starwind123 
Keeper of the Sacred Arts
Posts: 475
(6/13/04 3:24 pm)
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What happened to the Feminine Aspect of God ?
Newest page on the web site of the feminine of God
What happened to the Feminine Aspect of God ?
We pagans are often bombasted by the more fundamentalist sects because we revere the Feminine aspect of the Divine
Now is this because it's just a Pagan thing..? Well not really 
The Female side of God is a well known, but well hidden, aspect of many major faiths,Christianity being no exception . This aspect however ,was hidden in plain sight
almost from the start of Christianity, as we currently know it.
I am not Christian bashing here, so please no nasty letters, it's just that Christians are one of the major bombastors of our faith for this reason , among others .
And this is my attempt to clear up a few misconceptions in very basic form the " facts" and details, behind this missive , are there for anyone to find ,who cares to look
The suppression of the Female side of the Divine is many fold, starting with translations.The Feminine side of God is Shopia, or the Holy Spirit. Taken that way the Trinity of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit takes on a whole new light and a lot more sense from a human perspective,
as it's a family unit Mother, Father and child.
According to the Rabbinic Skekhinah is the Bride of God
The Creator, Matrona ... the Middle Pillar of Benignity,
between Mercy and Severity .. of the Cabala
which is just another word for the aspect of Shopia or wisdom
This has been supposed by many, to be a Greek word meaning Wisdom personified,but in fact , the original meaning was very Literal ! Shopia is said to have been
the spirit who led the peoples of Israel, out of the bondage of Egypt , in the form of Skekhinah .This According to the Rabbinic again.
This problem of translations started with the original texts of law and lore which were written in Aramaic. These texts where not shared with the population until some 200 years after the death of the Christ. In fact, a great many scholars say, they were not even written down at all, till some 100 years after his death. So some 10 generations or more passed between events and the forumlation of the " law " and when they where recorded.
By this time the language was no longer spoken in it's original form, nor could many folk of the day
could read anyway. So, the priests of the day had to translate the texts to the population. And in doing so
, changed it's meaning on a lot of levels ,as they had to interpret them at the same time. I believe I can
safely assume this, as it tends to happen with any translation, this would be no exception . But, the
profound change in this case, was the suppression of the female principal of the Divine
through mainly ..language changes.
Now was any of this deliberate ? We have no way to know, but given the status of women at the time
I would suspect it was an unconscious mis-translation, it would not occur to a priest to give a Female any
creditability. It literally would not occur to him to ascribe any of the aspects of a lowly woman to a God !
So anything that seemed to say that ,would be mis-translated as a matter of course, as it's interpretation
would be distorted by the priests own thoughts on the subject.
Now in the Torah the female aspect of God as Skekhinah is still noted,for the simple reason the texts in question were NOT translated again out of the Hebrew,
but have been studied in their original form from then to now so have not suffered as much distortion.
But the Main texts of the Bible, as it's currently known, were translations not once but twice once from Aramaic to Hebrew, then again to Greek. And the Greek version is all that survived.
Unless one counts the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. ( more on them later in another page )
Now it's translation to the Greek is where things really get messed up.They were translated into Greek, some 400 years after the Death of the Christ.
The reasons where very simple, there was a large conclave of
Christians in Greece. The problem arose when they would require certain days off from work for religious reasons, or would not eat certain foods etc. for the same reasons. Now
the Greeks allowed any to practice whatever faiths they pleased, but the Christians where an unknown, as to what was really " their" Law.
I mean, even today if you told your boss, " Hey I'm not coming into work on Saturday
it's a religious holiday " he would want to be sure it was legit. So, at Greek insistence,the Laws of Israel were translated into Greek, for any official to read, if this became an issue.
However the Greek word for Wisdom ( Shopia ) is Logos ( Logic ), which is masculine... so again the
Female Aspect was made masculine, due simply to the translation being done word for word, without
I assume, the allegorical meanings inferred. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption, as the children of
Israel themselves had done much the same thing, translating from the original Aramaic.
The Greeks where not trying to understand the religion of Israel, they just wanted it written up
to make sure if someone demanded something and sited his laws as a reason,they could look it up for themselves. So no one could pull the wool over the eyes of any official.
It has since been translated again and again with the meanings changed a bit with each translation. Since
such translations are based almost entirely on the Greek translation, the mistake of the Feminine
suppression, has been repeated over and over . Often made more so, according to the prejudice of the
times. For example: the King James version. Now there's a mysagonistic piece of work for you !
By the time of King James, women, were so unregarded, that any reference that might have been left that
refered to them or the Female aspect of God would have been suppressed deliberately. As is very
apparent by whole Books of the bible that got left Out of that version. All of them refer to the power of
women and the Female aspect of God in general. And who, in the time of King James, would want
women getting ideas above themselves ? And so it goes ..
A mistake .. sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate.
So where does this leave your average Pagan in terms of how we practice the faith of the Mother ?
It means that we practice religion in the form as the originators ( re: pre Christian )
intended, balanced and whole with all aspects revered and honored.That we call on the old ones is nothing more than their due of respect and respect for principals of balance, accepted thurout history.
Until the advent of Christianity and a very simple mistake,
all of mankind held the Mother in Respect..
The current followers of the Christian faith are not to
blame for this omission, as they did not create it. My personal opinion is ,they have been misled, by well meaning leaders, who do not know there own roots.
If one chooses to ignore one's own roots in this fashion, so be it. I hold no quarrel with any honest heart. As the basic
tenants of Christianity are really no different than my own ,in fact, if not in practice.
However, it behooves any reasonable person to do a little
double checking of the " facts" before one accepts a principal , any principal,especially for something as important as the worship of the Divine. And it wouldn't hurt to assume
that one who has done the investigations I speak of, could just maybe be right And then do your own research, and Withhold judgment, in order to make an informed choice.
But live and let live say I .. but it is meet to know that the Female Aspect of the Divine
is as old as man and we .. the Pagans ... will honor the ways of our ancestors.
For we have looked beyond the prejudice and mistakes of some translators and not a few self serving
persons who dictated religion texts and widened our scope of understanding to include the faiths of all
mankind. And once one does this, the Great Mother and all her worksbecomes very apparent to one with open eyes to the truth
All Hail and Glory to the Great Mother of us all
Blessings Be
Starwind
Blessings on your coming
Blessings on your going
Blessings on all your house |
I have heard part of this before but you have made it so much more enlightening and complete. Wasn't one of the books left out of the bible the one written by mary magdalene? Do you by any chance know the names of the others?
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