Bees have always been a symbol of divinity and after all a monarchy symbol. The queen bee which everyone served to, was seen at the Neolithic as an epiphany of the same Goddess.
- It seems that this cult of the bee was extended to the islands of Crete in the Aegean and the Greek mainland. The mythology realizes that Jupiter in its childhood was fed with honey brought by Melisa, the daughter of a Cretan king, to a cave where they had hidden the child. The stamp of a gold ring (1450 BC) in a tomb located in Isopata near Knossos, shows the relationship between the Goddess and priestesses with the queen bees and their pawns, performing a dance. This ring was found in a tomb, probably because the bee in Crete was considered life emerging from death. In the stamp appears the Goddess bee in the middle, coming to Earth with snakes and among the lilies, being adored by her priestesses.
Honey was used to embalm the dead, and also played a central part in the new year rituals of the Minoan culture. The new year began in the Cretan summer solstice, when the heat was at its peak, and July 20 was the day when the big star Sirius rose in conjunction with the Sun, also in Sumeria and Egypt. In these two countries Sirius was explicitly called “the star of the Goddess” (Innanen in Sumer, Egypt and Isis), and temples, palaces on Crete were geared to this star. The rise of Sirius ended a 40-day ritual during which it was obtained honey from the hives of bees in the darkness of caves and forests. Honey was made mead by fermenting it to be drunk as an intoxicating liquor, which accompanied the ecstatic rites to be celebrated. A jewel of onix also found at Knossos shows the goddess bee taking over the head of bull horns and the double ax inside the curve of the horns. Later, dogs belonging to the underworld Hecate and Artemis have wings and fly so close to their winged goddess who, at first glance, appear as if they were theirs.
The tombs at Mycenae are in the shape of beehives, as well as the Omphalos of Delphi in classical Greece, where Apollo ruled with his principal oracle priestess, the Pythia, who was named bee delfica. In the Greek Homeric hymns to Hermes, written in the eighth century BC, the god Apollo talked about three seers women as three bees or maids. Bees, like himself, practiced divination. These bees-maidens with their sacred gift of prophecy, were the gift of Apollo Hermes, the only god who can carry the souls of the dead to life, and sometimes back again.
According Strabo, in Elefsina and Ephesus in the priestesses who once held the ancient mysteries were called Melissai, “Bees”, initiated some that had reached a level of purity were also indisputable that name. The bees were Melissai or priestesses of Artemis, and were led by the “King of Bees” (the Greeks did not know that the bees had no king and queen). Bees were associated with Ephesus for many reasons, saying that muses in the form of bees were those that had led to the Athenians who came to colonize the land.
The figure of Artemis showed in his belt and skirt, figures of bees, have also been found in excavations representations of gold. The currencies of Ephesus had in any of their faces always at the bee.
- Egypt: beginning to represent it as a symbol of the soul of men, it is embodied in the graves as the image of survival of the soul after death. But at the same time serve as emblematic of the pharaonic dynasties of Upper and Lower Egypt, represented by a bee and a blade of rushes. One of the funeral hymns to the pharaoh usertable II reads: ‘case to rush to the bee, “which is interpreted as an affirmation that prevailed in both Egypt. Bees also have been found in the burial tomb of the pharaoh of Egypt, Ahotpu I. According to an Egyptian myth, honey bees were tears of the sun god Ra. His religious meaning was extended to an association with the goddess Neith, whose temple in Lower Egypt was known as per-bit, meaning “house of the bee.”
Honey is considered a symbol of resurrection and the thought of giving protection against bad spirits.
- Within Europe bees also were found in the tombs of the barbarian Gauls, and mainly in the tomb of King Childeric franc (d. 481). The bee is the symbol of the French monarchy. In the Basque Country were part of the family and they were communicated the most important events of family life, because if it did not so bees were dying or leaving the hive.
There have always been in the Basque region a special and profound respect for the dead, as evidenced many old traditions. After death, the closest neighbor to call relatives and himself, or someone in the house, gave the news to the animals, especially bees.
Juan Garcia Atienza, known discloser of esoteric issues, we spoke in one of his books that made a curious discovery while visiting the interior of the parish of San Torcuato: In the corridor leading to a small chapel located between the old and the apse rear of the altar, this author found two fresh different from each other but with both a symbol and very similar feature for some of the esoteric art: Two lozenges fairly flat landscape and each of them containing a bee in the center and two six-pointed stars at both ends.
- In the Mayan culture is not known a goddess bee, but a god bee, a companion of the moon goddess, surely influenced by the patriarchal culture.
