More on the Queen Mother...

By Steven (Details of an object of Scythian artwork found in Tuva, Siberia, dating to the 4th Century BCE)

I finally got around to looking at a book I found at a thrift store some time ago - Twilight Goddess: Spiritual Feminism and Feminine Spirituality - by Thomas Cleary and Sartaz Aziz. I realized this book would likely have something to say about Xi Wang Mu, the Golden Mother of the West. Indeed it does. While the authors discuss some of the general information about the Goddess, they also put forth an interesting theory. Given recent discoveries in the Taklamakan Desert, not far north of the Kunlun Mountains, of seemingly Caucasian "mummies", they wonder if the "Golden Mother" may not be a memory of some blonde-haired shaman-queen of these Western people. The authors believe the likeliest origin of these remains are the Scythians. The remains may date as far back as 4,000 years. These people lived between the Kunlun and Altai ranges, which should be the right location for the Scythians at that time. Ancient accounts do mention red and blond hair amongst these tribes, which were an Aryan people speaking a language similar to Iranian. Fair-haired people among the Afghans and Pakistanis, usually attributed to the army of Alexander the Great, may actually represent Scythian ancestry. Scythian-style chariots have been discovered in Chinese archaeological sites.

A major problem is that the Scythians left no written records.

But the plot thickens...

Apparently, a fair number of Irish historians claim Scythian roots for the Celtic people, pointing to long-standing Celtic traditions. If this is a valid claim, there were certainly women warriors, wizards and chieftains amongst ancient Celtic and Pictish peoples, as well as matriarchal traditions amongst some of the tribes. The authors pointed to the legends of Queen Medb (Maeve), a wealthy, powerful blonde queen with magical powers who ruled over the western fifth of Ireland (a Queen of the West?). She could induce feelings of childbirth (labor pains) in male warriors, which bears a relation of sorts to some practices and legends in Chinese Taoist beliefs (meditation is a man become 'pregnant', the Queen Mother and her representative teaching magical methods for to Chinese rulers and sages to protect themselves and their domains). Her name meant "intoxication", which can have a number of meanings at deeper levels. Neither Queen married, but both had many lovers. The idea of Xi Wang Mu holding court atop the mystical Kunlun Mountain, surrounded by Immortals and tending the Peaches of Immortality in her splendid gardens, is mirrored by Tir na n-Og, the Land of Youth that was thought to be somewhere west of Celtic lands, and was the location to which worthy people went after death (and sometimes returned from, should the people have a time of great need).

Can they prove this theory? Not unless some new "smoking gun" is dug up somewhere, one day in the future. I do think there is likely some kernel of truth there. The more reading I do, the more I seem to find that Central Asia has been "central" to much of Eurasian history.