Article by Mariagrazia Pelaia, Italy

The Lithuanian archeologist Marija Gimbutas devoted her life to the study of Neolithic Europe, deciphering its culture on the basis of archeological findings and, above all, the recurrent symbolic patterns generating its abundant iconography (in caves, burial places and megalithic cult and living sites; and especially small sculptures, vases and objects of daily use).

Marija Gimbutas researched her major work, The Language of the Goddess (1989), between 1975 and 1985, surprisingly the same period proclaimed by the United Nations as the “Women’s Decade.” At the beginning of her work, most of the slow-moving planets were concentrated in feminine signs (Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagittarius, Saturn in Cancer and Jupiter in Pisces; only Uranus was in a masculine sign, Scorpio). In 1981 Uranus entered Sagittarius, making the slowest triad all feminine. In the same year, Jupiter and Saturn were both in Libra, affirming that the astral year was indeed “in the pink.” When in 1983-84 Pluto entered Scorpio and Neptune entered Capricorn (both masculine signs), Gimbutas had already finished her work.

The decade 1975-85 was a golden age for the study and progress of the feminine world, from the political to the familial. In every environment, women not only struggled for the acknowledgment of important rights (work, health, etc.), but reached their goals (in Italy, for example, divorce and abortion became legal, thanks to a referendum vote).

While the planetary level of the feminine universe began to pulse with initiative, this woman analyzed the remains of a culture prevalent in Europe between 7000 and 3500 B.C., thus initially conceived during the Age of Cancer. The main cult that emerges from the lively decorated stones centered around an aquatic Bird-Goddess, or a Snake-Goddess, a water and moon being, mistress of change, art, animals and life-death-rebirth cycles.

In 1989, the year The Language of the Goddess was published, a powerful alliance of three planets in Capricorn (Neptune, Uranus and Saturn) greeted the publication of a work that suggests to an astrologer following Lisa Morpurgo’s method that her logic theories work [Lisa Morpurgo is a great Italian reformer of astrology, who deciphered the code inscribed in the zodiac, according to logical procedures and not accepting symbol interpretations just because “ipse dixit”, by “ipse” meaning Tradition]. For example the dialectic law, implying that a concentration of planets in a sign can result in its switch to the opposite pole, in this case to the sign of Cancer (the opposite of Capricorn). Here the Moon permits Saturn to take back Athena’s matriarchal clothes after her dutiful service as a lost star in a still very “authoritarian” patriarchal system.

Basing her work on both archeological and mythological research, Gimbutas brought to light a pre-patriarchal and pre-Indo-European culture in Neolithic Europe. Her detailed analysis of the drawing patterns on a great number of handmade objects highlights a culture organized around a cult of a Mother Goddess who is the Creatrix: the Universe is her body and all living things within her participate in her divinity. Most interesting from an astrological point of view is that recurrent symbols and patterns show surprising similarities to the zodiac symbols connected with feminine planets, especially those of the zodiac reformed by Morpurgo.

It is feasible that, during the Age of Moon, the memory (a lunar function par excellence) of a feminine alternative became all the more urgent, to the point that it turned a fascinating possibility into a documented historical reality (although without a written record).

The Great Goddess described by Gimbutas is often pictured as a Bird Goddess, whose accompanying symbols are the letter “V” and the chevron (double V). Every woman astrologer (I generalize here, using the female gender with playful license) immediately notices a correspondence rich in suggestion: between letter “V,” a simplified shape for the vulva and the pubic triangle (also for the beak of a bird, faithful companion of the Neolithic Goddess), and the planet associated with the female genitals, Venus.

(Is it by chance that in the Italian language the initial letter of Venus, vulva and vagina – that is, Venere, vulva, vagina – remains a “V” today? I also mention the possibility that the term “Italia” derives from ‘osco’, an old Italic language, (V)Italia, that is, “land rich in calves”: let’s remember that one of Venus’ homes is the sign of Taurus).

Another symbolic correspondence to the “dolce pianeto che d’amar conforta” (Dante’s term for Venus in the Divine Comedy: “the sweet planet who encourages loving”) is to art works, and to the Neolithic Goddess featured in many drawing patterns as “Dispenser of the Arts” (spinning, weaving, metallurgy, flint carving, musical instruments). In her Taurus home, Venus is associated with love for animals and nature, and the Neolithic Goddess shows also an iconographic connection that justifies her nicknames: “Mistress of Wild Animals” and “Mistress of Mountains.” In this capacity she expresses the idea of the bio-geological unity of Nature (Nature = Moon, according to Morpurgo’s astrological school). In her Cancer home, Venus indeed allies with Moon (exalted in this sign): the Lady of Tides presides over everything aquatic, with cyclical and spiral symbols appearing as the most typical for the Goddess, connected to birth and fertility, with death not considered as The End, but as a passage to the next cycle, and the same is true for her astrological counterpart, that is The Moon.

To the Moon we can also relate the mysterious pattern of the triple line and the power of three, an idea probably deriving from the triangle, that is, as a stylized pattern of the pubis, identified as the center of creative power of the Goddess. Triplicity is, furthermore, a typical representation of moon phases: waxing, full and waning. Also well known are the divine triads, favored epiphanies of Goddesses in the mythologies of the entire world, especially the Greek. Robert Graves defines the participants of this female trinity as Maiden, Woman and Crone, each presiding over a phase of life, birth-fertility-death, a cycle destined to be continuously repeated, evoking the idea of a perpetual regeneration. In Woman, Natalie Angier reports that the uterus is composed of three different types of tissue (myometrium, serosa and endometrium), after which she states the following: “Our body likes the number three, and thus the endometrium is also composed of a three-layered mucous membrane.” In addition to its familiar roles, this female organ of “triple structure” is given a new function by Margie Profet (evolutionary biologist, winner of the renowned Macarthur Fellowship, an independent scientist with a radical political commitment). She asks why women menstruate, why they bleed, and why they have developed this endometrial cycle of death and regeneration. According to her, menstruation is a defense against pathogens that might introduce themselves into the woman’s body along with sperm: “Our endometrium must die, to let us live”.

A possible point of connection between scientific knowledge (in this case, biological) and the social sciences (here, mythology) is astrology: the Moon is indeed mistress of a cyclic system, that is, a peculiar vision of time in which past, present and future are contemporary. In other words, the cycle life-death-life (recurrently described in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With Wolves, a milestone in the recovery of feminine creative symbols) is waiting for the forthcoming discovery of the hypothetical planet representing it: X-Proserpine.

Before going on, a digression. The association often made by traditional astrologers between astrology and Uranus (in natural opposition to the Moon) is, in my opinion, the result of a real misunderstanding. Uranus, concentrated in the present and on the immediate and practical action, has nothing to do with the wise science of cycles nor with synchronic correspondences among celestial signs and earthly happenings. Certainly, the well-known phenomenon of zodiacal dialectic (for example, the law that compels the “exploitation” of an opposing symbolic sector; for example, Publishing Industry/Capricorn, which lives out of Literature/Cancer) is responsible for the Uranusian acquisition of lunar knowledge for commercial purposes (astrologers, or aspiring astrologers, often operate for purely pragmatic goals, obsess on new techniques, and have been first in line in the use of the computer to get faster working results and greater profit). Astrology is indeed governed by the Moon, apparently whimsical and showing resistance, one time allowing you marvelous results and the next upsetting you completely. In my opinion, Moon is a brilliant self-defense from Uranus’s desire of gains (implying the blind specialization of Virgo, a sign in which Uranus is exalted). The coexistence of past-present-future expressed in Moon symbols reminds us of a holistic mentality, very far from the current prevailing scientific mentality of our shining solar system, so easily projected on the arrow-ray of linear time.

Let’s go back to planet X-Proserpine for the most astonishing discovery in the iconographic connection to the Neolithic Goddess that an astrologer following Morpurgo’s theories could make: A bull’s mantle decorated with a multitude of “x” shapes, featured on a Cyprian vase (XIII-XII B.C.) (Fig. 419, p. 271 in The Language of the Goddess, paperback, Harper-Collins, 1991). Gimbutas considers “x” to be a connection of two “v” shapes (one upright, one inverted), thus stressing the symbols of feminine creative power connected to X as a planet. In astrological language, this is a stressing of Venus’ symbols – in Morpurgo’s astrological slang, Proserpine, whose glyph as the first undiscovered transplutonian planet is indeed an “X.” In this very old iconographic connection to a distant Neolithic cult we find a symbol chosen by Morpurgo “by chance” to identify the planet Proserpine, whose primary domicile is in the astrological sign of Taurus, the same sign opening the matriarchal zodiac of her system B. The symbols associated with Proserpine, as a natural opponent of Pluto, are those of the uterus and feminine creative principle (which is why this planet has remained hidden, apparently not working, even today, like the feminine half of human kind symbolically associated with her). I can imagine that her discovery will be accompanied by a feminine creative explosion on a planetary scale. We could say that this is partly happening; for example, in the strong spiritual and artistic movement connected to the Reawakening of the Goddess, particularly alive in the U.S., which promotes a reconstruction of the artistic universe, reviled by destructive and de-constructive actions of XX century artistic movements (I refer here to Riane Eisler’s work, Sacred Pleasure). Let’s hope that all the news regarding the discovery of a transplutonian planet, heard of but still unproven, will turn out to be the anticipatory signs of her real sighting.

Another depiction possibly explaining the choice of a bull (in zodiac terms, Taurus), and originally probably of a cow, as symbol of regeneration associated with the uterus, is the skull, which is surprisingly similar to the anatomy of the female reproductive organ (Fig. 411, p. 265 in The Language of the Goddess, paperback, Harper-Collins, 1991). Astrologically, one of the attributions Morpurgo has made for Proserpine, based on a corresponding function for opposing Pluto (associated with the testicles and male generative power), is with the uterus and the ovaries – that is, female generative power. Therefore, either the Neolithic cultures had an archetypal sensitivity similar to that of Lisa Morpurgo’s new astrological vision, or they owned in its fullness a zodiac system recovered by the Italian astrologer with the energy and will of her untamable and obstinate logic.

My hypothesis is that the astrological knowledge rooted in the Neolithic Age is linked to its figurative obsession with the spiral, a symbol of becoming, transformation, and the cyclic, and often connected to the snake (a symbol of wisdom). The same spiral pattern lies beneath the symbols of the zodiac code deciphered by Lisa Morpurgo, DNA structure, the shape of the galaxy, and the mandala patterns of sub consciousness. In my opinion, astrology is the feminine knowledge tout court (disguised in the vulgar feature of divinatory art, this science attracts mostly women, as either consultants or researchers), which has miraculously survived censorship and denigration throughout a patriarchal age lasting a few thousand years. This tenacity might explain the inexplicable rage of the more conservative parts of the scientific-patriarchal establishment directed at it (not by chance, the feminine art/science of astrology was kicked out of the European universities during Mars’ age, the XVI-XVIII centuries).

As I intend to explore in a separate paper, there is a strong resonance between zodiac symbols and the lunar cult of the White Goddess, as reconstructed by Robert Graves in his 1958 book The White Goddess, and seen, as with x-ray vision, in the myths and literatures of ancient Celtic and Mediterranean civilizations.

Gimbutas writes, “We are familiar with animal processions as symbols of cyclic time through the omnipresence of the astrological zodiac. The zodiac as we know it is very ancient, but the tradition of animal whirls and processions which stimulate the motions of time is older still.”

She continues, “Animals portrayed as marching in a row of five or more, or whirling around a center, are known from Old European vase paintings, Minoan engravings on seals, and bas-reliefs in Maltese temples… Female animals appear next to male… The doubling of sexes probably doubles their force.” This doubling brings to mind the complex zodiac system designating our solar system; it implies two systems (logically connected by analogy and dialectic), A and B, one patriarchal and the other matriarchal, each formed by superimposing one over the other, a mutual insemination of one male and one female zodiac.

The Neolithic ancestor of the Zodiac (from Greek, Zodion, probably “animal track”), and the sexually differentiated representation of animal couples that forms its base, are vivid images by which to translate the superimposed male and female Zodiacs as reconstructed by Morpurgo. This distant Neolithic reminder provokes a fascinating hypothesis: the Zodiac we inherited is the damaged wreck of a once perfect and fully functional device, or at least of a whole body of knowledge that has been lost, leaving here and there puzzling traces, left possibly by persecuted initiates.

“In vase painting, animals may belong to a whirl which is part of a larger whirling design,” writes Marija Gimbutas in Language of the Goddess. She later details, “This frieze is the inner circle of a large four-corner composition with smaller circles placed at each of the cardinal points.” In this Neolithic mandala we find a charming connection among the zoological-zodiacal reminders and the quaternary pattern of the planetary systems.

Recurrent and obsessive patterns of Neolithic art are opposing spirals (featuring moon crescents and snake heads) and vortexes organized within quadrangular frames. According to Gimbutas, spirals are “intended to stimulate the process of becoming,” and “whirling signs seem to ensure a smooth transition from one phase to the next.” To what else do the vortexes of the exaltation process allude, if not to the starting up of a vital process including a whole planetary system?

You can say that in the Neolithic age they celebrated the laevo-gyrous and dextro-gyrous motions according to which life is organized in the universe, elegantly featured in the deciphered zodiac graphics where uroborical circularity lays implicit and invisible, as the dumb score of a forgotten symphony.

Many drawings and objects found to derive from the Neolithic age are very similar to the quadripartite planetary pattern of Morpurgo’s zodiac system. A dish decorated by a double laevo-gyrous and dextro-gyrous vortex is visually reminiscent of the vortex of the exaltation system, only differing in that Morpurgo initially proposed a matriarchal dextro-gyrous system (B system), but this proved untrue, and also B system appears to be a laevo-gyrous system, similarly to ours. This dish could suggest other areas to be investigated in this regard. (An idea: a quadripartite dextro-gyrous system opposed to the laevo-gyrous system that is ours. Award-winning theoretical physicist Edward Witten has recently proposed an eleven-dimensioned universe). Other Neolithic images include quadripartite drawings featuring an inner circle surrounded by four smaller circles containing symbols. One of them is the double seed – two detached and opposed hemispheres, very similar to a Zodiac split into two dialectic halves. Considering these Neolithic images in connection with Morpurgo’s “zodiacal fiction” is rewarding: the discovery of a logic thread hung between Cancer Age and the Moon Age (the last one in zodiacal timing) could be the sign of a rebirth and a renewal for selenic, or Moon-related, astrological science.

By the way, the word science reminds me that I kept for last an analysis of the astrological symbols of Saturn, which also left visible traces in the ornamental inventory and the sacred and funeral customs of the Neolithic civilization that was settled in Old Europe before the arrival of Indo-Europeans. I left it for last because in our traditional patriarchal zodiac Saturn is considered a male planet, even though it is exalted in the sign of the feminine alternative par excellence, Libra. I will here take into consideration Saturn as a planetary alternative to Sun, thus becoming Athena, leading star of the B feminine system.

With Saturn we leave the sexually characterized symbology of Proserpine and Pluto, and find an anatomic association with bones and teeth, the more durable and strongest components of our bodies. Similarly, the Sun does not symbolize any part of the male genital apparatus, being nevertheless its psychological quintessence, equivalent in properties to our cardiac muscle. Statuettes known as “Stiff Nudes,” included in funerary inventories, were carved in bone. And bones feature in the Goddess symbols recorded by Gimbutas, who defines her as “Killer-Regeneratrix,” characterized by a “close link between the grave type, Old Hag, dry bones, and the death of nature in winter.” Entries to tombs were usually aligned to the lunar station at Winter Solstice. Nevertheless, these symbols are always connected to rebirth symbols. The mythical “la Loba” of a Mexican tale wonderfully depicted by Pinkola Estes (Women Who Run With Wolves), comes to mind. She dredges a river looking for bones, especially wolf bones; after completing a skeleton she blows on it and brings it back to life. The burning skull of Vassilissa, depositary of Slavic wisdom and insight, a treasury guarded by the terrible Baba Yaga, also comes to mind.

Saturnine bones in both Neolithic archeo-mythology and human folklore are hence true companions of the Goddess; in their archetypal representation we can recognize the transformation of Saturn into “Saturnia” of zodiac B systems.

Another saturnine symbol recurring in the Neolithic culture of old Europe is stone: standing stones, circles of stones, fertility stones, menhirs, and so on. Particularly, circles of stones, or henges, in the Anglo-Scottish and Celtic cultural areas, as well as Norse areas, are always connected to water, either because they include a spring in the center or because they are in some way connected to water sources. The saturnine symbol of stone is associated with the most feminine element, water, traditionally governed by Moon, cosmic alchemist of all liquid things. It looks as if Saturn(ia) left a trace of her true nature in the pre-patriarchal culture.

If we consider that the Great Neolithic Goddess is always the same in her various incarnations as Bird Goddess, Snake Goddess, Dispenser of Life and Death, Killer-Regeneratrix, etc., we notice that these are all characters assigned to the Greek Athena, goddess of wisdom accompanied by an owl and a snake. The symbology of snake is multifaceted – vital power, fertility symbol, epitome of the celebration of the life cult on Earth. As Gimbutas states, “The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature. Her power was in water and stone… Hence the holistic and mythopoetic perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is on Earth.”

Further, “This culture [that is, the Neolithic] took keen delight in the natural wonders of this world. Its people did not produce lethal weapons or build forts… This was a long-lasting period of remarkable creativity and stability, an age free of strife. Their culture was a culture of art.”

In this old historical record we find the anticipation of the Libra alternative, with her peace and love totems opposed to the prevailing zodiac culture of Aries, based on war and hate, which has haunted this last section of the long history of our planet. But this is already a matter for another essay, where I will explore this dialectic through the lenses of a brilliant American sociologist, Riane Eisler, whose new theories of “societies of dominance” opposed to “societies of partnership” are very similar to the zodiacal dialectic formed by the sign of Aries opposed to the sign of Libra.

(Translation by Mariagrazia Pelaia and James Koller)

About Author: Mariagrazia Pelaia (Milano, 1964): Poet, essayst, translator (in English she has been translated by Coyote books (2008): The European roots of the woman-poet, with a post face by James Koller, reviewed among others by Etain Addey, daughter of the great astrologer John Addey. Since 1996 a contributor to the astrological quarterly “Ricerca ’90”, her research combines astrology with matriarchal studies and the Macrozodiac (starting from 4 zodiacs theory by Lisa Morpurgo). Since 1999 she has participated in the review’s annual astrological convention, held in Vico Equense (Sorrento, Italy), or (once) in Lavagna (Genova, Italy), 2006. In 2004, 2005 and 2008 she conducted a seminary on matriarchal astrology in Capracotta (Isernia, Italy), within the context of a summer calendar of events organized by the village council (another one is foreseen for July 2009).