HERstory begins before the lineage of kings born of David, before the lineage of priests born of Aaron, before the lineage of Hebrews born of Yisrael.
HERstory begins at the birth of creation. In the beginning, there was the void and from its darkness came the light. Rehem is the Hebrew word describing the creative womblike energy that gave form to the universe. All creation stories begin with the unknown darkness. Quantum physics confirms that chaos precedes creation and creation returns to chaos. So in the beginning was the void, the womb, the chalice, the sacred feminine.
Aboriginal peoples worship a Divine Matriarch which gives birth to all. Life and Death are revered, both attributed to the Great Mother-the birther and the destroyer.
Just as the masculine god of the modern era is called by different names, the Divine Mother has many names. Born in the triple cradles of civilization, she was known as Inanna of Sumer, Hathor of the Nile, Shakti of the Indus Valley. She transformed into Ishtar of Mesopotamia, Anat of Parthia, Ashtoreth of Canaan, Astarte of Yisrael, Aphrodite of Cyprus, Athena of Greece. The Great Goddess is One with Many Names. In gratitude for the abundance of life, fertility rituals are celebrated to honor Her. During ritualistic coupling in the fields or on altars, the spirit of the Divine Father in the form of the sun is coaxed down from the heavens to impregnate the body of the earth-the incarnate Divine Mother. Sucot is still celebrated in the fall as a remnant of a festival devoted to the Divine Mother.
The Creator of the anciet Hebrews was beloved as a Divine Couple-the Father/Mother God-El and Eloha. Through blood rituals experienced in female form, women were naturally connected to the Divine. Men sought divine favor through women, their wives blessed the harvest and the priestesses blessed the people by anointing kings. Hebrew men paid tribute to the goddess Astarte, just as Egyptian men paid tribute to Isis, and Parthian men paid tribute to Ishtar. In spite of Avraham's dedication to one masculine god, his people viewed the creator as a couple.
King Solomon appreciated the power of the Sacred Feminine adorning the Temple with lush images to invoke the favor of the Goddess. He employed and enslaved Phoenician craftsmen who endowed the Holy Temple with traditional Phoenician design-an outer hallway, a central open courtyard and an inner holy of holies. Two pillars stood at the temple's entrance represented the masculine and feminine aspects of the Divine. The tops of the pillars were decorated with interwoven chains and a hundred bronze pomegranates, the symbol of fertility.
Solomon invited the most powerful woman of the time to his palace-Queen Makeda of Sheba. Her country of Sheba encompassed most of the Nile River into what is now known as Ethiopia. The Queen would not marry Solomon, but did bear him a son-Meyelek-who she took back to Sheba with the gift of Solomon's ring. Legend has it that Prince Meyelek returned to Jerusalem wearing the ring proving to Solomon that he was the king's heir. The royal advisors shunned the dark-skinned spawn of the king's illicit love affair, but one priest believed the boy and followed Meyelek back to his homeland.
Queen Makeda was such a powerful force in Solomon's time, uniting most of North Africa under her magnanimous rule that just as the Hebrews wished for a king like unto David to unite the tribes of Yisrael against foreign oppression, so did the people of the Nile River wish for a Messeh Queen. Messeh is the Egyptian word for the most revered beast-the crocodile-from its fat is rendered the oil to anoint the true king.
Not until the Babylonian captivity did the Hebrew life view become dualistic. Parthian Zorastriasm embraced a polarized world view influencing the writings of Hebrew scribes. During the long captivity the Zadok priesthood decided to preserve the Hebrew faith by adding to the five books of Moses (the Torah) the words of the prophets (the Nevi'im) and the historical records of the scribes (the Ketuvim), the collected works were forever tainted by Parthian black and white philosophy.
Polarity affected the Hebrews and also the Greeks who were duly conquered by the Persians. When Alexander the Great returned world order to the Greeks, the spread of Hellenism throughout the western world was well spiced by Parthian ideology. So the light and the dark took sides, the right hand forgot that it was connected to the left, the masculine parted from the feminine. Civilization polarized as humans lost touch with the Divine Feminine and separated from Unity.
When the tribe of Judah and the Zadok priesthood returned to Jerusalem, they found Solomon's Temple defiled by the Macedonians. The Shekhinah or feminine face of god no longer resided in the Holy of Holies. Perhaps this is why the Essenes set up camp in Qumran. So the Hebrew leaders became strict. Mothers held great power over their children and might influence them with their foreign customs, language and religion. No more interbreeding with foreign women.
From 200BCE through 200CE, Hebrew scholars decided on the writings which would become the modern Tanach. Much of the miqra had been translated from the ancient Hebrew into a Greek version to be read by the common people called the Septuagint. The Torah and the Nevi'im were established as canonical, but some of the original Kevutim was left out. Like Constantinople's council of Nicea which chose only a few of the many stories that make up the New Testament, the Alexandrian council chose to leave out some of the writings of Hebrew scribes. These forgotten scriptures can be found in The Apocrypha and The Pseudoepigrapha, some of which were stories of heroic women-Susannah, Esther, Judith.
Sacred Marriage or Heiros Gamos had been practiced from Mesopotamian times. A high priestess would anoint and couple with the chosen king which elevated him to the status of divine ruler. Through such ancient ritual, Herod Antipas became ruler of the land by marrying the Hasmonaean princess Mariamne, a priestess of the Mother Goddess. The high priestesses were from matriarchal lineage. Mariamne was Mary Magdalen's great aunt through her Hasmonaean mother. Although Magdala was also the name of a town in Galilee and Migdol was its Egyptian equivalence, the word means Tower to the Divine.
Mary anointed Yeshua in Sacred Marriage. The Feminine Face of God, the Shekhinah, returned embodied in the wife of the Divine Son-Mary Magdalen, the Divine Daughter.
Deborah Maragopoulos MN APRN is a board certified family nurse practitioner, an expert in Intuitive Integrative Medicine, author of LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter, founder of DMAR Pyramid of Health™, and creator of Genesis Gold®, a natural supplement designed to optimize genetic potential. http://www.lovedance.com
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