ARCHETYPE OF THE WOMB
MEDITATION

My favorite depictions and abstractions concerning beliefs about The Archetype of the Womb are ovens created in the shape of a womb and temples of worship that contain ovens as a focal point.

In the Neolithic cultures of the Balkans we have amazing examples of this concept. A temple model from Popudnia Ukraine (4500 BCE) contains a bread oven, storage jars for grain and female figurines, one grinding grain, the other with her hands upon her breasts.

At Sabatinovka II from the Tisza culture in western Ukraine(4800 BCE) there is a full size temple with a large bread oven dominating the space.
At the far end of the temple is an altar covered with clay images of large hipped women accentuating the womb oven within. 

From Neolithic Hungary (5000 BCE) remains an amazing bread oven shaped like a pregnant human uterus with an umbilical cord at the top and lines of energy moving over it.   Could these be contractions?   I believe that early people understood that the same process that turns galactic clouds into stars, births planets and lifeforms is the same process that turns seed into grass and grass into edible, warm, velvety bread.   It is the alchemical process of the universe—which they conceptualized as contained within the womb of the Goddess.    Baking bread, molding pottery, metallurgy, weaving, giving birth, these are all ways of participating with that process.   All ritual is about finding a relevant way to participate with the forces of the universe as they are conceptualized in the time one lives.
Baking bread to the Queen of Heaven must have been a profound experience!