8. The Mystical Function And The Primal Goddess
This function of mythology introduces us to (and reminds us of) the fact that there are things about existence, the universe, and life experience that are transcendent, not submissible to formal, scientific analysis; things which simply must be accepted as they are and recognized as having a significant impact on human experience, a “… reference … to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being … beyond all categories of thought.”1
The biologist J. B. S. Haldane wrote that, “The universe is not only [stranger] than we imagine, it is [stranger] than we can imagine.”2 The fact that there are aspects of living experience which are not explicable via reason does not mean that those experiences are to be avoided nor dismissed — they are certainly not to be denied. Indeed, the very nature of “mythos” in contrast to “logos” is the assimilation of the wisdom of experience disconnected from reason and logic. Some things just are.
The idea that no matter how many numbers you count up to, you can always count one more. The concept that no matter how far out in space you travel, there will always be more space stretching out before you. The riddle that even if our universe had a beginning, the wider cosmos in which it is embedded has always existed – it never “began” and it never will “end.” The notion that a thing is itself and its opposite at the same time. That your own awareness, and all the other awarenesses around you, are merely temporarily isolated elements3 of a cosmic awareness that can be infinitely subdivided and yet is always whole. That the insignificance of a thing is what makes it significant.
Imagine a tapestry (it doesn’t even need to be an infinite one; just a plain, old tapestry will do). It is composed of all the strings which form the pattern it displays. The tapestry is the strings that make it up; without them, it wouldn’t exist.
Remove any string and the tapestry is now a different tapestry; very similar to the previous one, but fundamentally different from it. That one string, in itself, isn’t particularly significant, but the identity of the tapestry as a whole depends upon that string being there.
Replace that string with another string, and the tapestry is a different tapestry. Switch two of the strings; it is no longer the same tapestry, though it contains all the same strings. It may not be immediately obvious at-a-glance that the string is either missing or has been replaced or has changed places with another string, but a close enough inspection would reveal the difference its absence or replacement makes.
Thus, the tapestry is the strings; it has no existence (and thus no meaning) without them. But, the strings only have significant meaning in the context of the tapestry. And, now, realize that each string is made up of smaller threads, without any one of which it is no longer the same thread…. You can easily give yourself a migraine following such a line of thought.
Or, you can simply accept that there’s a tapestry, and that it has components and aspects of which you are only dimly aware (or utterly unaware), but that having intimate knowledge of those manifold subdivisions of the tapestry isn’t necessary to experience the tapestry and acknowledge its meaning as part of your experience. This is the crux of the Mystical Function: never forget that there’s a wider reality than you are currently experiencing, but don’t let that distract you from this particular experience.
Our earliest ancestors didn’t have any more knowledge of these things than your pet does today. It wasn’t important to their survival. They needed to stay warm, eat, drink, avoid being eaten, etc., and these things occupied their time quite effectively. However, at some point, someone began to make connections between how they saw the universe around them working and how they, themselves, and those around them functioned and behaved. Most likely one of the first things to impinge upon early hominid cogitation was the nature of life and death.
The Primal Goddess is the representative of this function because of her association with the mysteries of life and death. It is easy to see how early peoples would have identified the Earth, itself, as the source of life; plants sprung up from the ground; herbivores ate the plants; carnivores ate herbivores; and (eventually), humans ate all of the above. But it started with the Earth.
What made the plants grow? Why did a particular plant grow in one location and a different plant in another location? Why did some plants seem to grow alongside some types of other plants, and yet never alongside other types of plants? Why did some plants die and disappear for part of the year, only to miraculously reappear at a later time? And why did this cycle seem to be related to warmer/wetter and colder/dryer periods?
What about the herbivores who ate the plants? Why did a particular animal eat the kinds of plants it ate, and not others? How did they tell the difference? And why did their young feed from their mothers at first, and only began consuming plants later? And how did the young come to be there, in the first place? What made them appear? How did they grow and change over time? What caused them (and every other living thing) to age and eventually cease functioning?
While early humans hadn’t yet reached the stage of actively researching these questions, they still must have pondered them, and the Mother Goddess was the result. Again, it is easy enough to understand why our earliest forebearers would have concluded that the nature of the Earth was female. It produced life, as did the female of every species which clearly had distinct male and female genders.
The parallels are not always charitable or complimentary to modern sensibilities. For instance, the Earth is fickle; it is warm and comforting at times and cold and forbidding at others. Human females show this behavior, as well.4 The existence and functioning of hormones and their relationship to gender and body/mind interactions was millennia in the future. Simply, a similarity was noted and a connection drawn. The Romans even had a cliché about it, captured in Book 4 of Virgil’s Æneid: Varium et mutabile, semper femina, which more-or-less translates as “A shifty, fickle object is woman, always.”5
The dichotomous nature of the Mother Goddess as both mother-nurturer and implacable punisher reflects the inexplicable variety and vagaries of the natural world: the Earth provides food but also produces earthquakes and volcanoes. This contradiction was a mystery, certainly to early cultures, and it is not unknown even to contemporary societies, as reflected in the question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?”6
All that could be said with any certainty was that this was the way things were, the way the world worked, and there was nothing to be done but survive and try to thrive. The notion of trying to negotiate with nature came later.
Protology: Automatic Myths Of Origin
There also occurs a parallel between this function of mythology and automatic creation/origin myths, wherein the fundamental elements of creation either already exist or come into being without explanation (they are automatically part of the myth, and accepted as apodictic). Examples include Gaia in the Greek tradition,7 arising increatus8 from the primordial chaos — she does not cause her own creation (sui creates) — she just “happens” as a result of the inherent properties of the ylem,9 the primordial first substance; Tepeu and Gucumatz in the Mesoamerican tradition, pre-existing in a cosmic ocean (again, without an explained origin);10 the Great God Vishnu (Mahavishnu)11 in the Hindu tradition, who is interwoven throughout the fabric of the universe, but nevertheless contains it simultaneously. There are examples from every mythic tradition, no matter how ancient.
The First Steps Away From Animism
The British historian and documentarian, Bettany Hughes, in the first episode (“When God Was A Girl”) of her three-part her televised series, Divine Women discusses the fact that, “If you look at the total number of human figures unearthed between now and around 30,000 BC, then the massive majority of them are of the female form,”12 and goes on to propose that the earliest expressions of human spiritual awareness are evidenced first in abstracted feminine figurines and then later in specifically goddess-depicting statues and carvings.
Among the earliest such depictions she references is a carving from the archeological site of Göbekli Tepe, in modern Turkey, of a woman who
… looks like she is both being penetrated and giving birth at the same time … and whoever made it obviously thought it was both important, and appropriate that a woman should be commemorated right at the heart of a prehistoric temple.13
Hughes posits that the mystery of the Earth giving rise to plants (humankind’s earliest source of nutrition) and the similar mystery of the females of all species giving birth (apparently miraculously) to live young were connected in the minds of Neolithic peoples.
Reay Tannahill, in her 1980 book, Sex In History, also opines that “… homo sapiens, after more than 100,000 years of fully-fledged existence, may still have been unaware of the biological facts of life when the Neolithic Revolution began.”14
These two examples give weight to the idea that early humans were unaware of the relationship between sexual intercourse and birth. Early peoples apparently found the production of life to be a mysterious, even magical. It seemed typical of their broader experience of the world as a place of unexplained and inexplicable objects and occurrences which must simply be accepted in-and-of themselves. As a species, we were primarily reactive.
Thus, in Campbell’s words, the Mystical Function is that of “…opening the world to the dimension of mystery … [realizing] the mystery that underlies all forms,”15 and reminding us that there are aspects of human experience which logos (science) cannot explain (and which it often declines to investigate).
For example: Imagine you find yourself thinking of a friend or family member to whom you haven’t spoken in quite some time; your phone rings, and when you answer it, that self-same person is calling you.
Logos would call this event a coincidence; arguing that in an infinite universe, “uncanny” events are bound to happen from time-to-time. Logos-thinking declares that there is no demonstrable causal connection between you thinking of the person and them choosing that precise moment to place a call to you.
Carl Jung, working with Wolfgang Pauli, described such a happenstance as synchronicity;16 arguing that although there may be no demonstrable physical causal connection between the two events, psychologically there seems to be a connection, and this seeming causal connection impacts your reaction to the event, which then has an effect upon your immediate environment. Thus, an event of synchronicity has an effect “… equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation.”17 It may be objectively insignificant, but its subjective significance is profound and not to be dismissed.
The Growth Of The Goddess
As human consciousness expanded, men and women began to seek answers to the question “why?”, “… the question that marked humanity’s final, irrevocable divergence from the apes,”18 and to utilize the rudimentary answers they found in their first, halting steps to have some sense of agency and empowerment to consciously direct the paths of their lives. This marks the transition of the female figurine from a simple expression of the abstract concept of the powers of nature into representations of a personified director19 of natural events.
The discovery at the bottom of a grain bin at Çatalhöyük of a carving of a seated woman flanked by two lionesses has been described by Shahina Farid, field director of the site until 2012 as:
As Hughes then points out, “As societies developed in scale and got more sophisticated the goddess … got bigger; she’s no longer one of those diminutive, little figurines at Çatalhöyük. Now, she’s a kind of dominatrix, guarding and ruling over a vast landscape.”21
Dr. Taciser Sivas of Anadolu University at Eskişehir, Turkey, has remarked, “She controlled nature. She controls the animals. She controls the wild world … so the Mother Goddess was the protector of the people.”22
This highlights another development of immeasurable importance: a shift toward an adversarial relationship between humans and the natural world. Hughes states: “So, it’s almost as if … nature is an enemy, rather than an ally.”23 She continues …,
As prehistory gives way to history, and men and women start to write down the stories of their lives, we begin to learn the names of some of these divine women: Isis; Ishtar; Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. They actually come in all shapes and sizes, but a notable number share two key traits: These are still creatures in charge of both life and death, of conflict and fertility: they inspire awe … and they are terrifying.24
The Demotion Of The Goddess
But, the continued growth of human intelligence and the increasing levels of our ability to manipulate nature (which gave us a growing, false sense of control), meant that our thinking processes steadily progressed from mere awareness of experience to contemplation of causes and effects.
Thus, we began to develop disciplined structures of asking questions and ferreting out answers, a process which Leonard Shlain believes led to the domination of the explanations of the “left-brain” in human cognition, at the expense of the insights of the “right-brain”. He observes:
… left hemispheric modes of thought are reinforced at the expense of right hemispheric ones, which manifests as a decline in the status of images, women’s rights, and goddess worship.25
And as Robert M. Pirsig observes in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
It’s been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions and the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature’s order, which was as yet unknown.26
Shlain asserts that there was a devaluation of the contributions of women in the maintenance of the community:
The necessity of hunting larger and more dangerous animals … meant that hunters had to be bolder. The female, on the other hand, performed repetitious routines that had little glory or reward and kept her immanent.27 Women’s work was not inspiring because it was not dangerous, even though everyone tacitly recognized its value to the tribe’s overall well-being.28
This led to a gradual diminution of the power of the Primal Goddess in mythological stories. As Hesiod reports the outcome of the civil war among the Greek gods in his Theogeny, “Now King of the Gods, Zeus was wiser than any other god or any mortal….”29
This social change in the status of the female is reflected in numerous myths within all societies. An example of a myth that encodes this transition is the Greek tale of Demeter and Persephone.
Persephone is given away by her father, Zeus, to his brother (and her uncle), Hades, as a wife. Neither Persephone nor her mother, Demeter, are consulted about, nor even informed of, the arrangement. Hades simply collects (abducts) Persephone one day and carries her off to the Underworld. Hermes witnesses the event, but keeps quiet about it.30 Demeter, noting Persephone’s absence, seeks her out only to be told she should not be upset, but that she should instead feel joy at having such a powerful and prestigious new son-in-law. The message is clear: the girl is inconsequential; the male is paramount.
Demeter, in her sadness, abandons Olympus for the world of Men, and decrees an embargo on the Earth’s fertility — seeds will not germinate, fruits will not flower. She is exerting a fundamental power of the Primal Goddess by controlling natural processes. As the Earth becomes sere and barren, mortals are not able to make sacrifices to the gods, an intolerable state of affairs. When Zeus finally takes notice that something is awry, he engages each of the other Olympians, in turn, to plead and negotiate with Demeter to relent, but she remains steadfast.31
Zeus ultimately sends Hermes to the Underworld to command Hades to release Persephone from the “contract”. Hermes finds her there, despondent and dejected. It is critical to take note at this juncture that Persephone has taken no action whatsoever to extricate herself from her undesired circumstance. Again, the message is clear: as a female you are powerless and without agency — if something bad happens to you, endure, and wait patiently for a male to come to your aid.
Persephone is delighted at Hermes’ news and immediately prepares for departure. Hades ostensibly releases her, but in doing so, fools her by encouraging her to eat a bit of pomegranate before leaving, thus dooming her to spend part of each year with him in the Underworld.
Once Persephone is (temporarily) reunited with her mother,32 Demeter is forced to release her stranglehold on the Earth and allow it to bloom and thrive once more. Tellingly, she is then required to reveal the secrets of growing things to the male gods,33 so that she will never again be able to hold them hostage in such a way.
Persephone’s obligation to remain consorted with Hades, and Demeter’s forced surrender of her Primal Goddess power are both tacit signals to the audience that the male has taken the dominant position and the female is well-advised to bend to masculine whim and will.
Shades of these same messages are to be found in the Norse story of the theft of Idunn’s Apples, in which Loki conspires with a Frost Giant to spirit the goddess away, depriving the Asgardians of the rejuvenating effects of the apples Idunn dispenses. When (as always happens), Loki’s mischief is revealed, he is forced to undertake her rescue to undo the damage he’s done.
He finds her in the giant’s castle, sitting dejected in a dark, cold room (à la Persephone), having taken no action on her own behalf to rectify her situation. She is returned to Asgard, where she blithely resumes dispensing her apples, evincing no signs whatsoever of trauma as a result of her ordeal, implying that she was too naïve even to recognize the danger she had been in.
Another implicit message concerning the diminution of the authority of the Primal Goddess is found in the story of Artemis and Aktaion, in which the hapless prince of Thebes34 chances to glimpse the goddess at her bath. Infuriated at such an imposition, the Huntress transforms Aktaion into a stag and he is then brought down by his own hunting hounds.
Here, again, Artemis displays a power of the Primal Goddess, to exercise violence in the punishment of wrong-doing, but the message is far more subtle than that. Artemis is an avowed virgin,35 and her agency in the male-dominated environment of Olympus is predicated upon her retaining this condition.
Since the males of her society equate even simply being seen naked as tantamount to engaging in sexual congress, she cannot allow anyone to know that Aktaion has encountered her thus. What actually transpired carries far less weight than what may appear to have occurred. A whiff of scandal becomes an inescapable social stench. She defends her virginity by violent means, not so much because she values it in-and-of-itself, but for the agency it affords her in society.36
This emphasis on the importance of virginity is also apparent in the story of Callisto, a handmaiden of Artemis who is raped and made pregnant by Zeus. She attempts to hide her condition, but when her belly inevitably swells, she is ejected from Artemis’ company, no longer welcome.
Like Kybele of the Phrygians and Kali in the Hindu tradition, Artemis is fully capable of violent action; however, the difference is her motivation in this instance for violence. She is not (as with Kali), defending the world from a dangerous threat; Artemis’ motivation is far more materialistic and socially constructed.37
The ultimate demotion (degradation?) is found in Aphrodite’s story. She is reported to have arisen (not been born) from the foam issuing from the testicles of Ouranos (Uranus), severed and thrown into the sea.38,39,40 In the story of her “marriage” to Hephaestus (via an act of extortion against Zeus) and her dalliance with Ares (whom she preferred and desired to be united with),41 she is depicted as a purely sexual creature, desired solely for her pulchritude. (In one retelling, after Hephaestus has left Olympus for his daily work, Ares goes to Aphrodite’s bedchamber and merely motions to her — all the effort needed on his part to summon her to lovemaking).42
Discovering the pair in flagrante delicto, Hephaestus immediately summons Zeus to witness her “betrayal”, and demands that the entirety of the bride-price he gave for her be returned.43 The other male gods, attracted by the commotion, jape and jest, admitting that they would gladly endure Ares’ humiliation in this situation for a chance to sample Aphrodite’s charms, themselves — and all this while the goddess is entrapped in Hephaestus’ snare and cannot extricate herself to flee from their leering and jeering.
Thus, the male in many societies was established as “an acknowledged despot … [taking] over the dominant role and [learning] to use every available means to sustain it.”44 Exploration of the processes of the natural world and the development of discernment of the relationship between cause and effect fell to males because they were exempt from the requirements of child-bearing and child-rearing.
The human male tended to focus on developing logos-knowledge over mythos-wisdom, and gained a (sometimes utterly illusory) sense of the power of agency in personal and collective destiny. This, combined with unplanned responses to biological necessities and haphazard adaptation to environmental pressures, conspired to create a state of gender inequity and injustice in many human societies, which mythology was sometimes coöpted to validate and perpetuate.
