Goddess_in_the_Sky - Marija Gimbutas.pdf - Marija Gimbutas - adad.molo

Goddess in the Sky: The Archaeomythology of Marija Gimbutas and the

Astrological Language of Neolithic Old Europe

* Editor’s note: This paper was submitted to the Goddess of Prehistory: An Archaeomythology course taught by Dr. Mara Keller

and Joan Marler at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Marija Gimbutas taught that a viable interpretation of prehistory requires an interdisciplinary focus, but

the discipline of astrology has yet to be seriously entertained with respect to the mentality and spirituality of

the Neolithic peoples of Old Europe.

Granted, astrology is a curious topic at best for western scholars today, due to its contemporary

alienation from western science and religion. Routinely disparaged as unscientific, astrology's ancient

natural laws—essentially religious laws—attest to principles such as the indivisibility of matter and spirit, of

time and space, of consciousness and the void of absolute emptiness, and laws such as these, being

inconceivable, flatly contradict the kinds of tidy dualistic philosophical assumptions which have long

sustained the overall trajectory of eurocentric scientific method. Therefore, since the controls of repetitive

laboratory experiments cannot "prove" the aforementioned first principles of astrology-or any of its other

truths, for that matter-only its mechanistic aspect, the field of astronomy, has found a safe home within the

modem era of the eurocentric university.

Astrology is also an odd topic for Western scholars today because the Abrahamic male monotheistic

religions, which include Judaism and Christianity, do not award religious status to the discipline. Catholicism,

in particular, has even had the habit of proclaiming astrology as demonic, or even the work of the devil. A

confusing situation indeed, given that the Vatican library - arguably the dominant intellectual citadel of

Western religion, owing to its historic alliance with the Roman Empire and subsequent European royal

bloodlines - is stuffed with secret troves of astrological texts written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek, Latin,

and Arabic. Indeed, one can barely approach Roman Catholicism without being hypnotized by the intricate

layers of astrological symbolism hidden within its visual art, rituals, sacred calendar, scriptures, and

architecture. At any rate, for various philosophical and religious reasons, astrology has been mysteriously

stripped from the western academic canon, a regrettable state of affairs that helps to explain why astrology

has yet to be seriously entertained with respect to the mentality and spirituality of the Neolithic peoples of

Old Europe.

The loss is ours, but fortunately, remedial work is always an option. In order to begin to contend with

this state of affairs, admittedly on a tremendously superficial level, the introduc tory remarks of this paper will

concern: 1) Astrology and the history of religion; 2) Neolithic figurines and rituals, compared to the

constellations and astrology; and 3) Neolithic animal symbolism, with reference to astrological shamanism.

Astrology and the history of Religion

To begin with, the history of astrology is simply inseparable from the history of science, whether

Western or Asian, and whether in terms of the evolution of mathematics, navigation, astronomy, or

medicine. But even more importantly, with respect to the puzzle of Neolithic mentality, religions around the

world have seemingly always lived in the most intimate of marriages with various schools of astrology .

As long as history speaks, disciplined spiritual leaders - indeed, the religious elite of virtually every non-

Abrahamic culture - have seen fit to carefully attune to the vocabulary of the heavens. For thousands of

years, highly refined and discriminating teachers, whether Hindus and Buddhists, or priests and priestesses

from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, or those from the world's other shamanic and indigenous traditions,

for example, from Siberia and Peru, or mystics from non-orthodox strains of Abrahamic Judaism, Christianity

and Islam, all these and many more have observed the ways in which the planets of our solar system drift in

time and space within an uncanny context: an abstract, yet practical rapport with the stars and with Earth.

Observing the ways in which the bodies of our solar system align with the celestial backdrop of stars, these

teachers have exhaustively correlated such alignments with the sensitive panoply of interrelationships

between elements such as earth, water, fire, air, as well as minerals, plants, animals, humans, and events

on Earth. While comparing, codifying, recording, and refining the human reception of these alignments and

interrelationships, they have witnessed fabulous spectrums of resonance between Earth and sky, as though

precise frequencies of intelligence are inexplicably shared between terrestrial and celestial worlds, all in the

midst of clearly delineated, highly predictable rhythms: the temporal and spatial cycles of birth, growth,

maturity, death, dissolution, and regeneration. Therefore, although the vast majority of western scholars

today display a breathtaking ignorance of global astrological tra ditions, the fact remains that the majority of

cultures - those of which we have any record, that is - have carefully trained religious leaders to accurately

receive and transmit the language and consciousness of the sky. In so doing, our species has been

encouraged to solidly center itself within the cosmic framework of an ongoing miracle: earth and sky,

existing in an indissoluble union, are essentially indistinguishable from one another. Western science now

admits that the vast expanses of galactic structures are literally realms echoed on the subatomic level of the

human body, but the unfathomable wonder of this ceaseless union was long ago enshrined with simple

elegance in an irrepressible Western philosophical dictum, one found in archaic, classical, Medieval and

Renaissance hermetic texts: As above, so below. Upon reflection, astrology's alienation from western

science and religion is seemingly inexplicable, given that astrological practice amounts to a scientific proof of

an inconceivable orderliness, the imponderable details of which are best contemplated as divine.

At any rate, it stands to reason that in common with world's other religious traditions, whether shamanic,

indigenous, or organized, the ceremonial life of the Neolithic peoples of Old Europe may also have involved

an astrological consciousness. Perhaps, if western academia's ignorance of global astrological traditions

comes to be corrected during the decades to come, pioneering archaeological scholars will come to assume

that this was the case—rather than to assume the contrary-and the Old Europeans will come to be

appreciated, like so many other peoples, as ferociously intelligent cultures who deeply perceived, recorded,

tested, refined and celebrated the subtleties of natural laws linking heaven and earth over millennia, in terms

of the cyclical alignments of stars and planets, and their rhythmic affinities with the natural laws at play

amidst the spectacular array of elements, minerals, plants, animals, humans, and events on Earth.

Neolithic figurines and rituals, and the constellations today

This general theory with respect to Old European Neolithic mentality and spirituality gains conspicuous

support from the fact that the names and images of the constellations covering the bowl of the northern

hemisphere largely correspond, whether in physical or symbolic terms, to the epiphanies of Goddess that

Marija Gimbutas excavated, catalogued and inter preted in her voluminous and reverent scientific writings. In

other words, quite remarkably, Gimbutas's reflections upon precious clay pieces of Neolithic ceremonial

pottery, whether animals, humans, plants, or symbols, may be instantly appreciated by students of the sky

as efficient signals for heavenly asterisms. As an aside, the exquisite, repetitive signs of Old Europe, such

as spirals, meanders, and chevrons, may include ways of denoting the astrological elements, celebrated

across cultures, such as earth, water, fire, air, wind, ether, spirit.

In further support of this theory, Gimbutas taught that Old Europeans reenacted rituals with these

figurines, and in these passages of her work, mention is repeatedly made, however inadvertently, to the

spatial and temporal language of astrology. For example, she taught that the myriad figurines contained an

abstract sacred vocabulary; that they were ceremonial implements utilized in seasonal rituals intimately

related to the annual solar cycles of agriculture and the authoritative role of the female therein; and that

these rituals—which included the sacrosanct event of birth—took place within temple precincts oriented to

the spatial coordinates of the four directions and the temporal coordinates of the equinoxes and solstices.

Interestingly, this overall portrait of Old European ritual clearly articulates the alpha and omega of astrology's

primordial, yet perennial, landscape of language and consciousness, namely, the spatial and temporal

coordinates of annual solar cycles of agriculture, and the monthly lunar cycles of the female role in human

reproduction.

Therefore, in my own mind's eye, any number of the 100,000 Neolithic figurines excavated to date may

have once been ceremonially utilized as hand-held clay codes for specific constellations featured at

seasonal ritual times of the solar year or lunar month, figurines perhaps filled with oil or beeswax, then lit

and held aloft to the tunes of chants, songs, and dances, as delicate yet fiery mirrors of the stars.

Goddess, animal, and human female fusions: signs of astrological shamanism

Moreover, Gimbutas refers regularly to the central role played by animal symbolism in Old European

religion, and specifically, to the remarkable extent to which animal and female forms, as extensions or

manifestations of Goddess, were creatively fused in figurines, masks and other works of art. To the

layperson, this salient feature of Neolithic religion may seem totally unrelated to the sky. Yet to an

astrological priestess such as myself, this is the purest portrayal of astrological dimensionality found in

Gimbutas's work, since the Old European ceramic fusions of Goddess, female animal, and woman easily

symbolize the triangulating system of navigation that I utilize to pace the void of heaven.

For example, I begin by summoning the deity known as Artemis, she who is Goddess in her emanation

as Bear. When this current is firmly established, I contemplate the natural laws surrounding the lives of

bears on Earth, asking respectfully for direct assistance from the spirit of female bear herself. Thirdly, I

reflect upon the individual and collective powers of female human beings, especially in terms of our affinities

with female bears. Then, once the triangular circuit between Goddess, female animal, and woman has been

firmly established in meditation, I am finally free to pace the void, focusing the inner eye upon the distant

stars long named for bears. At this point, remembering that astrology is literally stellar logic and language, I

engage in the arduous and extended labor of consciousness that may eventually reap a few kernels of

astrological truth.

To repeat, in my own work as a feminist shamanic astrologer, I cultivate, and patiently sustain, a free-

floating triangular current of associations between the following holy trinity:

1) the spirit of Goddess, in terms of an animal emanation;

2) the spirit of the same female animal, that her relationship to natural law, and to my own species, may be

revealed; and

3) the spirit of women, or female-centered human experience, in so far as my female ancestors not only

learned lessons by closely observing the female animal, but led their families and clans to survive and

prosper due to the animal's ability to provide food, drink, shelter, clothing, adornment, decorations,

containers, or tools, and from her ability to carry us over land or water, to carry messages, to plough or

fertilize our fields, to haul local goods, to ship trade items overland, and so forth.

Finally, by connecting this triangular state of the psychic inner sun with the distant suns or stars long

associated with the female animal in question, visceral floods of insight are spontaneously generated. Over

time, these often are confined as the richest and most reliable revelations of astrological knowledge. Bluntly

put, only with the free and willing assistance of the spirits of female animals, in addition to the contemplation

of Goddess and of women's experience, have I attuned to the spirits of the stars, and therefore, to me, the

animal symbolism so abundantly featured in the spectacular Old European repertoire of clay figurines and

masks—a imaginative repertoire of patterns that fuse various forms of Goddess, animals, and women can

only stand as an astrological heartbeat of Neolithic religion. i

At first glance, these theories may seem preposterously farfetched. Yet the courage to proceed in this

direction was initially found in the introductory words of Gimbutas's final book, The Living Goddesses. A

superb working definition of astr:ology in itself, this paragraph is here quoted in its entirety, with its

astrological terms highlighted in italics:

In Neolithic Europe and Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia)—in the era between 7000 " BCE and

3000 BCE-religion focused upon the wheel of life and its cyclical turning. This is the

geographic sphere and the time frame I refer to as Old Europe. In Old Europe, the focus of

religion encompassed birth, nurturing, growth, death, and regeneration, as well as crop

cultivation and the raising of animals. The people of this era pondered untamed natural

forces, as well as wild plant and animal cycles, and they worshiped goddesses, or a

goddess, in many forms. The goddess manifested her countless forms during various

cyclical phasis to ensure that they functioned smoothly. She revealed herself in multiple

ways through the myriad facets of life, and she is depicted in a very complex symbolism. ii

Taking this paragraph as an inspirational point of departure, this paper will begin to explore the theory that

astrological awareness was central to the religious reality of the pre-Indo European peoples of Old Europe,

and indeed, that these peoples pioneered the world's first abstract language in an effort to artistically

celebrate the natural laws of heaven and earth with visible signs and symbols.

Next, a few words about this paper's structure, methodology, and politics.

Structure and methodology

Admittedly, a topic this enormous is dangerous for a term paper, since years of intellectual focus would

be required to gain more than a superficial acquaintance with Gimbutas's massive corpus of scholarship,

and moreover, since the celestial teachings to which this paper refers are still utilized by seers east and west

to decode the interrelationships between all things in nature. Given the vast scope of this paper's tentative

yet governing theory, what follows can only amount to an initial exercise, but hopefully in retrospect it will at

least be considered an exercise that was worth the effort, and perhaps one to be profitably developed more

thoroughly in the future.

In order to briefly illustrate the theory that the ceremonial life of the Neolithic peoples of Old Europe may

have involved an astrological consciousness, the following structure will be utilized. First, heavy reliance will

here be placed upon the first-42 pages of Marija Gimbutas's final book, The Living Goddesses. Here, she

quickly categorized the vast symphony of Old European pottery figurines—approximately 100,000 of which

have been excavated—in terms of several dozen keywords: vulva, birth-giving goddess, bear or deer, bird,

Goddess_in_the_Sky - Marija Gimbutas.pdf

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