Snake Goddess of Crete

After seeing the Willendorf Venus in Vienna, I wanted to learn more about prehistoric goddesses, so I read When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone. One of the most intriguing stories was that of the Snake Goddess of Crete. Between 3000 and 1450 B.C.E., a matriarchal culture seems to have evolved on Crete. The Goddess was supreme and the queen her representative.

A cultural tradition required the king to die to ensure the fertility of people and crops. Every year, a new king was selected as consort of the Queen, and his sole function was to impregnate her. At the end of the year, he was sacrificed, and a new king chosen—the king is dead, long live the king. Scholars think that in later years, the consort was not killed but simply castrated and transformed into a eunuch priest who served the Queen, priestess of the Goddess.

Although I found this myth unsettling, the statue of the Snake Goddess is a dramatic image. The snakes she holds were symbols of wisdom because, in someone immune to snakebite, snake venom causes hallucinations and the gift of prophecy. Venom allowed the queen to be possessed by the voice of the goddess and then to transmit divine revelations.

After scanning a photo of the Snake Goddess, I made her into a silhouette and placed her in an abstract landscape. The result is a symbol of female power different from the erotic power of the Greek goddess Venus or the protective power of Willendorf. But to understand the significance of the Snake Goddess, reading When God Was a Woman is necessary.

“The Great Goddess”

(A predynastic sculpture from 4000 B.C.E. in the British Museum)

I made drawings of two other goddess images. One was a sculpture of the Great Goddess from the pre-dynastic period on display in the British Museum.

The other image is the violin shaped Cycladic Goddess from the Cyclades islands near

Greece. This idol evolved so that, over time, she acquired legs, arms, and a head. Houston’s Menil Museum has a violin-shaped idol from about 3000 B.C.E. and a later evolution with legs, arms, breasts, and head from 2300 B.C.E. A pubic triangle, a common symbol of the female, is etched into both statues. I like the violin shape because it’s an ambiguous abstraction representing female power.

Goddess images from the Cyclades Islands near Greece.

(Violin Shaped Icon, 30,000 BCE. Evolved Icon, 23,000 BCE.)

Placing a Cycladic icon among several abstract images is my attempt to create a spiritual landscape for the goddess.

“Cycladic Icon”