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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (13523)	4/7/1998 1:48:00 PM
From: Charliss	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

Hi, Thanks for that interesting link. I saw Hermaphroditus listed there under Transgender. This is an interesting mythology. The male god Hermes(aka Mercury) was the changeling(hence, "mercurial") god who delivered riddle-messages from the other gods to humankind. He is the patron of travel, change, flamboyance and the daring, as well as the guardian of secrets and closed societies(hence, our word "hermetic") The goddess Aphrodite was seen as the patroness of heterosexual love and female beauty, the embodiment of the fertility power, Woman as mother and lover. In an early Greek myth, Hermes and Aphrodite were said to have mated and produced a child, Hermaphroditus, who was half female and half male(hence, our word "hermaphrodite") This being was said to possess special magical powers, and in Hellenistic period Greece was frequently depicted in art and sculpture as the ideal of beauty and mystery. Add to this that the Greek culture also possesses a myth(recounted in Plato's "Symposium") that said originally all people were united creatures, i.e., some were male/male entities, some female/female, and some female/male. In this myth, these proto-humans were round-shaped, perfectly happy and complete. The gods became jealous that these humans were so perfect, and split them in half. From that point forward, all people have been born incomplete, longing for restoration with their missing half. This myth was used by the Greeks to explain the differences in sexual preference and gender identity that they observed from person to person. In our Native American culture, there were transgendered people in virtually every tribe and clan. In the Navajo tradition, the transgendered were known as "Nadle." In the Lakota, "Wintke." The early European explorers in North America used the term "Berdache" to describe these people. The word originally came from the Persian "bardaj," and via the Arabs spread to the Italian language as "bardasso" and to Spanish as "bardaxa" or "bardaje" by the beginning of the sixteenth century. While the Native Americans honored their transgendered, and made provision for their reality by establishing various rituals and cermonies, the term Berdache as used by the explorers was a derogatory term, a condemnation for acting like a woman. Actually, Native Americans saw the transgendered as representing a third gender, a combination of both of the other two genders and acting as mediators between the polarities. Best, Charliss