These Pagan Portals are all current works in progress, serialised here on the Pagan Collective blog with each chapter being open for comment. In due course the entire script will be published as a Pagan Portal book.

Places of Worship

The first obstacle we encounter when talking about the places of worship of the Goddess Ataecina is her antiquity. We are talking about a deity that emerged in the early Stone Age. Her first representations could have been goats, although she is also related to idols with prominent eyes. In relation to the votive offerings in the form of a goat, some think that this could be the original form of the goddess in Iberia, given that the time in which this deity could have emerged coincides with the domestication of the goat in the Iberian Peninsula and its important role for Iberian livestock and its people. Others think that Ataegina got associated with the goat after the orientalization of the original cult upon coming into contact with the Goddess Astarte, who came from the East and has the goat as one of her animals. I mention the votive offerings of goats in relation to the cult of Ataecina because we find these animal figures are distributed over a wider part of the territory of the Iberian Peninsula, although we have no way of ensuring that these represent the goddess or were only the offering or representations perhaps of the animal that was offered to her. We find the largest concentration of epigraphs on the peninsula’s Southwest side, between the Tajo and Guadiana Rivers. The votive offerings outnumber the inscriptions. They also surpass some of the inscriptions in antiquity, while most of the epigraphs are from the Roman era.

The fact that we find the bulk of the cult of Ataecina between those two large rivers of the Iberian peninsula is not a coincidence either. Ataegina is a goddess of life and death, of the cycles of nature. Rivers are a source of life but they are also death, as liminal places, gateways to the afterlife and the underworld. We cannot forget the healing character of the goddess, this is another link to water. I would like to mention that there are very curious connections between Ataecina and the Guadiana River. I have already mentioned the existing connection between Ataecina and the Phoenician Goddess Astarte. The Astarte who arrives in Iberia is already heavily syncretised. We are talking about an amalgam of several goddesses that would include Inanna, Ishtar, Hathor and maybe even Anath, and later we find another goddess who takes aspects of Astarte as heir of the ancient cults of Mesopotamia in Persian culture, the goddess Anahita. Here we already have two Goddesses, Anath and Anahita, beginning with Ana, the second being mostly related to water, purification, fertility and healing. It would not be surprising if the Ana River were the body of water that personifies the goddess. If so, we could speak of the river itself throughout its course as a place of worship. We find another river Anna in the Iberian Peninsula, in the Levant, and a town that still bears the name of the Goddess. This town and river are not too far from the coast, and perhaps they were on the trade route to the interior. The Guadiana River, the name given by the Arabs, was Anna for the Romans, and it sums up many of the aspects of Ataecina as we have seen, that of the mother and fertile Goddess, giver of life, healer and also that of psychopomp, as a means of taking souls to the other world. The cult of the river Anna did not die with Christianization, it has persisted over time in the figure of Anna, mother of Samuel, but also Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, once again we see her aspect of mother goddess in these syncretizations. Saint Anne was very popular in Iberia, there is also a town called Santa Ana in Caceres, which is not a coincidence at this point.

Then we have Turobriga, although no one knows for certain where is it, is possibly the main place of worship of the goddess (some speculate that her location could have been in Aroche, in Huelva, others think that it is in Trampal). Turobriga is the place from which she possibly emanated. This conclusion is based on the number of inscriptions found all over the Iberian territory where she carries the epithet Turibrigensis, Turobriga, Turobrigae and similar ones, together with any of the variations of the name Ataegina, or even alone. In a way, she has carried her palace of origin to other places where she was honoured. There are people who carry in their surname a place of origin of one of their ancestors, something similar happens with that epithet of the goddess. Even without knowing the exact location of Turobrigia, one of the important places of worship that we do know is Santa Lucia del Trampal. This place was clearly significant in the cult of the goddess. The site is located between Caceres and Merida, surrounded by forests. We also find water nearby, which is very important for Ataecina. A Visigothic basilica was erected on the site to mark the importance of the place even later in time. A large number of dedications to the goddess and ancient votive offerings were found on the site. Other places of worship worth mentioning would be Merida, Coruña, Beja and the Castro de San Lorenzo in Portugal, although the expansion of the cult covers most of the Iberian Peninsula, as we can see from the many epigraphs that mention her name in one spelling or the other.

I want to return to the hypothesis that I shared in the previous chapter about the movement of the goddess following the course of the Guadalquivir River towards the Sanctuary of the Lobera. The cult of Astarte would be linked to the caves in the Levant and during her migration through the Mediterranean. We see it on the island of Gozo in Malta, where we find a sanctuary to the goddess Astarte, which was founded in a cave around the 4th century BC and was in use for several centuries. When Ataegina was syncretised with Astarte, she also acquired that chthonic part, which reinforces Ataegina’s relationship with the caves and reinforces the possibility of the dedication of the Sanctuary of La Lobera Cave to Ataegina. However, more data could reinforce this theory, such as the discovery of two inscriptions dedicated to Ataegina found in the city centre of Ubeda, in the province of Jaen. To put it in perspective, Ubeda is only about a 10-hour walk from the Lobera Cave in Catellar. In ancient times that was a relatively close distance. Ubeda is also located more or less halfway from the Cerrillo Blanco Necropolis, where the statue of the said Ataegina holding sheep or goats was found.

But not far from Catelar, following the cattle trails, and entering Castilla la Mancha, we have the source of the Gaudiana River, although its source is also a matter of discussion due to the flow of underground water and aquifers. We have a part that would go from Campo de Montiel to the Ruidera lagoons, and from there, the waters would go underground until they overflow in what is known as the Ojos del Guadiana, literally the eyes of the goddess, the water that overflows from the aquifers to integrate later and form the flow of the Guadiana. As we can see, these underground waters also incorporate part of Ataecina’s attributes as an underground goddess. But a little in line with Santa Lucia del Trampal, we could expect to find a common thread between the cult of Ataecina and the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Cortes, in the city of Alcaraz, in the province of Albacete. This common thread could be linked not only to the cattle routes, but also to an ancient Roman sanctuary that was built in the area, said to be dedicated to the Roman goddess Diana. And if we have basic knowledge about this goddess, we will know that she is a goddess linked to wild animals and forests. Here we can relate her to Ataecina in her Feroniae aspect, as the goddess of the wild and forests. Alcaraz is located in the Sierra de Alcaraz, which is the entrance to the Sierra de Segura, which is known as the Water Mountain range. It is one of the most important wild spaces in the Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula even today.

Another possible connecting thread between Ataecina and the Virgin of Cortes is the fact that it was a shepherd who witnessed the apparition of the Virgin of Cortes, as happens with other Marian apparitions on the peninsula. Once again, cattle, goats and sheep are linked to the sacred. The Sierra de Segura is famous for its lambs, but not far from Alcaraz, in the village of la Mesta, we find the heart of the medieval council of shepherds.

I may be the only person who sees these threads that weave the cult of Ataecina from West to East, but somehow these connections are there and perhaps they should be investigated. Whatever the case, Ataecina is still very much alive in a large part of the territory of Iberia, and if we look for her, we will find her.

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