(Video) Winter Solstice Goddess Slideshow by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Each year between June 20-23 the dark part of the day reaches its peak in the Southern Hemisphere: it is the Winter Solstice Moment.

Poetry of the Season may be expressed in this way:

At this time when the Dark part of day is longest, as Earth leans us away from Sun to the furthest point,

You are invited to celebrate

WINTER SOLSTICE

Darkness reaches Her fullness, and yet …

She turns, and the seed of Light  is born.

This is the season for the lighting of candles,

and receiving the Gift of Birth.

The story of Old tells us that on this night,

the Great Mother gives birth

to the Divine Child 

– the New Young One within all.

We celebrate Her eternal Cosmogenesis,

and the Miracle of Being.

Glenys Livingstone, 2005

The choice of images is somewhat arbitrary; there are many more that may express Her maternal relational essence and Her gateway quality at this time. The Mother images of this Season overlap with the Crone images of Samhain – they are never really separate. Most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all three of Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice. The Mother aspect is many things: She is a dynamic Place of Being. She is a Weaver – knitting and fabricating the world. Her space of birthing is not a passive place: She is Creator.

As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable, that which can only be known in body, below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you.

• The Womb of Space

• Aditi 1800 C.E. India. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess p.66).  She is “the Hindu Goddess of the Void. Her name means ‘abundance’ and ‘creative power’ in Sanskrit”. Aditi is the primordial space, the womb from which all creation arises. See also Lajja Gauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajja_Gauri – connected to Aditi         

• The Birth of the Goddess  450 B.C.E. Rome. An icon of spiritual transformation.  (Erich Neumann The Great Mother, pl 155)

• Tlazolteotl 1400 C.E. Aztec. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.18). Birth is the quintessential shamanic act. Tlazolteotl is also known as the Goddess of Filth – and as such both provoked and pardoned licentiousness: She may be thought of as associated with Beltaine (sex) and also Lammas (the complete forgiveness of the Dark Mother). See article by Anne Key: http://www.matrifocus.com/BEL09/key.htm#1

• Sheila-na-gig 900C.E. British Isles. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 120). Elinor Gadon describes: “She is remembered in Ireland as the Old Woman who gave birth to all races of human…. In churches her function was to ward off evil”, or to attract the Pagan peoples to the church (The Once and Future Goddess, p.338). Adele Getty describes:“The first rite of passage of all human beings begins in the womb and ends between the thighs of the Great Mother”.

• Ixchel 800 C.E. Central America (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 10). She sits at her loom with Her bird companion, the nest weaver. She weaves the Fabric of Life.

• Diana of Ephesus 200 C.E. Asia Minor. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 27). A Holy Mother, a Dark Madonna.

• Woodlands Nursing Mother 1400 C.E. North America (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.29). This is actually a ceramic pot, which is associated with woman, creation, nurturance and spiritual power.

• Mary “Mother of God” – Vierge Ouvrante 1400’s C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 40-41). Closed She is the traditional “Virgin” with Child, although since she is “holding the sphere of the world in her hand” she may also be understood as the Mother/Creator. Indeed opening Her reveals that She contains God, Christ and temporal and spiritual rulers.

• Tiamat – 4000-3500 B.C.E. Babylon (Ur, Iraq), Adele Getty Goddess : Mother of Living Nature p.33). The Mother and Child of Old, expressing the essential relational nature of Creativity, the essential urge to bring forth the New. Classically She is named as the “sea monster/dragon”, but She is “personification of The Deep”, the formlessness before creation (Barbara Walker, p. 998). She may symbolize primordial timelessness. The classic slaying of the dragon represents the advent of patriarchy, victorious over the Goddess. The slaying of Tiamat by the hero Marduk is said to be the Creation story – the Enuma Elish – of the Babylonian peoples, but this supreme creative act is also a criminal act, an act of deicide (see PaGaian Cosmology, p. 73). Her name means Goddess Mother, Tia-mat, Dea-Madre. Adele Getty says:”… this Babylonian Goddess presents an ancient and haunting image of the sacred mother. Holding her child to her breast, she stands upright like Tiamat, the dragon woman, naked except for her magic belt of triangles, which serves to emphasize as well as beautify her own fertile delta. The triangle represents the triple aspect of the Great Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone, and is recognized in the Tantric tradition as the primary symbol of life. The serpent force is the great life-affirming, maternal blessing. The snake is always associated with immortality …”.

–   Nut, Mother of Rebirth 200 C.E. Egypt (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.81.)

• Womb of Space (again)

Music: “Ancient Pines” by Loreena McKennitt

REFERENCES:

Gadon, Elinor W. The Once and Future Goddess. Northamptonshire: Aquarian, 1990.

Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.

Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess.Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. http://www.heartgoddess.net/

Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology. NE: iUniverse, 2005.

Neuman, Erich. The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983.