Conversations with the Goddess: Encounter at Petra Place of Power

In these pages I will share with you my encounter with the Goddess. Yes – the Goddess.

I had learned that goddesses were relics, products of ancient peoples’ mythic imaginations. We of the modern world, on the other hand, are beneficiaries of the evolution of thought lifting us from the murky swamp of old world-views. That’s what I used to firmly believe. Until I met up with Her in a most unusual place. Imagine traveling to the ruins of a site where the imprint of a long-vanished civilization leaves an indelible mark on you. I traveled to such a site in Jordan, a country littered with archaeological ruins from many eras. One of the most memorable experiences of my life was my visit to the ruins of Petra, a Nabataean Arab city carved out of the rock of the Biblical mountains of Moab.

But the biggest surprise from my visit to Petra was this: my journey was not over when I returned home. I just didn’t realize it for a while, for seven years, in fact. I didn’t know that my journey to Petra would lead me into an inner journey which would transform my life, or rather, I should say transform my perceptions about it.

You see, the Great Goddess has her own powerful way of attracting your attention. By following my curiosity about her, I found myself taking a step into uncharted inner ground, every bit as amazing as the site of Petra. I didn’t know at first that my curiosity would lead me back into the thicket of my own confusions, and then through it to something new, as I asked questions all along the way.

I asked questions—and I was answered. All of which became a lengthy dialogue that is the main part of this book.

My inner journey began after I started meditating in 1980. I was pleased to advance in meditation to a point where I could find interesting images and answers to personal issues, while having a fascinating journey along the way, all for myself. At the time I began this practice, I had no suspicion that I would encounter a goddess. There was no hint that I, not unlike seers and shamans of old, would follow a path to become a bridge between the worlds—the realm we live within, and Her realm.

Since that fateful day I began my journey into the world of the Goddess, quite a few years and waves of experience have passed over me: a move to a different city, the growth into adulthood of my sons, illnesses, the deaths of friends and family members, the making of new friends, the birth of grandchildren, travel to other countries, times of sadness and times of happiness.

Now I’m telling my story, because the Goddess inspired me—as I believe she will inspire you—to see how there is a path through the darkness of our confusions. I invite you to follow along on my journey through the mist of my confusions and the surprise of my discoveries. I hope that along the way you will feel that you too are experiencing the voice of the Great Goddess, and that you will find her words belong as much to you as they do to me. My wish for you is that her words will inspire you to see that you are part of Her Story, emerging in our times, a story which includes affirmation of the spiritual power of the feminine.

But before you come to that part of the book, let me make a cautionary note, one which the Goddess made to me: have patience, because her words about herself must come first in these pages. Keep an open heart and mind to what you will read.

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Before I begin my story of my inner journey, I will narrate the outer journey which is its parallel, my visit to Petra, because knowledge of the site and its history are threads woven into this book. I’ll weave a capsule narration of Petra’s physical characteristics and history with a few descriptions of its impact on me. If you wish, you can dive into Chapter One, then use this information as a reference along the way.

So, on to Petra....

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I had never heard of Petra, had no special expectations. My husband’s sister offhandedly suggested it as an excursion site, and we decided to go. To start out early, my husband, children, and I woke to the sound of the muezzin’s morning call to prayer. As we finished breakfast, honks from our taxi summoned us. Outside the house, we heard the bustle of the everyday: buses, cars, the sounds of Arabic from passers-by on the street.

We motored through Amman, Jordan’s capital city, passing through its residential areas. Gradually we came to the edge of the city where the road winds into arid land stretching for miles. The land spoke of the primordial past, of quests, transitions, and transformations. Invading armies, wandering tribes, and caravans came here. Ancient peoples lived here: Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Canaanites, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and others. I wondered what drew them to this harsh place.

After a four hour drive, we came directly to the Petra hotel, where we found Bedouin guides who led us on horseback toward the Siq, an approach to Petra which is a canyon. Imagine living within a city with an entrance that is a huge cleft in mountain cliffs. Petra is a city encircled by a ring of mountains. The Siq is a miracle of nature, the result of a natural fault that split through the mountain eons ago. Repeated flash floods smoothly contoured its red, brown, and purple sandstone walls. Since Paleolithic times nature provided the peoples of Petra with a natural fortress. Even Rome’s legions, able to dominate most of the area between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf by the first century B.C., found Petra nearly inaccessible. Not until 106 A.D. did Rome, under the emperor Trajan, discover a fatally vulnerable point, Petra’s secret main water supply traveling by aqueduct, at which point the Nabataean kingdom was incorporated into the Roman Province of Arabia.

Traveling slowly through the shadows of the Siq passage, we came to walls rising to three hundred feet at the other end of the canyon. I had not anticipated Petra’s wild, surreal beauty. Vividly colored, multi-striated sandstone crags testified to the immensity of geological time spans which they represented. Going into the Siq on horseback we left the desert sunlight for shadows like twilight. Many had come here before us. Their ancient markings were etched on the canyon walls. The walls seemed a passageway into another time, another space. More difficult to describe than Petra’s unique physical characteristics was an intangible factor: Petra had presence.

I saw conduits cut into the canyon walls by the Nabataeans to channel spring water into the city’s cisterns. Part of the original roadway of paving stones laid down in the bed of the Siq also remained, evoking visions of the traffic that might have passed through Petra two thousand years ago: caravans of camels laden with goods from Arabia going toward Damascus; merchants, noblemen, legionnaires on horseback, and common people on foot; then later, Roman governors, messengers from Rome, Roman architects, artisans, engineers.

We emerged from the dark end of the canyon into intense sunlight. Before us was the most impressive monument in Petra, El Khazneh, carved into a cliff. The facade of this monument reached a height of ninety feet. Characteristic Nabataean carving around the doorframe had not eroded. Roman influence added elaborate pillars, niches, and statues. Footholds ascending the sides of the facade were also visible. I felt as if I could hear voices—workmen, artisans, stone carvers—calling to each other.

Turning away from El Khazneh, we walked toward the valley leading to the city-basin. Before us spread a valley embraced by cliffs. Tiers of tombs were carved into these cliffs. This valley birthed, nourished, and protected generations of human life. We passed a Roman amphitheater cut into the left wall of rock. The theater had once seated 7000 people. I could easily imagine the roar of the crowds seated here for performances, such as gladiator combat.

To the left of the amphitheater I saw eroded steps cut into the sandstone crags. They ascended steeply to a height not visible from where we were standing on the valley floor. Weary from climbing the ascent, we overlooked valleys with blue haze. We had come to the mountaintop known as the High Place. The altar on the High Place had been one of the official centers of the city’s religious life. There were carvings in this mountaintop, an altar, a ceremonial basin, and a rectangular ledge, deeply cut into the mountain top, which surrounded the altar as if to provide space for a congregation.

Because many of the striking structures in Petra are tombs, I was at first most conscious of the Nabataeans’ concerns about death. Unlike the city of the dead, the Nabataean city of the living, which lay mainly in the mile-wide basin between the rock ramparts, had few traces of freestanding structures.

I was amazed to see tiers of apartments carved into high cliffs surrounding the city basin. Streets of steps, carved into the cliff, ascended to the apartments. I wondered what it might have been like to live inside chambers carved into the face of a cliff. Aware of the love for decorative arts which has long existed in the Middle East, I envisioned embroidered wall hangings on the apartments’ stone walls; hand-woven, intricately patterned carpets on the floors; divans with a profusion of colorful pillows; charcoal braziers; perhaps even hanging oil lamps dispensing light or fragrance of incense, such as can still be seen in the Middle East today.

Archaeological evidence from these dwellings rests in the Amman museum: bowls, lamps, storage jars, cooking pots, animal figurines, human figurines, offering cups in the shape of animal heads, elegant vases, bottles for perfume and kohl (mascara), bronze pieces, fragments of iridescent glass, and intricate gold jewelry.

These findings tell us that the Nabataeans lived very much in the present. By the time the Nabataeans’ rapidly developed civilization reached its height in the first three centuries B.C. they were enjoying luxury living.

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The Nabataean Arabs had appeared only about seven centuries before. They were the consequence of a drift of tribal peoples, perhaps from the Arabian peninsula. They developed from a wandering people into an effective strike force, raiding caravans that carried luxury goods out of Arabia and the Far East. In time they displaced the Edomite peoples who lived in this mountain stronghold. Before the Nabataeans ever arrived, Orites, Edomites, Moabites, Israelites, and Judaeans, vied to maintain a presence in the great rift valley of the Wadi Arabah, near which Petra is situated. Evidence of human habitation within the region dates back to at least one million years ago when Paleolithic man hunted elephant, deer, and other animals throughout Jordan.

Gradually the Nabataeans made Petra a compulsory stage and a stopover place in the caravan route. Caravans paid dues and tolls in return for protection by authorities against raids by desert nomads. Here the caravan teams of men from the south handed over their goods to be taken on by new teams to west or north.

Within the span of the Hellenistic period (338 B.C. to 393 A.D) the Nabataeans organized sweeping control of all trade from the southernmost provinces of the Arabian peninsula to the Mediterranean. Under a series of able kings they took advantage of the unrest during the breakup of the Greek Empire, founded by Alexander the Great, and the beginnings of the Roman Empire. By the first century B.C. they extended control over politically weakened areas from Damascus to the northwestern corner of Arabia.

The Nabataeans’ cultural enterprise matched their mercantile enterprise. They developed their own legal code, administering the huge area from the Red Sea to Damascus; minted their own coins; perfected an alphabet and script that were a forerunner of Kufic and Arabic scripts. Although they had their own language and script, they were conversant in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. No doubt such versatility was essential to navigating the complexities of a trading culture where proximity to one’s neighbors and other cultures was a given. One illustration of the extent to which Nabataean life was intertwined with neighboring peoples was an important marriage. The daughter of King Aretas IV wedded the Judaean ruler, Herod Antipas, a figure of infamy in the Bible’s New Testament.

The Nabataeans were especially innovative in developing a system of irrigation for their many terraced plots of desert land, which they turned into fertile areas of green. They also created an architectural style and produced sculpture which reflected assimilation of other cultures, yet remained uniquely their own; it became part of the worship of their chief deities, the goddess Al Uzzah and the mountain god Dushara.

Petra continued to enjoy exceptional prosperity under Roman rule. In the third century A.D. Petra began its slow decline as the main caravan routes were abandoned for other routes. By the seventh century A.D. Nabataea had disappeared. The world did not hear of Petra again until 1812 when a young Swiss-born explorer, Johann Burckhardt, persuaded local Bedouins to allow him entry to the city.

Visions come to prepared spirits.

~ Friedrich Kekule

January, 1981

Gray cloud cover. Chimneys emit heavy smoke. Furnaces work overtime. People shovel snow, jump-start cars, find galoshes and mittens lost many times over, dispose of dead Christmas trees—a sign of holiday joy settling into the routine. Nothing new until spring , I thought to myself as I gazed at deep snowdrifts from the window of my living room. I had experienced the depth of Wisconsin winters many times in the small city where I, a former east coast dweller, now lived.

Little did I know that the dark of winter would birth on this very day an event that would change my life.

As the sky darkened early, signaling the beginning of evening, I mulled over my list of things to do for the next day. When my list was completed, I took advantage of the interval between my sons’ arrival from school and my husband’s return from work to relax.

I decided to listen to music. That cassette with aboriginal chants might be good, I thought. I put the music cassette in the player, turned the volume up high so that the vibrations of the chants filled the room. I lay down on the living room rug, letting myself drift upon waves of sound. The pulsations of sound swept over me, as if I were rocked by ocean waves and carried to a distant shore. Completely absorbed in the tidal rhythms of sound, I lost all sense of time and place.

Quietly, a most unexpected thing happened. I saw, with an inner sight, as if on a screen between my eyes, and with photographic clarity, an image of a beautiful dark-haired woman who looked both living and statue-like. She wore an intricately patterned necklace and a crown with sparkling jewels, like those of royal women or goddesses whom I had seen in book illustrations about ancient India. Radiant light surrounded her. She seemed to emanate beneficence. As she turned her head and smiled in my direction, I saw beneath her image an undulating shape with scales along its barely highlighted back. Then the view shifted to a point behind her image and I saw a woman’s nude torso. I found myself visually moving into the heart area of the torso, which opened into subtle layers of darkness, infinitely unfolding.

I was jarred back into time by the sudden ending of the cassette. I was so surprised by the experience of my vision of the woman that I could barely focus on anything else. Did I really see what I think I saw? questioned one part of myself. After dinnertime with my family, I wondered all evening why I had seen this vision.

I made two decisions: meditate and research. I had learned in the last six months that meditation could often bring me into a different perspective on my life. Perhaps it could also help me know why I had seen this image. Books might also help me find an answer. From early childhood through graduate school, and beyond, books had been among my best companions, providing pleasure, knowledge, even solace. Often a book appeared just when I needed insight.

Two weeks passed before I kept my promise to myself, absorbed as I was in the bustle of a household of four. The beginnings of my research came to me unsought when my youngest son asked me to take him to the public library. While waiting for him to find the books he wanted, I browsed the shelves. My eye happened to fall upon a large book, The Realm of the Great Goddess, by archaeologist Sybille von Cles-Reden. Drawn by its title, I checked the book out of the library.

Might I have seen a goddess? I wondered, as I devoured the book’s pages. After surveying megaliths, tombs, and temples in Europe and the Near East, Sybille von Cles-Reden concluded that there had once been widespread worship of a great goddess in prehistoric times, but her survey did not include India.

Even if I did see a goddess, what connection could I, a modern woman living in the United States, possibly have with a goddess? Goddesses were relics of the past. The last time I had thought of them was during my Latin literature class in college. Something of the radiance ascribed to those ancient mythological beings did match the aura of the image I had seen.

In my next meditation session I had an urgent question, Who was the woman I saw?

Maybe I can’t find out anything about her, I thought. Maybe it was a once in a lifetime experience. As I again created a tunnel, I rapidly emerged into a landscape that closely resembled the terrain of the site of Petra. I next saw a carving of a lion situated near a ceremonial way of stone steps cut into the face of cliffs. I had climbed these steps on my visit to Petra.

Next to this lion carving, the figure of a woman suddenly appeared. She was thin and angular, with a look of sadness and stoicism on her face. She stood with her body held at a slanted angle, as though she were lame. Her dress was a simple tunic. Within my mind, I felt her thoughts forming into words.

"My name is Zillah. I live in Petra, in one of the houses cut into the rock cliffs around the valley of Petra. My house is on a lower tier of streets. I am the slave of a wealthy merchant to whom I have given four sons, named Pharon, Nusreth, Rubin, and Hilo. My master beats me. One day, in a fit of anger over some food he thought I prepared poorly, he broke my hip, and I became lame. I help other slaves in illness, injury, and childbirth. I worship the goddess, and sometimes I take offerings to her in secret at the High Place.

Our king is Aretas IV. I sometimes see the cruelty of the Romans, who took over our city. Our times are an in-between period, old gods abandoned, but no new ones arising. The great goddess is honored less, only once a year at the High Place.

As the scene faded, I snapped back into reality. How is it possible that I saw this person, I wondered with incredulity, and with so much detail about her status, the time period in which she lived, where her home was, even her children’s names? I knew that I had just seen this person with great clarity, but my mind reeled in disbelief. Then too, this was more than just intriguing imagery. These words were someone’s thoughts—and that someone spoke with familiarity about a great goddess.

It had been seven years since my family and I visited the site of Petra. It had made such an indelible impression upon me that I wrote a poem and a travel essay about it, which was published in the local newspaper. I had not felt motivated to write more about Petra, although its grandeur and antiquity had thrilled me. Why, then, was this place showing up in my meditation? Perhaps I really did see a person from a historical past, I assured myself, since she did mention a king. But what relationship, if any, might this scenario at Petra have to my question about who the east Indian woman was?

I had to find out.

In the public library I discovered a book by an archaeologist, Nelson Glueck, with the intriguing title Deities and Dolphins: The Story of the Nabataean People. I pounced upon it, ravenous to discover its treasures.

Glueck had done extensive reconstruction of the Nabataean kingdom’s history and ways of life. He stated that the Nabataeans revered a goddess, of whom there were many local and regional variants throughout the ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.¹ This reverence extended even beyond these regions, as far away as Europe and Persia, where Nabataean traders discovered likenesses between their goddess and the goddesses of other cultures. Perhaps some Nabataean traders went to India, I thought.

As I entered meditation, I found myself viewing the High Place, the mountaintop sanctuary carved out of the rock of one of Petra’s steep cliffs, called the Attuf Ridge. As I looked at this scene of expansive sky and naked rock, I felt again the mysterious quality this long-deserted place had for me when I stood upon it, looking down upon deep rifts of valley below.

An image of Isis appeared over the High Place altar. I wondered why an image of the primary goddess of Egypt was appearing there. (Long after this session, I discovered that Isis was known and revered as another aspect of the Nabataean goddess.) Then another impression formed in my mind.

Petra is a sacred place. It will be a renewed place in the age now coming. It will become green again. The High Place on the Attuf Ridge is a site of great power. Subtle celestial forces of tremendous power are drawn to this place.

The Great Goddess is returning here. Petra will again become a place sacred to many people as the home of the Great Goddess. The feminine is rising to restore balance, but this is not merely a recurring cycle. This time a new reality will emerge, completely transcending the old yin/yang cycle. This new cycle will span 26,000 years.

This is too incredible, I said aloud to the room as I wrote down what I was hearing. Who would ever believe this?! For that matter, can I believe it?

You can. I heard these words inside my mind as if I were being answered. If I dared to tell anyone about this, I thought, I might be called crazy for saying I heard something like someone answering. I shoved that uneasy thought aside.

As my shock died down about the information I received about Petra, I re-read what I had written down, and exclaimed, Well, this is a different experience! I wasn’t in the habit of making predictions of any kind, especially ones that sounded a bit Delphic. It has never been part of my life’s plan to become an oracle, I joked to myself to re-establish my equilibrium.

Later, when I calmed down, I thought, Perhaps it really is possible that unidentified spiritual forces—celestial energies—exist which promote planetary change. I considered that there had been a time in history, not so remote, when forces now known and identified by science were unrecognized.

I thought also about Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes, universal patterns inseparably connected with the psyche. Forever influenced by my academic training, I always looked for some reasonable way to explain my experiences. I wondered whether it be fruitful to consider my inner experience of the east Indian woman in the light of an archetype. Certainly she had about her something of the numinosity ascribed by Jung to figures such as goddesses, which he considered to be archetypal in nature. Nevertheless, Jungian thought did not include a theory about why my psyche was throwing up images of a remote site in the Middle East.

As I recollected my visit to Petra, I recalled the alchemy of my journey through the desert toward Petra. Yes, Petra had cast a spell over me. Yet I felt this didn’t entirely account for why Petra was coming up in my meditations seven years later.

Deciding to let rest a while the question of what linked Petra and my life, I searched for other material on goddesses, and rediscovered an essay by theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether. Many years earlier I had come across some of her ideas when I read a lecture she had given in 1971, published as an essay in a collection from a class by and for women held at the Graduate Theological Union in California. I had realized that she was an original thinker.

I had felt an electric charge of recognition when I realized how deeply my own life might be touched by the cultural and philosophical inheritance her essay described. But at that time theological ideas were secondary to the heavy demands of my daily life—including young children, a household, school, church, and social obligations.

The essay was titled Women’s Liberation and Reconciliation with the Earth.² It pinpointed the fusion of religious thinking that preceded Christianity with early Christianity’s belief system. This created profound splits in perception. Often without realizing it, we moderns still tend to describe our perceptions of the world in terms of these old dualisms, and in terms of opposites.

In the most fundamental dualistic perception woman, body, and nature are equated with the earthly, finite aspects of existence. A transcending male consciousness rejects these aspects in favor of a purely spiritual realm beyond time, space, and matter. Moreover, this kind of dualism is hierarchical in nature, not simply a polarization of opposites. One duality, perceived to be the more important, dominates the other. This primary sexual symbolism sums up other alienations: mind/spirit/culture over against body/matter/nature.

These dualistic perceptions have shaped our environment. One outcome has been separation of the world of work, dominated by masculine values, from the world of private life, dominated by feminine values. Another outcome has been creation of an enormously powerful psychic energy, which becomes destructive when it is disconnected from nature. The earth, our matrix of existence, becomes the target of this energy. In its most extreme form, this psychic force expresses as technological assault upon