves and Tantric adepts, she is mistress of
the cremation grounds and guarian of ghosts. She is compassionate to the
devoted and cruel to enemies of cosmic truth: ""I AM Time,ever inclined
to destroy the worlds and annihilate all and anything that is not worthy
of keeping." Kali's very appearance is meant to both terrify and intrigue,
a fusion of beauty and fear; she has black, disheveled hair, which forms
a curtain of illusion, midnight blue skin and her tongue hangs from her
open, bloodied mouth, representing rujas, while her pure white teeth are
symbolic of the sattva.. She wears a tiger's skin and a garland of fifty
human heads, representing the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, indicating
knowledge and wisdom. Her three eyes represent past, present and future.
Her girdle is slung with human arms,(symbolising the accumulation of karmic
deeds) and very commonly in pictorial interpretations of her, she carries
a human head in one left hand,symbolising the annihilation of ego-bound
evil force,and a sword in the other, with which she cuts the thread of
bondage.One right arm gestures to dispel fear and the other encourages
all to spiritual strength. Her consort is Shiva, and she is often shown
squatting over him, eating his entrails while her yoni (vagina) devours
his lingam (penis). D.R. Kinsley (1975) writes: "Kali's dark, menacing
appearance does not frighten but attracts one who has seen the world for
what it really isL the ephermeral, phantasmagoric display of....the magic
of the gods, a world fraught with pain and suffering, a world in which
all things perish and pass away." And once this is accomplished, it is
prepared to be reborn again, in a neverending and beautiful cycle of life,
death and rebirth.
Like the volcanoes she is
Goddess of in her native Hawaii, Pele's very name crackles wth energy.
Still a popular and worshipped Goddess today as Madame Pele, the fiery
and tempestuous volcano Goddess attracts many lesbian and bisexual women
to her. Diane Mariechild writes: "I found a marvellous picture of Pele,
her hair waves of fire extending out from her head. She stood, a fiery
being in the ocean...I placed it on our altar and Barbara and I sat together
and repeated our vows....I asked that we call upon Pele, thank her for
cradling us to her breast." in Lesbian Sacred Sexuality (1995).
A ferocious and jealous Goddess, Pele can never do anything halfway. Believing
her favoured sister Hi'iaka to have sedced her mortal lover Lohiau, Pele
sends a wave of lava to destroy Hi'iaka's garden and her l "aikane" (intimate
companion) the mortal woman Hopoe. In return, Hi'iaka seduces Lohiau at
which point Pele sends more lava, killing Lohiau. Before she came to Hawaii
on a boat she seduced her older sister's husband, and made her way to Mauna
Loa, one of the tallest mountains on earth, as her sister,Na-maka-o-kaha'i,
the sea Goddess, kept sending waves and foam to make it impossible for
Pele to settle her home. Pele was also involved with the Hog God Kamapua'a,a
terribly tempesutous union for Pele's jealous rages manifested themselves
in eruptions which covered the land, and he sent rains to soften it once
more. Yet even the barren lava makes way for greatly fertile new earth,
in the greatest depths of her fiery rage Pele is both destructor and creator,
wiping out the land to make way for new paths, as nature does again and
again.
Pele is still greatly respected
today, as she is clearly still very active in her volcano home! Most Islanders,
no matter their creed or code, speak of her with great respect, and tales
of her strange appearances still scatter the local gossip. Pele is so very
much a vivid, alive and fierce figure of amazonian feminity, that she cannot
help but continue to intrigue, she is a reminder that even within the midst
of destruction there is new life and creation.
Lilith, the legendary first
wife of Adam, who refused to be subordinate (ie: refused to be underneath
during sex) to him in anyway, flew away to the Red Sea and then becane
a figure of fear, devilry and evil to Christians, Moslems and Jews everywhere.
She is also very possibly the first fully "Grrl Power" Goddess most young
women come into contact with.
There are several conflicting
and contradictory stories of Lilith's origin and history, some aspects
doctored by the Patriarchy, others modified over time in the style of 'Chinese
Whispers'. A widely accepted form is of Lilith as originally a Middle
Eastern Goddess of abundance, fertility and fecundity (after leaving Adam
she mostly spent her time coupling with demons and, so the story goes,
giving birth to a hundred children a day. This would seem to suggest her
status as a mother goddess in early tribes. Later patriarchal myths had
her slaughtering these children.)
Lilith is a Dark Goddess,
associated with the Owl, a figure of darkness and deep wisdom, and it is
believed she is also a goddess of death and transformation, the time-honoured
cycle of life, death and rebirth. She is also associated with the Lotus
(Lily), a favourite symbol of the vagina. For this reason she is sometimes
associated with the Etruscan Goddess Leinthm who received the soulds of
the dead at the gates of the underworld - which where in the form of a
yoni (vagina) or lotus.
Lilith's open and hearty
willingness to embrace both her voracious sexual energy, and the darker,
necessary aspects of life and death, make her a very threatening figure
to the patriarchy. Jews, Moslems and Christians wove a contradictory web
of Lilith's story - she was frigid and sterile, but seduced thousands of
men and gave birth to hundreds of children. She was a demonic, terrifying
figure, yet incredibly beautiful and enticing. It was said that nocturnal
emissions with the direct result of Lilith and her daughters (the 'lilim').
Lilith became more and more demonized by patriarchal religions until she
bore little to no resemblance to her original form at all, now taking on
the role of a shrieking harpy-like creature who flies about at night, and
who seems to have nothing better to do than take advantage of mortal men
in their sleep!
The Lotus is a flower that
grows from rank, decaying earth. It can represent the blossoming of creativity,
beauty and wisdom, even in the most unlikely of circumstances. The true
face of Lilith flowers from within the midst of the lies, and it is this
confident, sexually assured, strong female figure who entices women to
her in the modern age, encouraging them to unlock their own confidence
and independance and scoff at those who would oppress us. She encourages
the women of the world to acknowledge the dark side of life and to accept
it as vital.
No reason is known as to
why Sheela-na-Gigs were carved on a multitude of places around England,
Ireland, Scotland and Wales, including church pillars, abbeys and convents.
We can only speculate as to what the people of hundreds of years ago sought
to represent with the image of a Sheela.
Sheela-na-Gigs are representations
of a naked woman, squatting with her legs apart and her vluva on display
to the world. Often she is presenting the vulva with her hands. There
has been speculation of the Sheelas as fertility figures, their large genitalia
symbolic of their power to give life, but this theory is treated as flimsy
for most fertility icons have young, ample bodies, nurturing faces and
large breasts. The Sheelas are always old hag women with fearsome faces
and scrawny breasts. Another theory is that they were carved to warn
against the sins of the flesh; given their locations on buildings of the
Church it is certainly a plausible theory. It might be that the sheelas
were first erected in order to remind those who would succumb to sexual
desire of the hellish consequences awaiting them. Perhaps one of
my favourite theories is that of the Sheelas representing the crone aspect
of the Celtic Triple Goddesses. Triple Goddesses are found throughout religions
in the world, their three faces - Virgin, Mother, Crone - represent the
stages of life. The Triple Goddess is the original trinity, and is the
earliest representation of the Great Goddess of her diversion into multiplicity.
The Virgin is the strong and self defined Goddess, the Mother is the Goddess
of nourishment and nurture, and the Crone is the Goddess of death and transformation.
As the Crone, Sheelas invite humankind back into her womb, reminding us
of our return to the earth at death. If this is so, then much like Kali,
Sheelas hag-like appearance is not intended to frighten, but challenges
us to face the dark aspects of life and embrace them. Another favourite
theory is that of the Sheelas as protection against evil - the worship
of the vagina was also a practice found in cultures throughout the world,
for its lifegiving power and its ability to bleed were held in great revere,
and it was thought of as a deflector of evil. Flashing the yoni was believed
to avert such forces as the evil eye.
Whatever theory is true
- and any of them may very well be true - today the Sheela-na-Gigs have
been reclaimed by feminists as icon of female power and strength. Many
feminists use the image of a Sheela as a statement of independance and
a reclaimation of the power within our yoni.
Hecate was the Greek Goddess
of the Crossroads, the paths we choose throughout our lives. It was said
she haunted three-way crossroads, with her three heads facing in a certain
direction. (sometimes she was depicted with three heads, one a snake,
one a dog and one a horse.) She was Goddess of Ghosts, with two ghost hounds
who served her - said to have been the wronged Hecuba of Troy reincarnated
- and was invoked by those who would set out on journeys for guidance on
the roads they would take.
Although Hecate came to
be misinterpreted as a dreaded Goddess of witches and evil, she was known
to have performed good deeds in her time - one of which was telling Demeter
of her daughter Persephone's kidnapping by Hades. Persephone was said to
be her close confidante.
As a Triple Goddess, she
was associated with the Moon in all her aspects. Sometimes she was a part
of the Queen of Heaven Trilogy (Hebe the Virgin, Hera the Mother, Hecate
the Crone) and sometimes associated with Atemis and Persephone (Hecate
Selene, the Moon in Heaven, Artemis the Huntress on Earth and Persephone
the Destroyer in the Underworlld). She was worshipped as a Goddess of the
night and darkness, she held a torch to symbolise she knew the way to the
realm of the dead and all wild animals were favored by her - it was believed
she knew all the secret os Nature, birth, life and death. She was
patron to midwives, and when Christianity took hold they diabolised the
midwives as witches as practicers of black magik, denouncing Hecate as
a Goddess of Evil. It is said that Hecate and her hounds traverse
the Graves, finding lost souls and guiding them to the Underworld.
Hecate is a dark Goddess,
representing all that entails - an embracing of death and transformation
and change as crucial to continued life, and she guides and comforts those
souls who face it with fear, a solace to those who face the Crossroads
with uncertainity.
Despite that the actual facts
we know of this woman's life would scarce fill a page, the fame of this
beloved Saint has elevated her to the status of the second most revered
woman from the Bible, Mary the Virgin Mother being the first.
Mary is generally portrayed
as a whore who repented and devoted her life to following Jesus within
Christian teachings. But in the original text of the Bible, what Mary actually
did
before following Jesus is never stated - it is only said simply that she
was "a sinner".Mary as a whore was an assumption based on further assumptions
made about the lifestyle of Jews in the time of Jesus. Mary is depicted
within Biblical texts as a woman with her own means - in Luke 8:1-3 it
is said "The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed
of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven
demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuaz, Herod's stewart, and
Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means".
Mary also causes a scandal by coming to Jesus with an expensive ointment
in an alabaster jar, and bathing his feet with it. The patriarchal-dominated
Western world which followed the Christian faith, then deduced, that
Mary Magdalene as an unmarried woman, titled a sinner, and able to afford
to use an ointment which would cost an ordinary laborer's half a year of
wages to bathe a man's feet, to further more assist in providing that man
and his followers with food and shelter from her own resources, must simply
be a whore. No other explanation seemed likely to the patriarchy. It was
set in stone forever in September of 591, when Pope Gregory the Great stated:
"....And what did these seven devils signify if not all the vices?.....It
is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume
her flesh in forbidden acts. What she therefore displayed more scandulously,
she was now offering to God in a more praiseworthy manner....She turned
the mass of her crimes to virtures...."
A whore she has been ever
since.
Tbere has been much debate
as to the exact nature of the relationship between Mary and Jesus. A school
of thought which is becoming more and more widespread since the discovery
of the Gnostic texts and copious amounts of research done by intrigued
scholas, is that Mary and Jesus were effectually a couple. Although the
Christian leaders promote Peter as the most beloved of his Apostles, the
actual text within the Bible would suggest otherwise. It has been said
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead simply for love of her, it was to Mary
Jesus first appeared upon his resurrection, and he called her Apostle to
the Apostles. The Gnostic texts, one of which is entitled 'The Gospel of
Mary' and is purpotedly hers, also highlight the conflict between Mary
and Peter. From these texts it would appear apparent that Peter resented,
as a man of his time, the fact that Mary was allowed to preach and speak,
that she was too upfront for a woman. Where he is concerned, Mary seeks
to know too much and asks too many questions. But the outcome of the conflict
is always the same: Mary is right, and Jesus encourages her to speak.
Mary the Whore has inspired
as many devotees as Mary the Virgin. As is characertistic with the
Christian Community, a multitiude of conflicting ideas, opinions, beliefs
and theories criss-cross one another, effectively veiling the reality:
we will probably never know for sure the true details of the life
of this woman. Her chief appeal is that she - or rather what she has come
to be - encompasses all that is woman. The deep love she has for Jesus
is apparent in Biblical texts, and her devotion to him and his cause is
certain. Like Jesus' own mother, she lays at the foot of the Cross in grief,
she listens and questions, she is the first to see him when he Rises. But
unlike Mary the Mother, Mary Magdalene is not perfect. Whatever her sin
actually was, she committed it. She was earthy and sensuous, passionate
and alive. Humanity can emphasise with her. Humanity, and especially women,
can see themselves reflected within her.
As Baubo, she is actually
the Greek manifestation of a much older Goddess figure, such as Iambe,
although she is sometimes depicted alongside limping Iambe, the spirit
if iambic (limping) lewd verse. These ancient female figures - who
sheela-na-gigs, gorgons and some mermaid images are also possibly derived
from - represented the deep cultural beliefs in the power of the
feminine. The vulva was a wound which bled, and healed and brought forth
new life, and so was therefore a clearly very powerful force which was
honoured in thousands of images and figures. Baubo is often depicted as
the lower half of a female body with a head restng on what is possibly
a pregnant belly. From the head rises an elaborate headdress. She is commonly
described as a Crone aspect. Other popular Baubo depictions feature the
Spirit squatting, raising her arms in the air, or lifting her skirts (ana
suromai), displaying her vulva to the world. Her importance in Greek Mythology
is as a female clown who Demeter encounters when she is miserable and hiding
from the world after the kidnappy by Hades of her daughter Persephone.
Demeter has sworn that so long as her daughter is not with her, no life
shall grow on earth, it will be a dead and barren place. But the sexually-at-ease
and laughter-loving Baubo moons the Goddess, making her laugh and willing
to take nourishment. In many myths, it was the sadness or misery of women
that brought about despair and destuction, and the laughter of woman was
crucial to restore balance and harmony to the world. With her light-hearted
ways, bawdy jokes and nurturing nature, Baubo is a highly accessible and
extremely attractive Goddess figure. She reminds us all that it is women
who are the center of human life, that we are nurturers and should celebrate
accordingly.
Resoucres:
'The Goddess Paintings'
Michael Babcock, art by
Susan Seddon Boulet
'Cassell's Encyclopedia of
Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit'
Conner, Sparks and Sparks
'The Women's Encylopedia
of Myths and Secrets'
Barbara Walker
'The Word According to Eve'
Cullen Murphy
'The Metamorphosis of Baubo'
Winifred Milius Lubell
