Agricultural holidays were dedicated to Athena: Procharistoria (sprouting of grain), Plinteria (the beginning of the harvest), Arrephoria (giving dew for crops), Scriphoria (aversion to drought).

Summarizing the above, we can conclude that Athena as a whole retained the main features of the ancient Mother Goddess, the Owl-Mother-in-law.

Interestingly, Athena’s name is not derived from Greek. Its pre-Greek origin is suggested.

Let us assume that this name originated from the term «Owina».

There is good reason to believe that in a patriarchal society, many of the sacred terms of matriarchy have been recoded into a masculine version. So the name of the barn «Shish» clearly replaced a completely different term meaning the female genital organ (the symbol of which in Polish riddles was the Owl).

Here it makes sense to recall again that in the Russian folk tradition, the «name day of the barn» was celebrated on the days of Thekla Zarevnitsa (September 24) and the Most Holy Theotokos (October 1), and the Ir rune, which looks like a schematic representation of an ancient barn, was a sign of the feminine principle and was understood as «Comprehensive». Then Ovina or Avina will be the same as Ovinnitsa, that is, «The Mistress of Ovin.»

Another argument in favor of such an assumption is the fact that Athena (as the Great Goddess – Mother) gives and takes life. But in Sanskrit, the term «avi» means «pain, suffering, and labor pains». Recall that in the Old Russian folk tradition it was customary to give birth in a barn.

Since Sanskrit is extremely close to the Russian language, we use its terms to clarify this situation.

Av (avati, ava, avit) —

1) contribute

2) saturate

3) protect

4) desire, love.

Ava – to rush, descend, favor.

Avata – pit, burrow.

Avati – earth, soil, base.

Avi – pain, suffering, labor pains.

Avinacin – eternal, everlasting.

Of no less interest is the word «Sova».

We look close to him Sanskrit phonemes:

Sava —

1) revitalization, excitement

2) sacrificial rite

Sava – squeezing soma.

Savana – 1) revitalization, excitement

2) a sacrificial rite.

And here it is appropriate to recall the wedding ceremony, preserved in the Russian tradition, where beer was prepared and drunk in the barn.

Savana – wooded

Savana —

1) fire

2) hell.

Savitri —

1) producer

2) mother.

Sva – his, her, them, to have.

Saviman —

1) setting in motion,

2) awakening,

3) an indication,

4) direction.

Savidya is endowed with knowledge.

Savicesana – endowed with special properties

Apparently, Mother-Sva of the Vlesova book is the Mother-Owl of deep Paleolithic antiquity, the Goddess of life and death, the Owl-Mother-in-law of the Vologda and Vladimir ritual songs.

But there is also:

Sauva – heavenly (about sound),

Suvari – giving birth to someone

Savega – fast, impetuous,

Savisa – poisonous, poisoned.

It makes sense here to remember that in the zoomorphic incarnation Athena, Neith, Lilith is not only owls, but also snakes that the palace of the Minotaur in Crete was guarded by an owl and a snake. That the plot of the goddess with snakes in her hands was preserved in the North Russian embroidery until the 20th century. And that snakes eat mice too, and owls hunt snakes.

And an owl carrying a snake in its claws is a common sight, so it’s okay to call an owl a poisonous one.

In the North Russian dialects there is such a name for an owl as «Guha», supposedly repeating the cry of this bird. But if we again turn to Sanskrit, it turns out that: Guh – shelter, cave.

Guhya – to be hidden, hidden, mysterious.

Guha-caya – living in a secluded place, in a cave, kept in secret, intimate.

Guha – heart (remember that it is the heart of an owl that is considered to be what can make a sleeping person talk about his innermost dreams and secrets).

And finally, guha is an epithet of God Shiva – the Creator and Destroyer of the Universe.

In addition, Sanskrit has its own name for the Owl – Kaucika (literally «having clawed paws»). Based on the terms of Sanskrit, we can assume the following semantic series: the sacrificial rite (sava or savanna) associated with fire (savana) consisted of squeezing out soma (sava) and reviving, arousing (sava). Soma (beer) is strained through a straw grate (kauca), standing on a bed of straw (kusa) in a barn, warehouse, granary (kucala). This drink made from grains (barley, rye, wheat) and hops gave health, dexterity, intelligence, experience, happiness and goodness (kaukala). And all this was possible thanks to the Owl (kaucika), which protected the grain from mice.

Speaking of beer in connection with the barn and Sova, we should turn to the second half of the ancient Paleolithic matriarchal society – men who, of course, played an important role in this society. Beer was prepared for them, and it was men who drank it. This is also evidenced by the North Russian tradition, which survived until the first third of the 20th century.

In the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, old people told folklorists that the general drunkenness, which today is attributed by some to the Russian people as their specific «genetic» quality, was completely absent in the North Russian villages back in the 30s of the 20th century.

On holidays (Shrovetide, in particular), men drank no more than 3 glasses (the size of a thimble) of vodka, but they were not limited in beer. However, this beer, prepared according to ancient technologies, has nothing to do with the so-called «beer» that our «breweries» produce today. As for the women and children, they never drank beer, let alone vodka. They drank pivtso, a weak, almost non-alcoholic beverage. As for men, consuming beer brewed according to tradition, they could hardly sleep. And they did not have free time for constant drinking in the ancient matriarchal society. The men built houses, prepared firewood for the winter, hunted and fished.

And they also did very important work – they mined salt, the deposits of which are quite widespread in the North of Eastern Europe.

Note that even today, paying tribute to the ancient tradition, we meet guests with bread and salt, where the loaf is a female symbol, and salt, apparently, is male.

Turning again to Sanskrit, we find in it such terms as:

Lavana – salted, salted, plus:

Lavana – salt (sea)

Lavanya – salinity, salt, beauty, beauty

Lavanata – salinity

Lavanita – salty

Lavana-Jala – containing salt water, sea

Lavanoda (Lavana-Uda) – sea (salt – water).

But there is also in Sanskrit:

Lavana – cutting, mowing

Lavaka – reaper

Lava – cutting, plucking (fruits, berries)

Lava – the harvest

Lava is the cut, shearing, piece, piece, drop and name of the son of Rama and Sita.

In the Vologda and Arkhangelsk dialects there is the word «lavina», which means «mowing, cutting». In the Kostroma and Nizhny Novgorod regions, the word «rama» is «border, border, and end of arable land near the forest.» And in the Cherepovets district of the Vologda region, «ramenye» is «meadow grasslands among the forest. As for the term «Sita», in Sanskrit it is a furrow, a wrinkle, a fold and the name of Rama’s wife, but also – white, light. In Russian, there is such a concept as sieve (white) flour and sieve (white) bread, as well as the name of the device for sifting flour – a sieve. Thus, already at the linguistic level, a complex of connections is being built, where «rama» (one of the names of a wooden harrow) and «furrow» in the field give an opportunity for subsequent harvest, as a result of which «flour» will appear, in combination with salt, giving birth to bread.

This complex of concepts will arise later, after millennia, when the harvesting of wild cereals will be replaced by slash-and-burn agriculture. At the early stage of proto-agriculture, we can assume the participation of men in some important harvest rites, possibly related to the salt they mine.

Here it makes sense to refer to another Sanskrit term Lu (Lunati, Lunite, Lulava / Lu, Ulava / Lu Luve, Lavitum, Luna), which means:

Cut, separate,

Divide, divide,

Tear off, tear off,

Harvest, harvest.

And now we recall the city of Lunit, whose patroness was the ancient Egyptian goddess of the first dynasties of the kings (beginning from the 3rd millennium BC) – Nate. Herodotus considered her an analogue of the ancient Greek Athena. And the fact that the Greeks called this city Latopolis Laton, that is, the city of the goddess Lato (Leto-Summer, Lada). And here we mention a term such as Lavitum, associated with Lavana – mowing, harvesting, harvesting and with Lavana – salted, salted, and salt.

Apparently, the place and time of birth of such images as Owl – Mother-in-law and Lilith were the same. It is possible that the appearance of fair-haired (red-haired) and light-eyed Levites, the descendants of Jacob’s third son from Leah, named Levi, is also associated with the same «space-time» characteristics. Note that it is the third son (Ivan Tsarevich, Ivan the Fool) in Russian folk fairy tales, which are distinguished by the deep archaism of their plots, who possesses certain sacred abilities. He marries the Frog Princess, takes out rejuvenating apples, receives the magic horse Sivka-Burka the Prophetic Kaurka, etc.

But, the same thing happens with the descendants of Levi – the Levites. They were excluded from the 12 tribes of Israel and the only ones from all were not endowed with land.

That is, in fact, they led the lives of the Brahmins, not possessing property and receiving tithes from the people for their existence. But they also performed priestly functions, being singers, musicians and guards in the portable temple of the Tabernacle. It remains for us to conclude that the Levites (Lavites) in the deepest matriarchal antiquity in the north of Eastern Europe took part in the holy ceremonies of harvesting with salt, music, singing and ritual libations with beer. This is also evidenced by such an ancient text as «Mundaka Upanishad», one of the most authoritative Upanishads of Atharva Veda, the second chapter of which says:

«Whose agnihotra is not accompanied by the sacrifices of the new moon, full moon, four months’ offering of the first and is performed without guests, Deprived of libation, offerings to the visvadevas are not performed properly, destroys his worlds, up to the seventh.

Black, terrible, fast as a thought, very red, the color of thick smoke, The sparkling one and the goddess in all forms are the seven tongues playing.

Whoever, while these shine, performs and makes offerings on time, That they are the rays of the sun, lead, where is the abode of the one lord of the gods».

Of course, the texts of the Atharva Veda, and even more so the Mundaka Upanishad, were canonized thousands of years after the end of the era of matriarchy. But, nevertheless, here are preserved relics of that distant time when not God the Father, but the Great Goddess Mother was incarnated in seven tongues of flame and not solar, but lunar cults played a leading role.

It is also significant that the terms of classical Sanskrit «deva» – heavenly, divine, god, priest, lord and «devaka» – heavenly, in Russian, and especially in North Russian dialects, are used at the everyday level to this day (deva, devka, deuka) in relation to exclusively girls and women, but not men. Thus, the term that later became the basis of many words associated with the concept of «divine» in Sanskrit:

Deva rarman – sacred rite, worship,

Deva kula – temple, home of the gods,

Deva gana – doubt of the gods,

Deva-ja – of divine origin,

Devatva – divinity,

Deva-Deva – God or King of the gods, etc,

in the Russian language retained its most ancient meaning, where the concept of the divine is assigned precisely to the feminine.

We can state that the cult of the Goddess-Mother-Owl, protector of Grain and giver of Life, mistress of Fire and Water, formed in deep (still Paleolithic) antiquity, could arise only where for many tens of millennia there were meadow cereal steppes consisting of sown forms – wild rye, wild barley, wild oats and wild wheat. And such steppes existed for such a long time only on the territory of Eastern Europe – the Russian Plain. In the subsequent Mesolithic era (the Middle Stone Age, in 10—8 thousand BC, led to the disappearance of cereal steppes and the widespread distribution of deciduous forests (the real steppes remained only in a narrow strip of the Black Sea region), people were forced to burn these forests in order to restore the fields of cereals that now needed to be sown.

So, apparently, slash-and-burn agriculture appeared.Matriarchal-hoe farming, as B. A. Rybakov noted, survives to the Eneolithic (5—3 thousand BC). He writes: «All four dimensions entered the worldview of farmers: the surface of the earth, the height of the world plowed up and down, lost in the blue firmament of the sky, and the continuous movement of this world in time.

And all this was expressed in the ornament. The ornament has become a public phenomenon that allows, like later letters, to tell about your attitude to the world and to unite people to perform certain actions. ” Appearing back in the Paleolithic of the Russian Plain (Kostenki, Mezinskaya site), the ornament developed here to that complex system, which was then carried to the territory of future India, Ancient Greece, Ertruria, etc. And it was in Russia that these ornamental complexes have survived to the present day in the most complete and complete form.

At the turn of 4—3 thousand BC the role of agriculture is weakening and the importance of animal husbandry is increasing. As the authors of «Eneolithic USSR» note: «It was the development of livestock breeding in its mobile forms (distant pasture, semi-nomadic, and further nomadic) that sharply limited or even excluded the possibility of simultaneous agricultural practice… mobile livestock breeding is very productive in the first periods of development, it provides a surplus product faster and easier than agriculture… Collectives of mobile livestock breeders grew rapidly. Their herds grew accordingly, which required a constant expansion of „production areas“ – pastures. This expansion proceeded much faster and on a large scale than among the farmers… The conditions of feather grass and wormwood steppes, passing in their extreme southern limits into the semi-desert, sharply limited the possibilities of agriculture. The forage base necessary for the development of cattle breeding was practically unlimited here… in different landscape zones, cattle breeding took different forms. In the forest-steppe settlements marked by a strong settled settlement and the presence of even limited agriculture, it was clearly of a local nature. The herd was dominated by large domestic animals and a pig, respectively. To the south, in the steppes, the most productive and adapted animal to the specifics of this zone was the sheep. Sheep breeding was the decisive economic factor in the development of steppe areas».

This is where, in my opinion; one should look for the origins of the legend about the farmer Cain and Abel – «the shepherd of the sheep.» Speaking about the weakening of the role of agriculture and the significant strengthening of cattle breeding at the turn of the 4th-3rd millennia BC, when the «agricultural Eneolithic period with its equality of the» Golden Age «ended, B. A. Rybakov emphasized that «the struggle for these herds, their alienation and uneven distribution, the ability to move together with property in carts (carts (rattle cars)) over considerable distances under the protection of mounted warriors, the development of exchange -all this radically changed the established agricultural order, introduced into it is social inequality, and the military principle, and the relationship of domination and subordination within each tribe. The agricultural Eneolithic with its equality of the «Golden Age» did not leave us any traces of forced burials …The culture of battle axes, the culture of mobile and warlike horse shepherds gave birth to a new social phenomenon that consolidated the immeasurably increased power of tribal leaders and governors – the custom of violent ritual murder of the closest subordinates of the leader at his grave and a joint burial with him».

The millennial era of matriarchy has ended. The era of patriarchy has begun – the era of war and murder. The Ancient Mother Goddess ceded her place to God the Father.

But not everywhere and not always!

And where the ancient traditions of agriculture were born and preserved, the Mother Goddess remained not a Warrior-Virgin, but Mother Earth, Great Foremother, Owl – Mother-in-law.