And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 16

Continued from Part 15

“There’s a woman, on my block, who sits there, as the night grows still, saying, “Who’s going to take away their license to kill.” Bob Dylan, “License to Kill”

Before moving on, let’s sum up Inside the Men’s Club by “Hawthorne Abendsen.” Think of his three animals: the ram, the goat and the lamb. The ram represents the ritual killing, rulers who sacrifice, those who have decided to kill rather than be killed.. The goat is the lower-class counterpoint, representing lust and mechanically following one’s needs and desires. The lamb is the sacrificed (murdered) son/god or he who decided to be killed rather than kill. We have a semi-secret, multi-generational group which seems to have a thing for blood sacrifice, pedophilia and ritual homosexuality intent on placing its members in strategic positions of power. Abendsen calls it the Men’s Club, Bramley calls it “the Brotherhood of the Serpent” or just “the Brotherhood.” Laura Knight-Jadczyk has called it “the Consortium.”

We also see the imposition of a certain type of monotheism, Bramley calls it “custodial” and claims that it is designed to further the ends of another “race” besides the human race. The “covenant” of this monotheism is sealed by a ritual of painful bloodletting (circumcision) searing its imprint on male babies at the time of imprinting (see this from Laura Knight-Jadczyk). This particular form of monotheism posits linear history, happening once and culminating in the End of Time.

Abendsen:

COMMON PATRIARCHAL RELIGION

What is not commonly known is that originally both I-E [Indo-European] and Hebraic tribesworshipped identical Ram-Gods of Fire (fire from Heaven - lightning,thunder), Blood and War. (Even in Egypt in period the ram-headed Amonbecame the chief deity, with the death-god Set second most popular.) The
I-E invaders of India had their fire-god Agni, evoked in the sacrifice of a white ram. in he legend of Phrixos, Jason and the Argonauts' search for the Golden Fleece belonging to their ancestors, a ram-cult is indicated. For example, archeological studies (supported by Greek myth) demonstrate that the Argive mycenaeans revered the ram as a symbol of royalty, i.e., the warlord caste.

Among the Hebrews, the internal evidence of the OT itself indicates that the god El (or Elohim) originally was likened to a ram and was worshipped by the passing of a lamb through sacred fire and by the spilling of its blood. 'El" translates "high "I in the sense of high-leaping: 'Elhim" (cf. Elohim) has the literal meaning of ram, the high- leaping animal, strong in hi butting horns. There is the substitute-sacrifice of Abraham': firstborn in lamb form, and the ritual Passover lamb, celebrating the time when lamb's blood smeared on doorposts spared the Hebrews from the Angel of Death (God) during their revolt against thePharaoh. These conclusions are obvious.

Considering the fact that priests of this period were also astrologers, it is no coincidence that --at this precise period-the New Year's Sun (rising on the Spring Equinox) moved out of the constellation of the Bull and into that of the Ram.

However, the ram was not the only symbol used. The ram was, to be precise, only the Son of God, his general. ('Israel' can be translated "God's general' or 'God is the Army.") God the Father, the deity of the Sky in which his Son (lightning/storm) reigned, was universally represented as the Eagle or similar bird. The Hebrew "spirit of God' ruach in proto-Semitic means 'eagle," hence the Arabian Nights' mythic 'roc' bird. Father Sky Zeus had his eagle form just as the Vedic (I-E) Indra his "garudall thunder-bird. What is of particular relevance here is the eternally recurrent symbolism of the Eagle of Empire in the heraldic
symbolism of patriarchal nations in the West, whether Rome, Germany, or the United States.

There seem to be three periods of sharp disconinuity in pre-history and early history. Let’s say 8,000 BC, 3,000 BC and 1,500 BC. As for the Neolithic revolution (agriculture and domestication of animals) of ca. 8,000 BC recent research has turned traditional understandings upside-down. It is usually thought that agriculture preceded urbanism, in other words that villages preceded towns and cities. Lewis Mumford and V. Gordon Childe are good examples of this. A newer view, following on excavations of Catal Huyuk and Jericho, towns that existed 10,000 years ago, and the work of Jane Jacobs and Ian Hodder, holds that cities caused domestication of crops and animals and the formation of villages. These early cities were dismissed by earlier generations of ubanists and pre-historians because they lacked writing, centralized power under a king, and other symptoms of the State. They also did not seem patriarchal. Interestingly, they seemed to be based on an associative model, rather than a class-stratified, exploitative model.

This changed around 3,000 BC beginning in the city-states of Mesopotamia, notably Ur (where, interestingly, Abraham was from). The polity of these city-states has been called Ancient Despotism. There followed a 1,500 year period of development where there was a degree of balance between the dominator-patriarchal mode and remnants of the cooperative, matriarchal mode ending with the dominance of the patriarchal mode. The period circa 1,500 BC saw the overthrowing of the older despotims by the Indo-European war machine, characterized by an even stronger patriarchal ideology, one that would bring about a religious revolution in addition to the political revolutions. All this can be seen in the development of mythology and religion during that period.

The term “matriarchal” may be misleading, if we accept Riane Eisner’s Dominator verus Partnership model. In other words, the earlier partnership societies were not matriarchal in the sense of being RULED by women, they may not have been “ruled” in the sense we (in a patriarchal society) understand that term. Patriarchal societies, on the other hand, are certainly ruled by men or by the men’s club to use Abendsen’s term. Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes the following in "The Grail Quest and the Destiny of Man":

Ms. Eisler, an acclaimed scholar, has developed what she calls "Cultural Transformation Theory," which proposes that there are two basic models of society underlying the great diversity of human culture. The first is the "Dominator Model," that can be termed a patriarchy OR matriarchy. It consists of ranking one half of humanity over another, in the broadest terms, but essentially can be any situation where any group dominates and any other group is considered inferior.

The second model is what Ms. Eisler calls the "Partnership Model," which is based on the principle of "linking rather than ranking."

…Ms. Eisler proposes that the "original direction in the mainstream of our cultural evolution was toward partnership, but that, following a period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, there occurred a fundamental social shift, and that this "cataclysmic turning point during the prehistory of Western civilization, when the direction of our cultural evolution was quite literally turned around" was brought about by invaders who "ushered in a very different form of social organization." These were people who "worshipped the lethal power of the blade - the power to take rather than give life" and that this became the ultimate power to establish and enforce domination.

As Ms. Eisler acutely points out:

If we stop and think about it, there are only two basic ways of structuring the relations between the female and male halves of humanity. All societies are patterened on either a dominator model - in which human hierarchies are ultimately backed up by force or the threat of force - or a partnership model, with variations in between.

If we look at the whole span of our cultural evolution from the perspective of cultural transformation theory, we see that the roots of our present global crises go back to the fundamental shift in our prehistory that brought enormous changes not only in social structure but also in technology. This was the shift in emphasis from technologies that sustain and enhance life to the technologies symbolized by the Blade: technologies designed to destroy and dominate. This has been the technological emphasis through most of recorded history. And it is this technological emphasis, rather than technology per se, that today threatens all life on our globe.[Eisler, 1987]

Gathering a vast array of scholarly evidence, Ms. Eisler provides the missing data that tells a story that began many thousands of years ago; a story of how the original "Partnership" direction of Western Culture, the "Chalice," was transformed into a "bloody five-thousand year dominator detour" of the "Blade."

And here we see again this figure: 5000 years ago. And it will come up again and again.

… Suddenly, at a certain point, 5000 years ago, serpents are associated with the goddess, where before, they were apparently not! What happened to bring about this association?

…By 4000 B.C., Goddess figures appeared at Ur and Uruk, both on the southern end of the Euphrates river, not far from the Persian Gulf. At about this same period, the Neolithic Badarian and Amaratian cultures of Egypt first appeared. It is at these sites that agriculture first emerged in Egypt; and once again, goddess figurines were discovered.

From that point on, with the invention of writing, history as we know it, emerged in both Sumer and Egypt - about 3000 B.C. (5000 years ago!) In every area of the Near and Middle East, the Goddess was known in historic times. It is pretty clear that many changes must have taken place in both the forms and modes of worship, but, in various ways, the worship of the Female Goddess survived into classical Greece and Rome. It was not totally suppressed until the time of the Christian emperors of Rome and Byzantium, who closed the last Goddess Temples about 500 A.D.

It appears that the Goddess ruled alone in the beginning. At some point she acquired a son or brother who was also her lover and consort. He is generally assumed to have been part of the female religion in much earlier times.

It was this youth who was symbolized by the male role in the annual sexual union with the Goddess. He was known in various languages as Damuzi, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis, Osiris or Baal. This consort died in his youth causing an annual period of grief and lamentation among those who paid homage to the Goddess. Wherever we find symbolism and rituals of the young god, we can recognize the presence of the religion of the Goddess.

The people of the early Neolithic cultures of the Near and Middle East may have come down from Europe, possibly the descendants of the Gravettian-Aurignacian cultures. Later, waves of more Northern people descended on both Europe and the Near East. There has been some conjecture that these were the descendants of the Mesolithic (15000 - 8000 B.C.) Maglemosian and Kunda cultures of Northern Europe. But, their arrival was NOT a gradual assimilation - it was wave after wave of aggressive invasion.

These northern invaders, generally known as Indo-Europeans, brought their own religion with them: the worship of a young warrior god and a supreme father god. Their arrival in the Near East is attested to by 2400 B.C., but there may have been several earlier invasions.
After these invasions, the worship of the Mother Goddess fluctuated from city to city. As the invaders gained more and more territory over the next two thousand years, the male began to appear as the dominant husband or even the murderer of the Goddess!

Up to this point in time, writing seems to have been primarily used for the business accounts of the temples. The arriving Northern groups adopted this writing and used it for their own purposes.

Professor Chiera comments: 'It is strange to notice that practically all the existing literature was put down in written form a century or two after 2000 B.C.' Whether this suggests that written language was never considered as a medium for myths and legends before that time or that existing tablets were destroyed and rewritten at that time remains an open question." [Stone, 1976] (emphasis, mine)

Over and over again in the studies of the ancient religions it is noted that, in place after place, the goddess was debased and replaced by a male deity after the coming of the Northern Peoples. The transition was accomplished by brutally violent massacres and territorial acquisition throughout the Near and Middle East.

The Northern Invaders left neither tablets nor temples to explain why or how they came to choose a male deity. These "Sons of the North Wind, Aeolus" - these Nordics - are referred to variously as Indo-Europeans, Indo-Iranians, Indo-Aryans, or simply Aryans. There seems to be a complete lack of evidence of their culture in the Northern areas of Russia and the Caucasus. It is thought that maybe they were just illiterate nomads - hunting and fishing groups or just shepherds. But, in the opinion of the present writer, this idea is not supported by their culture, which they imposed on so many conquered peoples, as we will see further on.

Nevertheless, their existence, once they burst upon the historical scene, is described as aggressive warriors riding two abreast in horse-drawn war chariots; or as big sailors who navigated the rivers and coastlines of Europe and the Near East. Jaquetta Hawkes writes:

On no subject have authorities differed so completely or with greater lack of objectivity than on the origins of these cultures. The reason for this partisanship lies in the one thing the authorities are agreed upon - that the BATTLE AXE cultures represent the roots of the Indo-European speaking peoples. ...What can be said with some certainty is that the battle axe people had a large ethnic, social and cultural inheritance from the hunter-fishers of the forest cultures such as the Maglemosian and Kunda. ...Though it may not always or everywhere have been so, this character came in time to be dominantly pastoral, patriarchal, warlike and expansive. [quoted by Stone, 1976]

These Maglemosian and Kunda people of Mesolithic times (15000 - 8000 B.C.) were generally located in the forest and coastal areas of northern Europe, especially in Denmark. Their sites were generally much further north than those of the earlier Gravettian-Aurignacian groups.

The invasions of the Aryans took place in waves over a period of up to three thousand years according to standard archaeology. The invasions of the historical period are attested to by literature and artifacts, and are agreed upon by scholars. Those of prehistoric times are suggested by speculative etymological connections.

What is most significant in the historic records is that these Northern invaders viewed themselves as a very superior people. They were aggressive and continually in conflict with not only the peoples they conquered, but among themselves as well. Their coming revolutionized the art of war. They introduced the horse-drawn chariot, and the charioteer became a new aristocracy.

Historical, mythological and archaeological evidence suggests that it was these northern people who brought with them the concepts of light as good and dark as evil and of a supreme male deity. The arrival of the Aryans, the presentation of their male deities as superior to female deities, and the subsequent interweaving of the two theologies are recorded mythologically in each culture. It is in these myths that we can discover the attitude that led to the destruction of the Goddess.

The Aryan male god, unlike the son-lover of the Goddess, was frequently depicted as a storm god, high on a mountain, blazing with the light of fire or lightning. (Haven't we heard this before?!) In many of these myths, the goddess is depicted as a serpent or dragon, associated with darkness and evil. Sometimes the dragon is neuter or even male, but in such cases, is closely associated with the goddess, usually as her son.

The Goddess religion seems to have assimilated the male deities into the older forms of worship, and survived as the popular religion of the people for thousands of years after the initial Aryan invasions. But her position had been greately lowered and continued to decline. It was the assaults of the Hebrews and eventually the Christians that finally suppressed the religion.

Strangely, it is in the accounts of the Aryans that we find the original religious ideas of the Hebrews. There is the mountain-top god who blazes with light; there is the duality between light and darkness symbolized as good and evil; there is the myth of the male deity defeating the serpent; and there is the supreme leadership of a ruling class: the priestly Levites. All of these are to be found in both the Indo-European and Hebrew religious concepts and politics! The Indo-European patterns were either adopted by the Hebrews, or the Hebrews were Indo-Europeans from the start. But, the end result was that the same ideas and attitudes were later adopted by Christianity.

To be continued...