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Origins of the Tejana GoddessSelected Precursors- Coatlique, Artemis, Athena, Minerva, Liberty, Virgen de G., Columbia, "Indian Princess", "Feathered Goddess", Lady Liberty, Diana, Venus, "Celestial Virgen", Lydia Mendoza, Yellow Rose, Dallas Cheerleader, Selena. Accessories and features taken from above goddesses- armadillo, rattlesnake, eagle, feathers, barefoot, frontier fringe, lone star. |
The Female Form as Allegory
Centuries before Lady Freedom topped the U.S. Capitol or the Statue of Liberty
dominated New York Harbor, images of women were already widely used to
symbolize the traits, virtues and opportunities of the United States of America. Art
historians have traced images of America's lady liberty back to the first years of
European discovery and invasion, when America--the untamed New World--was
symbolized as the Indian Queen, a voluptuous, but stern Native American woman
dressed in little more than head feathers. Portrayed sitting astride a giant armadillo or
sporting a tomahawk, the Indian Queen represented exoticism, danger and adventure:
attributes that 16th- and 17th-century explorers most associated with their new land.
By the age of late colonization, however, the Indian
Queen came to be seen as perhaps too savage a symbol
for the settlers' new home. She was soon replaced with
a tamer, more anglicized American image: the Indian
Princess, a tawny, barefoot beauty often guarded by a
rattlesnake.
In the years surrounding the American revolution, the image of the Indian Princess
began to compete with emblems of the Greek goddess emerging from the European
schools of classical art and architecture. "By the late 1790s," folk-art historian Nancy
Jo Fox points out, "it was not clear whether a feathered Indian Princess had changed
into a Greek goddess or whether a greek goddess had placed feathers or plumes in
her hair" (Fox, 5). Alluding to the order and sovereignty of the antique democratic
state, the Plumed Greek Goddess represented what the United States, an eager new
country, wanted to be. Wrapped in a toga and wearing high-laced sandals, the
Plumed Greek Goddess signified a merging of the neoclassical with the new
iconography of America. She was sometimes depicted holding a liberty pole,
propping up a shield of the United States, standing beside a bust or depiction of
George Washington, or offering food to a bald eagle.
In the United States' youngest years, images of the Plumed Greek Goddess or the
Indian Princess soon shared space, and at times meshed with, slightly different
versions of the female figure of freedom. Columbia, sometimes considered the
feminine counterpart to Christopher Columbus, emerged as yet another icon for the
United States. Dressed in classical robes, but with a kinder face than the Plumed
Greek Goddess, Columbia did not appear with plumed ostrich feathers, nor bows and
arrows. But the liberty cap and pole almost always accompanied her, and the stars
and stripes of America could be found on her dress or cap.
With so many varying forms of the lady liberty, it is no wonder that artists began to
mix traits from the Indian Princess, the Plumed Greek Goddess and Columbia. Other
figures merged with these images as well, especially the Greek representations of the
Goddess of Wisdom (Minerva) and the Goddess of Liberty. The Goddess of Liberty,
in fact, became "so intimately identified with the American cause as in effect to
become Americanized.... we have either Liberty representing the United States or the
United States interpreted as Liberty" (Fleming, 56). This Lady Liberty is, by many
accounts, the most frequently portrayed of the four American personifications. With
her hair flowing behind her, carrying the liberty pole or draped in classical garb, Lady
Liberty became the emblem of choice for the U.S. cent and half- cent coins
(Fleming, 56). A plaster statue of Liberty and the Eagle even stands above and behind
the speaker's chair in the House of Representatives.
Today, representations of lady liberty blend and borrow from each of these images.
The Statue of Liberty has been described by historian Marvin Trachtenberg as a
"synthomorphosis" of forms (65), a term that aptly describes the way both the New
York statue and Lady Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol were formed. Both statues
include variations of headdresses, props and clothing: The Statue of Liberty is
crowned with a helmet of sun-ray spikes, an allusion to the headgear of the Colossus
of Rhodes, a monument to the Sun-God Helios standing astride a Greek harbor,
which is said to be one of the key influences on the New York statue. The Statue of
Liberty's gown folds around her like a classical Greek toga; the torch in her hand
gestures back to images of Liberty holding out an offering to the Bald Eagle. Lady
Freedom wears a helmet of plumed feathers, and looks, from a distance, like an
Indian warrior. A circle of stars, similar to Columbia's accessories, rings her head.
She holds a laurel wreath and shield in her left hand, while carrying a sword with her
right.
Analyzing these two statues in particular, and understanding them within the context
of the symbols they both carry, an interesting question emerges: Why were these
particular signifiers chosen? Why is Lady Freedom crowned with a helmet instead of
a liberty cap? Why does the Statue of Liberty carry a stone tablet and torch instead
of a sword or shield? As historians have begun to uncover the context and pressure
under which Lady Freedom and the Statue of Liberty were designed, deeper
meanings behind these two statues begin to unfold--and their multiple layers of
political, social and aesthetic meanings start to take shape.
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In "The New Colossus," Lazarus contrasts the soon-to-be installed symbol of the
United States with what many consider the perfect symbol of the Greek and Roman
era, the Colossus of Rhodes. Her comparison proved appropriate, for Bartholdi
himself created the Statue of Liberty with the well-known Colossus in mind. What
Bartholdi did not intend, however, was for the Statue of Liberty to become a symbol
of welcome for thousands of European immigrants. As political propaganda for
France, the Statue of Liberty was first intended to be a path of enlightenment for the
countries of Europe still battling tyranny and oppression. Lazarus' words, however,
turned that idea on its head: the Statue of Liberty would forever on be considered a
beacon of welcome for immigrants leaving their mother countries.
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The Goddess's Rattlesnake
A native American snake, the rattlesnake exemplified both "constant vigilance" (with no eyelids, its eyes are perpetually open)
as well as American rebellion (the rattlesnake attacks only when provoked) (Fox, 4).
the figure of Columbia protecting the two seated figures of Science and Industry
Blood-chilling events in Springfield, Missouri on the evening of April 14, 1906 also
emphasize the ironies. That night three black men were lynched, hung from a light
tower, and burned. At the top of the tower, lifelessly observing the scene, stood a
replica of the Statue of Liberty. The thousands of cheering bigots in the crowd below
may not have ever absorbed the irony, but a cartoonist for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch captured the moment with this drawing.
The shadow made by Liberty's arm forms the
outline of a gallows on the ground. The caption
read, "O Liberty, What Crimes are Committed in
thy Name!". (Reprinted from Lederer, "And Then
They Sang a Sabbath Song," Springfield! (May
1981); 26.)
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Babcock's feminist approach to the Statue of Liberty merits exploration: Men,
Babcock argues,
have not only excluded, ignored, or otherwise rendered women
invisible, they have, for centuries, appropriated woman as a semiotic
object and made her female form highly visible to represent their
established order and to redress it.
In an effort to heighten momentum for their own projects, lady liberty can be seen as
little more than a tool used by leading men to better their own situations.
Undoubtedly, there are times throughout history when this point can be proven true.
I would argue, however, that the Statue of Liberty and other female representations
of freedom exude more than men's manipulation of women. The layers go deeper,
past semiotics where images of women become objects of utility, to lifetimes of
socialization in which images of women register feelings of desire and comfort.
The Statue of Liberty, for example, can be considered as a much a reflection of
Bartholdi's admiration of his mother as a political pawn flailed by ambitious French
statesmen. Bartholdi admits readily that the face of Liberty Enlightening the World is
the face of his mother, Charlotte, a woman who endured Prussian occupation in her
own home and whom Bartholdi forever tried to please (Trachtenberg, 60). Bartholdi
modeled the arms after "the beautiful arms" of his wife (Babcock, 404). He designed
Liberty to radiate the strength of the women around him, a far reach from ignoring
the powers of women. In the Statue of Liberty, perhaps, lies a tribute to women, an
ironic and probably unappreciated sentiment in the face of the brutal inequalities that
plagued women's status at the date of Liberty's dedication and for decades afterward.
The second stanza of "Unguarded Gates" chants some of the strongest examples of Aldrich's white nationalism. "O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well/To leave the gates unguarded?" asks Aldrich, worrying that the "wild motley throng" of immigrants pressing through the New York Harbor will desecrate and "trample" upon the land he considers pure (ll. 31). "Strange tongues" and strange religions with "unknown gods and rites," Aldrich writes, are "Accents of menace alien to our air" (ll. 29).
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The world at large is totally ignorant of the occult symbolism which lies behind the famed
statue of liberty which sits astride the harbor of New York, symbolizing its true inner
character and purpose. The sculptor who made the great statue was Italian. His name was
Auguste Bertholdi. His work was greatly influenced by the ancient sculptor Phidias who
made gigantic statues of the ancient goddesses, particularly Athena, the "goddess of
wisdom" and Nemesis (another name for Venus), a goddess who held a cup in her right
hand. Before beginning the statue of liberty project, Bertholdi was seeking a commission to
construct a giant statue of the goddess "Isis," the Egyptian Queen of Heaven, to overlook the
Suez canal. The statue of Isis was to be of "a robed woman holding aloft a torch" (Statue of
Liberty: 1st Hundred Years, Bernard Weisberger, p.30, quoted in Beyond Babylon, James
Lloyd, p.103).
As Hislop shows, Isis is the Egyptian name for the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who is also
the same as Athena (Greece), Minerva (Egypt and Greece), Astarte (Syria), Cybele (Rome),
Ashtoreth (Israel), and Diana (Ephesus). This statue of the pagan Madonna, the Statue of
"Liberty," is a statue of this same ancient pagan "Queen of Heaven," the wife of Nimrod, or
Semiramis!
"The Sabine goddess Feronia had evidently a relation to Phooroneus, as the
`Emancipator.' She was believed to be THE `GODDESS OF LIBERTY,'
because at Terracina slaves were emancipated in her temple. . . .
As we said earlier, another name for Semiramis or "Isis" was Cybele in Rome. As Nimrod
was the "god of fortifications," so she was also an architectural deity
This pagan licentious queen of vice and prostitution, infamous for her flagrant wanton spirit,
was the original "tower woman." The very same goddess, known as Ashtoreth, which is
cognately related to Ishtar and Astarte, the "Queen of Heaven" and "Mother of God" of the
pagans, the original "Madonna" and "Celestial Virgin" (although she was no virgin!), was the
pagan prototype of the "Virgin Mary" or "Madonna" of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Babylonian heritage of the "Statue of Liberty" should come as no real surprise to God's
people. Her identity is written in her shape. She stands on a base patterned after the
Babylonian stepped-pyramids, or zigurrats, of old -- which themselves were designed by the
"tower" woman Semiramis and her architects. She stands literally on a base patterned after
the tower of Babel! She wears a turreted crown, like Rhea, Cybele, Diana, and the pagan
goddesses who were counterparts of Semiramis. She stands as a universal symbol of
"liberty," apart from the laws and commandments of God. She represents the "emanicpation"
of mankind, and "immigration" and "unity" and the coming together of many races to
become one universal mankind, all peoples coming together to one land, uniting the nations
as "one," with one language.
This is exactly what ancient Nimrod and Semiramis tried to do at the original "Tower of
Babel," but God Almighty defeated their attempt by scattering the nations and confounding
their languages (Gen.11:1-9).
In her poem "The New Colossus," Emma Lazarus calls the "Statue of Liberty" the "Mother
of Exiles." But the truth is, she is the "Mother of harlots andabominations of the earth"
(Rev.17:5). The liberty she promises is slavery to this world's system.
Almighty God abhors this world's evil system, based on the system begun in ancient Babylon
by Nimrod and Semiramis. New York City, the modern Babylon, and banking capital of the
world, home of Wall Street, and every wicked vice and every financial fraud and deceit, is
the symbol of this world's system of financial enslavement and captivity. It is only fitting, in
a sense, that the statue of the original "Queen of Heaven," the "goddess of fortifications," the
Queen-Mother of Babylon, also known as Isis, Cybele, Feronia, Ishtar, Astarte, Ashtoreth,
and Easter, should sit astride an island at the mouth of her world-renown harbor, beckoning
to the world, "Come hither."