Cakes for the Queen

Our first class last night was very well attended, and proceeded without any major glitches. Byron Ballard did an excellent job of guiding us here and yon...as we explored ancient goddess worship which existed around 35,000 years ago (or maybe that was 70,000?) No matter to me, I'm not very exact with numbers. The thought that stayed in my mind was that this culture with a goddess deity existed for tens of thousands of years longer than the one we've been in for only a few thousand years.

We forgot to describe the shells as being the progression of goddesses through time, each one representing a 5000 year step...the shells were arranged around the altar. But when we did explain it, we also gave everyone the more linear time line that wasn't quite as "goddessy" (can that be a word?) which also picked up some of the major archaeological finds...like Venus of Willendorf, and Goddess of Laussel, etc.

We also explored our own body image by a guided fantasy and then discussing our feelings about ourselves. Since we had such a big group, not everyone got to share, so we'll probably break into smaller discussion groups next class.

I particularly like this goddess who depicts a powerful woman, probably delineating the 13 months of the year by the marks on her carved moon. As all women know, we have periods every 4 weeks or so for the part of our adult lives when we can bear children, and there are 13 full moons every solar year. Too bad someone came along and made a 12 month calendar...especially since they named these months after Roman rulers no less. Why? Gee, I bet it had to do with civilization becoming patriarchal.

Incidentally these photos are not from the Cakes curriculum, which has a lovely full color slide show for each of the first 5 classes. Good job, Women in Religion of the Unitarian Universalist Association! This revised curriculum is wonderful.

Having 2 felines (what species is in doubt) on either side as she gives birth, must have made this goddess purr-ty happy. Carved in stone, this is just a line drawing of this figure from Catel Huytek in what is now Turkey. I got a kick out of how the archaeologists report this goddess was found in a grain bin. So? Does that supposedly mean something? Perhaps that was a safe place to keep it once the goddess started to be threatened by, you guessed it, a patriarchal religion. Or maybe she was charging the grain for seeds for the next year's crop. The powers of magic were probably more part of everyday life, or perhaps not.

Anyway, I'm glad to be working with Byron to conduct this series for women of the 21st Century.