BEECOMING🐝🐝🐝
"The story of Rennes-le-Château has an exhaustive list of subplots including sacred geometry, art history, Vatican secrets, complex codes, Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, the Holy Grail, royal families, lost lineages, Knights Templar, Cathars, Visigoths, the treasure of Solomon and the Priory of Sion, to name a few. But there is another, lesser-known facet to the story: the honey bee. Prehistory is full of clues that hint at ancient man’s fascination with bees, and so is the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. However, to appreciate them we must first turn our attention to the genesis of bee adoration, back in the age when temples of Venus graced the Aude valley, long before the churches dedicated to Mary Magdalene were erected there. In Anatolia, a ten-thousand-year-old statue of the Mother Goddess adorned in a yellow and orange beehive-style tiara has led scholars to conclude that the Mother Goddess evolved into the Queen Bee around this time. At the Neolithic settlement of Çatal Höyük rudimentary images of bees dating to 6540 BCE form a circle above the head of a goddess figure, creating the first ever ‘halo’, while beehive-inspired designs are stylistically portrayed on the walls of its most sacred temples. Not surprisingly, it was the Sumerians who soon emerged as the forefathers of organised beekeeping, known as apiculture, and invented apitherapy, or the medical use of bee products such as honey, pollen, royal jelly and venom. The adoption of bee symbolism in Egyptian society developed rapidly and by the start of the First Dynasty, Egypt was known as the ‘Land of the Bee’. Minoan and Greek mythology soon followed and adopted the sacred bee as a vital element of their societies, depicting bees on the statues of their most important gods and goddesses. They also developed the coveted position of female bee shamans, called Melissas.