A few days ago I have been in Chiuduno, near Bergamo. Every day,
there is a festival, The Spirit of the Planet, that is dedicated to those
cultures that risk to disappear because of the globalization. That evening,
American Natives appealed in order that their sacred mountain, in Arizona,
wouldn’t be used as a copper mining. They explained that this place, Big Seated
Mountain, known also as Graham Mountain, is a sacred place since thounsands of
years where their women go to bear and where they celebrate thanksgiving
rituals to Mother Earth.
Then I listened a bell ringing…
Once again a sacred mountain, an archetype that recurs in
many cultures in the world. I spoke about it, in my article concerning Delphi,
but I desidered to share with you some ideas about the importance of two
mountains that had the same name in the ancient Mediterranean: Mount Ida. Now, the most famous Mount Ida is where the
judgment of Paris happened. The prince of Troy, not aware about his origins,
young and innnocent shepherd, has been chosen like judge in order to award the
fateful apple to the most beautiful goddess. This Mount Ida was situated in
Troad, western region of Anatolia.
On the contrary, the second Mount Ida is situated in Crete
where baby Zeus has been hidden by his mother Rhea because she was tired for
seeing her husband Uranus eating up her children. Zeus was cared by Nymphas and
by Amalthea, a goddess or a goat.
The point is that the precence of two mountains with the
same name and so close to each other doesn’t seem a coincidence.This name
results from Indo – European root *Da, a syllabe that recurs in the name of Demetra
too. We know this goddes with her Attic name, Athenian name, but in the rest of
Greece she was known as Da – Ma – Ta and his partner was Poseidon, or else Da’s
husband. In fact, those two gods, under the guise of a horse and a mare,
copulated and generated Kore, the Maiden, also called Persephone or simply
Despoina, the Mistress.
It’s not the moment for knowing more about this divine
family becuase they deserve an other post, instead I want to return to those
two mountains.
Leaving the myth, in historical times Mount Ida in Troad was
the principal site of the goddess Cybeles while the Mount Ida in Crete was the
site of the goddess Rhea, a personification fo Mother Earth.
It’s not a new thing that people who lived in Crete, before
of the arrival of the Mycenean hordes, adored God Mother, represented with
serpent in her hands and celebrated through ritual plays of the bull, the
taurocatapsy. So, Cybele and Rhea are two faces of the same goddess Da, id est
Mother Earth. And the worship linked to the mountain suggests that these places
was considered basic in the ancient religions to these goddesses.
As the Native American brothers, as in the Pre – Greek Mediterranean
or in the christianised world, a mountain holds a sacred value, it’s the place
where the earth join the sky and its shape remembers a womb. We could find a
lot of sacred mountains everywhere in the earth from Australia to Tibet, from
South America to Europe, today again. Where? The Mount Athos in Greece, for
example, forbidden place to women (also famale animals!) because only Virgin
Mary can stay there.
The Mount Carmel in Israel, Tyndaris in Sicily, once site of
the worship of Ceres and now dedicated to a Black Madonna… How many marian
sanctuaries rise on a mountain? Also the chatted site of Medjugorje…
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