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Gordon a Negative Metaphor for Cybele and Her Amazonians?
In one version of the Medusa legend she is horse-like in archaic representations as the terrible filly of the mare Demeter (again the earth mother herself by another of her names). So again part horse, part snake and a killer of men. Possibly the symbols for Cybele's leadership combined in the snakes and the Amazonian horse, and thus became mixed as they came to live in the same region.
It should be only natural to those living in such a region at that time that if the most popular religion in the most stable position, with mountains and walls to protect their many domains, this version of Cybele earth mother should dominate the field and decision making of the political rulers. Why would not the Amazonains simply demand women rule in their steppe tribe, for are women not the Goddess’ special worshippers who give birth to people, and are men not deformed at Cybele's beck and call? Since deformed types are high in the court of Cybele the Amazonians' hacking off one breast should be a high status badge of honor.
Maybe the Amazonian break came with men of the tribe came over a lack of proper succession to leadership, or when too many men were killed in battle by other tribes wanting more passive neighbors, leaving the remaining women to lead. Or possible the Amazonians got fed up with their male leaders who survived at any cost too, and were too passive to their enemies. Thus the Amazonians could have left them to their submissive role and came to mate with them yearly.
The story of the Gordons (many Medusa like goddesses said to be all immortal, except for the one Perseus kills) is very interesting here too. Remember how all kings and queens and princesses at this time were turned into Godesses or Gods, and therefore it is also fitting that the one killed by Perseus would be turned into a mortal.
We can then move on to the fact that the patriarchal Greeks went to war with the Amazonians and defeated them. The Gordons could have been the daughters/ sisters/ or chosen priestesses of the now possibly dead Cybele, for Attis was killed (and later reborn into as a tree) and nothing has been recorded of any other of her offspring or followers. They are unlikely to have disappeared, and she didn't neuter herself in the records we have. Were there no other children with the now castrated king or with other men? Unlikely isn't it, for as said the ability to produce children was part of the earth mother's power. The Greeks defeating of the Amazonians as an Empire doesn’t mean the other religious elements were all done away with either. The Greeks didn’t likely go criss-crossing all over Asia Minor to find every Gordon they could find. Maybe the Gordon Medusas were part of the main religious caste of a series of kingdoms. Troy's destruction left room for another power to play the role of leader of Asia Minor, before the Persians came. Possible Cybele and the Amazonians filled this void and thus brought the wrath of Athens.
History has an evil Cybele Queen/ Goddess recorded, added to many references to snake and horse-like women to the East of Greece (including early Crete), that spreads to other points of Europe and around the Mediterranean. Her followers include eunuch mangina-like men, content with being second fiddle to the indirect power of women and other naturally deformed persons, said to be in good standing in her worshipping court of courtesans. Surrounding yourself (as Cybele was said to have done) with deformed people at court tends to make others feel you have the power to deform others was something not to be passed up, just as any person that has people die around then tends to be called a witch or warlock. So deformed bodies had a fear-causing role to play with such religious courts for people of that time were scared for the slightest of issues, let alone seeing the likes of Cybele's court. Those who like to think Cybele was taking better care of those naturally deformed persons at that time she is unlikely to have done so for any noble reason, for these would have been weaker parts of the populatin and not be a threat to her to become fools or show peices at court. She was making small > big yet again so as to reaffirm her postion and un settle others who came before her.
This theory fills in much as to why the Greeks conquered the Amazonians, and likewise why they felt men to the East were so effeminate and fought effeminately, and also why women needed to be placed in such low positions in their culture and why they must be surppressed for good practical reasons- that everyone one at the time would know. The population was likely to say,"Just look at the strange Queendoms to the East that we hear about from soldiers, thinkers and the heroes of Athens!"
They weren’t being macho so much as realistic, for they had seen or heard second hand what female leadership looked like. They were a pretty smart group of men to invent the bases of western knowledge, so why do they have a mental block when it comes to women having power? Smart in so many ways and then a black hole in dealing with females? Or are we more of the ones in the black hole as our birth rates plummet. Is it possible they were a little smarter than we give them credit in this area?
Therefore the Medusa could be the patriarchal Greeks version of the wicked witch of the East. Cybele, or one of her representatives, could be the birth mother of such evil Gordans. To name or attack her directly could have created division with those who worshipped her, and so she must be given a new name and made into a demon, ugly, eastern and she must lose to Perseus to show that young men should not be afraid of Eastern Goddesses and her indirect looks, arrows etc. If this were not history it would surely be good propaganda to make boys careful with women and their stares and indirectness. Yet Homer and Jason's stories have become more historically real with every step of investigation that modern investigators seem to take, so what can we make of these classic stories/myth/legend/history.
Could it be the Perseus/Medusa story is in fact a kind of the destruction of the Amazonian Empire story? Could Perseus have been one of the heroes who marched on Amazonia and killed the Goddesses’ Gordon in her chamber, where other older men fear to tread? Having a story where the young lad marches in campaigns and does nothing but run errands on his fast horse to then finally get his chance with the Medusa is not very exciting. With the idea of other men fearing to enter into the Gordans liar to do the final deed, likely being very unflattering to the men who took Amazonia.
What happened at the Amazonian capital city? The boy Perseus' version of events would have included his not looking at her eyes for his fear of her power, and their was likely to be many statues of men in her chamber as there were statues in many goddesses and queens chambers at the time. New art historians are now coming to see that ancient Greek statues where made from molds of real people. Could this technology have come from the march on the Amazonians, where the Gordon/ Medusa was said to turn men into stone!
We can imagine a story here, based on real events, as motivated by a boring march on the capital. The records show that the Athenian hoplites didn't get to fight the Amazonian women well enough for a story telling, as said the Amazonians would come in on horse, let lose, and gallop away again and again. This probably happened for the total march on Amazonian lands and means a very boring story with setting up camps and sending messages out on very fast horses with boys to ride them so they couldn't get over taken by lighter weighing women on horseback (Pegasus). A full-grown Greek man with any armor and questionable riding skills would not do. So the Medusa story could fill in much for us here. The Greeks wanted to honor the gods with truth, but they also wanted heroes, and not a very long story about a daring Amazonian fly on the mouth of an Athenian lion.
But the story given still gives honor to the lad and the Greek Gods watching over him. Praising the Gods (like all good Greeks of the period would have done) is natural. The boys horse could have been swift throughout the campaign as he deliver messages eager to impress, and certainly was swift as he rode with the Medusa head back to Greece as word of the deed spread and was redeveloped many times over. Perseus could have picked up weapons riding all over the battlefield and told stories that impressed all the hoplites and made what was a very boring campaign into a golly affair. Once arriving at the Gordan's liar the boy felt obliged to answer for his boast and went in and killed the Medusa, where the other spirit fearing men dreaded.
You can imagine his horse being so fast it was said to have wings. He would likely have wanted to show everyone his beheaded catch, and surely would have had many citizens turning away in fear, freezing in horror, or fainting from the sight. The statues brought back, that showed men in death like poses, would have certainly been all the rage and confirmed what some had felt upon seeing the bloody head for themselves.
Maybe the word "stone" was used for the Greeks as we do frozen, freeze etc. The head would have turn ghastly ugly after the long march back in a bag with flies all over it making it move, or the locks of hair could have had any number of items in it to make it surreal. The stories of the Medusa head bloody, having special powers could have started at this time, as fans would soak up any dripping or spilled blood from the headed bag, and claim it had special powers, as is done in all matters of religious and simple groupie situations today. This could have been encouraged by the unhappy followers of Cybele in Greece and other parts, as a back biting explanation as to why one of her daughter goddesses had died at all! Don't mess with her for her blood has powers still.
What better way to say to Greek males that one shouldn't get too carried away with Cybele, over our Zeus, for mere a pure hearted boy Perseus has kill her, as Zeus is said to have done to Attis as a boar.
Achilles can be found on Greeks pots today killing a leader of the Amazonians at Troy too. Why was that important, as compared to Hector? Why did the Amazonians come to aid the Trojans, and why did Paris break one of the most basic of customs of the Greek world. By this I mean being treated nicely at another man’s home to then turn around and steal his wife and other items, not fighting for her as a man should. Instead running away and then taking her back to his lands with none of the Trojans, including Hector, kicking his ass and sending the wife back! Was Paris a kind of Attis wannabe and connected to the goddess in control of love and able to take any women he wanted, for they all belonged in the good graces of the mother of all the goddesses. Was Paris wanting to be Attis or Apollo like? Was he concerned with being wild like the religion on his side of the Aegean practiced?
A lot of conjecture here, but we can try to attempt a explanation for this, for if we wait for Hollywood and feminists to destroy the little information we have left it is unlikely to bring us closer to truth.
Hard Spartan Men vs. Spoiled Spartan Women
"A Spartan male could only have a grave if he died in battle, and a Spartan women if she died in child birth."
First of all I need to give credit here to Thomas Pollock effort here: The Men Tribune His work in this area surpasses my own and brings to light what Fleck and Hanssen have done. I certainly like all there work and would welcome Mr. Pollocks communication or discussion to any of our representatives on the forums (for he is a hard man to contact).
Thomas Pollock's overview of Fleck & Hanssen study of the Spartan society is extremely important to our study of the effects of woman-dominated societies of the distant past. The Spartans had been, to the point I came across Mr. Pollock's work in my personal study, a male lead society.
The set up of the society, which I had falsely believed was almost male dominated from stem to stern, had removed the boys early in age from the mothers. It is still correct to point out that Sparta was the most stable society of the Greek states.
So it was a big surprise when I found that it had given its women rule of the farms and much much more. I had come to see, like most, that the Spartan military system was the starting point for all western militaries. The fall of the Spartan society, which I had held to that point, had been purely a result of too many wars and its effect on the leadership of the state. This was one major points in my book (Honor vs. the Amazonians World) for other societies at other times in history have suffered too. So I had no idea that the Spartans had handed over the reigns of power on the home front so much to their women full time, and by doing so given them far reaching rights that were not matched until much later in the West. And that this had the lasting effect on bringing the state down as touched on below:
Aristotle blamed the loss of Messenia on Spartan women and, specifically, on the power that control of property enabled them to exercise. Could he have been correct? The immediate cause of Sparta’s loss of Messenia was that Sparta’s population had declined to the point where it could no longer field a formidable army. The reason for the decline in population has been inconclusively debated; however, it certainly derived from the Spartan system, because the local non-citizen population (Helots) apparently reproduced without problem (Pomeroy 2002, 101). Furthermore, excessive death in battle does not appear to have been the cause. In the first place, there is no evidence that Spartans went to war, or died in battle, more frequently than did citizens of other city- states (see Cartledge 1987, 167). In the second place, Spartan rules permitted extra-marital liaisons as long as the objective was the production of children (Blundell 1995, 154; Pomeroy 1975, 37). So the question becomes: What in the Spartan system caused Sparta’s population to fall -Fleck & Hanssen
The Helots were the slaves of the Spartan state and supplied the farms with workers. The men were full time warriors and practiced training and lived in barracks away from home, unless older in years when they were allowed to live more at home. The fact that the military state was an equality granting state to women seems suspiciously absent in our history of this time, when those on the left condemn this state and also its relation to its collapse.
We see again the both of best worlds for women. Effectively argued in the history books that the Spartan state was military one (fascist because of the men), and then at the same time fails to address that women had real freedom, and were in fact the fascists themselves (in such a rhetorical argument) in their total control of the Helots, their sons lives (if they prove to be cowardly), and in the birth rate and who their lovers would be. The men were not around to boss their wives and only arrived for romantic or ravaging affairs at night, which the women were allowed to fight back in full if they found a man or husband not to their liking.
So we have women becoming the weak link in chain of maintaining the day-to-day running of the farms, Helots and much more. They were the real bureaucracy of all aspect of governance, outside of the military and issues of war and peace. They didn't have to fight wars(like Spartan men), or work in the fields (Helots), nor do household chores (Helots).
In the 50s women were said to only be in charge of the home & children, yet in Sparta it would seem they were in charge of the home, family business, the workers, husband selection, trips around the state, free time activities, no doubt a dominate role in the bureaucracy too. They had the best food and entertainment to be found in the state. They didn't have to cook either, which seems very big with women today. They were in effect the most spoiled for their time as a class, though they did take part in robust physical training which I would say is a plus for it keeps one healthy, happy and more attractive.
So for this system to work as long as it did the women needed to receive the best rights of any women of the Greek city states and by far the greatest for their time.
To improve the ability, Sparta implemented universal education for girls and granted women complete freedom of movement, both unprecedented in ancient Greece. In addition, Sparta’s laws and social norms discouraged Spartan women from engaging in the type of household activities that occupied the time of women elsewhere. As a result, under the new (post-Messenian conquest) Spartan constitution, Spartan women not only had formal title to property, but had the legal right, training, and capability to do with land what Spartan men did
The state faced the low birth rate problem head on from early on, and though Fleck & Hanssen seem to wish to be chivalrous and say it was the design of the state that was at fault and not the women, I will do no such excusing of little women as they do not know what they do. You don't respect women by flipping back and forth, as we have covered here between equality and chivalry to always benefit the woman's position in any accountability, at least if you expect to call yourself a scientist.
The key for us to look at is this very successful state didn't fall from the men or its design, as much from the females choosing with their freedom to not hold to one of the few demands on them to keep their privileges. Aristotle was right on the mark! Should the Spartans have given even more rights to women to hold their line of reproduction? Or should the male designers have taken away some rights of women? Fleck & Hanssen are afraid to make such claims and so it is the flaw of the male designed system, without comment on any other possible reason?
I think the writers are trying to appear objective to on lookers, and likely know the score here, but are timid to rest blame where it should go because they live in a time when academic license is subject to its removal from PC moves in the media and PC Red Guards in schools. The Spartan men of old would call this showing fear in the ranks and such men would suffer demotion if they lived in such a time among men who regard such cowardly action in the face of a real threat before them.
In their society the women were being treated much more as capable beings in charge of many slaves (half of whom were men), and yet we still find some way to blame the male's design of the society that was in fact the best for stability for its time (a time that was nasty, brutish and short). When we can see things rightly as equality based in such societies females always lead the way to more spoiled females & males. They have yet to live up to their assertions of being able to hold their own, as we have males that excuse them for this trait. Their defenders always point to an exception over the rule. Excusing them is a hard debate, so their defenders openly make women out to be superior by retrenching through deconstructionism.
It would seem that women, when given to be spoiled, avoid childbirth for they fear it in probably many ways, for it limits them from the life of more options. They in fact don't like their role in this way. Women may prefer children in isolated farms to have someone as company, yet when there are pleanty of persons around (to have as company, as found in the cities) children generally become more trouble than assets to them.
A wise state would be advised that freedoms should be made more available to women once they have children and become mothers, to balance out the much easier route to denial of their lot in life. With many modern women now regretting not having had any children, as their carriers become hollow, it would seem that wise counsel comes late to many supposed bright women.
Still we seem set on giving women everything for not having children or prolonging having children. Most modern urban women instead want to play games with themselves and live in denial and then blame men, or otherwise they would have to rightly blame themselves, which seems unlikely to ever happen anymore in our time. Running away from nature is very ironic to come from a sex said to be in touch with nature more? This closer to nature lie must be rearranged in such a way so that a woman's desires are natural, and then we have women and nature in some mystic distorted harmony dream world, as if primative is more natural than advanced. Men should see this as not natural, not nature, and simply a grab by this matriarchy world based on effeminate instincts (plain and simple).
Educating a woman, instead of some male, to only have her become a, drama queen, homemaker or part-time worker that doesn't use her heavy educational background seems more like entertainment for her again, and is purely wasteful for any public funded educational slots, and may be in many cases just another social slut that takes even more from men as she claims to suffer from males (this being for publicly paid for enducation systems)!
Average working males are so taxed for education that goes to the rich families that can afford school with males' support . This is now dominated by female numbers. In the past such rich family males would then create jobs for these lesser educated males, and not take their comapnies abroad. With women now taking most of this subsidized education support and using it for something else (aside from its purpose) we are headed to ruin with the baby boomers retirement and the public and private debt as it is. This has happened before:
Finally, public education reduced the per child costs faced by parents, and thus subsidized having children. In the end, the incentives to increase birth rates were insufficient to stop Sparta’s population decline. And, consequently, Sparta lost the land and captive labor force that had led Spartan men to grant rights to women in the first place. Because Aristotle blamed Spartan women for Sparta’s downfall, the Spartan policy of giving rights to women was, in his view, a mistake -Fleck & Hanssen-Fleck & Hanssen
Other unstable ideas that seem very much like our own present societies, like no fault divorce and a lay back idea towards adultery have their mirror image in Sparta it would seem.
Finally, the explanation for another Spartan idiosyncrasy, the Spartan attitude towards adultery, may also lie in the need to provide women with secure property rights. While adultery was a crime in most city-states – where a woman found dallying with a man could be sold into slavery – in Sparta, adultery was not even sufficient grounds for divorce. If adultery were reason to confiscate a woman’s estate (as cowardice was for confiscating a man’s estate), there would be a potentially serious commitment problem: A man might make false accusations in order to deprive a woman of her land. And if this were possible, it would of course undermine a woman’s incentive to manage the family estates. Thus, in Sparta, allegations of adultery, whether true or false, did not threaten a woman’s rights to her property. - Fleck & Hanssen
Young Spartan men would come home during the night to mate with their wives until an older age, and by the day were said to have gone back to the barracks. As the birthrate fell the state went to great lengths to encourage production of children, though it had done so from the beginning of its implementation of the social reforms of the new state. So it was women, who had all a woman could want in freedom for this time (and a whole state literally begging them to have kids) that chose to once again fail the state that had allowed them so much freedom. One can't but see this in relation to our own problems at present, if you can see the birthrate numbers (before the influence of immigration), then our female spoiled problem has not gone away.
Only in Europe do we see our future more clearly, as whole societies become old age homes with seniors citizens ready to place the last nail in their cultures coffin, as they must have even more immigrants come in to do as the childless population demands until the very end. The dominating populations of immigrants will not hold on to the cultural ideas of their adopted state, for even if the Muslims like their new country they do not know its ideas in detail! And like Sparta are doomed from the birth rate, by the same female freedoms that allow them to choose anything but birth, or prolong it until too late, or just have an adopted child to avoid the whole painful and body distorting birthing "thingy."
The likely answer is women’s rights. By giving women property and human capital, the Lycurgan reforms raised the opportunity cost of having children. Furthermore, because Spartan women had substantial control over their own time (as well as wealth), they had a greater range of choice in how to respond to that increased opportunity cost. As Lacey (1968, 205) writes, “Rich women, . . . , do not commonly bear large families, especially when, as in Sparta, they are independent and not subordinated to their husbands.” Or, as Cicero put it more poetically: Spartan maidens care more for wrestling, the [river] Eurotas, the sun, dust, and military exercise than for barbarous fertility. (Tusc.2.36) Decreased fertility in Sparta should not surprise modern scholars: Today, nations with well- educated, well-paid, well-to-do women generally have low birth rates. At least two other aspects of the Spartan system could have contributed to low birthrates. First, like women in today’s developed democracies (which have low birthrates), Spartan women enjoyed the freedom of movement, education, and wealth necessary to make the use of contraceptives common. - Fleck & Hanssen
So the Athenians were wiser to women's rights and democracy by their dealings with the Amazonians, and we have myths that point to these lessons (whether you believe my characterization of the myths probably having some real history behind them or not). While the Spartans seem less wise to these Medusa threats, they seem to base their ideals of women on Homer's Helen of Troy, and by that train of thought a man must take a beautiful women and keep her in her nation and not let visitors come and whisk her away, while keeping things romatic and to her liking in the nation. So the threat to them came from men from outside the state (Paris types) over any of Helen's nature! The lion males tendency to see outside males as the problem over inside weasels is here again. In Sparta you see an attempt to do away with fox or weasel types in many laws and rules.
There is much history to be taught to men here and it is amazing that they are told that antiquity had no such examples of female religions and female dominated and equality based states. Why the lack of such truths made plain? Interesting...
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