How can you fish from a soapbox, anyway?? < : ) It was a good speech, though, incorporating most of the things I also believe about random chance and living a productive, happy, peaceful life. I am sure that if a crowd of sentient flounder were gathered around you, they would be flipping their tails in agreement with your philosophies of moral atheism.
I think there is a little widespread confusion about the relationship of modern paganism to a belief in goddessess. I don't literally believe in goddesses as powerful deities. I believe in them in the sense that they symbolize the power of the female in the life process. I surround myself with sculptures of women's bodies because they are aesthetically beautiful, and represent fertility and soft gentleness and nurturing.
Male-dominated religions tend to be unkind to women, generally speaking. We can see this certainly in the history of Christianity. It is difficult to worship feminine energy and the female body and then dominate and control women. So to me the goddess religions are significant in what they stand for in terms of strong, positive roles for women, not because I worship specific goddesses.
I am copying over here a brief description of the transition from goddess religions from a company selling statues of fertility goddesses, for your information:
SACRED SEXUALITY,SACRED EARTH
What would the implications be if our world today viewed sexuality as sacred? In fact, this
condition probably did exist in late Neolithic and early historic times in Western cultures as well
as Eastern.
Ample archeological remains suggest that when the earth is viewed as sacred by an entire culture,
sexuality figures at the core of religious ritual, and social structure is organized to highly respect
the feminine. It is very likely that such systems prevailed in ancient Sumer, Babylonia, Canaan,
Anatolia, pre-dynastic Egypt, Crete and Myceanean Greece.
Let us imagine for a moment the outlines of how such a political and social system might operate
in, for example, ancient Babylonia.
The seasonal reproductive cycle of the Great Earth Mother would be venerated as the source of
all love, all renewal, all creative growth, all that sustains human life. Large communal rituals to
propitiate and re-sanctify Earth Mother's bounty would occur periodically. (Har- vest festivals
that survive world-wide today are remnants of such celebrations.)
In microcosm such earth-honoring cultures were matrifocal, with elder women in every extended
family accorded the most respect, honor and authority. Male respect and authority would
emanate from two probably channels: 1) as a result of relationship (as brothers, sons or other
kinship ties) to honored women; and 2) as a result of accomplishments, especially those
connected with agricultural skill or service to community.
In such a world the most spiritual act an individual woman might engage in would be periodic
(seasonal, and at least yearly) service as one of many priestesses in the temple of the Great
Goddess. Among her priestess roles, none would be more important than re-enacting the Great
Rite of sacred sexuality in order to keep the Earth Goddess fertile, receptive and benevolent.
In like token, the deepest devotional offering of male agricultural workers would involve a
seasonal tithing of first fruits to the Goddess. From such "tenth parts" of the entire society's
harvests would come the source of material richness and comfort of the temple, its Priestess
Queens, and the culture as a whole.
Family lineage would be matrifocal, with children absolutely certain of their maternal ancestry
and far less focused on the paternal. The exact father of a given child would always remain
uncertain because sexuality would occur within the context and mystery of the sacred.
Picture the priestess at night in darkened temple rooms offering her body, with the most sacred,
respectful and tender motivations imaginable, as a representation of Holy Mother Earth herself.
Picture the farmer, his heart and his senses perhaps stimulated by droughts of sacred barley beer
or wine. He enters the pitch-black chamber, and with a reverence at once primevally wild and
mystically celebratory, he plants his seed, with Hossanahs of both physical and spiritual ecstasy,
in the very body of his beloved Mother Earth.
Imagine the rich variety of feelings and concepts that would be central in such societies: storms,
passion, changes, seeds, cycles, cleansing, renewal, fertility, power, softness, creativity,
wholeness!
For many millennia, and across cultures, children were born out of these penultimately sacred
rites. Their very conceptions a result of holy ritual, imagine how they were cherished and cared
for within such cultures!
Circa 5000 BCE a paradigm shift occurred wherein herdsmen, skilled in the use of sharp blades
for animal slaughter, infiltrated and took control of agriculture-based societies. First among their
objectives would be the justification of their methods for power-grabbing.
Ancient scriptures and rituals venerating the Great Mother would be re-written. Cain and
Abel-type myths would demonize agriculture- centered systems and sacralize animal slaughter as
the politically correct invocation to a newly masculinized concept of the Divine.
Over the next 6000 years the process of "taking dominion over" the earth would replace the
concept of sacred stewardship of a Holy Mother. Sexuality would evolve from a sacred,
venerative function into a power/ownership-of-children function.
The profound psycho-emotional gifts of the feminine would become captive also. And the
vibrant, celebratory, and periodic sexual energies of women would become associated with
temptation, shame and uncleanliness.
Thus the genesis of some false myths we today have inherited. Because the serpent is the most
ancient and widespread archetypal expression of feminine wisdom and sacred sexuality, it
became the central image for condemnation and eradication.
By 3600 BCE, as the new myths came about, the sexual and serpent energies of woman were
associated with guilt, unworthiness and deprivation of access to the Divine. In the Near East,
priestesses of the sacred Goddess were re-mythed as prostitutes, Great Whores of Babylon.
In the Mediterranean the triple goddess of feminine power and wisdom was re-mythed as
serpent-haired Medusa. The fact that her fierce glance turned men - not humans, but males - to
stone is nothing more than the literal admission, within the myth itself, both of outrage at the
violation of the old earth religion and the accompanying numbing of emotion required of the men
engaged in that violation. In this sense Goddess Medusa is an archetype whose return in our own
times is vital.
Of course the generative powers of Mother Earth could never be fully appropriated by
patriarchal culture; well into historic time rituals, shrines and pilgrimages to the goddess were
maintained. As recently as the Dark Ages however, male St. Patricks have driven serpent
energies out of cultures. Medieval St. Georges have slain the very dragons which, ironically,
were among the objects of sacred mystical quests by generations of white knights, longing to
re-unite with the fruitful and balancing energies of the sacred feminine.
The demonization of sacred sexuality is with us still, yet we are finally shaking free of its
repressive yoke. Let us restore the wisdom of Tantra, the sacred kundilini serpent of our own
inner divine flame, to the center of our daily life, finding ways to teach these mysteries to our
children and to venerate the archetypes that give expression to these forces.
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Now don't go away!!! These url's show amusing ancient Sheela-na-gigs, those Celtic fertility figures, still sprawled enticingly all over Ireland, where the women are graphically revealing the core of their sexuality!!! These are way more fun than a boring old essay!!!
jblstatue.com
nbn.com
wam.umd.edu
Gee, this is getting very long and I will have to answer my other posts later, but I did want to also share some ancient Celtic laws pertaining to women. These are from "Irish Laws", Mary Dowling Daley, Chronicle Books, 1989:
The husband-to-be shall pay a bride-price of land, cattle, horses, gold or silver to the father of the bride. Husband and wife retain individual rights to all the land, flocks and household goods each brings to the marriage.
The husband who, through listlessness, does not go to his wife in her bed must pay a fine. (editorial comment--this is great!!! More women would be rich!!)
If a pregnant woman craves a morsel of food and her husband withholds it through stinginess or neglect, he must pay a fine.
If a woman makes an assignation with a man to come to her in a bed or behind a bush, the man is not considered guilty even if she screams. If she has not agreed to a meeting, however, he is guilty as soon as she screams.
February first is the day on which husband or wife may decide to walk away from a marriage.
This last one is not about women's rights, but shows the ancient Celts were environmentalists. I think it is important to do away with the mythology that to be pagan means that you are savage or uncivilized:
For stripping the bark of an oak tree, enough to tan the leather for a pair of woman's shoes, the fine is one cow-hide.
The defendant must cover the bruised portion (of the tree trunk) with amixture of wet clay, new milk and cow-dung.
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Well, Del, you will have fun mulling all this over while you are fishing!!!! |
