GLAMTRIBALE Twin Serpents Ecstatic Goddess Pendant Honors Women's Ancient History

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GLAMTRIBALE Twin Serpents Ecstatic Goddess Pendant Honors Women's Ancient History

Ancient cultures recognized that sexual energy is our creative and vital life force energy, but with the demise of the goddesses, and the rise of monotheism and patriarchy, women's status changed dramatically. Woman -- or Eve in the case of Christianity -- was responsible for the downfall of humanity because she succumbed to the devil's temptation. This entire topic interested me as a second wave feminist and led in my early 20s to reading the work of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian doctor of medicine and one of the prominent second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. 

The controversial research and clinic work of Dr. Wilhelm Reich has always held a prominent place in my understanding of human nature and women's history. But an experience with kundalini energy in the summer of 2017 brought Reich's research front and center in my mind, as I created GLAMTRIBALE's Twin Serpents Ecstatic Goddess Pendant. 

Dr. Reich called the life force energy that became the focus of his research 'orgone energy' and he believed that it was an energetic connection shared by living beings, one essentially identical to 'chi'. As a student of Freud's theories around neurosis, Reich believed that traumatic experiences blocked the natural flow of life-energy in the body, leading to physical and mental disease. His arguments caught the attention of American authorities at the FDA when Wilhelm Reich concluded that the libidinal-energy that Freud discussed was the primordial-energy of life itself, connected to more than just sexuality. Orgone was everywhere and Reich measured this energy-in-motion over the surface of the earth with a machine he invented called.

It was truly ironical that in 1939 Reich had emigrated to the US, fleeing the Nazis' burning of his books. In 1956 and 1950, the US government's multiple agencies from the FDA to the FBI rose up against him, burning Reich's scientific books and journals, and leaving him to die in a federal prison in 1957.

In the last decade, top researchers at institutions like Harvard have gained access to Reich's research papers and have worked to duplicate his work on orgone energy. A multi-year-crowdfunded project to produce a documentary on Reich has just been completed.

In 2017 I embarked on a series of four Daily Om courses that had a tremendous impact on my behavior and wellbeing. I had my first experience with Kundalini energy, an incredible event that prompted me to read this excellent this excellent article about the sacred sexual energy of the Goddess. More.

Goddess Hathor's Fifth Dynasty Priestess Hetpet's Tomb Unveiled A Century After Discovery In Egypt

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Goddess Hathor's Fifth Dynasty Priestess Hetpet's Tomb Unveiled A Century After Discovery In Egypt

Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered a 4,400-year-old tomb close to Cairo, one that contains rare wall paintings and is thought to be the tomb of a priestess named Hetpet. Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the discovery located near the Giza pyramids. 

“The tomb is in very good condition,” Dr. Waziri said. “There are colored depictions of traditional scenes: animals grazing, fishing, bird-catching, offerings, sacrifice, soldiers and fruit-gathering.”

Hetpet is believed to have been close to Egyptian royals of the Fifth Dynasty, part of a prosperous period in Egyptian history known as the Old Kingdom during which the pyramids, temples and palaces were built under the rule of pharaohs. Hetpet served as a priestess for Hathor, a goddess depicted as a cow and associated with fertility, motherhood and love. By this time in women's history, female priests were not that common in ancient Egypt, but Hathor's priesthood was an exception. 

Hetpet's name was first seen on antiquities uncovered at the site in 1909 by a British explorer who sent them to Berlin and Frankfurt.  The tomb itself was not unearthed until more than a century later in 2017

Eye | Behati Prinsloo In 'Seminole Spirit' By Russell James Opens Feb 17 At NYC Stephan Weiss Gallery

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Behati Prinsloo In ‘Seminole Spirit’ By Russell James Opens Feb 17 At NYC Stephan Weiss Gallery

Apart from the photos of Prinsloo, the exhibit will also present a film featuring spoken word from the spiritual leader of the Seminole Tribe, a fine art photography exhibition from Bobby Henry that includes portraits of tribe members, and the tribe’s cultural sites and landscapes.

“Seminole Spirit is totally different than any type of normal shoot. This isn’t a project about fashion or trends, it is an art project with a really powerful story behind it,” Prinsloo says. “We were all so humbled to be in collaboration with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. […] This was definitely a project of passion for all of us with no shot count or designer label needed.”

Adds James, “I hope to engage people to look at this and understand this culture as not something that is gathering dust in the closet, but to realize that tribes and indigenous people are using culture to their great advantage, to maintain their identity.”

Anne adds:

Describing her experience with the Seminole people, Behati Prinsloo says: “We painted my body gold as we tried to capture an idea we had of what ‘Seminole Spirit’ is . . I felt like a savage swamp mermaid on Seminole land, crazy.”

In describing herself as a mermaid, Behati channels the key theme of female goddess history, establishing herself in the sisterhood of Mami Wati’s born in Africa before travelling the globe — often on the slave ships as a source of comfort and solace in brutal conditions.

AOC is dancing as fast as we can on this one, because ‘Seminole Spirit’ goes to the very essence of our identity and purpose. Lots more is coming. ~ Anne

Eye 2-2-15 | Mami Wata Resurgence As Global Goddess | 55,000 Years-Old Female Skull Provides Critical Link In Human Evolution & Migration Out of Africa

Eye | Mami Wata Resurgence As Global Goddess | 55,000 Years-Old Female Skull Provides Critical Link In Human Evolution & Migration Out of Africa

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Carmelita Mendes Is Beauty Goddess By Mari Queiroz For Amuse Magazine AOC GlamTribale

A Female Skull Closes Migration Link Out of Africa and Into The Levant

Female Skull In Israel’s Manot Cave Links Humans & Neanderthals 55,000 Years Ago AOC GlamTribale

In a series of coincidences that are peppered throughout my life, scientists have threaded another needle in the highly-probable story that human life originated in the region of Lake Turkana bordering Kenya and Ethiopia before migrating into a region known today as The Levant.

In a very real sense, today’s religious wars are going on in the very region that is the cradle of human civilization. My own relationship with The Levant area is most focused on studying the evolution of the goddesses and the rise of monotheism.

Kenya, Lake Turkana and the Omo Valley people of Ethiopia are a much stronger connection — one revealed through my inexplicable connections with the young photographer Dan Eldon. Here is a sampling of our journey.

Mami Wata Moves Into Anne of Carversville

Aphrodite Joins Mami Wata For A Swim in Human Consciousness AOC Sensual Rebel Nov. 2009

Men have always been ambivalent about mermaids, the mythological aquatic creature with a female human head and torso but the tail of a fish. In many ancient cultures, mermaids were regarded as semi-divine aspects of the Goddess.

Carl Jung’s theory of the feminine unconscious describes this oceanic-subterranean womb of creation as an unfathomable place of ancient wisdom but also fear.

The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him.

Distraught and ashamed, Atargatis jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid—human above the waist, fish below—though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and legs, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo.

Prior to 546 BC, the Milesian philosopher Anaximander proposed that mankind had sprung from an aquatic species of animal. The scientist and highly-regarded critical thinker thought that humans, with their extended infancy, could not have survived otherwise.

Mami Wata Resurgence In South Africa

Steve Marais Celebrates African & Global Goddess Mami Wata As Mermaid In Gaschette Magazine AOC Salon

More reading:

Read More

South African Photographer Koto Bolofo Intrigues Me With Numéro #160 'Atelier D'Artiste'

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Aneta Pajak In Atelier D’Artiste By Koto Bolofo For Numéro #160 February 2015

Visual cues run wild in these images: is Aneta exploring a gender-neutral, artistic studio or is she in the fashion-predictable studio of a male artist? Is she the prototypical muse of the male mind? What is the significance of a large — presumably male — hand at her throat and in her face? How has this male artistic vision — and the powerful art world institutions behind it — defined Aneta and millions — no billions — of female identities worldwide and for the last 3000 years?

There are no answers in ‘Atelier D’Artiste’, a Numéro #160 February 2015 fashion editorial that may be nothing more than a celebration of the male mind and fashion’s support for traditional gender-based power relationships. This isn’t how these images strike me, however.

Do I share a vibe with photographer Koto Bolofo? Rest assured that I will answer that question for myself and AOC readers. ~ Anne

Eye | Spring 2015 Designer Brands | Sarah Burton's Proverbial Goddess Women

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2015 is a milestone year for the Alexander McQueen brand. February marks the fifth anniversary of Lee McQueen’s suicide, while the sold-out ‘Savage Beauty’ retrospective will open at London’s V&A museum in March 2015.

Alexander McQueen Creative Director Sarah Burton, McQueen’s assistant prior to his death, turns east to Japan this season, with the always dark undercurrent of he/she power plays operating in both designs and theatrics. Not surprisingly, Burton’s Queen Bee women are on top of their game — a psychological perspective not necessarily shared by the more female-ambivalent Lee McQueen.

Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2015 ad campaign features model Karolin Wolter lensed by David Sims.

 

Previously on AOC

Sarah Burton Takes The Helm of Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton’s Spring 2012 Goddess Collection Unleashes McQueen’s Unbearable Beauty

Sarah Burton’s interpretation of the Alexander McQueen aesthetic is so subtle, that perhaps only a Smart Sensuality woman sees the trend. Both Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel and Sarah Burton’s collection for McQueen paid homage to women of the sea in Paris yesterday. (Chanel coming shortly).

Both collections are astoundingly beautiful, but Burton’s is more psychological. Style.com writer Tim Blankscaught the difference, too. ‘Lagerfeld’s models were nymphs; Sarah Burton’s were goddesses,’ writes Blanks.

Bingo — a man after my own heart and mind. Who said men can’t dig deeply into womanly concepts like the difference between nymphs and goddesses!

The answer is power. Not only are the Alexander McQueen women more powerful — goddesses rather than nymphs — they are shedding their Lee McQueen ambivalence about female power and its impact on the lives of men. Still bound with fetish details and an inherent female eroticism, the Sarah Burton women are lighter, even romantic at moments and more human than animal. McQueen’s women hovered more obviously between both worlds — torn creatures in the mind of the man who invented them.

Very psychological, I know. What’s crystal clear to me is challenging to explain, but I will attempt do so in a long piece soon … the post that has drifted in my mind for months since McQueen’s death and his show at the Met.

McQueen’s Ambivalence Revealed?

Read More

Kim Kardashian As Fertility Goddess? A Politically Incorrect Take On Jean-Paul Goude's Paper Magazine Images Pt 1

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Kim Kardashian As Fertility Goddess? A Politically Incorrect Take On Jean-Paul Goude’s Paper Magazine Images Pt 1

My Life Beliefs:

1. Humanity first began in Africa and then migrated across the globe.

2. Goddesses preceeded gods as the powerful forces of the universe, and monotheism’s one god. Monotheism finished off the goddesses for good.

3. Goddesses were frequently associated with procreation and fertility and those evolutionary beliefs are part of our DNA.

4. The earliest goddesses were most-likely dark-skinned and African. If that statement appears racist, there is nothing I can do about it. 

5. Jung’s concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ is real. As humans we inherit a body of psychological, physical, social experiences in our unconscious minds. Fertility goddesses are embedded in our collective unconscoius minds, and they are not going anywhere.

6. Life provides us with teaching moments. Rather than verbally pummel Paper Magazine’s and also Refinery 29’s values with comments like this one from Katie, writing on Refinery 29:

I think perhaps what most people find disappointing in all of the posting about Kim Kardashian is because she doesn’t reflect what most of us would consider the values of a truly strong 21st century woman. R29, from what I can tell, values the forward thinking, independent, and stylish woman; someone who has a career, goals, and (gasp) orgasms. Kim is a mockery of all things that a female role model should be, and not because of her naked photos. Nudity isn’t even shocking anymore. What I’m basically saying is that we, as loyal readers, expect that the women and celebrities that R29 post about and celebrate is a reflection of the company’s values. Much like when there was an uproar over Vogue putting her on the cover because many felt that Kim didn’t reflect the ideal Vogue woman, I find myself resenting R29 for showcasing a woman who frankly defies many of the ideals R29 promotes (you know…like being an intelligent person who’s worth isn’t 100% defined by looks)

 … could we talk about this topic and explore it from multiple angles? Note that Refinery 29 was taking heat for being the lead website writing and promoting the Paper magazine editorial. I admit to being astounded that Katie believes that Kim Kardashian is nothing but a high class porn star. It’s a bit like Victoria’s Secret’s Sophia Neophitou calling Kate Upton a footballer’s wife with a face anyone can buy. 

Paul de Luna's 'Samsara' & The Sacred Feminine

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Paul de Luna’s ‘Samsara’ & The Sacred Feminine

In their book ‘Myths of the Female Divine’, authors David Leeming & Jake Page describe researchers earliest understanding of the Goddess:

Like the human fetus in its early form, Goddess was thoroughly female; she preceded any differentiation into God and Goddess. She seems to have been absolute and parthenogenetic — born of herself — the foundation of all being. She was the All-Giving and the All-Taking, the source of life and death and regeneration. More than a mother goddess or fertility goddess, she appears to have been earth and nature herself, an immense organic, ecological, and conscious whole — one with which we humans would eventually lose touch.

Evidence of Goddess mythology is pervasive around the globe. Scholars studying the ‘sacred feminine’ believe that by the time the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt flourished, the Goddess had dominated human consciousness for 25,000 years.