In the first post in this series, I mentioned I am out of my depth when it comes to feminist studies, but I am commenting on this one anyway hoping not to say anything stupid, but to glean practical insight from the author. I know a lot of fantasy novels could use some dangerous feminine energy. For some reason, I felt drawn to Mesopotamian ideas about witches when I started designing the world of Haral. I think my best stories will be those featuring characters who are witches (but not like European concepts). Here we turn again to Vanessa Lavallée's wonderful study of ancient goddesses.
In her first chapter, Lavallée helps us get inside the thinking process of an ancient person, seeing the sun sink below the horizon, knowing that she (the sun) carries the souls of those who died today to the world below. And as she disappears, the sky darkens and lights appear: the stars and constellations who are the gods and goddesses of the cosmos!
A common title for an ancient goddess is "Queen of Heaven." The Sumerian Inanna, known by later cultures as Ishtar, was named Queen of Heaven. According to Lavallée, the epithet was applied to many other goddesses as well. She says this about the phenomenon of goddess worship in Mesopotamia:
In the current era, during which patriarchal dominance has prevailed, it can be challenging to envision a time when women held significant power. However, in the past century, there has been a growing interest in ancient goddesses thanks in part to advances in scholarship. While in antiquity there was no singular great goddess cult, the presence and importance of goddesses in the ancient world cannot be denied.
I haven't read her chapter on Inanna yet, but I am surprised she says there was no great goddess cult. Because the importance of Inanna (Ishtar) in Mesopotamian myth is hard to overstate. And it has always seemed odd to me, knowing the patriarchy of the ancient world from my reading and studies, to understand how Inanna was thought of in Sumeria, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, and beyond. The mighty Gilgamesh feared her. Her cult pervades the Near East.
Lavallée quickly introduces the concept of astronomy in the ancient world. The science of omens had its highest point in the work of astrologers who read omens in the patterns of heavenly objects. There is evidence that constellations were known and venerated in prehistoric times. The Lascaux cave in France features images of the Pleiades and Hyades, for example. And researchers have discovered the oldest lunar calendar from—get this—35,000 BCE. She describes several ancient sites which have a similar purpose to the well-known monuments at Stonehenge, such as the Göbekli Tepe temple which helped observers mark the ascent of Sirius in summer.
The ancients revered the stars and constellations, especially those constellations that resembled animals. They view them as full of beneficent energy to aid the lives of worshippers.
By the time of late antiquity, one particular goddess came to be regarded as the one goddess who encompassed all the great goddess who preceded her: Isis. Specific attributes of other goddesses were thought to be aspects of Isis. A Lucius Apuleius wrote in Metamorphoses book 11, chapter 47:
I am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of powers divine, Queen of Heaven, the principal of the Gods celestial, the light of the goddesses:at my will the planets of the air, the wholesome winds of the seas, and the silences of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity, is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customs and in many names, for the Phrygians calls me Pessinuntica, the mother of the gods; the Athenians call me Cecropian Artemis; the Cyprians, Paphian Aphrodite; the Candians, Dictyanna; the Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine; the Eleusians call me Mother of the Corn. . . . Behold I am come to take pity of thy fortune and tribulation, behold I am present to favor and aid thee. Leave off thy weeping and lamentation, put away thy sorrow, for behold the healthful day, which is ordained by my providence, therefore be ready to attend my commandment.
Lavallée is a practitioner of animism, a devotee of these goddesses. It is not merely her field of study. She seeks to capture—and this is the gold I am searching for in her work—the meaning of the divine feminine energy in human experience. She rejects older scholarship which assumed goddess were mostly about fertility. She embraces the astrological meaning of the goddesses and sees in it practical tools for animists to use in their prayers and rituals.
Now, I am reading Lavallée with an interest in goddesses and feminine forms of magic for worldbuilding and fantasy literature. In upcoming posts, I will consider how she describes specific goddesses and the energies they possessed and wielded in the cosmos. Already, just in these preliminary posts, I feel as if a few practical insights are already emerging:
#1. There could be a magic system based on stars, planets, and constellations. I am sure there must me worlds already written that have such magic. The only specific example I can recall is the red comet in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
#2. A mother goddess could be a fascinating feature in a fantasy world, a goddess whose creative energy thrums in everything that lives, whose fecund nature encompasses earth, sky, and the world below. Fertility is not the only feature of ancient goddesses, but fertility as creation could be a powerful force in a fantasy world.
#3. The sky and its celestial objects were viewed as primarily feminine (Lavallée claims, she could be wrong). The Egyptians saw the earthly sphere as masculine and the celestial as feminine, although modern Western thought has reversed this (God the Father is in the sky). Much feminist paganism follows what Lavallée calls the error of associating feminine energy with the ground and she wishes to redirect our thinking to see astrology as the realm of goddesses.
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