The Monstrous Goddess:
The Degeneration of Ancient Bird and Snake Goddesses into Historic Age Witches and Monsters

Miriam Robbins Dexter (USA)

This paper discusses the relationship of birds and snakes to ancient goddesses and heroines. Birds and snakes are related to goddesses, or the beneficent avatar of the prehistoric goddess, and to witches and monsters: the fearsome aspect of the same goddess. By comparing archaeological data on prehistoric European bird and snake iconography, and historic mythological data, the author intends 1) to demonstrate the broad geographic basis of this iconography and myth, 2) to determine the meaning of the bird and the snake, and 3) to demonstrate that these female figures inherited the mantle of the Neolithic and Bronze Age European bird and snake goddess. Dexter discusses who this goddess was, what was her importance, and how she can have meaning for us. Further, she attempts to establish the existence and meaning of the unity of the goddess, for she was a unity as well as a multiplicity. That is, although she was multifunctional, she was also an integral whole. In this wholeness, she manifested life and death, as well as rebirth, and her avian and serpentine iconography give evidence of her different aspects. In fact, the goddess was responsible not only for the life continuum of birth, death, and rebirth; at least in the texts of the early historic era, she was also responsible for wisdom, prophecy, war, love, judgment, and justice as well.