Free Eve!

Nikki Marmery has captured the psychic zeitgeist with her weaving of a new mythology for women in her latest book, Lilith.  Who is Lilith?  if you happen to be familiar with Hebrew mythology outside of the Old Testament, she was reputed to have been the first woman created, co-equally to Adam; you know, "male and female, they created them'.  Marmery follows Lilith and Eve through all the millennia of patriarchal mythologies brilliantly in her fiction. Lilith leaves the Garden of Eden, pissed off at Adam's ignorant entitled behavior and striking out on her own, later in the company of other famous renegades, through 6 thousand years of patriarchal absurdity.  But Adam whines to God and his BroGod makes him somebody for him to dominate, Eve.  Marmery's retelling of our first Mothers' stories reveals how so many misogynist myths dominate our lopsided psyches.and how these infect us with a very destructive attitude towards all things woman.  A line from the caption on Goodreads sums it up:

"In the Garden of Eden, at the beginning of time, an outrageous lie is born: that women are inferior." 

Woman is inferior and she is to blame for life not being easy street for man; it's HER fault so she needs to be punished and kept under control.  Fortunately, sexual slavery is a handy dandy way to control women and our own country has just plunged us backwards, eviscerating the progress women have made just in my lifetime, to have complete statutory bodily autonomy.  As Vice President, then Senator, Kamala Harris said in her examination of fratboy Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings:  "Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?  He could not, and yet he voted to repeal federal laws that have protected all American women since 1973.  Why? 

Because there's an outrageous lie that dominates the patriarchal mythologies that impact our psyches, shape our cultural paradigms and determine everything about a woman's life, her relationships, family, community and country.  The magic spell of Patriarchy is brewed and fed to us by its religions.  Unfortunately, indoctrination founded on our fear of death and need for meaning that project a sex onto divinity, the Male/Father.  1. We are born sinful.  Meaning we are bad little boys and girls in His eyes, despite the fact that we haven't done anything yet.  It's our inheritance from His first failed experiment as a Creator.    But, that's just something we have come to believe, and as a result, allowed an empire of religious restrictions to dictate to us what good is, rather than our own hearts.  This raises so many questions!  First of all, what kind of know everything divinity gets so pissed off because his kids disobeyed him that he demands human sacrifice as retribution? And then decides that sacrifice will be his own kid, questionably engendered by him and without his kid's consent.  He likes extreme obedience to his every whim, does that really sound like Love to you?  I remember as a kid comparing God the Father to my dad and figuring, if my dad could laugh off my stupidities and still make me feel so safe and loved, then how could God be less loving?  I was 7, the age of reason before they teach you not to use it.

2. Woman is inferior, born not from woman but from man.  (huh?)  Two people caused our expulsion from Paradise, but really only one can be truly held responsible, Eve. And it wasn't even her idea.  It was a snake who has been conflated with evil. The myth of our original parents, Adam and Eve, drilled into so many human beings for the last six millennia (yikes!) taught that women are actually to blame for all that went wrong with our relationship to the divine; therefore, we have to toil and go through untold hardships, all because of Eve and that God Damned apple.  This story is just that, a story that became a a myth used to explain how woman, who was once exalted as Goddess the Creator in cultures predating patriarchy's assent.  

It truly doesn't take much to free ourselves of this psychologically and socially destructive myth.  What actually matters about each of us is that spark of what animates us, Consciousness, the I Am that transcends death.  I've shared the basis for my position on this here so many times, The Consciousness revolution that is challenging both material science  and material religion is one of the great silver linings of our age. And every one of us has access to spiritual experience in the non-physical worlds of our dreams; dreaming is organic spirituality.  The more awareness we can bring to our dreams, the deeper our spiritual lives can become.

So the good news is that most of our greatest problems are a matter of the way we think and believe about reality, both the physical and the non-physical realities of our existence here.  Sadly, there is the down side that many people fear not believing what they have been told for so long, regardless of the absurdities they may have to swallow.  I get it; the physical seems so concrete, while the "spiritual" is elusive.  But, doesn't it make sense that God's pronouns are They and Them?  If all of us, in our various shapes and shades, all emanate from the same eternal Consciousness, and as Consciousness has no physical form, though it is in all physical form, why would a temporary physical body determine a person's worth?  

There are two myths in the Hebrew Old Testament that explain the genesis of earthly existence. In the first, humans are created equal; all things are created in the Yin/Yang pairing of universal flow that recognizes the dance of opposites driving existence when it's in harmony.  Patriarchy has chosen the second myth for us to follow.  But we have a choice.  Free Eve.  Free ourselves, male, female or other identification to live a life conscious that the material world is but one manifestation of who and what we are.  Underlying everything is sheer Being, no body required.  

in the second, women have been thrown down and dominated with dubious justification.  Yet, which one have we been led to follow?

The Autumn Equinox: A Daughter’s Courage

In her wonderful book, “Lost Goddesses of Early Greece” Charlene Spretnak explains that as the ancient Greeks first told the myth, Persephone volunteered to go shepherd the dead in the underworld out of her deep compassion for the suffering of those lost souls.  A young woman with a passion and a mission is an unstoppable force.  Demeter, Mother of All and of Persephone herself, relented and said yes, she may go, but only six months at a time because she would miss her beloved daughter too much to let her go full time. Persephone promised to take a break from Queen of Death duties for half the year and return, along with Spring and Summer, because Mamma Earth is so happy to have her back that she blooms and flowers and perpetuates all sorts of joy in life.  On the Autumn Equinox though, Persephone, also known as Kore, goes back down and Mamma Demeter loses her vibrant energy and goes inward, to her dreams, where she can keep in touch with Persephone in that other realm.

 

You may have heard that Persephone was raped and abducted by Hades, the Unseen, the underworld god of Death, also called Pluto, giver of wealth, who forced her to be his sex slave and queen and would have kept her there unhappily forever.  In this later myth, Zeus, his older brother and god-king, is alarmed by the power of Demeter’s wrath over Hades' violation of her daughter. Knowing Mother Earth could destroy all living things with just her basic elements, Wind, Fire, Water and Earth, he bargains with his hairy underworld twin to release Persephone.  Hades relented to his brother’s nagging, but tricks Persephone with pomegranate seeds so she has to come back, year after year, for half the year, in the season of death and decay. This version is the patriarchal retelling of the original Greek myth of the seasons; can you spot the patriarchal alterations?

 

September is a bittersweet turning inward time of year in the northern hemisphere; starting with the Fall Equinox the light of day dims, moon through moon, to All Hallow’s Eve and then the Winter Solstice.  I like to think of it as the Season of the Witch. The Witch is an archetypal symbol of woman’s power. Patriarchy has created a caricature of this ancient archetype, regularly trotted out at Halloween and in fairy tales. She’s ugly, old, scary and evil. Yet witch burning was a real thing in patriarchal European history for centuries! Somehow, that is one patriarchal genocide that we never learned about in school books.  In the history of patriarchal regimes, religious or secular, perhaps millions of women and a smaller percentage of men, were tortured and brutally, cruelly murdered for having their own beliefs. The crime was called heresy; failure to believe what must be believed by law.  So, if as a woman, you were raised with wise understanding of herbal healing and midwifery passed down through your family, and now some priests, cum doctors, are telling you what you may or may not believe, what you may or may not practice, you might be inclined to tell them to go fornicate themselves. Sanctioned by church and state law, church henchmen retaliated with such cruel devices for torture and murder that it must make Jesus weep, still.

 

If you took a survey today, in most places around the world, among most populations, few people have any awareness that so much death, pain and destruction was wreaked by the church and state, in order to vanquish women’s place and authority in culture.  The European witch burnings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance never invoke the horror that the German Holocaust or American Slavery rightly invoke; yet, the male created and male executed persecution of women in all walks of life, based on spurious religious justifications and totalitarian rule, is just as historical, just as monumentally genocidal, just as deeply tragic and in light of the attack on US women’s reproductive freedom and voting rights, just as prevalent, today.

 

Let’s remember that the young Persephone of the compassionate heart acted of her own accord when she chose to lighten the struggle of the lost dead and help them find the light. It took courage, self-sacrifice and vision to do what she did, and in gratitude the dead called her their Queen. It took courage for Demeter, her doting mother, to let her go.  Her gift to her daughter was to continue to love her, even as she let her go.  No guilt, obligation or pressure on her daughter to live out a script she herself might have chosen for her. Instead, she grieves her own loss, but support’s her daughter’s mission.

 

The death of beloved Feminist icons, Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, reminds me that now is the time to support young women, older women, women of color, all women who want to make a difference and help us end this dry, dusty, deadly era of patriarchy.

 

We are spiritual beings having a physical experience on a tremendously challenging physical plane of existence.  As spiritual beings, we live beyond the expiration date of our physical expressions of consciousness.  Gender doesn’t matter.  Skin color doesn’t matter, neither does ethnicity.  Spirit isn’t physical and doesn’t just express itself that way, so why limit ourselves so drastically while we’re in these earth suits?

 

In my dream of Persephone’s descent, she is the warrior princess who refuses to allow injustice to exist on her watch.  Persephone is the patron saint of real women; she doesn’t give a fig or a pomegranate about anything others think.  She does what she feels in her heart is right.  When she returns from her mission, she reunites with Demeter, her loving and supportive mother.  They share the secrets of above and below, life and death.  They’re a team.

 

I see so many strong, wise and brave young women adeptly using social media to champion social justice and challenge patriarchal gaslighting.  I see so many women of diverse backgrounds taking the challenge to offer better service and better leadership to the American people, through public office. I see so many women claiming their voice and power, owning the role of Crone and continuing the good fight for women’s rights.  Despite all we’ve been through or will go through, women are stronger now than ever. 

  

Shout out to all the incredible daughters, moms, sisters and crones who are standing up for a new myth that doesn’t make women either the culprit or the victim. We are each the “hero” of our own story but there’s a greater story, an older story and one that doesn’t end in death, about one young woman’s courage and compassion, that’s worth the telling.  Think of all that Persephone teaches us in this new, old myth of Fall.