Courage, Wisdom, Strength: The Minerva Award

Gloria Steinem was among a group of women given the the Minerva Award yesterday at the Women's Conference in Long Beach.

Minerva/Athena:

As a young woman, I was not not a fan of the "sprung full grown from the head of Zeus" myth of Athena so beloved of the Greeks and Romans. It's a little too patriarchal for my taste, too too fraught with Daddy issues, too suggestive that the right source of a woman's power was through the male and that her loyalty must be to him, also. So, I went looking on the net today for a pre-Hellenic version I'd found in college. Accorring to Timelessmyths.com:

Minerva was probably a goddess of Etruscan origin. Minerva was the goddess of art and crafts. It was only when Minerva was equated with Greek goddess Athena that she became the goddess of war and victory. An Etruscan equivalent to Minerva is Menrva...Where Athena was essentially a virgin the goddess, Menrva was also a goddess that promoted marriage and childbirth.

I would also recommend Thalia Took's post on Menra at the Obscure Goddess On-line Directory:

As many know, Minerva is the Goddess of Wisdom, Art, Horsecraft, Justice, War and Healing. Her images appears on the Great Seal of California. One of her creatures is the owl.

Links:

Youtube videos from The Women's Conference

Yahoo News: Photos from the Conference

Minerva and the Altar of Liberty

Pallas Athena (AKA Minerva)

Images of Women in the Ancient World - Athena

Excerpt:

Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, of household arts and crafts, of spinning and weaving, of textiles. Inventor of the flute, the plough and the ox-yoke, the horse bridle and the chariot. Athena, goddess of war, guardian of Athens, the city named for her; defender of heroes, champion of justice and civil law.

Concerned as we are with the role of women in today's society, we may well ask ourselves, who was Athena that she was celebrated in song and story, portrayed by artist and poet, and worshiped as the pre-eminent goddess of Greece. Was the stately grey-eyed maiden a light in the mind of man, or the dream of woman?

According to legend, Athena sprang fully-grown and fully-armed from the head of her father, Zeus, ruler of the gods on Mount Olympus. It is told that he swallowed his pregnant first wife, Metis, meaning wisdom, so that she would not bear a child stronger than he. In some versions of the story, Athena's birth was assisted by the blacksmith, Hephaestus, who opened Zeus's head with a stroke of his axe. This metaphor may suggest two possible interpretations and pose two questions. Was Zeus demonstrating his power by giving birth without a woman's help, or was he sharing his power with his daughter? Certainly, Hephaestus, a son of Zeus by his second wife, Hera, would appear to be an unlikely "midwife."

Give Me Enough Chocolate And I Can Rule The World

Chocolate......

Now that I have your attention, I would like to remind everyone that tomorrow is International Women's Day. Click here for a list of events in your area.

Why not honor a woman who has inspired you with a bit of fine chocolate on this day? See some truly orgasmic chocolate links below.

Once strengthened, we can go out and promote our radical (?) feminist agenda. Fox News (?) warns us that:

According to it's website, IWD is a "global day connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential." Back in 1911, the very first IWD was celebrated in order to campaign for such noble ideals as women's right to work, to vote, and to hold public office.

Today, IWD serves to advance radical feminism in the form of promoting pro-abortion and pro-gay rights legislation, ratification of ERA, affirmative action for women, Title IX, government babysitting services, and government wage control, commonly camouflaged as "pay equity" or "comparable worth."

...Even media groups, such as CNN, the BBC, and Aljazeera TV have signed on as sponsors. Tomorrow, over 450 rallies and "events" are planned in 44 different countries across the globe.

"The radical feminists want to remake our laws in order to eradicate everything that is masculine from our culture and create a gender-neutral society," concluded Schlafly. "The United States should seriously reconsider lending its stamp of approval to future IWDs."

Seriously, Phyllis? Human rights is still a radical notion? Who knew?

Does the fact that women are still used as slaves and sex captives not appear on your personal radar?

Emily Maguire writes that:

70 per cent of those living in poverty are female, as are two-thirds of all uneducated children and two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults. Eighty per cent of the approximately 700,000 people trafficked into slavery (including sex slavery) each year are female, and around 130 million women and girls are victims of female genital mutilation. Every year, 500 000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth and 68,000 die as a result of unsafe abortion.

That seems to be a cause that matters.

Meanwhile....

Scientist are trying to trace the origins of the original chocolate tree.

Oh, gods. I want one.

The cacao plant, or Theobroma cacao, evolved in the tropical rainforests of the Americas, but its origins remain something of a mystery. The species has been domesticated for so long that, like corn, it is now quite different from its wild relatives.

Since I can't offer you a tree, I will offer some of my favorite chocolate links:

Moonstruck: On-line store
If you are ever in the Portland area, visit one of their chocolate cafes.

Equal Exchange On-line store: Fair Trade Chocolate, Tea and Coffee
and do check out the link to their article on chocolate & slavery below.

Chocolate Dieties On line store
I'll have the 3/4 pound Green Tara in the dark chocolate, please.

The Chocolate Tree - Based in Edinburgh

Sweet Earth Organic Chocolate

Adults may care to purchase some special chocolate party hats. Check out the viking hat.
(My thanks to the delicious Brownie Points blog for pointing me to this site.)

Where was I? Oh...right:

The original tree may have been lost through human meddling. Typical.

...the fragrant, calorie-rich oils produced by wild Theobroma (the original tree) are what attract trapline bees, which have high energy requirements. But the hairlike structures that might have produced the oils are either vestigial or completely absent in most cacao cultivars. While breeding the plant to produce better chocolate, humans may have inadvertently destroyed the plant's primary means of attracting pollinators.

Efforts are now underway to improve the pollination abilities of modern cocao producing plants. All strength and honor to them. Give women enough chocolate and we can take over the world.

Sia
Links:

Chocolate: The Original Mood Food

The Dark Side of Chocolate: Slavery and Chocolate Production

How To Taste Chocolate

The O'Mamma Organic Report notes that that many Dagoba Organic Chocolate products were recently recalled due to high levels of led.

Recipe for White Chocolate and Pacan Nanaimo bars from the Domestic Goddess blog

Image: Chocolate Minerva - from Gizmodo's list of chocolate toys

Minerva:

Wikipedia notes that: The name "Minerva" is likely imported from the Etruscans who called her Menrva. In Etruscan mythology, Menrva was the goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools and commerce.

Her name has the "mn-" stem, linked with memory. See Greek "Mnemosyne" (gr. μνημοσύνη) and "mnestis" (gr. μνῆστις): memory, remembrance, recollection. The Romans could have confused her foreign name with their word mens meaning "mind" since one of her aspects as goddess pertained not only to war but also to the intellectual. Minerva is the Roman name for Athena the goddess of Wisdom and Virginity. She is also depicted as an owl.

The patriarchial Roman myths have her springing full grown from the head of Zeus. Earlier myths list her as the daughter of Zeus and the Goddess Metis, an oceanic Goddess, and the first great spouse of Zeus, who was, in fact, his equal. I think it's fair to say that in Menrva, we see the offspring of Mother Ocean and Father Sky. She is said to be the inventor of mathematics, language, poetry, the healing arts, and music. As 'Minerva Medica', she was the goddess of medicine and doctors, warriors, wisdom, commerce, and crafts. Ovid called "The Goddess of a 1,000 works".

All this is probably why the character of Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter books has the first name of Minerva.