The Father's face is stern and strong,
he sits and judges right from wrong.
He weighs our lives, the short and long,
and loves the little children

The Mother gives the gift of life,
and watches over every wife.
Her gentle smile ends all strife,
and she loves her little children

The Warrior stands before the foe,
protecting us where e'er we go.
With sword and shield and spear and bow,
he guards the little children.

The Crone is very wise and old,
and sees our fates as they unfold.
She lifts her lamp of shining gold
to lead the little children.

The Smith, he labors day and night,
to put the world of men to right.
With hammer, plow, and fire bright,
he builds for little children.

The Maiden dances through the sky,
she lives in every lover's sigh.
Her smiles teach the birds to fly,
and gives dreams to little children.

The Seven Gods who made us all,
are listening if we should call.
So close your eyes, you shall not fall,
they see you, little children.

Just close your eyes, you shall not fall,
they see you, little children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuymA1tDzvM
a mother's grief
from Palestine, now displaced in Lebanon

Semiramis https://www.historyhit.com/who-was-semiramis-of-assyria-founder-seductress-warrior-queen/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGalHiAZBxU
IndiaJiva is one of my (Azine) favorite prayer music bands

"In the highlands of Armenia, archaeologists have discovered the grave of an injured woman who died during the Iron Age. Based on the wounds to her skeleton, she may have been the kind of Amazon warrior the ancient Greeks wrote about.
"From the 9th to the 6th centuries B.C., the Kingdom of Urartu flourished in Armenia. Well-connected with the major empires from the Mediterranean to India, Urartu had a distinct cultural environment focused on hunting, the military, and a trade economy. Intruders such as the Scythians, however, who sought to conquer the highlands, were often rebuffed by trained Urartian archers. New analysis of a skeleton from this region shows that these Urartian warriors were both men and women.
"Writing in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, a group of Armenian researchers led by Anahit Khudaverdyan of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia detail their study of a skeleton from the Bover I necropolis in Lori Province. Discovered in 2017, the skeleton was buried in a flexed manner with ceramic vessels and jewelry, which date it to the Early Armenian period (8th-6th century B.C.).
"Based on the bones, the archaeologists concluded that the grave was for a woman in her 20s. Although the woman was initially assumed to have been high-status because of the jewelry, upon reexamination of her strong and injured bones, the researchers began to suspect that she was also a warrior.
"The woman’s muscle attachments in her upper body were strong, “indicating considerable work activity,” the archaeologists write. Specifically, the woman’s pectoral and deltoid muscles “had been used in flexing and adducting the hand at the shoulder,” lending support for an interpretation that she was a trained archer used to drawing a bow across her chest. Her thigh bones were also well-developed with pronounced gluteal muscles, possibly “related to specific military activities, such as horse-riding,” the researchers suggest.
"In addition to her muscular frame, an iron arrowhead was discovered embedded in the woman’s left knee, an injury that had healed long before her death. Khudaverdyan and colleagues think that the bow and arrow used to cause this injury were home-made weapons frequently used for war or hunting.
"Three other injuries to her skeleton appear to have been caused around the time of her death, and likely contributed to it. Her left hip and right thigh bore chop marks, while her left lower leg had been stabbed. The sheer number of injuries “emphasizes the fact that for this Early Armenian female from Bover I, interpersonal violence was an ever-present aspect of life,” the archaeologists write. [This phrasing is misleading, since the evidence clearly points to battle.] Additionally, the fact that she suffered at least two different kinds of cuts just before death – most likely from a hatchet and from a sword – suggests she was wounded by more than one person. “We suppose that she had died in battle,” they conclude.
"Warrior graves elsewhere in the Armenian highlands present similar skeletal evidence; at the site of Qarashamb, the archaeologists point out, there are at least five male warrior burials. But this burial from Bover I is one of the few examples of a likely female warrior, in spite of the fact that women and men in this culture were known to have fought together."
Thanks to Nayiree Roubinian.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2019/11/26/archaeologists-discover-amazon-warrior-in-ancient-armenian-grave/?sh=7655bd4f7d0e&fbclid=IwAR1kgVzB_Wt2nz728uKiaEpF30nmEHd1s9KuLC6dXJeS3_i0bu3k6iAkcnA

https://www.facebook.com/Suppressed-Histories-Archives-333661528320

A temple to the Lady of Linshui and her sworn sisters was dedicated in 792, at a cave sanctuary in Daqiao where an ancient python goddess was once worshipped. This much older tradition became demonized and was wrapped into the story as the White Snake antagonist of Chen Jinggu. The snake-woman was described as a death spirit who took two children yearly. Chen accordingly fought and defeated her, but died afterwards. Her mummified body was said to sit atop the python in the cave, just as she died there fighting her.
Around 1250, the Lady of Linshui was recorded in the official Register of Sacrifices. A 1710 account refers to the building of a temple “with a pavilion for her to dress up in.” [Brigandier, 5] This refers to the spirit mediums who have channeled the Lady of Linshui since her death, as they do today. They are part of a larger East Asian context of Vietnamese and Korean shamans who embody and dress in the robes of the spirits.
Veneration of Chen Jinggu continued into the 20th century. In 1950, communist anti-superstition cadres defaced her statues. The Red Guards attacked the shrine again in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution. A local woman began restoring the shrine in the 1980s, arguing that the anti-superstition laws didn’t apply because the goddess is real. [Baptandier, passim]
Images of the Three Ladies—Chen Jinggu and her two sworn sisters—sit above the altar in the Linshui temple today. She has eleven more temples in Taiwan, as well as nine others to the Three Ladies, where female spirit mediums enact her rites, and the White Snake is “hidden under her altar.” [Baptandier, 32, 36]

"In 1611, Father Pierre Biard, a French missionary assigned to colonial Canada, wrote home to complain about the locals. Apparently, the Indigenous Mi’kmaq didn’t think much of what they’d seen of European civilization:
“They consider themselves better than the French … they say, ‘you are always fighting and quarrelling among yourselves; we live peaceably. You are envious and are all the time slandering each other … you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbour.’ They are saying these and like things continually.”
"Readers brought up on a certain kind of history may find this account somewhat surprising. To say the least, it is uncommon to read of Native Americans as social theorists probing into European settlers’ psyches. The Dawn of Everything, the new book from which this passage comes, offers many such charged moments. In it, archeologist David Wengrow and the late David Graeber, an anthropologist, public thinker, and activist, confront deep assumptions about how human society developed from its humble origins.
...
"Upon contact with Europeans, Native American groups like the Iroquois and Wendat had well-established democratic institutions, and individuals’ material needs were generally guaranteed among their communities. In the face of such radically different social arrangements, apologists for European systems rationalized their own structures by belittling Native Americans’ accomplishments as “savagery.” Whether based on production modes (such as hunting-gathering, farming, or complex urban specialization) or governmental arrangement (tribes, chiefdoms, and states), the resulting narrow models of social development remain more or less baked into history textbooks, right down to the present day.
"The Western Enlightenment view of social progress is not only chauvinistic but, as these two social scientists contend, is increasingly untenable in the face of mounting scholarly evidence. By ditching the “myth of progress,” Graeber and Wengrow are free to examine prehistorical and precolonial societies with fresh eyes. From the earliest bands of hunter-gatherers, to the rise of cities, up to major moments of first contact, the book brings together previously siloed academic evidence and little-publicized interpretations. Marijuana, we learn, was widely cultivated in prehistoric Japan. Centuries before Montezuma, Mesoamerican city-dwellers developed a precursor to urban social housing. Each mini-revelation is fascinating in its own right; together, they pose a serious challenge to both the Hobbesian and Rousseau-ite interpretations of the human past.
"Developing a renewed conception of fundamental social freedoms also brings the Indigenous critique full circle, with the Eastern Woodlands confederacies of North America as their exemplars. Crucially for Graeber and Wengrow, there was among these groups no obvious way to convert wealth into the kind of power over others that coerces or forces labor. Leaders were elected, but office holders “couldn’t compel anyone to do anything they didn’t wish to do.” We learn how, through generous social welfare provisions and consensus-seeking deliberations, groups like the Iroquois and Wendat self-consciously cultivated communal practices and institutions that vouchsafed human dignity without undue sacrifice of agency. Native American societies are once more cast as noble, but not as the pure, Edenic “savages” of Enlightenment imaginary.
"Mi’kmaq critics ... jibed that they were richer than their French counterparts—not in material possessions or extractive technologies, but in “other, greater assets: ease, comfort and time.” I don't know that they "jibed," but they certainly declared the fact.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/a-new-social-justice/2021/11/15/book-human-history-ancestors?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YESDaily_%2020220114&utm_content=YESDaily_%2020220114+CID_6e0753ec4a8562dba3683ca0af5e2f1d&utm_source=CM&utm_term=Read%20the%20full%20story

Blessings to Thich Nhat Hanh.
"The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism announces that our beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has passed away peacefully at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam, at 00:00hrs on 22nd January, 2022, at the age of 95.
We invite our global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful breathing, as we together hold Thay in our hearts in peace and loving gratitude for all he has offered the world."
Read the Update: https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/thich-nhat-hanhs-health/thich-nhat-hanh-11-11-1926-01-22-2022/
—-https://t.me/EuphonicIntuitive/724