THE BOOK

Introduction

Chapter 1: A Taxonomy of Divine Birth Priestesshoods

Chapter 2: Divinity, Birth, and Virginity: The Greek Worldview

Chapter 3: Athena’s Divine Birth Priestesshood

Chapter 4: Artemis’s Divine Birth Priestesshood

Chapter 5: Hera’s Divine Birth Priestesshood

Chapter 6: The Divine Birth Priestesshood at Dodona

Chapter 7: The Divine Birth Priestesshood at Delphi

Chapter 8: Is Virgin Birth Possible? and Other Outrageous Questions

Notes

References

Index

Table of contents

The Cult of Divine Birth

in Ancient Greece

From the Introduction of The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece:

Were holy women of ancient Greece once engaged in attempting to conceive children miraculously? . . . .

[S]hards of a Greek history seeming to link women and divine birth have continuously presented themselves

to me, glinting through obscure passages in ancient texts and in the prose of unsuspecting contemporary

scholars. I have collected these pieces, and in this book I have assembled them. The result is a vessel that

may still have many missing parts, but one that begins to reveal an integral form and shape, nonetheless.

During the course of this research I have come to realize there have been so many artifacts staring at us for

2,000 years, in fact, that it is truly stunning no one has put them together before as evidence of possible female cultic practice. Practically all of the legendary heroes who came to head the great genealogical tribes of early Greece, as well as various historical political and spiritual leaders and a handful of humans turned divine, were said to have been born of mortal women through sexual union with gods. Not only were Heracles, Perseus, Theseus, and a host of other legendary heroes associated with divine birth stories, but so were historical figures such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great.

In certain corners of the Graeco-Roman world, it was believed that miraculous conception could occur

through the influence of snakes and celestial rays of light. The healing cult of Asclepius held that women

could be impregnated with supernatural assistance—a belief that was the basis for the entire nearby

Egyptian civilization. The basilinna, the “queen archon” of classical Athens, was even attested to conduct

a secret and presumably sexual rite with the god Dionysus every year. Are such stories and practices—

and many, many more—to be dismissed as mere remnants of mythology—that is, fiction—alone?

Or do they point to something important about the actual beliefs and rites of ancient Greece? . . . .

In Chapters 6 and 7, this book draws together interesting or typically overlooked details regarding the oracles

at Dodona and Delphi, particularly as they relate to women and the feminine. It provides a more comprehensive feminist analysis of the goddess Dione at Dodona, and of the female oracular functionaries at both sites, than has been attempted before. The discussion of the possible connection between these cultic locales and the astral realms of Taurus and the Pleiades opens the window to an expanded understanding of the significance of such star systems in Greek religion and of their relation to the feminine, as well as of prophetesses’ likely engagement with not only the chthonic but also the celestial mysteries.

Text Copyright: Marguerite Rigoglioso

In bringing to light the fact that the dove and the bee were symbols of divine birth, this book further explains

why oracular priestesses at Dodona and Delphi were identified with such totems. Similarly, it renders plain

why the lore of such places was replete with stories of virgin birth. It explicates the Delphic Pythia’s “spousal” relationship with Apollo and, by elucidating the dual understanding of the concept of “conception” as both a physical and mental/oracular process, makes clear why the same verb, anaireô, “to take up,” would have meant both “to give an oracle” and “to conceive in the womb.” In so doing, this book provides a coherent rationale as to why oracular and parthenogenetic aspirations would have been understood as the province, in many cases, of prophetesses.

In its thesis that terms such as parthenos (variously but unsuccessfully defined by classics scholars as “maiden” or “virgin”)

as well as heroine and nymph were titles originally used to denote the priestess of

divine birth, articulated in Chapter 2,

the theory detailed here allows for the

resolution of contradictory meanings and characteristics associated with such words, and lends to a new interpretation of Homer’s “cave of the nymphs” as symbol of virgin birth. This book foregrounds the importance of virginity as a requirement in certain priestesshoods, as well, but clarifies that celibacy originally was a specialized

practice, not a burden imposed on all young women with its later moral connotations.

The theory likewise eases the apparent contradictions associated with the derivationof the Greek parthenos from the Egyptian name Pr thn, allowing for a conjectural definition of the term as the poetic and apt “holy vessel for the divine star being who has descended from the heavenly cow/Hathor/Neith.”

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Marguerite Rigoglioso, The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece, 2009, Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. This extract has been taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive version of this piece may be found in The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece by Marguerite Rigoglioso, which can be purchased from http://www.palgrave.com.