In the way that its so easy not to talk about stuff that isn’t there..
any more..
we puzzle over our symptoms endlessly because their roots are as lost in antiquity as they are in our earliest childhood.
back inna day..
the goddess Wisdom/Hokmah/Sophia was deposed. Our own connection to Nature was blocked. A millenial dam of unexpressed need began to build up seeking expression, but in a distorted way.
When the Goddess is broken in three pieces and thrown into the sea in Revelations, this represents a final stage in the splitting of the feminine principle that has been underway since Gilgamesh chops down the sacred grove of Humbaba/Cybele.
In the story of Abraham it is represented by him having three wives, one of which is Sarah his half sister and two others who are concubines. One, Hagar, is ‘given’ to Abraham by Sarah and therefor clearly a slave. The three fragments of the divine feminine become three archetypes.
none of them very happy, mon.
We think of all this stuff as not having much relevence to us but the plain fact is that the modern male is run through with this splitting of the feminine into virgin/mother/whore. Women are then either untouchable and simply to be provided for in a slavish way, or they are slappers to be treated like shit, or they are jealously depersonalised as the embodied imago of romantic love to be longed for from afar.
doesn’t work very well…
Or, worse, the pieces of the goddess are projected into matter (mater) and we get fascinated with possessions and all kinds of totemic stuff which we crave, and polish, and stroke….
forever hungering…
By Abraham’s time we can already see the deterioration of consciousness that this rejection of the Principle of Relatedness has caused. In the epic of Gilgamesh, on the cusp of the new patriarchal order, we see both Enkidu and Gilgamesh punished for their inflation. There is a tacit expectation of them to be more conscious.
and to grow themsel’
In the story of Jacob, the ‘good’ grandson of Abraham, we find that inflation is rewarded. Jacob renounces his conscience and takes the route of least resistance in a regressed kind of way. He breaks three commandments in one go without any come back. He is special and exempt from the rules in a way that is reminiscent of aetiological factors in kids with Aspergers.
givemewhatiwantwhatiwantwhatiwant..
And so the die is cast that began with Gilgamesh’s ill fated attack on the Great Mother, now consolidated by Jacob who gets away with his attack on the natural man, Esau, beloved of the Great Mother who insists on people coming before power.
Jacob’s subsequent wrestle with his conscience dislocates his hip, a wound reminiscent of the wounded thigh of the Grail King, a wound symbolic of the failure to join the quest for the grail which must begin by honouring the birthright of the dark brother.
We think of the evolution of consciousness as a linear thing.
it ain’t neccessarily so..
We know perfectly well that trauma can cause splitting and regression. This can happen collectively just as it can individually.
There’s a tacit assumption in the literature that the subjugation of the divine feminine was essential, a neccessary condition for the emergence of consciousness. Erich Neumann uses the example of the natural shift of a child’s focus from mother to father as a metaphor, but Mum does not have to be chopped up and thrown into the sea in the process. The child’s frame of reference simply increases to include both without having to renounce anything except his own specialness.
The pattern of violent transition that it does fit however, with its corresponding ‘abaisment’, a lowering of the threshold of consciousness, and traumatic separation that can induce splitting is that of adolescent initiation.
This suggests a number of things. Firstly, that the birth of consciousness happened way before popular estimates, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. Secondly that modern conscoiusness may well be way below what it was for perhaps the majority of the neolithic period. And thirdly, that the transition to full human maturity requires a return to the Great Mother from the collective initiatory wilderness
… lest it swallow us up.
What we learn from stories is not necessarily the moral that was intended. What we learn from the disturbing story of Jacob is that specialness is a goal rather than something to be renounced and grown through.
De small print of the Covenant is dat God is not bound by it..
Well observed. In the meantime that internal split is kept wide open with the double message that you must have absolute faith in whatever I do given the proviso that I may change my mind at any moment.
Dat’s not fair!!
And in return I will let you kill off your dark brother for generation after generation without remorse or guilt and live riteously in your own lands as kings of the world…….
Er… so that comes with a squeaky clean conscience and,..you know.. invading people for their own good… if our cause be just?
yes
And booty….
yes
and..dancing girls?
yes
Ok, its a deal.
Yes!
