#Womanmay

[viejitomay]

"Ahi Ahi" by Womanmay Music video stills Directed / edited/ shot by Natalia Molina

[thewaysoundtravels]

(Indigo Blue by Womanmay)

Taking things down to introspective levels, ghostly territory...

[half-a-tiger]

WOMANMAY - "Ahi Ahi", from her 2015 EP on Midnight Special Records.

Video directed by Natalia Molina.

[deathlessathanasia]

“Peter Ucko studied and analyzed several hundred sculptures attributed to predynastic Egypt, Neolithic Crete, the Greek mainland, and the Middle East; he found that only six of these show a woman with a child. The others may appear in diverse forms, with arms beneath their breasts or at their sides, in seated, standing, or squatting positions, as male or female or sexless creatures (though the female form predominates), with or without facial features, some[1]times holding an animal, corpulent or slim, steatopygic or flat-bottomed. On the basis of his detailed analysis of the artifacts and their archaeological context, Ucko considers it unlikely that the figurines of any complement served the same single purpose, that they represented the same aspect of one single individual, or that the majority of the figurines from any complement embodied the same aspect of a deity. He thus finds no evidence for the cultic reverence of a universal mother goddess.

Marija Gimbutas, who asserts that a Goddess of Birth, Death, and Regeneration was worshipped in Old Europe, finds strong support for her claim in some clay figures of the Balkans of about 6000 B.C.E. These include a mother with an infant in her arms; however, none of them possesses a wholly human form. The head of a bear or of some other mammal or bird rests upon a body of somewhat human shape, and the infant, in its turn, shows the features of a bear or bird. It is not clear why a "bear mother" suckling her "bear child" should embody a force that gives fertility to human women. Gimbutas believes that the maternal solicitude of an actual bear mother so impressed the Neolithic farmers of the region that they adopted her as the symbol of maternal love. Here Gimbutas surely brings modern, anthropocentric thinking to the task of deciphering the relics of an ancient belief. She fails to realize the measure of reverence and awe accorded by archaic societies to the animals into whose realm they had penetrated, and the deep sense of guilt when men killed, as they must in order to survive, their animal gods and masters. Bear worship, especially, is attested through the ages for the provinces of Europe. The Bear Mother, who may be the source of death or of glorious triumph to the hunter, is infinitely superior to a human mother. She would be revered because of her own awesome might and not as the symbol of a human emotion.

It is also held that the imagery of Minoan art points to the existence of a great primordial mother. Female forms abound in this imagery; seal and signet engravings, above all, show slim-waisted women, full-bosomed and barebreasted, clothed in long flouncing skirts, in various activities. The womanmay be stationed between beasts or seated beneath a tree, dancing in ecstatic motion, traveling in a boat, holding or receiving flowers, or surrounded by adoring votaries or priests. Here too it is assumed that a single godhead is presented in her various epiphanies. She is thus the mountain mother, the snake goddess of chthonic aspect, and the Lady of flowering plants, preserving beneath her various shapes the unchanging reality of the Great Mother. We may ask once more why the various activities depicted in the scenes should be ascribed to one all-embracing being. The gods of later pantheons do not wantonly change their attributes; we recognize Thor by his hammer, Athena by her owl, Apollo by his lyre, and the Hittite Teshup by his thunderbolt. Why should, just in Minoan art, a flowering tree, a spear, or a snake symbolize the aspects of a single godhead, and why a maternal figure? It is true that the women look extremely similar to one another, but this similarity arises through stylistic convention, and what is believed to be the goddess can hardly be distinguished through her appearance from her votaries. Surely they are not various aspects of a single creature. Let us also note that the women of Minoan imagery are not depicted in a state of pregnancy or, with some exceptions, with a child.

As the artifacts of prehistory indicate a worship of female forces, so the written documents of the Middle Eastern regions more fully name and describe a number of female deities of great splendor, and some goddesses are clearly designated and shown as mothers, such as Ninmah, Ninhursag, or Nintur of Sumero-Akkadian tradition. While these maternal figures play a role in the myths of creation they seem to have diminished before the greater glory of more dazzling divinities—the Great Goddesses Anat of the Canaanites, Inanna-Ishtar of Mesopotamia, Astarte, and Atargatis of the Syrians. These show much resemblance to one another: They are, with only some individual variations, imperious, sexually aggressive, warlike, violent and tempestuous, protective of certain chosen beings, able to grant kingship, order, or prosperity; they may be brought into relation with seasonal ritual and the mourning for a young divinity. They are not portrayed as mothers. The important goddesses of the Greek pantheon—Hera, Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite—have separated from the All Mother of Minoan times, according to E. O. James, and developed on the Greek mainland their different individualities. While the separateness of these beings clearly emerged, the maternal aspect surely vanished, for Athena and Artemis are virginal; Aphrodite is involved in matters of erotic love; Hera brought forth some children but functions, above all, as a wife and queen. Though these goddesses are concerned with various areas of women's lives and assist in childbirth or protect the young, the core and heart of their being is not in the dominion over death, birth, and fecundity.The Greek pantheon does contain, however, some deeply caring mothers, and the act of giving birth is brought dramatically before our eyes, as in the cases of Leto and Rhea. Thetis deeply feels and tries to heal the anguish of her son Achilles. None of these figures exhibit any sovereignty. The time of approaching birth represents a period of crisis in the lives of Rhea and Leto, the latter searching in despair for a place that would accept her in her travail, the former hiding in the shelter of a cave to protect her newborn child from death. Thetis must plead with Zeus to obtain new armor for Achilles. More power is accorded to another mother goddess of the Greeks: Demeter, who lost her beloved daughter, the "slender-ankled" Persephone, through rape. The most important mother figure of her tradition, she was unable to prevent her daughter's violation. Demeter herself was raped by Zeus and had in this union conceived her child. While she wandered in sorrow, searching for her vanished daughter, she was ravished by the god Poseidon of the sea. Obviously the theme of rape looms large in the stories surrounding the divinity, and the helpless acceptance of male violence accords ill with the image of a great and sovereign deity. Nor can Demeter recall, through her own might, her child from the regions of the dead. She cannot then be the supreme mistress over life and death which the great maternal power is envisioned.

With the rising popularity of the mystery religions in the last pre-Christian millennium, the divine ruler of such a cult would attain a new and exalted stature. After the cult of Cybele, the Phrygian mountain mother, was brought to Rome in the midst of the Carthaginian crisis, she was revered as one who had bestowed a fruitful harvest and also the defeat of the Carthaginian forces. She became in time an almost universal goddess. And Isis absorbed in her travel from Egypt so many qualities that she grew into an all-embracing power, among other things a "parent of nature, protectress of sailors, comforter of those in distress, kindler of the fire of the sun." And she was adored as "Isis of the many names." She herself declares, as told by Apuleius, that the Phrygians call her the mother of the gods, the Athenians Minerva, the Cyprians Venus, the Cretans Dyotinna, the Sicilians Proserpina, others Juno, Bellona, Hecate, or the goddess Rhamnusa, but the Egyptians call her by her right name, the queen Isis. deities of the mystery religions truly attained the attributes of universal divinities who embrace and rule all aspects of human lives, but we must note that these beings stand at the end of a development. Having grown and fused with others through the ages, reshaped by poets, philosophers, and priests, intellectualized and spiritualized, belonging to the end of paganism, they cannot be one with the primary and enduring archetypal form that, so it is claimed, was present in men's souls as Great Mother from the earliest moments of their journey on the planet earth. It may also be of some interest to note that in the tales entwined around Cybele, whose cult was spread through many regions, the themes of monstrous birth and castration predominate. These hardly accord with one who, in her essence, should still be a fountainhead of life, fecundity, and regeneration.The figures that were briefly described here, all brought forward as epiphanies of the Great Mother, cannot, from the evidence we actually have, be understood as the embodiment of a great, universal, primeval maternal force. Those that are mothers are not sovereign, those that are sovereign are not mothers, and a sovereign and maternal goddess such as Isis is not primordial.

. . . 

It was noted earlier that in myth a man as well as a woman is able to create a child. When the severed phallus of Ouranos sank into the sea, the goddess Aphrodite was begotten. The ocean being masculine in Greek tradition, two male elements combined to bring forth the most seductive of all deities. The demiurge of the theology of Heliopolis engendered the first pair of gods, Schu and Tefnut, from the semen he had obtained through masturbation, and only a later source gave him a spouse. In the rock drawings of archaic Scandinavia, which depict few women, men are frequently shown with erect phallus, often of enormous size (Figure 4). We do not know the thought that caused the drawing of these symbols of male potency, but we can be sure that significance was accorded to the organ of male sexual power. The animals carved into the rock are rarely fitted with the male productive member, and it almost seems as if it were the phallus that marked the human from the beast (Figures 5 and 6). We may agree at this point that in archaic thought, miraculous action seems to be more important than the observed processes of biology. 

It has also been assumed that the status of the woman goddess changed with the coming of a patriarchal order. Jane Ellen Harrison understands that the bonding of the matriarchal group was that of the mother with her son, as exemplified by Rhea who gave birth to Zeus (though a goddess who must hide in a cave to escape the murderous rage of the child's father cannot easily be seen as example of sovereign womanhood); in later times the son eclipsed the mother (Semele and Dionysus), and finally the son ruled, as did Zeus, with supreme authority over sky and earth. And he was determined to suppress the ancient figure. Harrison thus states: "Zeus the Father will have no great Earthgoddess, Mother and Maid, in his man-fashioned Olympus . . . so he remakes it; woman who was the inspirer, becomes the temptress. She who made all things, gods and mortals alike, becomes their plaything, their slave, dowered only with physical beauty and with a slave's tricks and blandishments." We know, however, that a goddess of great potency can evolve in the midst of a patriarchal order, as did Inanna-Ishtar. The goddess Sedna dominates the religious emotions of the Eskimo, with whom women were of low account. The cult of Isis flourished in the midst of a patriarchal society, and churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary rose in the patriarchal Middle Ages. A recent study shows that the number (i.e., importance) of female deities in a given group bears no relation to the status of the human women. The existence of a one-time matriarchal society has not been substantiated. . . . Let me restate that a primordial sovereign goddess of fecundity is not present in our extant evidence. She has been reconstructed from archaeological remains that may be interpreted in various ways. Her true form is never seen, for it was supposedly achieved in a vanished age of mother-right that, in turn, is utterly hypothetical. Nor are the notions of fertility and motherhood imbued with the glory which they hold in our time. The persistence of the concept among scholars in spite of the absence of any real evidence, their occasional changing of actual facts to preserve the image of the goddess, must in itself constitute a kind of faith. The same phenomenon has been observed by Olof Petterson regarding a very similar configuration—a universally worshipped Mother Earth.”

 - The Faces of the Goddess, Lotte Motz

[pocketoflollipops]

Excited to announce this show by @eclecticoverdrive. With the legendary Damo Suzuki of CAN! Join us with @jaialaiofficial @womanmay @lookalivefest https://www.instagram.com/p/B3LD1MAB1VQ/?igshid=j88l5facxy5c

[redalexandria2686]

A woman, may turn out better than a man:

She may be wise and virtuous, A devoted wife,revering her mother-in-law."The son to whom she gives birth May become a hero,The son of such a blessed womanMay even rule the realm.

[msoca-blog]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mike Socarras (@mike_socarras)

Its my birthday today wish me a happy bday! Performing last night #performance #espguitars #emgpickups #emg #floydrose #ltdguitars #ltdm1000 #peavey6505 #peavey #peaveyamps @churchillspub thanks to @xcarlacabellox and @womanmay - check her stuff out. @abattoir_woken @stargirlseas1 @jessejacksonofficial 🎸💥🙌🖤 @exmness @clean.miked @monicacat23

[thesoulofmiami]

Words & Wine Open Mic at Las Rosas Ft. DON PINI & Womanmay 5/30/18

Words & Wine Open Mic at Las Rosas Ft. DON PINI & Womanmay 5/30/18

Words & Wine Open Mic at Las Rosas Ft. DON PINI & Womanmay Wednesday, 05/30/2018 – 05/31/2018 08:00 pm – 02:00 am Las Rosas 2898 NW 7th Ave, Miami, Florida 33127 Facebook Cost: free

Wednesday May 30th Las Rosas Presents:

Words And Wine Open Mic A weekly Tribal Kinda Open Mic

Every Wednesday at 8pm 21+ ONLY

This week featuring: DON PINI Womanmay

Come on out for the BEST Party on a Wednesday night!

O…

[weirdnoise44]

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A post shared by 𝔸𝕦𝕣𝕒 ℙ𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕒 (@weirdnoise44)

@womanmay curte tu rocking out @ lend me your ears ! @jadacolesofficial #music #live #miami #womanmay #lendmeyourears

[sofiemurray]

Womanmay

@mujersitamay

[msoca-blog]

Performing last night #performance #espguitars #emgpickups #emg #floydrose #ltdguitars #ltdm1000 #peavey6505 #peavey #peaveyamps @churchillspub thanks to @xcarlacabellox and @womanmay - check her stuff out. @abattoir_woken @stargirlseas1 @jessejacksonofficial 🎸💥🙌🖤 (at Churchill's Pub)

[thesoulofmiami]

Words & Wine Open Mic Feat. The Takers and Leavers & Womanmay 9/27/17

Words & Wine Open Mic Feat. The Takers and Leavers & Womanmay 9/27/17

Words & Wine Open Mic Feat. The Takers and Leavers & Womanmay Wednesday, 09/27/2017 – 06:00 pm – 08:00 pm Gaden Food & Bar 270 NW 23rd st, Miami, Florida 33127 Facebook Cost: free

Every Wednesday, Garden food and bar Presents:

Words And Wine Open Mic

This week featuring: Womanmay & The Takers and Leavers

8pm-1am NO COVER – FOOD TRUCK – WONDERFUL ATMOSPHERE – KID FRIENDLY

Now introducing a Pre…

[viejitomay]

Womanmay ™️

[tokeepbusy]

Haiku For A Woman May

Soon a WOMANMAY Come to you, sing the weird blues.... She's from Miami.