Moshi - the Cat Goddess

This morning - I listened to a lecture by Martin Rossman, MD on UCTV about guided imagery and stress management. He encourages people to allow themselves to relax just as cell phones that need to be recharged. While people could meditate on a flame or their breath, for instance - he encourages people to imagine some nice, relaxing place. To imagine the sights, smells, sounds, feel - to use ones senses. I think it's probably just as well to keep it simple.

Another thing that he suggests is to have a mental discussion with an "inner guide" which would be like prayer if you believed in God. He suggested imagining someone who was full of love and wisdom - it could be a goddess figure or whatever. So after the show - I figured that I would try that. I imagined a woman in a robe sitting across a fire from me. Meanwhile our cat, moshi, was sitting on a stool or chair and moving so that the chair was rocking. This went on for like 10 minutes - for awhile it seemed like a distraction - and then I decided that Moshi is a cat goddess.

She had some good advice about various people and things. And then she got down off her stool and came over and let me pet her (which is VERY unusual on her part) just a little bit. She thinks that Abby (our aging dog) would like having a puppy around. I forgot to ask her how she would like it. (If Moshi is full of love and wisdom - she mostly hides it :)

The Goat and the Tree

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Click on image to see Animation of Goat - determined to be the oldest known animation sequence - painted on an ancient Iranian earthenware bowl discovered in a grave at the 5200-year-old Burnt City.

The image is of a goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree.

From The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:

The image is a simple depiction of a tree and wild-goat (Capra aegagrus) also known as 'Persian desert Ibex', and since it is an indigenous animal to the region, it would naturally appear in the iconography of the Burnt City.

The wild goat motif can be seen on Iranian pottery dating back to the 4th millennium BCE, as well as jewellery pieces especially among Cassite tribes of ancient Luristan. However, the oldest wild goat representation in Iran was discovered in Negaran Valley in Sardast region, 37 kilometers from Nahok village near Saravan back in 1999. The engraved painting of wild goat is part of an important collection of lithoglyphs dating back to 8000 BCE.

However, wild goat representation with a tree is associated with Murkum, a mother goddess who was worshipped by all the Indo-Iranian women of the Haramosh valley in modern Pakistan, which culturally had closer ties with Indus and subsequently the Burnt City civilisations, than Mesopotamia, which could had influenced the ancient potter who made this unique piece.

The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization authorities (Iran) are insisting that it a depiction of the 'Assyrian Tree of Life’ even though it was created 1000 years before the Assyrian civilization. That is one way that goddess related imagery goes unrecognized or is lost.