The Seated Goddess of Çatalhöyük

One of the faces of the Goddess: The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük

Today we celebrate the second Super moon of this 2020 cycle, and with it, it is my second full moon since I entered (like many of you) in quarantine, so I have taken this day to reflect on the goddess and her thousands of different faces, a topic that we have already discussed here on the blog, as well as in my books and workshops.

One of the most mystical facets of the goddess is one of her oldest images, this one has always captivated my attention for two reasons.

1. The first is that this incarnation of the goddess is so old that it remains distant from that modernist vision influenced by the "movement of the goddess" and highly feminist, as those who read me often know, I have nothing against it. Feminism, I simply believe that far from seeking equity, it focuses more on seeking preference, and only "solves" one problem by adding another.
2. The second reason why I love this embodiment of the divine spirit of the Goddess is that it comes from what would be Turkey today, from the point of view of many historians and anthropologists of religion such as Ignacio Martinez Buenaga, Elif Batuman, Nicholas Birch, among others, this is the place where the first organized religions of humanity emerged.

The Statuette and its Origin.

The figurine called "Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük" is a fired clay statuette depicting a naked woman or mother Goddess, flanked on either side by two leopards or two lionesses, evoking the image and mythology of "The Master of Animals", a very common divine worship in Ancient Egypt.

This image was found in Çatalhöyük, an ancient settlement from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, in Anatolia (present-day Turkey).

For discoverers and historians, this statuette is a symbol of fertility, due to the exaggerated members of the female figure, which is depicted in the process of giving birth while sitting on her throne. The statuette is one of several iconographically similar that have been found at the site.

The figure, barely twenty centimeters tall, is associated with the so-called "Paleolithic Venus", which represent the goddesses of the Upper Paleolithic period, and the female figure who was considered a sacred figure, as the creator of life and home.

Divinity.

During the Paleolithic period, the man did not build temples, he was more focused on protecting himself from wild animals and predators, so his way of venerating nature and its spirits was through small altars and portable statuettes, which he could carry seamlessly from one place to another.

Proof of this is the enormous number of statuettes of Venus that have been found in different sites around the world, these images symbolize their feminine features and exaggerated attributes, the figure of the mother goddess, the giver of life, fertility, and abundance.

Indo-European matriarchal society revered the mother goddess as a primordial essence of nature, while male divinities embodied the primordial hunter, animal tamer, and guardian of mountains and caves. The mother goddess embodied all the fruits and benefits of nature, from the moonlight on cold nights to the sweet waters of the river, the fruits and plants of the forest, and even the herbs that grew in the environment.

Conclusion

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük represents one of the oldest figures used by our ancestors to venerate the mother goddess, not only represents motherhood, femininity, and fertility, in the most beautiful of aspects, but also the feminine power that it reigned over a developing society, the feminine wisdom that acts from discretion, and the divine love that has been given to humanity for millennia.

Canalization

Celebrating the full moon of April, May, and June, we will carry out a channeling of this divinity, awakening its spirit from our homes with a joint meditation. Each of the next three full moons will take five minutes to tidy up and clean the place around us.

Burn a little incense and light a candle, close your eyes, visualize that crescent moon inside you that grows, throbs and lights with each slow and deep breath you take.

Visualize this moon growing within you, and once the full moon has manifested, open your eyes slowly, take a deep breath, and recite the following divine mantra three times, out loud and calmly:

“Kutsal tanrıça, uyan ve ışık getir.”

Followed by this, offer a personal prayer upon awakening from the goddess, invite her to wake up, walk to your home, invite her to come and fill the place with blessings, as well as all the beings who live there. And leave the light on for the rest of the night.

BLESSED BE.

 Copyright © 2015 by Elhoim Leafar De Jesus

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.