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Date Posted: 14:56:51 01/28/02 Mon
Author: tyrone
Subject: Re: Yasmin Greer the rest of the uterus crew
In reply to: sarah 's message, "Re: Yasmin Greer the rest of the uterus crew" on 08:32:27 01/26/02 Sat

It seems to me that you're writing from a somewhat marxist feminist perspective because you assume that religion is used, to a negative effect, to control the masses,
cocentrating mostly on women; but please tell me if I've got the wrong end of the stick here.
To be honest, I have to agree with you. I'm interested especially in what you have to say regarding the notion that the worship of a goddess preceded the worship of a male god.

As far as we know, the oldest monotheistic religion is Judaism. The original Israelites were polytheistic in a sense, because they did not deny the existence of other gods in relation to their own, but when they were exiled to Babylon, around about 550 BC, they turned their attention to a truly monotheistic religion, whereby the God of Israel
was seen as the universal God ruling the destiny of all other nations.

But you're spot on about the prior worshipping of a goddess, because way before all of this, about 5000 years ago, was the concept of the Universal Mother. Now what I find so absolutely fucking fascinating about this, is the application of Carl Jung's theory of the Archetypes. Prior to traditional Judaism came scattered remnants of the paganist era. During this time, the Mother Earth was worshipped in a godlike status by all different races, and all civilisations had their own names for the 'goddess'; Isis to the Egyptians, Ceridum to the Celts, Ceres, Demeter, Gaia and Cybele to the Mediterranean races, Dana to the Irish, Coatlicul to the Mexicans, Kali to the Indians, and the list goes on. But the most significant point to all of this is that the Universal Mother was worshipped at around about the same time.
Jung proposed that this was because Mother Earth existed in the collective subconscious as an archetype, and this explains why mythologies of different races throughout the world arose at the same time with strong fundamental similarities. The idea of the Mother Earth, and the appraisal of her as a goddess was common throughout the globe, and they all came up with the same idea at the same time. What a fascinating concept.

Sorry, I seem to be drifting. I meant to relate this to the argument by saying that, through Jung, the female was naturally regarded as a figure of worship, and thus did
indeed preceed the notion of a male god. So basically, I agree with you.

I'm sorry about my lack of comment on Germaine Greer. The reason is I haven't read anything by her, because I've never found her interesting. But I'm willing to become
familiar with her if you think she's an important figure. If you can recommend anything then that would be good.

I haven't finished this yet. It's just it's past my bedtime. I'll finish it tomorrow, then we can get stuck into a nice cosy debate on secularisation (but if you've just learned about it then I'm at a disadvantage, but I'll give it a go!)

P.S. Apologies Yasmin, if you're reading this, for my seemingly patronising tone. I'm very sorry for this, I really don't mean it but I don't notice it until I've posted the damned thing and read through it. Then I wish I hadn't posted it in the first place. I'm not very good at expressing my thoughts through a computer screen.

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