In article <
[email protected]>,
Yeff <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:18:53 -0700, Mark Thorson wrote:
>
> > Did he say anything specific about problems that
> > would result from messing with the witches coven?
>
> Nothing specific. The one thing I heard consistently from people who
> had been stationed there was that they were "spooky".
People fear what they do not understand...
Read this (very long) essay for a better understanding of the older
spiritual process, Pre-dates the Christian pantheon:
~~ "We Are the Other People" ~~
"Ding-dong!" goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or
perhaps Ed McMahon with my three million dollars? No, it's
Yahweh's Witnesses again, just wanting to have a nice little
chat about the Bible... Boy, did they ever come to the wrong
house!
So we invite them in: "Enter freely and of your own will..."
(Hey, it's Sunday morning, nothing much going on, why not
have a little entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves
watching their expressions as they check out the living room:
great horned owl on the back of my chair; ceremonial masks
and medicine skulls of dragons and unicorns on the wall;
crystals, wands, staffs, swords; lots of Goddess figures and
several altars; boa constrictors draped in amorous embrace
over the elkhorn; white doves sitting in the hanging planters;
cats and weasels underfoot; iron dragon snorting steam
atop the wood stove; posters and paintings of wizards
and dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked;
sculptures of mythological beasties and lots more dinosaurs;
warp six on the star-filled viewscreen of my computer; a
five-foot model of the USS Enterprise and the skeleton of a
plesiosaur hanging from the ceiling; very, very many books,
most of them dealing with obviously weird subjects... To say
nothing of the great horned owl perched on the back of my
chair and the Unicorn grazing in the front yard. You know;
early Adams Family decor.
And then, of course, it being late in the morning, you can
expect Morning Glory to come wandering out naked, looking
for her wake-up cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly
impressive sight, and the Witnesses look as if she'd set titties
on stun as they stand immobilized, hands clasped over their
genitals. With the stage set and all the actors in place, the
show is ready to begin.
Their mission, of course, is to save our heathen souls by
turning us on to "The Word of the Lord"- their Bible. I
guess they figger some of us just haven't heard about it yet,
and we're all eagerly awaiting their joyous tidings of personal
salvation through giving our rational faculties to Jesus. Every
time they come around, I look forward to trying out a new
riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but hey, I
didn't call them up and ask them to come over; they entered
at their own risk! This time should be pretty good.
After letting them run off their basic rap while lovely
Morning Glory serves us all hot herb tea, I innocently
remark: "But none of that applies to us. We have no need
for salvation because we don't have original sin. We are the
Other People."
"Hunh? What?" they reply eloquently. It's clear they've never
heard this one before. "Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible."
And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for
reference: (Genesis 1:26) The [Elohim] said, "Let us make
humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and
let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven,
the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl
upon the earth." Elohim is a plural word, including male and
female, and should properly be translated "Gods" or
"Pantheon."
(1: 27) The Gods created humanity in the image of
themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them,
Male and female they created them. (1:28) The Gods blessed
them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and
conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of
heaven and all living animals on the earth." Now clearly,
here we are talking about the original creation of the human
species: male and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all
been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of
Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these
people.
The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual
member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own
special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and
making his own little man to inhabit it: (Gen 2:7) Yahweh
God fashioned a man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed
into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became a
living being. (2:8) Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden
which is in the east, and there he put the man he had
fashioned. (2:9) Yahweh God caused to spring up from the
soil every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat,
with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil in the middle of the garden. (2:15) Yahweh God took the
man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and
take care of it.
Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh's precise words: (2:16)
Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, "You may
eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. (2:17) Nevertheless
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to
eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die."
Fateful words, those. We will refer back to this admonition
later.
Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man.
Now, don't forget that the Pantheon had earlier created a
whole population of people, "male and female," who are
presumably doing just fine somewhere "outside the gates
of Eden." But this set-up in Eden is Yahweh's own little
experiment, and will unfold to its own separate destiny.
(2:21) So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep.
And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in
flesh. (2:22) Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the
man into a woman, and brought her to the man. Right. Man
gives birth to woman. Sure he does. But that's the way the
story is told here. (2:25) Now both of them were naked, the
man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each
other. Well, of course not! Why should they? But take
careful note of those words, as they also will prove to be
significant...
Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter
the Serpent: (Gen. 3:1) The serpent was the most subtle of
all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the
woman, "Did God really say you were not to eat from any
of the trees in the garden?" (3:2) The woman answered the
serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. (3:3)
"But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God
said, 'You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death."
(3:4) Then the serpent said to the woman, "No! You will not
die! (3:5) "God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your
eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good
and evil."
What a remarkable statement! "Your eyes will be opened and
you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." The Serpent
directly contradicts Yahweh. Obviously, one of them has to
be lying. Which one, do you suppose? And, if the serpent
speaks true, wouldn't you wish to eat of the magic fruit?
Wouldn't it be a good thing, to become "like gods, knowing
good and evil"? Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?
(Gen. 3:6) The woman saw that the tree was good to eat
and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the
knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit
and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with
her, and he ate it. (3:7) Then the eyes of both of them were
opened and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed
fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths. The author
makes an interesting assumption here: that if you realize you
are naked you will automatically want to cover yourself.
Further implications will unfold shortly...
(Gen. 3:8) The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they
hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. (3:9)
But Yahweh God called to the man. "Where are you?" he
asked. (3:10) "I heard the sound of you in the garden," he
replied. "I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid." (3:11)
"Who told you that you were naked?" he asked. "Have you
been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?"
And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of
this. The descendants of Adam and Eve will be distinguished
throughout history from virtually all other peoples by their
obsessive modesty taboos, wherein they will feel ashamed of
being naked. It follows that those who feel no shame in being
naked are, by definition, not carriers of this spiritual disease
of original sin!
(Gen. 3:12) The man replied,"It was the woman you put with
me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it." Right. Blame the
woman. What a turkey! (3:13) Then Yahweh God asked the
woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman replied,
"The serpent tempted me and I ate. "So of course she blames
the serpent. But just what did the serpent do that was so evil?
Why, he called Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong? Let's see...
(3:21) Yahweh God made clothes out of skins for the man
and his wife, and they put them on. Out of skins? This means
that Yahweh had to kill some innocent animals to pander to
Adam and Eve's new obsession with modesty!
And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said
back there in chapter (2:17), regarding the fruit of the tree
of knowledge, that "on the day you eat of it you shall most
surely die." The Serpent, on the other hand, had contradicted
Yahweh in chapter (3:4-5): "No! You will not die! God
knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be
opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."
So what actually happened? Who lied and who told the truth
about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given in the next
verse: (3:22) Then Yahweh God said, "See, the man has
become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil.
He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick
from the tree of life also, and eat some and live forever."
Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and
in Yahweh's own words, the Serpent spoke the absolute truth!
And moreover, Yahweh tells the rest of the Pantheon that
he intends to evict Adam (and presumably Eve as well) to
keep them from gaining immortality to go with their newly-
acquired divine knowledge. To prevent them, in other words,
from truly becoming gods! So who, in this story, comes off
as a benefactor of humanity, and who comes off as a tyrant?
THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!
This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance
to a contemporary tale from ancient Greece. In that version,
the Serpent (later identified as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer) may
be equated with the heroic titan Prometheus, who championed
humanity against the tyranny of Zeus, who wished for people
to be mere slaves of the gods.
Prometheus, whose name means "forethought," gave people
wisdom, intelligence, and fire stolen from Olympus. Moreover,
he ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so that humans
got the best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that
was burned to the gods was the bones and fat.
In punishment for this defiance of his divine authority, Zeus
condemned Prometheus to a terrible punishment for an
immortal: to be chained to a mountain in the Caucasus, where
Zeus' gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would devour
his liver each day. It would grow back each night. Zeus
promised to relent if Prometheus would reveal his great
secret knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as supreme
god? Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the
answer...
The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly
regarded Prometheus as a noble hero in his defiance of
unjust tyranny. One may wonder why the Serpent is not so
well regarded. On the contrary, snakes are loathed throughout
Christendom. (3:23) So Yahweh God expelled him from the
garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken.
(3:24) He banished the man, and in front of the garden of
Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing
sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. So that's it for the
Fall.
But the story of Adam and Eve doesn't end there. (Gen 4:1)
The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she
conceived and gave birth to Cain... (4:2) She gave birth to a
second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now Abel became
a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil. (4:3)
Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the
soil as an offering for Yahweh, (4:4) while Abel, for his part,
brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as
well.
Yahweh looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But he
did not look with favor on Cain and his offering, and Cain
was very angry and downcast. Well, why shouldn't he be?
Both brothers had brought forth their first fruits as offerings,
but Yahweh rejected the vegetables and only accepted the
blood sacrifice. This was to set a gruesome precedent: (4:8)
Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out;" and while
they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother Abel
and killed him. Accursed and marked for fratricide, (4:16)
Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of
Nod, east of Eden. We can assume that the phrase "left the
presence of Yahweh" implies that Yahweh is a local deity,
and not omnipresent.
Now Eden, according to (Gen. 2:14-15), was situated at the
source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right
where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore,
would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right
in the Indo-European heartland.
Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married
one of the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is
specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not of the
lineage of Adam and Eve. i.e: the Pagans. So let's look at this
story from another viewpoint:
There we were, around six thousand years ago, living in
our little farming communities around the Caspian Sea, in
the land of Nod, when this dude with a terrible scar comes
stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us this bizarre story,
about how his mother and father had been created by some
god named Yahweh, and put in charge of a beautiful garden
somewhere out west, and how they had gotten thrown out for
disobedience after eating some of the landlord's forbidden
magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his
brother, as the god of his parents would only accept blood
sacrifice, and of receiving that scar as a mark so that all
would know him as a fratricide.
The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed with
guilt. He is also obsessively modest, insisting on wearing
clothes even in the hottest summer, and he has a hard time
with our penchant for skinny-dipping in the warm inland
sea. He seems to believe that he is tainted by the "sin" of his
parent's disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and
will continue to contaminate his children and his children's
children.
One of our healing women takes pity on the poor sucker,
and marries him... (4:17) Cain had intercourse with his wife,
and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. He became the
builder of a town, and he gave the town the name of his son
Enoch. With both of their first sons not turning out very
well, Adam and Eve decided to try again: (4:25) Adam had
intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son whom
she named Seth... (4:26) A son was also born to Seth, and he
named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name
of Yahweh.
Now it doesn't mention here where Seth's wife came from.
Another woman from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone
from another neolithic community downstream in the
Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also, cannot be of the
lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among
"the other people."
But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there
in chapter Gen. 2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of
knowledge, Yahweh had told him that "on the day you eat of
it you shall most surely die." So, when did Adam die? (Gen.
5:4) Adam lived for eight hundred years after the birth of
Seth and he became the father of sons and daughters. (5:5)
In all, Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years; then he
died. Hey, that's pretty good! Nine hundred and some odd
years isn't bad for a man who's been told he's gonna die the
next day!
Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses
come to visit I'll tell more of it. But suffice it to say that those
of us who are not of Semitic descent (i.e., not of the lineage
of Adam and Eve) cannot share in the Original Sin that
comes with that lineage. Being that the Bible is the story of
that lineage, of Adam and Eve's descendants and their special
relationship with their particular god, Yahweh, it follows that
this is not the story of the rest of us. We may have been
Cain's wife's people, or Seth's wife's people, or some other
people over the hill and far away, but whichever people the
rest of us are, as far as the Bible is concerned, we are the
Other People, and so we are continually referred to
throughout.
Later books of the Bible are filled with admonitions to the
followers of Yahweh to "learn not the ways of the Pagans..."
(Jer 10:2) with detailed descriptions of exactly what it is we
do, such as erect standing stones and sacred poles, worship
in sacred groves and practice divination and magic. And
worship the sun, moon, stars and the "Queen of Heaven."
"You must not behave as they do in Egypt where once you
lived; you must not behave as they do in Canaan where I am
taking you. You must not follow their laws." (Lev 18:3) For
Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasizes, is not the god of the
Pagans.
We have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale
is not told in the Bible. We were not "made" like clay
figurines by a male deity out of "dust from the soil." We
were born of our Mother the Earth, and have evolved over
aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of us, in our many and
diverse tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins
and history; some of these tales may even be actually true.
Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have
stories of great floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and
other cataclysms that wiped out whole communities of our
people, wherein "I alone survived to tell the tale." Nearly all
of our ancestral tribes (and especially those of us who today
are reclaiming our own Pagan heritage) lack that peculiar
obsessive body modesty that seems to be a hallmark of the
original sin alluded to in the story of the Fall. We can be
naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells us, "as a
sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites."
Not being born into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no
need of a Messiah to redeem our sinful souls.
Neither heaven nor hell is our destination in the afterlife; we
have our own various arrangements with our own various
deities. The Bible is not our story; we have our own stories
to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a long life, you may
get to hear many of them... May you live long and prosper!
By Oberon (Otter) Zell
--
Peace!
Om
"My mother nevers saw the irony in calling me a Son of a *****."
- Jack Nicholson
