Goddess & THE GOOD GODS

In a world where Goddesses swim at the center, what role should male gods play?

In his fine comments re: my March 11 post, Mandos suggests that male gods should somehow relate to the male role in procreation.

But is this really a top-notch, primo role for guy gods? Could there be better roles? If deities are models for how we want to treat each other, the earth, and everything on it, what male god would be best?

1. The Mother Goddess’s lover?
2. Mother’s hubbie?
3. Mother’s son?
4. Mother’s friend?
5. One who helps Mother care for and protect the kiddies?
6. One who watches over the community and keeps it safe?
7. A Dionysian-type dude in charge of good times?
8. All of the above?
9. None of the above?

Of course there’s no getting around it: since daddy-war gods such as Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh, Zeus and others punched most of our good male gods into the dust long ago, we are forced to find new ones.

Personally, I think which gods we settle on should rest on what kinda world we want to live in.

For example, among the marriage-less Moso of China, the main male god is not the Mother Goddess’ hubbie, but her lover -- ‘cause the Moso put marriage in the same category with the 24/7 ingestion of red-hot, skin-dissolving chile peppers.

But among the daddy-war-god ancient Greeks, the main guy-god had a wife he treated like the floor of a pigpen.

And the early Indo-Europeans’ main god was a dirt-bag who incested his daughter, Usas, Goddess of the Dawn.

So unless we are dying for incester, rapist, and child-molester men, or dudes who’d rather slice rice all day than marry, I’d suggest we avoid gods such as the above.

But floating around out there are lotsa fine dude-gods with “pick me, pick me!” written all over them. Some of my fave are the helper, guardian and protector gods. Take Koyote of Native American fame, for example, or Faivarongo of the Polynesian Tikopia, or Tokoyoto of the Koryak of SE Siberia. And then there are Osande, the elderly guardian god of the Ovimbundu of SW Africa (Angola), and Tanuta, also of the Koryak, and guardian of the earth, plants and animals.

A great old Chinese child-guardian god, Chang Hs’ien, is sometimes shown aiming an arrow at the earth-threatening dog star, Tien Kou (Jordan, Encyclopedia of the Gods, p. 54).

And then there’s the Aztec Huehuecoyotl, “god of sexual lust,” as author Michael Jordan puts it in The Encyclopedia of Gods.

So, zee qvestion of zee veek, liebchen, eeze, “What other dude gods model the kinda human dudes you’d like to see walking the earth today?”
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Thnx to aeroporc for the foto; go HERE to see a close-up and more of aeroporc's work.

THE GODDESS & THE Tarot Cards

Today I pulled out my trusty old Tarot deck to see about the role of Goddess men. It was Goddess-loving Minoan men who sailed the known world in search of gold, silver and precious stones and other things too – glittering tales from beyond, magic. Among the Great-Mother-worshiping Mosuo of China, too, it’s men who do the traveling and exploring.

Explorers come home with tons of tales to tell, i.e., as entertainers. Interestingly, the pre-Christian Tarot paint men in these same two roles: explorer and entertainer:

Other than the ruler cards (king, emperor and pope), the male cards in the major arcana are The Fool, The Magician, The Hermit, The Chariot, and The Hanged Man. All but the last are travelers. The Fool, the first card in the deck, is “the Green Man, the harbinger of a new cycle of existence, the herald of new life.” Also, however, The Fool is the “vagabond who exists on the fringe of organized life, going his own way”.

Originally The Magician too was probably a vagabond, “…the traveling showman, an entertainer like The Fool, who moved from town to town“. And The Hermit is an old man “setting off on the first stage of a journey… trudging along a dark and lonely road…”. The Charioteer in his suit of armor has “…no obvious mythological antecedents”; considering the chariot was originally a war vehicle, I think he's a later War-God addition.

Two of the above five cards show men as entertainers. Costumed as a court jester, The Fool is the medieval entertainer par excellence, the Brad Pitt and Jon Stewart of his day. Many jesters were “…highly gifted acrobats, singers and dancers …” traveling “far and wide, offering [their] services to those … who could afford [them]." Gallivanting from town to town “either alone or with a troop of actors," The Magician too was an entertainer, putting on shows and telling fortunes.

And what about The Hanged Man card? The Hanged Man “…cannot be found in any orthodox Christian symbology, and is one of the clearest indications that the Tarot trumps ... illustrate some non-Christian system....” The tree The Hanged Man hangs on is a “…symbol of the mother as the source of all sustenance; those who die on the tree are therefore being reunited with their source, through which they may be reborn into new life…”

Thirty-five years ago, Alfred Douglas said the meaning of The Hanged Man is this: “To achieve ... success ... one must align oneself with the rules of the universe rather than the laws of man.” The universe: the Great Mother Goddess of course, synonym for earth and cosmos alike.
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Source: Alfred Douglas, The Tarot: The Origins, Meaning and Uses of the Cards (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972).

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Pic: Pre-1450-BC Minoan sealing showing the Goddess and Her worshipper.