THE GodFather MACHINE

It's so simple. God the Father is toxic. Not banal or neutral, but lethal and deadly.

God the Mother is not banal or neutral, either. She is a cornucopia of peace, love, adventure, fulfillment, endless challenge.

But for millenia, using any means available, the GodFather Machine has drilled it into our heads that good is bad and vice versa. Pleasure is nasty, pain is joy. War is noble, peace is for sissies. Male gods give birth, goddesses don't.

This last is so funny I wanna fall on the floor laughing. "Oh, oh, oh! Dad's feeling labor pains! Get him to the hospital quick, I can see baby's head pushing through from his third right rib!" Or, "Jeez, Mom, gun it! Dad's got a splitting migraine from this baby trying to spring forth from his head!"

Barnstorming Brunhilda & Sweet Bedelia

Go here for a thought-provoking overview of the Goddess Movement by Shan Jayran that's also bubbling with captivating questions.

For example, if the Goddess is "Earth Mother of all," isn't she "inadequate to the case of justice for each"?

Presumably the author means this: if we're all Mom's children, Mom loves us equally. Therefore, when Barnstorming Brunhilda clobbers Sweet Bedelia on the noggin, Mom won't lift a finger, because she loves one as much as the other.

But Mom will lift a finger. She doesn't want Her baby Bedelia hurt!

But does She punish Brunhilda? No. She adores that overbearing powerhouse of energy, too. So instead of punishing, She teaches Brunhilda the "correct" way to behave.

With Mom, there are lessons, no punishment; schools but no jails.

At least that's my view. What's yours?

CHRISTIANS Caught STEALING FISH

"...Christians simply copied this pagan symbol [the fish] along with many other [pagan symbols]."

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FOR TACKING ONTO the Courthouse Door?

I am the eternal Goddess.
All races are my children....
My body is the earth.
Reverence me and mine.

A few seconds after I read it, this simple four-liner suddenly punched me hard. If the entire world revered a Mother Deity, wouldn't we all feel duty-bound to treat everyone like sisters and brothers?

And the earth would be our mother's stomach, back and legs. Who'd wanna even walk on it hard, let alone trash it up?!? Of course all this sounds very familiar to North Americans -- there's a lotta evidence that many Native Americans had this idea all along-- before the patriarchs among us cut them off at the knees.

Only kidding, though, about tacking this verse onto the courthouse door. I am still, and always will be, a firm believer in separation of "church" and state.

BTW, thanks to the wonderful Grove of the Sprial Goddess
for the verse.

DEAR ATHEISTS, I Love Ya!

If you're an atheist, I adore you! You're one of the few on the planet who's had the courage to challenge the Father.

But can you challenge him like this? Look up to heaven and say, "God, put me in hell right now. I'm ready to go." (Since you don't believe in God or hell, this should be easy. Try it now. Before you read on) ....

... So, did you have to stop and think, first? Hesitate at all? Sweat a little?

Here's the thing: I suspect that many of us are still operating under some pretty nasty God-the-father precepts.

Did you know that "hell" is just one of scores of concepts that the early Christian fathers stole from pre-Christian religions, and then twisted 180 degrees into something bizarre? "Hel" was originally a pre-Christian volcano goddess, to whose warm womb we all returned after death.

"Though Christian theology gave its underworld the name of the Goddess Hel, it was quite a different place from her womb of regeneration. The ancients didn't view the underworld as primarily a place of punishment. It was dark, mysterious, and awesome, but not the vast torture chamber Christians made of it" (Barbara Walker, 1983, The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Harper & Row, p. 383).

Here's a site about the Godfather's hell.

Did you try the experiment? What happened?

Please comment. Leave your footprints in the sands of blogdom.

Christianity PROWLING the PLANET

Can we survive without "the transcendent moral reference points" that Christianity offers? asks George Weigel, Catholic theologian and social critic.

George is asking the wrong question. The question should be, "Can we survive with Christianity prowling the planet?"

What makes George think he and his Father Gods have a monopoly on morality?

Read a scathing review of George's book here, by the San Francisco Chronicle's John Brady.

Sometimes I get so FRUSTRATED

Been cruising cyberspace today. Pretty scary out there. People and large chunks of the planet getting pushed down, picked on, and downright pulverized in many cases.

And everyone seems certain they have the answers: conservatives and progressives, fundamentalists and pagans, etc., etc. Lotsa people showing signs of stress and depression.

But it just seems so simple to me: The human species once lived in Paradise. Without war, violence, or hierarchy. We did it once, we can do it again.

And the way to do it is by dropping the Father Gods and putting Mother Gods in their place. Just cut those old Daddy gods out of the picture, and put Mommy Gods in there, instead.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm doing it too -- being certain I have all the answers.

But it's just so damn logical! I get frustrated when others can't see it.

Mothers stand for unconditional love. If Mother is our major overarching metaphysical symbol, then we will treat each other and the planet with what? Unconditional love! From there, everything else falls into place. For women AND men.

Of course not all human mothers love their children unconditionally. Let's face it: human mothers have been living in patriarchal hell for millennia now. It's a wonder any of them can get out of bed and draw a breath in the morning, let alone love Billy even IF he demolishes the neighbor's prize-winning petunias and smears tar on the living room walls. (These are actual examples, btw, from my brother Jeff's early childhood).

Left to their natural predilections, however, 99.99% of healthy mothers love their children no matter what, no strings attached, come hell or high water.

Besides, we also have the archaeological record. It shows that, in all probability, humans prospered wildly under a Great Mother Goddess, and then IMMEDIATELY fell flat on their faces as soon as Daddy God muddled His way into things.

Now to my academic friends who are wildly waving arms and shouting "Gross generalization! Gross generalization!" I reply, yes, this is a very, very gross generalization. What you are reading, however, is not a 400-page Harper & Row nonfiction special, but a weblog. My readers have only so much time in a day. They have other bloggers to read besides me, you know.

And see, you academics never finish anything. Everything is in a constant state-of-theory. Few things ever reach fact-status. The planet needs answers from us academics now -- based on our best hunches. And my best hunch is that, given all the available evidence, when humans lived with a Mother Goddess, most of them, by and large, prospered in ways we can only dimly imagine. We've been down so long, in other words, we have no idea what Up looks like.

Amen.

THE GREAT MOTHER'S 42 Commandments

Goddess Ma'at


Wow! I didn't know this. Forget about Jehovah's Ten Commandments -- the Goddess had 42! At least in ancient Egypt, She did. These were "The 42 Admonitions of [the Goddess] Ma'at."

Many think Moses copied his commandments from Ma'at's admonitions. (And "commandment" is so patriarchally pushy compared to "admonition," n'est ce pas?)

Below is a smattering of the 42 (some of the ones I omitted were probably added later by Egypt's patriarchal invaders -- the ones who came charging in with male gods, pharaohs, hierarchy, and the whole patriarchal mess).

The Admonitions of Ma'at:

I have not expropriated food
I have not caused undue pain to anyone
I have not made another weep unjustly
I have not robbed another
I have not slain an innocent person
I have not spoken lies
I have not set my mouth in motion against any person
I have not become enraged except with just cause
I have not inflicted terror on innocent people
I have not committed offence
I have not caused grief
I have not stirred up strife
I have not judged hastily
I have not multiplied my words (to confound)
I have not dealt deceitfully
I have not acted guilefully
I have not been an eavesdropper
I have not harmed anyone or done evil
I have not fouled the water
I have not made my voice haughty
I have not committed theft
I have not done what is wrong (to my neighbor)

The entire 42 Admonitions

Here's another site about the ethics and morals of ancient Egyptians; keep in mind, though, that both it and the other site above are about patriarchal/pharaohonic Egypt.

A PhD in GODDESS SPIRITUALITY?!

No kidding! You can earn a master’s or doctoral degree in Goddess Spirituality, from the Women's Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. One of the first accredited graduate programs of its kind in the world; open to both women and men.

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Goddess Thealogian MUZZLED ...

... And the Goddess Movement wins a truckload of free publicity!

Harvard Professor and Goddess thealogian Carol Christ (above) was barred last month from speaking at Santa Sabina, a Catholic college in Australia.

Said Bishop Porteous of the Archdiocese of Sydney: "[I]t would be inappropriate for a talk promoting Goddess worship ... to be held in a Catholic venue."

"This of course has drawn far more attention to her lecture ..." says Jason Pitzl-Waters of The Wildhunt.org, "causing Christ to reassess her influence on the Catholic Church:"

"I didn't think the Church was paying attention to me," she said.

Dr. Christ is one of the preeminent leaders of the Goddess Movement. I'm sure we can count on the Catholic Church to broadcast the news of the Movement far and wide. I suspect there may even be more of this kind of free publicity in future!

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Marduk and Tiamat DUKE IT OUT!

Women's Studies professor Ellie Amico says it all!

"There appears to have been a time in Mesopotamia, and in ... Catal Huyuk in Turkey, Minoan Crete, some Native American communities [all places where the Goddess predominated], and no doubt elsewhere, in which culture was not centered in hierarchy, in which people lived more peacefully ..., without a class system [or] gender dominance, without economic imbalances. Would that be possible again?

"It is said that the system of Marduk [i.e., the godfather who overran the Goddess Tiamat in ancient Sumeria], of hierarchy, domination, control, and order, is the only way for human civilization to progress.... Is this true? Or is ... Marduk going to be the ultimate destruction ... of the planet ...? "


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The GODDESS MOVEMENT

A concise, 6-page look at the Movement. Read it here.

Please feel free to comment. Leave your footprints in the sands of blogdom.

GODDESS IS LOVE -- But Is That ALL She Is?

Cheryl Hamilton has written a beautiful treatise on her experience of Goddess. I agree with her that Goddess is "wishing happiness for everyone, just as a mother does for her sole, sweet child."

When that sweet child is threatened, however, Goddess transforms into anger.

The basic model for humans is the animal-mother model: Animal Mom has unconditional love for her babies -- but anger when those babies are harmed. And if Mom's baby #1 is harming Mom's baby #2, the perp (baby 1) gets taught the correct way to behave -- not punished.

Read Cheryl's paper.

What do you think? Is Goddess love only?

WHAT ABOUT GODDESS ETHICS?

Without God the Father, wouldn't we all be pillaging and plundering? "Daddy's gone! Daddy's gone! Begin sacking and despoiling!!!"

Somehow I don't think so. Here's a juicy clue: "Every survey ever undertaken of the composition of the criminal population reveals a percentage of the avowedly religious higher than a random sample of the population will show" (George B. Vetter 1973, Magic and Religion: Their Origins and Consequences, New York: Philosophical Library, pp 479-80).

In other words, every survey ever done on criminals shows criminals more "religious" than the general population. Now, I have a feeling that before 1973 (when Magic and Religion was published) most Goddess worshippers were deep in the closet -- in prison or not. So you know who that leaves answering these surveys. Yep, the Godfather guys.


Please comment! Leave your footprints in the sands of blogdom!!

WOMEN SAVIORS?

Gather the Women is an organization dedicated to the premise that women can save the planet. I love the fact that they include men in what they do. They appear extremely well organized.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, author of Goddess in Everywoman, The Millionth Circle, and Crones Don't Whine, has this to say about them: "If our beautiful Mother--this beautiful planet, and all her children--are to survive and thrive, these words [Gather the Women] may be our marching orders."

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"Welcome to Doomsday," by BILL MOYERS

"There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality...."

Thus begins imminently respectable Bill Moyers in a recent article about Christian Fundamentalism, in which Moyers says he's scared -- scared like he's never been before. What Moyers does not get is that Fundies are just the tip of the Godfather iceberg. Humans are getting eaten alive not just by Fundamentalism, but by the entire underground berg.

"I ... look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer," he says near the end of his article, "pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age twelve; Thomas, ten; Nancy, eight; Jassie, three; SaraJane, one. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.' And then the shiver runs down my spine and I am seized by the realization: 'That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future..... Despoiling their world.'"

Yep, Bill's very confused. The Fundies are not the bad guys, Bill! It's that "Father" you're still praying to that's the "fundamental" problem, for gosh sake! [No pun intended.] Daddy just doesn't care about you -- or any of us. So why should we care about each other? Or the world? Or the future of our children?

"Mama Loves, Daddy May" (See previous post for an explanation of this cryptic title)(picture from Chimpanzee Politics, Frans de Waal, 1989)

HOW GODDESS Saves THE WORLD

In the animal kingdom, "Mother" means unconditional love. You can be a plug ugly, driveling idiot, and Mom adores you. Conversely, "Father" loves you (if he's around at all) on condition -- that you're a dynamite little hunter, that you stay out of his hair, etc., etc.

If "Mama" is our overarching, superordinate role model, then we will behave toward the world with unconditional love. The world will thrive. If "Daddy" is our overarching symbol, we behave toward the world with conditional love. Strings attached. The world fares less well.

I call this my "Mama Loves, Daddy May" theory. More on it in later posts.

Oh -- almost forgot. Atheists. The role model atheists use to explain where we all came from and where we're going is Science. Science doesn't love. We are 32c worth of chemicals. Under Science, the world shrivels up and blows away.

The Inquisition a LIE?!?

An article in a famous conservative rag says the Pope opened up Vatican godfather records recently and found that -- voila! -- the Inquisition essentially didn’t happen!

Or at least that’s what the article makes a person think, at first blush: “...The Inquisition was not so bad after all. Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed....”

But read carefully. What the author is really saying is this: the institution “Inquisition” did not torture, maim or kill. Instead, it let the civil authorities -- godfathers carefully trained by the Church, of course -- do all the dirty work....

WHEN I WAS Four, I COULD FRIGHTEN AWAY SOLDIERS....

"When I was four years old I could frighten away Russian soldiers from our bunker during the WW2 in Budapest. Even as a toddler I had certainty that I could pray aloud to the [Goddess] for a protection with my skinny little arms outstretched."

From an Interview with Z Budapest. When I need a strength-giver, I turn to Z -- wellspring of outrageousness, humor, creativity, and Ooooold Goddess knowledge....

CAN GODDESS SAVE THE WORLD?

"Goddess spirituality is one of the fastest growing spiritual movements in the world today.... Why is the Goddess so important? There is no panacea for all our modern ailments, yet to many, the Goddess symbolizes our best hope for a viable, sustainable future....

"Given the appalling spoiling of the environment, ... racial and class conflict, escalating violence between the sexes, ... the massive extinction of species, and the lack of respect for future generations, many have turned to the Goddess ... out of frustration with the ... religious as well as secular choices offered by the dominant cultures of the world, which might be characterized as patriarchal fundamentalisms."

Read the rest of this article, written by Dr. Mara Lynn Keller, Director of the Women's Spirituality, Philosophy and Religion M.A. and Ph.D. programs at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

What do you think? Can Goddess save the world?

Goddess, Xeste3, Room 3a. From "The Wall Paintings of Thera," S. Sherratt, ed., Proceedings of 1st Int. Symposium, Athens, 2000.

Of all images I have seen of the divine feminine, this is one of my favorites. Over 3,500 years old, it comes from ancient archaeological ruins on the Island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea.

GodFather, GodScientific, GodMother

Is there a direct cause-effect relationship between our major explanatory construct of the universe, and the quality of our existence? If so, we'd be foolish not to choose very carefully, here, among constructs.

Three explanatory constructs of the universe:

The GodFather, metaphor for conditional love;
The GodScientific, metaphor for absence of love; and
The GodMother, metaphor for unconditional love.

In my humble opinion, only one of the above provides a model for behavior conducive to healthy group functioning in a large-brained primate species stripped of instinctual guides to group behavior....

Closeup of Minoan bull leaper.  

Closeup of Minoan bull leaper (restored)

The Myth That Goddess Emasculates Men

Bull Leaping & Boxing in a Goddess Society (restored rhyton) 


It's a myth that Goddess emasculates men. Minoan men were some of the manliest men ever to set foot on the face of the earth. Above, see Minoan men boxing and bull leaping. For more on the death-defying pursuit of bull leaping, go here. This site even has video clips of what seems to be a modern descendant of bull-leaping -- still taking place in the Pyrenees, home of the mysterious Basque peoples....

With Goddess, a 1000-Year Peace?

Here's a great letter-to-the-editor:

"...There's good evidence that human existence in Pure-Goddess times was close to idyllic.... Much suggests that Pure-Goddess-era Goddesses stood for nothing but peace! How else could their worshipers go for centuries without lifting one weapon in war? This is true not only of the ancient Minoans, but also for the Catal Huyukians in Turkey and the "Old Europeans" in what is now Eastern Europe."

Religions Based on Fear of Torture -- Diseased?

This site, Danaan Press, is the home of what seems to be a Goddess religion worth looking at. I like this statement especially: "Any religion or philosophy based on fear of being tortured for eternity because of some godling's displeasure is psychologically diseased."

Geminiwalker, I love ya!

Dear Geminiwalker,

With great pleasure, I read your Amazon.com review of Sjoo and Mor's The Great Cosmic Mother. I can't get it out of my mind!

"The only drawback of this book," you say, "is that once you read it, once you *get* it, you will never be the same again. And if more people *don't* read it, those who *do* get it are going to be very lonely and hard to live with people."

That's me! I read the book in the eighties, and I have been lonely ever since. Not to mention crabby and hard to live with.

You probably know how it is. Sjoo and Mor enlightened us about how the "Godfather" religions have stripped us all -- men and women alike -- of anything but subnormal, abysmal existences. And we've been down so long we don't even know what up looks like.

And then you offer this from the book: "Because the enemy does not exist in space, but in time; four thousand years ago. We are about to destroy each other and the world, because of profound mistakes made in Bronze Age patriarchal ontology -- mistakes about the nature of being, about the nature of human being in the world...."

Anyway, yesterday I began a Blog to try to get this crabbiness out of my craw. My blog is dedicated to replacing "Godfather" with "Godmother," before the year 2025. I know that doesn't leave us much time, but you know what they say about goals: just set 'em, and you can always change 'em later if you need to.

My only problem is, I can't find anyone else on the web writing about ridding the planet of God the Father. Isn't there anyone out there brave enough to take him on?!? Would you happen to know of any site I might have missed?

Anyway, please visit my new blog, at:

http://GodmotherAscending.blogspot.com/

Yours,
Athana

P.S. I'm going to try to put a link on my blog that will send people to your review at Amazon. Hope it works. I'm new at this.

God people, I love ya!

Let me say this, you wonderful God people out there: I respect and love you, but I also respectfully think that the number one reason the world's in the mess it's in, is because everyone stopped worshipping God the Mother a while back, and turned instead to God the Father.

Hopefully both Goddess and God worshippers will visit my blog, here, not to mention atheists. I suspect all of you, when they get here, will be dismayed -- at first.

I can hear The Goddess people saying, "Look, we're just trying to grab a toehold here with our news that God is a woman. Do you have to butt in and get the God guys all riled up about us so soon?"

Well, the answer is, yes, I think I do.

Some of the God guys are getting real pushy here of late, and I started thinking about this weblog way back in the eighties (well, not exactly a weblog back then, but I did jot down a lot of notes about all the troubles the God guys were causing).

And I can hear you atheists saying, "Oh, just throw it all out!" Well, I'm just not so sure that the human species is smart enough, yet, to carry on without some kind of religion (more about this later)....

KEYWORDS: Goddess, Goddessing, Goddess spirituality, Goddess religion, feminist spirituality, thealogy, thealogical, did you know that Mother Goose is really an anagram for Mother Goddess (she was secret code when goddess worship went underground)....

The Cause

The Cause is to heal the world, to make it human again. To fix priorities. To save the planet. How? How to reach unimaginable heights of human health and wellbeing? Of planetary health and happiness? By ridding the world of "Godfather" religion, and replacing it with "Godmother" religion. Too simplistic? Nope, I don't think so.

MISSION STATEMENT:

To begin, on this blog, a dialog about strategies and methodologies regarding the three goals below:

1. To demonstrate to the world, by 2015, that the long-lost Godmother religions produced unparalleled peace, prosperity, social equality--and men more manly than can ever be imagined!

2. To demonstrate to the world, by 2015, that this unparalled peace, prosperity and marvelous manhood came to a creaking halt as soon as the Godfather stepped on stage.

3. To replace Godfather religion, by the year 2025, with Godmother spirituality.

DEFINITIONS:
Godfather: 1. Mafia don; brutal leader of a brutal social order. 2. A deity at the center of a male-principled religion.
Godmother: 1. Fairy who lovingly intervenes to aid mortal humans. 2. A deity at the center of a female-principled religion.

Godfather Religion: Any religion centering around male deity. Ex.: Christiantiy, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, ancient Roman religion, ancient Greek religion, etc. Commonly associated with war, social inequality, sex inequality, poverty, disease, and often slavery.

Godmother Religion: Any religion centering around female deity. Ex.: Ancient Minoan religion, ancient Catal Huyukian religion, Old European religion, ancient Sumerian religion, ancient Maltese religion, ancient East Indian religion, and doubtless hundreds more as yet unearthed by archaeologists, historians and others. Commonly associated with long-term peace, lack of human-on-human violence, social equality, sex equality, and physical and mental health.