The Silent Goddesses

As more and more people are displaced by climate change and war, personal choice and strength, documents

are there to remind us that patriarchy was not a winning balanced struggle. It is struggle.

Earth is a small planet on the edge of the Milky Way. Our hierarchy of needs keep shifting who gets what. Centuries of war wipe out not only peace, but create shifts in mental health that continue.

In 'The Living Goddesses', Mariju Gimbutas writes, "In Neolithic Europe and Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia)--in the era between 7000 B.C. and 3000 B.C.--religion focused on the wheel of life and its cyclical turning." 1

Archaeologist Gimbutas described a culture she called 'Kurgan' originating in the 'steppes of Russia' and in waves moving into Europe. These waves began between 4400-4200 BC where they met Old Europeans who were agrarian, goddess worshipping and relatively peaceful. The merging was sometimes peaceful and other times not. "The Proto-Indo-Europeans imposed both language and religion on the indigenous peoples, although traces of both indigenous language and religion remained as a substratum in the resulting "Indo-European" language and culture. 2

In 'Religion in Prepatriarchal Europe' Gimbutas writes that ceramic forms (as early as 17000-14000 BC) which were predominantly vulvas (lacking arms, breasts and legs) were intended.

"Had there been a need to represent the entire body, it could easily have been done in the space available. But apparently no such need was felt, and so only the abdomen, the pelvic area, and the vulva have been carved. The entire figure was not important, but only the fragment which stood for the whole." 3

Symbolically this sculpture represents the living and flowing of the feminine force. This 'cyclical turning' was a religion of 'wild plant and animal cycles, and they worshipped goddesses, or a goddess, in many forms.' 4

In France you can hear and see the underlying acceptance of this kind of meaning of life. You can open the window in the evening and smell the manure. This is a regular smell. People are out in fields trimming vines in January. The ideology of the country is formed by an element of wood available for cooking, so cuisine has developed.

The Basque area is one that has not lost its old language. To me it feels like the rural living nature of these areas have a rhythm.

Depending on where you believe your child came from one thing is fairly clear - he/she didn't come from here. The children are balanced peaceful creatures set upon by our own culture and while each country has its own ideology, hierarchy in all its forms creates haves and have nots. We are solely responsible for its creation.

I remember the end of 'No Country for Old Men'. The main character had a dream. It was his father. His father had gone ahead, lit a fire.

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1,2,3,4 Gimbutas, Marija. 2001. The Living Goddesses. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. xv - 8.

photograph, Vinca culture; c. 5,000 B.C. Slatino, western Bulgaria

'The Living Goddesses' p. 8