A Holy Tension in the First Christian Centuries
Dr. Abrahamsen shows that vestiges of the prehistoric Nature goddess, worshipped by Neolithic and other peoples for millennia, survived into the Graeco-Roman period, under different guises, and influenced the development of Christianity. She argues that, while a male-dominated religious ethos supplanted goddess religion in the West starting with the Bronze Age, goddess beliefs and practices persisted "underground" and could not be completely suppressed or ignored. Her evidence is drawn from the existence of goddess symbols in the catacombs, other early church art, and basilica art from the early Byzantine era; from extant folklore and folk traditions; from magic and other quasi-religious practices evident in the early Christian tradition; and from certain rituals preserved by the church.
The goal of this work GODDESS AND GOD is to answer some major questions like ... Have you ever wondered about the Virgin Mary? How does she relate to ancient goddesses? This books tells all! Click HERE to read sample chapters from this work!
MPM 10:
Goddess and God:
A Holy Tension in the First Christian Centuries
by Dr. Valerie Abrahamsen
ISBN 0-9719496-3-8, $39.95 Cloth Bound
ISBN 0-9719496-4-6, $31.00 Paperback
Foreword
I live in a culture that has an ancient agricultural base. Some of the olive trees on the island of Lesbos in Greece are over five hundred years old. Many of stones in the terrace walls have been re-used for millennia. Here, as in the Lithuania of Marija Gimbutas’ youth, the divinities of nature are still alive, thinly veiled as Christian saints.
Last summer a few days after the Solstice--on Saint John’s Day--my middle-aged neighbor Katina gathered May wreaths, bunches of dried herbs, and piles of sticks. About an hour after the sun set, she and several other women lit a fire in the center of a cobbled street, while the men watched. Women and children jumped three times over the fire “for health.” Jumping over the fire can also bring about a healthy pregnancy and birth, I was told. “Too late for me!” I laughed. As the embers were dying out, I asked Katina and her husband Spiros the meaning of the ritual we had just performed. I suggested that fires might be associated with Saint John the Baptist because he had predicted that that Holy Spirit would baptize with fire. “You with your education know more about things like that than we do,” they replied. “All we know is that what we are doing must be very ancient.”
On the night of Easter Thursday, the icon of Christ is set on the cross in a solemn ceremony attended by almost everyone in my village. When the service is over, the women go home, eat, and change their clothing. An hour later they are back in the church. The priest is home asleep. Now the church belongs to the women. They sing songs at the foot of the cross, keeping Christ company as he dies. The table on which the icon of Christ will be laid out in death has been brought to the narthex of the church. The women have collected rosemary and wildflowers. Katina takes charge again, telling the assembled women to form bunches of rosemary which will be affixed to the four posters and canopy of the bed on which the body of Christ will be laid to rest, suggesting where the flowers will later be placed. While the mood within the church is solemn, the women who decorate the bier laugh and gossip. This is woman’s work and they know how to do it. The next day when the bier they have decorated with their hands is inside the church, the women will approach it with tears in their eyes and kiss the icon of Christ on the lips—saying goodbye to him as would to any relative. Later the men will raise the bier and carry it throughout the village. When it is brought back into the church, everyone will walk under it “for luck.”
The year that my friend Ellie’s husband died, she stayed at the back of the church, telling me that it is not fitting for one so close to death to approach the mystery. When she plants flowers in front of her house, the neighbors tell her that they will not live. A woman whose hands have touched death should not plant seeds for a year.
The faith of the women I live among is simple. At set times of the year, and whenever they feel the need, they enter a church, purchase a small beeswax candle, light it, and set it in sand. Then they approach the icon, ask the saint for what they want, and kiss the icon. They ask for a good olive harvest and for profit in their tourist shops. They ask that their children and grandchildren do well in school, marry, and have children. Above all, they pray for health. “As long as you have your health,” they tell me, “nothing else really matters.” Over time I have come to realize that this is true. When their prayers are answered, my friends go back the church where they made the prayer to thank the saint. If it was an especially important or difficult prayer that was answered, they may offer the saint a piece of their own jewelry to express their gratitude.
Sometimes the village women ask me the subject of my books. When I tell them that I write about the rebirth of the Goddess, they look puzzled. “The Greek Goddesses are mythology,” they say, repeating what they have learned in school. “We are Orthodox,” they continue. “We have the Panagia.” Sometimes they add, “She is our Goddess,” sensing no contradiction in the words. “Panagia” is the name all of the Greeks most frequently use for the Mother of God. Literally translated, it means “She Who Is All Holy.” My neighbors are intuitively right: Panagia probably once was a name of the Goddess.
Through my friendships with Greek women, I have learned something that I might never have learned in America. The Goddesses did not die. They lived on in the land, in rituals, and in the hearts and minds of people, especially women. Marija Gimbutas taught us to read the language of the Goddess: “Symbols are not abstract in any genuine sense; their ties with nature persist, to be discovered through a study of context and association.” Valerie Abrahamsen builds on Gimbutas’s insights, revealing that early Christian women did not forget the Goddess. If we choose, we can remember with them, returning all of the religions we practice to their roots in the earth, the Mother of All.
--Carol P. Christ, Mithimna, Lesbos, Greece
The goal of this work GODDESS AND GOD is to answer some major questions like ... Have you ever wondered about the Virgin Mary? How does she relate to ancient goddesses? This books tells all! Click HERE to read sample chapters from this work!
MPM 10:
Goddess and God:
A Holy Tension in the First Christian Centuries
by Dr. Valerie Abrahamsen
ISBN 0-9719496-3-8, $39.95 Cloth Bound
ISBN 0-9719496-4-6, $31.00 Paperback
Foreword
I live in a culture that has an ancient agricultural base. Some of the olive trees on the island of Lesbos in Greece are over five hundred years old. Many of stones in the terrace walls have been re-used for millennia. Here, as in the Lithuania of Marija Gimbutas’ youth, the divinities of nature are still alive, thinly veiled as Christian saints.
Last summer a few days after the Solstice--on Saint John’s Day--my middle-aged neighbor Katina gathered May wreaths, bunches of dried herbs, and piles of sticks. About an hour after the sun set, she and several other women lit a fire in the center of a cobbled street, while the men watched. Women and children jumped three times over the fire “for health.” Jumping over the fire can also bring about a healthy pregnancy and birth, I was told. “Too late for me!” I laughed. As the embers were dying out, I asked Katina and her husband Spiros the meaning of the ritual we had just performed. I suggested that fires might be associated with Saint John the Baptist because he had predicted that that Holy Spirit would baptize with fire. “You with your education know more about things like that than we do,” they replied. “All we know is that what we are doing must be very ancient.”
On the night of Easter Thursday, the icon of Christ is set on the cross in a solemn ceremony attended by almost everyone in my village. When the service is over, the women go home, eat, and change their clothing. An hour later they are back in the church. The priest is home asleep. Now the church belongs to the women. They sing songs at the foot of the cross, keeping Christ company as he dies. The table on which the icon of Christ will be laid out in death has been brought to the narthex of the church. The women have collected rosemary and wildflowers. Katina takes charge again, telling the assembled women to form bunches of rosemary which will be affixed to the four posters and canopy of the bed on which the body of Christ will be laid to rest, suggesting where the flowers will later be placed. While the mood within the church is solemn, the women who decorate the bier laugh and gossip. This is woman’s work and they know how to do it. The next day when the bier they have decorated with their hands is inside the church, the women will approach it with tears in their eyes and kiss the icon of Christ on the lips—saying goodbye to him as would to any relative. Later the men will raise the bier and carry it throughout the village. When it is brought back into the church, everyone will walk under it “for luck.”
The year that my friend Ellie’s husband died, she stayed at the back of the church, telling me that it is not fitting for one so close to death to approach the mystery. When she plants flowers in front of her house, the neighbors tell her that they will not live. A woman whose hands have touched death should not plant seeds for a year.
The faith of the women I live among is simple. At set times of the year, and whenever they feel the need, they enter a church, purchase a small beeswax candle, light it, and set it in sand. Then they approach the icon, ask the saint for what they want, and kiss the icon. They ask for a good olive harvest and for profit in their tourist shops. They ask that their children and grandchildren do well in school, marry, and have children. Above all, they pray for health. “As long as you have your health,” they tell me, “nothing else really matters.” Over time I have come to realize that this is true. When their prayers are answered, my friends go back the church where they made the prayer to thank the saint. If it was an especially important or difficult prayer that was answered, they may offer the saint a piece of their own jewelry to express their gratitude.
Sometimes the village women ask me the subject of my books. When I tell them that I write about the rebirth of the Goddess, they look puzzled. “The Greek Goddesses are mythology,” they say, repeating what they have learned in school. “We are Orthodox,” they continue. “We have the Panagia.” Sometimes they add, “She is our Goddess,” sensing no contradiction in the words. “Panagia” is the name all of the Greeks most frequently use for the Mother of God. Literally translated, it means “She Who Is All Holy.” My neighbors are intuitively right: Panagia probably once was a name of the Goddess.
Through my friendships with Greek women, I have learned something that I might never have learned in America. The Goddesses did not die. They lived on in the land, in rituals, and in the hearts and minds of people, especially women. Marija Gimbutas taught us to read the language of the Goddess: “Symbols are not abstract in any genuine sense; their ties with nature persist, to be discovered through a study of context and association.” Valerie Abrahamsen builds on Gimbutas’s insights, revealing that early Christian women did not forget the Goddess. If we choose, we can remember with them, returning all of the religions we practice to their roots in the earth, the Mother of All.
--Carol P. Christ, Mithimna, Lesbos, Greece
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