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In Utero - Erklärung d. Symbole

The White Sow

was one of the most popular and widely distibuted animal forms of the goddess. Astarte, Cerridwen, and DEMETER appeared as sows. One of Frey's numerous names was Syr, "the Sow."A carving at the Tarxien temple on Malta shows a sow with thirteen teats, a lunar animal symbolizing the thirteen annual lunations. Thirteen became a bad luck number only because of its ancient association with lunar goddess worship.

Buddhists still speak of Marici, the Diamond Sow, a great goddess seated on her lotus throne attended by seven pigs. She is called glorious one, sun of happiness. The brilliant whiteness of the divine sow was perceived in the white and shiny surface of the eminently female-symbolic cowrie shell, which the Romans named porcella, "Little Sow." From this word for whiteness and shininess came our word "Porcelain"

The brilliance of the White Sow and her seven porcine attendants is prominete in the Celtic myth of the Princess Goleuddydd, "Bright Day," mother of Culhwch, whose name meant something like "womb, or hiding place, of the pig." Though the myth was partly Christianized, it retained the essential episode of Goleuddydd goving birth in a sow's lair. "Obviously she is the Sow-mother, the sow-goddess, and Culhwch stole a comb from the head of the magic boar, Twrch Trwyth, who may have been a sow originally; because he lay in his lair with his seven piglets - something only a female would do.

The Welsh saints Dyfrig, Kentigern, Cadog, and Brynach all were said to have founded monasteries at places where they were led by a magic White Sow. This is fairly good evidence that all of them were only pseudosaints, or loosely Christianized versions of earlier pagan heroes, the men of the Sow.

Jar

A jar spouting streams of water was a fertility symbol in Egypt and the Middle East from the beginning of civilization. The Goddess Isis wore on her neck a jar-shaped amulet representing her own fountains of living water, "the emblem of Ma," or Mother as the primordial Deep. According to Apuleius, water in a jar also represented Osiris. It was Nile water, lifted up in the ritual of the god's ressurection, exactly as the chalice is elevated at Christian altars today.

In India, any deity could be incarnated in a jar of water, which was called the holy seat (pitha) of the deity for the duration of the worship. In Greece the cognate word was pithos, a jar. Merging of the Goddess with her consort was often described as a mingling of waters from two jars. When Demeter Cabiria took the young god Cabirius as her consort in the Cabirian mysteries of Phrygia, both deitied were represented by water jars.

The Gospel story of a mysterious man bearing a jar of water to lead Jesus into Jerusalem (Luke 22:10) was based on the Babylonian precedent, wherein the saviour god Nebo, or Nabu, was led to the place of his immolation and ressurrection by a "jar-bearer." As in the worship of Osiris, Cabirius, and other fertility gods, the jar temporarily symbolized the deity himself.

Jar ceremonies were prominent in the three-day Anthesteria, a spring rebirth festival of Dionysus. The first day was Jar Opening (Pithoegia), when the new wine from the previous vintage was tasted. The second day was Pitcher Feast (Choes), when the wife of chief archon was formally impregnated by the god. The third day was the Feast of Pots (Chytroi), when the spirits of the dead were propitiated and supposedly, like the vine god himself, ressurrected from the underworld. Association of the jar with the springtime Savior was already old, long before Christianity assimilated it.

Honeycomb

Pythagoreans percieved the hexagon as an expression of the spirit of Aphrodite, whose sacred number was six (the dual Triple Goddess), and worshipped bees as her sacred creatures who understood how to create perfect hexagons in their honeycomb. In Aphrodite's temple at Eryx, the priestesses were melissae, "bees"; the Goddess herself was entitled Melissa, the queen bee "who annually killed her male consort"; and a golden honeycomb was on display as her symbol. Seeking to understand the secrets of nature through geometry, the Pythagoreans meditated on the endless triangular lattice, all sixty degree angles, that results from extending the sides of all hexagons in the honeycomb diagram until their lines meet in the center of adjacent hexagons. It seemed to them a revelation of the underlying symmetry of the cosmos.

Moreover, since honey and salt were the only commonly known preservatives at the time, both were symbols of ressurrection or reincarnation. The dead were often embalmed in honey, especially in the large pithoi or burial vases, where they were placed in fetal position for rebirth. Demeter was "the pure mother bee" who governed the cycles of life, as was the biblical Deborah whose name means "bee." Honey cakes formed like female genitals figured prominently in worship of the Goddess. The bee was usually looked upon as a symbol of the feminine potency of nature, because it created this magical, good tasting substance and stored it in hexagonal cells of geometric mystery. With so many ancient connections with the Goddess, it was inevitable that medieval hyms addressed the virgin Mary as a "nest of honey" and "dripping honeycomb."

Dolphin

The name of the dolphin comes from Greek delphinos, which also meant "womb." It was a totem of Demeter in her role as Mistress of the Sea, while the serpent represented her as Mistress of the Earth. The famous statue called The Boy on the Dolphin was once a religious image, depicting the young sun god born out of the sea, raised up on the back of a dolphin. At the time, most people believed that a whale or dolphin was a large fish; the fact of sea-dwelling mammals was not known.

According to the classical myth, the dolphin was placed among the stars as constellation Delphinus, because it played a matchmaking role in winning the hand of the sea Goddess Amphitrite for Poseidon. However, this was a late invention, intended to elevate Poseidon at the expense of Amphitrite, who was just another title of the Great Goddess ruling the sea. "The marriage involved the interference by male priests with female control of the fishing industry." Amphitrite was demoted from goddesshood to being a mere nereid. In Greek art, nereids were often shown riding over the waters on dolphins.

Shown on funeral urns, dolphins represented the soul passing to another world.

Triangel

As the four way designs of squares and crosses usually represent the male principle, so the three way design of the triangle and its many relatives usually represent the female principle. One reason the ancients so greatly revered the number seven was that the four and the three were united within it. The Goddess was the original trinity, for most of her oldest manifestations had three aspects; the classical virgin, mother, and crone. All three were the same individual just as each woman is one even though her life encompasses all three states or personae. This triangular Goddess exsisted even for early Christian Gnostics who worshipped her as the female Protennoia, who had three names, "Although she exsists alone, since she is perfect."

In India the Goddess was the original Trimurti, or Trinity, although the three gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva later laid claim to this title. Nevertheless, the goddess as Parashakti - the Mother of these gods - was represented by a triangle holding the gods as three small seed pods within herself.

Australian aborigines worshipped the Goddess as Kunapipi, meaning "Old Woman" or "Mother," in a triangular dancing area that they viewed as the Mother's genital center. The connection between this concept and that of the triangular yoni yantra in ancient India is quite clear, especially since anthropologists believe the aboriginies were Dravidian migrants from India some time in the distant past.

The Greek letter 'D' (delta) is a triangle. As in India, it was similarly described as "the letter of the vulva," and also as the Holy Door (of birth). It was the first syllable of Demeters name, the rest being meter, "mother." One of the oldest of Greek Goddesses, in fact pre-Greek, Demeter was also a trinity represented by the female triangle. Although she was the earth, she was three. Her young consort in classical myth, Triptolemus or "Three Plowings" was so named because he had to "seed her fields" three times in order to fertilize the whole Triple Goddess.

It seems likely that the triangle became a common symbol for "woman" because it was originally a symbol for "goddess" and many of the objects associated with her. Cakes for religious festivals were often baked in triangular form. the Jewish tradition of triangular hamantaschen for Purim apparently adopted the Egyptian custom of making triangular cakes for public rituals. Even in the twentieth century, Scottish countryfolk baked triangular cakes for Halloween (the old Celtic feast of Samhain), calling the woman who baked the cakes "the Bride." After a reign of one year, she would be displaced by the Caillech, or "Auld Wife" - that is, the incarnation of the Crone.

In Christian Gnostic literature there was a holy trinity of Marys, copied from the Moerae or Fates, who stood by the tree of god's sacrifice as the three Marys stood by Jesus' cross. Gnostic scriptures agree that two of them were "Mary his mother...and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion." But the third Mary remained mysterious; she was called the sister of his mother (his aunt) in another sentence. No one really knew who those Marys were, but it was traditional for them to be present.

Certain folkloric sources even remembered that the triangle was a sign of the Goddess as Wise Crone (Athene), and gave it the title of Creative Intellect.

Mare

Iron Age Britain worshiped the Goddess Epona as the White Mare, who is now called the White Horse as she appears in the famous 374 ft chalk-cut image in an Uffington hillside. She was similar to the Greek/Cretan Leukippe, "White Mare," who was the daytime aspect of Mareheaded Demeter. Her destroyer aspect was called Melanippe, "Black Mare," otherwise known as Demeter the Avenger (Erinys) in the form of a night-mare, punisher of sinners. The same title was applied to the Queen of the Amazons, who also appears in Greek myth as Antiope, or Hippolyta, "Charging Mare." Epona's name came from Gallic epo, in turn from Indo-European ekwo, which also gave the Latin equus.

Scandinavian witches were said to turn themselves into mares, after the manner of the ancient priestesses who may have worn equine masks like Leukippe's mareheaded priestesses. Such witches were called volvas. The cult of the divine mare persisted in Ireland up to the twelfth century, when Giraldus Cambrensis described the coronation of a king of Ulster, involving the kings gexual union with a white mare, which was afterward sacrificed and sacramentally eaten. Pagan religious feasts often used horsemeat, which was otherwise taboo or devoted to the Goddess. Modern prejudice against the eating of horsemeat seems to have developed from Christian condemnation of the old rites.

Rose

The red and white rose was adopted by alchemists as a symbol of the vas spirituale, the sacred womb from which the filius philosophorum would be born. This was an ancient female symbol of the virgin daughter (white) within the mother (red), formerly applied to such images as Kore/Demeter and Mary/Eve. The conglomerate rose was similar to the apple (the mother and the fruit), containing its five lobed core (the daughter and the flower). Symbolism was drawn entirely from female creative powers. White and red were the sacred colors of the Virgin and Mother, respectively. In male-centered systems, however, the black of the destroying Crone was pointedly omitted.

Baubo

In the Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated at one of the oldest emples in Greece, Baubo was a female clown who managed to draw laughter from the Goddess Demeter in the midst of her grief, when she was hiding away and withholding the gift of fertility from the world. Along with limping Iambe, the female spirit of lewd verse in the "limping" iambic meter, Baubo induced the Great Mother to forget her anger long enough to take a little nourishment.

Hellenic writers described Baubo as an old nurse, that is, a Crone figure corresponding in the usual trinitarian fashion to the Virgin Iambe and the Mother Demeter. However, statues of Baubo consisted of the lower half of a womans body with a face on a large (perhaps pregnant) belly, the rest concealed by a fantastic wig/costume.

Apparently Baubo symbolized the lascivious jokes made by women during Demeter's fertility rites. Such jokes used to be considered essential to the efficacy of the ceremonies. The resemblance between a face and the front of a female torso seems to have been a pereninial favorite thousands of years before Magritte painted his well known Le Viol, which expresses the same theme.

It is interesting to find a Baubo figure also in ancient Japanese mythology. She was the Alarming Female, Ame-no-uzume-no-mikoto, who created a face on the front of her body to draw laughter from Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Goddess Amaterasu, when she was hiding her light in the cave. The Alarming Female induced Amaterasu to emerge, bringing sunlight to the world again.

In both mythological traditions, the "alarming" idea seems to be that the world's welfare depends on the relief of female sadness or fear and the restoration of female sexuality, merriment, and joy.

Diameter

The diameter is a symbol drawn from the flat horizon of sea or desert plain, dividing the world into two halves above and below. The word Diameter means literally "Goddess Mother" and may refer to ancient creation myths in which the body of the world mother herself (Tiamat, Themis, Temu, Maa) was divided into upper and lower halves. Often, water was said to be her primordial substance, so the symbol of the Dia Meter also suggests the division of waters above the earth plane and from waters below the earth.

In Alchemical symbolism the diameter meant "salt," which is appropriate in view of its connection with the sea.

Furies

The three Furies represented one of Greece's oldest images of matriarchail law: the triple goddess as punisher of transgressors. The Furies were also known as Erinnyes (Angry Ones) after Demeter Erinys, the Avenger; or Eumenides (Kindly Ones) in an effort to flatter and pacify them; or Solemn Ones, to whom altars were dedicated for propitiatory sacrifices. Individualy, they were Tisiphone (Retaliation-Destruction), Megaera (Grudge), and Alecto (Unnameable). They were older than all the gods. As relics of the matriarchal age, they recognized no principle of paternity but punished only those who sinned against kinfolk in the maternal line.

The Furies pursued Orestes for having commited matricide, the one unforgivable crime under the old law. It was believed that the blood of a slain mother called down the Furies' wrath upon the criminal, automatically. Orestes bit off one of his fingers in an attempt to absolve himself of blood guilt - a custom that is still common in some parts of the world - and left it at the so called Finger Tomb, surmounted by a finger of stone.

Sophocles called the Furies "Daughters of Earth and Shadow." Aeschylus called them "Children of Eternal Night." Either epithet made them offspring of the female spirit of primal darkness at the creation and linked them to the primordial concept of the Mother's Curse whereby the Goddess inevitably ended each life that she brought forth. Some said the Furies were monsters with gorgon-like snake hair, black dog faces, and bat wings. Others said they were stern but beautiful women carrying scourges and swords. Psychologically, they were images of the Scolding Mother and projections of the young child's death fears and pangs of conscience.

Pluto

The planet Pluto was unknown to the ancients, because it cannot be seen with the naked eye. Therefore it was rather arbitrarily named Pluto in 1930 by its discoverer, C.W. Tombaugh, after the classical Greek version the dark god of Hades. A tailed P symbol was invented for it. Astrologers now had to fit Pluto into their system, even though no astrologer knew of its exsistence until a mere half century ago.

The dark god Pluto was himself a Hellenic revision of a former Great Mother's title, meaning "riches" or "abundance." There was a female Pluto among the pre-Hellenic elder deities whom the Greeks despised and discredited in their myths. This Pluto seems to have been combined with Demeter in a triple form, as Kore (Virgin), Pluto (Mother), and Persephone (Crone, Destroyer).

Poppy

Since opium and its derivatives - morphine, and heroin - are extracted from the opium poppy, it is hardly surprising to find the flower associated with sleep, inertia, numbness, and death. Demeter as a death goddess was often shown with poppies. The Etruscans' Island of the Souls of the Dead was pictured with decorations of poppy capsules. On the other hand, the poppy was also associated with fertility because of its numerous seeds. Poppy seeds contain no opium and are a good food source. Poppy leaves, sacred to Mother Hera, were used for divination.

The scarlet ornamental poppy, Papaver Bracteatum, contains no opium either, but it does have the alkaloid thebaine, which can be converted into codeine, but not readily into heroin. Thebaine yields an important narcotic antagonist, naloxone, which is given to infants born of heroin addicts, to help soften the shock of withdrawl that such infants must go through.

Moon

Perhaps no other natural object has been more widely revered, from such extremely ancient periods, than the moon. As a rule the new or crescent moon was its recognized symbol, becuase the full moon would have been a simple circle, which carried other connotations, frequently solar.

Because of its apparent connection with women's cycles of "lunar blood," which was supposed to give life to every human being in the womb, the moon became the prime symbol of the Mother Goddess everywhere. The Greek name of Europa, eponymous mother of continental Europe, means "full moon" and was a former title of Hera or Io as the white moon-cow, and of other versions of the Goddess as well, such as Demeter and Astarte. Albion, the old name of Britain, meant "white moon" and referred to the Goddess until the monk Gildas converted her into a fictitious male Saint Alban. A primal deity of Persia was Al-Mah, the moon, whose name became the Hebraic Almah, "nubile woman": the word Christians insisted on translating "virgin" when it was applied to the mother of Jesus. Another derivative was the Latin alma mater, living mother-soul of the world.

Romans revered the primal Moon Mother as either Luna or Mana (Mania), whose worship Christians condemned as 'madness' (lunacy). She was the mother of the archaic ancestral spirits called Manes, annualy propitiated at the Manalia festival. The same Goddess Mana ruled archaic Scandinavia, Arabia, and Central Asia. Mana came from Sanskrit Manas, "mind," an attribute of Ma the primordial mother; it was also related to Latin mens, meaning both "mind" and "moon" as well as a mysterious quality of spiritual power (nu-men).

According to Moses Maimonides, moon worship was the religion of Adam, and the bible contains many traces of pre-Jahvistic reverence for the moon. Old Testament kings wore "ornaments like the moon" and so did their riding animals (Judges 8:21). Prophets denounced Hebrew women for wearing lunar amulets (Isaiah 3:18). Agla, one of the "secret names of God" much used in Hebrew magic, is usually translated "light" but in meant specifically moonlight, Aglaia was an ancient name of the Moon Goddess. A Talmudic tradition said the Yahweh himself had to make a sin offering for offending the moon. The Moon Goddess showed little respect for Yahweh or any of his cohorts, according to the Apocalypse of Baruch: when Adam and Eve wept over their sin, then everything else wept with them, "the heaven and the sun and the stars, and creation was stirred even to the throne of God; the Angels and the powers were moved for the transgression of Adam." All except the moon, who laughed.

Saint Augustine condemned women for their "impudent and filthy" dances in honor of the new moon. And yet, lunar timing was so important to the saviour tradition that Christians insisted that the full moon shone on Jesus' crucifixion - even though there was supposed to have been a solar eclipse also, which can only during the dark of the moon. Lunar traditions continued to be associated with women throughout the Middle Ages. Folklore and ballads show that women were encouraged to pray for special favours not to God but to their own deity, the Moon Mother, by whom they also swore their oaths. Just as Jeremiah's opponents doggedly continued to bake cakes for the Queen of Heaven (the moon) despite the prophet's fulminations against her (Jeremiah 44:19), so the women of Christian Europe continued to bake moon cakes, which the French called croissants or "crescents" for their lunar holidays. Modern birthday cakes descended from the Greek custom of honoring the monthly birthday of Artemis the Moon with lighted full-moon cakes. Witches continued to invoke the Goddess by "drawing down the moon." In some areas, crops could not be sown nor weddings celebrated except at appropriate times of the moon. Everything having to do with the management of domestic animals seemed to depend on the moon. And, of course, no sorcerer or witch undertook magical operations without first checking the proper phase of the moon.

So im portant was the moon goddess in pre-Islamic Arabia that her emblem came to represent the entire country, and still does so, as the lunar crescent on Islamic flags. As Manat, the old Moon mother of Mecca, she once ruled the fates of all her sons, who also called her Al-Lat, the Goddess. Now she has been masculinized into "Allah," who forbids women to enter the shrines that were once founded by priestesses of the Moon. In Central Asia, her heavenly orb was described as the mirror that reflects everything in the world. It is still said that the moon's reflection on water is the prime remedy for nervous hysteria.

Bee

Bees were greatly prized in the ancient world as makers of the honey that was simultaneously a desired food and one of the few important preservatives then known. According to Porphyry, all bees were the souls of nymphs (priestesses) who had been in the service of Aphrodite during their lifetimes, especially at her temple of Eryx where her symbol was a golden honeycomb. Priestesses of the goddess were called Melissae, "bees." At the Ephesian temple of Artemis, the Melissae were accompanied by eunuch priests known as Essenes, meaning "drones." The Goddess Demeter was also addressed as "The pure mother bee." A former matriarchal ruler of Israel was Deborah, whose name means "queen bee." The mother of Lemminkainen used magic honey to restore her son's life in the Kalevala, assisted by Mehilainen the Bee. Even the patriarchal Mithraic cult revered the Moon Goddess as maker of "the honey which was used in purification."

Bees are Hymenoptera, "veil-winged," recalling the hymen or veil that covered the inner shrine of the Goddess's temple, and the officiating nymph (high priestess) who bore the title of Hymen and ruled over marriage rituals and the honey-moon.

In folklore, bees were always identified with mortality. If bees left their hive, it was taken as a sign that the hive's owner would soon die. It was also considered important to "tell the bees" about a death in the family, so they would not fly away. In some sections of England it was customary to turn beehives around to face in the opposite direction when a corpse was being carried out of the house.

Infinity

Our standard mathematical symbol of infinity came into the Western world by way of "arabic" numerals - whose real place of origin was India, not Arabia. In Indian religion this sign stood for infinity or completeness because it is composed of a clockwise circle and a counterclockwise circle. That is, a male, solar, right-hand half united with a female, lunar, left-hand half. Like the figure eight that it resembles, the infinity sign used to mean sexual union and the sense of perfection: two becoming one. Since neither circle lies above the other as in the figure eight, the infinity sign implies equality between male and female powers, leading to intimate knowledge of "the infinate."

Like the ying-and-yang symbol of dualism, the infinity sign was adapted to many concepts of twinning or pairing. Some said it was the mark of the twin gods known as Sons of the Mare (Asvins), born of the Goddess Saranyu who took the form of a mare like her Western counterpart, Demeter. The twin gods were famed as magicians, healers, horsemen, and fertility spirits.

Cowrie

The cowrie shell is probably one of the world's first yonic symbols, its resemblance to female genitalia being almost impossible to miss. Its very name is thought to be derived from Kauri, a pre-Vedic version of the Goddess in India. The shell is still revered in India as magical jewlery for averting the evil eye. But the use of cowrie shells as rebirth symbols - representing the female Gate of Life - dates as far back as 20,000 B.C.

Cowries were used throughout the Middle East, Egypt, the South Pacific, and the Mediterranean countries as charms for healing, fertility, rebirth, magical power, or good luck. Romans called the shell Matriculus, the "little matrix," or "little womb." It was also known as porcella, meaning both "vulva" and "little sow." Our word porcelain derives from this, since it was originally likened to the shiny white surface of the cowrie shell.

Among the Greeks, the word Kteis meant a vulva, a cowrie shell, a scallop shell or a comb. Cowrie shell magic persisted well into the Christian era, despite persistent efforts not to see its obvious symbolism. Gypsy women continued to value cowries above any other kind of amulet as a focus for their own feminine powers. Christianized Sudanese accepted amulets made of strips of leather stamped with a cross, but regarded them as relatively useless unless decorated they were decorated with nine cowries.

Athene

Sulfur used to be sacred to atheve as a goddess of healing and purification, when people believed that burning brimstone (sulfur) would drive away the spirits of disease. The element was named after her under the title of Brimo, virgin mother of the Holy Child Brimus. Alchemists therefore used the sign of Athene for sulfur, which they were always trying to combine with mercury in a 'marriage of Athene and Hermes,' believing this process could make gold. It never did.

Athene was much older than the city of Athens that finally adopted her as its patron. Her origin was not even Greek. She was the Libyan Triple Goddess, variously named Neith, Metis, Medusa, Anath, or Athenna; Egyptians said Athene was a title of Isis and it meant 'I have come from myself.' Athene's display of the Gorgon head on her aegis referred to her own Destroyer aspect. Her Crone self, Medusa-Metis, was twice mythologized as Perseus's petrifying monster and as Athene's mother, who was swallowed by Zeus in order that he might give birth to Athene from his own head. This male birth imitation was often cited to show that Athene recognized no mother and gave all her loyalty to her heavenly father; but its real meaning was that Athene was his Sophia, his wisdom, the guiding female spirit within his head.

The name of Athene's major temple, the Parthenon, means 'Virgin-house.' Athene was 'virgin' in the old sense: independant of male attachments, a spouse to none, a free agent. Yet, according to archaic traditions, she had lovers: Pan and Hephaestus, for example. Her sign represents female self-determination, freedom, and great skill in the civilized arts, of which she was supposed to have been humanity's primary teacher.

Sulfur

Sulfur was sacred to the Goddess Athene; therefore its alchemical symbol was the same as her sign. Sulfur was also called brimstone, after another of her manifestations, the Goddess Brimo (the angry aspect of Athene), who was also identified with Demeter. Because of its association with the Virgin Goddess of the Parthenon ('virgin house'), sulfur was widely regarded as an agent of purification. Sickrooms and demon haunted places were rendered pure by burning sulfur, possibly on the theory that anything with so bad a smell as burning sulfur, would be powerful medicine.

By the samne token, the bad tasting waters of natural sulfur springs were always considered great curatives. to this day, sick people make pilgrimages to sulfur springs to 'take the waters.' Up to a generation or so ago, children were regularly dosed with sulfur and molasses each year as a spring tonic, or 'blood purifier' The sulfur to do the purifying, the molasses to help mask the bad taste.

Labrys

The labrys or double bladed ax stood for the Amazons and their Goddess under several of her classical names: Artemis, Gaea, Rhea, Demeter. Perhaps originally a battle ax, it became a ceremonial scepter in Crete and at the Goddess's oldest greek shrine, Delphi. Her priests adopted the name of Labryadae, "ax-bearers." The labrys became an attribute of Cretan kings in their labyrinth (house of the double ax) and was probably used in ritual slaughter of the sacred bulls.

The labrys also appearedin India, carried by the hand of Shiva. Egypt's god Ptah was also represented by an ax. So was a Mayan deity known as God of the Ax. Tantric Buddhists explained that the gods use axes as weapons against unbelievers. In Brittany, stone axes were built into chimneys, in the belief that they would avert the lightning that the pagan gods used to control. The theory behind this custom seems to have been that the lightning gods would be mollified by seeing that their ancient symbols were still used.

In modern times the labrys has been remembered for its Amazon associations, and has therefore been adaopted by lesbian women as theiramuletic symbol.

Corndolly

The corn dolly was made not of corncobs but of grain stalks - wheat, barley, oats, or rye, collectively called 'corn' in Europe. The corn dolly was a traditional harvest figure made of the last sheaves of grain, or in some areas, the first sheaves of each years crop.She was dressed in appropriate clothing and treated in various ways as an embodiment of the harvest. Some folk left her in the field. Some brought her to the harvest dance and set her up in the center. Some placed her on a funeral pyre heaped with flowers and set fire to it. Some drenched her with water as a fertility charm. Some married her to a corn-man in a mock ceremony. Some hung her up in the farmhouse, until the next year's harvest. Some preserved her until Yule, when she was fed to the cattle 'to make them thrive all the year round.'

The corn dolly had many names. Among them were; Corn Mother, Harvest Mother, Great Mother, GrandMother, Mother of the Grain, Mother Sheaf, Old Woman, Old Wife, the Caillech, the Hag, the Queen, the Bride, the Maiden, the Ceres, and the Demeter.

Ceres

Ceres was a Roman title of the Great Goddess as Mother of the Harvest and ruler of all grains, which are still called 'cereals' after her major early-summer festival, the Cerealia. Up to the nineteenth century in parts of the British isles, it was said that 'farmers go round their corn with burning torches, in memory of the Cerealia.' Probably related to the Greek Kore and the female spirits of fate called Keres, Mother Ceres was not only the fertile earth but also another form of Juno as Queen of Heaven. Her priestesses may have founded the Roman legal system back in the age of 'mother-right.' Their Goddess was entitled Ceres Legifera, 'Ceres the Lawgiver.'

The sign of Ceres was the lunar crescent and inverted, or underworld-entering, cross. (Saint Peter's Cross). The combination probably represented the sickle for cutting grain, as well as the hint of lunar seasonality and the planting of the (male) seed in the earth's womb. The rites of Ceres were originally Greek, probably based on tradition from the great temples of Demeter.

Sistrum

The sistrum was a sacred rattle, used in the worship of the Egyptian Great Goddess (Isis, Nephthys, or Hathor). the sound of its clattering wires was said to dispel evil spirits, the same kind of magic later attributed to church bells in medieval Europe. It was decorated with various designs, sometimes a head of the Goddess, sometimes a small phallus representing her consort.

Egyptian paintings show the sistrum not only in the hand of the Goddess herself, but also in the hands of her priestesses and other high ranking women. Plutarch relates its many mystical meanings. The curved top stood for the orbit of the moon, presided over by a figure of the Goddess in her cat form. The four rattles represented the four elements whereby she created the universe. Their sound indicated mingling of the elements in the process of creation.

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Alben

Bleach

DE: 24 - 17.02.1992 - 14 Wo.

Nevermind

USA: 1- 12.10.1991 - 92 Wo.

UK: 1- 12.10.1991 - ?? Wo.

DE: 3 - 13.01.1992 - 72 Wo.

In Utero

USA: 1- 09.10.1991 - 87 Wo.

UK: 1- 24.09.1993 - ?? Wo.

DE: 3 - 13.01.1992 - 72 Wo.

MTV Unplugged In New York

USA: 1 -19.11.1994 -'???

UK: 1 -12.11.1994 -'???

DE: 6 - 14.11.1994 - 47 Wo.

Zahlen und Fakten (UK)

Stand: 2001, Statistik von Soundscan & MTV - 1989 Bleach, 1.44 million copies - 1991 Nevermind 7.65 million - 1992 Incesticide 1.13 million - 1993's In Utero at 3.58 million - MTV Unplugged in New York 4.11 million 1996's From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah 4.11 million & 1.15 million copies just in the US

You

Willkommen!

Sebastian Wilken talk 11:46, 8. Sep 2005 (CEST)

TO DO

Songbedeutung

"Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" was the opening song on most shows from late '93 and '94. Kurt described this song as a throw-away; a bunch of random lines of poetry thrown together. The title was a reference to ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" and its slick, radio-friendly sound.

Heart Shaped Box The lyrics manage to convey complex themes of love and entrapment, and deal with aspects of Kurt Cobain's relationship with Courtney Love and his addiction to her and heroin. According to Cobain's uncle by marriage, Larry Smith, the line: "Forever in debt to your priceless advice" was used by Cobain to piss off an aunt (Smith's sister) during arguments.

Rape Me: This song can be considered as Polly's response to her rapist. In Kurt's words, it's an anti-rape song. A sort of poetic justice, where a guy rapes a girl, ends up in jail, and gets raped there. The lyrics that were later added ('my favorite inside source...') are about the media's rape of the band.

Sever The Servants An autobiographical song about the whole Nirvana experience, the 'witch hunt' on Courtney Love, and a sarcastic response to the emphasis placed on the divorce of Kurt's parents. Through the lyrics Kurt delivers a very straightforward message to his father Don Cobain: I tried hard to have a father / but instead I had a dad / I just want you to know that I / don't hate you anymore / There is nothing I could say / that I haven't thought before. Kurt has explained that he just wanted to give his dad the message that he didn't hate him anymore.

Tourrette´s The title of this song is a reference to a mental disorder called Tourette's syndrome, in which the individual with the disease makes involuntary movements and verbalizations (often obscene), as well as having compulsive rituals or behaviors. Listening to Kurt Cobain's vocals on this song one begins to understand why he titled the song "tourette's."

During the 1992 Reading Festival, the band jokingly introduced the song as "The Eagle Has Landed." Bootleggers missed the joke and when the song made its way to commercial bootlegs the (intentionally) incorrect title was used.

"Also notice that the 9/10/92 setlist includes the title 'New Poopie' in place of 'tourette's,' solving yet another title mystery." Kris Sproul The Nirvana Live Guide

Nirvana Musikbeispiele

Hallo Autohorst,

mit den Ausflügen in die Musiktheorie (Tonika, Doppeldominante) bei "In Bloom" muss ich dir recht geben. Das gehört vielleicht echt nicht rein. Die Beispiele für den Wechsel Laut-Leise (Lithium) und den beweglichen Bass (Lounge Act) haben allerdings nur im Artikel schon vorher (d.h. nicht von mir) beschriebene musikalische Merkmale illustriert. Sie haben nur vorher vorhandenes ausgebaut. Insofern verstehe ich deine Argumentation hier nicht ganz. Bin aber auch nicht beleidigt, wenn die Beispiele nicht mehr im Artikel sind. Gruß Boris Fernbacher 05:43, 5. Okt 2005 (CEST)