The Goddess at Avebury and Silbury, 1978

Monica Sjöö

Narrator: I experienced an initiation to the Great Mother at Silbury mound and Avebury stones in February, 1978. I had been reading Michael Dames’ book “Silbury Treasure, the Great Goddess rediscovered” and had started a large painting “The Goddess at Avebury” but wasn’t able to finish it until I had visited the sacred site myself. This I did with my partner at the time and we ate a salad with sacred mushrooms (Psylocibin). This was my first meeting with the mushrooms as well as with a sacred neolithic site of the Goddess and the experience was overwhelming and changed my life and art. Here at Avebury stones, Silbury, the pregnant womb of Mother Earth and West Kennet long barrow, the Bone Mother within the stone chambers here in a few fields the people lived the entire life cycle of the Goddess, the seasons and the Earth in her changes. She becomes the Maiden of spring, the sexually mature woman of summer, the pregnant and birth-giving Harvest Mother in the autumn and then the Crone of the dead and the Otherworld in the winter, only to be reborn as the Maiden yet again in spring.
 
In my altered stated I travelled back thousands of years and just knew how much the ancient peaceful Goddess centred neolithic farmers loved the Earth, so much so that they created enormous earth sculptures in Her image that would have taken hundreds of years and the labour of the entire community to finish. I also understood for the first time what “Mother Earth” means. I experienced Her as entirely alive, a great spirit that gives us life and soul. I saw Her undulating and breathing!
 
Ultimately I had to leave the city to live in the Welsh countryside with the land, sea, moon and stars.