[Author’s Note: This essay and its sequels are part of a longer chapter for a book I am working on. The book is based on my dissertation research at the Maetreum of Cybele in Palenville NY. I wanted to share some of my historical research and I will be presenting more essays on Mother Goddess worship in the ancient world and contemporary interest in the Feminine Divine.]
In the Neolithic Age[1], there were deities however they were understood to be spirits of nature and the universe. Images of these beings are found on cave walls, from figurines found in the remains of homes, and from reliefs carved in temples. However, we cannot be sure of the names and characteristics of these deities. Scholars have had to learn to interpret other sources of information and worked backward to attempt to understand the people of the time using the myths and religious texts written by the people or their neighbors. These scholars know that the first stories recorded would be those critical to the people, their religious beliefs, and their history. Second, scholars examine iconography, repeated symbols, animals, or objects that appear with a deity in prehistory and then look at a goddess with these same symbols and objects depicted during the written era. Using this research, they can make a connection across time and culture from prehistory to the historical period.
Humanity is built on connections: connection to the family, a country, a religious community, or a community of friends. How communities are formed is not the central issue; it is that our community provides people with the connections that they need which is essential. In the practice of pagan religions, this often involves trying to trace back the roots of the faith to a more ancient path. Unfortunately, this leads some researchers to grasp at iconographic straws to make connections. The practice of building a non–existent link between ancient religions and contemporary Pagan and new age religious groups is so common that both Ronald Hutton and Margot Adler, have dedicated books to debunking the supposed ancient roots of some Pagan groups.[2]
This does not stop lay researchers and serious scholars from using archaeological evidence to try to prove that contemporary Paganism does have some ancient roots. The Great Mother, the Mother Goddess, the Mother of the Gods, the Divine Feminine, Mother Earth, and Gaia are some of the names of Goddesses found across the world throughout time. That mother goddesses existed is not in dispute. However, this does not mean that a contemporary Goddess is a direct “descendant” of a more ancient Goddess. At the very least this claim cannot be made without evidence. In the case of the Goddess Cybele, some scholars find the evidence to be lacking while others point to iconography as proof of her continuity of worship.
Philippe Borgeaud, in Mother of the Gods, states that because the name Cybele first appears in the sixth century BCE on an engraved façade in a Phrygian Sanctuary then that is the oldest her worship can be. From this first inscription, he traces the name of Cybele or the “Mother of the Gods” through to the sixth century CE via the established trade networks which linked Asia Minor and Phrygia to Greece and Rome.[3] His view grants Cybele a 1,200-year history of worship around the Mediterranean, and he dismisses any claims of older worship of the goddess.
It is my opinion that this hesitancy to connect Cybele with the more ancient Mother Goddesses is partly due to fear. Many in the field of women’s spirituality are familiar with the resistance scholars experience when they reinterpret what male scholars have already defined as real. Marija Gimbutas’ work on Goddess figurines found in old Europe combined the fields of archaeology and mythology[4] and Gimbutas herself coined the term archaeomythology to describe this field. However, her work is politely marginalized or openly mocked by parts of the scholarly community because she did not have written records to prove her claims.[5] Never mind that the previous scholars who wrote about the Neolithic also did not have written documents or the archaeological evidence from later digs that she oversaw.
Female and feminist scholars must fight through a least two centuries of entrenched male-dominated cultural dogma to rewrite a history which to them seems obvious. In fact, according to mythologist and poet Robert Graves,
The whole of Neolithic Europe to judge from surviving artifacts and myths, had a remarkably homogeneous system of religious ideas based on the many titled Mother Goddess, who was also known in Syria and Libya… The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not yet been introduced into religious thought.[6]
Before the discovery of evidence pointing, if not to worship then at least, to the adoration of the mother giving birth, it was so for scholars to agree that yes, there was a time when Goddesses were important. Some scholars claim the ancient Goddess worshipping societies were not matriarchal societies, but it is likely that they were matrifocal or at least egalitarian based on graves and artifacts.[7] Continued excavations at Old Europe cites, such as Catal Huyuk have provided evidence which supports the conclusion that these early societies were egalitarian.
I believe that there is proof of Cybele’s connection to Anatolia especially from Catal Huyuk in Turkey, around 6000 BCE based on archaeological finds. This view is supported by the work of other scholars including Merlin Stone, Lynn Roller, Elinor Gabon, and M.J. Vermaseren who wrote the first significant work on the worship of Cybele. These scholars point out attributes, titles, animals, and similar names as evidence that Cybele had a past which stretches back to Neolithic Anatolia. I explore the history of Cybele from a standpoint that based on the material evidence she is a very ancient Goddess.
Cathryn Platine, the Battakes[8] of the modern revival and a lay scholar on Goddess history, believes that Cybele can be linked back to Mesopotamia by looking at the connection of Goddess figurines with animals, often large cats. She thinks that it is fear of being ostracized by the academic community which keeps archaeologists from making such claims and believes that female scholars don’t have the same amount of intellectual leeway to talk about Goddess worship as their male colleagues do when discussing trade routes or methods of warfare. She points to scholars such as Gimbutas who spent much of her career outside of mainstream academia because she made connections which went against commonly held beliefs in archaeology.[9] This does not deter Platine though, “Over 20 years of research I’ve been proven right on everything I was saying back in the 80s. [Evidence for advanced egalitarian civilizations in Anatolia] is just one more thing.”[10]
(To be continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Francesca Tronetti.
[1] The Neolithic Age begins around 8000 BCE and predates the rise of civilizations in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt.
[2]Adler, Drawing Down the Moon; Hutton, Triumph of the Moon.
[3] Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods, xvii.
[4] In the first half of the twentieth century other scholars had combined archaeology and mythology in their research. Gimbutas was the first to name the combination after World War II as archaeomythology.
[5]Spretnak, “Anatomy of a Backlash.”
[6] Quotd in Stone, When God Was a Woman, 23.
[7] Spretnak,“Anatomy of a Backlash,” x.
[8] A Reverend Mother. A position like the head man or first among equals position found in Anthropology. She does not have control of the Cybelines per say but she leads ritual and is considered the most learned of the Cybeline scholars.
[9] Leslie, “The Goddess Theory.” Such as Gimbutas’ reinterpretation of female figurines with exaggerated sexual characteristics as relating to reproduction and nature with no erotic components. Her belief that the egalitarian people of Old Europe were invaded by the war-oriented Indo-Europeans who destroyed great civilizatios.
[10] Cathryn Platine, in discussion with the author, statement made multiple times in discussions. Cathryn told me that she studied the work of Gimbutas and other archaeologists and believed that their findings proved that there were egalitarian civilizations in Anatolia and that the advanced Minoan civilization of Crete was Goddess centered. Unfortunately, Cathryn did not publish any of her beliefs at the time so I cannot say with certainty that she did predict current beliefs concerning ancient civilizations.
I am excited for the rest of these essays 🙂