I Adore CHRISTIANS!

I adore Christians, Muslims and followers of the Jewish faith. We’re all children of the Goddess, born from Her body, and kept alive only by Her body.

Like every single solitary humanoid born on the planet, Christians et al. crave food-water-shelter, love and respect -- and then a challenge or two tossed into the mix to keep things a bit dicey and spicy.

But adoring personages who’re Christians, Muslims and followers of Judaism doesn’t mean I adore the “religion” that’s sucked them in.

As a matter of fact, I despise the desert-war-god religion that’s sucked them in. This so-called religion is strangling the earth and everything on it.

Yahweh/Allah/Jehovah followers have been brainwashed. How are we going to unwash their gorgeous brains?

Quick, quick, quick, now – we need the answer fast!
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thnx to gbenard for the foto; go HERE to see more.

GOOD PEOPLE Spinning EVIL

“…Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg: ‘With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion.’”

Of course we all know what religion Prof Weinberg is talking about. It's the one that's systematically scraped most other religions off the planet. Ta da! I give you the religion of YAJ the warrior god!*

For more of this article (“Math + religion = Trouble”), go HERE.
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*YAJ = YahwehAllahJehovah, traditionally seen as three different gods, but really just trusty, crusty ol’ ‘YAJ’!
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Thnx to satanoid for the foto; go HERE to see more of his work.

COUSIN HAROLD Strikes AGAIN!

He's baaaa-ak.

If you’ve hung out here any length of time, you remember Cousin Harold, the Cute little Conservative Christian.

Today Cousin graced me with a long (and boring) list of all 50 of the US state-constitution preambles. According to this list, every one mentions a male deity*.

At the end of the email, the author crowed: "After reviewing acknowledgments of God from all 50 state constitutions, one is faced with the prospect that maybe the ACLU and the out-of-control federal courts are wrong! -----GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

At the beginning of this List from Hell, Cousin tacked on a little note designed to ruffle my feathers: “I know this kind of stuff ruffles your feathers, Athana, but one needs to stay active.”

To which I replied:

“Not a feather ruffled, Cuz. All your piece shows is that our country has fallen to the wolves (my apologies to all wolves).

"The Founding Fathers -- who were not Christians but Deists -- never, ever proclaimed this country a ward of your itchy little warrior-god, Jumping Jehovah.

“Check this out, Cuz:

"’In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow … to settle matters, and … Article 11 [of the resulting treaty] says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.’

“Zip on over to the New York Times, Cuz, and taste the sweet waters in the rest of this article, ‘A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation.’

“Your Dearest of all Kin,
“Cousin Athana”

P.S. Say hi to Cousin Katy and the kids.

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*Although the following three don’t – not really:

Colorado 1876, Preamble. "We, the people of Colorado , with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of Universe..."

Hawaii 1959, Preamble. "We , the people of Hawaii, Grateful for Divine Guidance ... Establish this Constitution."

Washington 1889, Preamble . "We the People of the State of Washington, grateful to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution."
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Thnx to spencer 9 for the foto. Go HERE to see more.

THE DUDE WHO Dissed HISTORY

A dude who hangs out here thinks history’s a buncha bunk. In his own words: “… everything behind us is just monkey crap in the ruts of time and space.”

Now, this dude must have heard the old saying “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it,” so I’m scratching my head over where his head is.

If he woke up tomorrow with no memory of history, how would he find his socks and shoes? His bank? His way home?
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Thnx to vdmeij for the foto; go HERE to see more.

Scammed BY THE GREEKS

The ancient daddy-war-god Greeks offered us three kinds of love:

Agape – general love
Eros – romantic love
Philia -- friendship

But where’s Mother Love? Why don’t any of us ever raise our eyebrows over the fact that Mother Love is missing from this hoary old list? You know -- Mother Love -- the most powerful, long-lasting love ever witnessed on the face of the earth?

Pretty obvious we’ve been scammed -- and that the scamming goes all the way back to the Greeks.
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thnx to TheCleopatra for the foto; go HERE to see more.

IAN McEWAN, ATONEMENT, & THE GUIDING Goddess

Ian McEwan on religion (Ian’s author of the prize-winning novel Atonement):

Religion, says Mr. Ian, is “…fairly deeply stitched into human nature. It seems to be part of all cultures, so I don't expect it to vanish. And yet at the same time, if it is built into human nature, why are there so many people who don't believe in it?”

Me! Me, teacher! Call on me! Atheists are people who grew up seeing the muckiness of the war-god religions. And the war-god religions sewed it deeply into their brains that there are no other religions but the war-god religions. And these people were so sickened by these war/sky/daddy-god religions that they threw up their hands in disgust and said, “None of that muck for me!”

Of course on this blog we all know that the icky war/sky/daddy-god “religions” aren’t really religions, but only cleverly-designed social-control machines. They keep us sheople in line so’s Big dudes can have their way with us.

Ian goes on: “It is a bit of a problem, the title ‘Atheist’-- no one really wants to be defined by what they do not believe in. We haven't yet settled on a name….”

I have an idea! Why doncha call yourselves Goddess followers? If we all followed a Great Guiding Mother Goddess the way our ancestors did back in the Neolithic and early Bronze Ages, we wouldn’t be in the sorry mess we’re in today – solidly soaked in war, violence, and snooty snobbism with its zillions of social ladders all loudly shouting out who’s good, better and best (and who’s for the birds).
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thnx to fairytalecinema for the foto; see more of her work HERE.

FUNNY-GUY Falls OFF the LADDER

Last night as I was falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV, a comedian said something that jerked me awake.

He said we should send all our homeless to Iraq to serve as a “distraction” for Al Quaeda and whoever else over there is taking potshots at us.

“And when they die,” said funny-guy, “it won’t count ‘cause the homeless aren’t real people anyway.”

No sense getting mad at the dude. He’s you. He’s me. He’s America, “one nation under the war-god,” where one of our deepest beliefs is that some of us are shining stars, some are scum, and others don’t even count as humanoid.

It’s the war-god social ladders around us everywhere, sorting us out, making us fight each other so’s the Dudes at the top don’t have to.

They’ve trained us to keep each other in chains. And trained seals that we are, they don’t even hafta pay us for it. We do it free!

You could tell: funny-guy was just tickled pink to play his part, to remind us all that we can keep animal-humans (like the homeless) in their cages quite nicely by yanking away their shelter, food and clothing.

And the next level, the poverty stricken still managing somehow to find homes? We keep them in their cages too -- by yanking away their decent jobs and giving them ones paying chicken feed.

The Great Guiding Mother Goddess, now, She holds no truck with all this social-ladder stuff & nonsense.

We’re all Her babies. Like any healthy mother, She can’t help loving us all alike, calling us all equal, all valuable, all lovable, all beautiful, all handsome.

And She demands we all look at each other the same way She does.
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Thnx to simon davison for the foto; see more HERE

WHO TO Pick FOR PREZ

For Iowans and New Hampshire-ites especially:

How to Pick a President:

Ask yourself: Who's most likely to see all of us as a healthy Mother sees her child?

Who'd love us all unconditionally, no strings attached?

When it comes to tossing out life's goodies, who sees us all as equal ?

Who’s most fretful about the American people – and all the other children of the Mother around the world – more than s/he's fretful about self?

After answering the questions, who's your pick for Prez?
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Thnx to mrwaterslide for the foto of "a massachusetts Mother and her four children, including the newest one."

GODDESS Lost & FOUND

“When the threads of memory are cut much that is good is lost. But there are also benefits….

"When all that remains of the physical past is bones and stones, we begin once again to listen to the Goddess as She speaks directly to us in the whispering wind, in the crackling fire, in the crashing ocean waves, in the tinkling brooks, in the rocks of Her body, in the songs of the birds and calls of the animals, in the voice of our intuition, our inner teacher and direct connection to Goddess. We begin to hear Her speak to us….”

From Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess: A Renewed Spiritual Path for the 21st Century: A Journey of Transformation within the Sacred Landscape of Glastonbury and the Isle of Avalon, by Kathy Jones, 2006.

Please, everyone -- have a Goddess-blessed & blissful 2008!

Love,
Athana
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Thnx to Garron Nicholls for the fab foto; go HERE to find out more about him.

KING ARTHUR: Better THAN JESUS

Oh, lovies! Why didn’t we spot this before? I think Jesus Christ is really King Arthur! Take a sneak peek at the evidence:

First, the Celtic Christmas, celebrated on Dec. 21, is called “Alban Arthuan” (Winter Solstice).

Second, according to this website, King Arthur was born on December 21.*

Doesn’t that turn Arthur into Jesus Christ -- the hero who at the darkest hour comes to save us all from Evil?

Thing is, since Arthur isn’t plunked into the same rule book with Yahweh “the … psychotic delinquent,”** he’s bound to be Big-Time better than Jesus.

Arthur of course picked up his power not from a psychotic delinquent, but from from the Great Guiding Goddess.

According to Barbara Walker, King Arthur’s mother was the Triple Goddess. “Arthur lost his sacred mana when he lost his queen, the Triple Goddess incarnate in Guinevere, who was really three Guineveres according to the Welsh Triads” (TWEMS, p. 61).

Have you heard this before -- that King Arthur was the British Jesus Christ?

It seems as obvious as the pointy dunce cap perched on Dubya’s head!!! Why didn’t we see it before?!

Or, am I just the last to see it? Hee, hee.
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*“The name 'Arthuan' is interesting in relation to Arthurian legend, as King Arthur was believed to have been born on the Winter Solstice in Castle Tintagel in Cornwall”.
**Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006: 38.
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Thnx to Peter-Noster for the foto; go here for more.

SANTA WAS A Woman

This is from last year, but it's too good to pass up:

HO! HO! HO! Whaddya Know? It wasn’t Santa, but Mother Goddess Holda who used to swoop down our chimneys, leaving all those goodies, and nibbling on our cookies!

“…[I]n some parts of old Europe, it was Holda--not Santa--who brought gifts to children and determined who was 'naughty or nice.' I also encountered lore depicting her as dressed in red and going down chimneys to bring gifts to children. An old Germanic tradition included leaving an offering of food and milk for Holda on December 24, known as Mother Night.”

MORE>>>
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Thnx to Selena Fox and Beliefnet for the foto.

RELIGION: NOT A Choice?

Like I always say, sweeties, a dude without religion is like a nostril without a nose – ain’t no such thing.

Whatever you leap on to answer the Big Questions (Where da we all come from? Where da we go when we die? etc.) -- is your religion.

And be careful what ya choose, cuz it can make a whale-load of a difference. Here’s a sweetie dude who agrees with me -- a Mr. J. Peterson:

Jordan Peterson has an easy way to prove to most everyone they are a person of faith….

"I presume that you assume that the future is real," said Prof. Peterson, who teaches psychology at the University of Toronto and has studied the impact of belief on society. "The future is an immaterial entity. It's composed entirely of possibility. So your belief in it is an axiom of faith."

SNIP

"You are to an extraordinary degree guided by, or misguided by, what you believe," Mr. Harris said. "If you're a racist, that is a result of what you believe about race. If you're a jihadist, that is built on what you believe about the Koran and supremacy of Islam.…

SNIP

To Prof. Peterson, though, belief is not optional.…At its most basic level, belief acts like a set of headlights to guide us through a foggy universe that "is far more complicated than we are smart."

SNIP

But at a deeper level, belief represents patterns of a deeper reality that go beyond the physical world. They function like mathematical formulas that seem abstract but actually define an underlying physical reality.

"Our religious sense is grounded in biology," said Prof. Peterson. "It's not a simple cultural overlay. Religious belief and ritual are universal. It's as specifically human as language.

SNIP

"Christ is born at the darkest time of the year. That's not an accident. There are a lot of extremely complex ideas behind that. So here's one: the redeeming hero emerges when the need is greatest.

For more, go to the NationalPost.com, 23 Dec. 2007.
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Thnx to hippobosca for the foto; go HERE to see more.

Havva HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Getting bashed with “internet-connection” issues today, so I’m thanking my lucky stars and planets I can get through long enuf to say thank you, dear Goddess, for the new light, and HAPPY NEW YEAR, SWEETIES!

Love you all!

Athana
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thnx to Moo. Just Moo. for the foto. Go HERE to see more.

HUCKABEE THE Devil?

Is Mike Huckabee a Christian Dominionist?

Go HERE to find out.
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Thnx to carnefresca for the foto; go HERE to see more of her work.

STERLING STOCKING-Stuffer

Ahhh! The perfect winter-solstice stocking-stuffer for your sweet little pagan kiddies, who need to learn about the world's BogeyBaddies. It's Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. HERE’S a new review of this winning bookset, by assistant prof of New Testament Studies Leslie Baynes:

Some snippets:

Although the series is a fantasy set in multiple worlds, there is no doubt that Mr. Pullman, a self-described atheist, targets Christianity--and particularly a rather thinly disguised Catholic Church--in these children's books.

SNIP

The polemic against [YAJ's] religion starts … in the first book, which introduces … the personal daemon. A daemon is not a demon but … a sort of guardian spirit ... in animal form. Children's daemons change to match their mood or suit their purposes (say, from a moth to a wildcat), but they settle into a fixed form at puberty. This change is the crux of the entire series; that is, the series is about growing up.

SNIP

In His Dark Materials, however, the church condemns growing up, particularly sexual awakening. "That's what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling," claims a character in "The Amber Spyglass."… So strongly does this church want to "save" children from autonomy and the resultant possibility of choosing sin, that it literally cuts them away from their daemons, destroying their souls.

UNCLE SNURLY’S Christian NATION

Uncle Snurly driving you snarly with his rants about how the U.S. is a “christian nation”?

Point him to this New York Times op-ed piece: “A Nation of Christians is Not a Christian Nation.”

Some snippets:

The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” … The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.

snip

Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a “Christian party in politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed “Christian amendment” to the Constitution to declare the nation’s fealty to Jesus.

snip

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast…. Washington sent Joel Barlow … to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty … bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.

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thnx to delgoff for the foto; go HERE to see more.

DO YOU EVER Dream ABOUT THE GODDESS?

This morning I picked up Elinor Gadon’s magnificent The Once and Future Goddess.

It fell open to page 229 and to this: Jungian analyst Edward Whitmont says that “the Goddess is returning in the dreams and fantasies of his patients,” and that “his patients dream differently than they did twenty-five years before, and that the Goddess is omnipresent….”

Do you ever dream about the Goddess? Daydream about Her? What are your dreams like? How often do you have them?
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thnx to chasing twilight for the foto. Go HERE to see more.

GODDESS Hugging: THE NEXT STEP?

Z. Budapest, one of the great leaders of the Goddess Movement, has been experimenting with hugging:

“…the hug I was experimenting with is ... not just a plain hug. Not an air hug, not a petting hug, nor a boa constrictor hug.

“It’s a non-sexual committed hug, when two women embrace each other with heart-on-heart and entrain with each others breathing. This is easy. But when you breathe together, past a minute, old tapes begin to play. Break it off … enough … the urge to stop is great. But if you stay past 2 minutes in this hug magical things begin to happen.

“After about two minutes a great crumbling of the walls begins, the warmth of the human heart transcends the personality, you no longer think of this other person as an individual. You stop thinking. Sinking deeper into the hug, I felt a total peace descended on me....

SNIP

“My third [hugging] partner was an experienced darshan receiver…. A very different feeling emerged. Her center was like a hot point, like a heart oven, radiating heat and love to me. I fell into a bliss in her arms, just warming all my loneliness….

“Tears came into my eyes.

“I looked and saw others tearing up as well.

“How this unconditional love that was so close, so available, was making us all realize how the divine spark, was in all of us if we could stand it past the 2 minutes. Total strangers could transmit to us the unconditional love of the goddess and create a great peace in our hearts."

For more, go HERE
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thnx to mestes76 for the foto; go HERE to see more.

Birthing A BOOK!

It’s actually going to happen. The establishment is plunking our ideas on “gently replacing God the Father with God the Mother” into a real, live book.

The ideas of all of you who’ve posted regularly on this blog over the past few years are heading straight into this volume.

Most likely title: Switching to Goddess: Humanity’s Ticket to the Future. Publisher: O Books in the UK, an imprint of John Hunt Publishers. Date of publication: Nov. 28, 2008.

WE ALL ARE sooo FAB, aren't we?!?!
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Thnx to Ben Zvan for the foto; go HERE to see more of his work

BEGINNER'S Guide TO GODDESS

I could so use your help!!! Can you think of any important books to add to this list? It’ll be an appendix in a book that in 18 days I’m turning in to the publisher. [18 days!?! O Goddess help me, I can’t get this done in 18 days!][Sound of teeth chattering, knees knocking]

Baring, Anne, and Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image.

Bolen, Jean Shinoda, Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women Save the World.

Christ, Carol. Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade.

Gadon, Elinor. The Once and Future Goddess: A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Reemergence in the Cult.

Gimbutas, Marija. The Living Goddesses.

Gunn Allen, Paula. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions.

Johnson, Buffie. Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Images of the Goddess and Her Sacred Animals.

Olson, Carl. The Book of the Goddess Past and Present: An Introduction to Her Religion.

Sjoo, Monica, and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth.

Spretnak, Charlene, The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Feminist Movement.

Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess.

Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1976.

Stone, Merlin. Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood: A Treasury of Goddess and Heroine Lore from Around the World.

Tate, Karen. Sacred Places of Goddess: 108 Destinations.

Walker, Barbara G. The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother and Crone.

Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.

Wilson, Ian. Before the Flood.

MEN AND THE GODDESS

Ward, Tim. Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess.

RITUAL

Monaghan, Patricia. The Goddess Companion: Daily Meditations on the Feminine Spirit.

Budapest, Zsuzsanna. The Grandmother of Time: A Women’s Book of Celebrations, Spells, and Sacred Objects for Every Month of the Year.