She tore the heart out of those poor drones. The ancient Greeks were always ready to incorporate strange gods into their own household of divinities. When they colonized Ephesus in Asia Minor in about 1000 B.C. , they found a primeval eastern goddess of motherhood and fertility being worshiped, whom the soon blended with their own Artemis- the Roman Diana. To her the Ephesians built the great temple housing her towering image that became a wonder of the classic world. Temple and image were later destroyed; but a life sized marble representation, carved in Roman times and found by the Austrian Institute of Archaeology, is thought to be the closest known approach to the original, and undoubtedly, the most splendid.
---The Ephesian Artemis was not the beautiful virgin huntress depicted in Greek statuary. Her cult image was unusual, if not strange, more an amalgam of the Greek goddess and the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele. Her stomach/womb was covered with multiple breasts (eggs? bull testes?) symbolizing abundant fertility. Her necklace was made of acorns from her sacred oak tree; her breastplate showed signs of the zodiac. Rows of animals, representing fertility, decorated her tight, fitted skirt, while along the sides were bees Artemis was the queen bee, her castrated priests were "drones."---
While the Ephesian Artemis has long been called “the many breasted mother of Asia,” Franz Miltner, the discoverer of the figure , held that what is actually represented on her bosom is a bodice spangled with eggs. The many animal figures that decorate her robe symbolize her power over all nature. The signs of the zodiac on her breast also point to her power over the heavens. Young and stately, she is the life-giving and life-preserving mistress of the cosmos.
The statue of Artemis dug up in Ephesus has little enough in common with the slim huntress of the Greeks. Clustered about with the heads of her deer and her lions, the ancient Mother Goddess of Asia looks into space with that impersonal divinity, a benevolence free of compassion, which the Christian ideal of kindness was soon to humanize in the world where the statue was carved.
Andrew Gough:Like the Minoans, the Greeks held the Bee sacred and featured it prominently in their mythology. Not only did the Greeks believe that honey was ‘the food of the gods’ and that Bees were born of bulls, they believed that Bees were intricately entwined in the everyday lives of their gods. Take for example Zeus, the Greek ‘King of the Gods’ who was born in a cave and raised by Bees, earning him the title Melissaios, or Bee-man. Similarly Dionysus, the Greek god of ritual madness, ecstasy, and wine was called the Bull God and was fed honey as a baby by the nymph Makris, daughter of Aristaeus, the protector of flocks – and Bees.
"Outside the church, --in bethlehem--,is a cave, entered by a small door, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary gave suck to her son...The pilgrims take pieces of the earth of this grotto for the use of women who have no milk." (Women Pilgrims in late medieval England: private piety as public performance, by Susan Signe Morrison, p. 32, at Google books). And also this one: "Throughout the Middle Ages, the faithful cherished vials of the Virgin's milk as a healing balm, a symbol of mercy, an eternal mystery." (Nature's body: gender in the making of modern science, by Londa L. Schiebinger, p. 59, at Google books). The image is also pre-Christian: there were the breasts of Diana at Ephesus. The famous statue was recreated with improvements at the Villa d'Este, near Rome at Tivoli (http://folliesofeurope.com/album/html.php). The d'Este were the rulers of Ferrara, close to Mantua and an early center of proto-tarot production. click on image for more...
Additionally, Dionysus was said to have assumed the form of a bull before being torn to pieces and reborn as a Bee. Intriguingly, the cult of Dionysus consisted of a group of frenzied female worshippers called Maenads’s (Greek) or Bacchante’s (Roman), who were renowned for their dancing and who were believed to have had wings. Might these bull worshiping maidens have been Bee priestesses? Read More:http://www.andrewgough.co.uk/bee2_1.html
ADDENDUM:
Andrew Gough:Yet another link between the Bee and a sacred stone is Cybele, the ancient Mother goddess of Neolithic Anatolia who was revered by the Greeks as a Goddess of Bees and Caves. Curiously, Cybele was often worshipped in the form of a meteoritic stone, or a stone from heaven. Cybele was also known as Sybil - an oracle of the ancient near east who was known to the Greeks as Sibyls. The name inspired Sybil, the title of seer priestesses for hundreds of years to come, as illustrated below in a series of paintings by the German artist Herman tom Ring (1521-1597).
Read More:http://archaeology.about.com/od/eterms/g/ephesus.htm
Andrew Gough:Still another example of Bee veneration in Greek mythology is Aphrodite, the nymph-goddess of midsummer who is renowned for murdering the king and tearing out his organs just as the Queen Bee does to the drone. Aphrodite’s priestesses, who are known as Melissa’s, are said to have displayed a golden honeycomb at her shrine on Mount Eryx. The mythologist Robert Graves spoke of Butes – a priest to Athene who lived on Mount Eryx and was allegedly the most famous Beekeeper of antiquity. Butes represented the love-god Phanes, who is often depicted as Eircepaius – a loud buzzing Bee. Graves also states in his authoritative work, ‘The Greek Myths’ that Plato identified Athene with the Egyptian goddess Neith, who as we have seen, is associated with the Bee in a multitude of ways. Read More:="http://www.andrewgough.co.uk/bee2_1.html">http://www.andrewgough.co.uk/bee2_1.html
The virgin Diana/Artemis, Greco-Roman goddess of childbirth, is a precursor to the Virgin Mary. First the one and then the other were revered at Ephesus. And of course before that there was the “Venus of Willendorf,” the rotund goddess with the big breasts whose worship was everywhere at the dawn of culture 20 to 27 thousand years ago. Read More:http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2032651&highlight=tree
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