The Forgotten Ones.

I want to create a resource come hopefully debate regarding an often overlooked but in my opinion important aspect of our cultural development in various parts of the world, which should as well as being capable of answering quite a few questions regarding mysteries of the past and what lurks therein, also raise quite a few...the theme is the forgotten, generally overlooked, role of Bee Divinites.







There are one or two websites out there which at this point i could direct or be directed to which have attempted to cover this, but in my opinion not well, thus i will make the case anew, my background being in art history

.A good starting point for this study is to look at Bee Divinites were perhaps the creator of the artwork/symbolism is helpfully still alive to state his or her case, as to how a Bee Divinity should be represented, what he does, how the artwork can be interpreted...thus the art of the Australian Aborigines opens the study.







Murayana — Yirritja Honey



Murayana-The Cheerfull One

Each type of honey has its own creation story. A spirit, in the form of a man called Murayana the happy spirit is associated with Yirritja honey. He wears the diamond honey design on his chest and thighs. Dancers in ceremonies today wear these body paintings. Murayana taught people how to sing and dance and be happy. Near Yathalamarra waterhole, in Balmbi country, Murayana left rock arrangements on the side of a hill; his mark, his spirit

In a ceremony close to the beginning of time, a spirit man called Murayana made the first Yirritja hollow log, known as Djalumbu


The representation of honey varies according to moiety. Yirritja honey belongs to the Gupapuyngu, Gumatj, Manggalili, Birrkili, Balmbi and Dhalwangu people, whose artists depict the wax cells of the bee hive in a design of diamond shapes — cross-hatched shapes represent sealed cells, while tartan design shapes represent empty or half full cells.

Each type of honey has its own creation story



The diamond shape pattern represents a hive of bees showing cells, wax, eggs and young bees. The projection in the center section may be the entrance to the hive or a sacred post.


Murayana is a mokuy [ghost] who came from the east and is associated with the forest near Yathalamarra. Murayana is a trickster spirit who roams the forest, often turning the country around so people get lost.

That tree belongs to Murayana, I call it wäri, it belongs to Murayana, dhirmbuk that belongs to tucker. That belongs to Murayana because he’s the boss …

Murayana Spirit



Yirritja Honey Story


Yirritja Honey Bee design (Niwuda)



So things that can be generally said of the aborigine Bee God, he is a spirit of the first time, the Dreaming, and good though perhaps also trickster, he makes people sing and be happy and dance, also at funerary rituals. Importantly he is involved with First Creation, has hollowed out logs of creative power, inspires and wears geometric designs of a golden hue derived from the honey bee hive, also wears and protects his favorite plants and trees of the forest.


It is also Murayana that conducts the soul of the deceased back into the Dreaming...

Traditionally hollow log coffins are part of mortuary ceremonies that allow for the passage of the spirit to the ancestral domain and they renew relationships with the Dreaming.


The figure of Murayana emerges from the forest to accompany the deceased to the spirit world

Hollow log coffins



An important aspect then of this Bee God and his associated patterns and attributes, that they bridge the gulf between the realm of the living and the netherworld of the Dreaming...to be continued

HEY GOOD THREAD!
the bible talks about honey alot, in association with blessing. I know there was a stoneage culture in ancient Turkey that cultivated honey 10,00 years ago
some of the earliest intoxicating beverages humans made were made from honey

and now in the times we live in we are seeing bees rapidly becoming extinct

Forgotten Ones is a good title, we have forgotten what bees mean to this planet and the sacred concepts that are associated with them

reply to post by MrsBlonde



Thanks, the bee cult in Neolithic Turkey will be a major concern of this thread, it's role in the development of the first urban societies, some very intriguing considerations there...

Thank you for this thread. I was not aware that bees had this "status". Probably honey and its products were very important part of the diet among those people.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge



Yes, you see with the aborigines the importance of the Bee God when society is at the hunter/gatherer stage, this can be expected to diminish of course as societies become more complex and have other concerns, and then you're looking at residual influence....which Bee Gods specialize in.

back in neolithic times sweets were rare and nothing had the sweetness of honey that could be used to sweeten other things

also it has medicinal value ,so now we have sugar and artificial sweetners so honey and bees were forgotten like the OP says

The Praying Mantis is one insect commonly described in some ET descriptions, considering their reputation in the insect world it is not surprising. The insects are very much rulers of this planet performing a vital part in its ecology and food chain. There are productivities to be made when working with them rather than against them. It is not always easy and there are dangers with some.

reply to post by kwakakev




All i'd say there is that the Praying Mantis hasn't had much of a 'symbiotic' relationship with humanity, whereas mankind has kept bees and the bees have kept mankind with honey and wax.

Part II



For a second part, i want to look at North American rock art, mainly examples from the Coso Mountains of California, but also others, with a few considerations on how these earleir influences found their way into into the iconography of tribes such as the Navajo and Apache, a quite loose investigation as i haven't studied these regional cultures in any depth, but there are some things i consider worth pointing out for the general theme of forgotten Bee influence, that rarely if ever get mentioned in connection with these images.







The above is a good place to start, a bee spirit, seen in connection with spiral, sun, staff of power, and diagonal hatched hive iconography, In Australian iconography the spiral represents a focal place upon the landscape, whcih can be anything, a rock, watering hole, tree etc, that is also probably the case in North America.

The association of the bee, with the spiral, focal point of landscape, is that as seen in Australian lore, the bee is the pathfinder, even finding the four quarters of the Earth, the ruling spirit of the four directions (that can even turn the land upside down just to confuse!), thus the central squares and diagonals of geometric hive iconography reflect this, mastery of cardinal directions.


The spiral form could also reflect the spiral dance of the bee before setting out on a path. Association with the sun is more indirect, there is the correspondance of the sun in rising/setting to the cardinal directions and laying out of the Earth, the diurnal activities of the bee, and the golden nature of honey.








These associations then seem to find their way into many of the Coso figures, which wear the geometric pattern garments as seen in Australia, the hive iconography, and carry the sacred plants and staff also, with the addition of solar and spiral aspects.































There are of course other aspects to the art of these regions, their interest in sheep and hunting for example, but the case for Bee Divinities/Shamanism appears strong. Whilst it is considered the figures could represent spirit/shaman guides of animals and people back into the spirit realm, the bee is not considered, though as was seen that is a primary function of the bee God in Australia.


The diagonal pattern tradition seen on the garments has continued, finding it's way into the traditional costume and rug making, as one would expect, such as in Navajo examples. It's this stage of icongraphic development i'll look at in Part III













Coso sheep cult art...bah!



Coso decorated animal-humans and the Animal Master



Rock Art, Shamanism, & Subsistence in the Coso Mountains of California



The Enigmatic Art of the Fremont Culture

Cool thread

Bees could have also been seen as "Grand Pollinators" who continuously fertilized plants and trees which our ancestors needed to survive. Bees were basically preservers of food which in turn made life much more easier for the ancients. So bees could have been seen as gods given the fact that they preserved life.

en.wikipedia.org...

There may have been Mayan Bee Gods as well.

naturallyuniversal.com...

Bee motifs are also seen in Mayan cultures, an example being the Ah-Muzen-Cab, the Bee God, found in Mayan ruins, likely designating honey-producing cities (who prized honey as food of the gods).

...and there's the Indian Bee Goddess
andrewgough.co.uk...

The Indian Bee goddess - Bhramari Devi

reply to post by Nurelic



Good points regarding their role in nurturing and guarding the natural world, keepers and seekers of every pathway.


Isyeye, the Maya are important in realsing the world and it's four quarters were understood as being first marked out by the Bees, the Mayan word for 'honey' and 'world' apparantly the same, thus the world was understood as marked out in geometric terms in the same manner as the geometric hive iconography....their 'supernatural class of Bees, the Mulzencab-ob and supernatural Lord of the great Hive is also very interesting, in the context of those who landed/descended from above.

(THE RITUAL OF THE FOUR WORLD-QUARTERS)

The red wild bees are in the east. A large red blossom is their cup. The red Plumeria is their flower.

The white wild bees are in the north. The white pach¢ais their flower. A large white blossom is their cup.

The black wild bees are in the west. The black laurel flower is their flower. A large black blossom is their cup.

The yellow wild bees are in the south. A large yellow blossom is their cup . . . is their flower./


Then they swarmed at ¢ecuzamil in great numbers among the magueys of the land, the calabash trees of the land, the ceiba trees of the land and the chulul trees of the land. Kin Pauahtun was their priest. He commanded the numerous army which guarded Ah Hulneb at Tantun in Cozumel, Ah Yax-ac, Chinab, and Kinich Kakmo

THE RITUAL OF THE FOUR WORLD-QUARTERS

This name is spelled Muzencab in the Tizimin manuscript, so Mucencab is probably intended for Muçencab. Cab means hive or honey. As shown in Appendix A, the bees are closely connected with the Bacabs and the four world-quarters, and Dr. Redfield finds the Muzencabs invoked in the u hanli cab ceremony which is propitiatory of the gods of the bees. One native priest explained that "the Mulzencab-ob were a class of supernatural bees dwelling at Cobá. They report to Nohyumcab (Great-lord-of-the-hive), their superior, everything that happens in the apiary." Another native priest, or h-men, stated that the Nohyumcab and the Ah Muzencab were two gods in the form of large bees who governed all the bees

Ah Mucen Cab generally appears in Mayan art with the wings of a bee, usually outstretched either in the process of landing or taking off.


Honey was an important part of the diet in most Mesoamerican cultures, as well as a vital trade product, so Ah Mucen Cab was an important deity in the Mayan pantheon. The Mayan word for "honey" was also the same as the word for "world," so the honey god Ah Mucen Cab was also involved with the creation of the world.


Honey was an important part of the diet in most Mesoamerican cultures, as well as a vital trade product, so Ah Mucen Cab was an important deity in the Mayan pantheon. The Mayan word for "honey" was also the same as the word for "world," so the honey god Ah Mucen Cab was also involved with the creation of the world.

Images of what archaeologists believe is Ah Mucen Cab appear throughout the ruins of Tulum. Here Ah Mucen Cab appears as a "descending" god, with outstretched wings as he comes in for a landing. Archaeologists believe that Ah Mucen Cab was the patron of Tulum and that the region produced a lot of honey. Some honeys are toxic and produce psychoactive effects. It's possible that consumption of such honeys were integrated into worship of Ah Mucen Cab.

Ah Mucen Cab


Ah muzencab - God of Bees and Honey - intimately associated with the four bacabs



Tulum...Temple of Descending God

Ancient Egyptian Myth - Honey bees were the tears of Ra, the Sun god... beelore.com...

andrewgough.co.uk...

www.thebeegoddess.com...

Fascinating reading!

Cab is both honey and world. I wonder if the old Gods created this honey/world to eat from. Are we symbolically the honey for unseen entities, our prayers, respect, fear, and admiration for the gods and unseen forces is essentially food? If I leap to a conclusion or 2 this goes deep. Especially if one day they let us forget about them and found it easier to feed on our energy unseen.

Originally posted by matthewgraybeal
Fascinating reading!

Cab is both honey and world. I wonder if the old Gods created this honey/world to eat from. Are we symbolically the honey for unseen entities, our prayers, respect, fear, and admiration for the gods and unseen forces is essentially food? If I leap to a conclusion or 2 this goes deep. Especially if one day they let us forget about them and found it easier to feed on our energy unseen.

Symbolically our souls have been directly associated with bees, such as the Ka in Egypt, and as outlined in the OP the Bee God is the underworld conduit for our souls, but there are other interesting aspects of the correlation between the hive/honeycomb pattern and the Earth, though also of course the product of a good soul good be comparative to golden honey in allegorical terms.

IX ZACAL NOK is the Mayan Goddess of weaving. She is the wife of Kinich Ahau, God of the sun. As she creates her tapestries, she also creates the changes in the seasons, bringing forth plants in the spring and readying them for harvest in the fall. Ix Zacal Nok, whose name means "lady cloth weaver," is sometimes referred to as COLEL CAB, "mistress of the earth," and as such she was also given dominion over the earth. The title MISTRESS OF THE BEES was also associated with her in this latter guise.

IX ZACAL NOK is also considered Goddess of the waning moon, her association with pattern making/weaving being that of the moon orbiting the Earth, when one sees the rituals and chants based upon 13 as a magic number, in correlation to honey harvesting this becomes clearer...





[TO LADY BEE TI COLEL CAB


Tu bu, tu bu (sound of the bees)
I drink the wine of gods my lord
to therefore the insects of the lady bee Colel Cab
to lady black rock, to lady rain
tu bu, tu bu, tu bu the wine of the lord god thirteen days,
thirteen nights thirteen times downwards then return our insects
certainly of the beautiful (lady) hole lord

where therefore I place the holy virgin wine
in the path of the lady bee, lady peten
spring of springs my lord
to the beautiful lady foreign divine queen lord





Colel Cab Hymns


The stingless bee honey harvesting ceremony



The key then is pattern making, the moon describes pattern, the bees create the pattern of the honeycomb, the two are seen as interlinked, and extending across the face of the Earth

The aspects seen her are also those that most closely correlate to the moon Goddess Artemis/Diana from classical Greece, and her association with bees and weaving, at Ephesus in particular.

Originally posted by Nurelic
Ancient Egyptian Myth - Honey bees were the tears of Ra, the Sun god... beelore.com...

andrewgough.co.uk...

www.thebeegoddess.com...

The association of Neith with the Bee is interesting, in her aspect of weaving and pattern making and general maintainence of the cosmos, this abstract quality best described at her 'House of the Bee' at Sais


“I am All That Has Been, That Is, and That Will Be. No mortal has yet been able to lift the veil that covers Me.”


Andrew Gough makes good points regarding Greek bee etymology corresponding to the fates and weaving, and touches upon Plato of the 'bee kissed lips' narrating the yarns of Sais...


The old shamanic bee God type of Egypt would appear to have been Min, with an ongoing association between the souls of the deceased and bees, and honey an essential offering for the afterlife.

To continue, i'd like to consider the earliest South American cities of Peru and later the Andean cultures in the context how important earlier Shamanic bee type cults had been in their development. One doesn't find in Andean culture bee mythology to the extent that it can be found in the Mayan, after all much is above the tree line whilst the Mayans are surrounded by the forests, likewise the earliest cities of Peru were dependant to a large extent on coastal regions and bordered deserts with irrigated areas for crop growing.


It would appear though that it was the geometric language learnt from the hive iconography, translated into geomancy and cosmology, that informed their subsequent development, ie they copied off the bees.


Here's an argument that makes a similar case that i would, albeit it does not trace the source of these skills and intuitions;


Other Knowledges: Reflections on Recent Archaeology in South America

If a set of structures has a spatial ordering then there must have been a planner or group of planners. The apparent differentiation in the quality of domestic spaces may be evidence of social division, but it may also be interpreted as permanent and occasional accommodation. However, the claim of necessary hierarchy looks less cogent if the large geometric and spatially organised structures in the Amazon were built communally without an expert elite.

Textiles were the primary visual medium for the expression of ideas, the fundamental art form of the Andean peoples’. Their ‘weaving insists that messages be embodied in and expressed by structure’. As Katherine Seibold puts it, ‘Textiles are art which reveals cosmologies.Inca landscapes were draped with textiles, as for example on the island of the sun in Lake Titicaca, and people’s clothing was designed to be read t reveal their status and their ethnicity.


Likewise the landscape was marked by lines (ceques) radiating out from the capital Cuzco. These lines joining sacred shrines (huacas) formed an abstract social map projected onto the landscape as paths, which had their fabric and material analog in the knotted string khipu


What weaving, stories, and string share is the complex duality of tension and connection, difference and similarity. Stories join ideas, string joins things together, and both are dependent on tension

S o we see then the coming together of certain aspects of the bee cult seen in the behaviour of the bee and the iconography of the hive, the concerns with pathways, development of spatial and structural awareness, cosmological and geomantic frameworks, the relationship of narrative, the fates, weaving, patterns of life, and the numerogical and temporal aspects that will develop in tandem with considerations of space.

In the later developed soceities it is the case that the origins for these patterns will probably no longer be known as an aspect of everyday life, that they become the mysterious patterns as learnt from the ancient ancestors and spirits.


Thus an ideogram developed from observation of a honeycombe, translated to the Atacama desert, still has the connotations of the shamanic period, as a centre, a link between Earth, the realm of the spirits and the underworld when created, but becomes increasingly mysterious over time.

The final part concerns the core Neolithic region, commecing circa 11,000 years ago in the region of Northern Syria/Southern Anatolia. This region of cultural transformation i have looked at long and hard as it is the most perplexing and intriguing, and in my opinion cannot begin to be understood without understanding of all the aspects of the bee cults i have previously outlined.


Begining at Djade al Mugarh in Northern Syria, one finds patterns of remarkable complexity and ambition, for the period, circa 11,000 years ago, these on the oldest adobe brick wall known in the world



Worlds oldest mural


















Thus the geometric same motif that was seen in the form of a geoglyph in the Atacama desert, Northern Chile, can also be located in the core region of the Neolithic, and i would suggest the same essential meaning and derivation in each case, that of the conjunction of the underworld (black), Earth (red), the Heavens (white)



Much of the following evidence is from Catal Hoyuk, the most extensive, best preserved and most studied site regarding the origins of Neolithic urbanization. Interest in bee hive pattern/iconography to some extent is non-contentious, as it is readily apparent













The second pattern seen above is interesting in that it has long been thought of as a map of the town, with volcanoe in background, but recently opion is being revised such that it is just another geometric pattern, with leopard skin seen in conjunction. The example below it is Australian aborigine hive iconography, so tellingly it seems likely that hive iconography has been mistaken for the first example of urban planning...!!!






















The formalization of hive iconography into geometric pattern is seen throughout Catal Hoyuk, in it's more precise and abstract form reminiscent or derivative of Djade al Mugarh, noteworthy is also the translation of these patterns onto the body of the honey Mother Goddess type figurines of the early Neolithic








The above top row motif is also of interest in the development of the Neolithic Goddess types toward the abstract, the probable basis of this representation is that of actual bees nest upon a totemic tree, one thing leads to another and very curious Goddess abstractions are the result.















The aspect that has intrigued me the most is how far was the centralized bee mother cult taken or applied in these socities, and by default how much did the individual members consider themselves as part of some collective hive.


The evidence from Catal Hoyuk is rather alarming in that it shows women of apparantly differant race/ethnicity cojoined by Goddess type figures, in some sort of therefore breeding programme over extensive regions. The goats or sheep seen in conjunction with these images are probably as a methaphor for the nature of such inter-breeding, one that was used for exampke later in Genesis chapter 30, were the ethic intermarriage of formative Israel is in conjuction with a story of cattle/goat breeding.

The structural abstraction of this iconography can be traced directly to the pattern making seen earleir at Djade











Seen below adults carry infants from a chamber of the Goddess. This is wild iconography, and there is comparison with the later South American tradition of the three levels of existence being governed by the Heavens condor/vulture, Earth Puma/Leopard, Underworld Serpent, it is apparantly these same cultic aspects that predominate here.





The earliest Neolithic sites seem to have developed around a subterranean central .communal structure', the Djade building of the murals being such an example, around these the dwellings are smaller and cellular, a curious development in that they are unsuited for any family/community type accomodation and it is hard to see how such living spaces could have been desirable...but there is the origins of our urbanization.











For me then this has raised many questions with no easy answers, the similarity of the early patterns with that of modern DNA diagram schematics has furthur puzzled, the illustrative evidence lending itself to such comparisons...

reply to post by Kantzveldt

I love this thread and I applaud you for this.

Kudos.

A

Worlds oldest mural

I find it utterly fascinating that the powerful motif of Red, Black, and White is used in one of the earliest known Mosaics in Syria (I will explain shortly).


Those 3 colors have I believe have significant power which would be redefined 11,000 years later when they were adopted by German Empire prior to World War 1. At the conclusion of the war the flag again reverted to the Black, Red and Gold (Honey anyone?) Only to be changed back yet again just 2 years prior to the NAZI party taking power to the same Black, White and Red...


Taking a another ancient symbol (The Swastika) and inverting (and perverting) and combining it with those colors the NAZI's created an Icon that will forever be recognized and associated with the horrors and atrocities of NAZI party.



Did this painting have anything to do with cult of the black sun? Funny too how the home of this mural Syria is a hot-bed of human conflict currently.

It is of course just a coincidence that Syria (including the current Bashar al-Asad) used those colors (only reversed...) to represent it's flag who are fighting with the SNC (The Syrian National Coalition flag is Green, White and Black with 3 Red stars) with the recent civil war..


Sure they are "Just Colors" and the are "Just Flags" yeah and the Pope ss just a guy in a "Funny Hat".
Makes me curious which flag will come out as Syria's true colors...