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16-08-2004, 08:04 PM

In article ,
pamfree (Zemedelec) wrote:

Online source for hebes in the U.S.

Since Hebe is the goddess of pleasure, I'm dying to know how to get hold of a
few of her clones--I think they would settle in nicely in New Orleans.
zemedelec

Hebe is a diminished form of the Great Goddess Hepa or Hepatu, pretty much
the same as Cybele who was also called Baba or Kubaba, & was notably
warlike & raging. To the Greeks she was the adolescent form of Hera. Her
Hebrew name is Hawwah traditionally rendered in English as Eve though Hebe
would be closer.

Among the Hittites & Hurrians (biblical Jebusites), & throughout much of
the Mid and Near East, she was the primary, central divinity, which is why
even the Greeks identified her with Hera. Though her Greek form is
diminished from the Hittite original, she was not a Goddess of Pleasure,
but of youthfulness. She was the source of the ambrosia which controlled
the immortality of the gods. But as Great Goddedss, she was extremely
warlike, baring a sword & standing upright on a lion.

Hepa occurs in the Bible in the form of a violent angel associated with a
hill upon which a Jebusite priest of Hepatu operated a sacred
threshing-floor (of a cult simiilar to that of the Goddess Anath & her
dying, "threshed," & reborn brother Baal Hadad).

The El Amarna tablets indicates a Jebusite king worshipped Hepatu, for his
name was Adbi-hepa, "Servant of the Goddess Hepa." The priest-king's
wealth was predicated upon grain production. One such Jebusite priest-king
was known to David, who bought from the Jebusite the hilltop
threshing-floor on which the future temple of Yahweh would one day be
built [2 Sm 24:24; 1 Chr 21:22-25].

In scripture this priest-king of Hepatu had the Hurrian name Araunah or
Ornan, which is probably only a title meaning "Lord." The destroying angel
who was sent to plague Israel and punish David for vanity was Hepatu, whom
the patriarchs coöpted into Yahweh's angelic hosts. Hebrew scripture calls
this angel "he," for it was a yahwist habit to masculinize the Goddess
[21:14-15]. It was Hepatu's servant, King Araunah the Jebusite, who
stopped the wrathful endeavors of this angel at the site of a
threshing-floor [2 Sm 24:16], indicating that Hepatu's destruction was a
symbol for the reaping of grain. Ancient fertility figurines have been
recovered in Israel depicting a Goddess wearing reaped ears of grain upon
her head, this very Goddess of the Threshing-floor. The Chronicler
evidently identifies Hepatu's fertility daemon Teshup with Satan [1 Chr
21:1].

After the Jebusite king stopped Hepatu's threshing, the destroying angel
stood between Earth and Heaven with sword still drawn, but now held
outward, flat above Jerusalem as a protective covering [21:16]. She next
commanded that an altar to the Lord be built at the site of the Jebusite's
threshing-floor [21:18-21], for Yahweh like Zeus & Baal was initially a
sacrificial fertility daemon, he was reaped grain. And like this biblical
angel demanding a sacred threshing altar for Yahweh (where the Temple
would a generation later be built), so too Anath the Thresher in the Poem
of Baal saw to the building of a palace for Baal, who had formerly be
worshipped only in open groves.

When the altar was built, Hepatu put away her sword into its sheath
[21:27]. Solomon was later to build the Jerusalem Temple upon the very
site of Hepatu's threshing-floor. A sacred threshing-floor was also
established in Samaria when the kingdom was divided, and it was here the
kings of Judah (Ahab) and Israel (Jehoshaphat) brought their thrones to
set them in the midst of the threshing-floor [1 Ki 22:10; 2 Chr 18:9] to
receive prophesies of war from Zedekiah who placed upon his head a pair of
horns fashioned from iron [1 Ki 22:11; 2 Chr 18:10]. This hardly seems a
yahwist ritual, but was a holdover from the worship of Hepatu and the
threshed war-god Teshup.

Cooler stuff than Hebe being merely a goddess of pleasure.

-paghat the kabbalistic ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com