Many remedy pictures feature clairvoyance: phosphorus, carcinosin, hydrogen, to name only 3. The clairvoyance can be on any level--hydrogen does have clairvoyant dreams, though.

I once took a case in school where the patient had dreams which were not exactly clairvoyant--but she derived some meaning from them which led her to know the outcome of a situation. It was significant to her case that she derived some omen from her dreams--but they weren't exactly "clairvoyant"...she didn't "see" the future, other than she could predict the outcome of something based on the events in the dream, which were symbolic, more than anything.

Okay, I'll post the goddess information next.
Steel yourselves.

Divina

__________________
...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

Okay, ladies, here goes:



La fica

From The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, written and illustrated by Barbara G. Walker, Harper Collins, San Francisco, 1988.

Fig

To "make the fig" by sticking the thumb through the fingers of a closed fist is still considered an obscene insult, equivalent to "f*** you", in many parts of Europe. In England it is called to fig; in Italy, far la fica; in Spain, hacer el higo; in France, faire la figue; in Germany, die Feige weisen1. Yet the gesture was considered a powerful charm against the evil eye and other threats. Thousands of fig-making hands of carved ivory, metal, bone, wood, and plastic are sold each year as good-luck charms.2

The solution to the paradox is, of course, the sexual connotation of the gesture, which used to be holy because it is a lingam-yoni(definition to follow). According to Ovid, a Roman afraid of meeting a ghost would invoke the life-preserving power of sex by making "'a sign with his thumb in the middle of his closed fingers'".3 Figs were classified with apricots and pomegranates as female genital symbols. Hence, Gaulish pagan gods were referred to in medieval Latin texts as ficarii, "fig-eaters," perhaps a reference to cunnilingus.4 An archaic Roman festival called Nonae Caprotinae connected Juno Caprotina, Goddess of fig trees, with the lustful goat god.5 Similarly in Greece, a euphemism for "vagina" was sykon, "fig". Fig trees were supposed to arouse lust and were favourite resting places for satyrs. Significantly, Tannhauser ws also resting under a fig tree when he was approached by the Goddess Venus. As in Rome, so in Greece general fertility was assured by invoking the power of sex through the fig, in an annual ceremony of touching the genitals of the king's wife with a phallus of fig wood.6

According to the Ananda Tantra, the fig leaf is "the conventional form of the yoni"7. This may account for the common use of the fig tree as a symbol of man's enlightenment, which was formerly supposed to come through his connection with the female principal. Buddha attained "perfect illumination" by sitting under the sacred fig tree.8 His boddhi or bo tree was identified as ficus religiosa, the Holy Fig.9
Adam and Eve placed "aprons" of fig leaves over their genitals after they had become enlightened (Genesis 3:7), which seems to indicate a male imitation of female genital symbolism. According to the Haggadah, the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden was not an apple, but a fig.10 This hints at the probability, never very deeply concealed, that the knowledge forbidden by the Judeo-Christian god was knowledge of specifically female sexuality which patriarchal societies have always tried to suppress. The fig tree Ruminalis was worshipped by the Goddess herself in the Palatine temple in Rome.11

Notes:
1. Joshua Trachtenberg. Jewish Magic and Superstiton: A Study in Folk Religion. New York: Atheneum, 1984. p. 161
2. Frederick Elworthy. The Evil Eye. New York: Julian Press, 1958. p. 152
3. Georges Dumezil. Archaic Roman Religion. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. vol. 1, p. 367.
4. Richard Payne Knight. A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus. New York: University Books, 1974. pp. 149, 153.
5. H. J. Rose. Religion in Greece and Rome. New York: Harper & Bros., 1959. p. 217.
6. Hans Peter Duerr. Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization (Felicitas Goodman, trans.) Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1985. pp. 189, 198.
7. Francis King. Sexuality, Magic, and Perversion. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1972. p.28
8. Count Goblet d'Alviella. The Migration of Symbols. New York: University Books. 1957. p. 162
9. Eithne Wilkins. The Rose Garden Game. London: Victor Gallanez, 1969. p. 45
10. Willis Barnstone, ed. The Other Bible. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961. p. 34
11. Michael Grant. Roman Myths. New York, Scribner. 1971. p. 104

lingam-yoni: the lingam yoni was a carved symbol of male and female genitalia in conjuction, the lingam in the yoni. This was the typical Tantric altarstone, reminding worshippers that sexual love is the source of human life, that all existence depends on union of male and female principles, and that hte Goddess and God were perpetually joined in order to keep the universe in motion.

Westerners usually called the lingam-yoni obscene, since it was not the habit of Western religion to view sexuality as a divine motivating power.


There you are. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Divina

[ 14 August 2001: Message edited by: Divina ]

__________________
...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

Divina,

Wow. I'm especially stunned by the Greek ceremony. I wonder if it connects with Proserpina at all. It must. I don't know about the fig, but certainly, the pomegranate was one of her symbols. It referred to her return to earth for the "birth" of spring, the rebirth of the earth, the time of fertility. Sicily being her home, the image of the pomegranate is everywhere, churches, balconies. I wish I could think of the female saint that holds one. I probably took a slide. There's also the Madonna of the pomegranate. Carlo Crivelli, the renaissance painter had pomegranates and figs galore in his madonna paintings.

On my trip I realized that these symbols are not mysteries to "the people" , your grandmother is an example. We are removed from their meanings and, reading your contribution, you've got to ask yourself why.

Rosettes too, Venus's symbol, are all over the place.

In the fascinating column capitals of the cloister of Monreale (12c) I found a yogini and also a female figure displaying a yoni you couldn't miss.

With all the supposed sexuality around us today we are not catching the more interesting references.

Contenta

Hi Contenta,

We're missing the references to sexuality because we're really just being bombarded with images of soft (and hard core, let's face it) pornography. The two things are not the same...in fact, sexuality--particularly female sexuality, is still being actively suppressed by those images we're surrounded by. The number of women who are aware that such a thing as female sexuality even exists is very small, in the world...and believe it or not, there are very physical signs of this in the pathologies you'll find in the symptom pictures of many homeopathic remedies! So, even though we're not aware, for the most part, people still feel, and suffer from, this lack of knowledge about themselves.

There is a madonna with a pomegranate--Our Lady with the Pomegranate of Paestum, she's called, and she has one in one hand and a baby in the other. Like all the Christian iconography, she's a "renamed" figure in pagan iconography--specifically Juno, who is always pictured with a pomegranate, as is Proserpina (or Persephone).

I'm fascinated by that goddess tour you did, (Sicily in particular being one of the places where there is still a tacit awareness of the goddess, which remains in what those who don't know call "superstition") and want more details! Isn't this book of symbols interesting? I got my copy almost 10 years ago--and its been very useful.

Divina

[ 14 August 2001: Message edited by: Divina ]

__________________
...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

Divina,

Our Lady of the Pomegranate of Paestum! Now that's a great example of the Pagan in Christianity. The temple of Juno still stands there.

The suppression of female sexuality: such a huge subject it's hard to wrap your mind around it. On the tour we found out that it shouldn't that way. Each day we'd step through another layer and there was the female again. I don't know that I can satisfy your intellectual mind, it was such an emotional and intuitive experience. From the images, the shapes, the settings we came to sense a strong female power. It was a beautiful and mournful experience at the same time, very healing.

I'll share some details about the trip soon. I'm going to have to come back to this, in fact, I need to. Right now I'm a bit anxious.

Contenta