PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
To a Witch Friend Going to Beirut
Dear N,
I miss you already. Hope it's a good trip. By all accounts, Beirut—“wells” it meant, in Phoenician—is an amazing city. Best hummos in the Middle East, I hear.
While you're there, be sure to get to the Museum. (“Temple of the Muses” it meant, in Greek.)
Sing to the Astartes. You know which songs.
If need be, sing silently.
Spring is risen. Indeed She is risen!
This exchange, in various languages, and with deities culturally-pertaining thereunto, is a long-standing tradition of our coven Ostara.
(Yes, it's a steal from the Church. Call it reparations.)
Through the course of the evening, the greeting, like a golden ball, is tossed back and forth in various languages, call-and-response style, a playful ritual game. Sometimes only one or two voices reply. Sometimes everyone calls out together. No matter where you go, or what language you speak, we're all glad to see Spring.
Every year, we try to add a language or two. (Greek: Korê anéstê. Alithôs anéstê! Akkadian: Ishtar tebîtum. Kînish tebîtum!) We try to include all languages spoken by coven members. (Dutch: Ostern is opgestaan. Echt, zij is opgestaan! Arabic: 'Ástarût qámat. Ḥáqqan qámat!) Recently, we've been incorporating ancestral languages as well. This is, after all, paganism: the ancestors are not only important, but axial.
For some of us, this means Yiddish, the Jews of northern Europe having been, for the most part, Yiddish-speaking. So come along with me on a fantasy journey into the depths of time.
Contrary to what you may read in the local papers a few weeks from now, there's no historical connection between Easter and Ishtar.
Easter is the modern English name of the pan-Indo-European Dawn Goddess, also known as Ostara, Aušrine, Austra, Aurora, Eos, Ushas, and by many other names. All these names clearly derive from the Proto-Indo-European root for 'east.'
Ishtar is the Akkadian ('Babylonian') name of the pan-Semitic goddess known to the Greeks as Astarte, the Phoenicians as 'Ashtárt, and the Hebrews as 'Ashtóreth (originally 'Ashtéret). The name's original meaning remains unclear.
There's no known historical connection between these goddesses (or, better perhaps, families of goddesses). One is Indo-European, the other Semitic.
The fact that the Indo-European name is clearly derivable from an Indo-European root precludes the possibility that Indo-European speakers could have borrowed her from Semitic cultures. Although the origin of the Semitic name remains unclear, the fact that the goddess was already known among Semitic-speakers before their initial contacts with Indo-European-speaking peoples precludes the possibility of borrowing in the other direction as well.
If I believed in reincarnation, I'd say that it's probably a Long Memory. Since I don't, I can only say that I don't know.
She's old, and something is wrong, badly wrong. That's why the old country woman has come to the city, and is standing here nervously in the crowded street, looking up to the high temple, golden in the morning sunlight, that crowns the top of the hill. She has come to see the Lady, because she needs a favor, and she needs it badly. On her hip she bears her gift: you don't come empty-handed to the Lady, especially when you have a favor to ask. It's a poor woman's offering, a basket of eggs, but she has lovingly painted each one with the brightest colors she can find, to make them beautiful for the goddess.
That's it: as it were, a snapshot from the past. No before, no after. It's a memory, or rather an image, that I've had in my head since early childhood at least, one still frame from a vanished movie.
A recurrent iconographic motif of Phoenician art during the early 1st millenium BCE is the “Woman at the Window.” Sometimes called by researchers “Astarte at the Window,” the motif occurs with such frequency—known examples number in the thousands—and in so many different mediums (ivory, stone, wood, bone), that it is well worth asking what it may have meant to the ancestors.
Although minor variations occur, the type is surprisingly consistent. A woman's face peers out from a window. The window itself is generally back-set in a triple recess; she looks out over a balustrade supported by four (occasionally three) elaborately-carved columns. The woman is characterized by an elaborate ringlet coiffure—perhaps a wig—bekohled eyes, and prominent ears.
Early researchers associated the motif with a cult of sacred prostitution, but contemporary scholars have laid this sacred cow of Biblical research to rest. No evidence exists for such an institution in any ancient Semitic culture; such claims in antiquity have proved to be at second- and third- hand, and are invariably attributed to other people. Whoever the Woman at the Window may be, she is no “hierodule.”
The monumental architecture of the window clearly indicates that this is a very special woman indeed; the window is an elaborate frame for what seems most likely to be a divine epiphany. Although no known examples are inscribed, it is not unreasonable to think that we may here be gazing upon the face of a goddess, and although the cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean coast knew numerous goddesses, we may well suspect that this may be the goddess known variously as Astarte, Ashtárt, Ashtéret, and Ashtarót.
Uni is the supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon. She is part of a ruling triad together with her husband, Tinia, and the goddess Menrva. The Etruscans were distinct culture that occupied a region north of Rome. They were most likely an aboriginal people conquered by a Near Eastern culture which was then influenced by Greek traders (as I understand it any way). Originally they overshadowed their Roman neighbors who took on a lot of the Etruscan culture, especially religiously. Eventually the Etruscans became subordinate to the Romans and essentially disappeared into the Roman Empire.
