--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> cas111:
> >There was no "butterfly." That is a simplistic answer repeated over
> >the years until it is unquestioningly accepted as "fact". The
> >butterfly was part of Gimbutas' 'Mommy Complex' and supposed to be
> >part of her political agenda for making us believe that
the "peaceful
> >matriarchal societies of the Neolithic peoples" worshipped
> >their 'Great Goddess' above all else. It's rubbish.
>
> Yes, all ethnologists can agree the "matriarchal peace" thing is
> rubbish, but I'm not sure if we can ignore the "butterfly" motif.
> I could swear that Gimbutas had illustrations of an insect-like
> character in one of her books.
Look in "Language of the Goddess," page 273 (soft cover). It has a
goddess with an insect-like head flanked by two winged griffins, from
a Minoan jug. Above her are a double set of horns. Above that is the
axe. Gimbutas says that "the double axe of the Bronze Age was
originally an hourglass-shaped goddess of death and regeneration...
the butterfly rises fromt hebody or skull of the sacrificed bull." I
don't see it. It's an axe. Okay, other than Athena popping out of
Zeus' skull, split by an axe, what do we have to link with this
imagery? Are butterflies or axes associated with Athena? No. How
about the insect goddess being swapped out of this myth for Zeus?
Unlikely, IMO.
Gimbutas has the axe as an "energy symbol, because of its roughly
triangular form symbolically linked with the female triangle
(vulva)." Get your mind out of the gutter, Marija. For all the
wonderful research she did in this area, her interpretations and
conclusions, while mostly quite impressive, became somewhat warped by
her feminist political agenda. We don't have to accept everything she
wrote as being accurate.
On page 274 there are images of Minoan pithos. One has axes above the
heads of bulls. Axes also adorn the rim. No goddess. Nothing feminine
about the axes. Gimbutas calls them "double-axe-shaped butterflies"
because that's what she wants to see. On another image there is the
double-axe that does have some similarity to a winged angel. What I
see, however, is perhaps the savior-god ascending to heaven, his arms
reaching upwards. I don't see anything convincingly butterfly or
feminine about this. No skirt. No boobs. The constellation Taurus is
immediately adjacent to Orion. This is what the ancients were looking
at.
There's also Hannahanna's bee that
> is sent out to fetch Telipinu... What's that all about if it has
> no bearing on the Goddess? The bee is otherwise useless to the
> story if it is not a symbol of something greater (that is, if not
> a symbol of Goddess' power (like a shakti) or even of the Goddess
> herself).
>
The bee is an acolyte of the goddess, as with Hannahanna. I think the
ancients knew the difference between a bee and a butterfly. ;-)
The Greeks had the Melissa (bees) I believe as some sort of nymphs,
but no butterflies that I can think of.
The Greeks had multiple myths of dying-and-resurrection gods that
became, along with the goddess Demeter, the focus of their Orphic and
related mystery cults: Dionysus, Adonis, Heracles, Orion, Mithras,
the Dioscuri. The attraction of these cults was a belief in the
immortality of the soul and the possibility of ascending to heaven.
It is very Near Eastern, to include the winged angels. It seems to me
that the constellation Orion and Taurus were linked to the most
ancient Neolithic religion as the death and resurrection of the
sacrificial savior-god. As far back as Catal Huyuk they had shrines
dedicated to their 'great goddess' and the bull, who was their
sacrificial savior-god. Even the feminists agree with this. Probably
also axes, though I'd have to look that up.
cas
>
>
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