Ancient Goddess Research Articles

The Worship of Goddess Kotravai in Silappathikaram and the Life of the Eyinars

Kotravai worship is the most important place in the worship of the mother goddess of the ancient Tamils. Kotravai is an ancient goddess. In Sangam literature, Kotravai is referred to by the names Pazhayol, Ganamar Selvi, and Ayirai. Literature indicates that the Eyinars worshipped the Goddess Kotravai. Ilangovadigal in the Madurai chapter has explained in detail the worship of the Kortavai of the Eyinars in the Vettuvavari story. The Eyinars have lived as an ethnic group. The leadership was not mentioned to them. The Eyinars lived as ethnic groups and made their living under the rule of chieftains. It is a fact that the literature suggests the truth that people who were good at hunting in the early times may have turned into murderers and robbers due to poverty. But it is an incontrovertible fact that the Tamil people who lived in ancient times were Eyinars. It can be seen from the Silappathikaram that they have destroyed their own race by sacrificing to the Kotravai.

The Evolution of the Female Image in Western Art from Aphrodite to Rosie the Riveter

In this paper, we will discuss the worship of fertility goddesses around the world and how these practices inform female figures as they appear in Western art. Aphrodite, or Venus, is a key figure in our discussion. In this study, we will focus on her origin, figures, and characteristics. We will also investigate female images from the later time when Europe became a fully patriarchal society. These images evidenced a shift from a muscular and curvaceous body to a soft and submissive-looking one. Once the feminist movement was underway, images from the ancient Greek and Roman period were revived and reemerged in new ways. In this paper, we’ll use Rosie the Riveter as a modern example for study. As the message and intent of artists throughout history makes clear: the ancient goddess’s expression of “Heroic Femininity” is still full of life in today’s context. Venus, the goddess of love, sex, justice, and fertility, created with a body to be desired by man, has become, in a new world setting – a beacon for women’s equal rights and freedom.

The Xtabay: From Forest Guardian to Hungry Demon

The Xtabay is a legendary Mayan forest entity associated with the sacred ceiba tree. The prose-poem by native ethnologist Antonio Mediz Bolio, translated here, represents the version of her story that he knew a century ago, where she appears as a temptress who lures young men under the tree to become her slaves. Behind the romantic sensibility that pervades this poem may lurk the combined shadow of two avatars, an ancient goddess of the hunt and a hybrid bird-woman who regards as prey those who threaten her forest or the creatures that call it their home.

Eostre and the Matronae Austriahenae

The Venerable Bede (672–735 AD) provides our only account of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, which he claimed to be the origin of the Easter festival name in the English language. In the early nineteenth century the goddess was imagined to have been a pan-Germanic deity renamed Ostara, and subsequently suggested to be the Germanic reflex of a more ancient Indo-European dawn goddess. However, by the latter half of the twentieth century many academics began to question the reliability of Bede’s account, with these doubts now being reflected in wider reference publications. More recently Eostre has been thrown a linguistic lifeline, not as a pan-Germanic or Indo-European deity, but as a local goddess in eastern Kent, said to have been shaped by naming practices that parallel the Romano-Germanic matron cults of the Lower Rhine region. This article re-examines the principal evidence that underpins this ‘local goddess’ theory, offers an alternative explication for the Matronae Austriahenae, and argues that any reinterpretation of Eostre cannot simply ignore or dismiss the one piece of evidence Bede provides about her cult, namely the timing of her month (Eosturmonath) and celebrations.

The Goddess in the Exodus: Nina Paley’s Seder-Masochism, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, and Female Divinity in the Ancient World

Nina Paley’s animated musical Seder-Masochism reimagines the story of the Exodus. To Paley, the Exodus is not the pinnacle of God’s relationship with Israel but the silencing of Goddess religion. Paley draws heavily on the work of some “goddess feminists” to argue that YHVH’s rise killed “the Goddess.” This article discusses how Seder-Masochism portrays goddess worship in the ancient world in general and ancient Israel and Judah in particular. Tamber-Rosenau explores how Paley’s filmic portrayals of goddesses interact with the current state of scholarship on ancient goddesses. She then shows how the film’s central thesis that God silenced and killed the Goddess connects with Paley’s antitransgender ideology.

In Defense of Heavenly Mother: Her Critical Importance for Mormon Culture and Theology

In Defense of Heavenly Mother: Her Critical Importance for Mormon Culture and Theology

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Apotropaic Bes: Egyptian terracotta figurines depicting the god Bes from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

The article examines eight ancient Egyptian terracotta figurines of the Graeco-Roman Period, stored in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; three of them have not been published before. Five objects were acquired by V.S. Golenischev in Egypt, three come from other sources. The figurines are united by a common style – they were made in the form of the ancient Egyptian god Bes, standing in a tense pose with his hands on knees and, apparently, symbolizing a willingness to fight against malign forces. Most of the figurines belong to the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, but one item should be dated earlier – to the 5th–4th centuries BC. God Bes was considered a protector in the most dangerous and critical life periods (childbirth, sleep, illness, death) and therefore gained wide popularity in Egypt. Probably, in relation to the family, Bes played the same role as the Lares in Ancient Rome, who protected the home, hearth and family. If the ancient Egyptian goddesses, for example, Isis and Taurt, contributed to female fertility and the birth of healthy offspring, then the function of Bes was broader – to guarantee effective protection of everything related to the female sphere (fertility, conception, pregnancy and childbirth). Bes is inextricably linked with the child god Horus / Harpocrates and guarded babies and children from numerous visible and invisible dangers – from evil spirits and diseases to snake and scorpion bites. Due to their apotropaic properties, Bes images become a popular symbol on various household items; in various forms, images of Bes adorned a special part of the house – the bedroom. Figurines of Bes prevail in the home context; however they are also found in burials, and associated with ability of Bes to guard the “sleep” of the deceased.

Artemis and Thecla. Τhe Meeting of the Ancient Goddess with the Christian Female Apostolic Saint in the First Four Centuries of Christianity (Historical and Comparative Reflections)

The paper’s subject is about the interaction between the cult of the goddess Artemis and the cult of St Thecla of Iconium throughout the Eastern Mediterranean in the initial four centuries of Christianity in particular. The phenomenon is investigated regarding the literature, the cities, social groups and personalities mostly associated with the cultural meeting of the free-spirited but fearsome goddess protector of the wilderness, virginity and childhood with the virgin heroine of the Cross and alleged apostolic companion of Paul for spreading the Logos of life to the nations.

From the History of the Russian Surname of Deyanov / Diyanov / Dianov

The paper discusses the variation of a surname that currently sounds like Dianov over the history of one family. Different variants were retrieved from the official documents preserved in the family archive and from the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region, as well as from private correspondence of the 18th–20th centuries, which helped restore the chronology of changes. The authors suggest their own hypothesis about the original form of the surname and the deriving personal name, as well as about the etymon of the latter. In parallel, they also consider the etymologies of the surname Dianov available in literature. The analyzed surname is distinguished from the surname Dianov which, as the authors believe, has clerical origin tracing to the name of the ancient goddess Diana. The deformation of the surname over the course of two centuries could be caused by both objective linguistic factors (the extinction of the sound denoted in Cyrillic by the letter yat, and then the letter itself, the interchange of the letters e/i due to the reduction of unstressed vowels, the loss of etymology of the surname, etc.), as well as subjective factors (insufficient qualifications of employees of civil registration departments, negligence in the preparation of documents, illegible handwriting, etc.). The paper also provides statistics of the existing variants of the surname at the present time (according to the Internet), as well as settlement and street names in Russia derived from it. The surname Deyanin / Diyanin receives a new interpretation in the light of the considered phonetic processes. The conclusion is made about the possibility of an independent development of similar surnames with different origin.

Anti-Idiotypic Agonistic Antibodies: Candidates for the Role of Universal Remedy.

Anti-idiotypic antibodies (anti-IDs) were discovered at the very beginning of the 20th century and have attracted attention of researchers for many years. Nowadays, there are five known types of anti-IDs: α, β, γ, ε, and δ. Due to the ability of internal-image anti-IDs to compete with an antigen for binding to antibody and to alter the biologic activity of an antigen, anti-IDs have become a target in the search for new treatments of autoimmune illnesses, cancer, and some other diseases. In this review, we summarize the data about anti-IDs that mimic the structural and functional properties of some bioregulators (autacoids, neurotransmitters, hormones, xenobiotics, and drugs) and evaluate their possible medical applications. The immune system is potentially able to reproduce or at least alter the effects of any biologically active endogenous or exogenous immunogenic agent via the anti-idiotypic principle, and probably regulates a broad spectrum of cell functions in the body, being a kind of universal remedy or immunacea, by analogy to the legendary ancient goddess of universal healing Panacea (Πανάκεια, Panakeia in Greek) in the treatment and prevention of diseases, possibly including non-infectious somatic and even hereditary ones.

Between Life and Non-Life: Sachiko Kodama’s Black and Bridget Riley’s Pink

The contemporary world is so technological that humans are located on the verge of life and non-life. Computers, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and androids permeate human society, and people are even fascinated by such menaces of the non-life. This paper clarifies why contemporary society loves the idea of the rise of artificial beings by analyzing the use of artificial colors – black and pink – by the cutting-edge female artists Sachiko Kodama and Bridget Riley. Media artist Kodama uses black liquid while the abstract artist Riley uses pink pigments as key materials. According to Asao Komachiya, black is the color of the blind; it appears on the verge of being and non-being. Meanwhile, Barbara Nemitz identifies pink as an artificial color that does not exist in the spectrum of sunlight. Both colors are highly evaluated in technological and consumer society and widely used on many goods. Kodama’s and Riley’s high reputation signifies that contemporary society likes the precarious artificial beings between life and non-life. Moreover, their original and unique works have realized the field of liberty as their extensive use of artificial colors black and pink indicates ultra-human. Kodama’s and Riley’s gender is also key. As Dora Haraway suggests in “Cyborg Manifesto” (1991), contemporary women, historically dealt with as peripheral existences, survive as ultra-human beings rather than the ancient goddesses. By considering significant female artists such as Kodama and Riley, we can understand not only the contemporary aesthetics of visual arts, but also the concurrent yearning of contemporary society for liberty, ultra-humanity, and non-life. Article received: April 17, 2019; Article accepted: June 23, 2019; Published online: September 15, 2019: Review article

Goddess Consciousness: The Power of Inanna as Revolutionary Ecofeminist Archetype

A robust study of the ecofeminist archetypes in ancient goddess literature, particularly the Sumerian myth of Inanna, can assist in facilitating the global shift in consciousness necessary to alleviate environmental destruction and the human cost of patriarchal capitalism by resolving the wounded anima/animus in our collective unconscious. The human and ecological costs of patriarchal capitalism are the result of placing material wealth over life, just as the masculine is placed over the feminine. To guide any permanent cognitive shift, we humans have historically and intuitively drawn upon archetypes and symbols to give meaning to our lives and inform our transformations. Jung pointed out the relationship between the wounded anima/animus in the personal and collective unconscious and our crises of modernity. Ultimately, we long to resolve this disconnect with our ancestral wisdom. The Sumerian myth of Inanna has been “useful in psychological processes of contemporary women and men,” particularly the myth as recorded by the Sumerian poet Enheduanna that includes her reclamation of women’s sexual power, and it can serve as a powerful resource in facilitating the cognitive shift necessary to arrest these individual and collective crises. The result of this cognitive shift is the development of goddess consciousness.

Investigating the Use of Ancient Fertility Themes in Malcolm Bradbury’s Eating People Is Wrong

Employing James George Frazer’s anthropological book The Golden Bough (1890) as a theoretical background, this paper examines the ways in which Malcolm Bradbury’s academic novel Eating People Is Wrong (1959) builds on ancient fertility rituals to delineate the divide between past and present moods and modes of thought and to illuminate the emotional and intellectual sterility afflicting the modern academy and its population. It will be clear that although their names and conduct resonate with echoes of the celebrations and rites of savage tribes and subsequent societies, Bradbury’s characters fail to enact the roles of ancient fertility divinities and to maintain the essential flavour of remote antiquity’s culture. This is best illustrated by the vain attempts of a number of ardent suitors to marry the leading but misleading character Emma Fielding, a latter-day fertility goddess who heartlessly hurts their hearts. While ancient fertility goddesses’ suitors or consorts were concerned about the welfare of the community on the whole, alongside their own welfare, their modern counterparts merely seek to enhance their narrow interests. Predictably, all the characters in the novel finish up helpless and hopeless. Finally, grounded on the premise that scholarly disciplines tend to crisscross in a mutually enriching manner, this investigation aims to prove how helpful it is for Bradbury to explore the academic soul and soil through the employment of studies from other fields and how interesting it is for the researcher to spot out this cultural trend and to bring it to the attention of the reader.

«Non sine Musis»: raffinatezze ellenizzanti del cardinale Miguel da Silva (con due appendici su Filippo Gheri e Mario Favonio)

The article presents three hitherto unknown Latin poems that Miguel da Silva († 1556), the dedicatee of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, composed during his cardinalate: a hymn on Sanitas addressed to pope Julius III, an epigram to Filippo Gheri accompanying the composition, and an epitaph for Mario Favonio, a straight collaborator of cardinal Rodolfo Pio. In the course of a detailed analysis, the hymn reveals to be a Marian remake of a Greek composition in praise of Hygieia, the ancient goddess of health. The epigram in memory of Favonio is another impressive document of Da Silva’s qualities as a poet. Thanks to its convincing fabula and its fine elaboration, it bears comparison with the most sophisticated texts of the same kind in the Greek Anthology and in Humanist Latin poetry.

Women in the Ancient Athenian Context: From an Ecofeminist Perspective

I discern in Greek myths of the goddess Athena traces of the idea of domination of mind over senses, and that men were seen as superior to women because of their naturally ruling mind. The Athenian, Platonic, androcentric, hierarchical worldview saw women as physically inferior to men. Behind courageous, wise Athena, lies Plato’s dualistic philosophy of reason, and the ideology of control. We must make a distinction between a dualistic philosophy and a holistic approach to reality. Ancient goddess Hestia’s inextinguishable flame as energy of all life extended to the entire world can be read as symbolizing the interrelatedness of all life.

Ancient Goddesses for Modern Times or New Goddesses from Ancient Times?

This paper deals with the way the goddess(es) of ancient Crete and Greece are imagined and reappropriated in the feminist spirituality movement. It offers an overview over the different metamorphoses of these ancient goddesses in the twentieth century, and takes a closer look at the goddess-related work of Carol P. Christ.

Cultural and Mathematical Meanings of Regular Octagons in Mesopotamia: Examining Islamic Art Designs

The most common regular polygon in Islamic art design is the octagon. Historical evidence of the use of an 8-star polygon and an 8-fold rosette dates back to Jemdet Nasr (3100-2900 B.C.) in Mesopotamia. Additionally, in ancient Egypt, octagons can be found in mathematical problem (Ahmose papyrus, Problem number 48), household goods (papyrus storage), architecture (granite columns) and decorations (palace decorations). The regular octagon which is a fundamentally important element of Islamic art design, is widely used as arithmetic objects in metric algebra along with other regular polygons in Mesopotamia. The 8-point star polygon has long been a symbol of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna and her East Semitic counterpart Ishtar. During the Neo-Assyrian period, the 8-fold rosette occasionally replaced the star as the symbol of Ishtar. In this paper, we discuss how octagonal design prevailed in the Islamic region since the late ninth century, and has existed in Mesopotamia from Jemdet Nasr to the end of third century B.C. We describe reasons why the geometric pattern of regular polygons, including regular octagons, developed in the Islamic world. Furthermore, we also discuss mathematical meanings of regular polygons.

TYPES OF INDIVIDUAL WOMEN EROTIC CODE

The article is devoted to the current issue of sexuality. Significant expansion and development of psychologists’ professional activity necessitate creating of generalized classification of individuals and married couples’ behavioral erotic types. The destruction of self-reflection, self-perception and the difficulty of interpersonal understanding are due to the substitution of concepts. The study of sexual-psychological characteristics of behavioral patterns of women in erotic relationships is very important in this regard. The new material on the topic under study is generalized. Erotic imagination functions and erotic images impact on the process of forming a fixed erotic Image of a sexual partner in women are determined. The impact of early life experience (imprinting) influenced on the individual erotic code formation is determined. Several motivational schemes of sexual behavior are described. Authors submit the definition of «individual erotic code» for the first time. «Individual erotic code» is found out as the unified recording system of the individual model erotic behavior and her «ideal partner» reactions on this behavior. The types of women individual erotic code, based on the concept of archetypes (K.G. Jung, D. S. Bolen) study are defined. Types of individual erotic code were named after the ancient Greek goddesses: Artemis, Athena, Hestia, Hera, Demeter, Persephone, Aphrodite. The attention is focused on the deep analysis of individual women erotic code stages realization, such as, the genesis of erotic impulse, the tempting process, the sexual act behavior, the pregnancy, the caring of posterity. Materials of research can be used in the practical work of psychologists and psychotherapists which working both with married couples, as well as in individual work with the client.

Between History and Personal Narrative: East European Women's Stories of Migration in the New Millennium—Contributions to Transnational Feminism

Between History and Personal Narrative: East European Women's Stories of Migration in the New Millennium—Contributions to Transnational Feminism