Who is Goddess Tanit of Ibiza?

Tanit is an ancient African Mother goddess of sexuality, fertility and death. Her worship spread throughout the Mediterranean where she was honored for her ancient powers over the life-death continuum in Phoenicia, Carthage, Iberia, Libya and even Egypt.

Ibiza was her island until the Roman Emperor Vespasian suppressed her cult in AD74.  The Romans named her Dea Caelestis and worshiped her as Juno. To this day Tanit is still worshiped in Ibiza and her cave Temple, at Cova Des Cuieram on the road to Portinax, still remains as testament to her memory and spirit.

In ancient times, the Island was a sacred place associated with healing, rebirth and resurrection where Carthaginian nobility buried their dead at the necropolis at Puig des Moulins. Even the Romans laid their dead to rest there. 

Today, many people still come to Ibiza for the healing and rejuvenation powers of her waters, springs and fountains are said to possess purification, fertility, life and magnetic balance.

To me, Ibiza is the island where Tanit became my guide and protectress when I moved there to heal from a divorce. I was introduced to Her mysteries through grief and then recovery. Tanit is an African-Semitic Persephone who protects the dead and the dying. She is a healer, and Tantric mystic who teaches life, death and rebirth to all beings. She is the Goddess of regeneration, metamorphosis and spiritual resurrection.

Tanit’s origins

Tanit –  Thinit – Tanis – Rat Tanit – Lady of Carthage – Lady of the Sanctuary – Tinit – Tank – The face of Ba’al – The heavenly Goddess – Tanith – The heavenly virgin.

All are names to represent the original great goddess, an ancient and powerful force and symbol of fertility and fruitfulness.

Tanit was the highest deity and the protector of the city of Carthage, with her consort Ba’al – Hammon the god of the sky, she watched over and protected Carthage. Tanit’s worship was spread from North Africa to Spain, Malta and Sardinia.

There are varied opinions as to the date of the emergence of this goddess, most scholars treat Tanit as having come from the Phoenician mainland as a descendant of one or more of the great Canaanite goddesses. 

A few others see her as either originating in North Africa or being a combination of an indigenous North African goddess with one or more of the Phoenician/Canaanite deities.

Before her death in 2005, Monica Sjöö had been working on a book “Seeking Tanit: African/Semitic Great Goddess and Her people”. This was to be her last great work, in which she explored the origins and mysteries of the African Goddess.

Her research also shows that Tanit – the African Persephone and preserver of life in the Underworld, protector of the dead and giver of resurrection, who says “I am the Beginning and the End” – was the Goddess who presided over that world.

“I was on Ibiza – an ancient island of the Phoenicians in the Bronze Age and a sacred        centre of their Great Goddess, Tanit, who said I am the beginning and the end” – when I discovered that I had a cancerous tumour in my breast. It was February of 1997. Although the tumour was five centimetres by then, I had never noticed it. I learned that Ibiza, which was called “The Island of Pine Trees”, was a place where people came to be healed and also to die. It was a colony of the Carthaginians/Phoenicians from north Africa. There are many wells here sacred to Tanit, whose mysteries were forgotten when the Romans destroyed Carthage (Tunisia). She was the same Goddess as Astarte of the Canaanites (also a Phoenician-Semitic people) who was hated by the Hebrew prophets and their Jahweh. Tanit was also African Berber in origin. In this image are the hand of Tanit (later the hand of Fatima?) and other symbols. Here is La Dama de Elche, found in Andalucia and representing the Goddess herself or Her priestess, wearing extraordinary headplates and heavy jewellery, so mysterious. Apparently Ox T’art means “womb of the Earth”, so in Ash T’art there is the word “womb”. The Siren or Serene carries the soul of the dead to the Otherworld.”

~ Monica Sjöö 

 Her symbol, known as the symbol of Tannit, is a triangle representing the human body, surmounted by a circle representing the head, and separated by a horizontal line which represents the hands. The worship of the goddess Tannit emerged after the 5th century BC. She appears to be of Libyan origin.

The Libyan Berber Goddess Tannit and connections to Egyptian Neith

Tannit or Neith is originally a Berber Libyan Goddess venerated by the Berbers of North Africa from immemorial times. Poets and scholars of all ages knew Her as the Goddess Neith. There is no doubt that the Nit of the Ancient Egyptians, Tanit of the Phoenicians, and Athena of the Greeks were none other than the Libyan Goddess Tannit.

The Goddess Neith is one of the oldest goddesses in the world and her shrine was attested in Egypt from pre-dynastic times. She was the patron deity of the city of Sais, in the Western Nile Delta of Lower Egypt.

Her Berber name Tannit means Ta-Nit, “the Land of Nit” and refers to ancient Libya (today’s North Africa as a whole) being Her original home. According to Herodotus Tannit (whom he called Athena) was venerated by the Libyan Amazon around Lake Tritonis.

The meaning of Neith’s name was interpreted in many ways, the most popular was the Goddess as a personification of the primordial waters of creation, making her a Creatrix.

The Mother Dragon Goddess

In her role as Creatrix, we travel back with Tanit to her Pheonician roots and even earlier to Sumer where she was the original primordial Dragon Mother Goddess, Tiamat. Before Tiamat became a legend in Sumerian civilization. She was the Creatrix Goddess and serpent mother who created life from the primordial waters until her battle with Marduk.

And the lord stood upon Tiamat’s hinder parts,

And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.

He cut through the channels of her blood,

And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.

Marduk sliced Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, her tail became the Milky Way.[16] With the approval of the elder deities, he took from Kingu the Tablet of Destinies, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. 

Chaos Monster and Sun God – drawing by L. Gruner – ‘Monuments of Nineveh, Second Series’ plate 5, London, J. Murray, 1853 (coutesy Wikipedia vua 

The Tiamat myth is one of the earliest recorded versions of the Chaoskampf, the battle between a culture hero and a chthonic monster, serpent or dragon. Primordial chaos battles linked to the Tiamat myth are found later in Greece, when Apollo killed the Python to take over the Delphic Oracle.

Robert Graves considered Tiamat’s death by Marduk as evidence for his hypothesis of an ancient shift in power from a matriarchal society to a patriarchy. His theory suggests Tiamat and other ancient monster figures were depictions of former supreme deities of peaceful, woman-centered religions that turned into monsters by the new order of patriarchal religions. Their defeat at the hands of a male hero corresponded to the overthrow of these matristic religions and societies by male-dominated ones. 

Graves’ ideas were later developed into the Great Goddess theory by Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone and others. Once her story became distorted, her worship slowly declined, her temples broken and myths forgotten. But she survived…Her worshippers brought the great primordial Goddess with them. She changed form and names from Aphrodite, Astarte, Asherah, Inanna and Ishtar but she always remained in the hearts of her devotees.

Tanit’s cult in Ibiza and Carthage 

Could Tiamat also be associated with Tanit, the Great Mother Goddess of Could Tiamat also be associated with Tanit, the Great Mother Goddess of the primordial waters?  

The Tanit cult remained strongly rooted in the island of Ibiza, where the Goddess was adored until the rise of Christianity, in the second century A.D.. Ibiza is the place where more statues of Tanit have been found, especially in the Cova Des Culleram, in Sant Vicent de sa Cala. She was one of the most important Goddess of the Carthaginians, as she defended the sacred island of Ibiza.

Tanit was a divinity represented by the lunar crescent, associated with the God of agriculture and therefore, the fertility of the earth, animals and people. She also had the character of a Goddess of the underground, health and death, and she was the protector of the deceased.

In this aspect, she resembles the Potnia, ancient Snake Goddess and Mistress of Animals that we see in the iconography of ancient Crete. 

This primal energy is the natural, instinctual and untamed energy that arises from the Earth. Our ancestors honored this primal energy in its feminine form. The Primal Goddesses’s transcendent function in the Mystery arouses our inner fire of creativity, passion and co-creative power. 

This energy is catalytic and shakes the carefully constructed world of the egoic personality out of its security and comfort. The energy of change, transformation and lightning awakening personal power and inner freedom. 

The ancient oracles were deeply connected to this power and could sing the truth into the world because of how connected their womb was to the womb of Mother Earth. The Sacred Serpentine priestess could shed, change, transmute lower emotions into higher awareness and love. She could unify opposite polarities. She could anchor Higher Energies into earth because she was a vessel of Divine Love. 

She was a messenger to “Know Thyself.” 

She was a singer. She was a sybil. 

She was a Kundalini Master. She who could fly the dragon.

She was Shakti.

When the Oracles of light return, the world will be set on fire.

Many statue heads of the goddess, Tanit – from the Archaeological Museum of Ibiza, Spain (photo courtesy of Historyteller) 

Goddess Tanit on Carthaginian Gold & Silver 1 1/2 Shekel (courtesy of Coin Week)

Carthage was a Phoenician colony, and as such the Carthaginians were related to the Hebrews and the Canaanites (among others). Culturally they had much in common, including the use of the shekel as the primary unit of money. Likewise, the Carthaginians worshipped a variety of deities from the ancient Middle East.

Tanit served as the special protector (tutelary) deity of the city of Carthage, which is why her effigy is found on its coinage. 

Primordial Dragon energy and Return of the Dragon tribe of Sophia

Dragon energy was the Kundalini energy of the Earth snaking through Earth’s lines as male and female energy eventually integrating into a vortex.

These vortexes became energy centers of creation and healing where temples and sacred places of worship were often built upon. 

It is believed that the Sacred Sexual Priestesses of the Dragon lineage and Magdalene lineage will return to Earth to activate these sacred temple spaces where the primordial creation energy of the Earth was once honored and celebrated. 

 Many of the Dragon lines are already well known as Earth’s sacred chakras.

 1st Chakra – Mt Shasta, California, USA

2nd Chakra – Lake Titihaca, Peru 

3rd Chakra – Uluru, Australia 

4th Chakra – Glastonbury, UK

5th Chakra – Luxor, Egypt 

6th Chakra – Afghanistan

7th Chakra – Tibet  

Stela British Museum (image courtesy from British Museum)

The Temple of Venus in Ibiza

I believe that the island of Ibiza had a cult of Tanit because the island is one of the lost islands of Atlantis where the teachings of Venus were taught. I believe the island is a living embodiment of the Goddess and initiates come to learn the cycles of light and dark through being initiated by her.

Many ancient islands of the Mediterranean are remnants of the lost civilization of Atlantis. Crete, Santorini, Malta, Ibiza, Sardenga, Canarias, etc…

These ancient islands of the Mediterranean are ready to begin their new path of evolution stepping into her role as a Portal of Light to shine like a beacon as she draws people to her Light and cosmic energies.

Ibiza was a great centre of mystery and healing, dedicated to Tanit. Tanit wears the cadeceus of the healers, and the elderly and sick of Carthage came to the island to be cured or die. 

The Caduceus associated with Tanit is a symbolic representation of spiritual truths, growth and healing.

Es Vedra represents balance of the feminine and masculine energies. For the first time on Earth, humanity will be integrating both energies and the Mystery Schools will show us how to do this. Tanit remains whole on Ibiza, untouched, unpolluted, left alone to be the beloved Goddess of Ibiza.island of magical women.

Sources:

The Mysteries of Tanit 1 & 2- Tanit on Ibiza by Monica Sjöö

Suppressed History Archives by Max Dashu

Tanit – The Original Great Goddess by Sarah Corbett

Tanit of Carthage by Johanna H. Stuckey 

The Libyan Berber Goddess Tannit (Neith)

Tanit: Phoenician Goddess of Death and Rebirth (mixed media, 1997)

Many statue heads of the goddess, Tanit – from the Archaeological Museum of Ibiza, Spain

Tiamat via Wikipedia. Robert Graves Graves, The Greek Myths, rev. ed. 1960:§4.5.

Ancient Coin Profiles – Goddess Tanit on Carthaginian Gold & Silver 1 1/2 Shekel