The Mother in the title refers to the Great Mother Goddess, humankind’s first understanding of the Divine and I am Her daughter, claimed by Her while a mere three years old in the ancient way, through my dreams. Language, the dominant culture that surrounds us and exposure to “key” concepts all have a vast effect on how we see the world, process information we are exposed to and even our basic understanding of how the world works and the meanings of common mythology. I grew up as most did, in a culture dominated by patriarchal thinking and Christianity as the base religious thought was measured by but unlike the majority, I never embraced Christianity as a child but remained Mother’s Daughter. That and part of a childhood exposed to a vastly different world, India, gave me a completely different worldview than the culture I grew up in.

My father was the “scholar” in our family. An educator and later an administrator with an advanced formal education heavy on the social sciences. Surrounded by the classics of psychology, I cut my reading teeth on many of them. But it was from my mother, who had no degrees but had a passion for ancient history and spent her lifetime learning for the shear love it that passed that love unto myself. It was from my father’s books I learned the concept of gestalt perception, but it was from my mother’s love of learning that I experienced it and learned of the keys of perception.

The “National Treasure” movies provide a handy example of what I’m talking about. All around Americans every day are symbols of Free Masonry but almost everyone does not notice them. Once you recognize what they are you suddenly become aware of just how common they are, but without knowing what they are, you simply do not see them at all. It is like learning to read. At first the pages of the books are covered with meaningless markings but gradually, as you learn first the alphabet and then that strings of letters are words, the meanings suddenly are there on the page. Everything we are exposed to in the world and how we understand it is reflected in this principle.

As a lifelong Pagan, how I see the world is vastly different than how a Christian sees it, and I live in a Christian dominated society. Take the story of the Garden of Eden as an example. Now almost everyone sees this as a straight forward creation story with the lesson that Eve brought the woes of women down on them. When I read the story it reads completely differently. Familiar with the symbology of the Goddess, the story reads to me as the suppression of Her by force along with the values of the Sacred Feminine principles and the imposition of the concept that the individual’s personal divine nature be replaced with a separation from the Divine. Allow me to explain. Every symbol present in the story from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fruit of that tree, the Tree of Everlasting life and the serpent are those of the Great Mother Goddess dating back to the dawn of pre-history.

Consider this: Yahweh lied, the serpent told the truth. Adam ate the apple (fruit) too but was not punished in the same manner as Eve whose’s daughters suffer to this day. Eve was “created” from the side of Adam. Yahweh wished to deny both knowledge and everlasting life to his creations and acknowledges other gods in the story.

The serpent (symbol of the Great Mother) tells Eve (woman) that if she eats the fruit she will gain knowledge (gnosis) and further, if she eats from the fruit of the other tree, she will be imortal. In the traditions of the Great Mother Goddess, we are all part of Her and the rituals of Her worship are designed specifically to connect with that part of each of us that is Divine. Prior to the Abrahamic faiths, the concept of reincarnation, that life is a series of cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth was virtually universal and almost every culture we know of had mythologies that expressed this basic principle. In other words, eternal life through rebirth, the purpose of which was to learn and grow. Eat of the fruit pointed to by the Goddess and you gain wisdom and meaning to your life. Yahweh (god of Abraham) wished keep humankind from it’s own Divine nature. Not the act of a loving deity in my book. Further, when we come to Cain and Abel we come to the imposition of sacrifice of grain (the bread resulting from horticulture) for the blood of living beings. Horticulture, spinning, weaving and making clothing were all products of women and women’s work. Yahweh discovers Eve’s “sin” by seeing she and Adam are wearing clothing (fig leaves) Yahweh places the blame in the story on Eve (woman), even though Adam also ate the fruit. Eve being created from Adam’s side is a straight forward attempt to undermine the creative process of birth from woman to Yahweh, out and out denial of the Mother.

To me, this story reads as the justification of the destruction and wholesale murder of the societies of the Mother Goddess, suppression of all things feminine and open denial of an entire theology that led to peaceful cities without walls or knowledge of war and all the products of women furthered by the addition of the story of Cain and Abel just in case the point was missed. It’s the story of roving bands of nomadic herders taking the fruits of civilized people. Sort of puts a different spin on it, doesn’t it? Exodus builds on this theme.

And the ironic thing is that early Christianity was first an attempt to return to the older way of living and thinking.

to be continued.