Conference hydra::dejavu

    re: .0 (Cindy)
       
          This note was sparked by your reply in 1556...wherein
    you claim to have some ideas about Goddess worship.  But based
    on your lack of substantiation, it seems to me you don't really
    have much of an idea.  Mostly, you used the opportunity in 1556
    to let me know that somehow I was "wrong."  I think you'd rather
    see me wrong than to challenge your own concepts.  Fair enough,
    maybe we're all that way.
          Yes, Goddess worship predates Christianity...big deal.
    Christianity, like all religions that I am aware of, is nothing
    but a thorn in our human sides (now where does this image come
    from?  ;-}  )  Religions are an abuse of spirituality.  While they
    may be reaching for something beyond, they are very much embroiled
    in their own severe limitations, lack of vision and negative ego
    manifestations.  
          Many of us in this reality have recognized the severe constraints
    put onto us by "God" worship.  Domination, war, control...are among
    many of the results of masculine energy running wild.  (Incidentally,
    I've mentioned this in notes somewhere a long time ago, but in 
    studies done by Margaret Mead, NIH [National Institutes of Health]
    and various others, there have been shown direct correlations between
    war, slavery, etc. by patriarchal or male-god-oriented societies, while
    matriarchal or female-goddess-oriented societies were generally calm,
    peaceful, etc.)  
          If I were to choose one over the other, I'd choose the Goddess
    basis.  However, that would be an error.  The Goddess is only "1/2"
    of the energy available.  To ignore the God energy is as much a mistake
    as the converse.  Unfortunately, since the God energy is the energy
    of manifestation, it's the one that gets noticed, hence it's the one
    that is seized and carried.  But for those who (rightly ;-) ) decide
    this is not a wise thing to do and instead go over to the other camp,
    they are left with impotency.  The Goddess does not manifest.  The 
    Goddess energy receives, it imagines, it feels...eventually, without
    the energy of doing, it crumbles...as witnessed by the disappearance
    of Goddess-based religions.  Two choices, then?  Either God and 
    domination or Goddess and submission?
        HOw about discovering that both are valid, both are useful and
    that maybe even both are necessary.  That perhaps what is valid is
    the exploration of both, simultaneously, in a delicate balancing act
    on its way to synergy.
        Forget religion...religion to me is antithetical.  It's mostly
    masculine energy gone crazy.  This includes Goddess religions.
    This is why I said, in note 1556, that Goddess religions aren't 
    really any better (though they may be more gentle.)
        This is my position...
    
    Frederick
    

RE -1 (frederick)

>          This note was sparked by your reply in 1556...wherein
>    you claim to have some ideas about Goddess worship.  But based
>    on your lack of substantiation, it seems to me you don't really
>    have much of an idea.  Mostly, you used the opportunity in 1556
>    to let me know that somehow I was "wrong."  I think you'd rather
>    see me wrong than to challenge your own concepts.

Isn't this too rash reasoning? Cindy starts a topic on Goddess, allowing
people to enter their ideas about it, and you seem to interpret it as a
personal attack?

>							 Fair enough,
>    maybe we're all that way.

At least you appear to me as being that way.

Arie

              
    Re.1 (Frederick)
    
    >wherin you claim to have some ideas about Goddess worship.  But based
    >on your lack of substantiation...
    
    And my lack of substantiation was based on lack of *TIME*.  Take a look
    at the timestamp of .0.  And I also have an important work deadline to 
    meet this week, strange as it may seem.
    
    When I have more *TIME*, I will substantiate it my ideas on Goddess
    worship.  In the meantime, anyone who is knowledgable on this topic,
    please feel free to jump in.
    
    I'll ignore the rest of what you wrote, since it was based on a total
    misunderstanding on your part.  
    
    Cindy

    re: .2 (Arie)
    
        Okay, perhaps it seemed hasty...however, I base what I say on 
    whatever I've taken in and what I'm trying to accomplish.  Maybe this
    time I should have stuck to the latter.  Based on my other interactions
    with Cindy, however, I'm pretty sure I'm correct.  I read it as 
    "Fred's wrong, somebody help me prove it..." which I can (and do)
    interpret further.  I don't wish to attack, and if it seems so,
    then the communication is failing.  Both of us are out-spoken, in
    my opinion, and with that there is a vulnerability which is 
    often exploited.  So, I understand it though I'm not immune to 
    reactive feelings.
    
    Frederick
    

    Frederick,
    
    I agree with much of what you have written, especially about the need
    to synergize the two energies.  I don't think, however, that
    matriarchal societies have necessarily died out do to 'not doing.'  In
    many cases they simply have been defenseless (and hence, overrun) by
    aggressive patriarchal societies.  Interesting to note that the
    societies that Mead studied were largely remote and until recently
    unknown to the rest of the world.  And, therefore, safe.
    
    I think in other instances that earlier matriarchal societies were
    replaced by patriarchal societies simply because the pendulum swung the
    other way.  Perhaps the masculine energies, suppressed for a millenia
    or two, overflowed the dam and flooded.  Now that society has been
    dominated by masculine energies for a couple of millenia -- bringing
    great technological advancements, plus war and pollution -- its time
    for the pendulum to swing the other way.  
    
    Its interesting to note that while most of the world has been dominated 
    by masculine principles, small pockets have held to the feminine 
    principles.  Makes me think of the yin and the yang -- each containing 
    the seed of the other.
    
    Mary

    
    Re.4 (Frederick)
    
    >"Fred's wrong, somebody help me prove it..."
    
    If you go back and look at the note in the other topic, you will see
    that I put in "and hopefully such a discussion will lead to a greater 
    understanding all around", or something very close to this.  How you 
    made the jump from my original statement to what you wrote that I 
    quoted above completely escapes me.
    
    I'm not going to take the time to interact with you on this topic any 
    further, given that it has all the makings of turning into a rathole.  
    Feel free to remain in your anger toward Goddess worship until the end
    of time if you wish to.
    
    Cindy
                          

    re: .6 (Cindy)
    
        Thanks for your permission, now I can rest.
    
    Frederick
    

RE .4 (Frederick)

>    (....)  I don't wish to attack, and if it seems so,
>    then the communication is failing.  (...)
    
The communication is failing.

Arie

    Not much of interest on the system lately, is there?
    I guess things tend to slow down as the winter solstice approaches,
    especially things psychic.
    

From: "Power Of The Myth", by Joseph Campbell

The Gift Of The Goddess, p.167

Picture captions:
    
   Early Goddess

   "When you have a Goddess as the creater, its her own body that 
    is the universe.  She is identical with the universe."

   Shu Separating Sibu and Nut 

   "I have frequently thought that mythology is a sublimation of 
    the mother image.  We speak of Mother Earth.  And in Egypt 
    you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut, who is 
    represented as the whole heavenly sphere."

...

Moyers:  But what happened along the way to this reverence that in
   primitive societies was directed toward the Goddess figure, the Great 
   Goddess, the mother earth - what happened to that?

Campbell: Well, that was associated primarily with agriculture and the 
   agricultural societies.  It has to do with earth.  The human woman gives 
   birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants.  She gives 
   nourishment, as the plants do.  So woman magic and earth magic are the 
   same.  They are related.  And the personification of the energy that 
   gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female.  It is in 
   the agricultuaral world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, and 
   the earlier planting-culture systems that the Goddess is dominant in 
   mythic form.

   We have found hundreds of early European Neolithic figurines of the 
   Goddess, but hardly anything there of the male figure at all.  The bull 
   and certain other animals, such as the boar and the goat, may appear as 
   symbolic of the male power, but the Goddess was the only visualized 
   divinity at that time.

   And when you have a Goddess as the creator, it's her own body that is 
   the universe.  She is identical with the universe.  That's the sense of 
   the Goddess Nut figure that you saw in the Egyptian temple.  She is the 
   whole sphere of the life-enclosing heavens.


Moyers:  There is one scene of the Goddess swallowing the sun.  
   Remember?

Campbell:  The idea is that she swallows the sun in the west and gives 
   birth to the sun in the east, and it passes through her body at night.


Moyers:  So it would be natural for people trying to explain the wonders 
   of the universe to look at the female figure as the explanation of what 
   they see in their own lives.

Campbell:  Not only that, but when you move to a philosophical point of 
   view, as in the Goddess religions of India - where the Goddess symbology 
   is dominant to this day - the female represents 'maya'.  The female 
   represents what in Kantian terminology we call the 'forms of 
   sensibility'.  She is time and space itself, and the mystery beyond her 
   is beyond all pairs of opposites.  So it isn't male and it isn't female.
   It neither is nor is not.  But 'everything' is within her, so that the 
   gods are her children.  Everything you can think of, everything you can 
   see, is a production of the Goddess.

   I once saw a marvelous scientific movie about protoplasm.  It was a 
   revelation to me.  It is in movement all the time, flowing.  Sometimes 
   it seems to be flowing this way and that, and then it shapes things.  It 
   has a potentiality for bringing things into shape.  I saw this movie in 
   northern California, and as I drove down the coast to Big Sur, all the 
   way, all I could see was protoplasm in the form of grass being eaten by 
   protoplasm in the form of cows; protoplasm in the form of birds diving 
   for protoplasm in the form of fish.  You just got a wonderful sense of 
   the abyss from which all has come.  But each form has its own 
   intentions, its own possibilities, and that's where meaning comes.  Not 
   in the protoplasm itself.

...

Moyers:  The stories of mythology actually point the way to the 
   spiritual life?

Campbell:  Yes, you've got to have a clue.  You've got to have a 
   roadmap of some kind, and these are all around us.  But they are not 
   all the same.  Some speak only of the interests of this in-group or 
   that, this tribal god or that.  Others, and especially those that are 
   given as revelations of the Great Goddess, mother of the universe and 
   of us all, teach us compassion for all living bings.  Then also you 
   come to appreciate the real sanctity of the earth itself, because it 
   is the body of the Goddess.  When Yahweh creates, he creates man of 
   the earth and breathes life into the formed body.  He is not himself 
   there present in that form.  But the Goddess is within as well as 
   without.  Your body is of her body.  There is in these mythologies a 
   recognition of that kind of universal identity.

    Furthermore, the archeological research documented in Riane Eisler's 
    (sp?) _The Chalice and the Blade_ and Merlin Stone's _When God was a 
    Woman_, suggests that although these ancient societies were goddess-
    oriented, women did not occupy a dominant role over men.  The cultural 
    organization of these societies appears to have been egalitarian.
    
    Karen                                                

    re: .11 (Karen)
    
         Yes, that's getting to the initial point of my contention.
    Goddess *cannot* and *willnot* "dominate."  That's not Goddess
    energy.  Goddess energy creates space,...content without form.
    Similarly, Goddess does not create superiority or a hierarchy or
    any other kind of similar structure.  Therefore, those who place
    the Goddess above God, do so in acute error.  They may have been
    correct, albeit for the "wrong" reasons, in discarding a dominating
    God, but to replace God with the Goddess is tantamount to having
    the same thing.  It's an oxymoron that people don't seem to understand.
    Goddess energy is there...it is valuable...it is essential...
    God energy is there...it is valuable...it is *not* essential.  However,
    without God, Goddess doesn't manifest.  God is form, not content.
    Goddess creates space, God fills it.  God does not create space...it
    cannot.  Goddess cannot fill space...but doesn't necessarily have to.
    To claim that "my Goddess can beat your God" is garbage...worshipping
    the Goddess, as though she is the power somehow, is also short-sighted.
    If worship should take place to any extent at all, it should be
    as God/Goddess (or even Goddess/God, if you prefer, which is probably
    more accurate, anyway.)  Notice that those religions that had both
    always placed God in the primary position.  Wrong!  There is no
    superior position.  There is no "first" position, either, but if there
    were, Goddess would be first, but not superior.
        Yes, I believe in God...and also, Goddess.  But not as 
    anthropomorphic beings, as religions also lend credence to, by
    inference, if not directly.  Worshipping also encourages a hierarchy,
    and anthopomorphism.  So, there we are...back to "my anger."
    
    Frederick
    

    Hi Frederick,
    
    I agree with much of what you say.  I don't believe Goddess is/was 
    meant to be dominant.  And neither do I believe that God was.  But 
    perhaps here we have a case of people utilizing these concepts in 
    ways which distort the "original" intentions....?  Or perhaps using 
    them as an avenue to express creative energy, in the form of
    aggression, which I believe is an aspect of human behavior. 
    
    Repression or denial of behaviors eventually find expression, usually 
    in domination-type themes, imo.  For women in western cultures, the 
    last 5000 years have been generally oppresive in all areas of their 
    lives.  But this experience is not simply relegated to women.  It 
    also has happened and still happens to groups of people, usually
    "minority" groupings of both men and women, as you well know.
    
    Many times, imo, people's response to such degradation experienced 
    over an extended period of time is anger and hostility, because of 
    the immense pain and sufferent one endures, most of the time in silence, 
    with such gross injustices.
    
    I'm not a strong advocate of retaliatory behavior, but I do feel 
    some "firmness" has to be used to address the oppression of people 
    based solely upon factors such as sex, religion, creed or what-have-you.  
    
    So far, most changes in this area seem to come through a combination 
    of those who express their rage through radical tactics, and those who 
    express by steadfast attempts to reason with the "system".  And
    sometimes the reasoning ones and the radical ones believe the other of
    using ineffective or inappropriate techniques, and their sentiments, on 
    the surface, get split down the center, making reconcilliation all the 
    more difficult.
    
    There's always a combination of both in any cultural paradigm shift.
    When the scales are tipped to actions of a more radical, militant nature, 
    a revolution is born.  When reason is more prevalent - a renaissance.  
    I think we are teetering between both right now.  This will certainly 
    be an interesting decade, and personally, I'm striving for a renaissance.
    
    Ultimately I believe it is as you say, that we need an equal 
    valuation and expression of both God and Goddess energies.  But I 
    would disagree with you when you say that God energy "is *not* 
    essential", for it *is*. 
    
    I know (and like :-) ) you Frederick, and I believe that what you are 
    striving so hard to create in your own life, and what those who you 
    are angry with are trying to create in their lives, are truly the 
    same thing.
    
    It is my hope that many, if not all of us, will work through our anger 
    and frustration and arrive there in unity.
    
    Kb

                      
    I was watching Ramayan, an Indian classic, the other night.  When the 4
    brothers were finished with their schooling under their guru and it was
    time for them to leave the ashram, the guru said that they should strive 
    to see the Divine in the face of all other people, and when they did, 
    then they would be worshipping properly.
    
    Cindy

    re: .13 (Karendipity)
    
         Yeah, thanks...I know and like you, too!  8-)
    
         When I say that God energy isn't essential, I'm not talking about
    essential at this human level...I'm talking about God in it's 
    fundamental energy state.  Yes, I agree that it is essential for
    and to us...which is why we need the balance and hence the opportunity
    for the synergy that can/will develop as a result of that balance.
    In some ways, we can see this metaphorically/allegorically? in 
    looking at women/men.  But I don't want to rathole this into that
    tempting discussion...
         What I meant was that I believe that in infinite "now-ness"  :-)
    there can be no beginning/end and therefore neither comes first nor
    last, BUT that if one *were* to come first it would be the Goddess
    (the feminine energy portion of All-That-Is.)  Because it is that 
    energy that is imagination, perception, conception...it is that 
    energy which "creates space" and is therefore "content" alone.
    Without THIS energy, there is nothing.  
          It is the God energy (the masculine energy portion of All-That-
    Is) that FILLS the space.  It is the energy of action, of
    manifestation, of meaning, of form...but it has absolutely no
    chance of existence if it isn't imagined first, n'est-ce  pas?
    (I mean, it can't exist without existence...can it?)  So it absolutely
    necessitates the feminine energy in order for masculine energy
    to even be allowed existence.  (Much as the analogous woman/man
    situation we have in human bodies.  While as humans perhaps we
    could clone or synthesize a man without a woman...even at that level
    the DNA or cell could be construed as a feminine force.)  So,
    therefore, the point is made that masculine energy has no basis
    in existence without feminine energy.
         The converse is NOT true, however.  Either feminine energy 
    exists or it doesn't.  It does not require masculine energy for
    its existence.
    
         I agree with all your other eloquent points.
    
    Frederick
    

    In the book "Drumming At The Edge of Magic", Grateful Dead drummer
    Mickey Hart states that it appears that the drum is connected with the
    ecstatic Goddess religions, and that it waned and string instruments
    waxed during the decline of the Goddess religions, accompanying what we
    think of as the rise of the Rational, modern mentality, beginning in
    Greece.  In various books I've read about Alexander the Great, it
    appeared his mother was deeply involved in Goddess worship, so it was
    still around in 400 BC.
    
    So to oversimplify, there is a trance or ecstatic aspect of Goddess
    worship that has mostly been eradicated from the patriarchial religions.
    
    karl

    
    Right Karl!  There's a lot of guitar playing in churches these days,
    but I bet some powerful African or Native American drums are few and
    far between! ;^)  They're so earthy and sensual, you know.
    
    Carole

                                                      
    Over the weekend, I purchased Marianne Williamson's new book:
    
                      "A Woman's Worth"
    
    Incredible.  Highly recommended...*run* - do not walk - to your
    local bookstore and at least flip through it. ISBN: 0-679-42218-8.
    Hopefully it will be out in paperback by Xmastime.
    
    Also for all you sensitive, wonderful men who want to understand
    the special Goddesses in your lives better.  (;^)
    
    Cindy

Marianne is appearing in Boston (sponsored by Interface) on Tuesday 
Evening May 11, 7:30 at the John Hancock Auditorium in Boston.  
Members $12, Non-Members $15.  Usual disclaimer here, I receive no 
monetary or otherwise fee etc.

From the Interface catalog:

"The author of the number one bestseller, A Return to Love, now turns 
her attention to what it means to be a woman today in this featured 
evening talk and book-signing.  Drawing on her own experiences and 
reflections, as well as her interaction with thousands of women across 
the country, Marianne Williamson gives us a unique and very personal 
view of the feminine spirit.  She looks at family, work, sex, love, 
power -- and speaks to the dilemmas, spiritual and emotional, that 
women face in today's world.  She also examines the enduring power of 
female archtypes, from women healers to women who run with the wolves. 
mean and women alike are invited to join her for a provocative 
evening full of ideas.



Ro