Ah, Neith! Now there's a goddess!

Yet another Nile-conceived universe-maker:

Wasn't just wall-to-wall male gods mothering themselves and actualising their inner woman via masturbation.

Neith, the great goddess of the Delta city of Sais/So/Sa el-Hagar was a sole female creator - a truly awesome deity. In the divine comedy of 'The Contendings of Horus and Seth' Neith is where the buck stops, the court of highest appeal. She sorts out the squabbling gods by threatening to bring down the sky on all their heads - no idle threat. She was the great mother, and also a warrior. Her emblem was crossed arrows on a shield. The Greeks interpreted her as Athena.

According to another Egpytian take on creator deities, the great god Amun of Thebes ("the Hidden One", "whose identity is hidden", "whose image is not depicted in the writings"), could be titled k3-mwt.f "bull of his mother".

In other words - one who begat/mothered himself.

In other words - the creator exulted in being a true motherf***er ;-)

Another way of he being she, she being he, and getting the world rolling.

Visions of Antony and the Johnsons' 'Black River':

"Late at night, all dolled up like Christ..."

I recall that sacred transvestism was part of the worship of the Syrian and Anatolian 'Great Mother' goddesses, and of the cult of the sacred solar baetyl of Emesa, favoured by the teenage emperor of the Romans, Elagabalus (218-222).

Also, the deity on the reverse of some tetradrachms (large four drachma silver coins) of the Parthian king Phraates II (138-127 BC) depict what appears to be a transgender deity: a clearly female body, clothed in a woman's chiton; bearded male head, crowned with a kalathos (an attribute of both the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis: fusion of Osiris, Hades, Zeus, and Dionysos; and of the Greek goddess Tyche: the 'fortune' or 'fate' of cities).
It's a bold attempt to evoke a truly pantheistic concept of deity.

The primeval creator god of the Egyptians, Atum, was able to copulate with himself and so beget and give birth to...himself, thus differentiating himself from the surrounding abyss/ocean/chaos, and developing into the cosmos by a process of extension and differentiation of his own substance (anticipations of Spinoza). The procreative agent here was the god's hand which was hypostatised into a goddess (not an anticipation of Spinoza).

The cosmos instigated by an act of primal auto-eroticism - explains a lot! ;-)

Jesus in drag? My, that would get the Fundies going! :D

"Goddess is not just Yahweh in drag"
_____________
I keep asking the same question: "Who is this "Yahweh" that I keep reading about on this blog?

Is s/he a one-named celeb like Cher? Like Madonna?

Is the goddess more than Jesus in drag?

But hey, thinking of Her as El-Shaddai, Mary, or Sophia is a good start.
___________________________________
Thinking of her as El Shaddai is a very poor start, since it is senseless. I don't mean this in any personal way. It simply is senseless, from a textual, historical perspective.
--------------------------
Far more sensible would it be to think of Her as, say, Jesus.

Ditto to what Paganplace has to say. The Goddess is not just Yahweh in drag. She is more than just the Mother, she is the Maiden and the Crone as well. She loves, gives birth, nurtures, shares her wisdom, and eases our passage into death. Sometimes she can be the destroyer, but that is only because there cannot be new life without death. But hey, thinking of Her as El-Shaddai, Mary, or Sophia is a good start. Keep learning about Her, and She will reveal more of herself.

Farnaz,

Ah, collateral damage...

Visions of cooped up Cathars and Catholics...

NonGod knows hisher own, eh?

Over there at Susan J's Arminius is in fine form, I see.

What? We’re just more clay
And bone for vulture’s play,
Croaking his ripe disdain
And griping of pain
As if his the shreds
He claws through matted threads.

|:>(

Hi Onofrio,

Ditto on all accounts. Regarding Susan J's thread, maybe, your posts were "casualties" of Operation Clean Sweep?

Even one of the authentic Susan's posts was removed. "Hi" and "thank you" sound innocent enough to me, but what do I know?

"Els" are good! Like them, me too! Please come back to Susan J's thread. It's chilly in the Arctic. Damp at the equator. Moosey in Wisconsin.

Etc.

Farnaz :)

El Shaddai - love that ol' time Canaanitish El and his epithets ;)

My, Farnaz, nice to see you here. I gave up on Susan J's threads because she kept removing my heinous greetings - you know, such evil terms as "Hi" and "thank you".

So I just good rid meself to foray occasionally from the underworld and make mince pie of some poor JustPiecesTheairist...back to cellar koboldry.

Again, respect for your many wise words on just about everything :)

I remain yours etc.

Onofrio

EL Shaddai. I'm all for new age, renewal, etc., as long as the letters are writ small.

El Shaddai, is not God,the mother, breast, etc.

I don't even mind moon worshipping. But loony mistranslations get my Logos up.

El Shaddai. Start here. Pleez. Don't come back until you know whereof you speak, on this, if on no other matter.

http://www.ots.org.il/parsha/5767/vaera67.htm

"We honor God the Mother when we remember the holiness of woman and see in her an image of God no less than the image of God in man. Such reverence would cause us to cherish the bodies of women as more than sexual objects."

"More than" sexual *objects*? How about just NOT.

Sexual SUBJECTS would be a good start. And reverence for she-deity won't pave a royal road to that.

Look at India, for instance. No shortage of devotion to Devi, Parvati, Lakshmi, Durga and Kali there, but it hasn't helped India excel in *cherishing* female bodies, especially those of its widows.

Changing the world by *soft* power? A lovely thought, but women have been nurturing, nursing, creating, enduring, and being wise for ever. Like that lady-deity of your hopes. No change to the angry phalli.

My daughters are learning martial arts, because many males will only learn *wisdom* by a swift pre-emptive strike to the cojones, metaphorically and/or actually.

Does the Holy Christian Pneuma-lady endorse that?

"When we embrace God the Mother, we can live into the womanist virtues of responsibility, love, commitment, and complexity, knowing that simplistic answers can lead us astray."

Since when was complexity a virtue?

Virtue's virtue. Nought manist or womanist about it. Or is that too...simplistic?

"It is a divine love, stronger than death, which loves us beyond anything we deserve. It is a love that requires us to love with such a love."

I'm drowning in treacle.

Fivefold undeserved love?

She has many names, indeed, but I'm sure they don't include Milquetoast, Blancmange, Anodyne, Saccharine, and Helen Steiner Rice.

...fairy

Thee, airy...

Theary

Just pieces...

"El Shaddai, God Almighty, the god of breast and womb, the fecund god of fertility, the god that is herself enough; Lady Wisdom, the consort of the Creator God;"

I note here a howling lack of Hecate Triformis of the crossroads, blood-drunken Hathor-Sekhmet, Anath up to her knees in gore, and of course Artemis, she of wild things.

Lady's Wisdom hath many names...some may eat you alive.

Ha, guess this is working. See, here:

"Mother's Day is a time when we bring to the foreground of our memory the times when God the Mother read us bedtime stories and sang us to sleep; when she healed our skinned knees and elbows and bump, bruises and boo boos with cold water and kisses; when we loved a love with our best selves, were rejected, and shed obdurate tears that refused to quit until she reminded us that there is more than one pebble on the beach, there is a Little Rock in Arkansas; we laughed and breathed and looked forward to tomorrow and the possibility of a new and better love. We remember that she encouraged us to take a risk, keeping faith in ourselves and faith in God."

See, I read that, and I think you're kind of talking about a 'Stepford Goddess,' who'll wipe our noses and point us right back into the same kind of stuff that kicks the crap out of all of us on a daily basis.

An enabler, by that scheme, I'd say.

Won't even pretend I don't do my share of blubbering, but there's more.

Better yet, different.

She, and yes, you should be able to capitalize She, isn't some afterthought on a 'He' and all associated words with *that.*

Kind of an important distinction: the big fear of most monothesist is in fact that if there's the slightest hint 'God' actually has more than a sophistic femaleness, that suddenly men will be reated like...

Well.

The only way they can imagine, I guess.

Suppose there's more.

*peeking at dates.* Hem.

I'm guessing the three days of silence here *ain't* any kind of manifestation of Holy Wisdom, and that in fact the utter lack of *early Nineties* type storming about on certain parts has something to do with computer glitches.

But in case anything works:

Not sure how advisable it is to try and say the Goddess is the Christian God in a dress, though. If She *is* then I'd figure said God went to *all* manner of trouble to put a little sacred in the lives of those of us otherwise to be scorned, and best it is to play along. :)
For some reason, well, them Abrahamics may say in the abstract that a distinctly male character also happens to be all female characteristics, which are to be shunned, but complete in that sense, 'He' is just a metaphor, but say 'She, and they think they're about to lose their penis privileges or something. :)