Saturday 5 October 2013

Koran and the Goddess Kore



Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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Koran

Mohammedan scriptures, often erroneously thought to have been written by Mohammed.  Moslems don't believe this. But many don't know the Koran was an enlarged, revised version of the ancient Word of the Goddess Kore, revered by Mohammed's tribe, the Koreshited (Children of Kore), who guarded her shrine at Mecca.

The original writing was done long before Mohammed's time by holy imans, a word related to Semitic ima, "mother".  Like the original mahatmas or "great mothers" in India, the original imams were probably priestesses of the old Arabian matriarchate.  It was said they took the scriptures from a prototype that existed in heaven from the beginning of eternity, "Mother of the Book" – i.e., the Goddess herself, wearing the Book of Fate on her breast as Mother Tiamat wore the Tablets of Destiny.  Sometimes the celestial Koran was called the Preserved Tablet. There was some resemblance between this and other legendary books of divine origin, such as the Ur – text, the Book of Thoth, and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.

As in the case of the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Koran was much rewritten to support new patriarchal laws and to obliterate the figures of the Goddess and her priestesses. 

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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Kore

Greek holy Virgin, inner soul of Mother Earth (Demeter); a name so widespread, that it must have been one of the earliest designations of the World Shakti or female spirit of the universe.  Variations include Ker, Car, Q're, Cara, Kher, Ceres, Core, Sanskit Kaur or Kauri, alternative names for the Goddess Kali.

Shrines of Karnak in Egypt and Carnac in Brittany were sites of gigantic temples and funerary complexes over 5000 years ago, dedicated to Kar or Kore.  France had similar shrines in similarly-named locations, Kerlescan, Kercado, Kermario.  The last name combined the pagan Virgin with the Goddess Mari, who was sometimes her daughter, her mother, or herself, like Kali embodied in Kel-Mari.  Inhabitants of Carnac, and of Carnuntum on the Danube, called themselves in Roman times the Carnutes, "people born of the Goddess Car."

In Egypt's early dynastic period there was a place called Kerma (Mother Ker) in Nubia, where mass sacrifices took place.  A similar name, Kara, was held in reverence by several early Egyptians rulers, Egyptians spoke of an eastern land called Kher, and called Palestine the country of Kharu.

Car or Carna was known to the Romans as "a Goddess of the olden time," whose archaic worship was connected with Karneia festivals of Sparta and the classic Roman Carnival.  Sometimes she was Carmenta "the Mind of Car," who invented the Roman alphabet.  An extremely old temple on the Caelian Hill was dedicated to her.  A later variation of her name was Ceres, origin of such words as cereal, corn, kernel, core, carnal, cardiac.

In the east this ancient Goddess was everywhere.  Some said she was Artmis Caryatis, mother of the Caryatides of the Laconian temple of Caryae.  The Tyrian seaport Caraalis (modern Cagliari) was sacred to her.  One of Israel's oldest shrines, the "garden" called Mount Carmel, was her place and that of her baalim (gods).

Kore was a great power in Coptic religion, with a flourishing cult at Alexandria in the 4th century A.D.  Her festival, the Koreion, was held each January 6, later assimilated to Christianity as the feast of Epiphany.  Kore's festival celebrated the birth of the new year god Aeon to the Virgin, whose naked image was carried seven times around the temple, decorated with gold stars and the sign of the cross.  The priests announced to the public that the Virgin had brought forth the Aeon.

The Koreion passed into British tradition as the Kirn, or Feast of Ingathering, which the church later changed to the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy.  Kirn was cognate of the Greek kern or sacred womb-vase in which the grain god was reborn.  Here again the Kore or Ker was a virgin mother.  The Goddess's harvest instrument, a moon-sickle, represented even the Christian version of the festival. 

The classic myth of Kore's abduction by Pluto was another instance of a god's usurpation of the Goddess's power, according to the Gnostic sources.  "Plutonius Zeus…does not possess the nourishment for all mortal living creatures, for it is Kore who bears the fruit."  Kore's resurrection represented the seasonal return of vegetation.  She was also the World Soul animating each human soul, and looking out of the eyes.  Reflection in the pupil of the eye was known as the Kore or "Maiden" in the eye.  To the Arabs, it was the "baby" in the eye.  The Bible calls either a daughter or a soul "apple of thine eye" (Proverbs 7:2); and of course, every apple had a Kore.


Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.


Eve

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.

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"The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets", by Barbara G. Walker.

Eve

The biblical title of Eve, "Mother of All living," was translation of Kali Ma's Jaganmata.  She was also known in India as Jiva or Ieva, the Creatress of all manifested forms.  In Assyrian scriptures she was entitled Mother-Womb, Creatress of Destiny, who made male and female human beings out of clay, "in pairs she competed them".  The first of the Bible's two creation myths give this Assyrian version, significantly changing "she" to "he" (Genesis 1:27).

The original Eve had no spouse except the serpent, a living phallus she created for her own sexual pleasure.  Some ancient peoples regard the Goddess and her serpent as their first parents.  Sacred icons showed the Goddess giving life to a man, while her serpent coiled around the apple tree behind her.  Deliberate misinterpretation of such icons produced ideas for revised creation myths like the one in Genesis.  Some Jewish traditions of the first century B.C., however, identified Jehovah with the serpent deity who accompanied the Mother in her garden.  Sometimes she was Eve, sometimes her name was given as Nahemah, Naama, or Namrael, who gave birth to Eve and Adam without the help of any male, even the serpent.

Because Jehovah arrogantly pretended to be the sole Creator, Eve was obliged to punish him, according to Gnostic scriptures.  Though the Mother of All Living existed before everything, the God forgot she had made him and had given him some of her creative power.  "He was even ignorant of his own Mother…It was because he was foolish and ignorant of his own Mother that he said, 'I am God; there is none besides me.'"  Gnostic texts often show the creator reprimanded and punished for his arrogance by a feminine power greater and older than himself.

The secret of God's "Name of power," the Tetragrammaton, was that three quarters of it invoked not God, but Eve.  YHWH, yod-he-vau-he, came from the Hebrew root HWH, meaning both "life" and "women" – in Latin letters, E-V-E.  With the addition of an I (yod), it amounted to the Goddess's invocation of her own name as the Word of creation, a common idea in Egypt and other ancient lands.

Gnostic scriptures said Adam was created by the power of Eve's word, not God's.  She said, "Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!"  As soon as she spoke the word, her word became reality.  Adam rose up and opened his eyes.  When he saw her, he said, 'You will be called "the mother of the living," because you are the one who gave me life."

Adam's name meant he was formed of clay moistened with blood, the female magic of adamah or "bloody clay".  He didn't produce the Mother of All Living from his rib; in earlier Mesopotamian stories, he was produced from hers.  His Babylonian predecessor Adapa (or Adamu) was deprived of eternal life not by the Goddess, but by a hostile God. 

The biblical idea was a reversal of older myths in which the Goddess brought forth a primal male ancestor, then made him her mate – the ubiquitous, archetypal divine-incest relationship traceable in every mythology.  The reversal was not even original with biblical authors.  It was evolved by Aryan patriarchs who called Brahma the primal male ancestor.  They claimed their god brought forth the Mother of All Living from his own body, then mated with her, so she gave birth to the rest of the universe.  The Hebraic version, a wombless God made his offspring with his own hands, and the actual birth-giving was left to Adam.  The Bible as revised by patriarchal scribes said nothing about divine birth-giving, since the scribes were determined to separate the concept of "deity" and "mother" insofar as possible. 

Gnostic scriptures however reverted to the older tradition and said Eve not only created Adam and obtained his admission to heaven; she was the very soul within him, as Shakti was the soul of every Hindu god and yogi.  Adam couldn't live without "power from the Mother," so she descended to earth as "the Good Spirit, the Thought of Light called by him 'life' (Hawwa)."  She entered into Adam as his guiding spirit of conscience:  "It is she who works at the creature, exerts herself on him, set him in his own perfect temple, enlightens him on the origin of his deficiency, and shows him his (way of) ascent."  Through her, Adam was able to rise above the ignorance imposed on him by the male God.

By this Gnostic route came the Midrashic assertion that Adam and Eve were originally androgynous, like Shiva and his Shakti.  She dwelt in him, and he in her; they were two souls united in one body, which God later tore apart, depriving them of their bliss of union.  Cabalists took up the idea and said the paradise of Eden can be regained only when two sexes are once more united; even God must be united with his female counterpart, the heavenly Eve called Shekina.

Another Gnostic version of the story made God the true villain, who cursed Adam and Eve and expelled them from paradise out of jealousy of their happiness.  He also lusted after the Virgin Eve, raped her, and begot her sons Jahveh and Elohim, whose other names were Cain and Abel.  Here was one of several myths that made Eve the mother not only of Adam, but also of Jehovah, and of all the elements as well.  The myths went on to say the first Eve's offspring ruled the male elements of fire and air; the second ruled the female elements of earth and water.

Like her prototype Kali Jaganmata, Eve brought forth death as well as life – that is, she brought forth all living forms, all of which were subjected to death for the very reason that they were alive.  Under patriarchal system of belief, the fact that every living thing is doomed to die was blamed on the Mother who gave it a finite life.  Instead of blaming God for casting Adam out of the paradise where he might have lived forever, the patriarchs blamed Eve for bringing this about.  "Because of her we all die."  Fathers of the Christian Church said Eve conceived by the serpent and brought forth Death.  The seeds of all women already existed in Eve, St. John Chrysostom maintained, so that in her sin "the whole female race transgressed."

The book of Enoch said God created death to punish all humanity for Eve's sin, but many patriarchal thinkers hesitated to blame God even indirectly.  The prevalent opinion was that when Eve disobeyed the deity, death somehow just happened.  St. Paul blamed only Eve, absolving Adam from guilt for the apple-eating incident:  "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Timothy 2:14).  A church council announced in 418 A.D. that it was heresy to say death was a necessity rather than the result of Eve's disobedience.

This was the real origin of the church father's fear and hatred of women, which expanded into a sexist attitude that permeated all of western society:  Women was identified with Death.  Her countervailing responsibility for birth was taken away, and the creation of life was laid to the credit of the Father-god, whose priests claimed he could remove the curse of death.  As every women was understood to be an emanation of Eve.  Tertullian said to Everywoman:

And do you know that you are an Eve?  The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age; the guilt must of necessity live too.  You are the devil's gateway…the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You destroyed so easily God's image, man.  On account of your desert – that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.

Medieval theologians said Adam was forgiven. Christ descended into hell and recued Adam along with other biblical patriarchs.  He escorted Adam into heaven, saying, "Peace be to thee and to all the just among thy sons."  But for Eve there was no forgiveness.  No peace was offered to her or her daughters.  Presumably, they were left behind in hell.  Christian theologians espoused the same theory as Persian patriarchs, that heaven was closed to all women except those who were submissive and worshipped their husbands as gods.  Even modern theologians naively blame human death on the Edenic sin.  Rahner said, "Man's death is the demonstration of the fact that he has fallen away from God…Death is guilt make visible."  Theologians have not yet dealt with the question of what "guilt" causes death among non-human creatures.

Actually, churches depend for their very existence on the orthodox myth of Eve.  "Take the snake, the fruit tree, and the woman from the tableau, and we have no fall, no frowning Judge, no Inferno, no everlasting punishment – hence no need of a Savior.  Thus the bottom falls out of the whole Christian theology."

Equally destructive to the Christian theology would be restoration of books arbitrarily excluded from the canon, such as the Apocalypse of Adam, in which Adam stated that he and Eve were created together but she was his superior.  She brought with her "a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which we had come forth.  She taught me a word of knowledge… And we resembled the great eternal angels, for we were higher than the God who created us"

Some of these once-sacred books made Eve superior to both Adam and the creator.  It was she, not God, who gave Adam his soul and brought him to life.  It was she, not God, who cast down the evil deities from heaven and made them demons.  And she, as the eternal female Power, would eventually judge the God she created, find him guilty of injustice, and destroy him.

As an allegory, this might reflect a social truth.  Fragile constructs of the collective mind, gods are easily destroyed by those who ignore them.  Early Gnostic documents show that most women of the ancient world were disposed to ignore the God who was said to have cursed their sex and their descendants forever.  Had one of the other versions of the Eve myth prevailed over the canonical version, sexual behaviour patterns in western civilization almost certainly would have evolved along very different lines.  Christianity managed to project man's fear of death onto woman, not to respect her as Kali the Destroyer was respected, but to hate her.

The uncanonical scriptures were no more and no less creditable than the canonical ones.  Their picture of Eve as God's stern mother, the defender of mankind against a tyrannical demon-deity, had more adherents in the early Christian centuries than the picture that is now familiar.  One of Christianity's best-kept secrets was that the Mother of All Living was the Creatress who chastised God.

Postscript

One of her Tantric names was Adita Eva, "the Very Beginning."  In northern Babylonia Eve was known s "the divine lady of Eden," or "Goddess of the Tree of Life." Assyrians called her Nin-Eveh, "Holy Lady Eve," after whom their capital city was named.

Eve was of the common Middle-Eastern names of the superior feminine power.  To the Hittites, she was Hawwah, "life."  To the Persians, she was Hvov, "the Earth."  Aramaeans called her Hawah, "Mother of All Living." In Anatolia she was Hebat or Hebat, with a Greek derivative Hebe, "Virgin Mother of Earth," with the same relationship to the Great Goddess Hera as Kore – Persephone to Demeter, and Hebe may have been an eponymous ancestress of "Hebrews."  A semitic root of her names was havy, a matrilineal kinship group, once considered the "life" of every tribe by direct descent from the Creatress.  The names of Eve, the Serpent, and "Life" are derived from the same root in Arabic. 

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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Bitch

This became a naughty word in Christian Europe because it was one of the most sacred titles of the Goddess, Artemis-Diana, leader of the Scythian alani or "hunting dogs."  The Bitch-goddess of antiquity was known in all Indo-European cultures, beginning with the Great Bitch Sarama who led the Vedic dogs of death.  The Old English word for a hunting dog, bawd, also became a naughty word because it applied to the divine Huntress's promiscuous priestesses as well as her dogs.

Harlots and "Bitches" were identified in the ancient Roman cult of Goddess Lupa, the Wolf Bitch, whose priestesses the lupae gave their name to prostitutes in general.  Earthly representatives of the Wolf Bitch ruled the Roman town of Ira Flavia in Spain, as a queen or series of queens named Lupa.

In Christian terms, "son of a bitch" was considered insulting not because it meant a dog, but because it meant a devil – that is, a spiritual son of the pagan Goddess.

Virgin Birth


Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.

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 "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets", by Barbara G. Walker.

Virgin Birth

"Holy Virgin" was the title of harlot-priestesses of Ishtar, Asherah or Aphrodite.  The title didn't mean physical virginity; it meant simply "unmarried,"  The function of such "holy virgins" was to dispense the Mother's grace through sexual worship; to heal; to prophesy; to perform sacred dances; to wail for the dead; and to become Brides of God.

Children born of such temple women were called by the Semites bathur, by the Greeks parthenioi, "virgin-born."  According to the Protoevangelium, the Virgin Mary was a kadesha and perhaps married to one of that class of priests known as "fathers of the god." 

Mary's impregnation was similar to Persephone's.  In her Virgin guise, Persephone sat in a holy cave and began to weave the great tapestry of the universe, when Zeus appeared as a phallic serpent, to beget the savior Dionysus on her.  Mary sat in the temple and began to spin a blood-red thread, representing Life in the tapestry of fate, when the angel Gabriel "came in unto her" (Luke 1:28), the biblical phrase for sexual intercourse.  Gabriel's name means literally "divine husband."

Hebrew Gospels designated Mary by the word almah, mistakenly translated "virgin," but really meaning "young woman."  It was derived from Persian Al-Mah, the unmated Moon-goddess.  Another cognate was Latin alma, "living soul of the world," virtually identical to Greek psyche, Sanskrit shakti.  The Holy Virgins or temple-harlots were "soul-teachers" or "soul-mothers" – the alma mater.

Christian translators insisted on rendering Mary's title as "virgin," which saddled their religion with an embarrassing article of faith.  Even today, theologians like Karl Barth declare that "It is essential to the true Christian faith to accept the doctrine of the virgin birth" – thus drastically reducing the number of people who can be called true Christians.

Early Christians demanded a virgin birth for their Savior out of simple imitativeness.  All the other Saviors had one, for they were both of the Goddess incarnated in a chosen "virgin of the temple," whose business it was to bear Saviors.  The notion that mortal women were impregnated by gods or spirits was a matter of everyday acceptance throughout the ancient world.  Even the Old Testament say archaic "giants" (ancestral heroes) were born of mortal women impregnated by spirits that came from God (Genesis 6:4).

Zoroaster, Sargon, Perseus, Jason, Miletus, Minos, Asclepius, and dozens of others were God-begotten and virgin-born.  Even Zeus, the Heavenly Father who begot many other "virgin-born" heroes, was himself called Zeus Marnas, "Virgin-born Zeus."  Plutarch noted among the Egyptians the common belief that the spirit of God was capable of sexual intercourse with mortal women.

Heracles was born of another almah, the Virgin Alcmene, whose name means Power of the Moon.  Her husband also, like the biblical Joseph, kept away from her bed during pregnancy.  The same tale was told of Plato, whose nephew affirmed that he was begotten by the god Apollo, his earthly parents having no sexual relations until after his birth.  Christians believed this, and solemnly attested that Plato was a virgin-born son of the sun-god.

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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After Christianity was established as the official religion of the Roman empire, however, church fathers tried to discredit all other virgin births by claiming that the devil had devised them, and maliciously placed them in a past time, so they would pre-date the real Savior.  Justin Martyr wrote, "when I am told that Perseus was born of a virgin I realize that here again is a case in which the serpent and deceiver has imitated our religion."

Despite the efforts of church fathers, the virgin birth of Jesus was neither the first nor the last such miracle given credence by Christians.  Priapic idols of antiquity, credited with the power to father children, actually fathered other priapic idols who become saints like Foutin, Gurtlichon, Gilles, Refnaud, and Guignole; these were credited with the same powers of fertilization and were much adored by women who desired offspring.  Women of Tuscany and Portugal thought they could become pregnant by eating apples specially consecrated by a priest.  Spaniards remembered the virgin birth of Mars, and thought any woman could conceive like Mars's mother Juno, by eating a lily.  It was believed that souls could enter a woman's body in the form of flies, worms, or serpents, to cause impregnation.  Cases were solemnly documented, like that of a Scot named Gillie Downak Chravolick, conceived when his mother raised her skirts on an old battlefield and received into her "private member" some ashes from the burned bones of dead warriors.  As impregnation by a god use to be the "acceptable explanation for pregnancy in most pagan countries where the sexual act was part of the fertility rites," so Christians thought impregnation by spirits was still credible, whether the alleged father was a dead hero, a devil, an incubus, or even –in some sects-the Holy Ghost again.

Such an untenable belief survived because it was important to men.  The impossible virgin mother was everyman's longed-for resolution of Oedipal conflicts: pure maternity, never distracted from her devotion by sexual desires.  Churchmen unwittingly showed their anxiety by denying even the evidence of their own Gospels that Jesus had brothers and sisters.  St. Ambrose insisted that Mary never conceived again, since God couldn't have chosen for his mother-bride "a woman who would defile the heavenly chamber with the seed of a man."

Theologians in effect severed the two halves of the pagan Goddess, whose realistic femininity combined abundant sexuality and maternity.  One half was labelled harlot and temptress, the other a female ascetic even in motherhood.  The Goddess's old title, Sancta Matrona-Holy Mother- was added to the canon of saints as a phony St. Matrona, whose pseudo-biography made her a "hermitess."

The primitive naïveté of the virgin-birth concept was dressed in pretentious verbiage, purporting to explain it, while actually hiding it from prying eyes.  "A shadow is formed by light falling upon a body, but the power of the most High overshadowed her, which incorporeal light of the godhead took a human body with her, and so she was able to bear God."

Churchmen often presented the doctrine of the virgin birth as "ennobling" to women, since they viewed women's natural sexuality as degrading.   Seldom were female sexuality and motherhood perceived as component parts of the same whole.  Some women were astute enough to see that the doctrine effectively degraded read womanhood by exalting a ever-attainable ideal.  At the end of the 19th century on woman wrote:

I think that the doctrine of the Virgin birth as something higher, sweeter, nobler than ordinary motherhood, is a slur on all the natural motherhood of the world…Out of this doctrine, and that which is akin to it, have sprung all the monasteries and nuns of the world, which have disgraced and distorted and demoralized manhood and womanhood for a thousand years.  I place beside this false, monkish, unnatural claim…my mother, who was a holy in her motherhood as Mary herself.

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.




Mary Magdaline

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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"The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets", by Barbara G. Walker.

Mary Magdalene

The Gospels say Jesus cast seven devils out of the sacred harlot Mary Magdalene, and appeared first to her after his resurrection (Mark 16:9).  Books later eliminated from the cannon by Christian censors gave further curious details about the relationship:  Jesus loved Mary Magdalene more than all other apostles, called Apostle to the Apostles and "the Woman Who Knew the All," and often kissed her.  He said she would excel every other disciple in the coming Kingdom of light, where she would rule.

Before Gnostic Gospels were cut out of the canon, they were accepted as the Word of God, as much as the synoptic Gospels and other New Testament writings.  Therefore medieval traditions concerning Mary Magdalene hark back to her early mystical supremacy.  She was called Mary Lucifer, "Mary the Light-giver."  It was said Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead solely for love of her.  "There was no grace that He refused her, nor any mark of affection that He withheld from her."

The Pistis Sophia made Mary Magdalene the questioner of Jesus, in the Oriental manner of the catechism applied to the god by his Shakti or Devi (Goddess).  The female questioner then was addressed as "Dearly Beloved."  Jesus used the same form of address, though later editors eliminated all traces of the identity of his questioner; but it was apparent that his "dearly beloved" was Mary Magdalene.

Origen showed a mystic devotion to Mary Magdalene, confusing her with the Goddess by calling her "the mother of all of us," and sometimes Jerusalem, and sometimes The Church (Ecclesia, another title of the Virgin).  Origen claimed Mary Magdalene was immortal, having lived from the beginning of time.

Thus it seems Mary the Whore was only another form of Mary the Virgin, otherwise the Triple Goddess Mari-Anna-Ishtar, the Great Whore of Babylon who was worshipped along with her savior-son in the Jerusalem temple.  The Gospel of Mary said all three Marys of the canonical books were one and the same.

Indeed, the Virgin and Whore were still confused with one another in the 7th century A.D. when, on the day of the Nativity, of the Blessed Virgin, Pope Sergius instituted an annual procession to the old temple of the prostitute-goddess Libera, changing the temple's name to Santa Maria Maggiore:  Most-Great Holy Mary.  It was not made clear which Holy Mary was meant.  A Gnostic poem merged the two of them as a primal feminine power:  "I am the first and the last.  I am the honored one and the scorned one.  I am the whore, and the holy one."

Magdalene means "she of the temple-tower."  The Jerusalem temple had a triple tower representing the triple deity, one tower bearing the name of the queen, Mariamne, an earthy incarnation of the Goddess Mari.  This was the same Mariamne, Miriam or Mary who took Joseph for her lover.  Priestesses of this temple apparently subsidized Jesus and his companions, according to Luke 8:1-3, which says Jesus and "the twelve" were financially supported by Mary Magdalene and a group of women.  Latin text say the women provided for "him" (Jesus), but Greek texts made it "them."

The seven "devils" exorcised from Mary Magdalene seem to have been the seven Maskim, or Anunnaki, Sumero-Akkadian spirits of the seven nether spheres, born of the Goddess Mari.  Their multiple birth was represented in her sacred dramas, which may account for their alleged emergence from Mary Magdalene.  An Akkadian tablet said of them:  "They are seven! In the depths of the ocean, they are seven! In the brilliancy of the heavens, they are seven! They proceed from the ocean depths (Maria), from the hidden retreat."

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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The Gospel says no men attended Jesus's tomb, but only Mary Magdalene and her women.  Only women announced Jesus's resurrection.  This was because men were barred from the central mysteries of the Goddess.  Priestesses announced the successful conclusion of the rites, and the Savior's resurrection.  The Bible says the male apostles knew nothing of Jesus's resurrection, and had to take the women's word for it (Luke24:10-11).  The apostles were ignorant of the sacred tradition and didn't even realize a resurrection was expected: "they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead" (John 20:9).

Mari-Ishtar the Great Whore anointed-or Christ-end-her doomed god when he went into the underworld, whence he would rise again at her bidding.  That is, she made him Christ.  Her priestess raised the lament for him when he died in the flesh, as a sacrificial victim.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh, victims were told: "The harlot who anointed by with fragrant oil laments for you now."  Temple-women of Jerusalem raised the same lament for Tammus (Ezekiel 8:14), with whom Jesus was identified.  Jesus himself said Mary Magdalene anointed him for his burial, pouring a precious unguent on his head in the time-honored manner of the sacred king's crowning (Matthew 26:7-12).  The christening-vase of holy oil was the ubiquitous symbol of Mary Magdalene in Christian art-through the virgin Mary also bore the harlot's title of Holy Vase.

Virgin and Whore constantly exchanged attributes through the Middle Ages; the virgin Mary was consistently a special patron of prostitutes.  A Christian magic ring, now in the London museum, bears the legend, "Holy Mary Magdalene pray for me."

Pope Julius II by a papal bull established a "sacred" brothel in Rome, which flourished under his successors Leo X and Clement VII.  The earning of this brothel supported the Holy Sisters and magdalenes (whores) were one of the same.  Pope Innocent III also favored Rome's collegia of prostitutes, called virgines, "unmarried women."  He publicly announced that any man who married one of them would be specially praised in heaven.

Much Christian myth-making went into the later history of Mary Magdalene.  She was said to have lived for a while with the virgin Mary at Ephesus.  This story probably was invented to account for the name Maria associated with the Ephesian Goddess.  Afterward, Mary Magdalene went to Marseilles, another town named after the ancient sea-mother Mari.  Her cult centred there. Bones found at Vezelay and declared to hers.  Her dwelling was a cave formerly sacred to the pagans, at St. Baume (Holy Tree).  For thirty years she lived there without eating or drinking, her only nourishment the sweet songs of angels, "delightful repast" she daily took in through her ears.  A church was built over her grotto.  Local winegrowers still offer votive candles to her for a good vintage, as if the ancient-fertility-mother still occupied the site.

St. Martha accompanied Mary to Provence and worked a number of miracles there.  Meeting a dragon named Tarasque (i.e. the Celtic deity Taranis), Martha destroyed him by tying him up with her girdle and pouring holy water on his head.  Old images of the Twofold Goddess with her Great Serpent seem to have been renamed Mary and Martha.  More often, Mary appeared as the typical feminine trinity ruling birth, love and death.  As Holy Mary at the Cradle, she was the midwife (or birth-goddess) who delivered Jesus.  As harlot and funerary priestess she was linked with sex and death.  Finally there was the Gnostic suggestion that she was the original "pope," foundress of Christian church, according to the Oriental idea that spiritual authority must pass from male to female and vice versa.

Some said she married St. John the Evangelist.  In 12th century Milan they were worshipped together in a dual cathedral built and administered by the monks of St. John jointly with the virgines of St. Maria Maggiore, also entitled Sancta Dei Genetrix (Holy Mother of God).  The androgynous cathedral was excavated in 1943-44, but its discovery was kept secret.

During the 13th century a Dianic Temple was rededicated to Mary Magdalene.  At Easter, the story of her conversion of the rulers of Marseilles was chanted at the altar.  Later the sacred song was suppressed.  Mary's devotees were forbidden to hold mass.  In 1781, the Magdalene temple was demolished.

Rasa Von Werder, photographer, is building a Mega-Website to house her work; an education / spiritual vehicle that will put God back into Sex & Sex back into Religion.  It is a fall-back to our Original Source:  Mother God - When She was worshiped, women were venerated & Sex was Sacred.  We will revive Goddess Religion, Shaktiism, & Tantra Sex.  We will teach men how to worship God through the woman's body & how to make love to Her in a pleasing manner.
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Postscript

Pistis Sophia (Faith-Wisdom)
A Gnostic scripture of the 3rd century A.D., translated from the Greek to Coptic, setting forth the teachings of Jesus upon his return to earth, 12 years after his resurrection.

Gospel of Mary
One of the early Gnostic Gospels, once included with the books of the New Testament but later eliminated form the canon.  A copy was rediscovered in the 1940s at Nag Hammadi.

WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN 1

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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Merlin Stone

Chapter Three: Women – Where Woman Was Deified

The question most pressing – perhaps the one that has most insistently caused this book to come into being – is this: What effect did the worship of the female deity actually have upon the status of women in the cultures in which She was extolled?  Hinz, Evans, Langdon and many others have referred to the ancient Goddess-worshipping societies as matriarchal.  Exactly what does this imply?

It would be easy to enter into a see-saw type of reasoning here; that is to say, they worshiped a Goddess, therefore women must have held a high status, or because women held a high status, therefore a Goddess was worshipped; though these two factors, if we judge by the attitudes of the societies that worshipped the male deities of today, may have been closely related.  Yet various views on the subject should be considered, even those in which cause and effect appear to be confused or simultaneous events are perceived as linear.  What we want to achieve is as comprehensive an understanding as possible of the relationship of the female religions to the position of women.

In The Dominant Sex, M. and M. Vaerting, writing in Germany in 1923, asserted that the sex of the deity was determined by the sex of those who were in power:

The ruling sex, having the power to diffuse its own outlooks, tends to generalize its specific ideology.  Should the trends of the subordinate sex run counter, they are likely to be suppressed all the more forcibly in proportion as the dominant sex is more overwhelming.  The result is that the hegemony of male deities is usually associated with the dominance of men and the hegemony of female deities with the dominance of women.

Sir James Frazer believed that the high status of women was initially responsible for the veneration and esteem of the female deity.  He cited the Pelew clan of Micronesia, where the women were considered to be socially and politically superior to the men.  "This preference for goddesses over gods," he wrote, "in the clan of the Pelew Islanders have been explained, no doubt rightly, by the high importance of women in the social system of the people."

Robertson Smith connected the choice of the sex of the supreme deity to the position of the dominance of the male or female within the family.  He suggested that, as a result of the kinship system, the sexual identity of the head of the family formulated the sexual identity of the supreme deity.

Each of these is an example of the theory that the sex of the deity is determined by a previously existing dominance of one sex over the other – in the case of the Goddess, the higher position of women in the family and in society.  Alongside these theories there have been reams of pseudo-poetic material about the deification of the female as the symbol of fertility – by the male – the awe of the magic of her ability to produce a child supposedly making her the object of his worship. 

As I just mentioned, Frazer suggested that the high status of women led to the worship of the Goddess as supreme being, basing his conclusions on years of study of "primitive" and classical societies.  But as a result of his research, he also connected the worship of the female deity to a mother-kinship system and ancestor worship, explaining that, "wherever the goddess is superior to the god, and ancestresses more reverently worshipped than ancestors, there is nearly always a mother-kin structure."  Robertson Smith also related the sexual identity of the supreme deity to the kinship system prevalent in each society.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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Whatever the suggested order of cause and effect, one of the major factors which continually appears in the material concerned with the status and role of women in the ancient female religion in historic times is its close connection to female kinship, matrilineality, perhaps the very origins of its development.  In examining the position of women, this mother or female kin structure, leading to matrilineal descent of name and property, should be carefully studied.

Matrilineality is generally defined as that societal structure in which inheritance takes place through the female line, sons, husbands or brothers gaining access to the title and property only as the result of their relationship to the woman who is the legal owner.  Matrilineal descent does not mean matriarchy, which is defined as women in power, or more specifically the mother, as the head of the family, taking this position in community or state government as well.  In some matrilineal societies, the brother of the woman who holds the rights to the name and property plays an important role.  Yet we cannot ignore the probability that matrilineal and matrilocal customs would affect the status and position of women in various ways.  The subtleties of the power and bargaining position that come with the ownership of house, property or title, or as in matrilocal societies, women residing in the village or home of their own parents rather than their in-law', should be considered.

The economics of the Neolithic and early historic agricultural societies were discussed by sociologist V. Klein in 1946.  She suggested that, "In early society women wielded the main sources of wealth; they were the owners of the house, the producers of food, they provided shelter and security.  Economically, therefore, man was dependent upon women."

Societies that followed female or mother kinship customs have been known is the past and still appear in many areas of the world.  The theory that most societies were originally matrilineal, matriarchal and even polyandrous (one woman with several husbands) was the subject of several extensive studiers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Scholars such as Johann Bachofen, Robert Briffault and Edward Hartland accepted the idea of ancient matriarchy and polyandry, substantiating their theories with a great deal of evidence, but they regarded these systems as a specific stage in evolutionary development.  They suggested that all societies had to pass through a matriarchal stage before becoming patriarchal and monogamous, which they appear to have regarded as a superior stage of civilization.  But as Jacquetta Hawkes observes, "Today it is unfashionable to talk about former more matriarchal orders of society.  Nevertheless, there is evidence from any parts of the world that the role of women has weakened since earlier times in several section of social structure."

Many of the studies of matriarchy were based upon anthropological analogy and the classical literature of Greece and Rome.  Since most of these works were researched in the nineteenth and earliest part of the twentieth centuries, these writers did not have access to much of the archaeological evidence that is available today.  Despite specific misunderstandings, or biased value judgments, we may yet find that these writers were prophetically ahead of their time.

Today we have the use of a much greater body of material, produced by extensive archaeological excavation of the Near and Middle East throughout this century, as well as the material available to those earlier writers.  It is true that the chance fortunes of archaeological finds – what remains undiscovered, what is found too damaged to read, what cannot be deciphered and what has perished as the result of nature of the original material – present limitations.

Hammurabi's law code of Babylon (about 1790 BC), long regarded as the oldest ever compiled, is now know to have been preceded by several others, more recently discovered.  Still, only one of these dates back to about 2300 BC and the others to about 2000 BC or slightly later.  So we must still rely on material that appears in written form only after the beginnings of the northern invasions.  But carefully sifting through the available evidence and commentary, which differ according to the location and era, we may gain some insight into the status of women in Goddess-worshipping societies.  The Goddess religion, though slowly declining, still existed.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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ETHIOPIA AND LIBYA – "ALL AUTHORITY WAS VESTED IN THE WOMAN…"

Forty nine years before the birth of Christ, a man from Roman Sicily wrote of his travels in northern Africa and some of the Near Eastern countries, recording his observations of people along the way.  He was keenly interested in cultural patterns and was certainly one of the forerunners of the field of anthropology and sociology.   This man was known as Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus of Sicily.  Many statements reporting the high or even dominant status of women were included in his writings.  We may question why he, more than any other classical writer, recorded so much information about women warriors and matriarchy in the nations all about him.  He did not belittle the men who lived in such social systems; that did not appear to be his aim.  Indeed he seemed to be rather admiring and respectful of the women who wielded such power.

It was Diodorus who reported that the women of Ethiopia carried arms, practiced communal marriage and raised their children so communally that they often confused even themselves as to who the natural mother had been.  In parts of Libya, where the Goddess Neith was highly esteemed, accounts of Amazon women still lingered even in Roman times.  Diodorus described a nation in Libya as follows:

All authority was vested in the woman, who discharged every kind of public duty.  The men looked after domestic affairs just as the women do among ourselves and did as they were told by their wives.  They were not allowed to undertake war service or exercise any functions of government, or to fill any public office, such as might given them more spirit to set themselves up against the women.  The children were handed over immediately after birth to the men, who reared them on milk and other foods suitable to their age. 

Diodorus wrote of warrior women existing in Libya, reporting that these women had formed into armies which had invaded other lands.  According to him, they revered the Goddess as their major deity and set sanctuaries for Her worship.  Though he gives no specific name, the accounts probably refer to the Libyan warrior-Goddess know a Neith, who was also revered under that name in Egypt.

EGYPT – "WHILE THE HUSBANDS STAY HOME AND WEAVE"

In prehistoric Egypt, the Goddess held supremacy in Upper Egypt (The South) as Nekhebt, symbolized as a vulture.  The people of lower Egypt, which includes the northern delta region, worshiped their supreme Goddess as a cobra, using the name Ua Zit (Great Serpent).  From about 3000 BC onwards the Goddess, known as Nut, Net or Nit, probably derived from Nekhebt, was said to have existed when nothing else had yet been created.  She then created all that had come into being.  According to Egyptian mythology, it was She who first placed Ra, the sun god, in the sky.  Older texts of Egypt tell of the Goddess as Hathor in this role of creator of existence, explaining that She took the form of a serpent at that time.

In Egypt the concept of the Goddess always remained vital.  The introduction of male deities, just as the dynastic period begin (about 3000 BC) will be more thoroughly discussed in Chapter Four.  This probably lessened Her original supremacy as it was known in Neolithic societies.  But Goddess worship continued and in conjunction with this, the women of Egypt appear to have benefited in many ways.

Diodorus wrote at great length of the worship of the Goddess Isis (the Greek translation for Au Set), who had incorporated the aspects of both Ua Zit and Hathor.  Isis was also closely associated with the Goddess as Nut, who was mythologically recorded as Her mother; in paintings Isis wore the wings of Nekhebt.  Diodorus explained that, according to Egyptian religions, Isis was revered as the inventor of agriculture, as a great healer and physician and as the one who first established the laws of justice in the land.

He then recorded what we today may from a most startling description of the laws of Egypt, explaining that they were the result of the reverence paid to this mighty Goddess.  He wrote, "It is for these reasons, in fact, that it was ordained that the queen should have greater power and honour than the king and that among private persons the wife should enjoy authority over the husband, husbands agreeing in the marriage contract that they will be obedient in all things to their wives."

Frazer commented on the relationship between the veneration of Isis and the customs of female kinship and stated that "In Egypt, the archaic system of mother-kin, with its preference for women over men in matters of property and inheritance, lasted down to Roman times…"

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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There is further evidence that Egypt was a land where women had great freedom and control of their own lives, and perhaps of their husbands' as well.  Herodotus of Greece, several centuries before Diodorus, wrote that in Egypt, "Women go in the market-place, transact affairs and occupy themselves with business, while the husbands stay home and weave."  His contemporary, Sophocles, states that "Their thoughts and actions all are modelled on Egyptian ways, for there the men sit at the loom indoors while the wives work abroad for their daily bread."

Professor Cyrus Gordon wrote in 1953 of life in ancient Egypt.  He tells us that "In family life, women had a peculiarly important position for inheritance passed through the mother rather than through the father…This system may well hark back to prehistoric time when the only obvious relationship between mother and child was recognized, but not the less apparent relationship between father and child."

Dr Murray suggested that "Women's condition was high, due perhaps to their economic independence."  S.W. Baron writes that in Egyptian papyri, "many women appear as parties in civil litigations and independent business transactions even with their own husbands and fathers."  One of the earliest archaeologists of the pyramids of Egypt, Sir William Flinders Petrie, wrote in 1925 that "In Egypt all property went in the female line, the woman was the mistress of the house; and in early tales she is represented as having entire control of herself and the place."

Discussing the position of women in ancient Egypt, theologian and archaeologist Roland de Vaux wrote in 1965 that "In Egypt the wife was often the head of the family, with all the rights such a position entailed."  Obedience was urged upon husbands in the maxims of Ptah-Hotep.  Marriage contracts of all periods attested the extremely independent social and economic position of women.  According to E. Meyer, who is quoted in the Vaertings' study, "Among the Egyptians the women were remarkably free…as late as the fourth century BC there existed side by side with patriarchal marriage, a form of marriage in which the wife chose the husband and could divorce him on payment of compensation."

Love poems, discovered in Egyptian tombs, strongly hint that it was the Egyptian women who did the courting, oftimes wooing the male by plying him with intoxicants to weaken his protestations.  Robert Briffault wrote of an Egyptian woman clerk who later became a governor and eventually the commander-in-chief of an army.

A most enlightening and significant study on the social structure and position of women in Egypt was done in 1949 by Dr. Margaret Murray.  Painstakingly tracing the lineage of royal families in Egypt, she eventually proved that, at the level of royalty, the Egyptian culture at most periods was matrilineal.  Royalty was studied because records for these people were most available.  According to Murray it was the daughters, not the sons, who were the actual inheritors of the royal throne.  She suggests that the custom of brother/sister marriage then developed, allowing the son to gain access to the royal privilege in this way.  She writes that the matrilineal right to the throne was the reason that Egyptian princesses for so many centuries were married within the family and were not available for international marriage alliances.  This may clarify why the Goddess Isis, who Frazer stated was a more important deity than Her brother/husband Osiris, and whom Diodorus cited as the origin of the generally high position of women in Egypt, was known as The Throne.

But even in Egypt women were slowly losing their prestigious position.  Sir Flinders Petrie, incidentally a deeply respected colleague of Dr. Murray's at the University of London, discussed the role of priestesses in ancient Egypt.  He pointed out how their position had changed between the time of the earliest dynasties (3000 BC onward) to the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570 – 1300 BC).  According to the available records, the Goddess known as Hathor, much the same deity as Isis, was in earliest times served by sixty-one priestesses and eighteen priests, while the Goddess known as Neith was attended solely by priestesses.  By the time the Eighteenth Dynasty women were no longer even part of the religious clergy, but served only as temple musicians.  It is in the Eighteenth Dynasty that Egypt was made to feel the greatest influence of the Indo-Europeans, a factor again discussed at greater length in Chapters Four and Five.  Incidentally, the use of the world "pharaoh," generally summoning up images even more powerful that the word "king," actually comes from the term par-o, which literally means "great house."  It was only from the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty that the world was used to signify the royal male of that household.


Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.


WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN 2

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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SUMER – "THE WOMEN OF FORMER DAYS USED TO TAKE TWO HUSBANDS…

Professor Saggs wrote in 1962 of the societies of Mesopotamia, which included both Sumer and Babylon.  Mesopotamia generally refers to the areas of Iraq along and between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, starting at the Persian Gulf and reaching up to Anatolia.  He examined the relationship of the reverence for Goddesses to the status of women in Sumer (about 3000 BC – 1800BC, in southern Iraq), concluding that in the earliest periods women were much better off than in the later periods, and that they gradually lost ground over the years.  Professor Saggs reports that.

The status of women was certainly much higher in the early Sumerian city state than it subsequently became…There are hints that in the very beginning of Sumerian society, women had a much higher status than in the hey-day of Sumerian culture: this chiefly rests on the fact that in early Sumerian religion a prominent position is occupied by goddesses who afterwards virtually disappeared, save – with the one exception of Ishter – as consorts to particular gods.  The Underworld itself was under the sole rule of a goddess, for a myth explains how she came to take a consort; and goddesses played a part in divine decision making assembly in the myths.  There is even one strong suggestion that polyandry may have at one time been practised, for the reforms of Urukagina refer to women who had taken more than one husband; some scholars shied away from this conclusion suggesting that the reference might be only to the remarriage of a widow but the wording of the Sumerian text does not support this.

I may add that the Goddess of the Underworld does not merely take a consort but has Her hair pulled, is dragged from the throne and is threatened with death until She agrees to marry Her assailant, the god Nergal, who then kisses away Her tears, becomes Her husband and rules besides Her.

The Urukagina reform is dated at about 2300 BC.  It reads, "The women of former days used to take two husbands but the women of today would be stoned with stones if they did this."  Polyandry has been reported in the Dravidian Goddess-worshiping areas of India even in this century.

The laws of the Sumerian state of Eshnunna, written about 2000 BC, were found in a small town, thus possibly reflecting older attitudes.  In them we read that "if a man rejects his wife after she bears a child, and takes another wife, he shall be driven from the house and from whatever he owns and if any accept him they may follow him."  These same laws also state that if a woman is married but has a child with another man while her husband is away at war, she is still legally regarded as the wife of the first man.  There is not mention of punishment for adultery.  Permission for marriage had to be received from both mother and father.

The position and activities of a group of Sumerian women known as the naditu were studied in depth by Rivkak Harris in 1962.  Carefully examining Sumerian text, she found that the naditu women were engaged in the business activities of the temple, held real estate in their own names, lent money and generally engaged in various economic activities.  She also found accounts at this same period of many women scribes.  Yet we read in Professor Sidney Smith's chapter in Hooke's Myth, Ritual and Kingship that the world naditu "probably means women thrown down, that is surrendered to the god."

In the Sumerian hymns the female precedes the male.  The epic of Gilgamish reveals that the official scribe of the Sumerian heaven was a woman, while the initial invention of writing was credited to a Goddess.  As I mentioned previously, it may well have been the priestesses, possibly the naditu who kept the temple business accounts, who first developed the art of writing.  The earliest examples of writing (from about 2300 BC), discovered in the temple of the Goddess Inanna of Erech, where many of the naditu, women lived, turned out to be the temple's accounts of payment for land rental.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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Stephen Langdon, eminent Oxford scholar, writing in 1930, observed that the legends associated with the Sumerian Queen of Heaven, Inanna, had probably been worked out under a "matriarchal system" of society.  This is also suggested by the changes in the image and role of the Goddess Inanna, when we find her centuries later as the Babylonian Ishtar.  In the Sumerian myth, Inanna exhibited Her power and omnipotent wrath at Her son/lover Demuzi's refusal to show proper respect to Her by turning him over to the demons of the Land of the Dead, while thirteen centuries later, in the Babylonian myth of Ishtar, a newer version of much the same story, the Goddess grieved at the accidental death of the youth.

In general, the records of the Sumerian reforms of Urukagina of about 2300 BC were strongly communally oriented.  They referred to the fruit trees and food of the temple lands, which were to be used from those in need rather than by priests, which apparently fast becoming the custom at that time.  The fact that on these tablets it was repeatedly mentioned that there reforms harked back to the way things were done in earlier periods suggests that the earlier societies of Sumer were more communal. Most interesting is the word used to label these reforms, amargi, which has received the double translation of "freedom" and "return to the mother."

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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ELAM – NAKED BEFORE THE HIGH PRIESTESS

In 1973 Dr. Walther Hinz suggested that the original supremacy of the Goddess in Elam (slightly east of Sumer and in close contact by 3000 BC), indicated a "matriarchal approach" in the devotees of Her religion.  He explained that, though She was supreme in the third millennium, She later became secondary to Her consort Humban; She was then known as the Great Wife.  In Susa, at the northern end of the Elamite territories, the male consort was known as In Shushinak.  In earliest times he was known as Father of the Weak, by mid-second millennium he was called King of the Gods and in the eighth century BC he was invoked as the Protector of the Gods of Heaven and Earth.

In the early periods of Elam the deities appeared to have been served by female and male clergy, the men appearing naked before the high priestess, as was the custom in early Sumer.  Hinz explains that in Elam, much like the naditu women of Sumer, "One special group among the priestesses was formed by those women or maidens who had dedicated their lives to the Great Goddess."  These women were primarily involved in the buying, selling and renting of land.

Legal documents from Elam, primarily from after 2000 BC, reveal that women were often the sole heirs.  One married woman refused to make her inheritance joint with her husband and intended to pass the inheritance to her daughter.  Another tablet stated that a son and a daughter were to share equally; the daughter was mentioned first.  Several tablets described situations where the husband was leaving everything he owned to his wife and insisted that their children would inherit only if they cared for their mother with the greatest respect.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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BABYLON – "TO HOLD AND MANAGE THEIR OWN ESTATES"

In Mesopotamia, the Akkadiens, after the rise in position under Sargon in 2300 BC, eventually gained supremacy in about 1900 BC gradually superseding the Sumerians as the cultural and political leaders of the area.  They formed the nation known as Babylon, installing their capital in the city of Babylon on the central Euphrates.  The Akkadian language of the Babylonians became the international language of the Near East, but the religion of the Sumerians was incorporated into the Babylonian culture and the Sumerian language was used much as Latin was employed in the masses of Roman Catholic Church all over the world.  By 1600 BC the Kassites gained control of Babylon.  Linguistic evidence suggests that the Kassites were ruled by the northern invaders, the Indo-Europeons, who had gradually infiltrated into Babylon and Assyria.

Despite a loss of status in the position of women in Babylon, compared with their predecessors of Sumer – a loss that was accompanied by the gaining ascendancy of male deities such as Marduk, who mythically murdered the Creator Goddess Tiamat to gain and secure his position – the women of Babylon still continued to hold certain rights of independence.  The following quote is based upon the law code of Hammurabi, which preceded total Kassite control, but which may have been somewhat affected by continual Indo-European incursions from the north from at least 2000 BC onward.  W. Boscawen, writing in 1894, reported that.

The freedom granted to the women in Babyonia allowed them to hold and manage their own estates and this was especially the case with priestesses of the temple, who traded extensively…One of the most interesting and characteristic features of this early civilization of the Babylonians was the high position of women.  The mother here is always represented by a sign which means "goddess of the house."  Any sin against the mother, and repudiation against the mother was punished by banishment from the community.  These are the facts which are evidently indicative of a people who are one time held the law of matriarchal descent.

According to de Vaux, writing in 1965, "In Babylonian law, the father gave the young bride certain possessions, which belonged to her in her own right, the husband having only the use of them.  They reverted to the wife if she was widowed or divorced without fault on her part.  In Babylon she could acquire property, take legal action, be a party to contracts and she had a certain share in her husband's inheritance."

In Hammurabi's time women were free to request divorce, and one Babylonian law declared that if a wife did not intend to be responsible for her husband's premarital debts she had to obtain a document from him stating that he had agreed.  This assumption of the financial responsibility in marriage suggests that most women may have taken part in business and financial affairs (as they did in Egypt) and perhaps at one time been economically responsible for the family.  Seven of Hammurabi's laws were concerned with the priestesses of the temple, their rights to inherit and what they might or might not pass along to offspring, suggesting that the economic position of these women was a matter of concern and probably was quickly changing.

Ishtar was revered as "majestic queen whose decrees are preeminent."  In one text Ishtar Herself says, "When at a trail of judgement I am present, a woman understanding of the matter, I am."  At Nimrud, in northern Mesopotamia, records of women judges and magistrates have been unearthed, testifying to the vital and respected position of women held there even in the eighth century BC.  In several cities there were accounts of Babylonian priestesses who acted as oracular prophetesses, providing military and political advice to kings and leaders, revealing their powerful influence upon the affairs of state.  Accounts of women scribes occur in all Babylonian periods, though there were more males in this field than women.

We find in the laws of later Babylonia, which belong to some time at the end of the second millennium, that a married woman might no longer engage in business, unless it was directed by her husband, or brother-in-law.  If anyone engaged in business with her, even if he insisted that he did not know she was married, he was to be prosecuted as a criminal.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.
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ANATOLIA – "FROM OF OLD THEY HAVE BEEN RULED BY THE WOMEN"

Just north of Babylon, and in very close political contact, was the area known as Anatolia, present-day Turkey, sometimes known as Asia Minor.  In Neolithic periods in Anatolia, the Great Goddess was extolled.  Her worship appeared in the shrines at Catal Huyuk of 6500 BC.  Little is yet known of Anatolia directly after the Catal Huyuk period, but sometimes before 2000 Anatolia was invaded by the Indo-Europeans.

The areas where the northern peoples made the heaviest settlements were in the central and south-central section of Anatolia.  Some of them conquered the land known as Hatti.  The invaders as well as the original inhabitants thus came known as the Hittites.  Most of the Goddesses who appear in the literature and texts of this area, written after the Hittite arrival, were actually the older Hattian deities.  One of the most important female deities to survive was the Sun Goddess of Arinna.  Upon the Hittite conquests She assigned a husband who was symbolized as a storm god.  Although this storm god gained supremacy in most of the cities where the northern people ruled, in Arinna he remained in second place.  But curiously enough, Hittite queens appear in several texts in a very close relationship to this Hattian Sun Goddess; they acted as Her high priestess.  Though there is no conclusive evidence to substantiate it, the existence of these texts suggest the possibility that the invaders, once martially conquering the land, may then married Hattian priestesses to gain a  more secure legitimate right to the throne in the eyes of the conquered population.

In the western sections of Anatolia, matrilineal descent and Goddess worship continued into classical times.  Strabo, shortly before the birth of Christ, wrote of northern Anatolian towns, as far east as Armenia, where children who were born to unmarried women were legitimate and respectable.  They simply took the name of their mothers, who, according to Strabo's reports, were some of the most noble and aristocratic of citizens.

It is possible that at the time of the Hittite invasions many of the Goddess-worshipping peoples may have fled to the west.  The renowned temple of the Goddess in the city of Ephesus was the target of the apostle Paul's zealous missionary effort (Acts 19:27),  This temple, which legend and classical reports claim was founded by "Amazons," was not completely closed down until AD 380.  All along this western section, which included the areas known as Lycia, Lydia and Caria, there were accounts in classical Greek and Roman literature of widespread veneration of "The Mother of all Deities," along with reports of women warriors, the Amazons.  Diodorus wrote of a nation in this area in which "women held the supreme power and royal authority."  According to his reports the queen of this land assigned the tasks of spinning wool and other domestic duties to the men, while law was established by the queen.  He claimed that the rights to the throne belonged to the queen's daughter and succeeding women in the family line.  It was in the land of Lydia that the legendary Indo-European Greek Hercules was said to have been kept as a servile lover to Queen Omphale.  We may at this point question whether the numerous tales of "Amazon" women may not actually have been the later Indo-European Greek accounts of the women who tried to defend the ancient Goddess shrines and repel the patriarchal northern invaders.  Yet we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "The only plausible explanation of the story of the Amazons is that it is a variety of the familiar tale of a distant land where everything is done the wrong way about; thus women fight, which is a man's business."

Throughout the classical Greek period, matrilineal descent and suggestions of  matriarchy in western Anatolia were repeatedly reported among the Lycians, where they appear to have lingered the longest or were most noted.  Herodotus wrote, "As a Lycian who he is and he answers by giving his own name, that of his mother and so on in the female line."  Nicholas of Damascus reported, "They name themselves after their mothers and their possessions pass by inheritance to the daughters instead of the sons."  Heraclides Ponticus said of the Lycians, "From of old they have been ruled by the women."


Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic.  This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships.  It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa  practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex.  There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru.  There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.