This extract is taken from a book called 'The Shining Ones' by Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn and is intriguing reading. It leads on from a passage which discusses the duel nature of God (in the historical sense).

"Ashtoreth, Asherah, Ashteroth, Astarte, Ishtar or Inanna are all names of the mother goddess ......

The mother goddess's images are usually the horns of bulls or the crescent moon, showing the union between the sun (bull) and moon (horn). One of her names, Ashteroth, can mean 'grove' or 'single standing stone' or 'pole within a grove'

When we consider that the image of the great goddess was a simple white shining cone, pole or even pyramid with her head at the top, we begin to see the universal usage. Megaliths, pyramids and various other temples display evidence of having been whitewashed. In Golgi in Cyprus, conical stones are raised to the mother goddess, as in the temples of Malta and in the Sinai, and in the great open sanctuary at Byblos in Syria (the city sacred to Adonis) there is the tall obelisk or standing stone. They almost come to life. The stones of many of the megaliths of northern Europe shine blue in the rain .... and the moonlight...."

I thought of Silbury as it was originally - a shining pyramid of white chalk.

This post is for those of us who venerate Nature through the imagery of the Mother Goddess and all she provides.

peace and goodwill

tjj