[tied] Re: Ancient female figurines (was Medieval Dragons, dog/snak

> >On Level VIa at Çatal Hüyük is a shrine depicting a spreadeagled

woman

> >giving birth to a bull, [...] whether the bull might be an early

form of

> >Ouranos, her son and husband, [...] The lady, however,
> >is not depicted as particularly corpulent.
>
> Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. The woman is the mother
> of the cosmos and the bull has come to represent the "sky", or

rather

> the sun and moon combined (alluding to a trinity). We are also
> reminded of Sumerian Gugulanna, the bull of heaven. The whole
> son/husband/wife thing is an example of a derivated form of the
> trinity, which itself was born from the tripartite model of the

cosmos

> that I just finished explaining..... For instance, El (sky) and

Baal (storm) can be seen to spring from the

> natural dual opposition between "skies above" and "waters below".

Over

> time, the "waters" become "waters of the sky" (tying in with the

dragon

> topic) and there is a new altered opposition between "clear sky" and
> "storm".

The way I see it, Ge parthenogenically gives birth to Ouranos,
represented as you say by the bull of heaven. The bull of heaven is
ritually killed or castrated, representing the castration of Ouranos.
Ouranos, as primordial father, represents male potency. The fertility
is brought to earth via the rains, which is unleashed by the
destruction of the sky. The storm and rain, new provider of
fertility, is thus represented by the son, or rather, Grandson. The
relationship is even more evident(and explicitly Freudian)in the
Hurrian creation myth. Kumarbi(Kronos) bites off sky god's phallus,
and is thereby impregnated with the unborn storm god. The storm god
is thus the re-emergent male potency lost in the castration/sacrifice
of bulll, which is represented by the falling fertility-bringing
rains. Thus the familiar image of grain springing from the body of
the sacrificed bull.

-Cort Williams