This essay is part 1 of an edited excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion.
‘Goddess’, as I understand the term, is the female metaphor for the Great Creative Principle of the Universe. As such, She is both the Matrix, and immediately also an wholistic template of Being; that is, She is whole and complete within Herself, and She is a complete illustration of the process of coming into being and passing away. Her three aspects are often based on chronological/biological phases of a woman’s life, but the aspects are not in any way limited to those biological phases … those particular phases are actually just one of the valencies of the three omnipresent cosmic qualities of being that the ancients in many cultures noticed and celebrated. It seems that the three aspects were understood as a dynamic of ultimate Creativity, which is why they were so revered and celebrated.
One witness to that is the Triple Spiral engraved in central position at Bru-na-Boinne (Newgrange) in Ireland. The significance of the Bru-na-Boinne monument may yet to be fully understood, as the heretofore ethnocentric minds of researchers only now begin to remember the Goddess centred minds that built it. This is true also of other monuments and artifacts in Old Europe, which have puzzled patriarchal Earth-alienated minds.[1] I propose that the Triple Spiral encoded at Bru-na-Boinne may specifically celebrate the triple faced female metaphor – ‘Goddess’ – as ‘Cosmic Dynamic of Creativity’; it seems so since it is lit up at the moment of Winter Solstice, the Seasonal Moment that especially celebrates Origins and the renewal of Earth-Sun creativity.[2]
I understand ‘Creativity’ as another name for the Mystery of Being, and it is what I understand as the essence of Being. As Loren Eiseley reflects,
No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution.[3]
‘Creativity’ is also a term used by process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead for “the Category of the Ultimate”[4] and he refers to it as threefold in nature.[5] Thus, so do I understand ‘Goddess’ – the dynamic, triple-faced metaphor: She may enable the identification of life itself, as we witness it, experience it, and inter-act with it, with the manifestation of the ultimate Mystery at the heart and origin of existence. To further this identification I have associated the three faces of the Female Metaphor – Goddess – with three characteristics of what is scientifically known as Cosmogenesis, the omnipresent creative dynamic essential to all structure and form in the Universe. These qualities of Cosmogenesis are referred to by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in their story of the Universe. They describe them as three central tendencies, which are “the cosmological orderings of the creative display of energy everywhere and at any time throughout the history of the universe.”[6]
The three chronological/biological phases of a woman’s life in which the faces of Goddess are mirrored are: pre-menarchal young one, menstrual mother, and post-menopausal elder; and thus they have been known as Virgin/Maiden, Mother/Creator, Old One/Crone. It is necessary to ‘re-story’ these terms, since women and men in these times, no longer understand them in their full integrity – diminished, trivialized and even demonized as they have been by millennia of patriarchal narrative. Whereas, in the earliest of times of consciousness, and even later, these phases seem to have been sensed as aspects of the Great Creative Process whereby life continued, they had in recent patriarchal times lost their sacred essence. Indeed the Great Creative Process itself, expressed in the female as sacred, had become background. The mother became mere vessel, and ‘useful’ in this mode. The young virgin became a prize to be taken, the older virgin became a harsh deviant to be avoided. The old one became ‘used up’ and troublesome. Adam McLean advises that:
To find the Triple Goddess … we must go back to an early stratum of myth. Long before the ascendancy of the Christ myth, the primal myths of the Goddess had been overlaid with generations of masculine Gods usurping her place in the scheme of things, taking over her sacred centres and grasping for themselves some facet of her attributes. If we go back to the earliest myths of humankind we will find the goddess in her purest, usually triune, form.[7]
The re-storying of women – the Being of the female, is a preface to being able to speak sensibly of how Virgin-Mother-Crone could be a metaphor for the mystery of being. It is then possible to relate these three aspects to the evolutionary cosmic dynamics – to ‘Cosmogenesis’ – as a way of deepening awareness of them in the present moment and as a way of entering into the Female Metaphor more fully; as a way of comprehending or sensing ‘Goddess’. The seasonal celebrations then may become a way of accessing the Metaphor, embodying ‘Goddess’, and developing personal and cultural relationship to the Cosmos. The process of celebrating Her annual cycle of Creativity is a process of joining Earth in Her annual journey of descent and return, in Her divine expression.
Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone
NOTES:
[1] See Paul Devereaux Earth Memory p.34 and 120-124, Michael Dames The Silbury Treasure, Claire French The Celtic Goddess, p.22.
[2] other valencies may be included, as with all poetry and art.
[3] Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, p.27.
[4] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p.28.
[5] More of this is described in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4: see “Whitehead’s ‘Threefold Creative Composition’”.
[6] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.72.
[7] Adam McLean, The Triple Goddess, p.12-13.
REFERENCES:
Dames, Michael. The Silbury Treasure: The Great Goddess Rediscovered. London: Thames and Hudson,1976.
Devereux, Paul. Earth Memory: The Holistic Earth Mysteries Approach to Decoding Ancient Sacred Sites. London: Quantum, 1991.
Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess. Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990.
Eiseley, Loren. The Immense Journey. NY: Vintage Books, 1957.
French, Claire. The Celtic Goddess. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2001.
Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Lincoln NE: iUniverse, 2005.
McLean, Adam. The Triple Goddess. Grand Rapids MI: Phanes Press, 1989.
Neuman, Erich. The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.
Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story. NY: HarperCollins, 1992.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. NY: Macmillan, 1929.
Yes Sara our birthrights have been stolen around the globe, and as you say many of the women have forgotten it was any other way, or could be again! thankfully here in Australia, there are Indigenous women who remember, and still have they own ceremonies, and take lead roles. so glad you can comment again too!
And thanks Helen re your appreciation. I am glad the essay has been helpful.
Hi Glenys, lovely to see your excerpt essay. I am now getting a better understanding of the Triad Creatrix, a primal embodiment of Nine Numerology. Helen Hwang
“The process of celebrating Her annual cycle of Creativity is a process of joining Earth in Her annual journey of descent and return, in Her divine expression.”
Oh yes indeed.
I am struck by the triple spiral which seems to show up in virtually every tradition I can think of. Here in New Mexico there is a striking triple spiral that looks identical to the one in your photograph – so much so – that I tried to find it in my pictures to include with this comment (oh what a relief to be able to comment again!) and couldn’t.
Here it is the Indigenous Pueblo peoples who are responsible for these symbolic and literal representations and yet there is no acknowledgment of the power of the feminine in her own right… Even many of the women are danced by men during the spring dances. The Turtle Dance that celebrates the first return of the light in January is a prime example.
Patriarchy has stolen this birthright of ours.