No Regrets Journal Essay -The Goddess and Abraham

No Regrets Journal The Goddess And Abraham May 2018

Spring is an excellent time to talk about the goddess—the return of sunlight, planting, birth and rebirth. The goddess was a dominant religious figure in neolithic times, a metaphor for the coming into being of the earth, the cosmos and us. Ancient rights of spring celebrate goddesses, fertility, the fecundity of spring and summer. The maypole is part of this heritage along with fall harvest festivals to prepare for winter until the cycle begins again. The goddess cultures tended to be in accord with nature. Most of what we know of the goddess comes from archaeological explorations of a preliterate neolithic age with varying dates in the Middle East, Europe and other parts of the world.

Our religions and myths can be interpreted as providing insight into what is universal in human nature. They can also be interpreted from ethnic or tribal perspectives tied to a particular people, in a particular place, at a particular time.

We are forever trying to understand the ultimate mystery of creation, our place on the earth, in the cosmos and in our hearts and souls. This universal search leads to spiritual, metaphysical, psychological, scientific and other explorations. The religious and spiritual side of the search is captured by the Sufi master who talks about, “One God, many paths.” Houston Smith, the religious historian, when asked by a student what the best religion to chose to find meaning in their life would be, replied that any of the major religions would provide a reasonable framework to pursue that goal. The search for answers to the why of our existence can be met in many ways.

Joseph Campbell describes myths and gods as being outside of history and time, “Gods are metaphors to transcendence….the reference is to that which transcends all speech, all vocabularies, and all images.” Myths do not denote a historic moment in time. Myths connote a way to encounter the mysterious from a mythological rather than historical or theological perspective. God and gods are not interpreted as final answers, but as metaphors for the mystery of the creation of the earth, of the cosmos and us. The findings of science and history can be accommodated because the principles of faith built on metaphor are not tied to historical time and place. Their underlying transcendence remains meaningful.

A dependence on historical truth limits the ability of a myth or religion to respond to the ever unfolding future. Some ethnic and tribal religions tie themselves to historical facts and specific moments in time. This historic approach inevitably creates problems in the face of changing knowledge about the earth and its inhabitants. As we move through western history with the earth at the center around which the sun moves, to the sun being the center and on to our galaxy being one of many, historically based religions struggle with to justify their certainties about time and place. This problem is further exacerbated by geologic and evolutionary knowledge.

Universal metaphoric interpretations tend to lead to openness and possibility. They are not dependent on being right about the moment creation took place. Historically dependent interpretations often lead to righteousness and exclusivity. The myth or the religion is used to limit knowledge and justify social and economic inequality through political actions that deny the rights of other faiths and of groups within the faith, particularly the rights of women. The

focus is on building an exclusive society and a set of rules revealed by God as is the case with many interpretations of the Old Testament and the Quaran.

Religious beliefs are described in detail along with dietary rules and modes of dress. The Jewish, Christian or Muslim identity tends to become exclusive.

Those who are not believers become the other. Wars are fought to project and protect the faith.

The Goddess symbolizes the life force that creates the earth and all that it contains, humans, animals, plants and other creatures. The Goddess and creation are one. Her divinity is immanent in all of the manifestations of nature.

She assures continued fertility. She oversees the cycles of birth, death and rebirth. The earth, the living body of the goddess, is celebrated and respected accordingly. It is of note that in all European languages the earth is feminine.

We speak of mother nature, mother earth.

In the vast majority of pre literate creation myths, the creation is neither fallen nor sinful. In the traditional Jewish and Christian faiths, the story of creation takes a different turn. God is not manifest in creation. He is separate from creation. It is worth noting that there are traditions and readings of the Bible in which God is not He and is not separate from creation, but that is a separate discussion. God brings the world and the universe into being. God interacts with creation and acts in its history, but He is not present in the creation itself. The earth and the cosmos exist at a distance from the sanctity of the creator.

Although there are traditions in which creation is also divine, the separateness of God can lead to conflicting perspectives about nature and stewardship.

For many Christians, the creation is intrinsically sinful because of the original sin involving Adam, Eve, the serpent, the apple, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. In the Jewish tradition, the purity of Eden is hidden from Adam and Eve and their descendants because they disobeyed God. Eve entices Adam to bite the apple. Having been influenced by the snake, she is responsible for the act of disobedience. In the Christian tradition, humanity, the creation and the natural world are fallen.

One of the Goddess’s companions is the serpent, an embodiment of the life force shedding its skin to begin a new life in a new year. In Judaeo Christian and Muslim traditions, the snake is a source of evil, responsible for enticing Eve to eat of the apple. Although it cannot be substantiated, the choice of the biblical authors to demonize the serpent for influencing Eve who, in turn, convinces Adam to taste the apple, was an effort to undermine the powerful divinity of the snake over centuries as a life force and companion of the goddess. It was also tied to the effort to justify a patriarchal society where women were expected to be subservient to men.

Tying the serpent’s devious cleverness to Adam and Eve’s fall, in some readings, links the evil of the snake to the character of Eve and to the character of all women. Snakes and women are not to be trusted. They may seduce you into sin. The goddess is no longer the creator of nature’s abundance, but becomes the source of witches, the mother of demons and an ongoing danger to society. Her power must be destroyed and concomitantly, the power of all women must be limited and contained.

In neolithic times, the Serpent is associated with the Goddess as creator of the earth. The serpent is shown entwined around the tree of life. God was concerned that Adam and Eve having eaten of the apple of the tree of knowledge would be further tempted to eat of the tree of life. He tells Eve in Genesis 3:16 “…I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” The serpent too was cursed, “ Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”

In the world of the Goddess, the serpent is celebrated as a positive life force of renewal and healing. To this day the symbol of physicians is the ancient caduceus with the image of entwined serpents. In most cultures the snake is celebrated for the life affirmation inherent in shedding and renewing its skin.

There are many neolithic images of the Goddess dancing while holding snakes.

Often, the scenes include the tree of life. Snake images are also common in neolithic ceremonial buildings and pottery.

Annie Finch, a contemporary pagan and poet, describes an approach to the goddess, “...It is a Christian notion that you need to transcend the body’s temporality. Paganism doesn’t feel threatened by the decay of the body, since it recognizes death and life as part of a cycle that is at once sacred and physical. Unlike the idea of a transcendent God, the point of the goddess is that she is immanent, part of the natural world, and so she dies and lives and changes; she doesn’t have to stand outside of nature to be sacred. And neither do we.”

In the Buddhist faith the mother goddess, the earth goddess, is called upon by Buddha to vouch for his right to seek enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, the center of the world, The earth goddess says, ”Bless him/her who sits on the axis mundi, for one can only transcend time and space if one is immovable.”

The earth goddess washes away the army of Maya so that the Buddha can continue and reach enlightenment. He is also protected from a storm by the King of Serpents, Mucilanda, a King Cobra who spreads his hood to shelter Buddha.

The concept of original sin developed and grew over time and was codified in Augustine’s interpretation of the fallen world of humanity and nature.

The Jewish tradition does not accept Augustine’s articulation of the fall and the intrinsic sinfulness of humankind. In the Jewish tradition, the issue was disobedience. Sins are created in one’s life.

For Augustine the focus of the sin shifted from disobedience to sex. His youthful debauchery convinced him that sex was sinful. A belief shared with Saint Paul. The closest one could get to unsinful sex was to be sure that you were focused on procreation, but even that was questionable. Only procreative sex might be appropriate. Pleasure and love were insufficient reasons for sex. One of the generally unsung benefits of Luther’s rebellion in the Reformation was a shift not only away from the purchase of forgiveness for sins, but the full throated support of sexual pleasure. Luther believed that mutual sexual pleasure was not only appropriate but would help to bind couples together. It was priestly, monkish

celibacy that was to be frowned upon. Sex was as “necessary to the nature of man as eating and drinking.”

With the exception of Sophia, the role of women in the bible is always subservient to men. Eve’s role in the fall paints women as subject to Satan’s seduction because she listened to the evil serpent, the companion of the Goddess. Women are required to be subservient to men, to obey their fathers and husbands. Saint Paul from Corinthians, "I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband and the head of Christ is God...let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.

Neither was man created for woman, but woman was created for man."

The Judeo-Christian God is institutionally described as male and celebrated in the arts throughout the centuries as male. The old testament God is not only male, but vengeful. In this reading, God, the ultimate patriarch, places men in positions of power over women whose rights and roles are limited, obedience and obeisance to fathers and husbands are expected. Saint Paul, among others, insisted that women should not speak in church. There are those who argue based on the two versions of Genesis that Adam and Eve were made in God’s image therefore we do not know whether God is male, female or simply exists.

The Goddess as the embodiment of nature and the earth was competitive with and a threat to patriarchy and to the God that could enforce patriarchy’s right to keep women in their place. Anything associated with the worship of the Goddess had to be maligned and destroyed. The Old Testament took this need as an element in its myths, metaphors and rules of behavior for believers.

The Goddess is also often accompanied by images and statues of pigs.

Pigs were celebrated for their fecundity and the bounty of their meat. They are sacred to the Goddess. The Old Testament makes it a sin to eat pork or touch the carcass of a pig. Again, this may be a tactical move to undermine an animal celebrated by the Goddess.

As stated in Leviticus 11:7-8, “And the pig, because it has a cloven hoof that is completely split, but will not regurgitate its cud; it is unclean for you. You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.” The caution is repeated in Deuteronomy 14:8, “And the pig, because it has a split hoof, but does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You shall neither eat of their flesh nor touch their carcass.”

The writers of the Old Testament, the early leaders of the Jewish faith, did everything in their power to destroy any representation of the Goddess, her divine companions and their attendant celebrations. Some contemporary conservative Jewish movements continue to make women subservient. The Catholic church and the New Testament followed suit and some Christian and Muslim sects continue to place women in that position.

The Goddess was also the source of healing. Women healers were a threat to patriarchal authority. Over time, Christianity condemned women healers as witches. Witches were portrayed as having the hooked nose of birds of prey.

The Goddess is often portrayed as the muse and the source of wisdom, in Proverbs 8:23-31 King James Version quotes Sophia, Wisdom, “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water.

Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep. When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: When he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.”

Clayton Medeiros claymedeiros@aol.com Epublishing http://issuu.com/claymedeiros/docs https://www.facebook.com/NoRegretsJournal Note: With thanks to Marja Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess and Joseph Campbell’s book, Goddesses along with his Masks of God series covering the history of the world’s religions.