Moon Deities (original) (raw)
Related papers
Moon worshipping in prehistory: fertility god or goddess?
The cult of the lunar deity spread in a vast geographic area in Europe and Asia during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The cycle of crescent, full moon, waning and new moon was the symbol of life from birth, infancy, adulthood and old age until death. The crescent occurring after the new moon was the symbol of life after death. Life beyond death is at the basis of all modern religions, and it would have been the central belief since the origin of Homo sapiens. Worshipping the moon as the protector of fertility would have started very early in societies with economies based on animal breeding and agriculture. I n different areas, the lunar deity was represented as a male or female entity, even in the presence of the same belief.
The metaphor for the violence done to the Goddess as a representative of Natural Order and the balance of the Natural World appropriately takes the form in the celestial sphere as an abrupt and frightening change in the heavens: an eclipse. The actions of the Goddess of the Eclipses are not the warrior goddess archetype but the intellectually powerful and disturbed nature of a Goddess represented as a raging fury determined to shake the universe, darken the skies, and set the world into a readjustment of its values after experiencing the chaos of the unnatural. Her power is to astound, frighten, and horrify to create the required and necessary change to the universe of humanity that is out of sync with Nature. Therefore, her power dwells in the unmasking of uncertainty and the shocking of humanity to evoke revenge and correct misconduct through a demonstration of cosmic change. The figure of the archetype must therefore rely on the ratio seminales or seeds of destruction planted in the human imagination to evoke such monumental shifts in cultural behavior. Like the eclipse itself, the Goddess of the Eclipses demands a recalibration of the universe as Divine Feminine Ruler of the Heavens to create a shift in paradigms guaranteed to repeat itself when necessary. The abrupt and frightening change necessary to recalibrate the actions of humanity finds its perfect expression in the lunar and solar eclipse cycle and its perfect metaphor in the human mind as The Goddess of the Eclipses celebrated as the Cailleach Bhéarra, the Goddess of Dowth, the Badb, Nemain and the Mórrigú, The Morrigan, Hecate, Pasiphaë, Circe and Medea.
The Depictions of the Entire Lunar Cycle in Graeco-Roman Temples
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 2016
The scenes that have come down to us from Graeco-Roman temples depicting the entire lunar cycle can be classified into two major groups. The first comprises some unanimously interpreted cases which show a line of gods in procession towards the moon. The second group is made up of the more complex scenes found in the temples of Edfu, Dendera and Esna, for which either unsatisfactory or conflicting, sometimes even diametrically opposed interpretations have been put forward. All these problematic representations are reviewed here in order to present a unified analysis that, on the one hand, aims to unravel the subtleties of the iconographic details of the individual scenes and, on the other, to establish clear interconnections between them.
A Goddess Arrives: Nineteenth Century Sources of the New Age Triple Moon Goddess
Culture and Cosmos - http://www.cultureandcosmos.org/ , 2005
The Triple Moon Goddess of contemporary Pagan and New Age thought is generally assumed to be an invention ex nihilo of the 20th century, with no precursor in classical antiquity, created by the poetic imagination of Robert Graves (1895-1985), with possible inspiration from the classicist and anthropologist Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928). However this hypothesis is incorrect. The Triple Goddess was presented in the 20th century before Graves. In addition, this paper is the first to reveal some astrological and esoteric as well as scholarly writings of the 19th century which presented and discussed a triple moon goddess from the ancient world whose identity would have been familiar to most educated men (and a few women) of the time.
We analyze some of the periodic parameters that characterize the Moon: latitude, inclination of the orbit, tropic velocity, synodic velocity, lunation, distance from Earth, as well as the periodicities of other phenomena that have some relationship with calendars: lunar day, the interval between consecutive moonsets, synodic and ecliptic movement, effect of the variation of the Earth's eccentricity, half lunations, difference between mean and true lunations and lunations depending on the phase.
Visualizing the Moon in the Ancient Near East
The Moon: A Voyage Through Time, 2019
The moon played a major role in the ancient Middle Eastern world as a celestial body, as a material measure of time and temporality, as a site for predicting the future, and as a benevolent god of abundance, prosperity, and in certain places, even healing. In this essay, I discuss both the veneration and the visualization of the moon in Pre-Islamic (ritual) contexts to provide a visual-historical biography of the moon, which was imagined both as a divine presence and as a cosmic actor. For the sake of brevity and coherence, I will focus on the ancient Mesopotamian engagements with the moon during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and pursue the very popular cult of the moon in Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia. In doing so, as an art historian, my biased focus is on the various apparitions of the moon on monuments, works of art, and the artifacts of visual culture, which will help me narrate its story. Contrary to the modern scientific vision of the moon as a “lifeless, rocky satellite,”3 the protagonist of this new materialist tale is no less than a major cosmic actor, a vibrant and powerful god who shaped and safeguarded the everyday life and fate of humanity. New materialism urges us to return to the matter, liberating it as much as possible from the ontological straitjacket of anthropocentric idealism, symbolism, and classification.
THE EARTH'S MOON, 2023
We happen to live in a planet that has a very large Moon, about 1/4 of the size of the Earth, making it the 5th largest moon, orbiting the 5th largest planet, that makes it more like a binary system than the normally observed relationship between Planets and their moons. Having a Moon this size, these two bodies coexist in a continuous dance around the Sun, while He tugs the entire Solar System in His journey around the Galaxy. In their daily lives, present day urbanistic humans understand little of the strong connection between the Earth and the Moon, beyond perhaps, of the regular and predictable ocean tides and that, only for those that live in coastal countries. But it was not so in the distant past, in fact our ancestors gave great reverence to the Moon and feared its powers, while asked for its help and blessings. To them the Moon was either a God or a Goddess. Considering its 28 day cycle, it was a much easier form of counting time, than the long 365 days in a year, why many believe that it was the base for the first human calendar. Here I would add, that due to the moon’s shape transformation, it provides a marker for the entire biome. No matter what culture one looks upon, the Moon was sacred, divine and very much alive and watching. Some believed that during the New Moon, She/He would come down to Earth, thus explaining his/her absence from the Sky.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
in J.C. Fincke (ed.), Divination in the Ancient Near East, Winona Lake, 2014, pp. 91-104, 2014