Kore

She is often identified as being the same as Persephone.  She is an ancient mythic deity.  She often is known as the maiden part of the matriarchal sacred trinity - the Maiden, Mother and Crone. 

There are a number of words related to the Kore.  ÎCoreÌ, as in apple core or as in the core of the earth is one.  From her comes one of the names for the ancient priestesses of the temples, the Îhorae.  The horae kept the sacred time, especially in Long Dance.  When the newer and less learned cultures swept in and replaced the ancient native cultures, they segmented sacred time into pieces.  From this comes the Indo - European word which in English manifests its self as ÎhourÌ - a piece of time.  Keeping the sacred time was a phenomena which, as in the visions William Blake, unified Heaven and Earth into one.  The sexual  force of life and the spiritual force of life were the same.  The newer cultures which overthrew the ancient cultures of the Kore and her horae, segmented these forces in women as ÎnunsÌ and as ÎwhoresÌ.  These were the people referred to when the Old Testament refers to the Ïwhores (horae) of Babylon). 

I should add an aside here that there is no guilt or blame to be borne by the newer cultures.  The times had changed.  The earth was undergoing a process of psychological individuation.  Perhaps, though, during the next thousand years we as beings of the earth will reintegrate all of our forces in a newer way.  (Again I might refer to William BlakeÌs work, especially ÏThe Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience.Ó) 

The ancient tribe of the Korites (from which the beautiful and sacred work, the Koran, gets its name - the book of the Korites, were the guardians of the sacred places of the Kore.  It is from her they (and therefore the Koran) get their name.  It is to this day the task of this tribe to guard the holy stone of Mecca. 

(It is an interesting note that the a feminine aspect related to Kore in this part of the world was the one who dispensed the ancient Law.  The name of this goddess was Sin, the Moon Goddess.  The place she dwelt was a certain mountain in the range known as Îthe mountains of the moonÌ, Mount Sinai - literally the Mountain of Sin.  This place, the Mountain of Sin,  the source of the Law for the matriarchal peoples of that area and that time,  is where Moses, as leader of a people undergoing the transformation from mother goddess to father god, went to get his laws, the Ten Commandments.) 

The dance known as ÎThe Kore (see) is one of the primary dances by which people have come to identify the genre of dance evolved by Shaker and known as the LongDance.