di John Feo
Adapted from Marija Gimbutas - Twenty years of Goddess study - Proceedings of the conference of the same name – Rome 9-10 May 2014 – Laima Editorial Project – Turin
The traditional mythological icon associated with the city of Rome, the she-wolf and the twins, has been interpreted according to different points of view, as is natural when one comes across archetypal symbols and motifs, pertaining to an ancient and important myth of origins.
After the revolutionary studies of the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, it is now possible to re-read and interpret the legend of the origins of Rome from a different and more coherent perspective.
In his latest book The living goddesses, Gimbutas has dedicated an entire chapter to the Etruscan civilization, including it in the group of historical civilizations derived from Ancient Europe of the Neolithic (Old Europe). Civilizations characterized by the cult of a Great Goddess of the earth, before the advent of warrior and patriarchal peoples (Kurgan) coming from the East.
Authoritative historians, both ancient and modern, have already underlined the importance of the feminine principle and of women in Etruscan religion and society, given that it is profoundly in dissonance with contemporary Greek and Roman societies. But only after the detailed historical, archaeological and myth-historical investigations of Gimbutas that it is possible to attest, with objective findings and scientific data, the original "matrifocal" character of the Etruscan civilization; without this, both the origins of Rome and of Christianity remain devoid of historical background.
Etruria, Rome, Christianity in fact constitute the parallel and founding historical roots of modern Europe; and it is to Ancient Neolithic Europe and the "Indo-European" invasions that we need to look to identify the original metahistorical motives and impulses which then, in historical times, made ancient Italy the seat of the first world empire and of the first religion of the West.
The main myth of the origins of the Etruscan religion, a religion "revealed" by a divine event, already contains all the key elements: according to the myth, the "revelation" would have taken place in the countryside of Tarquinia, by Tages, "son of mother earth ”, a genius born from a furrow opened in the earth, just like a true “son of the earth”. The aspect of the genius Tages is paradoxical, exceptional, being a divine and supernatural being: he has the appearance of an infant, but he possesses the wisdom of a wise old man. It is the well-known archetypal motif of the puer-senex. At her unexpected appearance, the lucumons, the Etruscan priest-kings, gather and transcribe the Tagetic (or Acherontic) Books, concerning the secrets of the underworld, the dark telluric womb of the earth-goddess. The importance of the feminine principle in the Etruscan religion clearly emerges from the myth.
Historians and chroniclers of the Roman age have unanimously handed down that the major Etruscan divinity was a goddess, Voltumna. Representatives of the twelve Etruscan regions went annually to the national shrine dedicated to her, the Fanum Voltumnae of Volsinii, to celebrate the common cult and common origins. The confederation of the twelve tribes was in fact founded on a sacred alliance, not on political or military bases.
But who was Voltumna?
To answer it is necessary to remove the Roman, Christian, medieval and modern stratifications that have superimposed themselves on the original figure of the Etruscan goddess.
“The goddess Volturna or Voltumna of the Etruscans corresponds to the goddess Fortuna of the Romans, names deriving from the ancient verb vote, which means "to reverse, to change": in fact the goddess Voltumna or Fortuna had the prerogative of being able to change the course of events" (from Clemente Lanzi, Historical memories on the castrense region, Farnese). The aforementioned definition has always been considered appropriate by linguists and scholars of the Etruscan past. But, during the twenty years of Fascism, the founding father of modern studies of "Etruscology", Professor Massimo Pallottino, developed and made known in one of his successful books, translated into several languages, what he believed was the identity of Voltumna: a bisexual god, perhaps androgynous, patron of war and… of fertility, sometimes with monstrous features…
Today, we can see that Prof. Pallottine did not detect a basic historical datum: in all the pantheons of polytheistic religions of the historical age – Rome, Greece, Egypt, Crete, Mesopotamia, etc. – the assembly of gods was always ruled by a couple, a male sky god and an earth goddess. And this is also the case of the Etruscan religion, whose pantheon was led by Veltha (in Latin Veltumnus or Vertumnus), the sun god, and by Voltumna who can be compared to the Fortuna of the Romans.
In the archaic age the goddess had various names and epithets: Urcla, Urthia, Ursia, Norzia. Her characteristics are evident: she is the goddess with the cornucopia from which come the fruits of the earth, the fertilizing waters and all the abundant wealth of the earthly world.
The goddess was also at the center of an astral cult: her priestesses (lasae) – whose rich tombs were found in Bolsena – attended a special rite mentioned in the ancient chronicles. During the traditional annual assembly in honor of the goddess, at the temple of Volsinii, a long nail was ritually driven into a cell of the temple of the goddess. The ritual served to magically fix the passage of time, according to a measurement of time useful for the formulation of the sacred calendar.
In other words, the cult of the stars, astronomical observation and that of lightning were practiced at the temple of Voltumna (ars fulguralis) that a woman, “nymph and sibyl”, lasa Vecu, he had revealed to the "fulgurator" of Chiusi Arruns Velthumnus.
The primary role played by Etruscan women in the religious sphere is testified precisely by the tradition relating to lasae; nymphs and sibyls in the fable transposition, but people who really existed in important social and religious contexts, as followers of the famous and renowned Etruscan "discipline", a body of knowledge jealously preserved in sacred books, concerning the laws of Heaven, Earth and Hell.
Another aspect of the Etruscan goddess is manifested in the totemic icon of the Capitoline she-wolf: the underworld, chthonic aspect, typical of a goddess of the volcanic subsoil, queen of the dark forces of the underworld.
Etruscan Hades, as evidenced by the frescoes of Orvieto (Golini tomb) and Tarquinia (Orcus tomb) and various figurative finds, was the kingdom of Aita and Phersipnai, depicted as wolf-gods.
Pliny, in Natural history, says that a "monster" called Volta lived in Volsinii (Bolsena), who killed, burned and terrorized the population of the lake. To defeat him rushed Porsenna, lucumone and fulgurator of Chiusi.
Lake Bolsena is the second largest volcanic lake in the world, its slopes of lava and tuff have always been seismic territory, with telluric fumes coming out and volcanic thermalism phenomena. The infernal force of the lake-volcano was for the Etruscans, not the "monster” fabled by the Roman Pliny, but rather the dangerous aspect of the goddess, in her role as queen of the chthonic world.
In six Etruscan funerary urns (from Volterra and Chiusi), the sculptural reliefs show the same scene: the lucumone and the fulgurator Porsenna stop the monster Volta with a ritual gesture as he is about to emerge from a well; the appearance of the monster is that of the wolf. The monster Pliny was therefore the volcano itself, its frightening awakenings and upheavals. His name, Volta, is homologous to that of the great goddess Voltumna.
The she-wolf of the legend of Rome dates back to a religion much older than Rome itself. The cult of the wolf was widespread among many peoples of ancient Italy: Dauni, Lucani, Irpini, Latins, Sabines, Etruscans and others.
Alongside the she-wolf, in later times, Romulus and Remus, the twins (from the Etruscan name) were added. According to a well-known interpretation, the Roman twins would be in connection with the Hellenic cult of the Dioscuri, particularly widespread in the warlike Sparta. But since we are in the presence of an archaic mythologeme, multifaceted and prismatic, it is also possible to evaluate a different view.
The myth of twins, one of whom is destined to die, dates back to the patriarchal and warrior world of the first Neolithic hunters, where the killing of a chosen victim, animal or human, was a fundamental and necessary part of the sacrificial rite.
The death of one of the twins alludes to the annual sacrifice of a victim, the scapegoat, in use in ancient societies of hunting peoples and the cultures derived from them.
The fratricidal myth is typical of cultures marked by war practices, the so-called "societies of domination" and can be seen tragically in action in the progressive rise of the history of Rome; after the Etruscans, who had founded it, were driven out, a period of endless internal wars began for Rome in the XNUMXth century PEC. Etruria was definitively conquered only in the middle of the XNUMXrd century. The bloodbath continued with the successive civil wars, between Mario and Silla, between Caesar and Antonio, up to the conquest of Europe and then of Egypt and Asia.
With the birth of the Roman Republic, in 510 PEC, the first major war industry in the West began to develop; in the new Roman state the exclusion of women and the priestly caste from the government of public affairs was gradually carried out.
From what has been said it is evident that the Etruscan world, governed by a confederation established on sacred alliances, where women and the feminine principle had their relevant natural and spiritual space, "that world" was in profound antithesis with the Roman imperialist character and it was inevitably destined to be won, devalued and forgotten. The patriarchal, militaristic and anti-feminine culture of Rome imposed itself by force of arms and only today, after more than two millennia, is it possible to reveal its grandiose and deadly face, which generations of historians have uncritically exalted, forgetting a non-secondary detail, the true face and secret name of the original Rome: amor, Rome read backwards. The tradition of the "secret" name of Rome obviously refers to a "secret" and unofficial history of the city.
Originally, the name of the city was linked to the goddess Venus, whose star had followed Aeneas fleeing Troy. Entering the Roman Forum, the first temple you come across is the "double" sanctuary of Amor and Rome, known as the double temple of Venus. Not by chance, another female temple is located in the center of the Forum, that of Vesta.
The goddess Venus, Vesta, the Capitoline she-wolf were the various faces of a female divinity, patroness of the city of Rome who, in a certain historical moment, denied her origins, becoming the mother of the most intolerant conflicts, wars and tyrannies.
The contribution of the myth-archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to Etruscan and Roman history is fundamental. You allow us to re-read in a critical key the epochal passage of the sixth century PEC, when the current western civilization began to take shape, on the site of Rome. Having ousted Etruscan culture and spirituality from the Republic together with women and priests, Rome devoted itself to the art of war, relegating the primacy of civilization to its generals and leaders.
But it is now time for the "twins" to be reconciled. And history can return to being a free territory, no longer exclusive to the "winners", their "stories" and their acolytes. Marija Gimbutas has left a task to carry on: rebuilding the true identity of the peoples and civilizations of our past who perceived the earth and the cosmos as places of sharing and not of domination.
The non-ideologicalized history of Rome has yet to be written, as does that of early Christianity. The true history of the Etruscan civilization, devalued, trivialized and reduced to a marginal phenomenon, is a theme that can today make many "Americas" discover.
John Feo
Writer and researcher, he dedicated himself to the knowledge of the Etruscan territory and the sacred geography of the Etruscans and other ancient pre-Roman peoples, favoring a multidisciplinary approach in research, with particular regard to the different forms of spirituality of pre-classical civilizations.
In 2004 he discovered the astronomical “temple” of Poggio Rota (culture of Rinaldone, Pitigliano GR). In 2013 he published with Luigi Torlai the first mapping of the alignment grid discovered in the Fiora valley and in the Bolsena lake (The land and sky of the Etruscans, Venice 2013).
Adapted from Marija Gimbutas - Twenty years of Goddess study - Proceedings of the conference of the same name – Rome 9-10 May 2014 – Laima Editorial Project – Turin
Selected bibliography:
- Etruscan mysteries (2000)
- Before the Etruscans (2001)
- Sacred geography (2006)
- The Etruscan cave ways (2007)
- The religion of the Etruscans (2011)
- Sacred art and witchcraft (2012)
- The lost temple of the Etruscans (2014)
