The Sacred Feminine

[Thomas]

perhaps the unwarranted magnification of ha-Satan into a sort of rebellious anti-god, as well as the general identification of the world and the flesh with evil and sin, whilst G!D Is restricted to the good and to "love", G!D forbid (contradicting isaiah) so all the good stuff is spiritual and all the bad stuff is physical. come on, thomas, surely you can see this impression might encourage dualism a bit, even if it is an error.

Indeed I can, but as you say, they are generalisations, and they are erroneous ...

Thomas

 

[bananabrain]

so catholics don't believe that the "devil" is a "rebellious angel"?

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Thomas]

Oh we do ... but we don't believe he's an "anti-god".

Thomas

 

[bananabrain]

the concept of a "rebellious angel", to me, suggests a less than omnipotent G!D, which doesn't sound very monotheistic to me.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Raksha]

there are *controls* on this sort of interpretation. firstly, it may be the Qudsha-Brich-Hu we-Shekhintehh, but the Shekhinah, in this context, is also conflated with the keneseth yisra'el - in other words we, the jewish people are the "female" Beloved and G!D Is the "male" Lover. this, interestingly enough, implies that prayer is some sort of inherently *female* modality, which would certainly explain the common (although by no means universal in traditional prayer) habit of addressing the Divine using masculine pronouns.

BB,

I am familiar with both of these interpretations, which aren't in opposition but are both operative at the same time...different levels of meaning. When I was fifteen the Song of Songs was without a doubt my favorite book of the Bible...but I have to tell you it wasn't because of either one of 'em!

yes, even the SoS can and has led to dualism, when these controls are not applied.

I don't believe you. In fact, I'm going to get back up on my soapbox again, because I want to let you know in NO uncertain terms that I don't buy the "equivalence" argument that is such a big favorite with conservatives, and you've used it more than once.

It is such a glib, facile argument that liberals are "just as intolerant" as conservatives, or that liberals are prone to the same ideological excesses from the opposite direction. The only problem with this "mirror image" argument is that it simply isn't true. I have NEVER known it to be true, although I wish I had a dollar for every time a conservative has accused me or other liberals of "intolerance." If liberals are intolerant of anything it's intolerance...and THAT'S ALL!

That's hardly the same the same thing as being intolerant of the beliefs and behavior of others simply because you're offended, or because you believe their behavior is a violation of God’s will or whatever. If it isn't hurting you or other people--or other countries, for that matter—then it’s basically none of your business. I have exactly ONE rule of morality for myself and other people, and that's the Golden Rule. I truly believe that's all anyone needs, provided you're careful to apply it in every possible circumstance, which I try to do. Granted, I don't always succeed but better late than never!

That's an absolute with me and it's non-negotiable. I just took the BeliefNet religion test last night and I ended up 100% Unitarian/Universalist, 94% Neo-Pagan. Those were my two highest scores and I'm perfectly happy with them. Reform Judaism ended up at only 67%, and that kind of surprised me.

For that reason I would never even consider voting for anyone who isn't basically a secular humanist, regardless of what other religious beliefs the individual did or did not profess. I would never vote for a fundie or theocrat or true-believer of any religion. I won't even give them the benefit of the doubt, because I'm terrified of theocrats and religious fanatics. There is NO upper limit, no built-in brake to the outrages a person is capable when he believes he's doing God's will, and history has proven that over and over again.

But my point is that we have absolutely NO comparable phenomenon on the left side of aisle, either in religion or politics. At least not in America we don't. The only comparable phenomenon on the Left are the communist ideologues like Stalin, but in their case their ideology has become a "religion" and operates the same way as a fundamentalist religion. I see hard-line Marxist communism as merely another flavor of fascism, and it also embodies some of the more demonic aspects of theocracy.

As for feminism...I'm happy to refer to myself as a radical feminist, which is kind of an inside joke with me, because how can there be such a thing as radical equality? I have zero interest in matriarchy even as an ideal, because that ISN'T my ideal. I guess what I mean by "radical feminist" is that I'm not an incrementalist I'm unwilling to put up with a "kinder, gentler patriarchy." I want it ALL and I want it NOW!

I still don't understand how the Song of Songs could liead to dualism any more than the concepts of Chokmah and Binah, or Yang and Yin could lead to dualism. They aren't opposites but complementaries. Likewise the so-called 'battle of the sexes" isn't a natural condition (how could it be?) but a highly artificial one brought about by 5000 years of patriarchal domination and women's totally justified resentment of same.

YES, there is a lot of anger, and YES, that anger is going to go beyond your comfort level as I'm sure it has in the past. That’s inevitable. It’s the totally natural and predictable result of what is basically a very unnatural situation. But nature will also keep that anger within bounds, so that it never escalates into full-blown hatred. After all, it’s totally counterproductive from a biological POV to hate the other half of your own species!

B'shalom,
Linda

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

It seems to me that there are two aspects to the Shekhinah. One in Malkhuth and the other in Binah. While the lower "mother", I suppose, could be described as entirely passive in that she can receive but not transmit the divine eminence, or whatever you want to call it, the upper "mother" is active. As Gershom Sholem put it, "it [Binah] is entirely active energy, in which what is concealed within God is externalized." It would seem that that active, energetic force is what actually creates in terms of animating the lower seven sephiroth. If one uses the analogy of the lower seven spheres equating, at least metaphysically, to the seven primal days of creation, Binah can be seen to be the force which is actually emitting the creative "days" from herself.

Being that Binah exists within the supernal triad of the Godhead as, arguably, co-equal with Hokhmah, and both Binah and Hokhmah emanate from the undifferentiated divine Whatsit in Keter, how is it that God is assigned a masculine gender in the first place? Surely Hokhmah isn't God any more than Binah, is it? Once we break God up into genders, how is it that the masculine gender is assigned as principle gender?

Chris

 

[Raksha]

but there's a difference between gnosticism and judaism. also, historically, gnostics aren't terribly keen on sex, because the world is the domain of the evil "demiurge", so we're better off restraining ourselves - a position which tends to be ignored by many self-described new-age gnostics.

BB,

Elaine Pagels gets into that in her first book, The Gnostic Gospels. It's ironic that where women were concerned, the Gnostics apparently made a trade-off between sexuality and equality. The Gnostic communities were generally celibate, and yet within those communities women had a MUCH higher status than orthodox Christianity allowed them. I've read as much of Tertullian as I could stomach (more, actually) and he just railed about that no end. And certainly the position of women was higher than in Judaism, which did allow women a very restricted, very "domesticated" sexuality, but at the cost of any spiritual recognition or participation WHATSOEVER.

You're absolutely right that modern Gnostic groups don't place a high premium on celibacy. My husband and I weren't married by a rabbi. We were married by Stephan Hoeller, the presiding bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica, in 1969, and were active members of the Gnostic Society for many years. However, because of my strong Jewish values concerning marriage which my husband also shared, the "antinomian" issue didn't apply to us in that area. I can't speak for others, though.

i am not saying that your anti-authoritarian tendencies are a bad thing - in fact, you can back it straight up from the Torah - tzedeq, tzedeq tirdof: "justice, you *must* pursue justice."

I love that saying! For me it's all about JUSTICE more than anything, and justice is the motivating force behind my anti-authoritarian tendencies--which go well beyond a "tendency" with me. It's an absolute passion and it goes beyond feminism too. I despise the whole system of authoritarian, top-down domination in every manifestation. THAT is the Demiurge and the evil legacy of the Roman Empire. I'm aware that historically the Gnostics equated the God of Israel with the Demiurge, and in the Nag Hammadi Library there are certain texts that were used over and over again to prove it. But to me the Demiurge is "The System," and I've even got a privately printed edition of the Gospels put out by some off-the-wall Gnostic group that translates the word "Cosmos" as "The System," the way we used to use that word in the 1960s and 1970s.

however, anti-authoritarian is not to be conflated with antinomianism - it is about the pursuit of justice, morality and equity, not merely removing laws for the sake of it.

I'm never been a big fan of antinomianism for its own sake. Have you read Isaac B. Singer's novel Satan in Goray? It's about the Sabbataian heresy and how it affects a shtetl community in Poland, if I remember correctly. Antinomianism on steroids! I think you and I would differ on exactly what constitutes "antinomianism," but I don't disagree with you on principle.

B'shalom,
Linda

 

[Raksha]

It seems to me that there are two aspects to the Shekhinah. One in Malkhuth and the other in Binah. While the lower "mother", I suppose, could be described as entirely passive in that she can receive but not transmit the divine eminence, or whatever you want to call it, the upper "mother" is active.

Chris,

You're missing something very important here...shame on you! Malkuth is NOT entirely passive, because from Malkuth everything reverses direction and begins heading upward again. This is where everything happens. This is where the action is! This is where the sparks trapped in chaos are released and liberated...or not, but hopefully they are. That's what they're trying to do anyway, and it's what we're supposed to help them do.

Think of the star of David with the lower triangle pointing upward, intersecting with the upper triangle pointing downward...

--Linda

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

On the biblical history thing:

The problem with the Bible's account of the history of the Hebrews is, put as simply as I can think of, that we can look out the window over the authors shoulders and see seventh, or eight, or ninth century scenery when the narrative purports to describe events happening centuries earlier. It's like watching a movie about medieval times and seeing telephone wires in the shot. The levels of political and cultural stratification and implied size and sophistication of cities in the bronze and early iron ages of the biblical narrative simply aren't sustained by the archaeological record. The dates I gave on Israel and Judah's respective rise and fall as extended city-states are pretty much text book.

It's not as though the Bible story is utter rubbish, it's just that events are transported back in time and rearranged to suit the author's needs. There are plenty of real kings, real battles, real events, but it's still a narrative in which history plays a subservient role to larger themes. These large themes are what is seen as real, coherent, and continuous in a way that supersedes the importance of the history of actual events. People didn't become obsessed with recording history the way we think of it until way later, plus, strict historicity doesn't always add to the storytelling. Therein lies the art!

We still don't know where the Jews came from. But as I said at the top, there are a lot of little details in the narrative that seem to suggest at times that the author's immediate surrounds look a lot like that period between 700 and 600 BCE when Jerusalem-Judah was having it's golden age. At any rate, we have artifacts from that era including royal signetry and temple artifacts which demonstrate a level of cultural, religious, and political sophistication capable of supporting the kind of temple cult imagined in the tales of King Solomon. What we don't have is functioning northern state to make up the balance of a united monarchy.

I'm tired.

Chris

 

[Thomas]

the concept of a "rebellious angel", to me, suggests a less than omnipotent G!D ...

C'mon bananabrain ... this isn't you — the God of Exodus 20:5 sounds like He's got anger management issues to me ... but we both know that's not where it's at.

The point I was alluding to is that whilst the voice of ignorance might well insist Christianity is dualistic (as indeed it insists many, many things), an intelligent reading of the texts says otherwise.

Thomas

 

[Raksha]

The point I was alluding to is that whilst the voice of ignorance might well insist Christianity is dualistic (as indeed it insists many, many things), an intelligent reading of the texts says otherwise.

Thomas,

Aha, "the voice of ignorance," is it? I hope you realize I laughed when I read that! WHY do I have this sneaking suspicion you're throwing down the gauntlet to any Jews and/or Valentinian Gnostics who might be involved in this thread? I don't know why, but it's just a feeling I've got.

Okay, I'll bite...but this is just going to be a quick, off-the-cuff reply--not a full-blown argument or exposition or anything. The word "Lucifer" is the Latin translation for a Hebrew phrase meaning "Son of the Morning Star," which was an honorific applied to the king of Babylon. Bananabrain can no doubt supply the correct term (I forget which word for "son" was used), but shachar (hard CH) is the Hebrew word for dawn or dawn star (Venus).

I assume it was a simple error when the Christian translator first applied this term to the fallen angel "Lucifer" and equated this angel with Satan. First of all, there is no "fallen angel" story in Judaism at all and it certainly isn't Satan, who is the tempter and the prosecuting attorney at the soul's "trial" after death...and may also be the Angel of Death (in the 10th plague story) but I'm not sure about that.

However, this error has to have been corrected by at least one Hebrew scholar centuries ago, if not 1000 years ago or more. YOUR side has known better for ages, so why then do Catholic and some Protestant churches still perpetuate the "fallen angel" story among Christian adherents? A few weeks ago I explained what I just wrote above to a group of Christians on another forum who were running the fallen angel story by me AGAIN!

And while I'm on the subject, why do Christians equate "the serpent" in the Garden of Eden with Satan also? There is no such equation in Judaism.

It seems obvious to me that Christianity has a vested interest in postulating a very, very powerful force of evil, if not exactly "equal" to God, then at least powerful enough to constitute a serious threat--to humanity, if not to God.

In Judaism the forces of evil definitely exist, and Jewish folklore is full of stories of evil spirits, but the true origin of evil is in a cosmic accident, i.e. the "fallen sparks" I referred to in my note to Chris. It doesn't originate in an act of "disobedience" of any kind, not even that famous apple-and-snake story.

Also, Judaism never developed a concept of "original sin," which to my mind is one of THE most offensive things about Christianity. It completely turned me off when I was very young, mostly because my mother was revolted by it and communicated her feelings to me in no uncertain terms. When I got older and eventually learned more about religion than my mother ever knew, I was still just as disgusted by it as she was.

In practical, everyday terms, the Jewish belief that we all have the yetzir hara and yetzir tov (evil impulse and good impulse) accompanying us at all times is much easier to live with, just because that's more true to the reality of human experience. We all *DO* have them, and sometimes the yetzir hara gets the upper hand. It's unfortunate but it isn't something to get paralyzed with guilt about.

All of that is self-evident, but it's a far cry from the huge weight of guilt and despair that comes about when a person internalizes a belief in original sin. I've seen what that does to fundamentalist Christians and "scrupulous" Catholics, and I thank God I was never subjected to what amounts to a deliberate psychic maiming. Or as Durrell said in The Alexandria Quartet, "Who invented the perversion of Original Sin, that filthy obscenity of the West?"

What I'm trying to say is that obviously Christianity WANTS to assign an inordinate power to evil, or more likely NEEDS to.

So why do you say it's "ignorant" to see Christianity as dualistic?

--Linda

 

[islamis4u]

Farhan, would you be willing to read and comment on this article?

Islam and the Divine Feminine

Here is an excerpt:

"So often has Islam been portrayed as an exclusively masculine, patriarchal faith that many have never suspected the central importance of the Feminine in Islam and would be astonished to realize that it has been there from the beginning. Perhaps in part due to the metaphysical interiority of the Feminine, this aspect of Islam has lived a largely hidden existence — but it is no less vital for that. In recent years there has been much discussion and controversy over how to reshape Christianity to include the Feminine on the divine level, but in Islam that has never been an issue, for the feminine element in Islam has always been present, especially in Sufism.

Although both masculine and feminine equally have their origin in the Divine, I would like to take a special look at the feminine in Islam to help redress the balance because the feminine side of Islam has been mostly overlooked so far. Moreover, in the sources of Islam and in the Sufi tradition growing from there, we find a distinct, explicit preference for the feminine aspect of Allah, especially the nature of ultimate Divine Reality as essentially feminine."

As Farhan said it is right For us God or Allah is not related to any sex or gender what ever you Allah is free for them all one thing i may say that when Muslim scholars mostly say God that does not mean that we are saying it because for gender because God has Goddess as feminine okay we just do say that because for understanding else we have got Word Allah which is free from every sex what it is. i would love to give more points but i havn't got much time right so i will right it later

 

[bananabrain]

I don't believe you.

there is a big dispute in the Talmud over whether the SoS should be included in the canon or not. in the end r. aqiba's opinion prevailed, as he said "the SoS is the Holy of Holies" (mishnah, yadayim 3:5) - now, i have a pretty good idea about what he meant by that, based upon the statues of the qerubim in the HoH and how they should be understood (BT Yoma 54a). however, there is an equally worrying section where they discuss what happened when the babylonians broke into the Temple and paraded the statues in the street and how that was misinterpreted by everyone (BT Yoma 54b). equally, in Nakh (ezekiel 8:14) it describes the women "weeping for tammuz" at the north door of the Temple; here we see the imagery of the Divine Marriage apparently syncretised with babylonian beliefs regarding inanna and tammuz. and here (KuntilletAjrudYahwehAsherah) is some archeological evidence of folk belief that contravened what the prophets taught) now, that's past dualism in my book. you can choose to believe it or not. as for present dualism, i have had this argument with *so* many "jewitches" and "neo-pagan reconstructionists" who have made precisely this mistake over the last ten years that it's become a real old chestnut. of course people will choose to believe what they want to believe. however, the sages were well aware of the reductionist tendencies of the masses as well as the short-circuits into heresy and, as far as i'm concerned, there is, from my own experience, ample reason to heed their warnings.

It is such a glib, facile argument that liberals are "just as intolerant" as conservatives, or that liberals are prone to the same ideological excesses from the opposite direction. The only problem with this "mirror image" argument is that it simply isn't true. I have NEVER known it to be true, although I wish I had a dollar for every time a conservative has accused me or other liberals of "intolerance." If liberals are intolerant of anything it's intolerance...and THAT'S ALL!

all i can say to this, linda, is that i've been on *all* sides of this argument during my journey from the reform movement to my current position and frankly, unless you've ever been on the receiving end of this intolerance as a conservative, you really are not in a position to judge my experience any more than i'm in a position to tell you what women experience as prejudice. as for "liberals are intolerant of intolerance", that is hoary old chestnut #234 - all that is is the crystallisation of a particular subset of political positions into a belief that "i am the middle of the road". believe you me, there are plenty of things that liberals are intolerant of. you only have to hear the way well-paid liberal journalists talk about successful entrepreneurs and businessmen without having the least idea of how hard it is to do their job and what skills it takes. so frankly, do me a favour; what you are doing is generalising from your own experience and drawing sweeping conclusions of unwarranted comprehensiveness. no doubt i do the same, but i make a point of at least admitting it.

If it isn't hurting you or other people--or other countries, for that matter—then it’s basically none of your business.

but "hurt" is a matter of perspective, judgement and opinion. how my insurance company may act may hurt me financially in one way, but my pension company is a shareholder in that insurance company and expects a good return on its investment in order to pay for my annuity. public spending is the same thing as higher taxes - you are certainly aware that the idea of what precisely constitutes "the public good" is at the very least debatable.

I have exactly ONE rule of morality for myself and other people, and that's the Golden Rule. I truly believe that's all anyone needs, provided you're careful to apply it in every possible circumstance, which I try to do. Granted, I don't always succeed but better late than never!

the only problem with this is that it reduces all moral questions to one thing - the quality of your judgement and, unless you are unlike every other human on the planet, you will use *heuristics* and *guidance* in every situation. for example, you will have to use your own judgement as to whether to agree with a doctor's assessment of any symptoms of ill-health, or a policeman's assessment of the acceptability of your actions. yet you will no doubt concede that there are times when both should be questioned and times when *their* professional judgement should be trusted.

That's an absolute with me and it's non-negotiable. I just took the BeliefNet religion test last night and I ended up 100% Unitarian/Universalist, 94% Neo-Pagan. Those were my two highest scores and I'm perfectly happy with them. Reform Judaism ended up at only 67%, and that kind of surprised me.

it doesn't surprise me - i know that test and people like you always come out like that. i score pretty highly on U/U myself, it appears to be a measure of tolerance of difference. the issue here is that so much of your drivers come out of, as it were, athens, paris, heidelberg and 1776, that it drowns out the call of jerusalem, which, as a universalist, you presumably despise as chauvinist particularism. these are tough things to reconcile.

There is NO upper limit, no built-in brake to the outrages a person is capable when he believes he's doing God's will, and history has proven that over and over again.

except that it doesn't need to be G!D's will; it can be political ideology, utilitarian philosophy, simple greed for power, or mental illness.

But my point is that we have absolutely NO comparable phenomenon on the left side of aisle, either in religion or politics. At least not in America we don't.

that's the problem, you see, in america there isn't really a left outside some parts of the university system. you should try living in europe with the singes-de-capitulation mangeurs-de-fromage. we have a political party in the UK, headed by a socialist demagogue who is an ex-toady of saddam's, largely staffed by maoists and trotskyists, who gives speeches on syrian tv about "the rape of the beautiful daughters, palestine and jerusalem", who got elected to parliament largely on the basis of the bangladeshi peanut gallery and islamist militants in his constituency in east london. here, the left are so desperate for power that they ally themselves with the "forces of medieval despotism". and as for the mayor of london, that great friend of hugo chavez, (who himself cultivates another mediaeval despot, the president of iran), words fail me. your system's out of balance, but you should thank heaven that you don't have to put up with the maniacs we have over here.

And certainly the position of women was higher than in Judaism, which did allow women a very restricted, very "domesticated" sexuality, but at the cost of any spiritual recognition or participation WHATSOEVER.

so what you're saying is that gnosticism allowed women equality on the grounds that they stopped being women, whereas judaism allowed women to be women at the cost of equality? that sounds a bit like the enlightenment bargain of "we'll let you be equal citizens, as long as you're not too jewish". secondly, i absolutely disagree with your addition of "whatsoever", because it's patently untrue. ok, the sages existed in what, from our perspective, was a very "sexist" world, but women still had property rights, inheritance rights, sexual rights, matrimonial rights, engaged in business dealings on their own initiative and for their own benefit and had a large area of religious competence. it just wasn't about the study house (although some women such as bruriah and the daughters of rav hiyya were great scholars) and the minyan, any more than my own area of religious competence is around the hallah ceremony, candle-lighting and the operational side of kashrut. from my own personal perspective, we would have no sephardic music tradition without women, because they wrote and sang the songs. of course, nowadays, men and women are able to cross over more and participate more widely and that is all to the good. that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the paradigm of the "esheth hayyil", a reading this as a modern leads one to the inescapable conclusion that (as mrs bb observed) "this woman sounds feckin'
terrifying"
. as indeed is mrs bb herself, hehehe.

I despise the whole system of authoritarian, top-down domination in every manifestation.

as do i, believe it or not. but from my perspective, the best solution is not revolution, but bottom-up empowerment. that means education. if you don't like what the self-styled guardians and interpreters say, learn it better than them and refute their points. the beards don't own judaism unless the rest of us let 'em.

and, yes, i've read "satan in goray". enjoyed it very much.

Being that Binah exists within the supernal triad of the Godhead as, arguably, co-equal with Hokhmah, and both Binah and Hokhmah emanate from the undifferentiated divine Whatsit in Keter, how is it that God is assigned a masculine gender in the first place? Surely Hokhmah isn't God any more than Binah, is it? Once we break God up into genders, how is it that the masculine gender is assigned as principle gender?

it's not. keter is arguably "higher" than hokhmah and it is neither masculine nor feminine. equally, one could say that the shekhinah is "more accessible" - people read more gender politics into the male/female thing than actually exists. G!D Is beyond gender - it's just the language we humans use to try and understand things. similarly, right isn't "better" than left; it's merely a way of labelling tendencies.

The problem with the Bible's account of the history of the Hebrews is, put as simply as I can think of, that we can look out the window over the authors shoulders and see seventh, or eight, or ninth century scenery when the narrative purports to describe events happening centuries earlier.

look, just to clarify things, i happily concede that the "divrei hayamim" (chronicles) in Nakh are just that, chronicles, not history as it is understood today; like you say, "There are plenty of real kings, real battles, real events, but it's still a narrative in which history plays a subservient role to larger themes." i accept much of the thinking of academics on these sorts of writing even if i reject its applicability to the Pentateuch or, to a lesser extent, the prophetic books. the difference in my approach is that i do not lump all bits of the "bible" into one category - not *all* of Tanakh dropped from the sky ready-made; so i can see how an account which bigs up the size of solomon's kingdom or the magnitude of david's military victories may be taking poetic licence, without having to concede anything on the Divine input into prophetic sections. there's therefore no need to argue about what the archaeological record shows or doesn't show.

The point I was alluding to is that whilst the voice of ignorance might well insist Christianity is dualistic (as indeed it insists many, many things), an intelligent reading of the texts says otherwise.

i know where you're coming from, but i try to read these texts intelligently myself and frankly, i struggle sometimes to avoid drawing these same "ignorant" conclusions; albeit i will concede it is less likely to be catholic approaches i have trouble with. it is other things about catholicism that tend to push my buttons, such as the obsession with celibacy, asceticism/monasticism, recent innovations like papal infallibility, the frankly stupid and pigheaded policy and practice on contraception, opus dei and the institutional unwillingness to face issues like paedophile priests, but all in all i find catholicism much less scary than i do the sort of protestants that are trying to encourage armageddon in the middle east.

And while I'm on the subject, why do Christians equate "the serpent" in the Garden of Eden with Satan also? There is no such equation in Judaism.

actually, there is, but it's much later, not until talmudic times. the serpent is identified with the yetzer ha-ra, which is later conflated with ha-satan, which itself is later sometimes conflated with samael, although this is not strictly speaking correct, as ha-satan and samael have different jobs.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Thomas]

Okay, I'll bite...but this is just going to be a quick, off-the-cuff reply--not a full-blown argument or exposition or anything. The word "Lucifer" is the Latin translation for a Hebrew phrase meaning "Son of the Morning Star," which was an honorific applied to the king of Babylon. Bananabrain can no doubt supply the correct term (I forget which word for "son" was used), but "shachar" (hard CH) is the Hebrew word for dawn or dawn star (Venus).

Yes, we know that, too.

I assume it was a simple error when the Christian translator first applied this term to the fallen angel "Lucifer" and equated this angel with Satan. First of all, there is no "fallen angel" story in Judaism at all and it certainly isn't Satan, who is the tempter and the prosecuting attorney at the soul's "trial" after death...and may also be the Angel of Death (in the 10th plague story) but I'm not sure about that.

The idea of fallen angels comes from the data of Revelation in Christianity, not Judaism ... in light of which, in looking at the Hebrew Scriptures the Fathers saw that the serpent in the Garden (accepting the mythopoeic aspect of the narrative) engages the Primordial Couple in dialogue, indicating a rational nature ... as it was axiomatic for them (as it is for us) that God does not will anything but the good, and the actions of the serpent can in no way be read as good, then something else is at play ...

We do not agree with the 'prosecuting attorney' idea, our ontology of sin/evil differs from the Jewish reading quite markedly on that. The serpent, for example, lies in an attempt to deceive, and is condemned by God for its actions ... were it just the divine prosecutor, then is it not harsh for God to damn His own servant for nothing other than fulfilling his mission? We furthermore hold it as axiomatic that neither God nor His messengers lie, or in any other manner attempt to decieve and corrupt ...

In the Christian view of things Adam and Eve attempt to usurp the limitations of their own natures — to assume possession of that which lies beyond them as created beings, in short, to become gods in their ownb right ... and the Fathers drew an analogy between this and the King of Babylon who set himself up as a god. The motivating principle in both cases is the same, and in the philosophical tradition of Christianity, we pursue the principle to its ontological cause.

However, this error has to have been corrected by at least one Hebrew scholar centuries ago, if not 1000 years ago or more. YOUR side has known better for ages, so why then do you still perpetuate the "fallen angel" story among Christian adherents? A few weeks ago I explained what I just wrote above to a group of Christians on another forum who were running the fallen angel story by me AGAIN!

And again, it's part of our tradition, based on the Data of our tradition ... I fully accept it is not part of yours.

And while I'm on the subject, why do Christians equate "the serpent" in the Garden of Eden with Satan also? There is no such equation in Judaism.

Because ontologically we see the principle as being the same ... as a rational being acting in a way contra to the Will of God.

It seems obvious to me that Christianity has a vested interest in postulating a very, very powerful force of evil, if not exactly "equal" to God, then at least powerful enough to constitute a serious threat -- to humanity, if not to God.

I cannot answer for what seems obvious to you, nor why, nor is that the point. Doctrine is not determined by what is obvious to you or I. What I do say is that Christianity does regard evil as a powerful and dangerous force, but nowhere near equal to God. At best it is a corruption of an angelic nature ... and the difference between the divine and the angelic is beyond measure.

Are you telling me that Judaisdm does not view evil, man's fault and man's sin, as constituting a threat to his existence?

In Judaism the forces of evil definitely exist, and Jewish folklore is full of stories of evil spirits, but the true origin of evil is in a cosmic accident, i.e. the "fallen sparks" I referred to in my note to Chris. It doesn't originate in an act of "disobedience" of any kind, not even that famous apple-and-snake story.

In Christianity there is no 'cosmic accident' nor 'fallen sparks' — nor did I think they form part of Hebrew tradition — bananabrain expressed the view that one could say our God is not very omnipotent ... by the same token I could argue that your God is somewhat clumsy? Neithert he nor I accept that line of arguing, i think.

If one accepts the idea of 'cosmic accident' then why does God not put it right? Why does He allow suffering in the world through His own fault? To me, that makes the God of Israel neither omnipotent nor just ... closer indeed, to the demiurge that Marcion, for example, tried to imply, and a view that most Christian theologians vigorously resisted.

Also, Judaism never developed a concept of "original sin," which to my mind is one of THE most offensive things about Christianity. It completely turned me off when I was very young, mostly because my mother was revolted by it and communicated her feelings to me in no uncertain terms. When I got older and because of my own interest learned more about religion than my mother ever knew, I was still every bit as disgusted by it.

I daresay. I find it logical, but then I tend to view it objectively, philosophically and metaphysically. More logical, and acceptable to me, than the idea of a God who made a cock-up, and then punishes his cocked-up creature when they make mistakes ... that is offensive to me.

In practical, everyday terms, the Jewish belief that we all have the yetzir hara and yetzir tov (evil impulse and good impulse) accompanying us at all times is much easier to live with, just because that's more true to the reality of human experience. We all *DO* have them, and sometimes the yetzir hara gets the upper hand.

In Christianity, we have human experience illumined by the Divine. We believe that anything God created and saw as 'very good' did not have evil in its nature. The potential, yes, but the actuality, no. Big difference. Then again, if there are evil spirits, then evil lies outside of man ... but, we would argue, not in God.

All of that is self-evident, but it's far cry from the huge weight of guilt and despair that comes about when a person internalizes a belief in original sin. I've seen what that does to fundamentalist Christians and "scrupulous" Catholics, and I thank God I was never subjected to what amounts to a deliberate psychic wounding. Or as Durrell said in The Alexandria Quartet, "Who invented the perversion of Original Sin, that filthy obscenity of the West?"

It's very easy to find a quote somewhere to offend another ... have you ever looked for the huge weight of hope, faith and love that issues from Christianity, I wonder?

What I'm trying to say is that obviously Christianity WANTS to assign an inordinate power to evil, or more likely NEEDS to.

Not really.

So why do you say it's "ignorant" to see Christianity as dualistic?

1 Because nowehere does Christian Doctrine claim to be dualistic.
2 Because nowehere do Christians claim to be dualistic.
3 Because despite everything you've said, Christians do not put evil, nor anything else, on a par with God.
4 Because from our Creeds and confessions we believe in one, Supreme, Transcendant, Absolute Deity ... not two.
5 Show me where we consider anything equal to God?

An 'informed' view of orthodox Christianity would see it as Trinitarian, not dualistic — but that's another discussion.

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

i know where you're coming from, but i try to read these texts intelligently myself and frankly, i struggle sometimes to avoid drawing these same "ignorant" conclusions; albeit i will concede it is less likely to be catholic approaches i have trouble with. it is other things about catholicism that tend to push my buttons, such as the obsession with celibacy, asceticism/monasticism, recent innovations like papal infallibility, the frankly stupid and pigheaded policy and practice on contraception, opus dei and the institutional unwillingness to face issues like paedophile priests, but all in all i find catholicism much less scary than i do the sort of protestants that are trying to encourage armageddon in the middle east.

Hi bananabrain.

I walked away from Catholicism on the principle that I did not view the body as wrtong, bad, sinful, etc., ... only later did I realise that such doctrines are gnostic, not orthodox ... and that if you want to understand, then informed commentary is a must.

And yes, we are not perfect ... but we do have a 2,000 year tradition of philosophy, and we do have answers for the questions you pose that are considered, and profound. Even if I feel inclined to argue.

In fact, this semester in my course we're introduced to the exciting world of ... (fanfare) Moral Theology ... oooh, I sense sparks are gonna fly.

Thomas

 

[Raksha]

If one accepts the idea of 'cosmic accident' then why does God not put it right? Why does He allow suffering in the world through His own fault?

Thomas,

Well, that is THE question, isn't it? It's the only question worth asking. To my mind, ALL theology boils down to exactly one question, namely: Why is the world so f**ked up?

If there were one answer that was acceptable and convincing to everyone, then everyone would have already accepted it a long time ago. Obviously nothing of the kind has happened. The answers individuals and schools of philosophy come up with (which are at best provisional answers, not "final" or definitive ones), depend to a great extent on individual temperment and world-view.

That's why we each need a private gate to the Torah, as I said to bananabrain earlier when he asked me what I'm doing here. I am just NOT going to waste my time trying to get through somebody else's gate at this stage of my life. Been there, done that!

The fact that your priorities aren't the same as mine doesn't make me "ignorant." It simply means that the answers/explanations you find satifying or acceptable are not acceptable to me. And vice versa, of course.

It just so happens that I LIKE the idea of a cosmic accident, or what I call The Glitch. In Gnosticism it's the fall of Sophia, and the analogous concept in Kabbalah is the "cosmic accident" known as the Breaking of the Vessels. That's the common denominator, and the reason I've always felt a deep affinity with both systems, which after all have a historic connection.

More about that later on if I have time.

--Linda

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Leonora Leet proposes a seven world kabbalistic model. Part of her reasoning is that if the purpose of the soul's journey were only to return by retracing it's path back to the source of unity there wouldn't be any real incentive to embark on the trip in the first place. So rather than return through the same first three worlds from Asiya, she proposes an additional three worlds for the soul's upward course which are essentially evolved versions of Yetzirah, Briah, and Atzilut. In that context she sees the Fall as the nefesh soul "falling" into Asiya. And then she says:

Though the Adamic and bicameral forms of man seem closer to the divine than is the fallen man of modern subjective consciousness, the paradox of the Fall is that it is just this fortunate growth of self-consciousness that liberated the human will, and that it is only through such freedom of the will that man can truly become the image of God. For it is not by modeling himself upon a past condition of divine unity but only upon the model of the future that man can fulfil his divine destiny. In Lurianic cosmology, the repair or Tikkun of the shattered divine vessels is to accomplish a transformation of the original single form of divinity, that of Adam Kadmon, into the Partzufim, the multiple divine personalities, and this way of the future is to be a product of man's own spiritual development. It is only by way of the Fall, the Shevirah, that man can accomplish, both below and above, this divine transformation, by modeling himself upon the future perfection of divine personality. It is not, then, through a past modeling, with it's implied angelic takeover of the human will, that man can make his necessary contribution to the cosmic design, nor through such modern occult forms as trance mediumship that aim at a similar return to the cosmic past. Rather, it is through such future modeling as can only arise from a fully self-aware ego that man can both model and remodel the divine image.

Humans, then, have a choice between submitting to an angelic compulsion that hearkens back to the past or the freedom of the soul urging them ever onward into the future.

Leonora Leet, The Kabbalah of the Soul, The Transformative Psychology and Practices of Jewish Mysticism

Does anyone want to comment on that?

Chris

 

[lunamoth]

Does anyone want to comment on that?

Chris

The Kingdom is not the Garden.

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Chris,

You're missing something very important here...shame on you! Malkuth is NOT entirely passive, because from Malkuth everything reverses direction and begins heading upward again. This is where everything happens. This is where the action is! This is where the sparks trapped in chaos are released and liberated...or not, but hopefully they are. That's what they're trying to do anyway, and it's what we're supposed to help them do.

Think of the star of David with the lower triangle pointing upward, intersecting with the upper triangle pointing downward...

--Linda

Are you sure we're supposed to rescue the Princess? Isn't she supposed to stay in the castle tower? I get my traditions confused rather rapidly when I'm out here in the tall grass!

Is the Shekhinah the Crown, or is she just trapped in the crown?

Chris

 

[Raksha]

the only problem with this is that it reduces all moral questions to one thing - the quality of your judgement and, unless you are unlike every other human on the planet, you will use *heuristics* and *guidance* in every situation. for example, you will have to use your own judgement as to whether to agree with a doctor's assessment of any symptoms of ill-health, or a policeman's assessment of the acceptability of your actions.

BB,

You're damn right I'll use my own judgment, because my own "judgment" as you call it happens to be my own CONSCIENCE. The only alternative to that is using someone else's judgment, and I totally reject your analogy. There are no experts comparable to medical experts when it comes to basic issues of right and wrong, given normal intelligence and a normal conscience.

I'm sure Thomas will be more than happy to give me an oh-so-condescending lecture on how the Church has "improved" on natural law and natural reason (their terms), but I don't see any improvement and I doubt if you do either. Nor do I see where the rabbis of the Talmud have improved on it. On the contrary, their judgments seem inferior to mine because they aren't free to contradict the Torah even when it advocates genocide.

I was on Rabbi Landis' website a couple of days ago--his name was vaguely familiar to me, so I was curious and spend a few minutes checking it out. I discovered that he's billed as "America's rabbi." I started reading his take on liberal American Jews, and came to a place where he was being very condescending on the subject of liberals doing "what seems right to them."

Right then and there, I clicked that window shut without finishing the article. I KNEW he was a fraud and had nothing meaningful to say to me. He isn't "America's rabbi." He's the neocon rabbi as I suspected. He was telling me I should listen to someone else, some "authority" (him, presumably) rather than my own conscience. Right then and there, he guaranteed that I would never listen to another word he said, because with those words he outed himself as the neocon fraud he is.

Please note that I make a distinction between "doing what's right" and "doing what I want." But there is also the Wiccan version of the Golden Rule, which I'm sure you're familiar with:

Eight words the Wiccan rede fulfill,
An it harm none, do as ye will.

That sounds simple enough, maybe even too simple. But what it means in practice is that I can't answer the rest of your post because I'm too angry to come up with a civil answer. Parts of it were okay, but the part about the sages vs. the masses just reeked of unconscious paternalism and condescension, the essence of what I absolutely hate about the "Gatekeeper" mentality. (Sorry James, I don't mean you!!!)

--Linda