Discussion with Lisa Over God/Goddess

Lisa and I went out for lunch today and had a very pleasant morning, lots of interesting discussions about music. It naturally evolved from talking about a mutual friend's spirituality, or lack thereof, to somehow talking about the spirituality that Van Goh may have projected onto his paintings. That was me hijacking the conversation into my own tangent, something I'm pretty good at. She called me out on it and I apologized and let her finish her thought. It started raining as we pulled into the driveway, not raining, but drizzling periodically, with gray clouds around the horizon. I guess it put me in a contemplative mood and I invited her to do a reading about our mutual friend outside on the porch while I assembled the stretcher bars for The Rose while we chatted. After I loosely assembled them to get a visual frame of the painting-to-be, we got into a discussion about her Sacred Rose deck, which she was using at that moment.

Her comment was that she was so overwhelmed by me constantly referring to God and not Goddess that the deck felt comforting to her for emphasizing more of the Goddess aspect. I explained that when I refer to God I mean Goddess also and that I wish there was a word that included both, she responded Goddess, to which I rolled my eyes. She asked me what Goddess qualities are, and I said I thought of it as more nurturing, growth, empathy among other qualities, she shook her head and asked why could it be war, or hunt also? Why did I think that those are mainly male characteristics? She was trying to open my mind to the fact that God/Goddess can be everything, and that to try and classify what one is and not the other is maddening, since across various cultures, things such as agriculture or death were associated with male on some and female on others. The black dot on the white and the white dot on the black shape of the yin and the yang stands for the truth that both male and female aspects can stand for all of the above.

I then told her how I admire the Goddess in the form of Athena, who aided Odysseus in his journey home, adding to his cunning and strategy where his own human cunning and strategic planning was not enough. I said that I felt as though their relationship was more as one of older sister and younger brother, to which she immediately took offense. 'Why isn't her a Goddess and him a man? By calling them siblings you are elevating a human and desecrating her.' I answered her that its because that was the precise philosophy of the Greeks, to rival the gods with their own intellect, artistic pursuit and acts of heroism. Essentially the gods were more human and the humans were more godlike. 'There is a reason why their philosophy is outdated' was her response, to which I answered, yes, but it keeps returning and fueling Humanism as it did in the Renaissance. It strengthens our (mine, I told her) belief in humanity, that we are more than just dirt as we thought in the dark ages, that we can aspire to accomplish great works, works which even the Greek gods may envy. (I had Orpheus in mind though I did not mention it, for his music impressed the gods so much, that he was given a release of his beloved from the clutches of Hades.) The head cops were showing up at that point, and she knew it. I had to calm down and articulate why I felt that way.

Having been brought up in a strict patriarchal religious upbringing, I look at my past as a Renaissance artist would look back at the dark ages, God was all powerful and humans were worthless unless they attained salvation through the Him, a power far above and beyond from their lives. “For every ten scriptures I would hear,” I told her, “nine would be along the lines of 'for He remembers that we are dust' while one may be 'and God made man in his image.' I ended the rant with “ Man is dust if dust is all he wishes to be”. She told me not to rely so much on this ancient, still patriarchal, philosophy of the Greeks to counter my oppressive upbringing, or else I would be just like Crowley, becoming a Satanist only to escape his past doctrine into its polar opposite, a way of psychologically and philosophically overcompensating. “Who wrote the Odyssey?” she asked “Homer, a man” I answered. She nodded, then I told her how its not sexist because Odysseus sided with the Goddess, in the form of Athena, while he opposed God in the form of Poseidon. “In fact” I told her “he teaches us that all the troubles brought about in his odyssey back home were because of his hubris defiance of the male god Poseidon, who then angered, was determined to keep Odysseus from sailing home”

I believe I paraphrased Odysseus saying ' it was my human cunning that won the war, not you, god' then he proceeded to outwit Poseidon every step of the way on his journey home. “Why does Odysseus need to defy this mighty God and prove his human superiority, while you say that the Goddess he sided with is anything less than a Goddess as powerful as Poseidon?” was the question she asked me, maybe not exactly in those words, but close. That gave me a long pause, a very emotional epiphany for me. “I have a problem what authority, don't I?” I thought of Athena as a “big sister” instead of a Goddess because of her intimate friendship with Odysseus, really looking out for him as a true friend, not acting as an authority figure, yet still revered by him as such. This was my epiphany, that intimacy with the Divine need not undermine its real Godhood. Years of imagining the God as a authority figure in a hierarchy, a King, sealed me off from thinking of the Divine as anything close to me, like a friend. My spiritual progress depends on my realization that He/She is both, all powerful, yet close and intimate to me, and Lisa agreed.


We then did a reading about my spirituality in the previous three lives, starting with the most recent, and we came to the conclusion that the quick learning that I've been going through, may be a reacquainting myself with that which I've already learned in my last walk in this earth (Supposedly a Japanese soldier who fought in WW2 and lived, coming back disillusioned and betrayed by his country/leaders) It was a very interesting reading, and as far as the cards I asked her to pull out for my life so far, starting my my spirituality as the 9 of swords, its effect on my life as the Knight of Pentacles and the way I express it as The World card. We both agree that in place of the Knight of Pentacles, by the end of my life, it should become the Ace of Swords, as both, the Ace of Cups and Ace of Wands, came up in the two previous lives.