“Treacherous” waters these days. I wish you great luck! Hope you didn’t use a beloved em dash. ←kidding. (Folks’ll have to pry those out of my arthritic hands.)
ummm…yeah…I’ve been working (on and off) on the “same” novel since 1999. And my second since 2019. Revising. Awaiting coalescence. Knowing the work has its own timeline and “journey.”
Hey, have you ever seen any work (or done your own) around the moment in Genesis when God decrees that man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife? Because I see a strong case for matriliny right there. Curious if others have noticed this?
I have not seen that yet, but I love the idea. There are so many matrilineal traces in the Bible, in Brittish law, and in the native cultures that were already here when the Brittish arrived - and the historical record of their horror at finding a culture of powerful women.
I really loved this essay, why hadn't I fully realised that the creative force has to be feminine? I have been so conditioned by my upbringing, the Christian religion that I embraced and then, after a long time, left and, well almost every story I've ever come across - the father is the head of the family, God is the father he created women for men, women are secondary. You have shown me this is so back to front. I've come to believe recently that patriarchy is the problem, your essay rolls that back into our mythological beginnings, thank you.
You are so welcome, and I am so grateful for your comment. The mythology we were raised in still runs our worldview even after we leave religion. It’s shaping of us is pre-verbal. The thing I love most about this particular Christian myth, is the way you can just see the older myth just under it. Barbelo is all genders, described as the waters of the deep ocean. Then she becomes the womb of the world. They knew something, then. The pasting of a male god on that is a move to control. That’s what patriarchy is. Domination and control. It’s killing us all.
Wow!! This essay was fantastic. I learned so much and I am no slouch on mythology research since it was part of my graduate work. I also had to cackle when you said we are in the Upsidedown. My friend and I are always seeing or hearing things that are absolutely backwards lately. And yet people just normalize it and walk on, so wounded by patriarchy that they can’t even respond appropriately to the world at large. It very much feels like the Upsidesown was not just fiction some days.
I mean. I am just gonna give you a big old A-women 🙌🏼 over here because you know I love me some “Eve as the cause of all our problems” takedown pieces, and the usurping of the creation story so a man in the sky no one can see is given the credit while women bleed — sometimes to death — (increasingly so every day) down here in reality? Hell to the no. This was brilliant as ever, I followed all the links, too (that Antarctica piece is enraging and scary), and I cannot wait for your novel. Here’s to matriarchy and matrilineal cultures, may we please head in that direction…today would be a terrific day to start.
If I ever have the misfortune of being in a room physically with a man who says, “Human society is inherently patriarchal,” I may punch him in the throat. Gross.
Great uplifting article! I've been working (a long time) on something similar about Sophia's fall but from the perspective of people who consider themselves "gnostic" (ones that attend liturgical services, for instance). I'll finish my article one of these days (swamped with practicalities). There's also some great articles by @Max Dashu on Sophia/Eve and earlier non-Christianized goddesses!
I always get to the end of your essays feeling like I’ve learned something important, or made a previously unknown connection. It’s a real gift, Susan.
Thank you, Dina. I try to get us out of the colonizer’s trap: thinking it’s always been like this and there’s nothing we can do. When you pull the covers back, that’s what I’m always after.
Right!! I love when people tell me it’s always been this way, so we can’t change. “Hmm. But, we didn’t have sewers before. And we used to prescribe smoking for certain medical maladies. But now we have better, healthier ways of living. So.”
Just as you say. This violence is not natural. We can change. Even other patriarchal cultures aren’t as bad as this one. I like to write about how different (and still the same) we are from the Puritan culture the US is founded on. Just a few hundred years, a blip on the screen of history.
Wowee, Susan. So many things to say about this amazing piece. I love your wry humor. I love your commonsense take down. And yes, to quote a good friend of mine, "It's A Metaphor." I think there may be t-shirt. Question: will you tag the dude who wrote the post you referred to? Because I want him to read this. If you haven't yet, can I?
I giggle all the time about this one thing. I think of all Christians as New Age Jews in denial. Many of whom have lost their way. But then, so many modern Jews have, too, IMO.
Love your work. I also like delving into creation myths and using them in my fiction so I look forward to your novel. I have often wondered how society moved from revering the womb to figuring out how a man could give birth. Lately I've been re-reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and re-thinking the role of Shamat. Shamat is often categorized as a prostitute, which carries lots of connotations in itself. She is told to civilise Enkidu, a wild man (or read that as a man unpolluted by the material world of Ur), so that he can challenge Gilgamesh, become his friend and confidant. The goal is for Enkidu to teach Gilgamesh how to be a better ruler. When Enkidu is dying, he curses Shamat for leading him out of his natural state but thenbShamash (the sun diety) reminds him that if it weren't for Shamat, he would still be an animal. There is so much to unpack in this story. Enkidu dies of a long and painful death as punishment for killing Humbaba the Bull of Heaven. Man against nature. Sex as both the civilising of men and the source of their arrogance. And in the end, the desire for men to blame women for their mortality. Or maybe there's something else, or something in addition. The Bull attacks civilisation because Gilgamesh rejects Innana's overtures but is this only the story of a woman spurned? Or is something else at play. Is Inanna, the mother Earth who Gilgamesh refuses to respect so she figgts back with droughts and floods, etc. Instead of accepting responsibility, Gikgamesh enlists Enkidu's support in killing the messenger --the bull. Someone is going to suffer but it won't be the rich and powerful Gilgamesh. It's the common man, the one who was supposed to teach Gilgamesh to be more understanding and empathetic. It is the common man who suffers for the destruction of nature and so Enkidu turns his anger not on Gulgamesh but on Shamat. If that isn't a tale fit for modern society, I don't know what is.
Phew. You are so right. I once saw a very talented actor turn that epic into a one-man show. Mesmerizing. I wrote a 13 part series about Inanna here at Modern Mythology, which has to start with Gilgamesh if you want to understand why Inanna descends to the Underworld. I think that part you wrote about men blaming women for their mortality is a banger. I’d pursue that one. I feel I’ve met a sister here. I can’t wait to see what you make of it. Keep in touch.
Such a smart, thoughtful piece, Susan. Many years ago, I heard a religious studies lecturer offer a feminist interpretation of the Book of Genesis (in which she also acknowledged the two conflicting origin stories, because, as you pointed out, no Track Changes back then) that I loved. Her reading of the "fall" was that instead of erring, Eve made a conscious, intentional decision to bite the apple as a way to escape from an infantile, static, timeless, ignorant state into history and knowledge. There are so many stories, and so many interpretations, and the reduction of human experience to a single, reductive, orthodox narrative is always, always a tragedy.
That’s so awesome, Irena. I’d have loved to be there. Some Gnostic texts say Sophia was there, telling Eve to eat the apple. Also, there’s a lot to unpack about that serpent. In any case, we could have ended up with other stories. It’s the literalness that kills us. Just as Robert Frost said, a man who doesn’t know his way around a metaphor I’d dangerous.
"We could have ended up with other stories." There's a whole world in that line! Also, yes, the literalness is absolutely killing us, and Robert Frost was 100 percent correct.
I guess that’s often my point. We could have easily ended up differently, so why are we so closed down about it? I think the answer is about protecting power. That’s why nothing really changes.
I love what you've written here, Susan. Thanks. I learned a lot from reading.
I was raised as a Christian, replaced it with a different belief system: science, for a number of years and fell back into Christianity after a few numinous experiences. I look with a skeptical eye on much of what is in the bible because of the many translations over time (you know, that childhood game of telephone tells me that stuff got lost in the translations across languages and across time, as the meanings of words are not static as we all SHOULD know).
I've read the Gospel of Thomas and many religious/spiritual books over the past few decades. I too reject the creation story in Genesis, but not for the same reasons that you do. I view the Divine - whatever you might want to call God, or the "ground of being" - as energy. How can energy have a gender? When energy chooses to manifest as the carbon beings that humans are, it does. How that manifestation happened the first time around when humans showed up on this huge rock we call earth, I know not. And it doesn't matter to me that "I know not." Some things just are.
FYI: Some years ago, I read the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins and was left with the question, how did inert matter, after it was created, manifest as living carbon beings? Where did the spark of life come from? That question really wasn't answered...in this brilliantly written book, otherwise.
Last year I read Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy because I kept on seeing other authors reference it, and I needed to understand it better. Hence, my reference to "the ground of being" in the previous paragraphs. Been searching for something like this my entire life (I'm a 74-year-old). As the old saying goes, 'when the student is ready, the teacher appears.' For me, the teacher is often a book as books 'call to me.'
Jesus was a prophet. If you cut away all of the dogma surrounding him in the bible, and follow the basic principles he outlined, the world would be a much better place. Really just two commandments - love god (the earth - the ground of being) and love your neighbor as yourself. Difficult to follow commandments for sure. Our HIStory books are filled with failures to follow these simple rules for living. What we need is more HERstory books...and adherence to these two difficult-to-follow commandments.
I have a Red Book. One of my master’s degrees is in Jungian Psychology. I love that approach to myth and fairy tales, too. I’m so glad you commented here. Perfect.
I agree with all of this. It’s so beautiful. I think the part about the divine being energy is pointed to in many creation myths, and probably why Batbelo, in Gnosticism, is both genders, or more clearly, all genders. Myths are metaphors. Obviously, I’m not a promoter of any mythological system, but it seems that there is something that responds to us. I have no problem with Jesus, only what he has been used for. Thank you for such a thoughtful response.
The eminent psychoanalyst and once considered by Freud to be his heir, Carl Jung, was the son of a Lutheran Pastor. Supposedly on Jung's office door and tombstone in Latin was this phrase: "Bidden or not, the gods are present." He said he didn't believe in god, but "knew." Like others before and after him who have studied comparative religions, Jung embraced mythology and incorporated it into his theorizing about the psyche (the notion of the 'collective unconscious' being derived from all of his studies of ancient myths and texts).
If you haven't read the posthumously published book of his The Red Book, I highly recommend it. He knew it would not be well received during his lifetime, as people would think he was crazy...hence the directive to publish it after his death.
Hey dear! I'm definitely not the queen of Substack. But maybe I'm a princess?
A Queen-in-Training? I wouldn't mind being a Grand Poobah or the Teacher's Pet of Substack. LOVE you, Mr. Kacvinsky. You're made of the right stuff. xo
Genuinely looking forward to your novel. It's so right-up-my-alley as was this piece!
Yep. I love them too much.
Mine is done. Just looking for the publishing path.
“Treacherous” waters these days. I wish you great luck! Hope you didn’t use a beloved em dash. ←kidding. (Folks’ll have to pry those out of my arthritic hands.)
Thank you. I hope you get to see it soon too. But there are dog years and then there are publishing years. 2028 anyone?
I, too — love them.
ummm…yeah…I’ve been working (on and off) on the “same” novel since 1999. And my second since 2019. Revising. Awaiting coalescence. Knowing the work has its own timeline and “journey.”
Hey, have you ever seen any work (or done your own) around the moment in Genesis when God decrees that man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife? Because I see a strong case for matriliny right there. Curious if others have noticed this?
I have not seen that yet, but I love the idea. There are so many matrilineal traces in the Bible, in Brittish law, and in the native cultures that were already here when the Brittish arrived - and the historical record of their horror at finding a culture of powerful women.
I really loved this essay, why hadn't I fully realised that the creative force has to be feminine? I have been so conditioned by my upbringing, the Christian religion that I embraced and then, after a long time, left and, well almost every story I've ever come across - the father is the head of the family, God is the father he created women for men, women are secondary. You have shown me this is so back to front. I've come to believe recently that patriarchy is the problem, your essay rolls that back into our mythological beginnings, thank you.
You are so welcome, and I am so grateful for your comment. The mythology we were raised in still runs our worldview even after we leave religion. It’s shaping of us is pre-verbal. The thing I love most about this particular Christian myth, is the way you can just see the older myth just under it. Barbelo is all genders, described as the waters of the deep ocean. Then she becomes the womb of the world. They knew something, then. The pasting of a male god on that is a move to control. That’s what patriarchy is. Domination and control. It’s killing us all.
Wow!! This essay was fantastic. I learned so much and I am no slouch on mythology research since it was part of my graduate work. I also had to cackle when you said we are in the Upsidedown. My friend and I are always seeing or hearing things that are absolutely backwards lately. And yet people just normalize it and walk on, so wounded by patriarchy that they can’t even respond appropriately to the world at large. It very much feels like the Upsidesown was not just fiction some days.
I feel so seen. Thanks Amanda. I’m really proud of this one.
I mean. I am just gonna give you a big old A-women 🙌🏼 over here because you know I love me some “Eve as the cause of all our problems” takedown pieces, and the usurping of the creation story so a man in the sky no one can see is given the credit while women bleed — sometimes to death — (increasingly so every day) down here in reality? Hell to the no. This was brilliant as ever, I followed all the links, too (that Antarctica piece is enraging and scary), and I cannot wait for your novel. Here’s to matriarchy and matrilineal cultures, may we please head in that direction…today would be a terrific day to start.
I love this response! The biggest part to me is how arbitrary it was that we got the Christian story we did. Dog eat dog.
If I ever have the misfortune of being in a room physically with a man who says, “Human society is inherently patriarchal,” I may punch him in the throat. Gross.
Thanks for the laugh.
Exquisite!
Oh, thank you. So much.
Great uplifting article! I've been working (a long time) on something similar about Sophia's fall but from the perspective of people who consider themselves "gnostic" (ones that attend liturgical services, for instance). I'll finish my article one of these days (swamped with practicalities). There's also some great articles by @Max Dashu on Sophia/Eve and earlier non-Christianized goddesses!
I love all of this. Thanks Thea.
I always get to the end of your essays feeling like I’ve learned something important, or made a previously unknown connection. It’s a real gift, Susan.
Thank you, Dina. I try to get us out of the colonizer’s trap: thinking it’s always been like this and there’s nothing we can do. When you pull the covers back, that’s what I’m always after.
Right!! I love when people tell me it’s always been this way, so we can’t change. “Hmm. But, we didn’t have sewers before. And we used to prescribe smoking for certain medical maladies. But now we have better, healthier ways of living. So.”
Just as you say. This violence is not natural. We can change. Even other patriarchal cultures aren’t as bad as this one. I like to write about how different (and still the same) we are from the Puritan culture the US is founded on. Just a few hundred years, a blip on the screen of history.
Yeah, it’s hard to distinguish our current state from Puritanism. Waaaay too many similarities and derivatives.
Same men in power, different devils, different fear mongering, same outcomes.
Wowee, Susan. So many things to say about this amazing piece. I love your wry humor. I love your commonsense take down. And yes, to quote a good friend of mine, "It's A Metaphor." I think there may be t-shirt. Question: will you tag the dude who wrote the post you referred to? Because I want him to read this. If you haven't yet, can I?
I giggle all the time about this one thing. I think of all Christians as New Age Jews in denial. Many of whom have lost their way. But then, so many modern Jews have, too, IMO.
Huzzah. Love you. xo
Yes, to revealing the truth about the matrilineal focal… realities
The creation myth of God as a male …
Let me scratch my head on that one
Yes, what a way to redirect attention away from nature
Great writing
Thank you, sister !
Oh, thank you! It all seem so simple to me. Life comes through the feminine. That’s all she wrote.
Love your work. I also like delving into creation myths and using them in my fiction so I look forward to your novel. I have often wondered how society moved from revering the womb to figuring out how a man could give birth. Lately I've been re-reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and re-thinking the role of Shamat. Shamat is often categorized as a prostitute, which carries lots of connotations in itself. She is told to civilise Enkidu, a wild man (or read that as a man unpolluted by the material world of Ur), so that he can challenge Gilgamesh, become his friend and confidant. The goal is for Enkidu to teach Gilgamesh how to be a better ruler. When Enkidu is dying, he curses Shamat for leading him out of his natural state but thenbShamash (the sun diety) reminds him that if it weren't for Shamat, he would still be an animal. There is so much to unpack in this story. Enkidu dies of a long and painful death as punishment for killing Humbaba the Bull of Heaven. Man against nature. Sex as both the civilising of men and the source of their arrogance. And in the end, the desire for men to blame women for their mortality. Or maybe there's something else, or something in addition. The Bull attacks civilisation because Gilgamesh rejects Innana's overtures but is this only the story of a woman spurned? Or is something else at play. Is Inanna, the mother Earth who Gilgamesh refuses to respect so she figgts back with droughts and floods, etc. Instead of accepting responsibility, Gikgamesh enlists Enkidu's support in killing the messenger --the bull. Someone is going to suffer but it won't be the rich and powerful Gilgamesh. It's the common man, the one who was supposed to teach Gilgamesh to be more understanding and empathetic. It is the common man who suffers for the destruction of nature and so Enkidu turns his anger not on Gulgamesh but on Shamat. If that isn't a tale fit for modern society, I don't know what is.
Phew. You are so right. I once saw a very talented actor turn that epic into a one-man show. Mesmerizing. I wrote a 13 part series about Inanna here at Modern Mythology, which has to start with Gilgamesh if you want to understand why Inanna descends to the Underworld. I think that part you wrote about men blaming women for their mortality is a banger. I’d pursue that one. I feel I’ve met a sister here. I can’t wait to see what you make of it. Keep in touch.
Such a smart, thoughtful piece, Susan. Many years ago, I heard a religious studies lecturer offer a feminist interpretation of the Book of Genesis (in which she also acknowledged the two conflicting origin stories, because, as you pointed out, no Track Changes back then) that I loved. Her reading of the "fall" was that instead of erring, Eve made a conscious, intentional decision to bite the apple as a way to escape from an infantile, static, timeless, ignorant state into history and knowledge. There are so many stories, and so many interpretations, and the reduction of human experience to a single, reductive, orthodox narrative is always, always a tragedy.
That’s so awesome, Irena. I’d have loved to be there. Some Gnostic texts say Sophia was there, telling Eve to eat the apple. Also, there’s a lot to unpack about that serpent. In any case, we could have ended up with other stories. It’s the literalness that kills us. Just as Robert Frost said, a man who doesn’t know his way around a metaphor I’d dangerous.
"We could have ended up with other stories." There's a whole world in that line! Also, yes, the literalness is absolutely killing us, and Robert Frost was 100 percent correct.
I guess that’s often my point. We could have easily ended up differently, so why are we so closed down about it? I think the answer is about protecting power. That’s why nothing really changes.
I love what you've written here, Susan. Thanks. I learned a lot from reading.
I was raised as a Christian, replaced it with a different belief system: science, for a number of years and fell back into Christianity after a few numinous experiences. I look with a skeptical eye on much of what is in the bible because of the many translations over time (you know, that childhood game of telephone tells me that stuff got lost in the translations across languages and across time, as the meanings of words are not static as we all SHOULD know).
I've read the Gospel of Thomas and many religious/spiritual books over the past few decades. I too reject the creation story in Genesis, but not for the same reasons that you do. I view the Divine - whatever you might want to call God, or the "ground of being" - as energy. How can energy have a gender? When energy chooses to manifest as the carbon beings that humans are, it does. How that manifestation happened the first time around when humans showed up on this huge rock we call earth, I know not. And it doesn't matter to me that "I know not." Some things just are.
FYI: Some years ago, I read the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins and was left with the question, how did inert matter, after it was created, manifest as living carbon beings? Where did the spark of life come from? That question really wasn't answered...in this brilliantly written book, otherwise.
Last year I read Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy because I kept on seeing other authors reference it, and I needed to understand it better. Hence, my reference to "the ground of being" in the previous paragraphs. Been searching for something like this my entire life (I'm a 74-year-old). As the old saying goes, 'when the student is ready, the teacher appears.' For me, the teacher is often a book as books 'call to me.'
Jesus was a prophet. If you cut away all of the dogma surrounding him in the bible, and follow the basic principles he outlined, the world would be a much better place. Really just two commandments - love god (the earth - the ground of being) and love your neighbor as yourself. Difficult to follow commandments for sure. Our HIStory books are filled with failures to follow these simple rules for living. What we need is more HERstory books...and adherence to these two difficult-to-follow commandments.
I have a Red Book. One of my master’s degrees is in Jungian Psychology. I love that approach to myth and fairy tales, too. I’m so glad you commented here. Perfect.
I agree with all of this. It’s so beautiful. I think the part about the divine being energy is pointed to in many creation myths, and probably why Batbelo, in Gnosticism, is both genders, or more clearly, all genders. Myths are metaphors. Obviously, I’m not a promoter of any mythological system, but it seems that there is something that responds to us. I have no problem with Jesus, only what he has been used for. Thank you for such a thoughtful response.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Susan.
The eminent psychoanalyst and once considered by Freud to be his heir, Carl Jung, was the son of a Lutheran Pastor. Supposedly on Jung's office door and tombstone in Latin was this phrase: "Bidden or not, the gods are present." He said he didn't believe in god, but "knew." Like others before and after him who have studied comparative religions, Jung embraced mythology and incorporated it into his theorizing about the psyche (the notion of the 'collective unconscious' being derived from all of his studies of ancient myths and texts).
If you haven't read the posthumously published book of his The Red Book, I highly recommend it. He knew it would not be well received during his lifetime, as people would think he was crazy...hence the directive to publish it after his death.
Love this Susan. It's brilliant.
Thank you, Louise. Your opinion means so much to me.
As always thought provoking and incendiary, well done. As always, Tom Kacvinsky
Hey Tom! xo
Wow, from the queen of substack! THX
If I get a vote, I’m going for “Grand Poobah. “ I like the ring of that.
Hey dear! I'm definitely not the queen of Substack. But maybe I'm a princess?
A Queen-in-Training? I wouldn't mind being a Grand Poobah or the Teacher's Pet of Substack. LOVE you, Mr. Kacvinsky. You're made of the right stuff. xo
Tears on my freshly pressed linen hankies!
There should be a handkerchief emoji.
I don't like using them in my comments, posts, and notes. They're not me. Maybe I'll design a gif. xo
Sounds like a mission.
Could be....when I find some time! Can you give me some? I'll pay top dollar. xo
Thank you, Tom. You mean the world to me.