114 CHAPTER 1
All the notions about the goddess discussed here stem from the beliefs in
the Neolithic Celestial Goddess. She, or more precisely the female deities of
the Sky and the Sun, are associated with the deity of fire and the hearth. In the
Neolithic age, the Sun was depicted as a fiery woman that had arrived in the
sky from the underworld.450 The female image of the Sun was embodied by
the Maiden in the form of a bride or daughter whose mother was the Celestial
Goddess. She was considered the goddess of the Skies and the celestial waters,
a giver of rain and fertility, but also a source and prime mover of life, death and
illnesses. She was also responsible for poor crops and disasters. The goddess
was associated with the funeral cult and the world beyond, being the patron
of the dead. She had a dual nature and symbolized both Sky and Earth, winter
and summer, life and death, good and evil.451
One of her symbols was the world tree, perhaps because she was regarded
as a ruler of Nature. The world tree also reflects the motif of the prediction
of human fates, since they depended on the Great Goddess. Trees with milky
juices in their fruit or trunk were regarded as sacred—clearly, an allusion to the
milk of the Great Mother of the World.452 Humans died by the will of the god-
dess and the color white was associated with death. She was often also associ-
ated with red. Conversely, the white color symbolized the sky, while the red
was a symbol for the underworld, the Paleolithic male deity. The combination
between white and red also represents the bond between the masculine and
the feminine (in various times and traditions white and red have been both
male and female color symbols), between the underworld and the celestial
one, which in one way or another were part of the image of the Great Goddess,
not only in ancient times. This combination is also related to royal power, as
was the case in ancient Iran. In Bulgarian tradition, red and white are associ-
ated with the “female” month of March and the martenitsa.453
The lack of written records does not allow a clear view on the cult of the
goddess among the Bulgars. It is not possible (at least for the moment) to find
out the name this goddess was given. The theory of D. Ovcharov, who calls
the female deity of the Bulgars Umay, is based only on the fact that the Turks
worshipped this goddess.454 According to T. Chobanov, the phrase from the
Chatalar inscription of the Bulgarian Kana Omurtag “until the Ticha flows”
450 Golan 1993, 32 and 178.
451 Golan 1993, 13–15, 42, and 139–140; see also Campbell 2005, 19; Campbell 2004, 47–49
and 140.
452 Golan 1993, 156.
453 See Stepanov 2003b, 59–67; Golan 1993, 44–45 and 172.
454 Stepanov 2003c, 72; cf. Ovcharov 1997, 23–25 and 147–159; see also Rashev 2008, 299–300.