The figure of the goddess with upraised arms is found almost wherever the archetypal figure of the Feminine appears. Erich Neumann gives two possible interpretations of this arm posture, both of which he says amount to the same thing. The one interpretation stresses the magical character of the attitude, which is accordingly assumed by priests or priestesses of the Great Goddess or by supplicants who wish to establish contact with her. In the other interpretation, the angular attitude of the arms signifies not worship but the divine posture of "epiphany," of the moment in which the godhead appears. Upraised arms as an attitude of prayer are not only typical for Egypt but are widely distributed elsewhere as well; including the shrine of Gournia, Crete, Mycenae, Troy, Cyprus, Greece and India. This gesture of epiphany is appropriate to the Great Mother when she stands on the earth, as in Egypt. When the lower part of the pre-Greek Goddess is undifferentiated like a bell or platform it reminds us of Gaia, the Earth Mother, whose womb coincides with the earth, the lower territory of fertility. See The Great Mother, An Analysis of the Archetype by Erich Neumann,Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim, Bollingen Series XLVII, Princeton University Press,1972 (with a dedication to C. G. Jung).