Goddess or Woman...The Worship of the Ideal

 

The prison of the external valuation of beauty, one that every culture has been through, going back to the dawn of time, when women were mandated to prostitute themselves in the temples of Ishtar at least once before they were to marry.  A religion that somehow took the power of a goddess that represented both love and war somehow turned inward upon itself to devalue women, by making all women into nothing more than objects for sale.  To get women to comply, it was told that during the act, the women would be transformed into Ishtar herself, and bestow love upon the first man that threw whatever denomination into her lap and he could not be refused.  She was, at that moment, acting as a priestess, and could not leave the temple until she was purchased.  

A woman was immediately judged and compared by all of the men who were there.  Since a woman could not leave until she was purchased, some would spend years in the temple before a man redeemed her.  In a very real sense, this was like the first beauty contest; the first appraisals of being an object and somehow lowering the value of what it means to be a woman.  I have run across many sites that actually look at elevating the worship of Ishar, Inanna or Lilith (among many other names), with many of them not realizing the real secrets of what these temples were used for in their ancient histories.  Who is to say how the temples evolved into making women sell themselves?  What might they had to believe in order to do so?  How young maidens were persuaded to continue the traditions that spanned long periods of time, as the roles of women were molded along the way by using a goddess as the very image to possibly go against their will.

 

The first rule is always to divide and conquer.  If women were forced to compete against each other, they could never unite.  They would have had the shared experience of what it would be like to sell themselves and their future husbands would all know that they were not untouched.  Perhaps that is just one view.  As sexuality seemed to be simultaneously sacred and profane, the conflict that women wrestle with when releasing themselves to another and yet wanting the free will to only release themselves to a man of their choosing seems hard for many women to understand.  The real power of being able to give a heart to another, freely, without purchase, is one that many still do not understand.

I see that there are still many women who act as though they are objects for purchase, only looking into a man's wallet and not at the man.  In return, the women wanted to be treated like a goddess or a princess; often with abusive traits displayed along the way.  Is this really how we need to be?

There are so many people who have lost faith in love, believing it is something to be purchased along the way.  Love can only be given when we first realize we are human.  Being worshiped takes away from the power of being human, having the ability to share our flaws and weaknesses with each other.  To being able to support and share our dreams with each other and helping one another achieve them along the way then enables us to unleash the power that resides deep within us when that couple loves unconditionally.

Not to be sold.  Not to be bought.  And if you still believe that the only way to attain love is through being an image and not a woman, your heart has grown very cold indeed.  Since the women we see in the world elevate themselves through using their sexuality indiscriminately, through varying forms of selling themselves like temple prostitutes to the highest bidder...in pieces of themselves to be possessions, I have to wonder how much it hurt to kill their hearts along the way.

What if we reclaimed our hearts?  What could we do if we stopped our beauty contests and just acted with our true beauty of love?  It is possible, very possible.  All we have to do is change.

The Journey of a Single Woman

Once upon a time, there was a baby born, who entered this world without a script, but desperately was trying to hold on to all of the information she came into the world with, but it seemed to slip away with the new language she was learning.  This was a new reality for her, as she looked at her body and childlike ways of walking and talking, and of innocence.  She was not aware she was called a girl.  She wasn't aware she was already labeled a sinner.  She was not aware of the darkness or of fear.  She was trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible, and found she entered a time of darkness.  It was a time of fear, polarization, of racial tensions, and of a war that no one wanted to be in.

She had no idea that she would be judged primarily because she was a girl.  As I stated before, she walked into life without knowing the script and the expected roles and most importantly, this girl did not know who to trust.  She just had the knowledge that she was the firstborn, and being the firstborn carried a lot of responsibility.  For as she grew and her siblings arrived, she found none of them could remember their instructions, and she had to be the caretakers for the children that followed.  She was their protector, their big sister.

With an unstable home, the first myth shattered.  The one of safety and love from those who are the appointed protectors.  As she grew and saw the role of mother being dismantled, or of wife, as one being abused, she looked outside to see what kind of modeling behaviours were displayed.  She saw many worlds of illusions and quickly understood that the public displays were lies.  The furthest thing from truth to the outside world.  Women concealed their real emotions and would take little pills with their wine at cocktail parties.  Everyone had an ailment, but the reality was they weren't trying to remember...they were trying to forget.

In the churches, the congregation gathered like cattle to listen to 'words of inspiration'.  Instead what they were told about all of their weaknesses and guilted into contribution to offering plates 10 percent of their earnings, but they must go above and beyond all of that, because God needed their money.  However, a gentle reminder was you must give cheerfully from the heart, 'For God loves a Cheerful Giver."  The game continued with how God needed their money, for more churches so they could continue the great commission of telling everyone how they were going to hell.  After all, they served a jealous God who condemned women from the beginning of time over a piece of fruit.  The fruit that God pointed out...and said to them not to seek knowledge, because if we knew good from evil we would die because of knowing. 

We were told that a woman looked at the tree, and listened to a serpent, and took the fruit.  She ate the fruit and then gave the knowledge to man.  The man ate the fruit and their eyes were opened.  Knowledge, we are told, produces fear.  So they ran and hide because they knew they were naked and they had disobeyed this God that is described in Jewish and Christian doctrines.

So what truth is there in this story?  In this fable?  So all women are held responsible for an action that set into motion being human.  This is just one example of how women have been controlled since the beginning of recorded history.

Just one example.  So as an innocent little girl I heard the story with wide open eyes and asked, "what is knowledge?"  No one could seem to answer that question.  "What is sin?"  I continued.  "Why would he tell then about the tree and create the tree if they were not supposed to eat it?"  More confused looks from the adults.  "Well, just because that is the story."

Relief spread across my face. "Oh, it's just a story, then I can do anything I want to do with my life."
"Oh no dear, you are a girl.  You can be a wife, a mother and live in a nice home."  was an elderly woman's reply.  "What if I don't want that?"  I silently thought to myself.  What if I didn't want to be a woman who silently took pills to stop thinking and sip wine at cocktail parties and laughed far too loud for the bland jokes that didn't seem to matter to me.  What if I wanted something more?

So as I began my journey as a young girl, I remembered a silent voice telling me, "They are all lying, but they think they are telling the truth."  I nodded my little head.  As another little girl got a gold star for bringing me to Sunday School with her and the sounds of "Onward Christian Soldier" played in the background.  I looked at the gold star, a sticker to say she tried to win another soul for Christ, I realized the lie was very deep indeed.

For in no way is love an oppressive force, to anyone.  There is no judgment or systems of complexity.  For the first 21 years of my life I explored religions, the narrow-minded religious views.  I start with the world religions. 

Not in the spirit of attacking them, but with the goal of eventually making a movie and asking all of the religious leaders of the world...the Forbidden Question.  The great conspiracy against women, and why the systems tries to get us to act as heartless as men when we rise to positions of power.  Or even worse, view us the same as men.

Let the journey begin and yes...this is going to challenge all of us, to look at each other differently.