Bee Stories for Gobnait’s Day - part 1

Humans have always had a close relationship with bees.

Honey has probably been a staple food for humans as long as there have been humans. Beekeeping is one of the earliest skills of settled farm based society and culture. Bees, and other insects, made settled farming possible through their action of pollination of fruit trees, especially apple trees, and other food crops.

Bees not only provide food through honey and their gathered pollen, but their waxes have been essential for effective medicines and as an aid in metalworking.

Sadly, as we hear from the media, the populations of Bees around the world are fast dying and nobody seems to understand why. Ancient legends have foretold that if the Bees died and became extinct in this world, human extinction would soon follow.

I would like to journey with you through some of the origins, the genesis of the Bee on earth, and how its symbolism seems to have shaped how we live. Through understanding this maybe we can encourage, in our own small way, a stronger lifespan for the Bee, both in its pollinating existence and through our closeness to what we may call "the Bee Goddess".

Earliest Bee Mythology

Much of early mythology seems to have created stories and codes inspiring ways of human living. These inspirations come from observances of other life, especially the ways of birds and insects along with some mammals and reptiles. Our mating and marriage behaviour, for example, mimics some ways of sea birds.

The bees' lifestyle seems to have inspired our human need for a social order that is cooperative and productive.

For example, in Egypt Bees symbolised a stable, ordered and even obedient society and the Egyptian symbolism and reverence for Bees later moved on into the Freemasonry movement that still exists today.

Bees of over 100 million years old have been immortalised in their own honey, frozen in time in amber. This is well before humans were on this earth.

Since humans roamed it's as if humans have always known that honey, and other products manufactured by the Bee, are regenerative and even miracle making.

It is told in alternative stories that  Bees accompanied Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden, called a "Golden Age", and that honey dripped around them from trees like dropping rainwater.

The Greeks called honey the "awakener" as they associated honey with their Sun God Elector and called amber stone, "Electon"

Before I move into Greek mythology it is worth considering "honey hunting" through the lands that are now Spain and Portugal. This started about 15,000 years ago. It's a tradition that is still in Spain today, but in the form of Bullfighting. Bees and bulls connections? I will move onto that shortly. 

Were Bee Goddesses The First Angels?

Sumerian medicine men from the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, who flourished between 5300 - 3500 BC, are said to be the originators of apitherapy, caring and healing with products from the bees.

The Sumerians also appear to have been the first to depict winged figures in art, including humans with wings, including images of the Bee Goddess?

Could these Bee Goddess images have been the inspiration and archetype for biblical angels?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Written By:Antonio Machado 
and translated by Robert Bly

Bees and Bulls, a connection?

Bullfighting today is passed down from "Mithraism" which includes the ritualistic slaughter of bulls. Where this comes from and how it connects to Bee mythology we have to delve deeper.

We need to delve into a time when the Goddesses were revered the most, the golden age of the Bee Goddess, during the time we may now mystically call ‘the Age of Taurus the Bull’.

One clue most of us know is the bible and other holy books scribing about how "the Lord promises to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into a land flowing with milk and honey". This was  describing a mythical utopia, seemingly symbolic of the image of the Mother Goddess, the Bee Goddess?

So through that quote we have milk of the cattle, and honey of the bees.

Some more clues have come from Catal Huyuk, an ancient town or city in southern Turkey, that was first discovered in 1958 and later dated as being of around 6500 BC, over 8500 years ago. This is regarded as one of the oldest finds of a truly farming and craft based culture. 

Catal Huyuk is the only ancient place discovered so far that features images of a Mother Goddess, Bull and Bees together. However, this is about 2500 years before the Age of Taurus time, in fact toward the end of Age Of Cancer.

Huge statues from the Assyrian cities of Nimrud, now in today's Iraq, and Persepolis , now in today's Iran, appear to have evolved from the Sumerian 'winged tradition' by strangely transforming bees into bulls with wings.

It is said that ancient Assyrians believed that when Bees were found on the carcasses of dead bulls this represented a sacred regeneration of souls. Their art included placing a Beehive in the head of a bull as a sign of some kind of soul purification, but this interpretation is very vague..

Somehow, this developed into a belief that Bees were born from Sacred Bulls that became a leading belief in Egypt. This belief spread through Mediterranean cultures, on both sides of the Mediterranean through to what is now Spain. It is this belief that seems to have transformed into Spain’s bullfighting tradition.

From this bees and bulls connection, I ask was bullfighting related to an encouragement to release the Bees within the Sacred Bulls as they fought. Or was this a weird tradition believing that the Bulls fighting attracted the Sacred Bees.

Yes, this is all quite confusing, but somehow feel all these are fragments of tradition and wisdom from Bee Goddess reverence that may have descended from human civilisations that existed during the Age of Taurus.

It is worth considering how Bull Fights were an important part of the ancient island of Ireland, Erin, Mythology. The well known epic, The Tain, is completed with a bullring fight between the Brown Bull of Cooley and White Bull of Achill, and the Bull Ring rath is still visible there at Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon.

Lesser known, and only slightly visible now, is an ancient bullring by the stone circle of Castleruddery in Co. Wicklow but I do not personally know of stories from there. Nearby the Castleruddery site is evidence of a settlement that is said to be the second oldest known in all of Erin.

Another example is the Grange Stone Circle in Co. Limerick that carries stories of first being a ‘star circle’ connected to move ancient Slav, Baltic and Balkan traditions. The circles were then used for harvest threshing and winning, and after that all done, incomes the bullfighting, maybe using ‘wagers’ from what was earned from harvest trade?

To me the Rathgroghan, Castleruddery, and Grange circles and their connection to bulls as well as harvest, her in Ireland, these are also indications of probable Minoan and Sumerian Ways that arrived in Ancient Erin. I have heard from a few storytellers that the words ‘Iran’, of the Sumarians, and ‘Erin’ of here are said to come from the same word, but that is another article for another time.

Much more to follow in ‘part 2’ …

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