Mega Index

The fact is that an insect life cycle exhibits a clear cyclicity of change.  Secrets of life, growth, birth, death and re-birth clearly may be learned from these changes.  From tiny, inert, stone-like eggs the caterpillar emerges and grows.   Later, as a ‘biological soup’ within the outer case of the chrysalis, its body mutates so as to be re-born as a splendid butterfly.  The cycle then repeats itself.  What a fine analogy for meditation!

Some of these metamorphic phases are symbolized on the torso or thorax of Great Artemis.  For are these renowned symbols only nipple-less breasts?   Or are they also eggs, or chrysalides?  Pliny suggested olives, too, one basis of Ionian wealth.  Other fruit and seeds would work equally well.  A further possibility is a collection of meteoric stones, associated with the aniconic form of Kybele and implying a visitation from another (divine) world!  And a very possible additional meaning is the severed testacies of male humans or animals, eunuched in the service of the Mother.

The insect model is further exemplified in the social organization of the beehive.  The ‘Beautiful Artemis’ statue has two beehives, (which are also omphaloses), placed at Her feet.   In the hive we have a Queen, drones and workers.  Many good things are produced there, such as wax, royal jelly and honey.  Nurturing is organized in neat, hexagonal chambers. (And geometry is fundamental to art and statue construction). The hive is served and protected by bee-line flights to the sources of nectar, and by the selfless, suicidal stings of second-role ‘bee-amazons’ which stop at nothing to defend the realm.

Ephesus has the bee as its symbol.  The Queen bee, like Artemis’ consecrated statue and High Priestess, represents The Mother.   A high-flying, ‘holy-dance’ precedes the Sacred Mating.  Apis melifera is Latin for ‘bee’.  This is a lexical link here to ‘honey’, to ‘beautiful sound’, and to EgyptianApis, the holy Pharonic sacrificial bull which represents Osiris, Mythical Consort of Isis.  The name of the priestesses of Artemis is the Melissae, the ‘honey makers’. These latter would serve and entertain at the Temple (hive) with music and other skills. There is a deep meaning to the linkage of the bee and the bull.  Gimbutas’ ‘Language of the Goddess’ draws close analogies between the bull’s head shape and the female reproductive organs, whose function is clearly the major source of inspiration for a matrifocal religion.

Both bee and bull motifs are carved into the strange, confining kilt of Ephesian Artemis.  This kilt overlays a tight, white, undergarment, reminiscent of the dress of Egyptian neters such as Isis.  The kilt probably represents a chrysalis’s case as on the intaglios of bee-headed priestesses incised into Minoan rings.  One of the Theran Murals represents a vesting ceremony.  The multi-functions of a symbol could also permit a ‘tree trunk’ interpretation for the kilt, a grounding-link to the earth with an efflorescence of fruit.
The butterfly, whose stylized motif is wrongly interpreted as the Labrys-‘axe’ of the Amazons, represents the freed soul at death.  The frog and toad, with an equally symbolic life cycle, are anciently associated with the uterus and with midwifery (as Heq in Egypt and as Hekate, ‘twin’ or ‘aspect’ of E.Artemis, at Labranda in Caria)

R Temple in ‘The Sirius Mystery’ has identified and analyzed another interpretation for such a kilt. A large statue from Koyuncuk, (now in Berlin) and cylinder seals from Babylon, are explained in a cuneiform-written legend. A repulsive amphibious being, Oannes, an ‘Instructor’ (!!!) from a planet orbiting Sirius, is thus represented.  This legend Temple cross-references with the similar Nommotraditions of the Dogon people of the Sahara, as recorded by Griaule and Dieterlen.