It is incredible to discover that in one of the most pontifical regions of Italy such as the Marche, a small statuette, a steatopygian idol which can commonly be found in the Cyclades, a Minoan place par excellence, and even earlier Pelasgian, was instead found near to a sanctuary dedicated to the Madonna, where a small temple was built by Valadier, or to Frasassi, near the caves. Incredible and at the same time natural, because the female image is always contemplated, just in different ways as representatives of different civilisations.
The figurine found, called "Venus of Frasassi" is 8,7 cm high and is rightly kept under the relic, like a precious relic, in a room all to itself, at the Archaeological Museum of Ancona. The description is not exhaustive although rather precise in the reference period - i.e. the Upper Paleolithic - however it does not explain why these figures were made. Why this shape I mean, why feminine, why this belly is so swollen, why these buttocks are so big.
Jung comes to our aid: “it was the magical representation of the feminine, the wisdom and spiritual elevation that transcends the limits of the intellect. It was what promotes growth, nutrition, the places of magical transformation and rebirth, the instinct or helpful impulse, what is secret, occult, dark. The abyss, the world of the dead, that which devours and seduces, intoxicates."
In a word: the Mother Goddess. The cult of the Mother Goddess was the cult of the white Goddess, or the Moon, fruitful, nourishing, magical, creative, poetic. Once upon a time, many, many years ago, great power was attributed to the female.
Robert Graves writes: "the language of the Muse, or the Moon goddess, both in the Mediterranean and in northern Europe was tampered with towards the end of the Minoan era, when invaders from Central Asia began to replace matrilineal institutions with patrilineal ones."
Philosophers began to feel threatened by the mysterious power of the Goddess, and opposed logic to the magic and enchantment that the Moon offered, the planet par excellence of poets, they posed the reason of the Sun God, clear, strong like the truth which however true it is never absolute as it blinds. You can't see the Sun for long but you can see the Moon. Often, when a doubt assails us, we say: "I'll think about it at night". In the nocturnal time of the Goddess things happen that do not work during the day: they are our unconscious spirits, our true treasure. And the philosophers were afraid of this power. Socrates says: "fields and trees teach me nothing, men do". Are we really sure?
It is precisely with time that we learn that logic, the reason for things, is not always on one side alone. And in the end, too much Sun dries up the earth, while the Moon moves the tides and the growth of the seed on the earth, on the plants, even affects us humans.
The language of men, from Socrates onwards, became rational and Apollonian. From then on, Graves continues, the Apollonian vision dominated unchallenged in European schools and universities, where myths today are considered curious relics of an infantile humanity. Socrates was the most intransigent, his motto was: "know the reason for being in everything, rejecting all opinions that cannot be accounted for".
Turning his back on the goddess Luna who inspired men and who required men to pay spiritual and sexual homage to women, Socrates devised the famous "Platonic love", or the escape from the power of the goddess: his refuge in intellectual homosexuality was, however, offensive as it is considered a male attempt to make himself spiritually self-sufficient. Sodomy was highly tolerated but not Apollonian knowledge of oneself without leaving it instead through a wife or lover. In the end, the Muse took revenge not only by finding her a shrewish wife, diverting him towards Alcibiades who became vicious and treacherous, but Socrates died, punished for having corrupted the young Athenians, forced to drink the poisonous hemlock, a plant sacred to Hecate, the waning moon.
All this is very fascinating and asks us more than one question, one among all: do we from the Marche also come from the Pelasgians, (which means navigators), or rather the first population to inhabit Greece? And did they arrive not only on the coasts but also penetrated into the interior of the region?
