THE GREAT GODDESS

I am life, I am abundance

I produce everything in Nature; I produce you, my children.

I bestow wealth, I bestow wisdom

I am first in all things, I surround you

I am beneath your feet.

Agriculture was probably discovered and developed by women. It freed humankind from the necessities of endless nomadic wandering, and meant that people could settle in one place, cultivating the soil and breeding livestock. This gave them time to devote to developing more complex societies, crafts and religious practice. Presiding over the whole cycle of planting, growth and harvest is the great Mother Goddess, the earth herself. Seeds are sown in her earth womb; she brings them to life and nurtures them into growth. She blesses women and animals with young. At death, all return to the womb of the earth, so that she might bring them to rebirth. The Great Mother presides over the changing round of the seasons: sowing, growth and harvest, birth, death and rebirth, revolving in a never ending cycle.

During the Neolithic period, most cultures seem to have been involved in a fertility cult, which centred around the Great Goddess, humankind's earliest deity, depicted as an abundant woman. As early as 35,000 BCE, our Palaeolithic ancestors were making “Venuses” such as those found at Willendorf in Austria and Laussel in France. They predate the famous animal cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites by as many as 20,000 years. Her breasts were large enough to nurture many, an image of love and trust. Every man and woman considered themselves a part of nature, a child of the Great Mother along with the earth, heavens, animals and plants that existed alongside them, related in a single whole.

Such societies existed throughout the Mediterranean, but perhaps better than anywhere else we can view the evidence of these Peoples of the Goddess in Malta. The temple complexes of Malta and Gozo are nearly 6,000 years old, the oldest standing structures in the world, predating Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt by many centuries. These two small islands originally boasted around forty temples, and nine remain. The buildings themselves represent the goddess, with the rounded shape of their structures echoing the ample curves of her body, the floor plans representing a female form. The ritual inner chamber delineates her womb, and the passageway entrance, her vagina. They were painted with red ochre which represented her menstrual blood, and carved with flowers, trees, birds and snakes. Spiral shapes are repeated on friezes, lintels and stone blocks. Holes in the structures enabled libations to be poured into the ground- right into the body of Mother Earth. Female figurines and statues have also been found in the temples, again with the same generous proportions.

We can only speculate on how the temples were used, but it seems probably that they were used for ceremonies honouring the bounty of the goddess, for rituals of initiation and the giving of oracles. At least one shrine, the underground Hypogeum, seems to have been used for sacred sleep. Constructed between 4000 and 5000 years ago, with several egg-shaped chambers, it was designed as a goddess womb-tomb. A small statuette of a sleeping lady was discovered during its excavation, and no one knows whether she is a priestess or a pilgrim who sleeps in the temple to receive oracular dreams, which would have been interpreted by the resident priests or priestesses. It is possible that pilgrims journeyed to Malta for just this purpose.

The "temple" people dwelt on Malta between 4500 BCE and 2500 BCE. Archaeological evidence shows that they were a completely peaceful society, which pursued a tranquil lifestyle in harmony with nature. Though they had no metal tools [Malta has no minerals] they built immense temples to honour their goddess. They possessed advanced artistic sensibilities, which allowed them to create beautiful pots, statuettes, paintings, carvings, furniture and fabric, even buttons to fasten their clothes. They were aware of astronomy, aligning the temples to solar and lunar events. They were also much healthier than the peoples who followed them. Their society was matrifocal, and nowhere is there any depiction of a father figure or male god. Everyday life was inextricably bound up with spiritual life, and there was no division between the two.

All this began to change with the invasion of the Indo-Europeans from southern Russia, who arrived in Old Europe around 4000 BCE. They were patriarchal, hierarchical and warlike. Eventually the peaceful goddess culture was replaced by a more aggressive system in which male deities were dominant.

The original god was the Mother, and so it remained for millennia. Male gods are latecomers, and the idea of a single male god very recent indeed- the blink of an eye in archaeological terms, compared to the reign of the Great Goddess. She is abundant, bountiful and nurturing, loving all her children in the manner of a mother- rather than a patriarchal Victorian father- forgiving their faults and helping them to grow. She is the free-flowing source of all healing and inexhaustible blessings.

NB: This short article is not from my more comprehensive Goddess Encyclopaedia