Goddess-Born (A Tale of Two Worlds Book 2)

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Paulus Hector Mair expresses astonishment that such a "manly weapon" should have been invented by a "tribe of women", but he accepts the attribution out of respect for his authority, Johannes Aventinus.

Ariosto 's Orlando Furioso contains a country of warrior women, ruled by Queen Orontea; the epic describes an origin much like that in Greek myth, in that the women, abandoned by a band of warriors and unfaithful lovers, rallied together to form a nation from which men were severely reduced, to prevent them from regaining power. Classicist Peter Walcot wrote, "Wherever the Amazons are located by the Greeks, whether it is somewhere along the Black Sea in the distant north-east, or in Libya in the furthest south, it is always beyond the confines of the civilized world.

The Amazons exist outside the range of normal human experience. Nevertheless, there are various proposals for a historical nucleus of the Amazons of Greek historiography, the most obvious candidates being historical Scythia and Sarmatia in line with the account by Herodotus , but some authors prefer a comparison to cultures of Asia Minor or even Minoan Crete. Speculation that the idea of Amazons contains a core of reality is based on archaeological findings from burials, pointing to the possibility that some Sarmatian women may have participated in battle.

These findings have led scholars to suggest that the Amazonian legend in Greek mythology may have been "inspired by real warrior women". Evidence of high-ranking warrior women comes from kurgans in southern Ukraine and Russia. During the time that the Scythians advanced into Asia and achieved near- hegemony in the Near East, there was a period of twenty-eight years when the men would have been away on campaigns for long periods. During this time the women would not only have had to defend themselves, but to reproduce, and this could well be the origin of the idea that Amazons mated once a year with their neighbours, if Herodotus actually based his accounts on fact.

Before modern archaeology uncovered some of the Scythian burials of warrior-maidens entombed under kurgans in the region of Altai Mountains and Sarmatia, [] [] giving concrete form at last to the Greek tales, the origin of the Amazon story had been the subject of speculation among classics scholars. While some regard the Amazons as a purely mythical people, others assume an historical foundation for them.

The deities worshipped by them were Ares who is consistently assigned to them as a god of war, and as a god of Thracian and generally northern origin and Artemis , not the usual Greek goddess of that name, but an Asiatic deity in some respects her equivalent. It is conjectured that the Amazons were originally the temple-servants and priestesses hierodulae of this goddess; and that the removal of the breast corresponded with the self-mutilation of the god Attis and the galli , Roman priests of Rhea Cybele.

Another theory is that, as the knowledge of geography extended, travellers brought back reports of tribes ruled entirely by women, who carried out the duties which elsewhere were regarded as peculiar to man, in whom alone the rights of nobility and inheritance were vested, and who had the supreme control of affairs. Hence arose the belief in the Amazons as a nation of female warriors, organized and governed entirely by women. Viirtheim De Ajacis origine, , the Amazons were of Greek origin [ When Minoan archeology was still in its infancy, nevertheless, a theory raised in an essay regarding the Amazons contributed by Lewis Richard Farnell and John Myres to Robert Ranulph Marett 's Anthropology and the Classics , [] placed their possible origins in Minoan civilization, drawing attention to overlooked similarities between the two cultures.

According to Myres, [] the tradition interpreted in the light of evidence furnished by supposed Amazon cults seems to have been very similar and may have even originated in Minoan culture. Francisco de Orellana gave the Amazon river its name after reporting pitched battles with tribes of female warriors, whom he likened to the Amazons.

The city of Samsun in modern-day Turkey features a recently constructed "Amazon Village" museum, created to bring attention to the legacy of the Amazons and to generate both academic interest and popular tourism. In Greece, female equestrians are also called "Amazons" Greek: Amazons became an important subject of the fine arts around , especially in the work of the Munich painter and sculptor Franz Stuck — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see Amazon disambiguation. Giantess Liburnians according to Pseudo-Scylax ruled by women Matriarchy List of women warriors in folklore Timeline of women in ancient warfare Shieldmaiden , female warrior in northern Europe Onna-bugeisha , female warrior in Japanese nobility Women in the military Women warriors in literature and culture.

Retrieved 13 September Retrieved 14 September Hole, Rinehart and Winston and Warner Books. The Lost History of the Amazons: Recent research findings on the legendary women nation. Retrieved 6 April Event occurs at Who's Who in Classical Mythology. From Artemis to Diana: The Goddess of Man and Beast. The epic, by Arctinus of Miletus , is lost: Hull, , Ohio University Press, G-vi, —, p. LIMC , "Achilleus" no. Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth. Stephanus does not write out the Amazon's name, simply stating that the town Cynna could have been named "after one of the Amazons".

Archived from the original on Studies in ancient Greek topography: University of California Press. Retrieved 30 September Religious Cults Associated With the Amazons. Description of Greece, Book I: Queen Elizabeth as an Amazon". Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications". Walcot, "Greek Attitudes towards Women: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: Jeannine Davis-Kimball, [ citation needed ] a tomb was found wherein female warriors were buried. Myres, "Herodotus and anthropology" in Robert R. Marett Anthropology and the Classics , pp.

Retrieved 27 August Ancient Greek religion and mythology. Dragons in Greek mythology Greek mythological creatures Greek mythological figures List of minor Greek mythological figures. Aphrodite Aphroditus Philotes Peitho. Empusa Epiales Hypnos Pasithea Oneiroi. Angelia Arke Hermes Iris. Apate Dolos Hermes Momus. Circe Hecate Hermes Trismegistus Triple deity.

Her approach was heralded by the howling of a dog. The dog was Hecate's regular sacrificial animal, and was often eaten in solemn sacrament. It has been claimed that her association with dogs is "suggestive of her connection with birth, for the dog was sacred to Eileithyia , Genetyllis, and other birth goddesses. Although in later times Hecate's dog came to be thought of as a manifestation of restless souls or demons who accompanied her, its docile appearance and its accompaniment of a Hecate who looks completely friendly in many pieces of ancient art suggests that its original signification was positive and thus likelier to have arisen from the dog's connection with birth than the dog's underworld associations.

Another metamorphosis myth explains why the polecat is also associated with Hecate. This maiden was playmate and companion of Alkmene, daughter of Elektryon. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed.

Galinthias, fearing that the pains of her labour would drive Alkmene mad, ran to the Moirai and Eleithyia and announced that by desire of Zeus a boy had been born to Alkmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished. At all this, consternation of course overcame the Moirai and they immediately let go their arms.

The Moirai were aggrieved at this and took away the womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel or polecat , making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hekate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant of herself.

Aelian told a different story of a woman transformed into a polecat: It has also reached my hearing that Gale was her name then; that she was a dealer in spells and a sorceress Pharmakis ; that she was extremely incontinent, and that she was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires. Nor has it escaped my notice that the anger of the goddess Hekate transformed it into this evil creature. May the goddess be gracious to me: Athenaeus of Naucratis , drawing on the etymological speculation of Apollodorus of Athens , notes that the red mullet is sacred to Hecate, "on account of the resemblance of their names; for that the goddess is trimorphos , of a triple form".

The Greek word for mullet was trigle and later trigla. It 'delighted in polluted things,' and 'would eat the corpse of a fish or a man'. Blood-coloured itself, it was sacred to the blood-eating goddess Hecate. It seems a symbolic summation of all the negative characteristics of the creatures of the deep.

The main symptoms were a preoccupation with size, the consequent rise to absurd heights of the prices of large specimens, a habit of keeping red mullet in captivity, and the enjoyment of the highly specialized aesthetic experience induced by watching the color of the dying fish change. The frog , which was also the symbol of the similarly-named Egyptian goddess Heqet , [69] has also become sacred to Hecate in modern Pagan literature, possibly due in part to its ability to cross between two elements. In her three-headed representations, discussed above, Hecate often has one or more animal heads, including cow, dog, boar, serpent and horse.

Hecate was closely associated with plant lore and the concoction of medicines and poisons. In particular she was thought to give instruction in these closely related arts. Apollonius of Rhodes , in the Argonautica mentions that Medea was taught by Hecate, "I have mentioned to you before a certain young girl whom Hecate, daughter of Perses, has taught to work in drugs. The yew in particular was sacred to Hecate.

Greeks held the yew to be sacred to Hecate Her attendants draped wreathes of yew around the necks of black bulls which they slaughtered in her honor and yew boughs were burned on funeral pyres. The yew was associated with the alphabet and the scientific name for yew today, taxus , was probably derived from the Greek word for yew, toxos , which is hauntingly similar to toxon , their word for bow and toxicon , their word for poison.

It is presumed that the latter were named after the tree because of its superiority for both bows and poison. Hecate was said to favor offerings of garlic , which was closely associated with her cult. It has been suggested that the use of dogs for digging up mandrake is further corroboration of the association of this plant with Hecate; indeed, since at least as early as the 1st century CE, there are a number of attestations to the apparently widespread practice of using dogs to dig up plants associated with magic.

Hecate was associated with borders, city walls, doorways, crossroads and, by extension, with realms outside or beyond the world of the living. She appears to have been particularly associated with being 'between' and hence is frequently characterized as a " liminal " goddess. As a goddess expected to avert harmful or destructive spirits from the house or city over which she stood guard and to protect the individual as she or he passed through dangerous liminal places, Hecate would naturally become known as a goddess who could also refuse to avert the demons, or even drive them on against unfortunate individuals.

It was probably her role as guardian of entrances that led to Hecate's identification by the mid fifth century with Enodia , a Thessalian goddess. Enodia's very name "In-the-Road" suggests that she watched over entrances, for it expresses both the possibility that she stood on the main road into a city, keeping an eye on all who entered, and in the road in front of private houses, protecting their inhabitants. This function would appear to have some relationship with the iconographic association of Hecate with keys, and might also relate to her appearance with two torches, which when positioned on either side of a gate or door illuminated the immediate area and allowed visitors to be identified.

Hecate's importance to Byzantium was above all as a deity of protection. When Philip of Macedon was about to attack the city, according to the legend she alerted the townspeople with her ever present torches, and with her pack of dogs, which served as her constant companions.

Watchdogs were used extensively by Greeks and Romans.

Iris (mythology)

Cult images and altars of Hecate in her triplicate or trimorphic form were placed at three-way crossroads though they also appeared before private homes and in front of city gates. In what appears to be a 7th-century indication of the survival of cult practices of this general sort, Saint Eligius , in his Sermo warns the sick among his recently converted flock in Flanders against putting "devilish charms at springs or trees or crossroads", [86] and, according to Saint Ouen would urge them "No Christian should make or render any devotion to the deities of the trivium, where three roads meet Like Hecate, "[t]he dog is a creature of the threshold, the guardian of doors and portals, and so it is appropriately associated with the frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier.

The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus , whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld, and the dead from leaving it. Hecate has been characterized as a pre-Olympian chthonic goddess. The first literature mentioning Hecate is the Theogony by Hesiod:. And she conceived and bore Hecate whom Zeus the son of Cronos honored above all.

He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honor also in starry heaven, and is honored exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favor according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honor comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favorably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her. For as many as were born of Earth and Ocean amongst all these she has her due portion.

The son of Cronos did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: Whom she will she greatly aids and advances: And when men arm themselves for the battle that destroys men, then the goddess is at hand to give victory and grant glory readily to whom she will. Good is she also when men contend at the games, for there too the goddess is with them and profits them: And she is good to stand by horsemen, whom she will: She is good in the byre with Hermes to increase the stock. The droves of kine and wide herds of goats and flocks of fleecy sheep, if she will, she increases from a few, or makes many to be less.

So, then, albeit her mother's only child, she is honored amongst all the deathless gods. And the son of Cronos made her a nurse of the young who after that day saw with their eyes the light of all-seeing Dawn. So from the beginning she is a nurse of the young, and these are her honours. Hesiod emphasizes that Hecate was an only child, the daughter of Perses and Asteria , the sister of Leto the mother of Artemis and Apollo. Grandmother of the three cousins was Phoebe the ancient Titaness who personified the moon. Hesiod's inclusion and praise of Hecate in the Theogony has been troublesome for scholars, in that he seems to hold her in high regard, while the testimony of other writers, and surviving evidence, suggests that this may have been the exception.

One theory is that Hesiod 's original village had a substantial Hecate following and that his inclusion of her in the Theogony was a way of adding to her prestige by spreading word of her among his readers. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter , Hecate is called the "tender-hearted", a euphemism perhaps intended to emphasize her concern with the disappearance of Persephone , when she assisted Demeter with her search for Persephone following her abduction by Hades, suggesting that Demeter should speak to the god of the sun, Helios.

Subsequently, she became Persephone's companion on her yearly journey to and from the realms of Hades; serving as a psychopomp. Because of this association, Hecate was one of the chief goddesses of the Eleusinian Mysteries, alongside Demeter and Persephone. Variations in interpretations of Hecate's role or roles can be traced in classical Athens. In two fragments of Aeschylus she appears as a great goddess. In Sophocles and Euripides she is characterized as the mistress of witchcraft and the Keres.

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One surviving group of stories [ clarification needed ] suggests how Hecate might have come to be incorporated into the Greek pantheon without affecting the privileged position of Artemis. Here, Hecate is a mortal priestess often associated with Iphigeneia. She scorns and insults Artemis, who in retribution eventually brings about the mortal's suicide. In these stories a supreme being usually sends an animal into the primal waters to find bits of sand or mud with which to build habitable land.

Some scholars interpret these myths psychologically while others interpret them cosmogonically. In both cases emphasis is placed on beginnings emanating from the depths. Earth-diver myths are common in Native American folklore but can be found among the Chukchi and Yukaghir , the Tatars and many Finno-Ugrian traditions. The pattern of distribution of these stories suggest they have a common origin in the eastern Asiatic coastal region, spreading as peoples migrated west into Siberia and east to the North American continent. Characteristic of many Native American myths, earth-diver creation stories begin as beings and potential forms linger asleep or suspended in the primordial realm.

The earth-diver is among the first of them to awaken and lay the necessary groundwork by building suitable lands where the coming creation will be able to live. In many cases, these stories will describe a series of failed attempts to make land before the solution is found. These myths all deals with the telling of the Creation which is connected to the Milky Way Centre on the southern "underworld" hemisphere and the Great Mother deity.

In emergence myths humanity emerges from another world into the one they currently inhabit. IVAR and the process of emergence is likened to the act of giving birth. The role of midwife is usually played by a female deity, like the spider woman of Native American mythology.

Male characters rarely figure into these stories, and scholars often consider them in counterpoint to male oriented creation myths, like those of the ex nihilo variety. Often the passage from one world or stage to the next is impelled by inner forces, a process of germination or gestation from earlier, embryonic forms.

The genre is most commonly found in Native American cultures where the myths frequently link the final emergence of people from a hole opening to the underworld to stories about their subsequent migrations and eventual settlement in their current homelands. Finnish mythology Tuonela Greek mythology Main article: Unlike many of his contemporaries among the deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shares his power with no female divinity, nor is he the divine Husband or Lover of any.

King, Lord, Master, Judge, and Father.

Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians, however, are quick to point out that God is not to be considered in sexual terms at all. Yet the actual language they use daily in worship and prayer conveys a different message and gives the distinct impression that God is thought of in exclusively masculine terms. And while it is true that Catholics revere Mary as the mother of Jesus, she cannot be identified as divine in her own right: Christianity, of course, added the trinitarian terms to the Jewish description of God.

And yet of the three divine "Persons," two—the Father and Son—are described in masculine terms, and the third—the Spirit—suggests the sexlessness of the Greek neuter term pneuma. This is not merely a subjective impression. Whoever investigates the early development of Christianity—the field called "patristics," that is, study of "the fathers of the church"—may not be surprised by the passage that concludes the recently discovered, secret Gospel of Thomas: For I tell you truly, that every female who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Further exploration of the texts which include this Gospel—written on papyrus, hidden in large clay jars nearly 1, years ago—has identified them as Jewish and Christian gnostic works which were attacked and condemned as "heretical" as early as A. What distinguishes these "heterodox" texts from those that are called "orthodox" is at least partially clear: Although one might expect, then, that they would recall the archaic pagan traditions of the Mother Goddess, their language is to the contrary specifically Christian, unmistakably related to a Jewish heritage.

Thus we can see that certain gnostic Christians diverged even more radically from the Jewish tradition than the early Christians who described God as the "three Persons" or the Trinity. For, instead of a monistic and masculine God, certain of these texts describe God as a dyadic being, who consists of both masculine and feminine elements. One such group of texts, for example, claims to have received a secret tradition from Jesus through James, and significantly, through Mary Magdalene. Since the Genesis account goes on to say that mankind was created "male and female" 1: The characterization of the divine Mother in these sources is not simple since the texts themselves are extraordinarily diverse.

Nevertheless, three primary characterizations merge. First, a certain poet and teacher, Valentinus, begins with the premise that God is essentially indescribable.

And yet he suggests that the divine can be imagined as a Dyad consisting of two elements: Followers of Valentinus invoke this feminine power, whom they also call "Grace" in Greek, the feminine term charis , in their own private celebration of the Christian eucharist: When they describe God in this way, different gnostic writers have different interpretations. Some maintain that the divine is to be considered masculo-feminine—the "great male-female power. A third group suggests that one can describe the Source of all things in either masculine or feminine terms, depending on which aspect one intends to stress.

A second characterization of the divine Mother describes her as Holy Spirit. One source, the Secret Book of John, for example, relates how John, the brother of James, went out after the crucifixion with "great grief," and had a mystical vision of the Trinity: I am the One who is with you always: Where the Greek terminology for the Trinity, which includes the neuter term for the spirit pneuma , virtually requires that the third "Person" of the Trinity be asexual, the author of the Secret Book looks to the Hebrew term for spirit, ruah—a feminine word.

He thus concludes, logically enough, that the feminine "Person" conjoined with Father and Son must be the Mother!

Indeed, the text goes on to describe the Spirit as Mother: She became the mother of the all, for she existed before them all, the mother-father [matropater]. The author interprets a puzzling saying of Jesus in the New Testament "whoever does not hate his father and mother is not worthy of me" by adding: Here again the Spirit is praised as both Mother and Virgin, the counterpart—and consort—of the Heavenly Father: Yet because this process is to be understood symbolically, and not literally, the Spirit remains a virgin!

But the author ridicules those "literal-minded" Christians who mistakenly refer the virgin birth to Mary, Jesus' earthly mother, as if she conceived apart from Joseph: Besides the eternal, mystical Silence, and besides the Holy Spirit, certain gnostics suggest a third characterization of the divine Mother as Wisdom. Here again the Greek feminine term for wisdom, sophia, like the term for spirit, ruah, translates a Hebrew feminine term, hokhmah.

Early interpreters had pondered the meaning of certain biblical passages, for example, Proverbs: In such passages, at any rate, Wisdom bears two connotations: One gnostic source calls her the "first universal creator"; 20 another says that God the Father was speaking to her when he proposed to "make mankind in our image. Father, Mother, unity, Root of all things. The Garden of Eden, then, is Moses' symbolic term for the womb, and Eden the placenta, and the river which comes out of Eden the navel, which nourishes the fetus. The Great Announcement, for example, having described the Source as a masculo- feminine being, a "bisexual Power," goes on to say that "what came into being from that Power, that is, humanity, being one, is found to be two: Yet this reference to the creation story of Genesis 2—an account which inverts the biological birth process, and so effectively denies the creative function of the female—proves to be unusual in gnostic sources.

More often, such sources refer instead to the first creation account in Genesis 1: Then he split Adam in two, and made two backs, one on each side. Marcus whose prayer to the Mother is given above not only concludes from this account that God is dyadic "Let us make mankind" but also that "mankind, which was formed according to the image and likeness of God [Father and Mother] was masculo-feminine. All the texts cited above—secret "gospels," revelations, mystical teachings—are among those rejected from the select list of twenty-six that comprise the "New Testament" collection As these and other writings were sorted and judged by various Christian communities, every one of these texts which gnostic groups revered and shared was rejected from the canonical collection as "heterodox" by those who called themselves "orthodox" literally, straight-thinking Christians.

By the time this process was concluded, probably as late as the year A. What is the reason for this wholesale rejection? The gnostics themselves asked this question of their "orthodox" attackers and pondered it among themselves. Some concluded that the God of Israel himself initiated the polemics against gnostic teaching which his followers carried out in his name. They argued that he was a derivative, merely instrumental power, whom the divine Mother had created to administer the universe, but who remained ignorant of the power of Wisdom, his own Mother: But he was unaware that the ideas he used came from her: For if there were no other god, of whom would he be jealous?

Then the Mother began to be distressed. The gnostic teacher concluded: Taken from Womanspirit Rising pp Christ and Judith Plaskow. Pagels received her Ph. This essay originally appeared in Signs Vol. Where the God of Israel is characterized as husband and lover in the Old Testament OT , his spouse is described as the community of Israel i. One may note several exceptions to this rule: The Gospel according to Thomas hereafter cited as ET , ed.

Collins, , logion Hippolytus, Refutationis Omnium Haeresium hereafter cited as Ref , ed. Irenaeus, Aduersus Haereses hereafter cited as AH , ed. Harvey Cambridge, , 1. Apocryphon Johannis hereafter cited as AJ , ed.

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