The Goddess Within by Phoenix of Elder Mountain… Studying the goddess and also the specific goddesses that came onto my personal path over the years, was a love of dedication and a karmic debt all entwined together. I learning about them in various ways which has been very rewarding and spent a decade through the arts of astrological archetypes and asteroid work with mythology, folkology, archeology and cultural archeology (historical sociology) and the last two decades bringing it out in more serious rituals with intention. When people complain that history over the last 200 years is filled with false accounts and not the way things really were, imagine how corrupt the last 3000 years have been and then imagine none written by women about women in all nations, races and colors.
Immeasurable amounts of information over too many millenniums, has ingrained the inability to see the invisibles of our ancient past. It’s myths were woven so tightly, so intricately into every single little tiny thread of our life that the breath and fabric of society is an immovable structure. Only new myths can be created to reveal secrets hidden within by understanding how to learn to be a weaver in your own journey. Even though all of history was one (his story heroi)c, and the other half broken, on my journey to the goddesses I found it to be one of the true Matrixes. But I also found my own soul and that is what it is always about. This poem by Nikophoros Vrettakos, speaks of the ancient time and it’s loss in his poem “The Orange Trees of Sparta”
The orange trees of Sparta
snow, flowers of love,
sprang into whiteness
at your words, bending
down their branches,
I hugged them to my small breast
and went to my mother.
She was sitting under the
moon, worrying about me,
she was sitting under the
moon and she scolded me:
Yesterday I washed you,
yesterday I changed you,
where did you run off to –
who filled your clothes
with tears and bitter
orange blossoms.
I understand the ancient past through the doorways in the fullness of experiencing visions, dreams, mysticism, out of bodies, remote viewing, time travel (dream walking) and magical experiences in both my waking & night dreaming that were consistent rather than the occasional mystical experiences in my prior decades before. My bridge to Delphi and any of the Holy places of woman, so to speak, was slowly and finally built piece by piece through the mystical wind storms thrust upon my life, barely walking through, then eventually crawling until I fell into the great swirling abyss. This lifetime forced me to be outside that invisible box, then the box was destroyed. It hurt like hell and then burned like hell and lastly it was the real hell itself.
But it added immeasurable depth and magic to my journey with the goddess all along the way, she was never too far from my heart or my art, and still is in even greater ways when I understand the rites of protection of ancient rituals in a living magic. Chief Joseph vowed: “From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more Forever“ – once I knew what my karma was, I experienced and saw what I did as a soldier of antiquity against the goddess, I committed even more to her then and that is when my life began a purging and vomiting of all of it, a burning off of my root psyche and souls and then Chief Joseph’s words were my sentiments exactly.
Once my past life soldier’s demon body was purified completely by my suffering this lifetime, his pure astral body the at the very end returned pure, back home to me and this returned my ancient soul memories of the life of a soldier 2000 years ago in Europe, Eastern Europe, Egypt and the Middle East. We had demised, diminishing and disrespected powerful women making them invisible in culture, reducing them from great leaders, into simpleton nymphs and maidens who have no power and it still stands today.
As a dreamer I do soul retrievals for groups of people and understand the processes first hand, as symbolist and artist I have something even much more precious with a trained eye when I see ancient goddess art, but the most powerful gifts are my wholeness of my souls memories and remembrances, the rites as a gatekeeper. This makes me a Sorceress – who has never needed to use Sorcery, a Magician who has never needed Magic and a Seer who never profited in my uncompromising dedication to the goddess and mother earth. At first it was to repay my shameful karma, but then it became a personal passion, then a broken heart entwined with my whole life this lifetime until it was done.
Titan Goddess Asteria (Ακραία Θεά)
Asteria is the Goddess I am working with presently in its beginning ritual processes and it starts at my second saturn return as I enter elder. Her name literally means the stars and has symbolically appeared recently on my path after the last three years of my mystical experiences and dreaming experiences in and around ancient Crete and the cultures of the Dorians, Ionians and Etruscans. The Delphic Temple of Greece was the great Temple of Mother Earth where most temples are dedicated to a specific goddess, but because it was the earth mothers temple, it was one of the oldest and most powerful temples of woman.
Delphoi comes from the same root as δελφύς delphys meaning “womb” a place where the Mother Earth’s Spirit lives in the form of the Python, which is an Earth Dragon. Delphi has been a sacred area long before the 14th century bce, and was then a post-Mycenaean settlement beginning in the late 9th century bce. Apollo took over the women’s temple around 500 bce and killed the sacred python (which was a metaphor for killing woman’s roles and leadership of that temple.)
In 356 bce the Phocians allied with the Athenians and the Spartans and captured the sanctuary of Delphi, and in desperate need to finance their wars they stripped the temples from all the precious offerings. They held control of the grounds only for a short time until king Philip of Macedon liberated the sanctuary. In 339 bce Philip interfered once again against the Amphictyonic alliance when the Krissans trespassed on the sacred grounds. Philip punished the Krissans, and consequently in 338 bce defeated the combined armies of the Athenians and the Spartans, thus becoming the dominant force in Greek affairs. Them the sanctuary of Delphi fell into Roman hands in 191 bce and was stripped of its treasures again by General Sylla.
Herbert William Parke, The Delphic Oracle, v.1, p.3. “The foundation of Delphi and its oracle took place long before the times of recorded history. It would be foolish to look for a clear statement of origin from any ancient authority, but one might hope for a plain account of the primitive traditions. Aeschylus for his own purposes had been at pains to contradict: Apollo came to Delphi as an invader and appropriated for himself a previously existing oracle of Earth. His slaying of the serpent dragon is the act of conquest which secured his possession; Delphi was displaced by the introduction of Apollo – a northern intruder and his arrival must have occurred in the dark interval between Mycenaean and Hellenic times. His conflict for the possession of the cult site was represented under the legend of his slaying the serpent (earth dragon).
When the Dionysus Cult finally came, it was to break the inner circle of maiden, mother and grandmother by luring the maidens away from the great circle of the goddess with alcohol and dark sex magic as a stand in for Apollo. In 83 – 86 bce, the Thracian Maedi in order to finance Athens wars raided Delphi, burned the temple down, plundered and profaned the sanctuary and extinguished the sacred fire “unquenchable fire” from the sacred inner altar. During the raid, parts of the temple collapse and finally after centuries of demoting woman from her own sacred temple, that same year, the Temple was severely damaged by an earthquake. The great Oracle fell and the surrounding area became impoverished. Between the 1st and 3rd century ce, Delphi had completely fallen and then eventually it became a City incorporated into the Kingdom and no longer any whispers of a holy place of woman’s great prehistory without even a recorded history.
This has happened to every sacred temple of woman on earth… So what does this mean today for a maiden or a mother or even a grandmother who searches for her goddess with such a destructive past and one that that is so veiled in the everyday world? I only have one answer, the power of Crete was the power of woman, the power of Dephi was the power of the inner soul of woman and when you seek a goddess, you are seeking and looking for yourself and your own personal ancient past through the re-connection to the stories of your own suffering, your own reasons to heal, your own rites and mystery to be explored and bring life to it, through your existence.
Seeking a relationship to the great mother (earth) begins with the sacred waters (healing) of you, the deep cave waters still flowing in where Asteria still lives in the night. When we are called to work with the goddess, we are not only seeking our own personal soul, but the fabric of our own story, the right relationship with other women that is supportive – just as it had once been in Delphi. When I realized this in my late thirties, I started a goddess circle right away with other women of all ages. I would encourage you to do the same or to find your connections in a local red ten group.
The Goddess Asteria
Asteria and her consort Perses had only one child, the great Hecate, a Goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night and the moon in her own right. As an older pre-Hecate Goddess, her mother Asteria carries all the traditions of the Dreamer, and the Oneiromancy (which is a prophetess who receives prophecy through her dreams). A Night Goddess which are the Grandmothers or the Elders. Asteria rules Oneiromancy (oh-nahy-ruh-man-see) which means Divination (prophecy) through Dreams. The Greek word “oneiros” means dream + mancy and she is one who understands the wholeness of both dream walking in the waking life and the night dreaming life as one, experiences out of bodies into the dream fields (gates and veil walking) consciously and this all results into dream interpretation from this level (oneiromancer). Seership is a lessor form of oneiromancy and this means its not a mental body divination like channeling or mediumship, its strictly the Souls jurisdiction and gifts.
There is not much left of Asteria, just a few paragraphs here and there, as most Grandmother (Dark Goddess) teachings were eradicated first. It also says she was a necromancer, but that is not true, not in the context of how people understand necromancy today, which states it as a method of divination to communicate with the dead. The only dead here on our plane are not dead people at all, but dead soul ‘shadow’ fragments and aspects (of the living). With 8 billion of us incarnated presently, times this by 2 dead soul fragments each (like my past life soldier) and it would equal 16 billion ghostly fragments roaming around, most of which are locked away in the underworld. Some of course are roaming free and they are all soul shadow fragments of the living.
Asteria’s Temple was a part of the Seer’s complex of Delphi and she rules the Night. Asteria rules dream, the stars, meteor showers, shooting and falling stars and Astrology. Her older symbol is the 8-Pointed Star which is so prominent in Eastern Europe and as a symbol its one of the three symbols I work with and have great faith in, just like the Moonlight. The figure of the 8-Pointed Star is at the founding of Byzantium by Byzas, it became the symbol of the city which was later named Istanbul and even later Muhammad the (warrior) Prophet made it his symbol. But long before him or his cult, in 341 bce, the Macedonian King, Phillip II, besieged the city because the Byzantines refused to turn against Athens. The siege was unsuccessful and the people felt it was a miracle because of their Goddess Hecate. They devoted this coin to her and decorated it with her symbol of which was none other than the Moon Crescent with the 8 pointed star..
Leto, is the mother of Apollo and Artemis, and Asteria’s sister, and both had dealings with Zeus. Asteria fled into the sea, but that only called Poseidon’s attention, and so she finally transformed into the island Ortygia (Quail), better known as Delos. Just as Lilith had fled her home, driven out by those who wanted to destroy the old dark goddesses magic, so too with Asteria. This is why it is important for both men and women to reclaim their personal goddess because myth, movies and more portray her as evil, not a woman raped by the heroes of antiquity and then called monsters when written language spread like wild fire. Those need to end in our psyche and only we can make that difference.
Like the Great Python Earth Dragon of Delphi, the Sea Dragon of Scylla or Echidna, these of course were not monsters, they are the spirit of the earth herself as every witch and druid learns and then knows. Celestials like Echidna the Sacred Draegon, remains holy and sacred regardless of myths that say otherwise. For legendary children of Scylla still remain strong: The Hydra, Chimera, Sphinx, Lion of Nemea, Cerberus, Ladon and the Gorgons.
We are the children of the great goddess (mother earth) we have the gifts of the ancient magical earth never to be forgotten because it is deep within your lost soul and getting these aspects of the soul returned is the hard but satisfying work. It is done through the path of our family, real relationships, our friendships and spiritual circles. And it is wise to be silent or walk away from those who fear the goddess, the mystery of woman, the intuitive and powerful emotions of woman. The secrets remain so learn to love the self and those who respect your boundaries and your beliefs.
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