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Ancient Goddess GrottoAncient caves are filled with images and symbols of the Ancient Goddess. ...In coming to honor the Ancient Goddess, we honor our own common human heritage. ...www.spiralgoddess.com/AncientGoddessGrotto.html - 13k - 30 Jan 2006 - Cached - Similar pages

Gods Goddesses & MythsGods, Goddesses, and Myths on Eliki provides beautifully illustrated content andarticles on Celtic Deities and Myths, The Origins of the Days of the Week, ...www.eliki.com/ancient/myth/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

Love Goddesses - Ancient Goddesses of sexuality, love, and ...Love Goddesses - Ancient Goddesses of sexuality, love, and fertility - AphroditeFreya Isis Ishtar Venus.ancienthistory.about.com/ cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/aa021403a.htm - 31k - Cached - Similar pages

Goodison and Morris, Ancient GoddessesIn the cases examined in Ancient Goddesses --- Mesopotamia, Egypt, ... This reallycannot stand, and the contributors to Ancient Goddesses don't let it. ...cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/ancient-goddesses/ - 28k - Cached - Similar pages

Ancient Goddess Religions – Greek/Norse/CelticOther famous goddess figures in Greek mythology include Artemis, ... oracle...who bearsa striking resemblance to the ancient snake goddess of the Minoans. ...www.angelfire.com/music4/thegoddess/ancient2.html - 12k - Cached - Similar pages

Reproductions of Ancient GoddessesHand crafted reproductions of ancient goddesses. ... Nile Goddess 4000bc - Funeraryfigure Cast stone on marble base 11" $64.99 atD85 ...www.prometheus-imports.com/goddessesrow2col2.htm - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

Gods and GoddessesThis section uses frames.www.ancientegypt.co.uk/gods/explore/main.html - 1k - Cached - Similar pages

Goddess: Prayers, Invocations, Songs, Mantras, Chants, RitualsThe Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. Rituals,invocations, exercises, and magic. By Starhawk. 10th Anniversary ...www.egreenway.com/meditation/goddess1.htm - 59k - Cached - Similar pages

Statues: Kuan-Yin, Buddha, Ancient Goddesses, Mayan Art, Celtic ...Museum reproduction statues of Buddha, Kuan-Yin, ancient goddesses, Egyptianstatuary, Bast, Mayan art and Celtic crosses add meaning and beauty to your ...

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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1999.10.03Lucy Goodison, Christine Morris, Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press and British Museum Press, 1999.ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1999/1999-10-03.html - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

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Oedipus Explains the Riddle of the SphinxJean August Dominique Ingres

Canvas, 1808

Camelot & Arthurian Legend

Amazons in Greek Mythology

Celtic Deities and Myths

Voodoo

Origins of the Days of the Week

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Camelot

Don't let it be forgot,That once there was a spot,

For one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot

Jousting at Camelot

Camelot was the most famous castle in the medievallegends of King Arthur, and where, according tolegend, he reigned over Briton before the Saxonconquest. At Camelot Arthur established a brilliantcourt and seated the greatest and most chivalrouswarriors in Europe, the Knights of the Round Table.Camelot was the starting point of the Quest for theHoly Grail, and by the 1200's, it came to symbolize thecenter of the Arthurian world.

The oldest known stories of Arthur don't refer toCamelot by name. It is first mentioned explicitly in theromance Lancelot written by Chretien de Troyes in thetwelfth century. Different writers throughout the ageshave placed Camelot in different locations. Sir ThomasMalory, in Le Morte D'arthur (15th century), placedthe castle in Winchester. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in hisHistory of the Kings of Britain (about 1136) namedCaerleon Castle in Wales. Another theory puts Camelotnear Tintagel, Arthur's reputed Cornish birthplace.According to the romancers, Camelot was named after

a pagan king called Camaalis. Modern attempts at identifying Camelot have sought to place Camelot at theruins of Cadbury Castle in Somerset, excavated in the 1960's. There is much underlying tradition tosupport this belief. Cadbury Castle is an earthwork fort of the Iron Age, which looks over the Vale ofAvalon to Glastonbury. Nearby is the River Cam, and the village of Queen Camel (once known as Camel)The antiquary John Leland, in the reign of Henry VIII speaks of local people who refer to the fort as"Camalat" and as the home of Arthur.

The mythology of Camelot, and the story of King Arthur has been told and retold over the centuries, hencethere are many versions. The legends of Arthur may have originated with an actual chieftain named Arthurwho lived in Wales in the sixth century, but the many retellings have moved the story far away from thatplace and time. Because of the belief that Arthur will return, he is sometimes called The Once and FutureKing and Camelot itself has come to not only be viewed as a place, but as a state of mind or a reflection ofa lost ideal. Tennyson, in the Idylls of the King writes that it is symbolic of "the gradual growth of humanbeliefs and institutions, and of the spiritual development of man."

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The Characters In Arthurian Legend

Arthur

Guinevere

Lancelot

Morgan le Fay

Merlin

The Characters in ArthurianLegend

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Camelot & Arthurian Legend

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Celtic Deities and Myths

Stone Deity

Unidentified Celtic deityfrom France

with boar carved in torso

The Celts were a technologically advanced and barbarous people whooccupied vast areas of western and central Europe during the last half ofthe first millenium b.c. Although the early Celts were composed of anumber of different races and tribes, and at the height of their power theyspread across wide tracts of Europe, they did have a uniformity ofreligious idiom that enables historians to speak of a Celtic religion. Theywere linked by common origins and language (P-Celtic spoken in Gauland Britain, and Q-Celtic spoken in Ireland), common religious traditions,and a close similarity of laws.

The Celts were highly ritualistic and religious. Their elaborate burials,under a mound, in a wooden chamber usually made of oak, furnished withhighly decorated weapons, food, drink, and personal ornaments point topowerful beliefs about the nature of life after death. The bodies of thewealthy dead were laid out, burnt or unburnt, on four-wheeled wagons inthe earliest of Celtic peoples, and later in lighter, two wheeled wagons.

Celtic religion featured many female deities such as mother goddesses andwar goddesses. The Mother Goddess of the Celts was often conceived as awarrior, fighting with weapons and instructing the hero in superior secrets

of warfare. Celtic deities were tribal by nature, and each tribe or clan would have its own namesfor particular gods and goddesses. This accounts for the great diversity of names in Celticmythology, there are over 300 different names recorded. The Celts also believed that it wasdangerous to name a sacred thing by its correct name, the result being that sacred things are oftenreferred to in a roundabout way.

Our knowledge of the religion and mythologies of the Celtic people comes from three differentareas in Europe. From Gaul, which is modern day France, Britain (most specifically Wales), andIreland. Both Gaul and Britain were influenced by Greco Roman tradition before the advent ofChristianity. The Celts themselves did not commit their traditions to writings, regarding theirlaws, genealogies and spiritual disciplines as sacred, required to be handed down orally. TheDruids, the high priests of the Celts, would spend twenty years learning the traditions and orallessons. The native lore of Wales and Ireland, the oldest outside of classical sources, is a greatrepository of pre-Christian myth and practices. Fragmentary texts transcribed during thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries provide us with ancient legends and heroic tales, influenced bythe times of the scribes. Archaeological evidence provides us with more clues. The Celts ofIreland maintained their cultural integrity until close to 500 AD, and it is there where the paganCeltic mythology has been best preserved.

Animal symbolism found in Celtic myths include boars, birds, serpents, fish, horse and cattle.Boars symbolise courage and strong warriors. Power and strength is attached to the bristles of theboar, which was held in high esteem by the Celts. There are many examples of supernatural boarsand their adventures in the literary traditions of the Irish and the Welsh. The otherworld feast issupposed to be sustained by magical pigs which, no matter how many times they are cooked and

Celtic Deities and Myth

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eaten, are alive again the next day to be cooked again.

Fish, especially salmon are associated with knowledge and secrets. Serpents and dragons areportents of trouble, strife and infertility. Birds also may presage bad luck or bloodshed. Horse andcattle represent fertility, as do many occurrences of animals in Celtic legend. Foliate head imageswere central to Celtic cultures, also symbolizing fertility. Horns were a powerful symbol ofvirility and divine power. The Celts not only gave their gods horns, but enhanced their chances ofsuccess in battle by wearing horned helmets. In Celtic mythology powerful opponents may usethe magic of shape shifting into different animal forms during battle. The number three wassacred to the Celts, and deities were sometimes portrayed in groups of three, or as having threeheads or faces. In mythological tales, the deities or semi-divine heroes are described as being oneof three people of the same name, or as having been born three times in succession.

The Deities of Gaul

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Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

The week of seven days was adopted in Rome somewhere about 400 AD,and spread into Europe, but had been recognized as a period of time longbefore that in the east. It was probably chosen to give one day each toeach of the seven planets known in antiquity. In the southern countries ofEurope, the days of the week were named after the gods of the Greeks andRomans. In the English language, as well as in the languages of some ofthe countries of northern Europe, the gods of the north have given theirnames to the days.

The Ashanti and some other peoples of West Africa gave a child a specialname according to the day of the week on which he was born. The habitwas brought to the American South and Caribbean through slavery, wherenames such as Quashee (Sunday), Cudjo (Monday) and Cufee (Friday)were common.

Monday's child is fair of face,Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child that works hard on the Sabbath Day,is blithe and bonny, good and gay

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Origins of the Week

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Jacob allows Benjamin to leave for EgyptRembrandt, Pen & brush drawing, c. 1650

Ancient Civilizations

Magic, Beliefs & Prophecies

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Valley of the Ancients

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Interior of the Temple of Diana at NimesHubert Robert

The Sumerians of Mesopotamia

The Historical Eliki

The Coliseum of Ancient Rome

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Ancient Civilizations & Lost Cities

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Eliki (Helike, Helice) was anancient Greek city located at themouth of the River Selinus on thesouthern shore of the Gulf ofCorinth. In 373 B.C. anearthquake destroyed the city,sending it to the depths of the sea.Classical sources referring to ordescribing Eliki include thewritings of historians Heridotus,Pausanias and Siculus, Homer inThe Iliad, Marcus Aurelius andthe Greek geographer Strabo.

According to Strabo, Eliki was home to the Temple of ElikonianPoseidon, and a huge bronze statue of Poseidon was left standing inthe strait after the earthquake submerged the city and all its people.In the Iliad, Poseidon is known as Lord of Helike. Pausanias writesof Helike, who was the daughter of Selinos of Aigaleia (later calledAchaea). She married Ion, son of the king of Athens, who named acity for her. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote that beforethe earthquake Eliki held "first place among the cities of Achaia." Inthe Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.) he writes "...andhow many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeiiand Herculaneum, and others innumerable." The constellation UrsaMajor was known to the Greeks as Helice. Helice was a daughter ofLycaon and loved by Zeus, by whom she bore Arcas. She is morecommonly called Callisto, grandaughter of Lycaon. According tostories calling her Helice, after she was changed into theconstellation of the Great Bear, she was able, by virtue of herposition in the sky, to assist Demeter in locating Persephone.

The Historical Eliki

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Archaeologists have long been interested in finding the lost Eliki.The most recent efforts, well documented with photos and writtenwith an excellent comprehensive background can be found atGeoprobe's site Ancient Helike In The Light of Recent Discoveries.

Here on www.eliki.com, you can visit our Poseidon, Oracle of Elikifor a quick and fun web oracle that we've dedicated to the lost city ofEliki!

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The Historical Eliki

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While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls -- the world.

-- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

The Colosseum Seenthrough the Arcades of the Basilica of Constantine

dated Xbre 1825, Canvasby Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

The Coliseum (Coloseum, Colosseum), wasbuilt during the reign of EmperorVespasiano c. 72 AD and dedicated in 80AD by his son Titus. The popular name ofColiseumcame about because the immenseoval stadium was situated next to a colossalstatue of Nero. The original name of thisancient Roman sports arena, the largestarena of its kind, is The AmphitheatrumFlavium.

Over 160 ft high with eighty entrances, the Coliseum could hold upwards of 50,000spectators. Public events such as gladiator fights, mock naval battles and wild animalhunts were held at the Coliseum. During the staged fights as many as 10,000 peoplewere killed. Fighters were slaves, prisoners or volunteers. Spectators saw persecutedChristians killed by lions. After 404 AD gladiatorial battles were no longer held, butanimals such as lions, elephants, snakes and panthers continued to be massacred in thename of sport until the 6th century.

Mock naval battles were arranged by removing the heavy wooden flooring and floodingthe lower cells, which usually housed the animals and prisoners. As gladiator fightsproved to be more popular, the naval battles were ultimately moved to another site, andthe wooden floors made permanent. During the middle ages, stones from the Coliseumwere removed for new buildings.

From the fourth story of the Coliseum wooden masts supported a linen awning thatprotected spectators from the sun. The Coliseum boasted seats of marble for the upperclass, and benches of wood for the lower. Ramps within the arena made movement easyby the large crowds, and on a catwalk suspended above, trained archers were watchfuland would shoot to avert disaster when an enraged animal would get out of hand. A wallabout 15 feet high separated the spectators from the bloody events in the arena.

Today, in Rome, the Coliseum is one of its most famous landmarks and tourist

The Historical Coliseum

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attractions. Although it survives only as a ruin, it still rates as one of the finest examplesof Roman architecture and engineering.

Interesting photos of the Coliseum, including a model reconstruction complete with thestatue of Nero can be found at Flavian Ampitheater.

Take a Virtual Walkthrough of the Coloseum with over 280 high quality photos in thisvirtual tour.

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The Historical Coliseum

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An Architectural Caprice, Oil onCanvas

Francesco Guardi, c. 1770/80

Personal Realms and Eliki EstatesHomepages and Member Sites

The StudioArtist Galleries and Exhibitions

Candyland on ElikiChildren's Homepages and Family Content

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Portals on Eliki

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The Papal Palace, Avignon, Oil on CanvasPaul Signac, 1900

The Circle of the MusesCorinne's Pages

Rainbow Dancer's CloudSheCrow's Feathers

Lil' Anny's Cozy Web CornerIrish Whispers

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Personal Realms and Eliki Estates

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Apollo and the Muses

The Circle of the Muses webring is closed and not accepting newmembers at this time.

The Muses Join The Circle of the Muses

The Circle Forum Subscribe to The Circle Newsletter

The Members and their Muses The Award of Inspiration

Member Voting Booth The Award of Inspiration Winners

The Circle's Awards & Gifts Guestbook

The Muses have inspired people to visit this site.

Circle of the Muses

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Circle of the Muses

This Circle of the Muses siteis owned by Kat.

Kat is inspired by the Muse:

[ Prev | Skip It | Next 5 | Random | Next ]Want to join the circle?Go here for more info.

Co-creators of The Circle of the Muses: Charna & KatE-mail: muses@eliki.comCreated on May 31, 1997

Page design by KatThe Circle of the Muses graphics by Kat

© 1997, 1998 Circle of the Museshosted by Eliki

Circle of the Muses

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enter

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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Music playing is "Footprints on My Rainbow"© 1998 Tom Williams III

written especially for my site by the wonderful and talentedTommy Williams, Dreamsharer

Thank you so much for this beautiful gift!

"Night with her Train of Stars and her Great Gift ofSleep"

by Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1914)

Family

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Who Is RainbowDancer?

Inner Child

My Prayer Page

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Hero

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Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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My Webrings

Awards I Have Been Honored With

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raynbow@frontiernet.net

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Order Song of the Soul, Healing Circle, Dancing in the Light & Gifts of Presence

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You can also visit my professional site!

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Photo Credits: © 1997 Lynne NewmanAll Poetry & Personal Writings: © 1992-2000 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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page one

Autumn Joy

The autumn calls me out to roam, I love to wander all aloneThrough the beauty all around

Crunching leaves, dry on the ground.

I feel I'm in a holy place, The golden sunshine warms my face.I lie on the ground and through the trees

The sun illuminates the leaves.

The brilliant orange, the burning gold, The warm, bright colors fill my soul

With a joy, most profound I feel God's presence all around.

Lynne Newman

Metamorphosis

She was a shadow of a person Swallowed up by others needs,

Always rushing, doing, For others, was her creed.

One day she looked around her, Eyes open, in surprise.

She started caring for herself, Her shaky marriage died.

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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Alone and scared and shaken, She allowed herself to cry;

And though she knew she'd carry on, She felt like she would die!

Slowly, slowly, surely, Her independence grows.

As she finds a sense of purpose, Her life takes on a glow.

The woman shadow changes, And a whole, strong woman lives,

A person with a balance, Receiving as she gives.

She's alive and feeling, No longer dead inside;

In her growing sense of worth, She lets herself feel pride.

Lynne Newman

Transition

It's a beautiful day today, With the early morning sunshine

Creating a diamond-like sparkle One the pond near where I walk.

Gracefully the wild geese Glide through the frigid water,

And I watch them and smile As they perform a goose ballet.

I feel in tune with the world; Its beauty surrounds me,

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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And fills me with joy, As I walk more briskly now.

What a mighty oak tree, Over there, by the pond;

Tall, majestic, with its branches swaying In the crisp October breeze.

There's a poignant message in this giant oak, Divided clearly down the middle,

With one side covered in foliage of fading green,

And the other already colored brilliant red.

I joyfully relate to this natural transition, For I too have one foot still

in the slowly fading pastAnd the other planted firmly

In the brilliant possibilities of today!

Lynne Newman

Spirit Dancing

Gleefully you slip away Leaving your shell

Lying complacently Beneath the azure sky.

Astonished, I witness The dancing spirit parts of me

Celebrate in harmony With windblown hills and roaring sea.

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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Spirit dancing in the sand Face lifted toward the sky,

In gratitude, For all her life's become!

Lynne Newman

[Poetry Page One ] [Poetry Page Two] [Poetry Page Three] [Poetry Page Four] [Poetry Page Five]

Photo Credits: © 1997 Lynne NewmanAll Poetry & Personal Writings: © 1992-2000 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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page two

Waves of Longing

Deep hurt floods my heart, pounding like the ocean in a storm;

Raging waves, seemingly endless.

And my brown haired inner child trembles with the memory

Of reaching out for mother-love.

Running for a hug, chubby arms outstretched; stopped short by the look

Of revulsion on her mother's face.

Frightened by the intensity of mother-rage, the child hides once more

In chocolate bars, then numbness.

Now I gather her in my arms, holding her close to my heart,

And I challenge her to feel!

And the grief overwhelms her as she cries salty tears,Still longing for mother-love.

Lynne Newman

from "Mama Do You Love Me?" by Barbara M.Joosse

illustrated by Barbara Lavallee

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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Sunset

What a glorious sight, High on a hill;The sun is setting, Bold colors spillAll over the sky,

Pink, red and gold....I joyfully watch

God's splendor unfold.

Lynne Newman

Garden of Life

Did you ever plant a garden, And give it loving care,

Tending to its needs, That it might bloom everywhere?

And did you ever fail to water it, And let the soil grow dry;

Then watch once-brilliant blossoms Wither up and die?

Your children, like your garden, Need love to survive.Without your tender care,

Their souls cry out, they die!

Please tend your children lovingly, When answering their needs,

That they might blossom brilliantly, Then plant tomorrow's seeds!

Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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[Poetry Page One ] [Poetry Page Two] [Poetry Page Three] [Poetry Page Four] [Poetry Page Five]

Photo Credits: © 1997 Lynne NewmanAll Poetry & Personal Writings: © 1992-2000 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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page three

Awakenings

Heavy hearted, leaden I approach your foggy shore,

And my heart begins to pound As I hear your mighty roar!

Oh, mighty ocean, there For as far as I can see

Unbinds the shackles of my past, My soul's alive. I'm free!

A new-found peace surrounds me, In surf-sounds everywhere,

And the grace of God caresses me As the wind blows through my hair!

Lynne Newman

Valentine Joy

No lover in my life this year, No hearts and flowers coming;No one to kiss or hold me tight,

And yet my heart is humming!

The secret's that I'm loving me; No longer can deny it!

Before looking for another's love, I decided I should try it!

Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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Moon Shine

Sparkly stars in a sapphire sky, Twinkle golden, catch my eye;

Moonshine's silver, radiant light Glows with beauty this cold night!

Lynne Newman

Lullabye

On a worn wood raft In sun-bright water,

God rocks me like A cherished daughter.

In new-found peace I close my eyes,And drift to sleep

'Neath summer skies.

To a lullabye of swaying trees Sweetened by the summer breeze,

My soul awakens, new and clean 'Tween heaven-blue and earthly green.

Lynne Newman

[Poetry Page One ] [Poetry Page Two] [Poetry Page Three] [Poetry Page Four] [Poetry Page Five]

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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Photo Credits: © 1997 Lynne NewmanAll Poetry & Personal Writings: © 1992-2000 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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page four

GREAT SPIRIT, WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR ABUNDANT GIFTSFOR TREES, MAJESTIC, TOUCHING SKY,

FOR ROLLING MEADOWS, MOUNTAINS HIGHFOR WHISPER WIND, FOR POURING RAIN,

FOR STRENGTH TO HANDLE LOSS AND PAIN.

FOR TWINKLE STARS AND FIRELIGHT,FOR BEING DAYS AND RESTFUL NIGHTS,FOR SUNLIGHT SPARKLES ON THE SEA,

FOR LAUGHTER, JOY, SERENITY.

FOR OPEN MINDS, FOR HEALING HEARTS,FOR EACH OF US WHO DOES OUR PARTFOR SUMMER, FALL, WINTER, SPRING,

FOR CONNECTION TO ALL LIVING THINGS.

FOR GIVING SPIRITS, FULL OF GRACE,FOR SUNSHINE KISS ON UPTURNED FACE,

FOR HEALING HANDS, A LOVING ART,FOR RAINBOW COLORS IN OUR HEARTS.

FOR MOTHER EARTH AND FATHER SKY,FOR ANGELS, DEVAS, TEACHERS, GUIDES.

FOR LIFE THAT'S FULL, EACH DAY NEW.....WE OFFER THANKS, WITH LOVE, TO YOU!

--- Lynne Newman12/18/97

[Poetry Page One ] [Poetry Page Two] [Poetry Page Three] [Poetry Page Four] [Poetry Page Five]

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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page five

RAINBOW DANCINGI've taken flight in fantasy,On a brilliant summer day.

While floating on a cloud of white,My child came out to play.

She's dancing on a rainbow,Sliding down a star,

Twirling with her bear of brown,As beauty fills her heart.

She leaps into the crimson,Rolls joyfully in blue,

Bathed in golden sunlight,She hugs magenta too!

Copper shimmers in her hair,As she giggles silver sounds,Blowing opalescent bubbles,

While turquoise drops rain down.

She prances through the purples,In many shades and tones,

And dips her toe in sapphire seas,Edged in silver foam.

The colored lights surround her,

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And the brown bear who's her friend,'Cause she's dancing on a rainbow,And her world feels safe again!

Lynne Newman6/14/92

RAINBOW of HOPEAt times when life felt ugly,The pain too much to bear,

My thoughts would travel skywardToward the beauty waiting there.

The joyful burst of color,The clouds so soft and white,

Somehow the memory of the rainbowGot me through the night.

You must have sent the rainbow,To give me hope, it seems;To show me there is beauty,To keep alive my dreams.

Oh, God! I offer thanks,For the sunshine and the rain,

For all the brilliant colors,That helped to ease the pain.

The thought of rainbow colors,Somehow shined right through

And the splendor of your rainbow,Kept me close to you.

Lynne Newman

Music playing is "Footprints on My Rainbow"© 1998 Tom Williams III

written especially for my site by the wonderful and talentedTommy Williams, Dreamsharer

Thank you so much for this beautiful gift!

[Poetry Page One ] [Poetry Page Two] [Poetry Page Three] [Poetry Page Four] [Poetry

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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Page Five]

Photo Credits: © 1997 Lynne NewmanAll Poetry & Personal Writings: © 1992-2000 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Poetry

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INNER CHILD

How Could Anyone Ever Tell You

How could anyone ever tell you,You were anything less than beautiful?

How could anyone ever tell you,You were less than whole?

How could anyone fail to notice,That your loving is a miracle?

How deeply you're connected to my soul.

Author unknown

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I WANT TO TOUCH THE WORLD

Long ago, way back then,I used to be a child.

The things that made me happy then,Still can make me smile.

I know I don't need fancy things,What I need is not too much...

I just want to wake up every day,And exhilarate in touch!

I'd like to get up in the morning,And blow the day a kiss;

Knowing that there's joy out there,That I deserve the bliss.

I want to feel the wind blow,Sweeping through my hair;

And I'd touch those fuzzy flower/weeds,As I blow them in the air.

I'd run and find an ocean,Feel the waves crash on the land.I'd search for textured seashells,

Buried in the burning sand.

I want to feel the raindropsAs they fall upon my face,

And gleefully stick out my tongueTo find out how they taste.

And yes, I'd blow some bubblesAnd watch them shimmer in the sun,

And wonder where they disappear to...When they POP, POP, every one!

I'd leap into a fountainIn some rigid, uptight town,

And defiantly splash, with delight,As some jealous adults frowned.

There's something about the autumn airI love to deeply breathe,

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And I'd roll and roll all over,In the crispy, crunchy leaves.

I'd carve a jack-o-lantern,And place a light inside.

It's face would be so scaryThe kids would run and hide.

My costume is a lacy dress..A ballerina I would be,

Twirling, swirling all aroundFeeling graceful and so free.

I'd sing a song as loud as can be,And I'd puff up with prideAs they all clapped for me.

"Oh, yes!", I'd shout, "I can sing on key!"

I'd let myself get giddy,I'd catch a falling star,

I'd eat a drippy ice cream cone,And catch fireflies in a jar.

I want to always savorThe pleasure that life brings

As I watch, to my delight,My sons enjoy these things!

It doesn't mean, because I'm grownI have to lose these things...

I can still reach out and touch the world,And soar like I have wings!

Lynne Newman8/14/91

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I WILL GRANT MYSELF A PARDON FOR PAST MISTAKES

Today I will come down from the attic of mypast. I have been living up there for too long,sorting through a chest of old rags, rags ofguilt and shame. Critical voices from mychildhood contributed most of the rags in thechest - voices that told me I was never goodenough, that I must always do more or bemore to be acceptable. The voices of shamefrom my childhood are the voices of myparents.

Today I will replace their voices with a newvoice, that reminds me of all the wonderful qualities God has given me. Iwill soothe my pangs of guilt over past failures by pardoning myself forbeing less than perfect. In doing so, I will absolve my inner child.

Today I will come down from the attic of my pastand shut the door firmly behind me. I no longer haveto live in the past. The sunshine and joy of life arewaiting for me.

author unknown

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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from Mama, Do You Love Me?by Barbara M. Joosse

Illustrated by: Barbara Lavallee

Katelyn and Little Lynne

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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The heart of my Inner Child is stirred by the art work of Greg Olsenused with permission

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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Copyright © 1997 - 2000 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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The Gift of an Angel

Artwork courtesy of and copyright by Daniel B. Holeman

The gift this angel brings, is love for the earth and alllife...human and otherwise....the vibrant colors of the rainbow,the sweet wind-song, the rushing streams, magnificent oceansand majestic trees, the fragrant flowers and our animal friendswho teach us much about building strong families andcommunities.

Watch the angel deliver her gift to the one who waits on theshore....it is you....hold out your arms, open your heart, singfrom deep in your soul, and paint every moment of your lifewith "all the colors of the wind."

- Lynne Newman 1998

Colors of the Wind

You think I'm an ignorant savageAnd you've been so many places

I guess it must be soBut still I cannot see

Colors of the Wind

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If the savage one is meHow can there be so much that you don't know?

You don't know....

You think you own whatever land you land onThe earth is just a dead thing you can claimBut I know every rock and tree and creature

Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.

You think the only people who are peopleAre the people who look and think like youBut if you walk the footsteps of a stranger

You'll learn the things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moonOr asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?

Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forestCome taste the sun-sweet berries of the earth

Come roll in all the riches all around youAnd for once, never wonder what they're worth.

The rainstorm and the river are my brothersThe heron and the otter are my friendsAnd we are all connected to each other

In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high does the sycamore grow?If you cut it down, then you'll never know

And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moonFor whether we are white or copper skinned

We need to sing with all the voices of the mountainNeed to paint with all the colors of the wind.

You can own the earth and stillAll you'll own is earth until

You can paint with all the colors of the wind.

Lyrics by Stephen SchwartzFrom Disney's Pocahontas

Colors of the Wind

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©1992- 2000 Lynne NewmanSite designed and maintained byInteractive Technologies, LLC

Colors of the Wind

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Herowritten by Walter Afanasieff & Mariah Carey

There's a hero, if you look inside your heart.You don't have to be afraid of what you are.

There's an answer, if you reach into your soul,And the sorrow that you know will melt away.

And then a hero comes along, with the strength to carry on,And you cast your fears aside, and you know you can survive.

So when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong,And you'll finally see the truth, that a hero lies in you.

It's a long road, when you face the world alone.No one reaches out a hand for you to hold.

You can find love, if you search within yourself,And the emptiness you felt will disappear.

And then a hero comes along, with the strength to carry on,And you cast your fears aside, and you know you can survive.

So when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong,And you'll finally see the truth, that a hero lies in you.

Lord knows, dreams are hard to follow,But don't let anyone tear them away.

Hold on, there will be tomorrow.In time, you'll find the way.

And then a hero comes along, with the strength to carry on,And you cast your fears aside, and you know you can survive.

So when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong,And you'll finally see the truth, that a hero lies in you.

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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that a HERO LIES IN YOU

Photo Credits: © 1997 Lynne Newman

Rainbow Dancer's Cloud

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AngelsImage and applet found .

HIGHER GROUNDWalk me over this horizon.

Let the sun's light warm my face.Once again the times are changing.

Once again, I've lost my way.

While the words of ancient poetsFall like dust upon my shoes,

Greed has robbed me of my vision,Turned my heart from higher truths.

So take my hand, and lift me higher,Be my love and my desire.

Hold me safe and unbound....Take my heart to higher ground.

I have walked too long in darkness.I have walked too long alone.

Blindly clutching fists of diamondsThat I found were only stones.

I would trade the wealth of agesFor a warmer hand to hold.The path of light is narrow

But it leads to streets of gold.

So take my hand, and lift me higher.Be my love and my desire.

Hold me safe and unbound....Take my heart to higher ground.

In this world we move through shadows,Never sure of what we see.

While the truth abides between us,Come and share the truth with me.

So take my hand, and lift me higher.Be my love and my desire.

Hold me safe and unbound....Take my heart to higher ground.

Higher Ground albumBarbra Streisand

Higher Ground

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THANKSGIVING PRAYER

God, we come together this November day to celebrate life. We are filled with gratitude for your many gifts; abundance beyond measure; love of family and friends; healing hearts and searching souls. We take a moment to pray for those who struggle; enduring catastrophic loss, grief, physical pain, emotional turmoil, and seeming insurmountable odds. May they find the strength and faith to carry on. We celebrate the beauty of our natural world; ocean, forest, mountains, sky, sun, moon, stars, wind, rain, and living creatures, one and all. We breathe deeply now and feel the grace of all that surrounds us. We experience a sense of freedom as we begin forgiving those who treated us with less than honor and respect. An expansion happens deep within our hearts, making room for joy and love and connection, beyond belief. Thank you, God, for life and its' experiences, which have brought us to this day of Thanksgiving. May we use your gifts only for the Highest Good of all. Amen. Lynne Newman 11/25/98

Higher Ground

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The tree that never had to fight for sun and sky and air and light, but stood out in the open plain and always had it share of rain, never became a forest king but lived and died a scrubby thing. The man who never had to toil to gain and farm his patch of soil, who never had to win his share of sun and sky and light and air, never became a manly man but lived and died as he began. Good timber does not grow with ease, the stronger wind, the stronger trees, the further sky, the greater length, the more the storm, the more the strength. By sun and cold, by rain and snow, in trees and men, good timbers grow. Where thickest lies the forest growth we find the patriarchs of both. And they hold counsels with the stars, whose broken branches show the scars, of many winds and such of strife, this is the common lot of life. by Douglas Malloch

Higher Ground

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Always we hope someone else has the answer... Some other place will be better, Some other time it will all turn out. This is it No one else has the answer No other place will be better. And it has already turned out! At the center of your being You have the answer You know who you are... And what you want. There is no need to run outside for better seeing, nor to peer from a window. Rather, abide at the center of your being; for the more you leave it the less you learn. Search your heart and see... The way to do... Is to be. by Lao Tzu, translator unknown printed in "A Grateful Heart" edited by M.J. Ryan

Higher Ground

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Miracles are Everywhere

The man whispered, "God, speak to me." And a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear. So the man yelled, "God speak to me." And the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen. The man looked around and said, "God, let me see you." And a star shone brightly. But the man did not notice. And the man shouted, "God, show me a miracle." And a life was born. But the man did not know. So the man cried out in despair. "Touch me God and let me know you are here!" Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on. author unknown

Higher Ground

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THESE ARE MY WISHES FOR YOU May you find serenity and tranquility

in a world you may not always understand. May the pain you have known

and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life

facing each new situation with courage and optimism. Always know that there are those whose

love and understanding will always be there, even when you feel the most alone.

May a kind word, a reassuring touch, and a warm smile be yours every day of your life,

and may you give these gifts as well as receive them.

May the techings of those you admire become a part of you,

so that you may call upon them. Remember those whose lives you have touched

and who have touched yours are always a part of you, even if the encounters were less

than you would have wished. It is the content of the encounter

that is more important than its form. May you not become too concerned about

material matters, but instead place immeasurable value

on the goodness in your heart. Find time in each day to see beauty and love

in the world around you. Realize that what you feel you lack in one regard

may be more than compensated for in another. What you feel you lack in the present

may become one of your strengths in the future. May you see your future as one filled with promise

and possibility. Learn to view everything as a worthwhile experience.

May you find enough inner strength to determine your own worth by yourself,

and not be dependent on another's judgement of your accomplishments.

May you always feel loved. Author unknown

Higher Ground

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The Pathway of Divine Love

http://nwcreations.com/pathdivinelove.htm

IS THIS WHERE I FIND GOD?

Humanity is crying for comfort,as the energy around us acceleratesand our internal systems speed up

to match the pace, beat for beat.And we cry, "Is this where I find God?"

Higher Ground

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One by one, the fears surface to be healed,and we seek comfort...

in food...in shopping…smoking...in any action that temporarily calms the fear.

And still we cry out, "Is this where I find God?"

And in the seeking we cry, again and again,and we shop more, eat more, watch t.v. more,

search for God in books and bucks,until numbness sets in...oblivion!

And we continue to ask, "Is this where I find God?"

And then, the longing begins in earnest...and our seeking takes on a different essence,as we connect with loved ones, with nature,

with all living things, who also are asking,"Is this where I find God?"

And, one day, the seeking intensifies,as we get quiet and listen,

and a glimmer of understanding occurs,as we go within, instead of out...

In our seeking for God!

And the wailing, the keening for God is poignant,heart-opening, exquisite as we come to understand,

The intensity of the God within us...And in gratitude, cry out, "God, I have found You!

Deep within my heart, God; this is where I find You!"

Lynne~Rainbow Dancer

May 19, 2005

Higher Ground

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Gathering in the Garden

Gilbert Williams

http://www.gilbertwilliams.com/DetailPages/GatheringintheGarden-Detail.htmGathering in the Garden

The energy hums as we gatherin the garden of life, ripe with song.We open our hearts and our spirits,

honoring loved ones, now gone.

A celebration of life in the garden,a prayer for all life in hushed tones,

As we enter the stillness our souls open wide;we remember the feeling of Home.

In joy we join hands, stand in circle,faces upturned in the sun,

In awe we feel the love of God's blessings,our hearts tenderly joined now, as one.

Lynne Newman

Higher Ground

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02/19/05

Higher Ground

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Surrendering(Oil on Canvas) 30" x 36"

by Rassouliused with permission by the Rassouli Art Gallery

Jonathon Earl Bowser

Higher Ground

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© 1992 - 2000 Lynne NewmanSite designed and maintained byInteractive Technologies, LLC

Higher Ground

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SheCrowListens has moved. Please adjust your bookmarks. The new URL is:shecrowlistens.com

Thank you.

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Home | SheCrowListens | Poetry & ProseWomen's Liturgy | Dusty's World

"Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice iscalling."

--Black Elk

SheCrowListens

Poetry & Prose

Women's Liturgy

Dusty's World

SACRED VOICES

MOTHER EARTH, FATHER SKYI HEAR YOU WITH MY EARS,

I LONG TO HEAR YOU WITH MY HEARTI SEE YOU IN THE DANCES

ROUND THE FIRES AT NIGHT

SheCrowListens

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I FEEL YOUR SPIRITS GUIDINGWHEN DANGER NEARS MY TENT

THOUSANDS OF MOONS AGOWHEN LONGKNIVES FOUND OUR LAND

OUR SACRED LANDS, YOUCALLED AND TRIED TO WARN US

WE LISTENED WITH STOPPED UP EARSUNABLE TO COMPREHEND

WHAT EVIL WAS IN THEIR HEARTS

AND NOW OUR LANDS ARE GONEOUR SPIRITS ARE SAD BUT OUR MEDICINE

HAS BEGUN TO BE STRONG AGAINSACRED WAYS ARE RISING FROM THE EARTH

OTHERS ARE BEGINNING TO SEETHE ANCIENT ONES WERE RIGHT

THEIR PROPHECIES WILL BE FULFILLED

IF WE JUST LISTEN ONCE AGAINTO SACRED VOICES ALL OVER THE SKY

--by Morney Kopecky

Read my Dreambook guestbook!Sign my Dreambook!

View My Old Guestbook

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This RingSurf - Dove Of Peace Web Ringowned by SheCrowListens[ List Sites / Random Site ]

Want to join the Dove's Flight Of Peace?Click here for info.

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BLANKET OF LIFE

Coming home togetherWoman sister friend

we give our hearts to one anotherallowing them to mend.

We weave those hearts in strandsof laughter, hope and even sin.

Come home togetherWoman sister friend

and see yourself reflectedin the understanding lens.

There’s love and full acceptancein the warp and woof of Feminine.

We’ve come home togetherWoman sister friend

we’ve made our blanket strongand warm by holding close the ends.

Standing here in love and unityour Sacred Dance begins.

by Morney Kopecky

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Who is SheCrowListens and How Did She Come to

Be?

SheCrowListens is the name given me through the guidance of aLakota woman and the wind when I was in my 50th year. There wasmuch suffering and much growth that came with the calling of thisname. Crow is a symbol of the law, one who goes into the abyss tobring back wisdom from the Divine. Crow is also one who cleans upthe messes others leave behind, the carrion eater. And of courseCrow is the encourager whose scratchy, irritating voice reminds meto just keep on going and not give up when life gets to beoverwhelming.

I was raised by my grandparents in the southern part of Indiana onthe very land that my Piankeshaw ancestors had inhabited yearsbefore my birth. I picked up arrowheads and flint in surroundingfields. I loved the earth and all its creatures; my dogs were constantcompanions. I learned to soothe my sorrows in the deep woods ofhickory and oak above our home and found the Great Spirit of ourCreator while gazing across the valley into the golden clouds ofsetting sun. The birds sang to me and always I heard the voice ofCrow, she was a part of me that never left but it was years before Irealized she was part of my soul. It was in discovering my Nativeheritage in my forties that I began to know who I was.

My parents died when I was young and I felt I belonged toeveryone, yet no one. My Irish grandmother was my anchor formany many years and taught me how to love and how to sing a bit.She also taught me about sorrow and hopelessness and God. Themen in my early life were simply not involved with me. Today I seethe God in whose Image I am created, as Feminine. But I continueto be healed by loving men who have come into my life, especiallymy husband of 30 years.

In my younger years I was a nurse and cared for babies andpsychiatric patients, today I am a hospital chaplain working oncertification. I especially enjoy working with the older folks andlistening to their life stories. It gives me strength and faith to hearhow each one overcame adversities along the way and still has hopeand a loving heart. I am a practicing Christian who has an openheart and mind to wherever the Spirit leads me. God is neither in abox nor in one particular church or religion. God simply IS. God isLove and the Source of all our Being. All creation is Holy, all theearth and her creatures are Sacred and beloved by their Creator.This includes You and Me, Woman, Sister, Friend.

While struggling with depression after my brother died 12 years agoI became more meditative and yet more questioning of my beliefsystem, my image of God. Within a couple years I developedRheumatoid Arthritis and tremors. My Dark Night of the Soul had

SheCrowListens

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ravaged my body as well as my mind. Somehow in this long journeyinto night and onto a new dawning I have learned a lot about myselfand about my vision of the Divine. After years of therapy andspiritual reading and prayer I have come to an inner peace that isfar better than what I had before my brother’s death or myillnesses. I have found the Mothering Image of God that hasnurtured my spirit in ways that the masculine could never reach.SheCrow is real to me as the Voice of the Divine that spurs me on towant to live, to want to be creative and to believe in myself as aWoman. One who is worthy of love, who has value as a person, as aChild of God and of the Universe.

SheCrow has opened the shadow side of my spirit, helping me toconnect with other women in our common struggles. She has alsobeen the force that pushed my Spirit to finally allow myself to loveand be loved by the masculine. She helped me realize I have a rightto see that my needs are met in a loving but firm manner. SheCrowurges me on to seek the Truth no matter how painful. She gives mestrength to be there for others who are in crisis in my work aschaplain, to help me clean up the messes of life and restore somesense of harmony in the Chaos.

I firmly believe that we all must constantly strive for balance andwholeness on our journey to become our Truer Selves, the womenGod created us to be. We must learn to care and nurture our ownspirits before we can truly and healthily care for others. It is a lifelong process and one of the many rewarding parts of growing intoCronehood. To be loving and wise and whole is the Sacred Task Ifeel called to in the Autumn of my years. SheCrowListens is a deeppart of who I am today on my journey.

SheCrowListens@insightbb.com

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Grandmother Piankeshaw

Ancestor Woman in the Field

Maireid

July is Gone

Comforter

Strawberry Bill

Ames

Irish Grandmother

Native Ancestor

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Poetry and Prose

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welcome image created by Marie with graphic by: Thomas Kinkaid

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The Spirit of Samuel Called up before Saulby the Witch of Endor

Salvato Rosa, Canvas, 1668

Archangels

Medieval Magics

Native American Animal Symbols

Plants, Herbs, and Oils ThroughoutHistory

April's Featured Calendar Beliefs

April 30th, May EveIn Ireland it is believed that food left over from MayEve must not be eaten, but rather buried instead, toavoid great harm. On the Isle of Man, a ritual has theyoungest member of each family gather primroseson this evening, and throw them before the door ofthe family home to keep out evil spirits.

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Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on thee-And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

---Robert Frost, In the Clearing

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Love Goddesses -Aphrodite, Freya, Isis,Ishtar, and VenusFrom N.S. Gill,Your Guide to Ancient / Classical History.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

Ancient Goddesses ofsexuality, love, and fertilityPersonifying abstract powers, gods and goddesses are heldresponsible for many of the mysteries of life. One of the mostimportant mysteries to humanity is that of birth. Fecundityand sexual attraction are key elements in the survival of afamily or race. The very complex feeling we shorthand aslove makes humans bond with each other. The ancientgoddesses held responsible for these gifts were honoredhighly in their societies.

Here are five of the top ancient love goddesses. You'll notethat beauty (or attraction), promiscuity, fecundity, magic, andan association with death are some of the attributes associatedwith love goddesses.

AphroditeAphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Thereare two basic versions of her birth. According to one, she wasthe daughter of Zeus and Dione. According to the other shewas born from the foam on the sea where the genitals ofUranus, cut off by his son Cronus, landed.In the story of the Trojan War, the Trojan Paris awardedAphrodite the apple of discord after judging her to be the most

Love Goddesses - Ancient Goddesses of sexuality, love, and fertility - Aphrodite Freya Isis Ishtar Venus

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beautiful of the goddesses. She then sided with the Trojansthroughout the war.Aphrodite was the most beautiful of the goddesses, but wasmarried to the ugliest of the gods, the limp smithyHephaestus. She had many affairs with men, both human anddivine.Eros, Anteros, Hymenaios and Aeneas are some of herchildren. Aglaea (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia(Good Cheer), known collectively as The Graces, followed inthe retinue of Aphrodite.Aphrodite

FreyaFreya was a beautiful Vanir Norse goddess of love, magic,and divination, who was called upon for help in matters of oflove. Freya was the daughter of the god Njord, and the sisterof Freyr. Her husband was the god Od (possibly Odin) andher hall Sessrumnir was where half the slain warriors went(the others went to Valhalla, the hall where Odin presided).Freya herself was loved by men, giants, and dwarves. Bysleeping with four dwarves she acquired the Brisingsnecklace.Freya travels on a gold-bristled boar, Hildisvini, or achariot pulled by two cats.The Vanir were the Norse nature and fertility gods who livedin Vanaheim, in Asgard. They were at war with the warriorAesir gods until they reached a treaty and exchangedhostages. The Vanir sent to Asgard, where the Aesir lived,Njord, god of winds, sea, and fire, and his children Freya andFreyr, god of sun, rain, and patron of bountiful harvests.Although the hostage sent by the Aesir was not as valuable asthe Vanir's offering, war did not break out again. Instead theVanir were absorbed into the Aesir.Norse Mythology

IshtarIshtar (also known as Inanna, the Hittite goddess Shaushka,and the Canaanite Astarte and Anat), the Babylonian goddessof love, procreation, and war, was the daughter and consort ofthe air god Anu. She was known for destroying her lovers,including a lion, stallion, and shepherd. When the love of herlife, the farm god Tammuz, died, she followed him to theUnderworld, but she was unable to retrieve him.Ishtar

IsisIsis, an Egyptian goddess of magic, fertility and motherhood,was the daughter of the god Keb (Earth) and the goddess Nut(Sky). She was the sister and wife of Osiris. When her brotherSeth killed her husband, Isis searched for his body andreassembled it, making her also a goddess of the dead. Sheimpregnated herself from Osiris' body and gave birth toHorus.Isis is often depicted wearing cow horns with a solar diskbetween them.Egyptian Deities

VenusVenus was the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Usuallyequated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, Venus wasoriginally an Italic goddess of vegetation and patron ofgardens. Venus was the daughter of Jupiter. Her son was

Love Goddesses - Ancient Goddesses of sexuality, love, and fertility - Aphrodite Freya Isis Ishtar Venus

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Cupid.Venus was a goddess of chastity, although her love affairswere patterned after Aphrodite's, and included a marriage toVulcan (Hephaestus) and an affair with Mars (Ares). She wasassociated with the arrival of spring and bringer of joy forhumans and gods.In the story of Cupid and Psyche, from "The Golden Ass," byApuleius, Venus sends her daughter-in-law to the Underworldto bring back a beauty ointment.Venus in Pompeian Gardens

See: Joseph Campbell - Love and the GoddessWhen God Was A Woman, by Merlin StoneFate, Love & Ecstasy : Wisdom from the Lesser-KnownGoddesses of the Greeks, by John A. Sanford

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The Bactra Review: Occasional and eclectic book reviews by Cosma Shalizi 72

Ancient Goddesses

The Myths and the Evidence

edited by Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris

London: British Museum Press, 1998

And Never Called Her Mother

The nice thing about modern myths (as opposed to the ancient ones) is that most of them have left broadpaper trails, and we can track them pretty easily, sometimes even to their lairs, to the books, if not theheads, in which they first appeared. The myth of the Great Goddess is almost ideally suited to scholarlyhunting, since it has a very definite point of origin and author: the Swiss-German academic J. J.Bachofen, in his book Das Mutterrecht of 1861. The story (if by some chance you've missed it) goes asfollows. Long, long ago, well before writing but after or just a bit before farming, humankind (or at leastthe part of it which counts, i.e. the inhabitants of Europe and the Near East) worshiped a single deity, theGreat Goddess, who was in charge (as solitary deities usually are) of everything, but put a specialemphasis on birth, fertility and death, and was symbolized by the earth, caves, the moon, and (in someversions) darkness, pigs and snakes. The societies worshiping the Great Goddess were egalitarian andmatriarchal, i.e. more or less mirror images of patriarchies; this is the ``mother-right'' of Bachofen's title.(There was, in Bachofen's original scheme, an even more primitive first stage of society which wasneither matriarchal nor patriarchal, but more of a group grope; this has tended to drop out of subsequentversions of the myth.) This era was eventually replaced --- still before the arrival of writing --- byhierarchy, patriarchy and polytheism, but was reflected in myths of sky-gods slaying various reptilian orchthonian monsters which were, supposedly, symbols of Her, and a few odd Mediterranean customsinvoking maternal descent. Bachofen, unregenerate male chauvinist that he was, saw this as a GreatAdvance, a crucial step on the road towards people like himself, and the true, Christian, religion.

Prior to the nineteenth century, and even for the most part up to Bachofen's day, the historical worldaccessible to most educated Europeans went back three thousand years at the outside and barely extendedbeyond the Mediterranean basin. Peering back through the Middle Ages, they saw Rome, Greece andIsrael, and some flickers that vaguely resembled Egypt and Babylon, these last largely derived from themystical gibberish of late antiquity; China, Persia and India were smears occasionally useful to satirists.Bachofen's mundane job, as a professor of Roman law, was supposed to put him in touch with hoariestantiquity. One of the great achievements of western thought in the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies was to make this ancestral vision quaint, to push back the frontiers of the known past in alldirections, spatial and temporal. Those who want a symbolic date can fight over the decipheriment ofEgyptian hieroglyphics; the recognition of the Stone Ages and so of ``pre-history''; or the excavations atNineveh which opened up Mesopotamian civilization. What mattered was the continued process ofdiscovery. (The Biblical inspiration of much of this research, and the way it undermined belief in the

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Bible, is another story for another time.) In any event, almost from the moment Bachofen's book hit thepresses it was based on an increasingly discredited image of the past, and of what would constitute anacceptable base for global history. Homer and Genesis, far from speaking out the bottom of the well ofthe past, proved to be but echoes (if splendid ones) of voices much further down. The past became notjust deeper but broader: it became obvious that, even in the Old World of Eurasiafrica, Europe was notthe only civilization, was not even a uniquely pre-eminent civilization before modern times: which is thestory of Ashoka, and of the Silk Road, and of how classical learning was preserved and augmented notby Irish monks but by Muslim philosophers. This had basically nothing to do with multiculturalism oranti-imperialism, and much to do with the historians' and archaeologists' responsiveness to evidence andactive inquiry, which eventually assembled a case so manifestly convincing that even such racists fraudsas Oswald Spengler were forced to acknowledge it. One might expect that, in the face of such a totalrevolution of the image of the past, an idea like Bachofen's, even if written up in a few hundred pages ofdensely-footnoted German, would be left behind for collectors of curious speculations.

Such was not to be. For want of almost anything else on the history of family structure, Bachofen's bookproved very influential (Engels took it up, for instance). Bachofen's magpie-on-growth-hormones style ofresearch into pre-history reached its culmination --- I'm tempted to say apotheosis --- in Frazer's TheGolden Bough, and the story told there, about god-kings who were ritually and periodically sacrificed toensure the fertility of their land and its inhabitants, proved to be even more influential than Bachofen's. Inany event the two soon fused, Frazer's dying god becoming the son and/or consort of the Goddess. Ontop of all this, the early years of the century saw Arthur Evans's excavations at Knossos in Crete,revealing a sophisticated Aegean civilization (the ``Minoans,'' Evans called them, and the name hasstuck; what they called themselves, we don't know) which long pre-dated that of the Greeks. Itsdecorative art showed women occupying (apparently) a high place in society, perhaps a dominant one,and snakes were somehow tied in to the mix as well. Here it seemed were Bachofen'sgoddess-worshipers (though, given their palaces and mercantile empire, perhaps not so egalitarian andprimitive as he said...). But there was essentially no recollection of this culture in the later world, at best afew myths which carried a few heavily distorted fragments of what had happened. What happened?

Enter the Indo-Europeans --- another of the great historical discoveries of the last century. Most of thelanguages of ancient and modern Europe are visibly related to each other, and more similar the furtherback we go in time. (The principal exceptions are Basque, Etruscan, Magyar and Finnish; the later twoare related, but Basque and Etruscan have no known affinities.) These in turn are related to the languagesof ancient Anatolia, to Kurdish, to Persian, and to (most of) the languages of Afghanistan and thenorthern half of the Indian subcontinent. On the other hand, they are not related to ancient Egyptian (orits modern descendant, Coptic), or to the Semitic languages of north and east Africa and the Middle East(Hebrew, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic, etc.). It is astonishing that nobody in the ancient world --- say, aninhabitant of one of the Hellenistic states in Bactria and India --- twigged to this, but it seems that was so.The realization that the languages of India are related to those of Europe was first made by a Britishjudge in Calcutta in 1796.

By comparing the oldest forms of the Indo-European languages, linguists were able to reconstruct theoriginal language from which they descended, now called ``proto-Indo-European,'' or at least make goodguesses about its pronunciation, its syntax, and that part of its vocabulary which was kept by descendantlanguages. An obvious question, given the spread of those offspring, is where Indo-European came from.For a number of reasons (including ingenious arguments based on what plants and animals had names inthe pool of common Indo-European roots), opinions converged on the Eurasian steppes. Another obvious

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question is what the speakers of proto-Indo-European were like: here again linguists and historians wenton vocabulary. This tells us that horses, cattle and fighting were very important, and that they thoughtvery highly of themselves. (They called themselves something very close to Aryan, meaning pure ornoble; ``Iran'' ultimately derives from ``Aryana,'' the land of the Aryans. I need hardly rehearse thedamage done by fools getting hold of this factoid.) The scholars also went on the commonalities in themyths told in the different Indo-European languages, which had pretty big squabbling pantheons ofdeities, drinking ambrosia or something very like, more or less under the thumb of a big daddy sky-godwho hurls thunderbolts at rivals and monsters. (The monsters may be more or less distantly related to thegods, but usually have something snaky and/or dark and earthy about them.)

When did the Indo-Europeans reach Europe and India? Well, the Minoan cities, like those of theHarrapan civilization in India (discovered at about the same date, and whose writing is likewise quiteundeciphered) went up in flames (some literally) within a few hundred years on either side of -1500. Thisrough-edged period is also when all sorts of strange, new and rather violent peoples appear in the recordsof Egypt and Mesopotamia, when the Rig Veda seems to have been composed by Sanskrit-speakingIndo-Europeans in India, and about when we start finding some inscriptions in Indo-European languagesin the Middle East. (It is also when we start finding a script, Linear B, at Minoan sites which we canread: it was used for a recognizable ancestor of Greek, and is thought to belong to a successor civilizationcalled the Mycenaean.) So the general view among archaeologists and pre-historians is that theIndo-Europeans arrived in the Balkans, Anatolia, Iran, India, etc. from the steppes about -1500, whichwas also about when a (new) wave of Semitic-speaking peoples came into the Fertile Crescent. That atleast some of the peoples these new-comers encountered were matriarchal and Goddess-worshiping wasaccepted by even such hard-headed (and influential) archaeologists as V. Gordon Childe. These scholarssaw the agricultural societies of Europe, particularly those which carved the stone temples on Malta andraised the megaliths in northwest Europe, as affiliated with the Goddess-worshiping cultures of theeastern Mediterranean. Classicists (e.g. the great Jane Harrison) attempting to trace the influence of theMinoans on later Greek religion, generally accepted this picture of what the Minoans were like in thefirst place. This seems to have been the stage of development at which it was decided that the Goddesswas really a triune deity. Many Greek goddesses come in threes (e.g. the Graces and the Furies), or inmultiples of three (the nine Muses), for no apparent reason, and there are some representations ofPersephone, her mother Demeter and Hecate together as a triad, so a triple Goddess, Her three canonicalaspects being Maiden (an actual title of Persephone's), Mother and Crone was projected back on to theMinoans, and outward across the Mediterranean. (Of course, groupings of every size up to about twelveare ubiquitous in mythologies, for tolerably obvious and non-mystical reasons...)

In the hands of these scholars, the story was relatively light on value-judgments, though not entirely freeof them. From them, however, the story passed to cranks of genius like Robert Graves, to archaeologiststurned cranks like Marija Gimbutas, and to lumpen-feminists and peddlers of newage. (Also to anotherSwiss-German crank-with-credentials, Carl Jung; but that fascinating limb of the tree of nonsense will besaved for another time.) It became very definitely ideological and mythical, an account of why the worldis so bad and how it may yet be saved. The Minoans now became the most spectacular flowering of anaboriginal, peaceful, earth-friendly, Goddess-centered matriarchy extending across Europe and the NearEast. (Africa, even North Africa, is almost never mentioned, nor anywhere east of the Euphrates.) Allwent Edenically for millenia until disaster struck, in the form of horse-riding, cattle-rustling, patriarchal,sky-god-worshiping, warlike, Indo-European-speaking nomads who, someplace out in the wilds ofcentral Asia, had gotten completely deranged and lost touch with everything valuable. Having burned

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down the original civilization, they forgot about it completely, except for myths about their gods killingmonsters. Exit the Goddess and her worshipers, except for secret mystical traditions; enter the violentand unhappy world we know to this day. Now, through great good fortune, the Goddess has beenrediscovered, and not a moment too soon to keep patriarchy from destroying the planet.

Like most theodicies, it's not logically compelling (where did those unwashed barbarians come from, andwhy didn't it occur to anyone else that power grows from the shaft of a spear?); and the quality of thescholarship associated with it has declined drastically. Say what you like about the methods of peoplelike Bachofen, Frazer, or Harrison, they were philologically almost impeccable. Graves, by contrast,advanced etymologies which he must have really known wouldn't hold water, and treated historical textslike clues to crossword puzzles. I have even seen contemporary writers argue that Greek geometry wasreally a mystery of secret Goddess cults surviving into the classical era, deriving ``geometria'' from``Gaia mater'' and ``diametros'' from ``dea mater.'' (I also wonder if there isn't a certain affinity here withthe Protestant theme that the true, primitive religion, practiced in ancient times, has been lost andcorrupted, and only now rediscovered.) In any event, the book under review is not about the history ofthe modern Goddess myth (though some contributors wave their hands in that direction), but about therelevant archaeological evidence --- not about the history of contemporary ideas, but whether those ideashave historical merit.

The answer is no, at least not if you require the Goddess of the myth. There are and have been lots ofgoddesses, of course, but that's quite a different story. For starters, societies where women haveextremely low positions (like classical Athens, or modern Mexico) can have very extravagantgoddess-cults (of Pallas Athene and Our Lady of Guadalupe, respectively), and ones where their status israther high (like modern Holland) can have no noticeable goddess-worship at all. (It would be interestingto learn whether there's any correlation at all between goddess-worship and female social status.) So evenif we found that a given ancient society went in strongly for worshiping goddesses, even for worshipingone Goddess, that wouldn't be strong evidence that it displayed the rest of the syndrome of featuresspecified by the Goddess-myth (matriarchy, egalitarianism, pacifism, environmentalist sensibility, etc.).

That said, how do we go about deciding whether a congregation of the long dead were worshiping agoddess or not? In essence, in the same ways in which we try to scope out any facet of ancient belief ---ways which differ radically depending on whether or not they left us anything which we can read. If theydid, the matter is reasonably simple: we read it, and look to see what they say about worship. In the casesexamined in Ancient Goddesses --- Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Arcadia in Greece, Romano-CelticEurope --- we always find at least one goddess (even in Israel), but nothing like the Goddess. In theoldest writings available to us, from both Egypt and Sumer, we read of people enduring kings, taxes,oppression, wars, fraud, (patriarchal) families and dubiously comforting religions, all the while busytransforming the landscape by massive engineering projects: in short, not an Eden of the mothers but anall-too-recognizable kind of civilization.

Her modern followers may not be too disheartened by this, however: after all, She is supposed to havereigned before the day of those societies, in their predecessors. (This dodge won't work for Egypt orSumer, however.) Conveniently, these societies either had no writing, or employed undeciphered scripts,so we can't rely on texts. (The cases of cultures who have left us no writings mentioning religion, and thebeliefs of the illiterate majorities of cultures with writing, are similar.) Then the cases for the Goddess ---or any other religious belief --- rests on interpreting statuary, paintings, and other artifacts. Often theseinterpretations have been blatantly circular. Artifacts (e.g. the famous Maltese statues of obese human

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figures) are interpreted as depicting females, if not Herself, when they have no clear sexual attributes atall, because the society which produced them is a priori believed to have worshiped the Goddess. (Iwould put figs. 53a and 54a-b, unhesitatingly identified by Goodison and Morris as showing females, inthe same category of ``not proven.'') The resulting preponderance of sacred objects depicting women thenconfirms the Goddess-worshiping character of the society.

This really cannot stand, and the contributors to Ancient Goddesses don't let it. In no case that theyexamine do the artifacts which are (plausibly) sacred representations exclusively or even preponderantlydepict figures which are clearly female. To be blunt, even for the Minoans and the Maltese, we have nextto no evidence at all for any specific kind of doctrine or belief, for anything more than ``well, theyprobably wouldn't have gone to all this trouble and expense making statues and erecting buildingswithout mundane function if they'd been atheists or Unitarians.'' This is not, to put it mildly, adequatesupport for ambitious visions of the past.

There is a load --- especially in the first few chapters --- of methodological baffle-gab. For instance, inthe introduction Goodison and Morris write as though archaeologists must have spiritual or mysticalexperiences of their own in order to adequately address the spiritual lives of ancient peoples, which isakin to saying they must use wooden rulers to measure wooden objects. Equally baffling is the notionthat that ordinary empirical caution and measured doubt in interpretation and inference are somehow``feminist''. Thus in ch. 1, Tringham and Conkey write that

One of the most important aspects of the feminist practice of archaeology is to emphasizethe need to demystify the authoritative optimistically-worded `facts' about the past. Theprocess by which the archaeological record --- in this case [i.e. that of their chapter],figurines and spatial contexts --- is interpreted and reconstructed by archaeologists and bywhich it is given meanings that modern readers can relate to is a complex series ofinferential steps. In practice each step is fraught with its own challenge of ambiguity andproblems of validation. To ignore the ambiguity and to work within the illusion of `provenfacts' is to claim that one's interpretation is knowledge rather than a `mode of transmittingknowledge'. Feminist theory encourages a celebration and discussion of this ambiguityrather than its mystification. [p. 44; admirers of rhetorical sapping will note, in addition tothe scare-quotes, the ironic defusal of ``authoritative''; also the idea of transmittingsomething which, ex hypothesi, nobody has.]

Put a bit differently: it's bloody hard to say anything reliable about the past, especially woolly questionsabout what people thought, rather than what they ate or wore or built or died from. It's next to impossibleif they've left you no writings which you can read. Even in the easiest cases there lurks the possibility oferror and mistake. None of these pitfalls and difficulties should be glossed over or ignored, especiallywhen you write up your report and the temptation to leave out all the probablies, maybes, and on theother hands is strongest. Well, how can one respond but by a nod, and maybe a muttered ``hear, hear''?But where's the feminism? Archaeologists may be more afflicted by the embarrassment of prematureasseveration than are any others (I'd put my money on the psychiatrists); feminists, alas, are notconspicuously more free from it than the common run of humanity.

Miserable writing almost always accompanies this sort of methodological rumbling, and AncientGoddesses is not, in this respect, a book to disappoint. The introduction and first chapter are appallinglybad --- jargon-ridden without being precise, wordy without having a style, and full of thought-cliches andcanned thinking. The remainder isn't so bad, but (at least here) the contributors' best proves to be

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competent grant-application prose. This is what archaeologists, like other scholars, usually write, buthardly the ``human and accessible voice'' promised by the dust-jacket. (Are the writers of such copytrained to avoid claims which could be actionable under the laws of false advertising?)

In any case, these calls to take up the cause of ambiguity and doubt tend to be forgotten when thecontributors write about what they've dug out of the ground. Take the (very impressive) Minoan frescofrom Thera that Goodison and Morris examine on pp. 126ff (fig. 56). This shows a woman seated on araised platform, with two strange beasts on either side, and human figures who seem to be bringing hercrocuses. Even assuming that the last bit is right, it still doesn't mean that the seated woman is a goddess,as our authors assert; for all we know, it's a memorial to the founder of the saffron export industry, andthe beasts (a monkey and a griffin, it seems) are symbolic representations of the countries which are thetrade's principal customers. (I become fonder of this notion the more I contemplate it, so it's probablywrong.) --- This license to interpret at will is tangibly, and welcomely, revoked as soon as readable textsappear.

There is a valuable message to be had as a reward for making one's way through the thickets ofacademese, and even the morass of the first chapters. Namely: a widely-held belief about the past haslittle or nothing to recommend it. The archaeological evidence from prehistoric societies, as from oneswith writing which we can't read, is only slightly more indicative of the worship of a Great Goddess thanit is of Spinozistic pantheism. (Slightly, because they saw something in idols.) In no society with anaccessible written record do we find the Great Goddess, or anything really like her. I doubt we'll everreally know what the megalith-builders or the Maltese were thinking, and without a great linguisticbreakthrough we won't even be better off with the Minoans. Almost certainly, what they believed wasmuch more complicated, much stranger, and much less neatly tailored to our present concerns, than themyth gives them credit for.

As modern myths go, that of the Great Goddess isn't a terribly important one --- certainly it's not up therewith the biggies, like that of the Elders of Zion (thank the gods!) --- but it's still a nuisance, and worse, agrowing one. Three features make it objectionable. In the first place, it distorts our vision of the past,which is always bad in itself. Second, it isn't even good feminist tactics, since people are perfectly free,like Bachofen, to accept its factual claims, but reject the values, and say that the societies which replacedthose which worshiped the Goddess were infinitely superior; a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist couldgo further and say that She was just Satan in drag. Thirdly, it's simply absurd to proceed as though theway some of our ancestors happened to live a few thousand years ago fixes the way we ought to live nowand in the future. Suppose (to steal an example from Ernest Gellner) that tomorrow some archaeologistsin Iraq (or the Rift Valley or wherever) dug up a copy of the original social contract. Shouldanti-feminists change their minds if it had equality of men and women as article 1? Should we feministsrepent in dust and ashes if it enshrined patriarchy? No --- not just that people wouldn't actually changetheir opinions on such a basis (since some might), but that they'd not be justified in doing so; if nothingelse, the original Contractors might've been wrong. (This point is made by one of the contributors inpassing.)

I see nothing wrong with worshiping a goddess, or even the Goddess. (Or rather, to be parentheticallyblunt, if you must bow down before something so transparently a product of human hopes and fears as tohave a sex, as well one as the other.) I would actually be surprised if there weren't people leading better,happier lives because they worship Her, just as I'd be surprised if there weren't people leading happier,better lives for having accepted Jesus into their hearts as their personal savior, or having made

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submission to Allah, or, longer ago, having been unfailing in their sacrifices and libations to theOlympians. We can argue about whether humans can ever reach anything like reasonable agreement andknowledge about such matters of faith, or whether this kind of belief must remain privileged,incorrigible, and a matter of leaps in the dark. Belief in the Goddess, or Genesis, in some(none-too-clear) symbolic or allegorical sense can plausibly claim such ``benefit of clergy.'' But whenreligious believers make claims about ordinary, garden-variety facts --- about history, or geography, orastronomy --- then they are certainly not in some private, protected realm of faith, but in the shared andpublic forum of inquiry. It doesn't matter, then, whether they have nasty politics, like (for the most part)Creationists, or nice politics, like (for the most part) Goddess-mythers: their claims should be, and with alittle luck will be, scrutinized and critiqued just like any others, and ought to be rejected if they can'tstand up to that. The claims the Goddess myth makes about human history aren't as definitely explodedas those the Creationists make about the history of life on Earth, but we have no grounds to give themany credence either, and many for doubt.

This is not the book that needs to be written to dispose of the Goddess; that is one which wouldadequately marshal the evidence from archaeology, anthropology and history, and point out theirrelevance of the myth to the real issues, and have a genuinely human and accessible voice. Until thatbook arrives, this one will have to do.

224 pp., endnotes (almost unusable), many black-and-white photos and drawings, indexAnthropology and Archaeology / Ancient History / Feminism / ReligionCurrently in print as a hardback, ISBN 0-7141-1761-7, UK£18.99, LoC BL473.5 A5

8 March 1999

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