| Robert Graves calls the “Dying and Resurrected God” the “Theme” and describes it in the White Goddess: “The Theme, briefly, is the antique story, which falls into thirteen chapters and an epilogue, of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing year; the central chapters concern the God’s losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess, their mother, bride and layer-out. The poet identifies himself with the God of the Waxing year and his Muse with the Goddess; the rival is his blood brother, his other self, his weird.” (17) In the Vegetation-god mythos, the goddess is the one who brings fertility to the earth and soil by going and rescuing the dying vegetation god from the underworld where he is kept prisoner. It’s the goddess who is the “hero” and the male god plays the role of the “heroine.” The goddess earth represents the stimulation to the god’s generative force, bringing forth fruits for mankind, in the spring and summer. (18) This is the storyline that has been maintained for generations, even several thousand years going back to at least the Hellenic period of Greece. I suspect that this was really a story about the harvesting of the mushroom each year and the subsequent feast. Many of the Roman celebrations and their corresponding holidays which we will read about in later chapters feature this same fertility and resurrection theme, which themselves were borrowed from rites such as those practiced in Greece at Eleusis. Throughout the ancient world the festivals on the holidays were always aligned with the calendar to celebrate the seasons and their changes, and these celebrations often involved the use of mushrooms. The Sacred Marriage of Earth and Heaven The concept of the “Sacred Marriage” goes back into antiquity and represents the union of the sky father with the earth mother. This was celebrated in the earliest times by festivals which usually involved the acting out of the whole ritual of the marriage. The “Sacred Marriage” is a very important concept to understand because it is involved in nearly every early mythology and religion. The object of course, was to immortalize the idea of the fertilizing rains impregnating the mother earth which will lead to crops growing and people being fed. There is one question we might want to ask: Did the idea of the sacred marriage come about due to the need for food to grow, or due to the fact that when the rains come, so do the mushrooms, since early man was a hunter-gatherer before he was a farmer? In other words, did the mythos evolve from an earlier tradition where an elaborate story was not yet constructed? It would seem so. The idea of farming and crop production, which relied on seasonal rains, didn’t occur until around 10,000 BC, as we read earlier and we saw the drawings on caves of mushrooms dating back to 30-40,000 years, which would lead one to suspect, mushroom myths predated seasonal myths associated with crops or farming culture. |
In Mesopotamian custom, a direct result of their mythology of the Sacred Marriage, the king was invited to share the couch of the goddess. (19) In the Iliad, there is a passage in which various flowers and grass spring up to make a marriage bed for Hera and Zeus on Mount Ida. (20) On a vase from Uruk that dates from the end of the fourth millennium BC, there is a sculpted relief that matches sacred marriage texts close enough that it can be relied upon as giving a description of the event of the sacred marriage. Later, during the time of Sargon (2700-2350 BC), an inscription from the city of Lagash has bridal gifts being brought by Ningursu to the goddess Baba. (21) In the play, The Danaids, by Aeschylus, (22) Aphrodite is quoted describing the “Sacred Marriage”: “The pure Sky yearns passionately to pierce the Earth, And yearns likewise for her marriage. Rain falls from the bridegroom Sky makes pregnant the Earth. And she brings forth her brood for mortal men - Pastures of flocks and corn, Demeter’s gift, While trees from that same watery brilliance grow Their fruits to fullness.” (23) The Hermaphrodite The mushroom is a natural hermaphrodite and fertilizes itself. This fact lends the mushroom to plenty of symbolic metaphors. The most well-known is usually the depiction in alchemy of the twins, a male and female, joined to one body. This is also our source for the symbol of the Gemini, Castor and Pollux, the twin Roman deities and even Cain and Abel, of the Old Testament. This symbolism occurs frequently not only in world mythology, such as the case of most goddesses and gods, but in the mythology of kingship as well. Many famous kings and great leaders were said to be born from either a serpent who slept with his mother such as Alexander the Great, or birthed from “fairies,” such as the French Lusignans. Discoveries like the Lady of Lemba (a Chalcolithic figurine) from Cyprus, Greece, c. 3000 BC, have led certain scholars of goddess history to conclude that there was such a thing as an “androgynous” goddess or that somehow the ancient people saw the goddess as having a penis for fertilizing herself (11i). (24) This appears to be the length at which professional scholars will go to cover up the truth. (17) The White Goddess, p. 24 (18) Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 237 (19) Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 82 (20) Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 144; Plutarch, de Daedalis Plataeensibus, p. 103; cf. Iliad, xiv, 346f (21) In the Wake of the Goddess, p. 51-52 (22) (Tragg. Graec. Frag. (Nauck), 44; cf. Euripides, Frag., 898, 7ff.) (23) Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 248-9 (24) The Language of the Goddess, p. 232 |