(Above: you can find more details about this upper Paleolithic carving here, and also more about the 6000-5,500 BC Turkish carving down below, along with other images of mother goddesses that didn't exist, and ssh, whatever you do, don't mention James Frazer or The Golden Bough).
As usual we're a little late to the scene of a major event, but since it involves Hal G. P. Colebatch, we ask forgiveness, and hope that this belated notice will send a few souls scurrying off immediately to read his latest offering, The Neopagan Temptation.
In case they've recently stumbled across a neopagan, and been inclined to suffer a great temptation, of the kind neopagans are always ready to inflict on the solid, sturdy, made of oak folk unused to their devious, guileful and sexually provocative ways.
The intrepid, valiant Colebatch has decided to break his recent fast from columns with a review of a book Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality, by Philip G. Davis, published by Spence Publishing in 1998, or so Colebatch advises.
This is also a tad late-breaking - some pedants are inclined to review books published more recently, within the last decade at least - but it's all in a good cause, as it sounds the alarum regarding the recent tendency of feminist paganists towards vile heresy.
Indeed. Say farewell to Sapphic pleasures and the Delphic oracle, you horrendous modern harridan harpies. Your anti-Christian ways will see you in hell soon enough, while lacking in the dignity and poise of the days of Caligula, or even the splendid traditions established in Salem.
Advocates of "goddess" and other feminist and New Age religions have generally tried to claim some ancientry behind their beliefs. However, on investigation this dissolves. Evidence for the worship of a great or supreme Mother Goddess in the ancient world or in ancient Europe simply does not exist. The story that modern witchcraft cults are the descendants of something sometimes called "the old religion" (which has allegedly been slandered and driven underground by the oppressive forces of Christianity) is false and manufactured.
Now don't you go reading a wretched wiki about mother goddesses (here), with all their fangled, high falutin' talk of mother goddesses of old. It'll do you no good, not up against conclusive and definitive prejudice.
Personally I blame Dan Brown, though I suppose - since Davis was published in 1998 - that this is a tad problematic. Perhaps also the Catholics, with their egregious Mary worship as the mother of god (one short linguistic trick, and the next thing you know she's a mother goddess). Not to mention the arcane notion that Mary Magdalene was hitched to Jesus - perhaps that was all Da Vinci's fault. Or Dan Brown's.
In fact, this book shows that while these cults generally have the usual heritage of Gnosticism to be found in most Christian heresies, the ideas behind them were concocted by occultists largely men -- mostly in the last couple of centuries. Those responsible included as unsavory a collection of disordered cranks, mountebanks, sexual predators and crooks as might be imagined.
Oh dear, this is very worrying. How to solve the problem? The problem of the legacy of gnosticism, which strangely has been around for hundreds of years, and strangely can claim and long and repressed tradition of alternative thinking?
Well who better to deal with the issue than Garner Ted Armstrong and his site Tomorrow's World, and a fine article by Douglas S. Winnall, under the header A Different Gospel?
Since some Gnostics taught that Adam was created without gender, the ideal state one should aspire to is androgyny—where sexual identity is suppressed or eliminated. The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas states, "when you make the male and female into one, so that the male is not male and the female is not female... then you shall enter the kingdom" (Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus, Dart and Riegert, 1998, p. 54). Celibate asceticism—denying one's sexuality and abhorring marriage—was a way of achieving this androgynous ideal and becoming like the true God.
However, other Gnostic teachers advocated just the opposite! Simon Magus appears to have rejected marriage and promoted free love! Gnostics saw laws given by an evil creator-god as restrictive and inhibiting. They taught the "practice of free love must be the means of bursting out of the social straight jacket specifically invented to stifle its [love's] liberating spontaneity... in the promiscuity of men and women lies the true communion" (Lacarriere, p. 51). Some Gnostic sects participated in orgiastic rites of almost indescribable perversion. The idea was that to extirpate evil, it must be practiced until it is exhausted!
Oh damn you ancient gnostics, and you, yes you in particular, you doubting Thomas (readers wanting to know more of Thomas will find the good news here ). Damn the lot of you to hell, with your filthy perversions and feminist conspiracies. But wait, we seem to have strayed a little from Colebatch.
Back to the font, and the fountain of evil:
The very best were perhaps little worse than ridiculous. One of the saner and actually less unwholesome examples (compared to some) was the French artist Ganneau. He founded a movement called "Evadism," combining "Adam" and "Eve" in its title, and styled himself "The Great Mapah," combining -- you guessed it! -- "Ma" and "Pa." As Davis tells it: "Garbed in a grey felt hat, a smock, and clogs, he preached eloquently of love, human fraternity and sexual equality and wrote condescending letters to the Pope." Then there were two pioneers of goddess-worship who joined the Alpha and Omega Lodge: "the two feuded, however, and engaged in psychic and magical battles with each other in which cats were strangely prominent. Fortune accused Mrs. Mathers of inflicting a plague of cats on her house by occult means and, after fighting one out-of-body battle on the astral plane reported finding cat scratches all over her back."
Why yes indeed, it's so much easier to believe in cannibalism, and the natural need of folk to eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood, as freely made available through the miracle of transubstantiation at an altar near you.
But wait, it's easy to sneer at the eccentrics. What about the heavy hitters? You might for example think that Mussolini reached some kind of accommodation with the Pope and that even the cunning Hitler pretended a kind of Christianity:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942) (here).
Silly you. Hitler was a vegetarian, and perhaps because he had only one testicle and worshipped Wagner, is directly connected to modern goddess worship and Satanism.
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942) (here).
Silly you. Hitler was a vegetarian, and perhaps because he had only one testicle and worshipped Wagner, is directly connected to modern goddess worship and Satanism.
This book provides additional evidence for the fact that people who adopt one crank belief tend not to let it go at that, but to gradually adopt the whole spectrum of them, whether they are compatible with one another or not. Fairly innocent, or at least naïve, sandal-wearers and vegetarian cultists could link up with practitioners of full-blown Satanism. The 19th-century occultist and neopagan movements from which modern goddess-worship sprang had links with the origins of both communism and Nazism.
Oh I'm so sorry, there goes Godwin's Law again, but never mind, it's such a jolly romp, where's the harm. Especially when there's a finer trick, which is to differentiate between witchcraft and wicca.
And then blame wicca on Gerald Gardner, and go with the notion that there's never been any moral panics or mass hysteria or killings associated with witch-hunts.
The wicca cult in England, far from being ancient, appears to have been the creation of one Gerald Gardner, who died only in 1964 (typically, claiming a doctorate from the University of Singapore from a date before it existed), and who was an associate of the Satanist Alister Crowley. It was Gardner who concocted the spurious figure of nine million alleged victims of witch hunts. Much of English wicca actually seems concerned with men getting women to take their clothes off (The late great English satirist Peter Simple created in his Daily Telegraph column gallery of targets a "thoroughly nice" British coven with Satan dropping in for tea and seed-cakes.)
Yes, but what about the witchcraft cult? Or at least the cult and craze for killing witches? Usually women. It's easy to knock over a spurious number, but surely even a modest campaign of slaughter might give pause for thought?
Sorry, men have been ever so terribly nice to witches. Come on dearie, they say, drop your gear and give us a gander, and that's all there is to it. No persecution at all, and not such a fuss, and why never you mind too much about the women who refused to drop their gear and got hung or burned alive for their troubles. That kind of thing was common enough in the old days only if they wouldn't flash their tits, and truth to tell, who wouldn't mind doing that to the odd tit-concealing feminist these days?
But soft, joking aside, what's this? It seems that the pesky bloody feminists and paganists and cultists and witches are at it again, and doing devilish mischief in the name of Satan:
Davis points out that these goddess cults have made considerable inroads into the mainstream Christian Churches, including parts of the Catholic Church, particularly in the U.S. and Canada:
Where God the Father is supplemented by God the Mother, it seems the Mother Goddess is rarely far behind. Her appeal crosses many boundaries. In the larger denominations today, it is not only women in small groups who welcome her. Male theologians with international reputations have spoken up in her cause; some of the more prominent names include the Rev. Matthew Fox of "creation spirituality" fame, and Professor Harvey Cox, the erstwhile secular theologian of Harvard Divinity School.
Fox, an ex-Catholic priest, believes the Madonna was black and has employed a witch named Starhawk on his staff.
Whereas I know for a fact that the Madonna was white and had blue eyes, I've seen her that way in the Mormon literature. Like Jesus hanging around in the Middle East. White as snow, or at least not in any way semitic looking. More a kind of blue eyed Jeffrey Hunter type.
And then damn it we have to deal with this other issue. I knew it, all this talk of the mother goddess. It's those damn Catholics and their Mary worship are at it again, and the next thing you know that bloody Mary MacKillop will end up being called a saint. Won't somebody warn the faithful?
In 1993 Pope John Paul II warned American Catholic bishops against the sort of gender-polarizing feminism which seems to be a first step towards goddess-worship. The "Reimagining" conference held in Minneapolis that year was, Davis says: "an interdenominational assembly of Christians openly bent on destroying the historic Christian religion root and branch, and steering the churches into wholesale neopaganism."
Oh no, the neopagagans are coming, lock up your daughters, put a chastity belt on your wife, the end of the world is nigh. Root and branch they're coming to get you.
Davis's scholarship leaves nothing standing of the notion that goddess-worship is an authentic religion. It is the invention of latter-day crooks, cranks and creeps. This book is both a valuable historical survey of the great currents of occultism which have had more influence of the modern world than is sometimes appreciated, and a valuable mental disinfectant.
Well consider us all disinfected, thanks be to the lord.
By golly I feel like going out and practicing an exorcism on someone right now. Preferably a woman, because as we all know they're the weaker sex, and likely to munch on apples, and not realize they're just around because of a borrowed rib, and a low quality rib at that, and way too likely to lure men into wickedness (why Islam is pretty right on when it comes to that topic), and the only way out is to ... well, I'm sorry, either they convert, and kneel down before the righteous patriarchy ... or burn, baby, burn.
Fry them and send them to hell where they belong. Or else the devils of Lourdes will be rampant.
Damn you Quakers, damn you for letting women preach, curse you Joan of Arc for your assorted heresies, and go Cotton Mather, hit 'em where it hurts.
Oh verily, and now we must move to the text for the day, and bear with me in its length, for it is rich and full of ripe fruit:
There is also a story of a man whose wife was drowned in a river, who, when he was searching for the body to take it out of the water, walked up the stream. And when he was asked why, since heavy bodies do not rise but fall, he was searching against the current of the river, he answered: “When that woman was alive she always, both in word and deed, went contrary to my commands; therefore I am searching in the contrary direction in case even now she is dead she may preserve her contrary disposition.”
And indeed, just as through the first defect in their intelligence that are more prone to abjure the faith; so through their second defect of inordinate affections and passions they search for, brood over, and inflict various vengeances, either by witchcraft, or by some other means. Wherefore it is no wonder that so great a number of witches exist in this sex.
Women also have weak memories; and it is a natural vice in them not to be disciplined, but to follow their own impulses without any sense of what is due; this is her whole study, and all that she keeps in her memory. So Theophrastus says: If you hand over the whole management of the house to her, but reserve some minute detail to your own judgement, she will think that you are displaying a great want of faith in her, and will stir up a strife; and unless you quickly take counsel, she will prepare poison for you, and consult seers and soothsayers; and will become a witch.
But as to domination by women, hear what Cicero says in the Paradoxes. Can he be called a free man whose wife governs him, imposes laws on him, orders him, and forbids him to do what he wishes, so that he cannot and dare not deny her anything that she asks? I should call him not only a slave, but the vilest of slaves, even if he comes from the noblest family. And Seneca, in the character of the raging Medea, says: Why do you cease to follow your happy impulse; how great is that part of vengeance in which you rejoice? Where he adduces many proofs that a woman will not be governed, but will follow her own impulse even to her own destruction. In the same way we read of many woman who have killed themselves either for love or sorrow because they were unable to work their vengeance...
... If we inquire, we find that nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women. Troy, which was a prosperous kingdom, was, for the rape of one woman, Helen, destroyed, and many thousands of Greeks slain. The kingdom of the Jews suffered much misfortune and destruction through the accursed Jezebel, and her daughter Athaliah, queen of Judah, who caused her son’s sons to be killed, that on their death she might reign herself; yet each of them was slain. The kingdom of the Romans endured much evil through Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, that worst of women. And so with others. Therefore it is no wonder if the world now suffers through the malice of women.
And now let us examine the carnal desires of the body itself, whence has arise unconscionable harm to human life. Justly we may say with Cato of Utica: If the world could be rid of women, we should not be without God in our intercourse. For truly, without the wickedness of women, to say nothing of witchcraft, the world would still remain proof against innumerable dangers. Hear what Valerius said to Rufinus: You do not know that woman is the Chimaera, but it is good that you should know it; for that monster was of three forms; its face was that of a radiant and noble lion, it had the filthy belly of a goat, and it was armed with the virulent tail of a viper. And he means that a woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep.
Let us consider another property of hers, the voice. For as she is a liar by nature, so in her speech she stings while she delights us. Wherefore her voice is like the song of the Sirens, who with their sweet melody entice the passers-by and kill them. For they kill them by emptying their purses, consuming their strength, and causing them to forsake God. Again Valerius says to Rufinus: When she speaks it is a delight which flavours the sin; the flower of love is a rose, because under its blossom there are hidden many thorns. See Proverbs v, 3-4: Her mouth is smoother than oil; that is, her speech is afterwards as bitter as absinthium. [Her throat is smoother than oil. But her end is as bitter as wormwood.]
Let us consider also her gait, posture, and habit, in which is vanity of vanities. There is no man in the world who studies so hard to please the good God as even an ordinary woman studies by her vanities to please men. An example of this is to be found in the life of Pelagia, a worldly woman who was wont to go about Antioch tired and adorned most extravagantly. A holy father, named Nonnus, saw her and began to weep, saying to his companions, that never in all his life had he used such diligence to please God; and much more he added to this effect, which is preserved in his orations.
It is this which is lamented in Ecclesiastes vii, and which the Church even now laments on account of the great multitude of witches. And I have found a woman more bitter than death, who is the hunter’s snare, and her heart is a net, and her hands are bands. He that pleaseth God shall escape from her; but he that is a sinner shall be caught by her. More bitter than death, that is, than the devil: Apocalypse vi, 8, His name was Death. For though the devil tempted Eve to sin, yet Eve seduced Adam. And as the sin of Eve would not have brought death to our soul and body unless the sin had afterwards passed on to Adam, to which he was tempted by Eve, not by the devil, therefore she is more bitter than death.
More bitter than death, again, because that is natural and destroys only the body; but the sin which arose from woman destroys the soul by depriving it of grace, and delivers the body up to the punishment of sin.
More bitter than death, again, because bodily death is an open and terrible enemy, but woman is a wheedling and secret enemy.
And that she is more perilous than a snare does not speak of the snare of hunters, but of devils. For men are caught not only trough their carnal desires, when they see and hear women: for S. Bernard says: Their face is a burning wind, and their voice the hissing of serpents: but they also cast wicked spells on countless men and animals. And when it is said that her heart is a net, it speaks of the inscrutable malice which reigns in their hearts. And her hands are as bands for binding; for when they place their hands on a creature to bewitch it, then with the help of the devil, they perform their design.
To conclude. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable. See Proverbs xxx: There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which says not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb. Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils. More such reasons could be brought forward, but to the understanding it is sufficiently clear that it is no matter for wonder that there are more women than men found infected with the heresy of witchcraft. And in consequence of this, it is better called the heresy of witches than of wizards, since the name is taken from the more powerful party. And blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the male sex from so great a crime: for since He was willing to be born and to suffer for us, therefore He has granted to men the privilege.
Phew. That was long. Verily, thank the lord, but if you thought it went on a bit, try reading the original bit of women bashing. By golly, the authors get wound up and go on for years about the assorted evils of women.
You can read more about The Malleus Maleficarum here, and you can thanks to the wonders of the intertubes, read more of the good book here. Luckily you can find it there in pdf form and download it and peruse it at your leisure, so finally you can come to a clear and comprehensive understanding of the links between women and witchcraft. For male readers it will provide tremendously funny and witty jokes you an deploy on your wife or on your female co-workers in the office (disclaimer: any divorce proceedings or sackings are not the responsibility of this site).
Meantime, can I urge you to also read the comments provoked by Mr. Colebatch's review of Davis, because it's unlikely you'll find a finer collection of provocations and examples of religious thinking ... at least not since Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger first had their epic work on witchcraft published back in 1486.
A few wretched pedants in the comments section try to demean Mr. Colebatch by pointing out historical inaccuracies, or personal prejudices, but they entirely miss the point (and quite likely are women to boot).
Let us just note that goddess worship is simply not an authentic religion, unlike Scientology, the Catholic Church, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Theosophy, Christian Science, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spiritualism, and Unitarian Universalism, not to mention another hundred or so certified creeds, denominations, sects, belief systems and so forth and etcetera - partial list here.
Whatever. Just keep those bloody vexatious women and their goddesses out of the game!
Damn, and now I've run out of time, just when I was hoping to reveal the truth about Rosaleen Norton, the witch of the Cross. Oh well never mind ... here's a link and a picture to go just below this mother goddess picture:
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