Vacuna, the goddess who exists and does not exist

di Enrica Tedeschi

Those who considered her indigenous and autochthonous (Vespasian and Titus Tatius) defined her as daughter of Sabo, mythical king of the Sabines, and granddaughter of Sanco (god of oaths, main male Sabine deity). According to other narratives (Varro and Dionysius of Halicarnassus), the goddess arrived in Italy with the Pelasgians. In any case, Vacuna possesses the traits of the great Mediterranean mother (Pestalozza 1964, 2019; Bonanno & Buttitta 2021). After all, Sabina was inhabited since the Paleolithic.
She is the dominant goddess of the pantheon of the Sabine people, whose archaic origins were linked to the Osco-Umbrian culture, and perhaps also to the Greeks of Sparta.
Classical authors, especially Romans and Greeks, painted it in an impressionistic style: ancient, mysterious, dark. Basically, a blurry image. Uncertain it is perhaps the most recurring adjective in the literature concerning it, as the data and descriptions are uncertain, in every sense: iconographic, mythological-narrative, cultic and geographical.
Despite the definition of "mother of the gods", she is elusive and elusive: an ephemeral vision, marked by silence and fog. But also an effigy on which to project multiple thaumaturgical powers, for the support and protection of her devotees. Thanks to her polysemy and multifunctionality, she was identified with many other classical goddesses, but every association with Roman and Greek divinities was rooted in historical-political rather than religious and cultic instances (Saggioro 2016).
In any case, after millennia of silence, it has now been reawakened: the attention of scholars, which for a long time was focused only on the culture of the Romans and, at most, the Etruscans, in recent years has begun to turn to other indigenous peoples of the pre-Romanesque age (Gentili, 2018), bringing to light precious fragments of archaic cultures of great interest. The narrative of the indigenous people, in fact, has abandoned the cliché that defined them as primitive and crude, rediscovering refined and evolved cultures. Like that of the Sabines, who gave lifeblood and genius to the birth of Rome, and were great protagonists of the events of ancient Italy, operating cultural and political mediations between the local lineages and the Romans.

Who is Vacuna

From a strictly technical point of view, we must take into account the opinion of Alessandro Saggioro, according to whom the data in our possession do not allow us to establish certain connections with Vacuna, "even if the reference to female domination in the literary, epigraphic and iconographic documentation constitutes a non-negligible index" (Saggioro 2016: 189; trad.mia). However, Vacuna shares this "uncertainty" with most of the myth-rites that have come down to us from the distant past: the anthropologist and the sociologist would say that we were unable to interview the witnesses, we were unable to carry out field research, nor ethnographic observation. With the data available, we can only make more or less realistic hypotheses. And that's what we will do with the uncertain Vacuna.
Even for the ancients the goddess was an enigma. “Vacuna in Sabinis dea sub incerta species est formed”, writes Orazio: Vacuna is mysterious, elusive, indefinable, almost invisible. Her sanctuary is dilapidated, ruined, abandoned. She and she is also silent.
The authors who describe her do not fail to underline that she is a very ancient and obscure divinity. The goddess seems to want to hide her identity, also because she is associated and confused with other deities of ancient Italy: Victoria, Bellona, ​​Diana, Minerva, Ceres, Venus.
Like other Sabine deities, she prefers the cult dedicated to her to take place outdoors, in the clearings that open up in the woods. However, she does not disdain temples and sanctuaries, traces of which are emerging especially in recent years, thanks to a renewed archaeological interest (Nelli 2020; Borlenghi, Betori, Giletti 2020). The trees, the hills and above all the waters are dear to her.
The iconography that represents her is scarce, almost non-existent. Her symbolic traits are vague, since she is associated with the cycle of agricultural production, with emphasis on the final phase of the harvest: a trait common to almost all female deities of pre-modern cultures founded on agriculture. However, some connotations about her are specific to her:

• the focus on break which follows the toil of the last harvest, or the midday hour, the shadowless hour, which involves a special emphasis on the dimension of rest after work, on the emptiness that follows activity;
• the link with thewater, in cold species and in all its forms, from rain to springs to lakes, with emphasis on the oracular and thaumaturgical properties of the aquatic element.

George Dumézil welcomes the reading of Ovid, therefore the concept of vacuum need emptiness (absence, emptiness), and notes that the invocation of the goddess is especially intense when faced with the void left by someone dear to us. He turned to Vacuna to ask that an absence (due to war, travel or illness) would not end badly. Thanks to her polysemy, the goddess would have been able to “fill many forms of emptiness” (Dumézil 1985; Nicolai 2020). Frazer's interpretation develops the theme of a void being filled by renewal, following the pattern of rites of passage (van Gennep 1909), and highlighting the goddess's powers of regeneration. He defines her as “a medical goddess, endowed with healing power” (Frazer 1929).

Iconography

The most widespread image is a Roman coin from 67 BC in which Vacuna's identifications with Roman deities, especially Victoria, are expressed.

(On the back, the eagle is a reference to the Roman Empire, but also to the nature of a winged goddess, which codifies its archaism.

Other images are of uncertain attribution, although several scholars have agreed on certain associations. For example, on a wall of the church of S.Maria Assunta in Montebuono, Guattani (1828) recognized Vacuna in a bas-relief representing an austere woman sitting on a throne. Another bas-relief has been identified in Roccagiovine, built on the ancient site Arx Iunonis, as a jamb in a window of the Orsini castle.
The scholar Giovanni Pansa (1920) identifies the goddess in a bronze statuette found in the Rieti countryside, describing it thus:

“The statuette, covered with a beautiful green patina, represents a female figure in an Ionic costume, covered by the tunic or chiton subjected to the himation, which is closed at the front, leaving a wavy band flowing along the wide fold of the right side, ending in it points almost to the middle of the leg (Guattani 1828; Pansa 1920). At the lower end of her chest, in the part corresponding to her waist, conventional folds can be seen, represented by ringed grooves. The complexion of her head is discreetly modelled, with the hair arranged under a curled tapeworm, which falls almost close to the eyebrows. Her eyes are hollow, perhaps to receive the glass or silver bulbs that were used to place them. The chiton and thehimation they almost adhere to the nude of the person, and therefore the shapes of the body and legs shine through in the highlights, especially of the left leg, in which the slight protrusion of the knee is noticeable. […]. What, finally, gives it the most significant note, for the identification of the type, is the presence of the wings and that of an apple or, rather, a pomegranate that he holds with his right hand.” (Nelli, 2020: 27).

The attribute of the wings is very important: it is a sure indicator of the archaism of the cult of Vacuna. The winged goddesses, associated with the flight of birds, evoke the original time of religious thought which associated the sacred feminine (ab illo tempore) with the sky, the sun and the stars. And it was a non-dualistic sky, like the one introduced later by patriarchy. The feminine sky was a sky that contained and embraced. It was above, but it was also below, on the sides, all around. An enveloping sky and not a distant and divisive sky like the patriarchal one, which opposed high and low, male and female, right and wrong, good and evil. Vacuna's wings give this depth and this tension to a divinity who, at the same time, is rooted in the most inaccessible and mysterious depths of the earth's womb.

Places of worship

The goddess arrives in Sabina along the routes of transhumance and migration of the Sabine ethnic group, from the L'Aquila basin to the Tiber valley. Vacuna – rural and aquatic – also protects flocks. She leaves traces of herself in Amiternum, Borbona, Posta, Cittaducale, Cures, in the cave of San Michele on Mount Tancia, in Cerchiara di Poggio Fidoni (two altars with dedication).

Trebula Mutuesca
Horace tells of a small temple dedicated to the goddess, already in a state of abandonment, near Rieti. Among the various cults, identified in various excavation campaigns, in the Trebulano Sanctuary (Trebula Mutuesca), its presence stands out – albeit in intercultural dialogue with Feronia, Mercury and Apollo – especially in the vascular inscriptions. On the basis of the black-painted ceramic fragments found, Giulio Vallarino, starting from 2007, hypothesized the presence of the cult of the goddess (2012rd century BC). The temple area has been identified in the area where the church of S. Vittoria stands (Vallarino 2020). But it is also probable that the sanctuary was in the locality of Caporio, near Cittaducale (in the complex of the Terme di Cotilia). Recent excavations place a sanctuary of the goddess near Montenero Sabino (Borlenghi, Betori, Giletti XNUMX).

Aquae Cutiliae
In a famous medieval road map based on an ancient Roman map (Table Peutingeriana), a spa is indicated (balneum), in the area of ​​today's Cittaducale. This is the site of Cutilia, whose lake waters, very cold but therapeutic, are cited by various authors, such as Vitruvius, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Macrobius, Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
The lake (today, Paterno) is a much larger, defined marshy area Lacus Velini, were considered sacred for some characteristics that led to recognizing the sign of the divine in the oddities and wonders of the territory. An astonishing self-propelled island seemed to sail on the icy waters of today's Lake Paterno, perhaps once the site of the sanctuary in Vacuna, inhabited by female spirits to whom sacrifices and offerings were due: the Lymphae Commotiles.
Furthermore, the lake itself, not large but with very deep waters, represented a geological phenomenon of secondary volcanism, since it resulted from a "sinking": an event known to experts as sink hole (Nisio, 2014). The depth and presence of sulphurous waters (still visible today from the Via Salaria) were interpreted as a direct connection with the underworld, therefore with thaumaturgical and oracular powers.
The area, which Pliny defines as “umbilicus Italiae”, inspired fear and respect. It is possible, although not certain, that the sanctuary of the goddess Vacuna was located right there (Alvino-Leggio 2006). The cult that took place there, and which according to Varro was dedicated to Lymphae Commotiles, it must therefore have been of a thaumaturgical and oracular nature. The connection between Vacuna and the lake nymphs would seem to be confirmed by a modern reading of her name, which is not linked to Latin vacuum, but rather a lacus e lacuna, justifying the definition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus who speaks of her as "the lady of the lake" (Prosdocimi 1989).

The Vacunae Nemora
Not only waters were associated with Vacuna: also woods and vegetation in general. Pliny the Elder talks about them, placing them in the upper Velino valley. The cult was practiced at small altars set up in the woods, but probably also in caves, such as the one on Mount Tancia frequented until the 2003s. Probably, even the rural aedicules scattered in the area, and even the "arboreal madonnas" of Rieti and Sabina (Tozzi 2020) represent traces that the goddess has left over the centuries (Nicolai XNUMX). Modern scholars have identified i Vacunae Nemora, initially, in the territory of Rieti, in an area that goes from Montenero to Posta; more recently, in a vast area that goes from the upper Velino valleys to the Rieti valley. Everyone agrees regarding specific sites where the goddess was assiduously venerated: Falacrinae, Forum Decii, Posta, Laculo, Aquae Cutiliae, Cerchiara (Tulli 2018).

The rites and traces

The Romans celebrated Vacuna, incorporated into their rich pantheon, at the beginning of December with i Vacunalia, a celebration about which little is known. It is possible that in Rome the cult contained traces, more or less rich, of Sabine cult practices and perhaps also of those of peoples, such as the Pelasgians, who inhabited the territory before the Sabines. We do not have certain evidence on the continuity of the cult, however it is important to consider all the information available, to try to grasp the spirit, intentions and underlying structure of the devotional traditions addressed to the goddess.
Ovid, nei Glories, mentions a close connection between the cult of Vacuna and the ritual of the Vestals. The fire burned day and night inAtrium Vesta of the Roman forum, guarded and supervised by the college of dedicated young virgins. The Vestals performed a daily ritual, which consisted of going to the sacred spring of Porta Capena. They drew from the source with special vessels which they then offered to Vesta (goddess that Ovid associates with Vacuna). Even the people participated: the devotees gathered around the bonfires or domestic hearths consecrated to Vacuna, the "vacunales foci”. The winter celebration was very ancient: the farmers sat around the fire and offered the goddess a patera of toasted spelled or bread cooked under the ashes (Ovid, Glories, VI, 305-307).
The poet also describes a ritual that today we would call "banishment" (if not black magic), in reference to a divinity who, if not Vacuna, certainly looks a lot like her.
Pointing out the silent and shady nature of Vacuna, the historian Maria Concetta Nicolai expresses her belief that "whatever her origins, the dark and feminine ritual described by Ovid suits her perfectly":

Here is a decrepit old woman sitting among young girls:

celebrates a sacrifice to Tacita, but she is barely silent,

and with three fingers he places three grains of incense on the threshold

where a little mouse has opened a secret passage;

then with magic words he ties some threads to a dark spindle,

and rolls seven black beans around in his mouth.

Then he burns the head of a sardine in the fire

he sews by piercing it with a bronze needle and coating it with pitch;

he also pours wine into it: and what remains of the wine

either she or her classmates drink it, but she drinks more.

“I have tied enemy tongues and malevolent glances”,

says the old woman walking away, and leaves drunk. (Ovid Glories, II, 571-582).

Nicolai is right: the verses are not explicitly connected to Vacuna, but the Sabine goddess has all the distinctive features of the goddess Tacita, or Muta, as Vacuna is also called. Ovid recalls the story of Tacita-Muta, the Tiber nymph Lara who has the audacity to protect the nymph Juturna from the aggression of the adulterous Jupiter. Lara "does not hold back her tongue", on the contrary she warns Juturna of the stalking taking place, and Jupiter, as punishment, renders her mute. The myth – of Greek origin, and taken up by Ovid to illustrate the Feralie of February which celebrated the dead - has the Lazio area as its backdrop, in the areas where it is richest in water, marshes and vegetation. The nymph, in fact, "now hid in the woods among hazel groves, now she dived into her familiar waters". The reference to the kingdom of Vacuna is linked, in the rite reported by Ovid, to the beans and the little fish whose mouth is sewn shut. The presence of the spindle evokes an exquisitely feminine form of magic against slander and the evil eye. The folkloric traditions of many cultures still associate beans, in the form of sweets, with the dead and connect the silent goddesses to the underworld.
Without entering into the debate between the anthropological theory of the substratum and the historical theory of Brelich (Spineto, 2021), the cult that is appropriate to associate with Vacuna, that of the waters, boasts, according to a large group of scholars, millenary traditions. Whether these have been rediscovered each time and assigned new functions (Brelich and Pettazzoni's theory), or whether they have crossed geological eras only slightly modifying the form and leaving the content unchanged (Pestalozza and Martorana's theory), is relatively important to us. We are only interested in noting that, from the point of view of the paradigms of anthropology and the history of religions, places of worship centered on the element of water derive, compatibly with changes in the landscape, from prehistoric, probably Neolithic, liturgies and practices.
To reconstruct the rites dedicated to Vacuna - thanks to the "inexhaustible resistance of mythical motifs" (Seppilli 1977, 1990) - we can draw on the descriptions of the water cults, to derive gestures, individual and collective behaviors, typologies of offerings.
In Rome, for example, it was customary to purify oneself and objects (especially goods) by immersing a laurel branch in spring water. The branch was then shaken, spraying the water on things and people. During the feast of Fontinalia in October, in honor of aquatic divinities such as Egeria and Fons, wreaths of flowers were offered, throwing them into sacred springs or placing them next to wells. Hair was offered in certain rites of passage.
Archaeological research on Aquae Cutiliae, and on the island that dances on the lake inhabited by Lymphae Commotiles, promises to be a promising path of analysis, of a historical-comparative nature. The association of Vacuna with the lake nymphs expands the view on her cult and allows us to make hypotheses to reconstruct it, even in the absence of certain archaeological data.
We know that aquatic rites in many cultures involve immersion, ablution, diving; that in priestly consecrations, ablutions and baths precede the wearing of new robes; that still water was synonymous with contamination, while current water, which is renewed, was considered very powerful because it was capable of restoring a state of virginity, as happens when one seeks healing and recovery of health.
The residues of the Vacuna tradition, reworked by the Romans and then incorporated into popular Christian devotionality, have been identified and studied (Luschi 1988; Cenci 2009). Some folkloric events still active are interpreted as "substratum", i.e. cult complexes whose rites-myths are, usually unconsciously, in continuity with the past. Such are the cults of the churches of Santa Maria di Capodacqua and Santa Maria in Cesoni (Coarelli 2009), as well as that of the Madonna della Neve in Bacugno: and rites of the straight furrow, offering of the manocchio and kneeling of the bull (Tozzi 2003). Finally, in the Abruzzo region, in Civita d'Antino, in addition to a plaque documenting her presence, the goddess could be associated with the mountain sanctuary of the Madonna della Ritornata (known for the cult of waters and woods), and even with the race traditional straight furrow, practiced in Rocca di Mezzo and Civita Retenga (Nicolai 2020).

The symbolic

The symbolism of Vacuna is expressed in four moments:

• the primordial void (vacuitas) and the reabsorption of manifestation
• the journey of the sun
• the Great Mediterranean Mother
• the state of consciousness and rites of passage

In each of these moments, water plays a crucial role. The importance of the aquatic element in the sacred feminine is well described by the psychologist Barbara Crescimanno regarding the Sicilian nymphs:
"The female water divinities are recognized as having the power to give (and re-give) life in a context in which the sacred and profane dimensions of existence are not yet separated. Evidence of this can be found in the prehistoric and protohistoric communities preceding the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, that is, that transition from nomadic lifestyles to sedentary lifestyles linked to cultivation and livestock farming, in which water becomes fundamental for the agricultural cycle. But this idea persisted into historical times... (...) Water is therefore perceived as a sacred element, linked to life, death, rebirth; furthermore, as it is capable of regenerating, it becomes a magical and medicinal substance par excellence: alongside the fertilizing ones we find healing and purification powers.” (Crescimanno 2017).

Emptiness and reabsorption
Pliny defines Vacuna as silent and incorruptible. Numa Pompilius and Plutarch call her “Tacita” or “Muta”. It is evident that silence is her main attribute, a silence that fatally places her in relation with the cult of ancestors, with the world of the dead, with the dark half of the year. If Feronia – another very important Sabine goddess, opposite and complementary to Vacuna – expressed herself and manifested herself in musical form, Vacuna would be the empty beat which, in the measure of the score, means silence and includes it in the rhythm. She would also be the interval between the notes of the scale, the main means by which the composer creates the melody. Without intervals and without gaps, music would only be a continuous, uninterrupted sound. Music is rhythm, that is, alternation of sound and silence. Therefore, Feronia and Vacuna are, for each other, the other side of the coin. The goddess of fire and spring awakening, Feronia, symbolically represents the visible manifestation, where Vacuna is the archetype of emptiness and primordial emptiness, that immense and chaotic space, created by the reabsorption of "creation" in the watery darkness, from which everything will re-emerge renewed and bright. Immersion in the waters symbolizes «the regression into the preformal, the total regeneration, the new birth, because immersion is equivalent to a dissolution of forms, to a reintegration in the undifferentiated way of pre-existence. And the exit from the waters repeats the cosmogonic gesture of formal manifestation" (Eliade 1992: 193).

The journey of the sun
Within the frame of the wheel of the year (the calendar appointments of each culture), Feronia seals the bright and solar semester, Vacuna the nocturnal and lunar one. But it is always the chariot of the sun which, once the summer is over, the harvest has been honored, crosses the critical threshold of the equinox in the West, to immerse itself in the chthonic ocean, in the world of death and rebirth. It will be Vacuna who will support him in the six months of sunset and night, while Feronia will help him to be reborn as strong as before, recrossing the threshold of the spring equinox in the East. Or, it is the seed, fallen to the ground from the exhausted plant with fruit mature, which penetrates into the clods and, in the darkness of the maternal womb, experiences a gestation that will let it flourish again with the first light and the first warmth of the new year. The myth-rite of the death of the plant god, which goes hand in hand with the solar drama, suits the Feronia-Vacuna couple (Chiavarelli 2011).

The Great Mother
The etymology Vacuna-lacuna (Prosdocimi 1969), which associates the goddess with water, attributes her as paredro Velinus, divinity of the river and the mountain of the same name. Water as amniotic fluid that forms the fetus and then pushes it out, freeing it and giving birth, as suggested by the etymology of the name of the nymph Egeria (egerere: send out). Egeria was Latin before being incorporated into the Roman pantheon and was associated with Diana of Aricia, uniting in a single symbol "the lit torch and the water rising from the womb of the earth" (Seppilli 1990: 56). On the other hand, her connection with Victoria (Varro) and with Nike (Dionysius of Halicarnassus) recall the winged, aquatic and chthonic Great Mother, dominant in truly archaic times. A vegetative rather than military “victory”.
The close connection with the waters and the woods, but also the meaning of the Latin vacate (empty, free, purify) suggests a healing goddess, capable of reclaiming places and people, eliminating poisons and diseases. The antiquity of Vacuna and the embarrassment with which the goddess was treated by the Romans (unlike Feronia) tell us how archaic the cult was and how deep-rooted but already little understood it was. According to Dumézil, the Romans did not develop water cults, not as much as other Indo-European peoples. Rome did not exalt the sacredness of its river and, above all, it did not associate any relevant female divinity with water (as instead happened in Mesopotamia or in the Indus valley).
The strong emphasis on the sacredness of water in the cosmovision of the Sabines distinguishes them from the Romans. In fact, they were known for being a pious people, attentive to divine signs, extremely religious.

The state of consciousness and rites of passage
The emphasis on emptiness and emptiness suggests a step in meditation: the one in which the mind is freed, emptied, purified, to allow the meditator to access his inner truth, the divine nucleus that is hidden in the heart. Certainly, water is the element that best lends itself to the practice of interior journeys: not only does it have a thaumaturgical power, but also a prophetic power, because it descends from above or emerges from below, the places of the gods (Petraccia, Tramunto 2013). And Vacuna, with its vagueness, well represents the mental state of the shamanic traveler, the Hindu or Buddhist meditator. Among the devotions to Vacuna, practices of this type probably had space, which were forms of access to the underground world of the unconscious. Perhaps, even the myth of sinking and diving was born from these experiences, as rites of connection with the gods and the underworld, widely known to the Romans (Seppilli 1990).
With reference to mental states, Feronia well represents the moment of conception, creation and manifestation of an idea, project or intent. Vacuna, opposite and complementary, symbolizes the phase in which the manifestation dissolves, is reabsorbed, returns to emptiness and silence. Dark moon phase, in which the experience of the world regenerates, absorbs power and energy for a new manifestation. This is the cycle of being and life. But it is also a meditation technique, a psychic work through which humans can retrace the phases of creation within themselves and, therefore, share the processes, becoming co-creators. In all rites and all forms of meditation, this cycle becomes a technique and a method for reaching the most subtle states of consciousness.
From this specific point of view, Feronia embodies the witness-observer of the phenomena and creative processes, while Vacuna expresses the opposite movement, from the manifest to the non-manifest, from the visible to the invisible: the moment in which the meditator retreats into consciousness, dissolves the ego and finds rest and refuge in the stillness of the “empty” mind. While Feronia dances on the fire, Vacuna brings his index finger to her mouth and invites her to resolve the movement in silence and emptiness. If we delve deeper into Vacuna within the framework of the symbolism of water, further significant elements emerge. If the element of water, on a cultic and ritual level, is particularly similar to rites of passage, the need for the phase of emptiness - understood as a critical moment and creative chaos that contains all possibilities - is crucial. The process of rites of passage is known and consists of three phases: the destructuring of the existing order, the chaotic phase (which Weber calls "charisma" and van Gennep "crisis") and, finally, the restructuring, which allows the construction of a new order of things, which concerns individual/collective status (van Gennep 1909) or the morphology of a social aggregation (Weber 1922). Water, fluid and uncontrollable, is precisely the chaotic and critical element that messes things up so that a new order, a new organization emerges, both of the psyche and of the community. Without the emptiness, silence and darkness that Vacuna symbolizes, it is impossible to achieve the change in status (personal growth, the new pact of solidarity in the community); it is impossible to achieve the healing that the individual or the community hopes for.

Enrica Tedeschi - 2019-2022

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• Spineto Christmas – The eternal Mediterranean feminine – in Daniela Bonanno and Ignazio Buttitta – 2021 – pp. 123-137;
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• Arnold van Gennep – Les rites de passage – Paris 1909;
• Max Weber – economy and society – Mohr – Tubingen 1922.