Woman Clothed - Page Two

Woman Clothed as the Sun continued return to first page

According to the inscription in marble in the Monastery's museum, this was specifically a Scythian or Tauropolos Artemis. Perhaps the chief Scythian goddess, Tabiti-Hestia, patroness of wild beasts as was Artemis. A very short distance from island of Patmos was the city of Ephesus in what is now Turkey, the place of John's death, which was the center of worship to Artemis [the Roman Diana] (Acts 19.23-40 ) and where, curiously, Mary was declared THEOTOKOS ("Mother of God" or "God-Bearer") at Pope Celestine I's Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. (The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus was rediscovered in 1869.) Artemis was the "goddess of the new moon, of wilderness, its animals, a huntress and - though herself a virgin without a children - the patroness of childbirth; - according to Euripides (Hippolytus, 165-8) "I cried out for Artemis in heaven, who loves the hunt and whose care relieves those giving birth". The statue of Artemis in Ephesus shows her with the multiple breasts to nourish her many "offspring". Artemis is most often depicted with eagle wings and her wild animals. Our woman of Revelation 12 is "in her pangs of birth" and her eagles' wings take her to the wilderness where she has even more offspring. Also compare with the "Lilith" of the Jewish Torah and of earlier Sumerian myths, who as Adam's first wife, taking umbrage to the recumbent position he demanded, uttered the ineffible Name of God, flew on (Owl's) wings to the wilderness, where she gives birth to hundreds of demonic offspring daily (see picture).

2] Patmos is located near to the Cyclades island group. Apparently Patmos has had very little modern archeology (my friend and I did climbed the Kastelli hill - finding 2000 year old pottery shards covering the summit), but it is certainly possible that figurines similar to the many found in the burial plots of nearby Cyclades Islands could well be present on Patmos.

3] I think is would be best that this icon be painted by a woman iconographer, either native of, or living on, the Island of Patmos. She should have the broadest understanding of the universality of the revealed images of divinity or, a better English [and Greek] word, the "epiphany" - ineffable divinity manifest in an concrete image - this I think is the reason for creating an icon. Familiarity with the Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite movements in the 19th century might be useful.

With all this madness, I leave the icon in your good hands. From the poet Yeats -

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Warm regards, Gary Regester

13 March 1996

Alkmini Karavis
Spirit of Byzantium
Patmos HELLAS

Thank you for the fax. Good to learn you have received my packet. I thought I might not hear from you until summer.

Medals and Dragon I think you understand my request very well. There is no hurry. I understand that ICONS are "not made by human hands". So let your thoughts grow and take their own path. Since my visit to Patmos and re-reading the Apocalypse, I see that this woman is a wonderful bridge described by John on Patmos which connects the spiritual epiphanies before the coming of Christianity with those epiphanies of today and of the future. I agree that she is unclothed and surrounded by the sun or sunlight. And that the image includes the ideas of the 2nd Chakra, the waxing and waning moon, etc. etc. I look forward to your sketch and explanation. Further to Ezekiel's angels with the eagle's face and four wings, John also has the same idea in Revelation 4:7,8 which I overlooked, "and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. . . with six wings about him. . .never ceases to sing, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" This creature announces the pale horseman of Death (Rev. 6:7). So two, four or perhaps six eagles wings around our lady.

Certainly, the mythology surrounding the divine feminine is a 20,000 to 30,000 year old spiritual epiphany that connects human, animal and plant existence. All who are women-born well know that "holy Matrix" during our first years of life. Memories of which are quickly eclipsed by the newer 4000 year old "us vs them, sky god" cosmology, accompanied by its necessary warrior cult, that disconnects us from each other and the earth. Given the resultant and accelerating destruction of both human life and the earth, the return to this earlier mythology is deserving of further and more serious consideration.

Warm regards,

Gary Regester (I have added some general background information to the original letters.)
Kindly comment or suggest further material.

References:
"Alone of All Her Sex- the Cult and Myth of the Virgin Mary", by Marina Warner, Vintage (Random House)1983
"The Myth of the Goddess", by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, Viking (Penguin) 1991;
"The Civilization of the Goddess", by Marija Gimbutas, Harper Collins, 1991
"The Language of the Goddess", by Marija Gimbutas, Harper Collins, 1989
"Inanna", Wolkstein and Kramer, Perennial, 1983