Bionecro asked some great questions in a 12/26/06 comment: BIONECRO: “If we switched to a Mother Goddess, wouldn’t women still feel pressure to have lots of children -- just like they do under the War Gods?”
ATHANA: No. Under a Mother Goddess, women would return to the healthy old ways of having two or three children only. Why? Because that’s what women have always done when left to their own devices. That’s how many kids they have in societies that aren’t War-God-ridden. Women instinctively know that two to three kids is healthiest all around – for the kids, the society, and the mothers. Each kid gets the right amount of attention, care and resources. They get enough love before the next kid comes along. The mother isn’t overburdened.
BIONECRO: “My guess is you'll say that all people would be considered the Great Mother's children and not archetypes of Mothers and Fathers themselves….”
ATHANA: No again. All of us are the Great Mother. As such, we all treat others the way a healthy mother would treat her children: with unconditional care and concern. So we all aim to be either Mother-Women, or Mother-Men. Some examples of Mother-Men: Robin Hood, King Arthur, Davy Crockett (although remember: the War Gods have tampered a bit with these men, so they don’t come down us as the pure Mother-Men they were and really are).
Examples of Mother-Women are very hard to find, since the War Gods have worked even harder to erase them than they have to erase Mother-Men. I think Joan of Arc was a Mother-Woman, but the War Gods have hidden this from us and have put a great overlay of tarnish all over her. I think Robin Hood’s Maid Marian was a Mother-Woman – if you can imagine her without the War-God overlay. Same with Guinevere, Morgaine, the Lady of the Lake and others in the Arthurian legends.
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Thnx to cinema-stars.com for the foto of Milla Jovovich, who starred in a recent movie as Joan of Arc
I am a male, also gay, and I agree with most of the ideas on here...but I have two questions:
ReplyDelete1. would bringing back the Goddess completely cancel out all male gods, or would some of the old male pagan deities be honored as well?
2. have you ever looked at Discordianism? it's a goddess religion with a twist...you may or may not like it's ideas.
I appreciate what you're doing for the Goddess community, and more power to ya.
Blessed Be, Andy
Thanks for answering my questions, Athana! - I see I was indeed a bit confused about this.I've nothing to add - thanks,again.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I believe the two- to three-kid rule would have held in ancient times (although it would probably be adhered to in a modern Goddess culture). The reason is child mortality; in an era before vaccination, many children didn't make it past the age of five. A mom might have given birth six times, and have two children reach adulthood. (This isn't taking into consideration the risky business pregnancy can be, either.)
ReplyDeleteTou Mou, kudos to you for challenging me on this. Here's part of the problem: Women in other cultures and in the past didn't always have enough breast milk to feed more than one baby every 3-4 years. For the first 90,000 years of human existence, humans lived as gatherer-hunters in very small groups. It's only been in the last 10,000 years that a few humans settled down to live in one place all year round.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in our gath/hunt bands, there were no other women usually lactating when you had your baby, so if you had a baby before the prior baby could survive on plant and animal food, one of those two babies had to die.
Go to Wiki and look at the article on the Bushmen, under "Society." The Bushmen/San until a few decades ago lived the way our ancestors lived throughout most of history. They had babies only once every four years, and could not have babies before age 18 (they didn't get fertile before then) and of course couldn't have any more after menopause.