The Venus figures

 Venus figure created about 25,000 years ago from the Kostenki - Borshevo region on the Don River, north of the Black Sea.

Kostenki / Kostienki is a very important Paleolithic site on the Don River in Russia. It was a settlement which contained venus figures, dwellings made of mammoth bones, and many flint tools and bone implements. Actually it is not a single site but really an area on the right bank of the Don River in the region of the villages of Kostenki and Borshevo, consisting of more than twenty site locations, all dating to the Paleolithic.

Photo by Heritage images

From Max Dashu who has written and researched in depth about the goddess figures:

When I got to visit the Grandmother of Willendorf, on my one and only visit to Vienna. They have her in a kind of shrine, lit up in the dark, suspended in a clear kiosk. Her name is on the entrance of the chamber.

However, I contest the "Venus" naming; see my article "They Are Not Venus Figurines" https://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/notvenusfigurines.html By Max Dashu on FB

Goddess figures, most date from the Gravettian period, which succeeded the Aurignacian period, and begins approximately around 33,000 to 21,000 BP.

I like that Marija Gimbutus in her work as an anthropologist, found that early civilizations where goddess figures were found, said there were no defensive structures in these towns. She posited that the cultures didn't need them, as there were no warlike exchanges happening yet. She also thought that these civilizations were led by women, a matriarchal society.

See my earlier post about these cultures, as well as more images of goddess figures here where I talk about eco-feminism.

And this earlier post about "Why I'm an Environmentalist" demonstrates how our connection to the earth is more than just something to take for granted.

Today's quote:

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

 -Martin Amis, novelist (1949-2023)

Thanks Paris Accord!

Climate Change.
Really.
  No, I mean sincerely really!  Finally a step that includes so many.  Here's the draft document that was finally achieved in Paris as of yesterday.

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf

That's it.  What is to be signed next April in the UN.

Enforceable?  Well, not really.  Who are the UN police going to lock up if nations don't follow through?

But it's a step in the right direction.

Look through it to see how you like it.

When we stop driving fossil-fuel-powered cars, trucks, trains and planes, what will your life be like?  Get out those bikes!

OK, it doesn't say anything about that.  But it's one of the things that comes to my mind.  I probably will be way too old to ride a bicycle if it ever happens...but then they do say you don't forget that.

Thanks to the efforts of sincere people who believe that we can avoid some of the dire consequences.

Today's Quote:

Mountains and oceans have whole worlds of innumerable wondrous features. We should understand that it is not only our distant surroundings that are like this, but even what is right here, even a single drop of water.

Dogen Zenji

Meandering thoughts

Good morning, or is it evening when you glance at my blog?
Just wondering.

The other evening some of us gathered to watch a relatively old video in the series "Goddess Remembered" (1989) created by Donna Read of Canadian Broadcasting.

This documentary is a salute to 35,000 years of the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. The film features Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Starhawk, Luisah Teish and Jean Bolen; all of whom link the loss of goddess-centric societies with today's environmental crisis. This is the first part of a 3-part series that includes The Burning Times and Full Circle.

I'll be happy to hostess a viewing of the 2 remaining films after summer solstice.
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Now there's a movement called Eco-feminism.  As well as lots of other environmental groups with very positive momentum.  It's needed more than ever.

So what's with studying goddess cultures that existed so long ago, before the ones of today where we find the goddess in second place in a hierarchy of deities?  Name one religion today where goddesses are venerated either as primary or even equal to male deities.

They were egalitarian societies where women and men were equals.  Societies that lasted thousands of years without warfare.

How can archaeologists tell this?  They examined the ruins of cities without any defensive fortifications.  There are no weapons besides those used to hunt and prepare foods.  See Marija Gimbutus work for more information on this.

Just think.  Life without warfare at all.

Nobody who greets a stranger had to worry about evil intentions.  A time when Rumi's poems would truly mean you welcome all guests to your home, even without knowing who they are.

Imagine when the deities of these civilizations were female, as evident through thousands of figurines, carefully made and even placed in areas of the homes and cities suggesting rituals of some kind. There are very very few male oriented sculptures which were found.  This led the early male archaeologists who found all these female forms to think only of "fertility goddesses" and that ancient men perhaps had made them with the same intentions modern men have in looking at feminine beauty.

I'm thrilled about the concept that a culture where men and women had equality would mean that women would be equal to men...and men would be equal to women.  Nobody would be Top Dog.  Nobody would be Bottom Dog.

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It is so hard to express the concept of true equality across to a culture (today) where there is such hierarchical competition to be the winner, to prove something is better than something else, to elect only the one candidate, and then the 49% who lost don't have any representation.  We are submersed in a culture of inequality, and don't see it, just like the fish who has no concept of water until she's out of it.

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Power "over" the earth is now the most important place where we need a new way of co-existing.  If we want to continue living on it, we need to recognize our symbiotic relationship with all life, the chemicals we create and discard, and how we can improve the earth rather than destroy it.

Today's Quote:

O Great Spirit, I awake to another sun, grateful for gifts bestowed, granted one by one.

Twylah Nitsch
Seneca Medicine Woman