Mother perverted into War Goddess
Can you see the magnificent mothering in this ancient statue of Athena and the warrior? This is the formerly-healthy-Mother Goddess perverted into a war Goddess by the Indo-Europeans who smashed Greece circa 3000-1000 BC. And even though this is the perverted Athena, the artist still conveys Her as a woman who loves not only her child, but also herself -- as a woman -- in ways I doubt we could ever truly understand.
Google “Goddess” + “peace” and you get all kinds of sites. About Tara the Goddess of Peace; Pax the Roman Goddess of Peace; Brylana the Goddess of Peace, Prosperity and Plenty; Eirene, the Greek Goddess of Peace and Wealth ; a site about a book called Buy A Goddess in My Shoes: Seven Steps to Peace . A site about the ancient Greek play “Peace,”in which Peace is a Goddess; Kuan Yin, Goddess of Peace clean across the globe in China ; and on and on.
Although I didn’t find any because I didn’t look hard enough, Grainne points out that Googling “god” and “peace” also produces multiple results (see Grainne’s comment below).
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Thnx to hylzscq for the foto of Athena
"Why are there no “gods of peace?”"
ReplyDeleteI Googled this:
"god of peace" -lord -bible pagan
And found these:
Sukhindir - Sikh God of peace
Ing/Frey - Norse God of peace (in some interpretations this is Baldur)
Lono - Hawaiian god of peace
Janus Quirinus - Roman god of peace
Saturn - Roman God of peace (re: Saturnalia
Apollo - Greek god of peace
Gutuater - Celtiberian god of peace
Ilmarinen - Finnish god of peace
Kolyada - Russian god of peace
Uppsala - Swedish god of peace
I also wonder why you think that the Mother Goddess didn't have her dark side. Nature also has its vicious moments, does it not?
Grainne
People find what they are looking for.
ReplyDeleteGood work, Grainne, on the Googling for gods/peace. I stand corrected. I will change this post accordingly.
ReplyDeleteAs for the dark side of the Goddess, I don’t know about that. I haven’t figured that out for myself, yet, to be honest. Not because I necessarily can’t (although I might not be able to), but because I haven’t gotten around to it. I think Goddess people are still in the process of trying to recapture the fragments that were Goddess thealogy before the gods worked so hard to grind that thealogy into the dust for forever. “I don’t think we’ve really developed a [full] thealogy yet…. I don’t think we’ve begun to systematize a set of thoughts about the Goddess. We are still, possibly, in the myth-making stage. The myth of a religion tries to answer basic questions. How did we get here, why are we here, why are things like they are?...” (Walker, 2000, Restoring the Goddess, p. 368).
Lisa, I think you're absolutely right. People often do "find" what they assume they will find. And I think I slipped into that very process in this post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Grainne... Nature absolutely has Her dark moments, and I think it does everyone a disservice to simply write off every less-than-agreeable characteristic of a goddess as a symptom of patriarchal rape. Women, Nature, everything has a dark side.
ReplyDeleteAthena looks like she's saying 'Give me that before you put someone's eye out.' Nature does have a dark side, Polynesian Pele had the worst temper of any goddess, Indian Kali was the Goddess of Destruction but also of rebirth and you didn't want to screw with her. Nature is like any mother, peaceful and loving but will tear you apart if you hurt her children.
ReplyDelete