Re: [tied] Re: Religion

From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 3836
Date: 2000-09-18

Can be ASHTART the origin of Greek goddess ASTERIA and ASTRAIA?
Did come APHRODITE from Egyptian Pr-Wadjet, ( Wadjet, god of
Aphroditopolis), according to Bernal. (I think it's one of the best
etymologies of Bernal). This not dismiss the fact that Aphrodite surely is
related to Phoenician Ashtart.

Joao SL
----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2000 10:50 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Religion


>
> In reply to Arkugal Glen wrote
>
> > Arkugal:
> > >Where is it stated that MARS or ARES have any connection with the
> > >Underworld?
> >
> > Nergal, Marduk, Baal, etc. They are related to war or storms and
> are
> also
> > related to the underworld with a venusian consort. Note also that
> Mars
> > wasn't always a war god and is the product of mythological
> confusion.
>
> Nergal became an underword divinity as God of pestilence. He
> replaced
> Ereshkigal only in late Sumerian times, with a myth that led to the
> rape/marriage of Ereshkigal and her subservience to the later god.
>
> Marduk was never "God of the Underword" and had no Venusian marriage
> connnection as you put it. Rather he was titulary god of Babylon,
> inserted into the Mesopotamian pantheon only with the rise of the 1st
> Dymasty of Babylon under Hammurabi. Baal too was not married to a
> venusian goddess. Baal was usually paired with Anat, sometimes with
> Baalit, who was portrayed (usually) as a fertility goddess, naked,
> with a Hathor type hairstyle (sometimes even with Hathor horns)
>
> > Arkugal:
> > >VENUS is connected with the land, APHRODITE is connected with the
> > >water. Two different things.
> >
> > Venus is connected with Mars (a theme persistent as well in the
> related
> > SumeroAkkadian belief) and so by association, they are connected
> with the
> > underworld which happens to be watery. However, the water theme is
> obscure,
> > I agree, partly because Mars has always persisted with the early
> established
> > association with fire even when the underworld went from firey to
> watery.
> > Clearly, Venus has always been a fertility god whether she be
> associated
> > with water directly or not. I'm not sure whether Aphrodite was
> truely an IE
> > deity or rather a later "mirror image" deity of Venus.
>
> Aphrodite was originally a Cyprian divinity, imported into the Greek
> pantheon it would seem in post Mycenaean times. This became
> cultically signified as a result of a late insertion into the
> Olympians, as in Hesoid's story of Theogony in which Aphrodite Urania
> was conceived from the sea, when Uranus was castrated and his
> genitals
> were flung into the Mediterranean near Kythera or Paphos. Homer
> presents a second origin claiming she was the daughter of Zeus and
> Dione, bit some have doubted whether Homer's Aphrodite Pandemos and
> Aphrodite Urania are the same goddess. Certainly Homer by giving
> Aphrodite the gift of the golden apples to Paris by promising for him
> marriage to the most beautiful woman alive (Helen, who happened to be
> already married to Menalaus, thereby initiating the Trojan War), was
> probably "retrodicting" - using a new Goddess to usurp the place
> originally held by an earlier one. In this case the rivalry between
> Aphrodite's support for the Trojans, and Athena's support for the
> Greeks seems indicative as to which goddess originally was
> responsible
> for bestowing golden apples (James Frazer's Golden Bough talks of
> this
> too).
>
> In either case Herodotus, who traced Aphrodite back to the Phoenician
> Astarte was probably closer to the mark. Aphrodite's dying and
> resurrecting lover Adonis is clearly the Semitic Adonai (Lord) one of
> the titles given to Astarte's dying and resurrecting lover Tammuz.
> Astarte was Queen of Heaven, Aphrodite was Urania (Celestial), both
> were worshipped with doves and incense, both had a cult of sacred
> prostitutes. The story of Aphrodite and Ares too is an exceptionally
> late insertion. Once Tammuz was dead, the ancient Greeks who were
> loath to insert a third virgin Goddess into their pantheon cast about
> for a consort to the new goddess, and married her off to Haephestus.
> As the divinity of Ares wmweged out of late Mycenaean times, he too
> was consortless, and so Ares and Aphrodite as lovers became the
> solution. This established an association between the planets Mars
> and Venus that previously did not exist in Semitic or Sumerian myth.
>
> The Roman Venus had none of these cultic associations until the
> Graeco-philic period in which the Romans took an old Etruscan myth of
> an origin for Sacred twins back to Lydia, and made Aeneas, son of
> Venus a Trojan, and inserted their Goddess Venus as being identical
> to
> the Greek Aphrodite. Before that they were very different divinities
> with very different associations.
>
> So Glen, the Venusian associations of the goddess Venus with the
> planet Venus came late in ancient history. And the origins of
> Aphrodite too are probably due to the spread of a Phoenician cult to
> Cyprus, spreading thence to Ionia to be popularised by Homer.
> Nothing
> to do with PIE divinities.
>
> For god sake Glen please learn a little comparitive mythology.
> particularly Burkert.
>
> Have a look at
>
> http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/imageswomen/papers/lombardiaphrodite/aph
> rodite.html
>
> http://www.messagenet.com/myths/bios/aphrodite.html
> Regards
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>