David: What is at the origin of your interest in the archeology and mythological dimensions of the Goddess of Ancient European religions[1]?
Marija: I think this has had something to do with my whole life. I have always been a black sheep. I did what I saw with my own eyes – until today, at least. I have always been very independent. My mother was equally very independent. She was one of the first medical students in Switzerland and Germany when there were no other students. When I was born in Lithuania, there were still fifty percent pagans. I have had several direct connections with Goddesses. They were around me, during my childhood. Goddess Laima was there, she could call the night and look out the window. When a woman gave birth, she appeared, and the grandmother organized things: she was equipped with Goddess towels and fabrics were spread out for her, because she weaves life, she is the spinner. The Goddess may be on the verge of extinction today, but up until 50 years ago she was still very much present.
Rebecca: When you talk about pagans, are you referring to people living in the countryside, close to nature?
Maria: Yes, Lithuania was only Christianized by the fourteenth century and even then it didn't mean much, because it was carried out by missionaries who didn't understand the language, and the countryside remained pagan for at least two or three centuries. Then in the 16th century the Jesuits came and started converting people. In some places, well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was an ancient belief in goddesses and all kinds of beings. So, in my childhood, I was exposed to a lot of things that were, I would say, almost prehistoric. And when I studied archaeology, I was more likely to grasp what those sculptures meant than a New York-born archaeologist who knows nothing about country life in Europe. (laughs). I initially studied linguistics, ethnology and folklore. I collected the folklore myself when I was in high school. And I always had one question in my head: what is my culture? I heard many things about the Indo-Europeans and that our Lithuanian language was a very ancient and intact Indo-European language. I was interested in all of this. I studied Indo-European through comparative studies of the language and in those days there was no question about what things were like before the Indo-Europeans. It was enough to know that the Indo-Europeans were already there. (laugh). The question of before came much later.
Then, due to the war, I had to flee Lithuania. I studied in Austria, in Vienna, then later I got my doctorate in Germany. I always continued to be interested in my ancient Lithuanian culture and added studies to those I had already officially done. I researched symbolism and collected materials in libraries. This is a tendency and interest of mine: ancient religion, pagan religion and symbolism. My thesis was also related to this. It was on the subject of funerary rites and the belief in life after death, and it was published in Germany in 1946. Then I came to the United States and had the opportunity to begin studying Eastern European archeology and in 1950 I became researcher at Harvard, to remain there for twelve years. I had to start from scratch because there were no people in the USA who knew what Russia or the Soviet Union was like in prehistoric times. Then they invited me to write a book on Eastern European prehistory and it took about fifteen years to complete. So that was the background of the studies.
Rebecca: Did you foresee the incredible interest this research has generated?
Marija: No, at that time I was just an archaeologist doing her job, studying everything I could. Then came the studies on the Bronze Age and this gave me another aspect of this Indo-European culture. I wrote my first book on Eastern European archaeology, I began to develop my hypothesis on the Indo-European origins of Europe and this hypothesis hasn't changed much.
Rebecca: Could you describe your hypothesis?
Maria: These Indo-European peoples arrived in Europe from southern Russia, introduced the Indo-European culture, hybridizing the European culture. The ancient culture mixed with the new elements: the steppes, the pastoral and patriarchal elements. So, already 30 years ago, I had sensed that there was something else before the Indo-Europeans. But I still didn't focus on the Goddess, sculptures, art or painted ceramics at all. I just knew they existed, but I hadn't had the opportunity to immerse myself in the field yet.
The opportunity came when I came to UCLA in 1963, starting excavations in southeastern Europe in 1967, in Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy, doing this work for 15 years. When I went to Europe to visit museums, I had already gained an understanding of what this culture might have been like before the Indo-Europeans, even before patriarchy. This, for me, has always been a question mark: what would it have been like? It's so different. Painted ceramics, for example, beautiful ceramics. And then the sculptures. No one was actually writing anything about it. There were many of these finds, hundreds of them. And I started writing what I noticed. So, I started my excavations on my own and found hundreds of sculptures.
Rebecca: How deep did you have to dig?
Maria: This depends. Sometimes at a 5.000 BC site, things were on the surface. You could walk among the houses from 7.000 years ago! Other times I had to dig deep to find. Usually they excavated in locations that were already exposed, already known, or where people found objects of great interest. Many things have been destroyed this way.
Some very interesting excavations were carried out, especially in Greece, and I began to understand more and more about the sculptures. I can't say how or when, but at a certain point I was able to distinguish certain types of sculptures from their copies. For example, the bird goddess and the snake goddess, which are the easiest to distinguish.
So, slowly, I added more and more information. My first book was called “Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe”. Actually, the first edition was called “Gods and Godesses of Old Europe” only then I wasn't allowed to use “Godesses” before “Gods” .
David: Who didn't allow it? The publisher?
Marija: Yes. The publisher didn't let me. Eight years later a second edition came out with the original title, “Goddesses and Gods of Ancient Europe.”
Rebecca: That first edition might be worth a lot one day (laughter). Your work is aimed at a very wide audience and equally at people who do not have a background cultural background but who intuitively understand what you are saying.
Maria: Intuitive people get there first, but the university environment understands later why they are less intuitive (laughter).
Rebecca: Can you briefly describe the main differences between the old European Goddess traditions and the Indo-European patriarchy that they came to dominate, and what aspects of patriarchal culture led you to want to dominate the matrifocals?
Marija: They are very different symbolic systems. All this reflects the social structure. The Indo-European social structure is patriarchal, patrilineal and the mindset is warrior-like. Every god is also a warrior. The three main Indo-European Gods are the God of the Bright Sky, the God of the Underworld and the God of Thunder. Female deities are just wives, wives or girls without any power, without any creativity. They are just there, they are beauties, they are Venuses, like virgins of the dawn and the sun.
The system from which the maternal culture prior to the Indo-Europeans came was very different. I say maternal and not matriarchal because the latter always gives rise to ideas of domination, and is semantically opposed to patriarchy. That was a balanced society, it is not true that women were so powerful as to usurp everything that was masculine. Men occupied their rightful positions, did their jobs, had their duties, and even had their power. This is reflected in their symbols where not only goddesses but also gods are found. The goddesses were creators, they created from themselves. In a time as distant as 35.000 BC, from symbols and sculptures, we can observe that the parts of the female body were creative parts: breasts, belly and buttocks. There was a different vision from ours, which had nothing to do with pornography.
The vulva, for example, is one of the first engraved symbols, and is symbolically linked to growth, and to semen. Sometimes, there is a branch or plant pattern near it or even inside it. This type of symbol is very long-lasting, persisting for at least 20.000 years. Even today, in some countries, the vulva is a symbol that offers security of creativity, continuity and fertility.
Rebecca: Why did patriarchal culture choose to dominate?
Marija: It's in his own culture. They had weapons and horses. The horse appeared only with the invaders who began to come from southern Russia, and in old Europe there was no weapon – no dagger, no sword. They had weapons suitable only for hunting. The habitations were very different: the invaders were semi-nomadic and in Europe there were farmers, who resided in one place for a very long time, most of the time in the most beautiful places. When these warriors arrived, they settled on the hilltops, sometimes in the least accessible places. In this way, in each aspect of the two cultures, I see an opposition and therefore they are oppositions that would not have allowed this ancient local European culture to develop patriarchy, a warrior culture in itself. We have archaeological proof of this. And then of course who starts to dominate? Those who have horses, who have weapons, who have small family units and who are more mobile.
Rebecca: What do you think the daily lives of people living in patriarchal society resembled?
Marija: Religion played a huge role and the temple was a kind of center of life. The most beautiful constructed objects were produced for the temple. They were very grateful for what they had. They always wanted to thank the goddess, they consecrated her and appreciated her. The head priestess and the queen were one and the same person and there was a kind of hierarchy of priestesses.
David: Was the goddess religion fundamentally monotheistic?
Marija: This is a very difficult question to answer. Was he a monotheist or wasn't he? Was there a goddess or not? The time will come when we will know more, but currently we cannot know more from prehistory. What I see, since the times of the Upper Paleolithic we already have different types of goddesses. So different goddesses or different aspects of a goddess? Before 35.000 or 40.000 BC there is no type of art, however the type of the goddess with large breasts, buttocks and belly has been present since the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. Snake and bird goddesses are also already present in the Upper Paleolithic, in at least three main typologies. But in later periods, for example, in the Minoan culture in Crete, we have a goddess who tends to be more one than multiple. The same serpent goddesses that exist in Crete are related to the main goddess, shown on a throne or worshiped in underground crypts. There may have been a form of monotheism, even in very ancient times, as there was a very strong correlation between the different types represented. It may be, after all, that we will come to the conclusion that there originally existed a “monotheistic religion,” which we now refer to as “goddess religion.” But we must always remember that there were many different forms of goddesses.
Rebecca: Do you see many remnants of the goddess religion in the different religions of the world today?
Marija: Yes a lot. The Virgin Mary is always extremely important. She is actually the heiress of many types of goddesses. She represents those who give life, she is equally the regenerator and mother earth together. We can find this mother of the earth completely and profoundly in prehistory. She is the typology of the pregnant woman and has been present for about 20.000 years, she is very well represented in each region of Europe and other regions of the world.
David: You see the “Gaia Hypothesis”[2] as a reappearance of the original goddess religion?
Marija: I think there is a certain relationship, in the Jungian sense. This culture has existed so deeply and for so long that it cannot fail to have influenced our thinking.
Rebecca: It must have affected our spirit for a long time. How do you respond to the criticism that goddess religion was simply a fertility rite?
Maria: How come I respond to all these silly criticisms (laughter)? People are usually not well informed about who and what, and have never studied the issue. Fertility was important for the continuity of life on earth, but religion was the subject of life, death, and regeneration. Our ancestors were not primitive.
David: Have you experienced a lot of resistance in the scientific community regarding your interpretations?
Marija: I wouldn't say a lot, but some, yes. It's normal. For decades, archaeologists rarely addressed the issue of religion.
Rebecca: For that long you mean?
Maria: Well, they probably accepted the existence of Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic religion, but the training was such that students had no opportunity to be exposed to these topics. There was no teaching on prehistoric religion. Only in some places, such as at Oxford University, until sixty or seventy years ago, Professor James taught a course on the goddess. Up to this moment there are no other courses. Now we have more resistance because of the feminist movement. Some don't accept regardless. This kind of criticism (goddess rejection) is nonsense to me. What is true is true, and what is true will remain. Maybe I made some errors in deciphering the symbols, but I continually try to understand. I know more now than I did when I wrote thirty years ago. My first book wasn't complete, so I had to write another book and a book more. It's a long process.
Rebecca: Wasn't it incredibly difficult to find sources and written references for your research?
Marija: There was very little, it was incredible! There had been some good books in the 50s. In 1955 a book was published on the Mother Goddess by a Jungian psychologist, Eric Neumann. There were very good works on symbolism by Mircea Eliade.
Rebecca: When I tried to look for some of your books in the library, they had already been taken and the librarian told me that some more work on the topic would be necessary, which certainly corresponds to a demand that there is currently.
Marija: I would never have dreamed of this. I have always thought that archeology books are not generally read and that they were only written for colleagues.
David: Were you amazed in your excavations by the concepts put forward by the habitats and rules of the goddess religion?
Marija: Yes I am. It was a revelation to see that a later culture was less advanced than an older one. The art is incomparably inferior to what was there before, and there existed a civilization of 3.000 years, at least, before it was destroyed. For 30 years we have had the possibility of dating through carbon 14. When I started doing research, the chronology was very unclear and we worked hard to understand which era the object had belonged to. Then in the 60s it became easier. I spent a lot of time doing the chronology, which is a very technical job. This gave us a perspective of the way this culture endured, and you can see a good development, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, in the architecture and construction of temples. Some houses and temples also had painted walls. Catal Huyuk[3] it was thus a great discovery in Anatolia. The wall paintings were published only in 1989, 25 years after Myler's excavations, one hundred and forty wall paintings – and some archaeologists did not believe them to be real because they were too sophisticated. And it was in the 7th millennium BC
Rebecca: Do you think the matrifocal society could have survived in the cities, or do you think the nature of the religion and lifestyle would have kept it at the usually no larger than village level?
Marija: It would have survived in the cities. She began to develop into an urban culture, especially in the region of the Cucuteni civilization, which is usually found in Romania and the western region of Ukraine. There we have cities with ten to fifteen thousand inhabitants around 4.000 BC. Urban development had begun but was stopped.
Rebecca: You said you think the meaning of prehistoric art and religion can be deciphered and that we need to analyze the evidence from the perspective of ideology. Do you think we can honestly do this without being overly conditioned by our ideologies?
Marija: It's always difficult. Most archaeologists have great difficulty accepting that life was so different. For example, an excavator surveys the layout of a village. It is a circular village with a concentric circle of houses and in the center there is still one house. The explanation that arises spontaneously: here is the house of a clan leader and around it his entourage and the last ring around it is that of the common people. Then when you analyze the material, it's exactly the opposite. The great circle included the most important houses with the best floors, then penetrating towards the inside of the circle came the smaller houses in the middle. So you can write anecdotes about interpretation because we only see through the prism of the 20th century.
David: What does your research indicate about the social status of women in pre-Indo-European culture?
Marija: Women were equal beings, it is very clear and perhaps they were more honored because they had more influence in religious life. The temple functioned thanks to women.
Rebecca: What can you tell us about political life?
Marija: My results suggest that political life - of course it is a hypothesis, it cannot be easily reconstructed, but we can judge from what remains in later periods and from what has always existed in mythology, because this still reflects the social structure - has been structured by the avuncular system. The rules of the land: the queen is equally the high priestess and equally her brother or uncle. The system is therefore called avuncular, which comes from the name uncle. The man, the brother or the uncle, were very important in society and probably men and women were completely equal. In mythology we encounter sister-brother pairs of female goddesses and male gods. It is wrong to argue that it is only a culture of women, that there was only one goddess and no god. In art, men were less represented, it is true, but male gods existed, there is no problem regarding this aspect. In all mythologies, for example, in Europe, Germanic or Celtic or Baltic, you will find the earth mother or the earth goddess and her companion or male counterparts next to her. Furthermore, there are other couples such as the goddess of nature, the regenerator, who appeared in spring and gives life to all the animals on the earth, humans and plants. She is Artemis in Greek mythology. She is called the Animal Lady and there are also male counterparts of the same gender called Animal Lords. Representations of this appear in Catal Huyuk in the 7th millennium BC and are found everywhere in prehistory, so that we should absolutely not neglect this aspect. There is a balance between the sexes everywhere, both in religion and in life.
David: Is there any evidence that the change was violent and how did the people try to defend themselves?
Marija: It was violent, but how they defended themselves is difficult to say. However they were defeated. There was evidently emigration, escapes from this violence and much confusion, many changes in the population. People started taking refuge in places like islands and forests and more rugged places. In the villages there is evidence of the killings.
Rebecca: What about the Kurgan, this invasive culture, has it always been patriarchal and when did patriarchy begin?
Marija: It's a very important question that archaeologists can't answer yet, but they can see that patriarchy was already there around 5.000 BC and the horse was domesticated later.
Rebecca: Do you think it arose from a previously “matristic” society?
Marija: It must have been like this. But the difficulty is exactly here, in southern Russia, where it is crucial to know, we have no evidence. We have no extensive excavations in this region before 5000 BC
Rebecca: Has the sacred text that you translated from the Goddess culture ever appeared, as far as you know, in sentences or expressions?
Marija: It is yet to be determined. It is possible that it was a syllabic text and would probably have turned out into something if the culture had not been destroyed. The text has been lost in most of Europe and it is in Eastern and Central Europe that most of the signs have been preserved. In the Bronze Age, in Cyprus and Crete, the text survived, returning to what it was in the fifth millennium BC. A part is preserved but we do not have very clear references unfortunately due to this change in culture. Specialists look into the matter and I hope that, one way or another, they can decipher it. The difficulty is essentially due to the fact that this pre-Indo-European language is very little studied. Generally we study the substrates of the languages in Greece and Italy, but usually what we can reconstruct are only place names such as Knossos which is a pre-Indo-European name. The word "apple", for example, is of pre-Indo-European origin and so linguists little by little, word by word, discover which words are not Indo-European. Names of seeds, various trees, plants and animals are easily reconstructed. And there are also more pre-Indo-European names to indicate the same thing (such as for "pig") and both were used; some languages use the pre-Indo-European name, while others use the Indo-European names or both. It is a field of research that should be further developed in the future and I think I have had some influence in this area. It is extremely important to have interdisciplinary research. For a long time at universities, there were multiple departments established and no connection between them. In this case archeology was deprived of connections both with linguistic studies and with mythology and folklore.
Rebecca: You've talked about the need for a field of archaeo-mythology.
Marija: Yes. And if you don't ignore the other disciplines, you start to see a lot more things. It's such a revelation to see truly ancient elements of mythology that you can apply to archaeology. For some archaeologists it's not science, well, let them tell you it's not science! It doesn't matter what you call it (laughter).
Rebecca: Many people believe that the language began with men hunters and by the way there are more people who lean towards the idea that it began with the family. When and how do you think the language developed?
Marija: Early, very early, in the Lower Paleolithic. And it developed with the family. Some linguists do research on the first known words and some formations prove that some words are very, very old and exist all over the world.
David: You have collected many European folklore tales. While creation myths are found in every culture around the world, have you found any that deal with this theme in fairy tales?
Marija: Yes. Like the water bird and the cosmic egg. The world begins with an egg and the water bird carries the egg, then the egg breaks and one part becomes the earth and the other part becomes the sky.
David: Have you found any Lithuanian folklore tales related to the story of Adam and Eve?
Marija: No. But it's interesting that Adam's first wife was Lilith. Who was Lilith? She was a predatory bird, the Vulture Goddess of Death and Regeneration. She was the one who later became the witch, she was very powerful. And she flew away far away. Adam could not command it. Then the second bride was taken from her rib, so she was naturally obedient and remained with him (laughter).
Rebecca: There are many transmutations of the goddess in mythology and folklore that develop from a positive and a negative figure. Do you see this as an attempt to deform the feminine?
Marija: Yes, it is. It is Christianity that did this, because it sensed the danger. They demonize the one who was the most powerful. The one that could perform many things, which was linked to atmospheric events, with rain and storms. She is the goddess who reigns over death and regeneration, the one who became the witch. She was truly powerful and during the inquisition, she is described as truly dangerous.
In some descriptions you can feel that there was fear. She could command male sexuality, for example, she could cut the moon and stop its growth, she was the equalizer of the powers of life. She could do a lot of damage, this goddess. But you have to understand why she did this. She couldn't allow things to develop forever, she had to stop them, she gave birth to death so that the cycle of life could begin again. She is the regenerator of the whole world, of all nature.
Rebecca: So the patriarchal culture had to make it refractory to people, so that they would abandon it.
Marija: Yes. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, she became a demon, a monster. This image is always with us. In each country she has more or less been preserved. In the Basque country, she is always there and much more present. She is a vulture, she lives in caves. And sometimes shepherds set up Christian crosses to chase away vultures (laughter).
David: You have been largely responsible for the reemergence of goddess consciousness in the Western Hemisphere. What do you think of the way this perspective is interpreted socially and politically?
Marija: The interpretation of the goddess is a bit exaggerated in some cases. I cannot think that the goddess can be reconstructed and reintroduced into our lives, but we must take the best of what we can know. The best understanding of divinity is itself. The punitive Christian God is angry and does not adapt at all to our period. We need something better, we need something closer, something we can touch and we need compassion, a certain love and equally a return to the nature of things. By understanding what the goddess was, we can better understand nature and we can establish our ideas so that it is easier for us to live. We must be grateful for what we have, which is why she should be returned to humanity. I don't think Christianity will last long, but it's like patriarchy, it's not very easy to get rid of it (laughter) but one way or another it will happen.
Rebecca: Patriarchy lasted about five thousand years compared to goddess culture which lasted probably a few million years. Why did it last so long?
Marija: Because of what I talked about. It was normal to have this kind of deity and it was absolutely artificial to create a God of punishment and warrior who stimulated our wickedness.
David: Of the many themes you speak of: giving life, renewing the earth eternally, death and regeneration, and the unfolding of energy, are the well-known archetypes that are generated during a psychedelic experience. I am curious to know if you think that the culture of the Eastern Goddess had incorporated the use of mushrooms or a certain kind of psychoactive plants in their rituals, and if you take Terence McKenna's thesis seriously, according to which Had the use of psychedelics been the secret that was lost in Catal Huyuk?
Marija: I'm sure they used them. This knowledge has always existed in rituals such as Eleusis in Greece, where it is now clear that psychedelics were frequently used. From the description of the mushrooms, perhaps you can judge that they were sacred, but this is probably not the most important aspect. On the engravings of the seals of Minos, for example, you find poppies frequently referred to. Furthermore cloves have been found in Neolithic villages, so they were aware of them, collected them, used them and perhaps had poppies grown as other domestic plants.
David: Do you think this has influenced the culture?
Marija: Yes. In the rituals of Dionysus in Greece up to more recent periods, there is dance, excitement, always bordering on frenzy, almost to the point of madness. All this also existed in the Paleolithic, I imagine, but what they used is difficult to say. We have some cloves, good. Mushrooms? Can be. But what else? The evidence is not preserved by archaeological remains. They have disappeared.
Rebecca: What do you think about the significant differences between a culture, like that of the goddess, in which the view of time is cyclical, as opposed to a culture like ours that sees time linearly, progressively awaiting a secure future?
Marija: It's easier to live when you think about a cycle. I think it's crazy to think of a linear development, as in the European belief, of life after death – if you are a king, you remain a king, and if you are a hero, you remain a hero (laughter)
Rebecca: This aspect of goddess culture, the idea that things develop in a cycle. To think that she has made you more philosophical about death?
Marija: Much more philosophical. And it's a great philosophy. What do you believe? It is the best. And the entirety of evolution is based on this thought, on the regeneration of life and the stimulation of the potency of life. It is the main aspect that interests us. The preservation of the life force, awakening it each spring, and seeing that it continues and that life thrives and blossoms.
David: What insights do you think this brings to those studying our ancient past to address issues facing the world today?
Marija: Well, it's time to be more peaceful, to calm down, (laughter) and this peaceful philosophy in one way or another, brings us a certain harmony with nature where we can learn to evaluate things. And knowing that there were cultures that existed for a long time without war is important, because most people in the twentieth century think that wars have always taken place. There are books that insist on this fact, that suggest crazy ideas such as that agriculture and war started at the same time. They say that when the villages began to develop, the property had to be defended, but that makes no sense! There was ownership, but it was community ownership. Indeed, there was a kind of communism, in the best sense of the word. It could not exist in the twentieth century. Furthermore, they believed that everyone was equal in relation to death. I really like this idea. You are nobody, neither queen nor king, when your bones are gathered together with other bones. (laughs).
David: Rebirth is one of the main themes of your work, what do you personally think comes to human consciousness after death?
Marija: Perhaps the same way ancient Europeans thought. That the energy of life continues at some level, but does not disappear at all. The different individual forms disappear definitively.
David: Do you think a fragment of your individuality will persevere?
Marija: Well, what I leave around me now, my influence, what my books have explained – this will continue for some time. So all this doesn't die out completely.
Rebecca: Are you optimistic that an association-based society can be achieved again?
Marija: I don't know if I'm optimistic. In a certain way I think it is, otherwise it would be difficult to live – you also have to have hope. But development will be slow, that's clear. This depends a lot on who is in government. Our spiritual life is so full of images of war. Children are taught from the beginning to shoot and kill. So education has to change, broadcasting has to change. There are signs of that, some signs appear. You have to be optimistic one way or another.
David: Marija, if you could condense your work into one message, what would it be?
Marija: Well, I don't know if it can be done in one sentence, but my greatest contribution is perhaps the reconstruction of the meaning and function of the goddess. It happened to me and not to anyone else. It was only fate – Laima – that led me. (laughs).
Interview conducted in the mountain house of Marija Gimbutas, on 3 October 1992 by David and Rebecca, her students.
Footnotes
[1] When talking about “Ancient Europe”, the interviewer is referring to the so-called Gylanic societies
[2] The Gaia hypothesis was first formulated by the English scientist James Lovelock in 1979. Gaia represents nothing other than a superorganismic system, which includes all living things on Earth, the oceans, the seas, the atmosphere, the earth's crust and all the other components of Planet Earth etc., which are in very close interrelation between them.
[3] The archaeological site of Catal Huyuk was discovered in the late 1961s. The archaeologist James Mellaart conducted a series of excavation campaigns between 1965 and 1993, then interrupted until 7000, which brought to light a real city (founded around XNUMX BC). There have been numerous discoveries of sculptures and drawings depicting female figures and the Mother Goddess herself.
