PLEASE Accept HUMBLE APOLOGY

Sorry, babies, I've been so busy bothering myself about the recent Giant Financial Hiccup of Western (and Eastern) Civilization that I've been badly neglecting you and this Very Important Blog.

Not to mention worrying about our World Savior, Barack Obama (no, no, I do believe he was born in a manger), and trying to market my book, Switching to Goddess, which is due to hit the shelves next month (gasp! Next month?!?).

Anyway, I thought I could let you in on a few things I've been blasting around the internet lately to encourage people to buy/order/review Switching to Goddess.

Here's the latest (going out to selected magazine editors):

Dear __________

I have a strong feeling that many subscribers to ____________ will want to read my new book, Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future, to be released in November by O Books in the UK.

Why? Because this isn't your ordinary spirituality book.

Switching to Goddess says something that, to my knowledge, has never been said before: in order to save the planet, we need to abandon the major world gods -- Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh and Vishnu for starters -- and replace them with the kinds of goddesses the world revered 6000 years ago, in the peace-loving, egalitarian and close-to-idyllic Neolithic and early Bronze Ages.

Even if your readers think my book wildly off target, they'll still want to read it. It's a book almost certain to stir up controversy. Should the world abandon its gods for goddesses -- or not? Naysayers will want to hear yeasayers' opinions on the topic, and vice versa. Those on both sides will want a copy of the book in order to join the debate that is bound to ensue once this book hits the shelves.

Two additional attributes make this book a natural winner: first, I've packed it with footnoted information from hundreds of up-to-date, highly reputable scientific and historical sources. I have advanced degrees in anthropology and archaeology, so I know how to do this. Second, the book is not stuffy. As a matter of fact, if I do say so myself, it's downright fun to read. Take this passage for example:

To make a long story short, while the Great Guiding Goddess steered the ship in the Neolithic Near East, war didn’t happen there. But how about the Indus Valley? Indus Valley people had moved out of the Neolithic and into the early Bronze Age. Did the Great Guiding Goddess keep them free from war too?

The answer here also is – Tah Dah! Drum roll please: “Yes indeed She did.” In total and mind-blowing contradiction to “what we would expect from experience elsewhere,” says [archaeologist] Jane McIntosh, “the clues from the Indus Civilization seem to be showing us a state without violence or conflict.” Jane is dumbfounded: “Can this really be so, in defiance of all our experience of the world elsewhere? Who were these peace-loving people? Where did they come from? How did they come together to create a state?” (McIntosh 2002: 12).

Societies doing war leave behind a trail of telltale clues that give away their dirty little secret. They can’t stand it for example until they paint and etch scenes of their battles, hand-to-hand combat, and armies facing each other with weapons bristling, and war flags flying. In their cemeteries they leave men buried with shields, helmets, swords and battle axes....

Thing is, we don’t find any of these dirty little clues in the humongous ancient Indus Valley (McIntosh 2002; Kenoyer 1998). No war art, no war weapons, no parry fractures, no siege engines....

Or this one:

Never let it be said that Guiding-Goddess people were wet-noodle wimps. In the courage department my guess is they outshone us two to one. Like the people in Willow, Guiding-Goddess men and women were gutsy risk-takers and valiant adventurers. For example Indus Valley mariners “roamed the known world” (McIntosh 2002: 7) and the ancient Minoans traveled and traded “to every port of the archaic world and even – boldly – to regions far beyond” (Campbell 1964: 62).

Archaeologists have dug up scores of images of Minoans somersaulting – from front to rear – over the backs of bulls (figures 4.6, 4.11-4.13). Although modern matadors say this can’t be done, I don’t believe it for a second. Just because we can’t do something, what makes us think our ancestors couldn’t? I suspect our Goddess-centered ancestors packed a lot more pluck than we do. Mother Goddess societies would drape people with a kind of self-sense we god peoples can’t even imagine. We’re birthed and ‘loved’ by deities who’d just as soon see us stoned to death as look at us. How could we ever have healthy senses of self?

Or this:

... backlashers say just because a figurine is breast-bedecked doesn’t mean it’s female. For gosh sake, men have breasts too! (Lesure 2002: 602). Tatsuo Kobayashi, a leading archaeologist of the Japanese Jomon period, whines as follows: Golly gee! Men have breasts! Who cares if all the Jomon clay figurines have breasts – that doesn’t make them women! Kobie goes on to say that if the figurines can’t be his sex, they can’t be any sex at all: “it is considered here that these clay figurines are neither male nor female … but rather they are images that surpass the realms of gender…” (Kobayashi 2004: 155).

Still others say: “Gee if that clay statuette over there doesn’t have breasts of a certain heft don’t try to sell me on its being a woman -- could be a man, darling” (See Meskell 1998) (never mind the poor statuette is also minus a penis). Well I say if breast-bedecked figurines sans penises are men, our ancestors were trying to tell us something. My bet is it’s this: Whether you’re man or woman, the important thing is feeding and nurturing others. Breasts are a jim-dandy symbol of feeding and nurturing, and maybe Neolithic men who had them were put up on pedestals....

To make a long story short, ____________, I was wondering: if I send you a copy of Switching to Goddess when it comes out in November, would you print a review of it in __________? That way your readers can judge for themselves if they should buy this important new book.

Thank you for your time, and have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,
Athana
Raymond, Maine, USA

P.S. For more info on Switching, go to www.jeristudebaker.com, www.o-books.com, or Amazon.com.