Both goddesses have a knot with a projecting looped cord between their breasts. Evans noticed that these are analogous to the sacral knot, a name given by him to a knot with a loop of fabric above and sometimes fringed ends hanging down below. Numerous such symbols in ivory, faience, painted in frescoes or engraved in seals sometimes combined with the symbol of the double-edged axe or labrys were found in Minoan and Mycenaean sites. It is believed that the sacral knot was the symbol of holiness on human figures or cult-objects. In Minoan Crete the cult was aniconic and the goddesses appeared only in epiphany, called forth chiefly by means of ecstatic sacral dance, as well as by tree shaking and baetylic rites. The sacral knot (combined with the double edged axe) can be compared with the Egyptian ankh (eternal life) which is used to represent the planet Venus, or with the tyet (welfare/life) a symbol of Isis (the knot of Isis) which is thought to represent the idea of eternal life and resurrection.
Read more about this topic: Snake Goddess
Famous quotes containing the word knot:
“Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)