It is summer, hot and horny, and I am on a roll. So I am going to continue this theme of beauty, attraction, seduction, sex, love and self-love until I run out of content!

Paleolithic carvings and figures found in caverns and caves are filled with life-affirming female imagery which bear reference to woman as matrix, as Creatrix, to moon cycles and to menstrual magic, and which relay profound reverence in their rendering.

Of the more than sixty known Stone Age sculptures collected at sites scattered from Spain to the Ukraine, only five are thought to be male. This is especially interesting given that skeletal remains from the same locations indicate that men outnumbered women by three to two.

This earliest art depicts grandly voluptuous female forms whose sturdy stature suggests commanding confidence, stunning strength and authority. Although they are small enough to snuggle in the palm of one’s hand, these goddess totems project a powerful, primordial potency.

The Venus of Willendorf, the Venus of Meton, the Venus of Lespugue, with their big breasts and belly, huge hips and ass, stand frank and fecund, self contained, central. Formidable and efficacious. Faceless, their limbs are abbreviated. Their entire focus is centered on their own nubile torso which tapers to a point, a fertile triangle — the tip of the vortex of their sex.

The Venus of Laussel is thought to be the oldest relief sculpture in the world. At least thirty thousand years ago, she presided over the entrance of a cave in southern France which was used as a ritual sanctuary. Glorious, she stands with one hand caressing her own swollen, pregnant belly. With the other arm raised high she salutes the sky with a crescent moon which is marked with the cycle of her thirteen annual periods. She was originally painted with the earthy red ochre of her holy blood.

Inside the cave are pictured scenes of pleasure and purpose; coitus and conception, copulation and birth. What ceremonies might have been celebrated in this sacred sheltered chamber? This recessed cleft womb-room deep inside the body of Mother Earth?

We can only imagine!

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Donna Henes is the author of The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife.

Queen Mama Donna is the Midlife Midwife™ offering counseling and upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity. Consult the MIDLIFE MIDWIFE™: http://www.donnahenes.net/queen/consult.shtml

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The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to thequeenofmyself@aol.com.