Quote:
Originally Posted by Ostrogorski
But one can also say that ancient Greece was the land where desert thought meets the solar ( Hyperborean) thought, where Hyperborean Hellenes meet the desert Cretans and Pelasgians. There was enough of both - chtonic cults, snake and stone worshiping, female deities related with the fertility cults, widespread homosexuality and pederasties etc. All signs of desert.
There were also solar signs - supreme god of thunder, sky, and justice - Zeus, sun gods Apollo and Helios, Spartan courage and war craft, the myth of Perseus in which he kills the typical chtonic deity of middle east - the Minotaurus and stops the practice of human sacrificing in Crete, in typical chtonic building - the labyrinth etc.
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If female gods of fertility, snake- and stone worshipping and labyrinths are "Middle-Eastern" or "signs of the desert", then the whole pre-Indo-European Europe should have been nothing but a huge desert. Venus-figures associated with female fertility were typical already in the Ice Age, and there's labyrinth-figures made of stones even in Finland.
Despite my rationalist standpoint, I can somehow subscribe to the symbolism used here. But instead of being only something specific to desert peoples, the things you call chtonic and Middle-Eastern are just an archaic form of spirituality and religious life.