Women get very short shrift in Greek Myth. Doomed before creation.
Pandora was the first woman according to the Greek origin story. The Gods and Titans made men, and then became angry after Prometheus helped them gain fire and they became uppity. So to punish men, they created a woman, the first mortal woman, Pandora.
WTF!
So before we get to her box, which as it turns out was a sealed jar, probably an amphora and not a box, the lies start. This should be our first clue that the whole story is bogus, but then you already knew that right?
So how was Pandora to punish men? She was created by Hephaestos and Athena on Zeus’s orders. He was the craftsman, the blacksmith, potter, and stonemason of the Gods. As a master crafter and with Athena’s help Pandora was lovely and skilled, she could weave, and was beguiling with her beauty and sexuality. Other Gods added their two cents worth with Aphrodite giving Pandora beauty, desire, self-aware vanity, and grace. Hermes gave her a bold and shameless mind, a duplicitous nature, and language. Other Gods decorated her with gold and flowers.
I am far from the first to notice her similarity with Eve. First woman. Created for man. Temptress responsible for downfall of man per the apple. As a weaver Pandora has elements of Eve leading to the awareness of nakedness. The gold and flowers are not part of Eve’s story and probably related to early economics and the commercialization of sex or the definition of women as property.
Pandora certainly has all the patriarchal branding upon which our modern western world is built. There is potential linkage to an earlier story when you bring in the covered jar rather than a box which Pandora opens. There is an All Souls Day ritual that involved the opening of wine jars which also released the souls of the dead to the world while the drinking fest lasted over the course of a couple days.
After the harvest most proto European cultures have a festival where the worlds of living and dead come together as Winter descends. There is usually a female deity or supernatural being associated with Winter such as Cailleach. These late Autumn or early Winter associations may well trace back to a proto-European mythology which is fairly well evidenced by early three dimensional representational carvings of women.
In any case, the dispersal of all of life’s misfortune’s such as pestilence, illness, suffering and death are blamed on Pandora and the curiosity that sparked her opening of a sealed jar that Zeus gave her and then told her not to open. This sounds like Eve too, with the tree of knowledge and the snake representing human understanding and knowledge. Blaming women for death and the understanding of our mortality makes sense only if you understand that the cycle of life and death are obviously under women’s control because of gestation and birth in early cultures.
The Sheela na gig or witch on the wall obviously, to most researchers, connect this life/death cycle in Western Celtic cultures, and when you include Pandora and Southern European mythologies you see this cycle attributed to women. Patriarchal cultures often see this linkage as negative. More egalitarian or women-honoring cultures see this element of humanity as part of the mystery and wonder of the life cycle.
The shackling of women and blaming of them for all of society’s ills is clear example of bullying and psychologically-enforced servitude that is not a balanced nor productive structure for organizing society in the most beneficial way for all members.
Pandora, the first women of Greek myth, and all the women in society derived from that time on have been scapegoats of a negatively framed worldview.
Iconic O: The Real OG
OG in woman speak is not Original Gangster but rather Original Goddess.
We will never know who the first Goddess on the Earth was. We can infer much about behavior after humans started creating representational art, but it is still inference.
Abstract and intentional, the oldest art with a clear date is from Africa.
Australian art may date back as far as habitation of the continent around 50,000 years ago. Dating is still being done and is mixed. 20,000 years is probable and 40,000 plus years ago is possible.
Indonesian cave art may date back to almost 30,000 years ago.
Cave paintings in Europe have been known for a century and to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old.
But none of these are three dimensional.
We really cannot say for sure that these figures had any religious or symbolic meaning, but it seems likely that the lion-man depicts some sort of shamanic beliefs. And the female, well, she is very womanly. Both of these Southern German representations are pushing 40.000 years old, being between 35 and 40 thousand years old.
The female figure is human and though such figures are often referred to as Venus figurines, the attribution of Venus to them suggests associations that we just cannot infer. This particular female figure is 5,000 years older than any of the other similar carvings of women found all the way from Spain and France to the Russian Steppes.
There were certainly cultural activities akin to spiritual thought involved. The world’s oldest flutes were also found here and were made from Griffon vulture and swan bones.
The female carving is the first fully human three dimensional representation found, thus far. She could have been related to fertility or she could reference a mystical or religious awe of women. It is very unlikely that porn as such existed back then.
I personally have taken to referring to her and others similar carvings as OGs. I think the first fully human statuary deserves the status. And original she is. Perhaps not Gangster, but probably similarly powerful and respected. She is certainly an Original Girl.
Iconic M: Mama
Why do most languages have something like a word that sounds like mama that means mother? Etymology, the study of the history of language and words, tells us part of the story, but biology tells us the other part. And we really can figure out why some things come to stand for other things, like a mmmmm sound for the one who birthed you and feeds your from her breast and for a while in a child’s life is indistinguishable from the child’s self. A pretty good article all about this can be found in the Atlantic.
We naturally make sounds before we can consciously shape the mouth, tongue and lips. Unclasping the lips from nursing and releasing a breath makes something akin to a ma or na sound. The mother reinforces the baby making that sound and the baby emulates her words and the positive experience. And wah lah we have a pretty damn near universal word recreates with every generation. Me beginning with the same sound as ma is not universal but is an Eurasian phenomenon.
This month I said I was working with iconic imagery that is associated with the essential or elemental feminine. Mama is one of the words that truly meets the criteria of iconic. Everyone has a mother. The woman, food, comfort, love, and a state of contentment are components of a preverbal association laid down in our earliest experience. In this way a mother, and as a universal experience, the mother truly stands for a concept in such a way such that it is more than simple representation, and that the icon embodies the concept.
The inverse is also true; we come to include the child’s response of naming Mama as part of this essential and symbolic element of this primordial relationship. Messing with icons breaks all cultural rules. This is also why creepy dolls who say, “Mama” are the subject of horror stories.
I offer this A to Z entry up as a roll out for Mother’s Day posts.
Iconic L: Of Leisure, Luck and Lilith
This post has been drafted for over a year, but I never found the right time, so I am expanding it for A to Z posting it under Iconic L: Leisure, Luck, and Lilith. Leisure because this is an iconic element that every person, women included, should incorporate into their life and personal ideology. We should all be so lucky as to be able to do this. It is Friday the 13th, so luck is a timely topic, and as most of us know, Dame Fortuna is female. And the final L for today is Lilith, the oldest female in the Judeo-Christian origin tale.
So here I go creating a segue. I was often called Lil in my High School days due to the Beatles song lyrics in Rocky Raccoon. “Her name was McGill. She called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy.” This made me want to research Lilith. She was an ancient Goddess. Then the Judaic world spoke of her. The Bible I grew up with did not mention her. But apparently she was Adam’s first wife. She was all the things that patriarchy does not like. So Adam and the male God cast her out and created Eve, a subservient female. Eve did get the short end of the stick with the whole apple thing, but that is another story. Lilith was turned into a demon and child killer in most tales. I did not buy it then, and I do not buy it now. I’m not alone.
Just look at events like Lilith Fair, the all female concert tour in the late 1990s. Many women have reclaimed Lilith as a positive and powerful icon. For women to accept their own power and be comfortable with themselves, we have to learn to listen to ourselves. I am so very glad I write all the time. I have lots of entries, be they journal or otherwise, which I can go back to in order to see how I felt when. The following bit of writing was initially entitled, A Leisurely Week.
Upon rereading this, I decided that this leisure was actually a self-celebration of the luck I had made for myself. My primary goal in life after having my daughter in 1990 was to make sure she knew she was unconditionally loved and that she should never doubt she could do great things in life. I tried to keep the Eve/Lilith dichotomy away from aware from her awareness until she was near maturity. I think I succeeded. And in reflecting on life a short time after my daughter’s marriage to a wonderful man, I realized that I had given her the best of my worldview, for the most part.
I could have focused less on the negatives in life, but when it really counted, I was positive and that positivity created luck. We create our own mindsets, and positive mindsets are able to notice when Dame Fortuna presents herself. I am glad I took the time to appreciate this.
We have to give ourselves leisure, so we can relax enough to allow understanding of ourselves and our lives surface. Then we have to realize that luck is at least partially, if not mostly, made from our worldview and whether we see ourselves as lucky or not. At least I have to.
My found post follows.
January 2017
Last week I did not accomplish much, or if I did, there is no record of it, as I did not keep a task list. No check marks, circles, squares or triangles noted next to items on a list.
I was basking in the glow of a change of status for my daughter, myself, and our whole family. One of our guests reminded us that the marriage of the last child prompts special wedding celebration recognizing the parents in traditional Jewish culture.
My daughter married the day after Christmas. And while my step-daughter’s wedding in a loft near Gramercy Park was amazing, this one, at the Tanque Verde Ranch, was near perfect. I am writing about many aspects of the wedding process from my perspective as a mother-of-the-bride, as an anthropologist, and as a frugal person.
I needed last week. My mind and heart were full. I wanted to just personally and privately enjoy the feelings of love, success, and growth after visitors returned to their homes and families all across the country from Brooklyn to San Francisco.
I have learned over the course of the the last 15 years to enjoy moments and cherish good experiences. I have given myself permission to appreciate the good things in life by drinking in calm, glowing joy as well as the occasional exuberance of vivid experience.
I endorse giving oneself time and space, if possible, to process intense periods of activity or change. Even if it is only 15 minutes before bedtime for a week, allow yourself to review, to write, to imagine about what is transpiring. In many ways, this slows time and allows you to live in a moment of appreciation.
It is heartening to know that this time of life I am entering is to be one of gratitude and appreciation rather than bitterness and regret. We can and do have control over how we live, think, and act. So much has changed for me in the last few years. It has taken tremendous dedicated effort to address physical, mental, and emotional roadblocks, but it is worth it as new structures allow new life paths.
We have ability to act and perceive that is partially informed by accumulated experience. Let us appreciate where we are in life and work together in respect. This is the best way to build the world we want.
Iconic K: Kindred Kali
“The phrase “kindred spirit” evokes for women who grew up reading the stories of the adventures and misadventures of Anne Shirley Anne Shirley a young woman, an orphan, who desperately wants to have a shared relationship that is a true and lasting connection between people as deep as a connection of kin but as individually affirming as friendship.” At least that is what I said in the K entry in 2016’s A to Z.
This year K is being revisited as K terms which link to iconic Female elements in culture and for individual women. I am not terribly well informed about Hinduism having only formally studied the Bhagavad Gita in a ancient literature class in college. But in this post, written the same day the K entry is to be posted — argh, I am examining the Kindred Kali, which may (or may not, I don’t want to tout my abilities beyond what is reasonable) clear up some of the problems I have noticed in Western world friends’ interpretations of Kali who often view the deity Kali through a feminist lens.
I do not want to go over territory previously covered. However, I want to draw in the one aspect of the word kindred that is conceptually important for contemporary women; that of the kindred that is reflected in the title of the novel by Octavia Butler: Kindred. This work had some challenges that stemmed from being first published in the 1970 from feminist interpretations at a time when feminism was primarily a white woman’s tool. Womanist interpretations of identity are more inclusive of individually contradictory, but accepted, aspects of a culture reflected in individuals as a whole than feminism.
I hope to show the breadth of the concept of kindred by featuring two very distinct icons which reflect aspects of the concept.
Kindred spirits live in the domain of women. Kali is the fierce manifestation of the mother goddess.
Butler looks at how a contemporary woman who sees beyond the limitations placed on her by a set of historical facts, ultimately comes to accept that she cannot know those shaping forces without having experienced them directly. We all live in worlds we did not make, but we do have the power to shape our world by learning and experiencing all we can so we can work with constraints we inherited.
Kali created the domain that is women’s, and men’s. She is the warrior who is counterpart to Shiva. She is unbridled energy that creates and destroys and part of the cycle of time. Shiva often is shown throwing himself under her feat to stop her raging. Kali is untamed, beyond the constraints of humanity. She protects her young, but she is life and death as these states are inseparable. She does not tolerate evil deeds or demons.
In kin, and kindred, we often ignore the terrible as we want to gloss over the aspects of people and life that make us uncomfortable. Ancient Hindu tales of origin and deity understand the contradictions inherent in a world that was here before we were and that continues on after we are no more.
The kindred of whom of whom Butler writes are many: ancestors, people who share a race, people who share a lineage, women of your time, and women who came before. Sex, race, and status, as well as slavery are the themes of Butler’s Kindred. Butler is usually called a science fiction writer and she was one of stand out greats of speculative fiction. She died young, while in her 50s, but left a good body of work. Kindred is a time travel novel in which a young black woman from 1976 is repeatedly pulled back through time where she make life and death decisions about an ancestor of hers, a slave owner. This is a gross oversimplification, but that is the action that feeds the plot.
This is a great vehicle to examine race, gender, and sex in our contemporary world. A 20th Century black woman who is well educated, independent and partnered to a man of another race has to face the reality of the horrors of slavery and the complexity of family where people own and are owned by relatives, abused and treated as property by fathers who raped and owned their mothers.
Can generations of time mute the cries of indifference and cruelty that were part of all that brought all of us to the present? Time is Kali’s domain, as is night.
Kindred spans time as well as space. Kindred spans race. Kindred crosses gender and the sexes. But as Butler shows by having a woman first deal with this bit of the past that is herself, women shape the story, the history of of what comes down through families. Determining kindred is ultimately determining family and thus self.
It seems that all of the great mothers of ancient humans are complex creatures, iconic crones, frightening. The Hindu deity filling this niche seems to accept the complexity of all that is associated with the wonder and terror of life and death. Learning to see these same traits with us, within our roles, brings together the personal and historic by illuminating the mythic within us that cannot be understood, or contained, but rather respected and accepted.
Iconic J: The Jaguar Goddess
As I write about iconic elements of The Feminine, or what are representations of essential aspects of figures that stand for women in various phases of life or in actions or behaviors that are inherently female, I try achieve some balance although biases are inevitable. All humans have biases. One of the biases that I would love to overcome is my Eurocentric bias. The world is a vast mixture of peoples and cultures. I am somewhat ashamed that I am not more global in my knowledge.
To overcome some of that bias, I want to travel to the world of the Maya who like so many other cultures have symbolically celebrated the wisdom and power of aged women in one of their Jaguar deities.
The incorporation of animal spirits into the gods and goddesses that helped the Maya give meaning and order to their world is essential to any understanding of their world view. Nature, people, and the animals and plants of their environment cannot be looked at individually. A pantheon of ruling and guiding spirits collectively influenced all peoples lives, not just human-formed deities, but mythic and magical beings taken from all aspects of the environment in which they lived.
The Jaguar was the top predator in the Mayan world. It is easy to understand the awe given to the Jaguar by the Mayans if you have ever been in the wild near a large cat.
My own first such experience was in Arivaipa Canyon in Arizona when my daughter was young. We were hiking as a group of around 10 people including a couple of children. This was a permitted hike in the section managed by the BLM. A mountain lion walked with us all of one day, as far as we could tell, pacing us along a cliff-top trail. It was stealthy but once spotted, we kept the kids in the middle of the group so the cat would not get any ideas that it could snag a straggler. I was not afraid, but I was in awe. I was just a part of nature, as was the mountain lion. Jaguars are bigger than mountain lions.
As a side note, a border wall would further endanger these cat species which do include the mountain ranges and wilderness area north of Mexico as the northern part of their ranges. A jaguar was spotted a couple years ago in Madera Canyon near Tucson.
Gods still walk among us.