To the Mary Month of May!  The beginning of the 2012 crop circle season is a welcoming statement to and from the Great Goddess, the Eternal Feminine, the Loving Source of Creation. The formation at Riesi, Sicilia, reported 5th May, and the 2nd formation at Bosschenhoofd, Southern Holland, reported 10th May, both carry symbols belonging to the Great Goddess. Moreover, they have both appeared in the month of May, traditionally devoted to the Virgin Mary of the Christian faith.  The Pentagram/Five-pointed Star of Reisi, the Ankh of Bosschenhoofd and devotion to Mary are all symbolic references to the Great Goddess. And what is more important is that these references come, not within some institutional construct, but directly to each of us as observers, and in the case of the Bosschenhoofd formation, through the accompanying vision of Robbert van den Broeke. The presence of the transcendent and immanent Divine is no longer in the purview of spiritual institutionalism; She belongs to all humanity and answers all cries for help, guidance, comfort, justice and peace.  The number five is implicated strongly in these two formations. The formation at Reisi appears on the 5th day of the 5th month in the year 2012, which can be reduced to 5; 5 days later the formation at Bosschenhoofd appears–four instances of five. 4, symbolizing the Earth, wholeness, manifestation, contains and is imprinted with instances of five, the Central Creator, the quintessence, the heart, the sacred marriage, Venus. The marriage of heaven and earth is unfolding in our world before our eyes!   The vision of Robbert (“ In his "vision" he saw a light emanating from multiple circles and also saw a feminine figure with her arms outspread and her eyes closed (directly over the "ankh" symbol) with a "beautiful" white light around her. “) precipitated my interest in writing this essay about the Feminine Principle as it presents itself to us in the images of the Great Goddess. She is the Initiating and Sustaining Life Force throughout the millennia it has taken for evolution of life and consciousness on Earth.  Images and sculptures named Venus go far back in history as evidence of the fact that humanity has related to a Divine Mother from pre-historical times on; the Venus of Laussel, the Venus of Willendorf, and countless other Venus figurines have been found at Paleolithic and Neolithic sites. They were associated with the life cycles: birth, death, fertility, lunar cycles.                                            Venus of Laussel (circa 18,000 – 20,000 B.C.) & Venus of Willendorf (circa 22,000 -24,000 B.C.)  Venus is the Roman Goddess of sexuality according to classical thought. ”Her birth-giving and death-giving aspects have been suppressed, but they were equally important in her cult.” (Walker, 1043). The present day symbol for the planet Venus closely resembles the ankh and thus connects her to the Goddess Isis, who is also a goddess of love and sexuality and associated with the Magna Mater, the Great Mother.                                                   ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli with symbols for the planet Venus and for the Egyptian Ankh. The ankh was the hand mirror of Isis; Venus is often depicted using a hand mirror in paintings. The planet symbol also signifies ‘female’ in modern times.  From ancient to classical Venus, we come to a more modern image of the Great Mother known as the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is no doubt that her image was honed and refined so as to be acceptable to the strictures imposed by the Catholic Church on women and relations between the sexes. However, the cult of Mary within the Catholic Church has always been somewhat of a conundrum, since the popularity of Mary tends to overshadow even that of Her Son and She was incorporated into the heavenly host only because without Her, the Church would not have been able to keep a great part of its faithful.   She is the Goddess appearing to us in both the transcendent aspect as Queen of Heaven and an immanent aspect as Mary, the human Mother of Jesus. Mary shares Her title, ‘Stella Maris’ with the earlier Goddess,Venus. Her connection to the Egyptian Goddess, Isis, is apparent in the very similar Madonna presentations we find in Isis with the Child Horus, and Mary with the Child Jesus. Isis is known as the goddess of love and sexuality as well as the Magna Mater, the Great Mother in ancient Egyptian religion.                                                               Isis with Horus representations juxtaposed to Christian Madonna representations  All this talk about Mother Mary and associated Goddesses is an expansion on the vision of Robbert van den Broeke of a woman surrounded by a beautiful white light. In the past and indeed ongoing to this day, the Blessed Virgin appears to devoted persons. When the surrounding light is mentioned, one cannot but think of these apparitions: at Mount Carmel, July 16, 1251; Guadalupe, December 9, 1531; Lourdes, February 11 – July 16, 1858; Fatima, May 13 – October 13, 1917; Medjugorje, June 24, 1981 to present times, monthly.  Most often the apparitions were described as having surrounding light.                                                                 Our Lady of Mount Carmel; Our Lady of Guadalupe; Our Lady of Lourdes; Our Lady of Fatima  In all cases, the Lady assured those who came to her that they would be saved and that if they continued to follow Her wishes for prayer, especially for Peace, She would watch over them in their lives. The lady of the apparition at Medjugorje bestows each month since 1987, a prayer for the month. The prayer for April 2012 is:  “Dear children! Also today I am calling you to prayer, and may your heart, little children, open towards God as a flower opens towards the warmth of the sun. I am with you and I intercede for all of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.”  (April 25, 2012, http://www.medjugorje.com/medjugorje-messages/latest-25-message.html ). For further information on the above mentioned apparitions see: http://www.marypages.com/MountCarmel.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_apparitions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Fátima This Mary of the Christian faith is none other than the persistent presence of the Great Goddess or the Feminine Principle acting in the world and seeking our freedom through conscious compliance with Her Principle of compassion, interrelationship, oneness of the spiritual and material, and, LOVE. Capital letters because it is not the mushy, cutesy, comfy kind of affection we might think we want, but a profound, tangible and constantly gentle, yet radical environment of peace, harmony and lightness, a place in which each human can see and know his/herself from the vantage point of the Loving Source of Creation. This is repeated and reinforced by the presence of the white cat in Robbert’s vision. The cat is another connection to ancient goddess symbolism. The Egyptian cat goddess, Bast was also associated with the Graeco-Roman Artemis or Diana, the Magna Mater. One title for the Zoroastrian Goddess of ancient Persia, Anahita, was ‘Lady of the Beasts’. This deity was often depicted with two felines. The cat is associated with the Moon and thus with intuition, inner vision. The ceremonies for Bast in ancient Egypt involved merriment, dancing, music and sexual rites; life was celebrated.  Bast is the benevolent aspect of the Goddess Hathor; her dark side was the leonine Sekhmet, who destroyed enemies with a ruthlessness unsurpassed. Once again, in the cat image, we come by the representation of the Goddess Who has power over life and death. Robbert’s white cat is a contemporary image for a Divine gentleness that offers a loving bond between the spiritual side and the physical side of our being.                                                    The ancient Goddess Anahita, Lady of the Beasts & a contemporary artist’s interpretation of the dual aspect of Hathor: Bast, the Cat and Sekhmet, the Lioness  This ‘feminine figure with the white cat’ seen by Robbert is the key to the interpretation of this crop circle message which is well described by his own words “this circle represents the great joy people experience when they delight in the success and happiness of others, this building the self-reinforcing love that feeds the souls of all.”  Just what the Feminine Principle brings to our world of human structures and strife, successes and failures, hopes and fears, desires and hatred, sorrow and anger, wealth and poverty, power and helplessness–opportunity to rejoice in who we are and to share our love and appreciation of one another.  This new year of crop circles opens with symbols of the Great Goddess (pentagram/five-pointed star of Reisi, Italy) and this amazing formation with an ankh standing, like the lady in light, with its arms open, beckoning all who want, to join in a renewed life powered by empathy, honor for the principles of Nature, co-operation, sharing, celebration. We are being invited to begin fashioning a new humanity!  Michelle Jennings Sources: Ann, Martha & dorothy m. imel. goddesses in world mythology. oxford university press. oxford. 1993. Cooper, J.c. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional symbols.Thames & Hudson. london.1978. Harvey, Andrew. the return of the mother. tarcher/Putnam books. new york. 1995. Walker, Barbara. the Woman’s encyclopedia of myths and secrets. Harper & Row. San francisco. 1983.  http://www.carnaval.com/egypt/bast/ http://whitepaintedwoman.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/egyptian-goddess-quiz-the-answers/