|Commenting on this universal goddess aspect, Professor Cesar Vidal writes,
Here is what various authors say about that one goddess which queen Jezebel was so fond of worshiping:
We read from Watson’s Biblical and Archaeological Dictionary, 1833:
|As early as the twenty-fifth century B.C., people of Ur of the Chaldees in Sumeria worshiped a mother-goddess named Ishtar. Around the same time the Minoans of Crete had a mother-goddess portrayed with “her divine child Velchanos” in her arms. Later, the people of Cyprus revered a goddess who appeared to have been patterned after the Sumerian Ishtar and later adopted by the Greeks as Aphrodite, or Astarte.The Babylonians, who conquered Sumeria around the twenty-second century B.C., related their religious beliefs to the heavenly bodies. They regarded the planets as gods and goddesses and equated the planet Venus with the Sumerian mother-goddess Ishtar.The Babylonians worshiped Ishtar as “The Virgin,” “The Holy Virgin,” “The Virgin Mother,” “Goddess of Goddesses,” and “Queen of Heaven and Earth.” They exclaimed, “Ishtar is great! Ishtar is Queen! My Lady is exalted, my Lady is Queen…There is none like unto her.”
They called her “Shining light of heaven, light of the world, enlightener of all places where men dwell, who gatherest together the hosts of the nations”; and they claimed, “Where thou glancest, the dead come to life, and the sick rise and walk; the mind of the diseased is healed when it looks upon thy face.”
In Babylonian mythology Ishtar wore a crown and was related to Tammuz, who sometimes was portrayed as her son and other times as her lover.
It appears that the Sumerian-Babylonian Ishtar was the counterpart of the Egyptian Isis and the model for the Grecian Aphrodite, Roman Venus, Assyrian Nina, Phrygian and Roman Cybele, Phoenician Astarte, and Astarte of Syria. In essence they were the same mother-goddess.
The Egyptians called Isis “the Great Mother” and “the Mother of God.” Isis worship spread to Italy by the second century and then throughout the entire Roman Empire. There the goddess was portrayed with her “divine child Horus” in her arms and widely acclaimed as “Queen of Heaven” and “Mother of God.”
The people of Phoenicia worshiped Baal. Baalism included the worship of Molech with fiery sacrifices of children and the worship of Astarte, the Phoenician Ishtar Queen of Heaven.
When the Phoenician princess Jezebel became the wife of King Ahab of the northern Kingdom of Israel, she influenced him to fully establish Baal worship in his realm (Melakhim Alef / 1 Kings 16:29-33; 21:25-26). This move entangled the people of Israel in Queen-of-Heaven worship. As a result, HaShem (G-d) judged them with the Assyrian Captivity, (Melachim Bet / 2 Kings 17:5-7, 16-18).
|Ashtart (either “the Star”, or “She of the Womb”), is better known by the name Astarte, the Greek version of Her name. Ashtart is a Semitic Goddess of Love and War and the Canaanite Great Goddess who is the cult partner of Ba’al (“the King”). Semitic describes a group of languages, and by extension, kindred cultures of the Near East and Africa which include Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew and Assyrian. She is the Deity of the Planet Venus and a Fertility Goddess, and Her cult was known throughout the ancient world for its practice of temple prostitution. She was the main Deity of the cities Sor (more familiarly Tyre), Zidon (Sidon) and Gubla (Byblos), and is frequently shown as an archer either beside or standing on a lion, much like the Babylonian Ishtar, who is quite similar. Snakes and the cypress tree are sacred to Her; and, like the related Arabic Goddess Al-Uzza, whose name, “the Mighty One”, is an epithet of Ashtart, the acacia tree is also Hers.As with many of the other Near Eastern Goddesses of the planet Venus, two of Her aspects are that of the Goddess of War and the Goddess of Love. As Venus the Morning Star, Ashtart is a Goddess of War and Hunting; and as the Evening Star, She is the Goddess of Love, Sex, Fertility and Vitality, depicted as a nude woman. In Her role as Goddess of Love She was honored with sexual rites, especially in the city of Sidon or Zidon, and some of Her priests and priestesses there were chosen from the royal family.
For some time Ashtart under the name Ashtoreth seems to have been worshipped side by side with the Hebrew God as His consort; He was early on called Ba’al, a general title meaning “Lord”, used in the area to refer to each people’s particular patron God, though their real (and sometimes secret) names were different. This fell out of favor in time as the Hebrews transitioned to monotheism. Apparently they had a hard time with this, though, as Jehovah is forever chiding His people for “backsliding” and returning to the worship of Ba’al and Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth in the Bible is worshipped in groves called after Her asherah and may have been honored as a pillar of wood, or as manifest in the grove itself. In one tale from the Biblical book Judges, Jehovah has Gideon destroy his own father’s shrines to Ba’al and Ashtoreth, which he does in the middle of the night under cover of darkness, as he was too scared of the repercussions to do it in broad daylight.
King Solomon, famous for his great wisdom, was said to have had 700 wives, many of whom were from neighboring, Pagan, tribes. To accommodate their religions, he built for them temples to their Gods, including a sanctuary to Ashtart in Jerusalem. Jehovah, known far and wide for His jealousy, couldn’t tolerate this and brought about Solomon’s death. On other occasions when the Hebrews reverted to the old religion, Jehovah in a divine fit of pique “gave them over into the hands of their enemies” (also from Judges).
Ashtart also had temples in Ascalon in Philistia, about 40 miles southwest of Jerusalem, and Beth-shean, or Scythopolis, near the Sea of Galilee. She is also said to be the mother of the maiden Yabarodmay, by Ba’al.
The Goddess Athirat-of-the-Sea, who also features in the Ba’al legend, is the wife of El, the Father of the Gods; She has much in common with Ashtart and the two may be aspects of the same Goddess. Some sources make Athirat the Goddess worshipped by the Hebrews as Jehovah’s consort; the two are quite confused, both by modern scholars and the ancients.
Ashtart’s name has many variations depending on the language or city in which She was worshipped. Some examples: She is Astarte to the Greeks, Ashtoreth or Ashtaroth among the Hebrews, ‘Attart or ‘Athtart in the city of Ugarit, Astartu in Akkadian.
Epithets: “Goddess of Heaven”, “Ashtart-Name-of-Ba’al”, “Ashtart-of-the-Sky-of-Ba’al”, “the Strong One”, “Ashtart-of-the-Fields”, “Ashtart-of-the-Battle”; and Kbd, “Glory”
She is the western Semitic equivilant of the Eastern Semitic Inanna of the Sumerians and Ishtar of the Babylonians; the Greeks identified Her with their Aphrodite, who may have Her origins in Ashtart anyway, as She was believed to have come from the East. Atargatis is confused or equated with Her, and may have originally been the same Goddess; Ba’alat, “the Lady” of Gubla (Byblos) is likely a title for Ashtart. She was equated by the Etruscans with their Mother and Sky Goddess Uni, and is related to Tanit of Carthage. thaliatook.com
Cultural Alter Egos
As already alluded to above, Ashtoreth/Ashtaroth goes by many different names as many different nations and cultures have either worshiped her in the past, or are still worshiping this deity to this date. Let’s focus on some of the more prominent alternative names she went by or still goes by.
|Easter began long before the time of Christ. Easter was the Ishtar celebration. Ishtar, Astarte, Ashtoreth were all the same. It was a single pagan goddess that was worshiped under various names in different countries over the centuries. As we trace the historical background of this goddess, we can see where Easter got its name, how our modern practice of sunrise worship originated, and why it is always commemorated at a certain time each spring. The story of Easter also helps explain where Sunday sacredness began, and the origin of virgin worship:This mother goddess was variously known as Astarte, Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Cybele, Demeter, Ceres, Aphrodite, Venus, and Freya.
|(pronounced EASTER) of Assyria was worshiped in Pagan Antiquity during her spring festival! Collier’s Encyclopedia, 1980, Volume 15, page 748, gives us this information:Ishtar, goddess of love and war, the most important goddess of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon. Her name in Sumerian is Inanna (lady of heaven). She was sister of the sun god Shamash and daughter of the moon god Sin. Ishtar was equated with the planet Venus. Her symbol was a star inscribed in a circle. As goddess of war, she was often represented sitting upon a lion. As goddess of physical love, she was patron of the temple prostitutes. She was also considered the merciful mother who intercedes with the gods on behalf of her worshipers. Throughout Mesopotamian history she was worshiped under various names in many cities; one of the chief centers of her cult was Uruk.|
|Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. In the Babylonian pantheon, she “was the divine personification of the planet Venus”.Ishtar was above all associated with sexuality: her cult involved sacred prostitution; her holy city Uruk was called the “town of the sacred courtesans”; and she herself was the “courtesan of the gods”. Ishtar had many lovers; however, as Guirand notes,
|(Hebrew astart”) is rendered ASHTORETH in most of the older biblical translations due to the insertion of the vowels from the Hebrew word “boset” meaning “shame” to form “astoret“. This method of insult is also used for some personal names, specifically Eshbaal of 1 Chronicles 8:33 and 9:39 who is called Ish-bosheth in 2 Samuel 2:10 and 2:12. ASTARTE is the sister of BAAL, equivalent to the Akkadian ISHTAR, and derived from the Sumerian goddess INANNA. She is a goddess of war, love, storms, the evening star, and of the storehouse. She is also called the queen of heaven|
|Astarte, the ancient Phoenician great goddess of fertility, motherhood, and war, is the counterpart of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, and is one of the oldest Middle Eastern aspects of the great Goddess, dating to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Tammuz also is identified as her son/consort as he is with Ishtar. According to legend Astarte descended to earth as a fiery star, landing near Byblos in a lake at Alphaca, the site where the original Tammuz is said to have died.The Phoenicians portrayed Astarte with cow horns, representing fertility. The Assyrians and Babylonians pictured her caressing a child. She was associated with the moon and called the Mother of the Universe, giver of all live on Earth. She ruled all spirits of the dead residing in heaven, visible from earth as stars; hence came her name Astroarche, “Queen of the Stars.” She was called the mother of souls in heaven, the Moon surrounded by her star-children, to whom she gave their “astral” (starry) bodies. Occultists still refer to the astral body as the invisible double, without remembering the term’s original connotation of starlight.Her other counterparts are Isis, Hathor of Egypt, Kali of India, and Aphrodite and Demeter of Greece. However, the mother goddess in the Ras Shamra texts appears as Anat, Athirat, and Athtart, or Astrate. Anat, the consort and sister of Baal, the most active Canaanite god, was called the “lady of the mountain,” and it was through the flattery of El that Baal was allowed to build a house on Saphon, a mountain situated in “the sides of the north.” In spite of her maiden and mother titles Anat was an aggressive goddess who slew Baal enemies, waded in the blood of her human victims, and desired to possess Aqhat’s bow. She was pictured with helmet, battle-axe, and spear. In Egypt, where the Hyksos invaders introduced her, the cow horns of Hathor became part of her iconography.|
|Semiramis, who was both Nimrod’s wife and mother, was worshiped as the “mother of god“83 and a “fertility goddess” because she had to be extremely fertile to give birth to all the pagan incarnate gods that represented Nimrod. She was worshiped throughout the world by each the titles associated with Nimrod’s worship, in addition to many titles unique to herself (Table 2, page 15). For instance, the respective Greek and Roman names applied to the worship of Semiramis include: Aphrodite and Venus, the goddess of love84; Artemis and Diana, the goddess of hunting and childbirth85; Athena and Minerva, the goddess of crafts, war and wisdom86; Demeter and Ceres, the goddess of growing things87; Gaea and Terra, symbol of the fertile earth88; Hera and Juno, the protector of marriage and women, who was the sister and wife of Zeus in Greek mythology, and the wife of Jupiter in Roman mythology89; Hestia and Vesta, the goddess of the hearth90; plus Rhea or Ops, who was wife and sister of the Greek horned-god Kronos.91MOTHER AND SON WORSHIPSemiramis was initially included in the pagan Babylonian trinity as the holy spirit or seed of the divine son in his mother’s womb. Within time, however, the father Nimrod was practically overlooked and worshiped only as the god-incarnate son in his mother’s arms. In other words, the father became invisible and was no longer worshiped, whereas, the mother with the god-incarnate son in her arms became the grand object of worship.92 Numerous Babylonian monuments show the goddess-mother Semiramis with her son in arms (Figure 2, pages 16, 17). This worship of mother and child spread throughout the known world, and given different names in the various languages of the world. Ancient Germans worshipped the virgin Hertha with child in arms. Scandinavians called her Disa pictured with child. The Egyptian mother and child were worshiped as Isis with the infant Osiris or Horus seated on his mother’s lap. In India, the mother and child were called Devaki and Krishna, and also Isi and Iswara as they are worshiped to this day. In Asia, they were known as Cybele and Deoius; in pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as Ceres, the great mother with babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms.
The image of mother with child in her arms was so firmly entrenched in the pagan mind that by the time Christianity appeared on the scene in 30 A.D., these statues and paintings were merely renamed and worshiped as the virgin Mary with her god-incarnate son Jesus. Thus, the pagan mother and child entered Christianity as the Roman Catholic worship of Mary with the infant Jesus. In fact, in Tibet, China, and Japan, Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the counterpart of the madonna and child as devoutly worshiped as they were in Rome. Shing Moo, the holy mother in China was portrayed with a child in her arms and a glory around her, exactly as if she had been fashioned by Roman Catholic artisans.
|Nimrod was the greatest rebel in history. The root word of Nimrod is drm [M-R-D, to rebel]. This comes down into English in the words murder and marauder.· People spoke of Nimrod as being “before the LORD”. “Before” is the Hebrew ~wnp [panim], which basically means face. Thus, he thrust himself up to the face of YHWH in rebellion, putting himself between God and the people. Their attention was focused on him, not their God. And so it is to this day! [This is the same word as in “thou shalt have no other gods before Me”; i.e., we are to shove no other gods in His face.]· Nimrod was the first world tyrant, marshalling the 70 families into the Tower of Babel enterprise, whereby the language was confused, and the human race was dispersed all over the planet.
· His female consort became—as did he—by many different names in different languages and places. Some of her names were Semiramis, Ashtoreth, Ishtar, Astarte, Isis, Eostre (which comes down to modern English as Easter). She had the title, “Queen of Heaven”—which persists as the title the Roman Catholics call “Mary”.
|Isis, an Egyptian goddess of magic, fertility and motherhood, was the daughter of the god Keb (Earth) and the goddess Nut (Sky). She was the sister and wife of Osiris. When her brother Seth killed her husband, Isis searched for his body and reassembled it, making her also a goddess of the dead. She impregnated herself from Osiris’ body and gave birth to Horus. Isis is often depicted wearing cow horns with a solar disk between them.
|The Egyptian goddess Isis is one of the goddesses that stood the test of time. Isis is the Greek form of more ancient Egyptian names, and the name Isis is associated with the word for “throne.” Originally, Isis was known as Aset, or Eset. Isis is worshipped today, just as she has been for thousands of years, as the Lady of Heaven, The Great Enchantress, Goddess of Magic, The Goddess of Love and War, the Giver of Life, Queen of the Gods, and Goddess of Marriage and Protection.Isis was able to give the gift of immortality. For this reason, she is often portrayed wearing or carrying an Ankh. The Ankh is an ancient symbol for eternal life. The symbol is similar to that of a cross, but it has a looped top. Isis is sometimes seen wearing horns and a solar disk atop her head. She is sometimes pictured with wings. Isis is occasionally shown with a cow’s head or with the sign of a throne on her head.Isis is one of the only winged deities in Egyptian myth. She is sometimes representative of the wind, as in the legend of Osiris. One version of the legend tells of Isis using her wings to fill Osiris’ mouth and nose with air. For those people who recognize Isis as a force at work in their life; the wind takes on a magical face. The simple act of walking outside on a windy day brings about a refreshing of the soul.|
|Eminent author and historian, Will Durant, writes of this Isis-goddess connection,
“Great Mother,” “Queen of Heaven,” “Mother of God.” All of these titles have been attached to Isis. Ishtar too, the Babylonian goddess, had similar titles. Moreover, the lines between the various goddesses of antiquity blur, with each mirroring the other in terms of purpose, symbolism, and meaning.
|This ancient goddess, however, predates even her Cypriot and Greek forms. In Sumer she was known as Inanna, in Babylon and Assyria Ishtar, the Egyptians called her Hathor, Quaddesha and Aset, to the Phoenicians she was Astarte, to the Hebrews Ashtoreth and Ashera, and to the Philistines Atergatis. And Homer’s tale that Zeus and his female form Dione were her parents creates an interesting paradox. Her foam-born birth occurred when Zeus’ father Saturn castrated Zeus’ grandfather Uranus (preceding paragraph). At that point Saturn had yet to father his Olympian children, including Zeus himself.
|Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, lust, procreation, sexual reproduction and fertility. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. She is also the protector of the sailors and the myrtle, the dove, the sparrow, the swan, the apple, the scallop shell and the mirror are sacred to her. She is accompanied by the winged god of love called Eros.Aphrodite the goddess of love has her origins from ancient civilizations. Her origins can be traced from the old Asian Goddesses like the Mesopotamian Ishtar and the Palestinian goddess i.e.the ancient Semitic goddess of love Ishtar. So the Greek were not the first to worship the goddess of love. Matter of fact the ancient Greeks themselves believed that Aphrodite was both Greek and foreign in origin. It is said that she was in fact “Cyprian” and many of her attributes reflect the origins of Asian Mycenaean times. She is a mix of Hellenic or Aegean Goddess. She also latter got identified with Venus the Roman goddess of love. Her offspring’s are said to be the founder ruling clan of the roman civilization.|
|Like Ishtar, the Greek Aphrodite and Northwestern Semitic Astarte were love goddesses who were “as cruel as they were wayward”. Donald A. Mackenzie, an early popularizer of mythology, draws a parallel between the love goddess Aphrodite and her “dying god” lover Adonis on one hand, and the love goddess Ishtar and her “dying god” lover Tammuz on the other. Some scholars have suggested that
Joseph Campbell, a more recent popularizer of mythology, equates Ishtar, Inanna, and Aphrodite, and he draws a parallel between the Egyptian goddess Isis who nurses Horus, and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who nurses the god Tammuz.
|A Great Mother goddess of war is also the Hindu Kali, known both for her cruelty and for her motherly care for all creation. Kali is sometimes considered an aspect of another Hindu war goddess, Durga, about whom the following story is told on the site ‘Goddesses of War’:Durga, a fierce warrior, was born during a lengthy battle between the Hindu gods and an army of demons. In desperation, the gods gathered together and breathed in unison. A ferocious fire blazed forth from their mouths, out of which Durga was born — a fully grown warrior, ready to fight.The gods quickly gave her a lion (or, some say, a tiger), to mount, and a weapon for each of her ten hands. Durga advanced toward the demons — one of them in the form of a buffalo, which is reminiscent of the Chinese story cited above. As her arms flashed with their weapons, within moments she had slaughtered all the demons.
On a site dedicated to her particularly, Durga is said to represent the power of the Supreme Being Shiva, to whom she was married, who preserves moral order and righteousness in creation. She is called “Divine Mother”, and one of her epithets is Maha, which means “Great” or “Terrific.” She had three divine children, two sons and a daughter.
It seems obvious that both Athena and Durga, springing forth with full armor ready for battle out of the effort of male divinities, were created by patriarchal societies. However, their respective characters present them as much more ancient female figures who had adapted masculine ideas of women’s loyalties. Both goddesses, besides being in charge of war, kept the main function of both fertility and wisdom belonging to ancient female divinities.
|Hindu mythology tells us that once Kali had killed all the demons in the battle, intoxicated by her triumph, she set out on a killing spree, putting to death anyone who crossed her path, and adorning herself with the heads and limbs of her victims. Her consort, Lord Shiva , asked her to desist, but Kali paid no heed. He then lay down beside the corpses. When Kali accidentally stepped on him, she realized her mistake. And she stuck out her tongue in shame.Many statues of Kali capture this moment. They depict the goddess with wild eyes, with one leg resting on her husband’s chest, and with her tongue protruding. Apart from this pose, statues of Kali standing, and of Kali dismayed after losing the dancing competition to Lord Shiva, are also popular.In most statues and sculptures of Goddess Kali, she is shown in the nude, and is portrayed as being very dark. She is depicted as having four arms and hands. The left arms hold a sword and a severed head, and the right are held in a blessing pose.|
Roman Catholic Mary
|“Essentially it [the myth of Demeter and Persephone] was the same myth as that of Isis and Osiris in Egypt, Tammuz and Ishtar in Babylonia, Astarte and Adonis in Syria, Cybele and Attis in Phrygia. The cult of motherhood survived through classical times to take new life in the worship of Mary the Mother of God.”–Will Durant, History of Civilization, Vol. 2, p. 178. pathlights.com
|Some scholars hold Astarte was a prototype of the Virgin Mary. Their theory is based on the ancient Syrian and Egyptian rituals of celebrating Astarte’s rebirth of the solar god on December 25th. A cry was heard that the Virgin had brought forth a newborn child, which was exhibited. Sir James Frazer in the Golden Bough writes, “No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess, in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte.” The theory that credits Astarte as being a prototype of the Virgin Mary made be given creditability by many who accept that Christ was born on December 25th; but not by those who do not believe this was the date of Christ’s birth, and say the exact date is unknown. A.G.H.
Our Lady of Fatima
|Our Lady of Fátima (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈfatimɐ]) is a title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary with respect to reported apparitions of her to three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on 13 May. The three children were Lúcia Santos and her cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco Marto. The title of Our Lady of the Rosary is also sometimes used in reference to the same apparition (although it was first used in 1208 for the reported apparition in the church of Prouille), because the children related that the apparition specifically identified herself as the “Lady of the Rosary”. It is also common to see a combination of these titles, i.e. Our Lady of the Rosary of Fátima (Portuguese: ”Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima”). The events at Fatima gained particular fame due to their elements of prophecy and eschatology, particularly with regard to possible world war and the conversion of Russia. The reported apparitions at Fatima were officially declared “worthy of belief” by the Catholic Church. wikipedia (Our Lady Fatima)
|What is Fatima?Fatima is Heaven’s intervention to save us from persecution, war, annihilation, enslavement and Hell.
Fatima is a visit by Our Heavenly Mother Mary in our time for our time. It is a Message of concern, a practical plan for world peace, a promise of Heaven.It is Heaven’s intervention to save us from persecution, martyrdom, war, enslavement or annihilation. Above all it’s a way to save our souls from Hell. It is meant for you and for me.
Today Our Lady, by Divine Providence, invites you to learn The Whole Truth About Fatima by giving you this opportunity to know Her beautiful Message of Fatima.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, appeared 6 times to 3 shepherd children; Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta, between May 13 and October 13, 1917 when She came to the little village of Fatima which had remained faithful to the Catholic Church during the recent persecutions by the government.
Our Lady’s Message
Our Lady of Fatima came with a message from God to every man, woman and child of our century, promising that the whole world would be in peace, and that many souls would go to Heaven if Her requests were listened to and obeyed.
She told us that war is a punishment for sin; that God would punish the world for its sins in our time by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church and persecution of the Holy Father, the Pope, unless we listened to and obeyed the commands of God.
She may claim to be the “Mother of God,” “Queen of Heaven,” goddess of this, that or the other, but in actual fact she’ll just always be a devil in disguise: