The above is a picture of one of the last of my climbing roses. I took this picture in August. My climbing rose begins blooming in mid to late May and, depending on the weather, will have a bloom or two in September, but not this year.
I read an article recently and I do not know where (I googled it, but no luck.), but it named women Egg Bearers because the designation “woman” has been co-opted by the transgender female. The transgender females have claimed periods, breasts, and other female physiology, but, at this time, they have not claimed ovaries. I’m sure technology will take care of that oversight. You know, I say live and let live, but something is wrong when a male who becomes aroused at the sight of naked/semi-clad women claims he identifies as a woman and gets to live in close quarters with non-consenting women.
With all the nihilism I’m reading and hearing about, I thought a bit of speculative fantasy about the Bible is in order. As I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of the Bible, but I’ve read it maybe twice all the way through (with Apocrypha) and skimmed it a number of times. Some parts don’t make logical sense. I began questioning Genesis when I was a teenager. Below are excerpts from the first two chapters that I never could quite wrap my head around. So, today, I’m speculating.
Genesis 1:26-27
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 2:18-23
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
So, it looks to me like two women were created by God. One at the same time as Adam was created and another after Adam was created. One was made from the same substance as Adam and another was fashioned from Adam’s rib. I think there’s a lot missing in and between the two stories.
Jewish lore names the first wife Lilith. Seems like Lilith was not a docile, obedient helpmate and Adam complained to god. Now, according to Jewish lore, Lilith left Adam and refused God’s command to return. She was subsequently deemed to be a demon.
I think the story about Lilith is an allegory about a time lost to us either deliberately through the machinations of man or organically through the passage of time. I speculate from the verse about the first woman that there was a time when woman and man, made of the same substance, were equal. Or, since Adam had to complain to God regarding his dissatisfaction with Lilith, maybe women had more power. Note: there is nothing in the Bible regarding Lilith’s fate…that is found in Jewish lore.
Note…in Jewish lore, Lilith is demonized. She is an outcast. Adam has no use for Lilith who is not amenable to his control. So, let’s do a bit of fantasizing. Are these two chapters in Genesis, with many, many omissions, the remnants of a memory about a transition from a matriarchal society to a patriarchy? Because what have males historically and presently labeled women who do not adhere to patriarchal norms? That woman is a witch, a demon, an outcast, a hag, a crone.
Think…Eve is man’s idealized subservient woman…made from man. Since we know, biologically that no woman has ever come from a man and be an Egg Bearer…we know that the story is, in all probability, symbolic. Eve is the perfect woman for the patriarchy…totally subservient. And, even Eve is demonized…she is the cause of man’s fall from grace.
However, the serpent…in some ancient cultures, the snake/serpent was associated with women. Could the snake/serpent, in Genesis, be the matriarchy reasserting itself? Since Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden…could it be that the matriarchy won the battle and exiled Adam and all who followed Adam? Then, their error was not annihilating Adam and his followers because, over the millennia, Adam and his followers procreated and spread the patriarchy.
Patriarchy is imbalance. That is probably why patriarchy has been a detriment to this Earth. War and more war, greed, lack., the fouling of our world–patriarchy has much to answer for. I think the Earth leans toward balance in all things. It might take a while for the Earth to balance what man has wrought, but it will.
An aside…have you ever looked at a picture of a Venus figurine? The one found in Europe? These figurines were created by an unknown people approximately 25,000 or more years ago. I have seen pictures of statutes that resemble the Venus statutes in other cultures…African? South American? Or am I thinking of Saartje (Sarah) Bartman, a Khoikhoi woman (South African) who was exhibited as an attraction in Europe in the early 1800s? She was billed as the Hottentot Venus. (Info re: Bartman and Venus figurines from Wikipedia.) Her body shape reminds one of the Venus figurine.
The Venus figurine’s hair is in waves like Black natural hair held in place with grease. Their bodies are reminiscent of a Black female’s body who has birthed babies and of Saartje Bartman’s. We know that Europe was settled by groups migrating from Africa, so these figurines could have been created by a group(s) from Africa that was following the matriarchal traditions of their African homeland or the memory of that tradition. I wonder how many generations did it take to walk and boat from their homeland in Africa to Europe? What conditions caused them to continue their walk and not settle? Was it curiosity or environmental factors or maybe both?
I’ve always wondered why “white” was considered to contain all colors. Never made sense to me until I read the article I’ve cited below about the color blue. We are so loosey-goosey with words. It’s not the color “white” that contains all colors; it’s light. Somewhere along the way the color white has become conflated with light.
colorsexplained.com/how-do-we-see-color/(opens in a new tab) In this article, color is defined as “light and the eye’s perception of visible light…” I understand the conflation–dark is black and light is white. Opposites…that’s how we define so much of our world. However, this lack of clarity feeds into the mindset of many that there is something better about anything associated with the color “white”. We forget that first there was dark and then there was light. If anything, light is dark’s creation.
https://www.grunge.com/285728/the-real-reason-ancient-people-didnt-see-the-color-blue/
But the above cited article brings up another point that I have made before. How can we trust a modern day translation of ancient texts when we don’t interpret the world as they did? They didn’t see as we do. They didn’t think as we do. That’s why for the longest we had a translation named by the translator “The Book of the Dead“. The ancient Egyptians probably would have been offended by such a misunderstanding of their interpretation of their intertwined spiritual and physical worlds.
And how many times has “light” been mistranslated as “white”? Unfortunately, as long as translators are invested in their translations for personal and cultural reasons, we will never know. It’s disheartening when so-called educated professionals have agendas that don’t align with history, facts, or evidence. We see this in the nonsensical insistence that ancient Egyptians looked like the current inhabitants who are the descendants of the conquerors of that land.
The ancient Greeks may not have named the color blue, but what they saw when viewing the ocean, if the translation in the above cited article is correct, had much more depth and emotion than the colors we have assigned to those roiling waters.
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