Tom Foran Clark

On Crete, the people speak of Sega -- a way of life. It means take it easy. As for company -- sharing life with other people -- the people of Crete have a special word for it -- and it has a stronger meaning than just friends. It is Parea -- the circle of people you enjoy having around you. On Crete, it's felt life would be unbearable if you didn't have your Parea. Frederik, on Crete, had not yet been at all influenced by either Sega or Parea. He was not a merry or at all lighthearted Dane. He had Hamlet's howling melancholy and a deep-seated, furious Viking rage.

He was a nordic berserk, given to strong moods -- worsened by his heavy consumption of beer. Historically, berserker rage had been connected with the consumption of the hallucinogenic mushroom fly agaric -- Amanita muscaria and/or massive quantities of alcohol -- mead.

Berserk meant "bare of shirt" -- fighting without armour -- or "bear shirt" -- dressing in animal skins, mostly from bear or wolf. The berserker was the stock villain of the sagas. Typically, the berserker was a murderous, stupid brute. It was common practice for a berserker to challenge men of property to "holmgang" and, upon slaying the unfortunate victim, to take possession of his goods, wealth, and women. The main characteristics of berserkers were: association with animals; terrifying appearance; the wearing of animal skins; and violent berserker rage. This berserker fury was called "berserkergang," which started with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and a chill in the body; then the face would swell and turn purple. "Berserkergang" included great hot-headedness giving rise to a great rage, under which men howled as wild animals. The loss of human reason was followed by acquisition of enormous strength and animal behavior -- killing and howling -- followed by profound bodily weakness and disability --a dulling of the mind -- feebleness -- lasting one or several days.

Then, after several days of rest and recuperation, Frederik would beging again -- working on his tragedy -- "Character is Fate."

"The tragic flaw in the hero -- the particular defect of character and inability to understand a situation that creates his downfall," Frederik lectured Emery. "Your fatal flaw is your self-righteousness. For me, it is my resistance. The more diverse a cast there is, the greater opportunity for perspective -- and for conflict, drama. All of the characters need to be connected to each other -- or to the plot, either physically (work, circumstances) or thematically (shared hopes, dreams -- but different means to achieving their goals). The characters have to relate to each other -- and the audience to them. They need also to have some sort of secret. The hero does not accept his fate. The audience tries to tell him, 'Accept your fate!' The audience identifies with the hero and feels pity -- and fear. The catharsis of the feelings leaves the audience exalted."

After such a session -- or sessions -- of revelation, lucidity, he'd just go nuts again.

Around that same time Frida, the object of Emery's desire, took Emery into the community garden and, in confidence, told him a few things. She said Frederik didn't know everything. She compared Nora to the girl in Sappho's poem, "Anactoria" -- "her heart hanging heavy with longing in her little breast." Emery didn't listen too carefully -- he was overcome with the sweet smell of Frida -- right there -- and the smell of an unknown herb spreading in the evening air. Beyond the garden. In a meadow.

That night Emery climbed in between clean sheets with her. "Put a pillow under my head, and throw something over me," she said -- "like yourself. I am cold." Her hair smelled like maple trees in the springtime; her breasts were satin-like sumptuous pillows; from her her nipples flowed honey. How beautiful life was. In the night, Emery heard Frida cry out in her sleep: "No! Don't!" she gasped, as if someone were strangling her.

Frida had an ecstatic conviction that she and Emery would consummate a marriage."The feminine -- the goddesss -- is the consciousness and essence of the universe," Frida told him. "The feminine animates everything. She is nature, embodying and manifesting herself through her rhythms -- birth, life cycles, transitions, death, emotions, creativity, mystery. She births all creation from within herself, from essence, her womb, and nurtures what she births. there is transformation -- growth, movement, gestation, dissolution, regeneration. When individual journeys are over, she takes all back into her body -- tulips, jellyfish, humans, thoughts, cultures, galaxies, multiverses."

The Goddess of Nature, Regenerator -- Artemis in Greek mythology -- appeared in the Spring. She gave life to all earth plants, animals, and humans -- the Mistress of Animals. There were male counterparts of the same kind, present throughout prehistory, called the Master of Animals. There was a balance between the sexes in religion and in life.

The Cretan Snake Goddesses yielded two snakes in either fist. Snakes were venerated in Crete, symbolizing immortality and life after death. The Minoan Goddesses were beautifully dressed, narrow-waisted, their breasts exposed. They either held snakes in their hands or had them wrapped around them. The phallicism merged the underworld and fertility into a single symbol. Among the symbols of the ancient mysteries at Eleusis was that of intertwining snakes -- two serpents, in opposition, the life-giving force of humankind. The union of the two serpents began at the Root Chakra, and ended at the top of the head. Each constantly sent or received, in silent communication, all that was taking place in the world of polarity. This system of life-giving force was at the root of the nervous system, sending messages from brain to body and body to brain, communicating what each was experiencing. Desire -- as irresistible as ocean tides going in and out -- sent the body a message: just do it. The body told the brain what was to happen. This was life.

"We say it is the year 2001," Frida said. "But there is no 'year' at all. The yearly cycle is only about our relation to the sun -- the foremost center of reference lying beyond ourselves -- around which the earth turns. A year is simply one complete rotation of the earth around the sun, in which the seasons fulfil their cycle, plants and animals fulfill genetic reproduction. Creatures set up homes, and then move on. The farmer sows seeds and reaps a harvest. Things rise up from the earth, and things return to it. Isness -- that is all there is."

According to Frederik, "all people have three needs: identity (a sense of self), pleasure (emotional, intellectual, and sexual stimulation), and security (a place to lay down and a roof overhead). There was just one prime mover at work in men -- the sexual urge. "Women have subtler natures -- they are lovers and mothers. As lover, a woman enhances the strength and creative power of the male principle. Woman is man's inspiration -- the source of his pleasure and the instrument of his self-realization. Without her, he would have no existence. As mother, woman represents the transcendent -- in which man plays no role. The goddess, as the sole source of being, is equal to the highest state of consciousness. Woman is the physical embodiment of the generative/destructive matrix. Woman is the principle of life itself. All existence comes from the mysterious energy of The Great Goddess. From the Universal Mother comes all creation, thought, form, and beings. Man, tossed on the waves of life, yearns for woman -- calm -- primordial night -- the total peace from which he originally emerged. But a man should never let his aspirations, even for a second, droop. Matter and vital spirit -- these equate to the body and the blood. Men have to be eternally on guard against women's tricks," Frederik insisted. "It is a constant struggle. The greatest danger for a man is that he attract an actual human being who has the crucial four-fold elemental forces. Any individual drawn into one's life, inspiring love, must be avoided at all cost. The last thing a man needs is a woman -- a demon in the form of a woman -- to corrupt him. To fall in love with a woman is to ascend the sacred mountain -- the easiest way to fall from the path of enlightenment. That person becomes one of Nature's pawns, unconsciously drawn to the woman for reasons the man could never understand. There can be no marriage with a goddess," he said. "Gods and goddesses -- and individual human Souls -- are neutral, neither male nor female. An oversight in understanding causes the man to stray from the love of the goddess. The man seeks seek solace in the flesh of a mere mortal. The Goddess, scorned, manifests herself on the face of the deep in the form of revenge."

The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas researched the prehistoric Goddess culture of Old Europe -- the vast region covering the area between the Scandinavian countries in the North, and Crete in the south: "The main theme of Goddess symbolism is the mystery of birth and death and the renewal of life, not only human but all life on earth and indeed in cosmos. Symbols and images cluster around the parthenogenetic (self-regenerating) Goddess and her basic functions as Giver of Life, Wielder of Death, and, not less importantly, as regeneratrix, and around the Earth Mother, the Fertility Goddess young and old, rising and dying with plant life. She was the single source of life who took her energy from the springs and wells, from the sun, moon and moist earth. This symbolic system represents cyclical, not liner, mythical time. In art this is manifested by the signs of dynamic motion: whirling and twisting spirals, winding and coiling snakes, circles, crescents, horns, sprouting seeds and shoots. The snake was a symbol of life energy and regeneration, a most benevolent, not an evil, creature. Even the colors had different meaning than in the Indo-European symbolic system. Black did not mean death or the underworld; it was the color of fertility, the color of damp caves and rich soil, of the womb of the Goddess where the life begins."

Urbanized societies developed god religions, rejecting "deity" (goddess) religions. But the Cretans did not adapt their religion to a male-centered universe. The head of the Minoan pantheon was an all-powerful goddess -- the mother-goddess of Crete -- a deity who ruled over everything in the universe. Her relationship to the world was as a mother to her offspring, a fundamentally different relationship than that of a father and his offspring. The deity's relation to people was a fundamentally closer relationship than that offered by "god" religions -- the "god" religions stressed distance.

There were subtly different representations of the mother-goddess of Crete: one was "The Lady of the Beasts" (or the "Huntress"), represented as mastering or overcoming animals. Another, "the Mountain Mother," stood on a mountain and apparently protected animals and the natural world.

Frida spoke of the Celtic goddesses: Proximæ (kinswomen); Dervonæ (oak spirits): Niskai (water spirits); and Mairæ, Matronæ, Matres or Matræ (the mothers); and Quadriviæ (goddesses of cross-roads). The goddess of Minoa, of course, was the snake goddess, having snakes entwined around her body, or held in her hands. This "household goddess" also took the form of a small bird, Frida said. Both the dove goddesses and serpent goddesses had evolved from primitive Cretan Meteres -- Holy Mothers. Frida insisted Nymphs and Nereids dwelled, then as now, in mountains, valleys, streams, and oceans.