Re: OT: Shekinah; some spoilers: was: THE DAVINCI CODE

I was just thinking, the Prophet Jeremiah recorded several instances of
arguing with some Jerusalem women who held him and his uncompromising
monotheism responsible for all their woes, saying things like, "When we
offered cakes to the Queen of Heaven, we were all right."

And there is documentary proof in some papyri I have lost the info on, where
the Jerusalem priesthood after the establishment of the Persian Empire,
writing to a Temple set up by the Egyptian Jews, a temple to both The Name
and Ashtorath, his consort.  Or it may well have been El and Ashtorath - as I
say, I only remember the central details.  I haven't seen it in at least ten
years.

If so, the Shekinah being female, may well be the same sort of phenomenon as
the Catholic/Orthodox veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary - once the
goddess was banished from the hearth, she rebounded back among the devotees
and the mystics.

Only the Protestants and the Muslims appear to have been successful in
banishing the goddess.  But then the Protestants have lost out to the
scientific movement, and the goddess seems to have reappeared in the forms of
the various pre/post-Christian religious movements.  How long the Muslims'll
hold out for, I don't know, but I think the next few centuries'll be
interesting.

Wesley Parish

On Sun, 08 Jun 2003 03:31, you wrote:
> The concept of the Shekinah as a powerful female being goes back at least
> to the Kabalah, IIRC from reading Gershom Sholem
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."