Preface: I'm out of my depth here, having no background in feminist studies or feminist history. If I say something naive or offensive, don't hesitate to call me out. In this series, I am reacting to and pondering the work of Vanessa Lavallée, Ancient Goddess Magic: Invoking the Queens of the Heavens. My purpose is to learn useful ideas related to magic and religion and share those ideas with other lovers of fantasy and authors of fantasy. I know I can benefit from deep thought in this area with regard to my own writing, which is fantasy set in a Mesopotamia-like world.
Vanessa Lavallée is uniquely positioned for this study. She is a feminist, interested in the goddesses and female demonic powers and how in a patriarchal society these represented a dangerous side of the feminine energy, a side feared by men. She is also a true believer, an animist and astrologer herself, open to the reality of energies in nature and astronomical objects.
One of her passions that led her to write this book came out of her own study of ancient goddesses and female demons:
I felt drawn to this original feminine energy that was assertive and sometimes aggressive and represented a combative force that scared most men.
And she wrote to combat the prevalent notion in myth studies and archaeological / anthropological studies that assumed the feminine was strictly about fertility issues:
I wanted to get rid of traditional interpretations and demonstrate that the divine feminine in the ancient world was not solely based on fertility roles—quite the contrary, in fact.
So what aspect of the feminine divine has been so generally overlooked?
It was in Wales, where many ancient sites are in tune with the sky, that I realized that many myths of ancient deities were connected to the stories of constellations and celestial objects and that our modern interpretation of these ancient cultural stories had partially forgotten this connection.
She is adamant that ancients looked to the sky at night and saw their gods, goddesses, and demons. They believed astral objects had power over us. And ancient goddesses were connected to stars and constellations. She came up with four major categories of goddess power: the Creatrix, the Warrior, the Healer, and the Lady of the Sea.
You will notice that they all have in common the ability to connect with the underworld and the dead, to protect the deceased and assist with spiritual rebirth and regeneration.
Well, I'm not sure about you, but call me fascinated and already mostly persuaded by the case she makes. I've wondered for quite some time how the Sumerians and later Mesopotamians thought of Inanna (a.k.a. Ishtar, or the biblical Ashtoreth / Asherah), associated with Venus (and parallel to the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus). In Sumeria and in later Mesopotamian texts, Inanna was a War Goddess as well as a Love Goddess.
Stay tuned for much more about the divine feminine energy as it was understood in the ancient world! And in my own world (Haral, a Mesopotamia-like world in which my stories and novels are being written) there are divine magical energies (witches, earthwives, seers, and sorceresses). Looking forward to learning more and filling my stories with divine feminine energy!
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