Symbols of Life and Death in the Neolithic Age – Dorothy Cameron

Symbols of Life and Death in the Neolithic Age – Dorothy Cameron

Symbols of Life and Death in the Neolithic Age by Dorothy Cameron
Venexia Editrice, The Owls - The Wise Men - 2020

I just finished reading Dorothy Cameron's book, Symbols of life and death in the Neolithic age, published by the Venexia publishing house and edited by Luciana Percovich, who also translated the text from English. I was very struck by it for two reasons: I knew very little about the work of this Australian artist and scholar of Neolithic symbolism and I had no knowledge of the 5th millennium BC wall paintings of Teleilat-el-Ghassul, located near the Dead Sea. Reflecting on my ignorance, I tried to understand the causes and discovered that the extraordinary results of this research did not have the necessary resonance not only in Italy, but throughout the world.

Marija Gimbutas credits Cameron with having first observed the fact that there is a perfect analogy between the head and horns of the bull and the female womb, with the fallopian tubes. This interpretation is also considered, as the language of Gimbutas itself reveals, a gamble, because in patriarchal religion the bull is an emblem of physical power and masculinity. This is also how James Mellaart, friend and colleague of Dorothy Cameron, considered it: for him it was the symbol of the son and lover of the Great Mother Goddess, worshiped at Çatal Hüyük, in Turkey.

Dorothy instead decided to "put aside the patriarchal way of thinking prevalent today" (p. 15) and came to the conclusion that it was women who created the magnificent frescoes found in the same archaeological site. They allow us to reconstruct the female interpretation of the world, of life, of death, of the sacred sphere, through a symbolic code ignored for millennia, erased by a vision of reality of entirely male origin.

Bulls, triangles, double-headed axes, rosettes, double goddesses, breasts express the generating power of the Goddess, who is also the Lady of animals, while vultures, tails, beaks, large eyes symbolize death in a "cohesive system of elements based on the cycle of life, death and rebirth and modeled on the necessary connection of the first sedentary farming communities to the cycle of crops, the changing seasons, the movement of the stars and moon, and the equinoxes” (p. 78). These symbols have survived over the millennia but have lost, in the eyes of most, their profound meaning, linked to the concept of the Earth as the Great Mother, from which everything originated and to which everything returned.

Dorothy Cameron found confirmation of her hypotheses when she participated in the undertaking of studying and documenting the wall paintings of Teleilat-el-Ghassul. Among them, the star inevitably stands out, whose image stands out on the cover of the book that collects Cameron's two essays: it is made up of eight horn-shaped rays and anticipates the symbol that will characterize the great goddesses Inanna and Ishtar. Its colors are red and black, which represent life and death, but the number eight, I underline, projects us beyond the beginning and the end: it is in fact the double of four, a number that evokes both femininity doubled is the lunar phases and makes the transition from arithmetic to geometric value. This doubling opens the limited spatial dimension (the 4 cardinal points, the 4 natural elements, the 4 winds etc.) towards the dimension of infinity. This was the awareness that animated a civilization of female origin in which “The changing of the seasons, the cycles of the moon, the equinoxes brought with them their own regular ceremonies; the decoration of cult objects, masks, ceremonial robes, musical instruments, frescoes in temples – all the religious symbolism associated with these activities provided great inspiration for creative and artistic expression. This peaceful, agriculturally based yet dynamic religion of fertility has prevailed in the lives of agricultural peoples for several millennia” (p. 135).

Then everything changed and the same Ghassul it will become a center of diversified cults, first dedicated to the various female divinities, then presumably to the male gods who violently imposed themselves, trying to erase the memory of the Great Mother, source of life and death.

But not everything was forgotten: the symbols survive to this day and testify to the inextinguishable energy that connects us to our roots.

The star is one of the emblems of Christian Christmas and Mary, the mother of Christ and Christianity, was conceived on the eighth day of December and was born on the eighth day of September; the rose is the flower associated with her, even in the prayers of the rosary; Anna, her mother, forms a divine couple with Mary, very similar to the double Goddess of the Neolithic. I stop here, because continuing would lead me to draw up an endless and useless list: every reader will be able to make associations about her, whatever the vision of reality to which she refers.

This book is a powerful source of inspiration and a precious tool for those who do not want to forget their origins, their roots, and want to achieve a profound transformation of the world we live in, knowing that another world has been and will be possible.

We must pay our debt of gratitude to Dorothy Cameron, a true divine gift, as her name means (the Greek name Δωροθεα (Dorothea, “gift of God”) is formed from δωρον (doron, “gift”) and θεος (theos, “god”); we owe gratitude to Luciana Percovich, who with her work and passion has allowed us to rediscover these treasures of inestimable value.

Nadia Lucchesi - September 2020