Prominent Pagan Phyllis Curott send out a long e-mail concerning the crisis in the Middle East to a Listserv that I'm on. Here's an important part of the letter:
The other day we were talking about the contents of an ad to be run in major newspapers, calling for peace. I joked to Michael that this war is what happens when God doesn't get laid, and Michael laughed, saying that I should put that in an ad in the NYTimes. Some people would be offended, some would laugh, but how many would really understand the sorrowful truth behind the humor?
God is alone, and so are we. The world is out of balance. In the beginning, the Bible says that: "We created humanity in our image, man and woman we created them." WE in OUR image. In the beginning there was God *and* Goddess, El as God is referred to early in the Bible, *and* Asherah as the Canaanites (Uritic) *and* the early Israelites both called their Mother Goddess. In the beginning, there was unity, there was balance, and there was love. But over the years that balance, the essential wholeness that is divine love was lost.
It seems to me, that is the real but hidden force driving this world-threatening dispute. That is the source of the wound at the center of Western Civilization. It is a wound that grew out of three compounding cosmologies where "we" became "He"--a solitary, often angry, punishing and absent Father God, a wound shared by all three religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
When God exists without Goddess, masculine without feminine, when the world exists without
the presence of the Sacred, humanity without divinity, confusion, pain and violence are the consequences. When religions justify killing because they have the "One True Way," they have no way at all. They are no longer religions; they are nothing but depraved politics.
When we cannot see the Divine in one another, we give ourselves license to kill. Were we to recognize the Divine in one another, we would be empowered to love.
5 comments:
...alas, I feel we humans have only ourselves to blame for our troubles.
darryl -
Just like an event I attended and people were praying to God to bring us peace. And I figured that it was up to people to quit bringing us war.
The idea that Hecate is talking about is how people see the world - as ruled by someone who personifies war - as the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God does. Or do we live in a universe where peace rules. People are praying to a God of War to bring peace.
It doesn't matter if the God or Goddess exist or not. It's what people value that matters. I think the God/Goddess idea just personifies people's values.
Some years ago I happened to read a marvelous book called In a Chariot Drawn by Lions:The Search for the Female in Deity by Asphodel Long. That's when I discovered that originally the Hebrew God had a consort. It was very illuminating and consoling too. I do wish we had that balance in Western society and our likely demise may well be because we have lost a sense of the feminine divine. It's unutterably sad.
Long ago we at "The Gods Are Bored" had the opportunity to talk to Asherah, bored goddess of the ancient Israelites. It is documented in the Bible that a priest named Hilkiah, during the reign of King Josiah, led the push to break up Yahweh and His Asherah. As I recall, Lady Asherah is very bitter about it. She has trouble finding a job.
If god exists and doesn't have a sense of humor, I am seriously screwed.
The Dusty Old Book In The Library - The Bible
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/
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