Paleolithic Goddess Figurines

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

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bodhibliss
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Paleolithic Goddess Figurines

Post by bodhibliss »

For your listening pleasure in the background while surfing the web, visit Sacred Places and Play the top offering, "Earth's Sacred Places - Sacred Venus Figurines Around the World," to hear author Karen Tate's interview with one Stephen Gerringer (aka bodhibliss).

CBS radio ran this on affiliates in Seattle, Detroit, San Diego and elsewhere a week ago, and it's the most recent offering on their online "Psychic Radio." The good news is the commercials have been removed; however, some weird looping happens to the recording in the last five minute segment that turns the conversation into gibberish

... which is too bad, as that's when I reveal the secrets of Life, the Universe, & Everything - now you'll never know!

(Actually, the final question was whether these hundreds of goddess figurines reveal the existence of a pre-historic matriarchal utopia. The short answer is no [when have I ever given the short answer? definitely a bit more complex than that]; intriguing coincidence that the part most likely to challenge the beliefs of a significant share of the audience who listen to Psychic Radio is obscured - that didn't happen on the original broadcast).

I look much better on radio than in person ...

blessed be,
bodhibliss

jd101
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Post by jd101 »

thanks for letting us know about that and also the link....congrats on the interview...that is wonderful....how did you happen upon that?
john

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

Thanks for the kind words!

I gave a presentation on the subject at the Gaia Festival in Pacific Palisades almost a year ago. Karen Tate, who wrote Sacred Places of the Goddess, was also a presenter, as was Margaret Starbird (author of The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen & the Holy Grail).

Next year's event, to be announced, should be somewhere around Ojai, California - I'll be discussing the relevance of Thesues, Ariadne & Dionysus to the theme of betrayal in relationships.

noman
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Post by noman »

Gee Bodhi, I never would have thought your speaking voice was as good as your writing style – but it is. I listen to a lot of professors on NPR and recorded lectures and – you know how it is – some academics take a while to get used to because we’re used to listening to professional orators in a multi-media format. But I thought you were as smooth and clear as can be. I don’t think the audio screw-up was intentional – because it continues to screw-up for the next guest, Miriam Dexter. It sounds like a scratch on an audio disc.

Just one thing that caught my ear. I didn’t remember the interpretation of the 13 marks on the Venus of Laussel representing the 13 months in a year. I read it in Atlas I,1 but just didn’t remember it. But I did remember the 13 marks possibly representing the days from new moon to full moon. For me that really connects the womb to the moon in this interpretation.

As you know, the Mayans used a base 20 in their math and calendar system. With 13 as a sacred number for the Mayans 13 x 20 makes their short year of 260 days. They had a 365 day year and a 260 day “year”, two cycles that would reach their original configuration every 52 years in a grand cycle. But the 260 days, utilizing the number 13 seems significant – to me anyway – because 260 days is about the length of time of human gestation. ‘Uinic’ means human in the native Mayan language. It also means the number 20 – probably because we have 20 digits. So it takes 13 days for the sky to make the moon, and 13 ‘uinics’ or twenties, for the woman to make a human.

Anyway, great intro to Campbell at the beginning of the show. I especially liked this:
[Campbell’s] work took off [after POM was aired] in part not because he said ‘okay this is what you should believe follow me’, but he just turned people on to some of the magic that myth has to offer to us and its relevance to human life.

- Bodhi


http://psychiconair.com/pages/4590685.php
- NoMan

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

Hey BB,

Your voice is very different from what I've heard in my head this last year. :D :wink:

Very nice interview. I enjoyed it. :D
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

Neo - I couldn't agree more - to be honest, my voice sounds very different from the one I've heard in my head the past half-century or so.

Noman
noman wrote:Gee Bodhi, I never would have thought your speaking voice was as good as your writing style – but it is ... I thought you were as smooth and clear as can be.
High praise! The irony is that, during the interview, I thought I was being about as clear and lucid throughout as those very Joycean last five minutes. That's always my sense during interviews and presentations - I'm sure I'm garbling my points. I've had to learn to let go and trust my wiser self, and am generally pleasantly surprised after the fact when I listen to what everyone else has heard.

Nevertheless, some points did slip through the cracks. I mentioned, for example, these figurines had no feet, then mention several were found standing in situ in household shrines - but failed to explain they were standing in clay (hence no need for feet).
Just one thing that caught my ear. I didn’t remember the interpretation of the 13 marks on the Venus of Laussel representing the 13 months in a year. I read it in Atlas I,1 but just didn’t remember it. But I did remember the 13 marks possibly representing the days from new moon to full moon. For me that really connects the womb to the moon in this interpretation.


Good memory - Campbell doesn't make this claim directly in The Way of the Animal Powers, but quotes from Alexander Marshack in The Roots of Civilization:
The count of thirteen is the number of crescent "horns" that may make up an observational lunar year; it is also the number of days from the birth of the first crescent to just before the days of the mature full moon.
Like you, it's the latter observation that originally stuck in my head, perhaps because iit's not something that was immediately obvious to me. However, given the time limitations of the on-air format, the luxury of elaboration is lacking (at least, to the degree possible in print), so when the moment came I chose to make the connection between moon and womb for the listener with the simpler of the two observations, on my way to the larger point. (Had I brought up the 13 days between new and full moon, I would have been compelled to expand on that thought for another minute).

Interviews are a challenge, as I know what I want to convey and how to build to those conclusions, but I'm dancing to another's tune - so fitting everything in can be tricky. You may have noticed several times when poor Karen sounded like she was poised to ask a question, but I plunged on ahead without surrendering the floor (actually, Karen is a very able interviewer, confident in her subject and her guest).

Bob Walter tells me I'm a born monologuist, which I blame on psychedelics. I've always liked to talk, but "I" was always the one doing the talking. It wasn't until after my engagement with and experience of the mythological realm on acid, mushrooms, datura, mescaline, etc., that the words flowed on their own (hence the allusion above to feeling I don't have control of what I'm saying, but trust the threads will all come together to weave a full tapestry).

Timed interviews can be a little forced - but at my best, there's a resonance with Jerry Garcia or Terence McKenna, who could hold forth on any subject for hours in entertaining, compelling fashion, conveying complex subjects, even embracing paradoxes, yet making sense.

McKenna, an expert on sacred plants and their active ingredients (particularly mushrooms, ayahuasca, and DMT - or dimethyltryptamine), notes that figures encountered in entheogen-induced visions sometimes represent themselves as embodied language, and relates that many who have indulged in psychedelics with the discipline of a sacred practice (as opposed to just "partying"), often emerge with a more playful, articulate, elaborate and lyrical verbal style, along with an expanded vocabulary

... which is quite different from the inarticulate stereotype ("Like Wow, Dude!"). Of course, that's no doubt based on the observations of people who have tried to engage someone who is in the trance state - no one is going to deliver articulate, logically constructed rational theses when tripping, any more than during orgasm ...

but after either, there is sometimes a tendency to wax rhapsodic.

I see my interview is no longer available, which I imagine might be because someone alerted the website to the indecipherable final minutes of the show - so thanks for listening while you could.

Namaste,
bodhibliss

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