Post by Watchman on May 21, 2007 10:17:20 GMT -5
Goddesses 'R Us, NOT
Debra Rae
May 20, 2007
RaidersNewsNetwork.com
Goddess Worship: Its Historical Threads ("Living Goddess" Cults)
Every culture throughout the course of recorded history has glommed on to some sort of goddess figure—Venus and Isis (fertility goddesses) and Morrigan (goddess of war), to name but three. The most prolific goddess worshippers are spawned out of Hinduism and the beliefs of indigenous peoples, but even early Christian sects purportedly venerated the Virgin Mary as a goddess; moreover, contemporary mystics are petitioning the Pope to include Mary in the godhead.
Whereas some worship "God the Mother" as supreme and sole Deity, followers of Hinduism honor a plethora of goddesses. Practitioners can be conservative (in support of male dominance, state control, and colonialism); or radical, as acted out by bra-burning, perpetually offended militant feminists best characterized by their mantra, "I am woman; hear me roar!"
Throughout the centuries "living" goddess cults have venerated their fellows as deities. In ancient Egypt, for example, stateswomen such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII wielded total power as living goddesses. The same concept has been promulgated by imperial families of China, Rome and Japan. In Nepal even today, young girls are selected as living icons.
Since the mid-19th century, goddess worship in Western society has developed into a distinct culture. Rather than worship some distant deity, devotees often prefer terms as "spirituality" or "veneration" over goddess "worship." That being the case, "living goddess" cult followings have not escaped the West. Indeed, England’s monarchs (Elizabeth I, for one) drew on the iconic powers of a living goddess; and, on the other side of the pond, a devoted, sometimes ecstatic fan base of the Oprah Show gives shape to America’s "living" goddess cult.
Goddess Worship: Its Bogus Wisdom (A-Traditional Primordial Wisdom)
For its successes in gaining needed social, political and economic equality for women, today’s Women’s Movement has been broadly acclaimed since World War II—in many respects, for good reason. Trouble is extremists rev up their message a notch by advancing the nefarious notion of female superiority—sometimes to the point of deification.
Take, for example, Caroline Myss, Ph.D. So compelling is her message in the field of energy medicine and human consciousness and potential that, for one entire year (2003), Oprah Winfrey gave Caroline her own television program with the Oxygen network, targeted to women. A former consultant to our Defense Department and 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, Barbara Marx Hubbard applauds such women of vision who, in turn, honor a-traditional "primordial wisdom" as a resource of the spirit in their ascension process—whatever that means.
Arcane? You bet. Their feminist philosophy is decidedly esoteric, the Greek root for which means "private" or "confidential." You see, goddess wisdom (or spirituality, as the case may be) is exclusive truth reserved for an enlightened "inner circle" of initiates. Their claim to wisdom mirrors the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome.
Both Carolyn and Barbara join faculty at the Wisdom University as purportedly enlightened educators for "cosmic order" and spiritual transformation. A favorite product available through the university’s bookstore is Hallie Iglehart Austen’s paperback, The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine.
That women are worthy I’ll not debate; moreover, for apparent reason, their intuitive prowess is legendary. Nevertheless, earth’s first lady, Eve, learned the hard way that dabbling with God’s exclusive knowledge of good and evil rendered no service to her relationship with Him, her family and humanity at large.
While a good woman is godly, even godlike by design, she is not a goddess, nor will she ever be one. Still, godly women are forces to be reckoned with—even worthy of praise (Proverbs 31:30)—but never to the point of usurping God’s glory.
Goddess Worship: Its New Age Expression (Earned Egoic Advancement)
Coveting divinity was and is the Achilles heel of Lucifer, chief of fallen angels. For envying the exalted status of humans, all the while craving for himself God's exclusive right to omnipotence, Lucifer was cast down from Heaven. In search of mystical union with a personal deity, Lucifer’s 21st century protégées follow suit.
To discover the goddess within, a woman first must achieve elevated "cosmic consciousness"; and yoga is presumed to accomplish that purpose dandily. Its promise of yoking with the divine spirit of the universe has become all the rage—so much so that tens of thousands of copies have been circulated of a video tutorial created by Marsha Wenig of Michigan City, Indiana. Techniques within her Yoga Kids video and adult certification program (to teach yoga to children) have captivated young moms everywhere.
Many rush to their local bookstores to snatch up Yoga Baby and I Can’t Believe It’s Yoga for Kids, two among many trendy publications of this ilk. Mother-daughter yoga may well ensure bonding—but not filially. The goal of yoga is samadhi, or occult enlightenment, in giving way to one’s true divine nature. This is accomplished by controlling vital energy (prana) in the act of breathing. Some may be surprised to learn that virtually all standard yoga texts link psychic powers and other occult abilities with yoga practice.
All too often gullible women in search of "egoic advancement" gobble up self-help literature that a fallen world has to offer, but then manipulating cosmic energies simply doesn't cut it!
Better to take to heart the sobering upshot of Lucifer’s folly than to pursue an elusive dream of so-called earned egoic advancement otherwise known as achieving Christhood.
For good reason the Bible warns us to "let God be true, and [let] every man [or woman who makes claims to the contrary] [be exposed as] a liar" (Ro. 3:4).
Goddess Worship: Its Sexual Expression (Tantra and the Great Rite)
The term "sexual revolution" is not new, but was coined by anarchist Freudian scholar Wilhelm Reich. In the 1920s and 1930s, Otto Gross and he developed a "sociology of sex" further expounded upon by renowned, but controversial anthropologist Margaret Mead, author of Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). By the way, this is the same Margaret Mead who was keynote speaker at a UN Spiritual Summit Conference in which the UN’s resident guru led a diverse group in Eastern meditation.
Historian David Allyn characterized it as a time of "coming-out" when, in the 1960s, Eastern mysticism linked with America’s sexual revolution. Indeed, sexual behavior and religious affiliation changed radically for the vast majority of "enlightened," thoroughly-modern Millie’s who readily "made love, not war." Once freed from Sunday school morality, women were eager to explore "free love" inclusive of premarital sex, masturbation, erotic fantasies, pornography and lesbianism.
Add to this list "tantric sex," the concept for which was featured not long ago on an Oprah show I happened onto. Simply put, tantric sex is meditative lovemaking through which partners learn to channel potent orgasmic energies. The idea is to raise one’s level of consciousness from the plane of doing to the place of being. Tantra teaches a woman to transform the act of sex into a sacrament, merging the dual nature of sexuality into ecstatic union. Once having harmonized internal masculine and feminine polarities, one allegedly realizes the blissful nature of "the Self" (capital "S" intended).
Oprah enthusiasts would do well to consider the dark side of this so-called sacrament of love. In "Christian" America alone, Wiccans number an astonishing quarter-of-a-million; and a necessary part of their Third-Degree elevation ritual, the Great Rite celebrates "sacred marriage" through sex (not necessarily with one’s "significant other"). Wiccan sex partners invoke specific gods and goddesses into one another’s bodies—the dynamic polarity for which is reminiscent of Tantra.
True, we’ve come a long way, baby, since 1962 when Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl and, then, went on to transform Cosmopolitan magazine into a life manual for young career women. But, in many ways, women are none the better for it. Realizing one’s "blissful Self" is sullied by an ever-increasing smorgasbord of STDs, half of which are incurable. Add to that spiritual darkness; and we have a formula for disaster—physically, culturally, and spiritually.
Goddess Worship: Its Kinseyan Fraud and Freudian Foibles
Sigmond Freud (1865-1939) was an Austrian physician who pioneered study of the subconscious and unconscious mind. He developed psychoanalysis and formulated concepts of the pleasure-seeking id, the "conscious self" ego, and the conscience, or superego. A confessed atheist at war with religious mores, Freud nonetheless worshipped the god/goddess of sexuality. Furthermore, he used cocaine and championed hypnotism—both consistent with "altered consciousness" heralded by New Age feminists.
While much of Freud’s research is widely discredited, no one can dispute its cultural (even spiritual) impact; indeed, his work laid the foundation for a groundbreaking study called Human Sexual Response (Masters and Johnson, 1966), which unveiled the nature and scope of sex practices engaged in by young Americans at the time.
Earlier on, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey published two similarly scandalous surveys of modern sexual behavior. In Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, co-author Judith Reisman exposes Kinsey’s illegal sexual experimentation on virtually hundreds of babies and children (for example, Table 34 tallies infant orgasms). Even so, Kinseyan sexology remains the learning base for sex education in America’s public school system.
In fact, the propagandist arm of the Kinsey Institute (Indiana University), Sex Instruction/ Information Education Committee in the United States (SIECUS) fundamentally shapes that curriculum; furthermore, SIECUS receives funding from (gulp!) the Playboy Foundation, no doubt influenced by Freud, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and modern goddess veneration, if not worship. The latter is epitomized in "playmates" of Hugh Heffner’s making. For decades, generously-endowed models have posed nude in Playboy magazine centerfolds only to be ogled by male worshippers in awe of their meticulously airbrushed curves.
Similarly, the famed Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue inaugurated in 1966 left little to the male imagination, but nonetheless has served to launch modeling and acting careers of the world’s most beautiful icons of goddess-like sexuality.
Not exactly what bra-burning militant feminists of the 1960s had in mind, but then our century’s leading sexperts might have taken a bow were they alive today.
Goddess Worship: Liberal Lollipop—The Imperial "I"
Solipsism is the philosophical viewpoint that only the "Imperial Self" exists. It is fair to suggest that the female "Imperial Self" is chief among great deceptions of our day and age.
Self-esteem has become the unremitting mantra of secularists and mystics alike. While secular humanists seek "a heightened sense of personal life," New Age mystics journey inwardly in search of an alleged "spark of the divine." The former lean toward Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger in her passion to "breed a race of thoroughbreds"; the latter aspire to self-deification. Both camps covet adulation. In female circles, both play the self-god card.
At the very heart of today’s "Me Generation" is preoccupation with self-fulfillment, as well as sexual gratification. Freud believed the roots of human behavior were in the libido. His "science" of psychoanalysis revolutionized an entire culture's self-image in shoving aside sexual purity, summarily dismissed as Victorian prudishness. In its place emerged an allegedly new, improved sexually-liberated icon of female rebellion.
For good reason, prophetic Scripture describes our "Me" generation as being high-minded "lovers of their own selves" (2 Ti. 3: 2, 4). In society at large, the imperial, autocratic self has given rise to no-fault divorce, serial marriages, latchkey kids, and cockeyed family dynamics. Springing from liberal core values are abortion on demand (if only for convenience), lesbian activism, and reverse discrimination (affirmative action).
In analyzing cultural studies spanning the continents, sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that, for thousands of years, sexual revolutions devaluing marriage and family precede virtually all political revolutions and eventually lead to social collapse.
Given an inordinate emphasis on "Self," the Human Potential Movement at its core declares independence from God to whom humans rightfully are accountable; in its wake, society is reaping putrid crops from the salacious seeds of narcissism.
The Imperial "I" may well be offered as a liberal lollipop to would-be goddesses, but licking it is more like "drinking the Kool-aid" at Jonestown.
Goddess Worship: Its Gaia Connection
In Greek mythology, Gaia or Ge is goddess of the Earth whose worship is at the root of ancient mystery religions, witchcraft, New Age mysticism and radical environmentalism (not to be confused with responsible stewardship).
In the 1970s, ex-wife of the late Carl Sagan, Lynn Margulis, elaborated Gaia ideology alongside British atmospheric chemist James Lovelock. Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis warned that, unless humans halt their technical assault on Earth, she cannot heal herself and, for that reason, faces certain destruction. In the politically correct mindset, Gaia commands human apology for damages inflicted.
Furthermore, as an interconnected living ecosystem, Mother Earth deserves protection from irksome human ingrates—predominately monotheistic male industrial capitalists degraded as some sort of icky virus, called "humanpox." Its only cure is found in sixteen commands memorialized within the crowning document of radical environmentalism—that of the Earth Charter. A type of planetary commandment, the Charter binds global citizens to Earth servitude.
In Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., characterizes divinity as the feminine life force deeply connected to Nature and fertility; but then, according to a Wall Street Journal article, these women "pray for the time when science will make men unnecessary for procreation."
Perhaps with this in mind, Jungian psychotherapist John Weir Perry insists that men tap into their innate femaleness (their "Higher Self"?). At her corporate presentations, the Director of the C.G. Jung Psychoanalytic Institute in Denver, Colorado (Clarissa Penkola Estes) induces androgyny-enlightened participants to visualize sexual encounters with the Earth goddess, Gaia—source and giver of all life.
Little wonder that a substantial lesbian consensus steers global leadership of the Earth goddess movement.
Goddess Worship—NOW
Signer of the Humanist Manifesto II (1973), feminist Betty Friedan authored The Feminine Mystique and founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in New York (1966). Along with Friedan, the late Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray co-founded NOW.
An American civil rights advocate and feminist, Murray was the first African-American woman Episcopal priest and served as a professor of American studies at Brandeis University (1968 to 1973). In 1990, the Pauli Murray Human Relations Award was established in her honor to commemorate her life work.
Underpinning the organization that Friedan and Murray spawned is feminist spirituality, devoted to re-interpreting and, thus, skewing Western monotheistic traditions compatible with what some call Judeo-Christian ethic. That God is of the male gender is soundly rejected, and His patriarchal authoritarianism is held in contempt. In its place, a deeply-ingrained culture of neo-paternalist hate characterizes the Klan-like cult of radical feminism.
Albeit out of character, feminist spirituality emphasizes God’s maternal attributes. "She" is nurturing, accepting, and creative, to name three; but, then, even TIME magazine once conceded that, for its ingenuous duplicity, "the feminist label is viewed with disdain, and the name of Gloria Steinem is uttered as an epithet."
Macho feminism in question was well illustrated on the silver screen in the characters of Thelma and Louise—hardly models of the predominantly "softer side" of God. Many NOW would-be goddesses sport a chip on the shoulder as they are out and about in search of a fight! As Phyllis Schlafley points out, "feminism has no happy role models" (Feminist Fantasies, 2003).
Although traditional family-values groups, as Concerned Women of American, dwarf NOW in total membership, the former do not merit a tenth of the publicity showered upon NOW. This is largely due to the outrageous antics of its members. For example, NOW activists bared their breasts in protest of the 1997 Promise Keepers gathering in Washington, DC.
Childish antics, as this, hardly command veneration let alone worship; but there’s no stopping the "feministas"—other than with a face-to-face encounter with God Himself!
Goddess Worship: Its UN Connection
The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) sounds noble enough. Certainly former President Jimmy Carter thought so when he signed CEDAW in 1980; but, then, this is the same UN that recognizes NAMBLA. Pedophiles in the North American Man-Boy Love Association work hard to erase all taboos restricting children from sexual activities.
Still, it comes as no surprise that the UN is radical feminism’s venue of choice. In the words of the late feminist activist Ellen Willis: "The objective of every feminist reform, from legal abortion to child-care programs, is to undermine traditional family values" (The Nation, 1981).
Toward this end, CEDAW defines discrimination against women as any restriction that "impairs" or "nullifies" their "recognition" or "enjoyment." Apparently said "enjoyment" includes practicing prostitution, motherhood shared with one’s lesbian lover, and protected "intergenerational intimacy." Such non-proliferating practices serve well the UN guiding principle of sustainable development. Mothers' Day does not; therefore, the latter is frowned upon. The UN chooses instead to sponsor Environmental Sabbaths for Gaia-Mother Earth.
Although CEDAW has yet to be ratified, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is once again poised to do so. While unnecessarily duplicating existing laws that already protect women from discrimination, this treaty proposes social engineering under the guise of "human rights"—i.e., to abortion, independence from parental authority, voluntary prostitution, gender neutrality, gay marriage and adoption.
Clouded in vague and confusing language, CEDAW is likened to an international version of the ERA. Alarmingly, the treaty empowers global bureaucrats and activist judges to overhaul U.S. laws, education, and customs in favor of non-breeding pedophilia, voluntary prostitution and, yes, Gaia paganism.
Western traditions simply won’t do.
Goddess Worship: Its Conservative Nemesis
Founder-president of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, Michelle Easton recounts the experience of a student at Rutgers University who proposed writing her thesis on conservative women leaders. In response, her professor retorted, "There are no conservative women leaders." No conservative women leaders? Balderdash!
How about Clare Boothe Luce? A Congresswoman from Connecticut and the American Ambassador to Italy, Luce was an outspoken advocate of free enterprise, and she led the entire free world’s opposition to communism. An award-winning play-write and prolific journalist, Luce later became editor of Vanity Fair.
And then there’s Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick, first woman appointed to serve as a Permanent Representative of the U.S. to the United Nations. A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Leavey Professor of Government at Georgetown University, Kirkpatrick surely qualifies as a conservative woman leader.
And we mustn’t overlook President and founder of Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly. Author-editor of sixteen books, Schlafly is a syndicated columnist and talk radio hostess. It was no small accomplishment when, from 1972 to 1982, this courageous lawyer led a successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment.
One more: a tell-it-like-it-is conservative, Dr. Laura is best known perhaps as "My Kid’s Mom" on her internationally syndicated, award-winning talk show heard daily by some twenty million. Author of numerous books, she earned a Ph.D. in physiology from Columbia University; yet Dr. Laura is openly scorned by feminist "sisters" she once embraced.
That conservative women commanding national and even international acclaim for their extraordinary accomplishments fail to qualify as "leaders" is ridiculous. To the contrary, I contend that these very women represent a formidable, even unbeatable opponent—a nemesis, if you will—to liberal feminist counterparts.
In ancient Greek culture, Nemesis was goddess of just punishment or divine wrath. No conservative woman leader claims to be a goddess, certainly not the goddess of divine wrath!
So, then, this begs the fitting question posed by Dr. Laura: "What’s a girl gotta do to be a feminist role model?" That is, if she’s not willing to play