Our meeting with Julia, a longtime researcher of Neolithic symbolism and folklore; author of the books "The Wisdom of the Great Mother," "The Goddess and the Horned Heads," and "The Goddess and the Two-headed Horse," took place at the first national sewing festival organized in the fabulous Beloslav in September this year. You can read more about the festival program and the diversity of the participants here. In this short talk, we will talk about the ancient knowledge of the Goddess, who she is, and what her role is today.
Hi Julia, I am very pleased to meet you, thank you! Would you tell us how and when your interest in cobblers came about?
Yes of course! Ever since high school, I became interested in Neolithic and the symbols of that time. I began to pay attention to them without any special intentions, somehow I noticed them. There is an English song:
"Where was Matzo? Was I at the Queen's Palace? What did you see there? I saw a mouse on the carpet. "
So, everyone sees the mouse. For me, these were Neolithic signs and I kept seeing them. Slightly after nearly 50 years of gathering information, the picture began to line up in my head and gain some order. This is how the first book, The Great Mother's Wisdom, was born, in which several of the characters are explained.
Are these Neolithic signs also present in the motifs of folk costumes?
There is a job that YES. Signs of nearly 8 for thousands of years can be seen on the stitches. At an exhibition in The Ethnographic Museum in Sofia, I came across a female Sofia costume with the sleeves depicting the symbol of the "Nourishing Goddess" from prehistoric times, along with horned heads.
I decided that I needed to figure out what this thing was and started collecting photos of seamstresses, especially sleeves from Sofia. I collected around 700 photos and noticed that Neolithic signs predominate in the cloaks, and the motifs of later times are much less. As a result, the book The Goddess and the Horned Heads appeared.
Photo: History in Shevitsa
The goddess can be seen in folk cloaks and with symbols from the later Bronze Age, where she is depicted on a two-headed horse. My third book, The Goddess and the Two-headed Horse, is dedicated to this symbol. It explains what the significance and role of the Thracian Horseman is and what exactly is the place of men in the whole system. In the previous Neolithic culture, it was primarily about the female deity, the male onset remains a little hidden. In the Bronze Age, this is reversed and still goes today.
Do you think a process of balancing these energies is underway?
It should, because we have reached some limit in the development of this patriarchal culture dating back to the Bronze Age. In its development it has reached a lack of values. Most of all, it lacks integrity. We have come to some scattering in society and somehow they are forcibly trying to collect us through state and other institutions, and it is not working out. We need to get started! Perhaps consciously already! It is high time we sought the root to acquire the totality from which we left and which we lost along the way.
In your books you mention the Red Goddess and the White Goddess. Are they two different and what's the difference?
The goddess is one, but has a dual character. The world, the entire existing world, is the Goddess. The point is that in addition to the material world we see and feel, there is an invisible world that is the world of Light. As they say - "God is Light." In fact, this is the White Goddess of the Neolithic era, the invisible side of things. The Red Goddess is all material. The Neolithic people were very aware of this duality and were constantly looking for the connection between the two worlds - how the White is present in the world of the Red Goddess and vice versa. The two-headed horse symbolizes this duality of the Goddess, as well as the idea of opposites in the world (their connectedness, interdependence), which is the cause of movement and development. Martenitsa is also such a symbol of the connection between spirit and matter.
And where is the role of the Male Beginning in the Neolithic?
In Neolithic culture, the male origin is part of the White Mother Goddess. Even in some statuettes one can see the goddess, depicted with a female body, and with a head and neck in the form of a phallus. This oneness decays during the Bronze Age, and the Male Oneness is distinguished as God the Father. In Thracian culture, through the Goddess, one can become sanctified and become a God-father. It is the Horseman who symbolizes the man on the path of initiation, who must first become a bridegroom, unite with the Mother, and then become a God-father.
How is the Goddess portrayed?
First - as a woman, but necessarily strongly stylized to be different from people. But in addition, the Goddess can be represented through everything, because She is everything. However, there are three of her animal images that are more characteristic. These are the Bird, the Deer (the deer but the horns) and the Serpent. These images of her are related to the three functions of the Goddess. The "bird" is connected with the ideas of cosmic order and movement in the World, and with the idea that everything that is born or created in the material world becomes at the desire of the spiritual. The "spruce" symbolizes precisely this birth of matter from the spirit; it is the symbol of the womb, where nothing is obtained from nothing; that is, the spirit receives the body.
That is, "The Bird" brings out the spirit, and "The Helen" materializes it?
Yes, the Bird sends the spirit, and the Reindeer is the process of materialization. The "snake", on the other hand, symbolizes a person's ability to gain knowledge of all this. That is, the Serpent is wisdom. All these symbols are present in our folk garments, both in ours and in other peoples, descendants of Neolithic culture. There are separate chapters for these three countries of the essence of the Goddess in the book The Wisdom of the Great Mother.
All this is very interesting! Thank you again for sharing with us this update on our current spiritual development! Where to start our readers who want to learn more and who want to follow your work in depth?
I would recommend that they first get acquainted with the Neolithic symbols described in The Great Mother's Wisdom and then continue with the two books exploring the stitches - The Goddess and the Horned Heads и "Goddess and two-headed horse. " Books have free downloadable electronic versions. If someone wants to buy them on paper, they can be bought or ordered by Bookstore Bulgarian Books" in Sofia at the address of the bookstore or delivered by courier.
