Read Online The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code by Lynn Picknett - Free Book Online
Authors: Lynn Picknett
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times it was often said that nuns awoke `to find themselves polluted as if they had slept with men's - in many, if not most, cases because they actually had. Some quick-thinking nuns claimed they had slept with Christ (possibly many believed that they had), but this was swiftly denounced as blasphemy resulting from demonic possession, despite the fact that they were known as `Brides of Christ'.
Predictably, women who were believed to consort with demons - as we will see - caused more fear and horror among the Godfearing than the imps of Hell themselves. An Anglo-Saxon book suggested the use of magic potions - or rather `holy salves' - not against the incubi themselves but against the women with whom Satan had allegedly fornicated. In Toulouse in the south of France in 1275 a woman of 56 was tortured until she confessed to nightly romps with an incubus and having given birth to `the demon's child, which was half wolf and half snake'' But as Barbara Walker notes grimly: `Perhaps the ultimate irony was the church's official opinion that all the activities of incubi were performed "with the permission of God ".10 But what God allowed, men punished."'
All that was in the bleak future, when men had discovered how to deal with the daughters of Eve and Lilith. Back at the beginning of all things, however, even Yahweh clearly had no idea how to cope with the latter bad girl - it seems never to have occurred to him to adopt the smiting mode that distinguished his later career - and his angels appear to have been similarly impotent in the face of her feisty response. Perhaps the Lord should have sought advice about how to deal with Lilith from his wife, who was already a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world. American Scholar William G. Denver wrote in 1984:
Recent archaeological discoveries provide both texts and pictorial representation that for the first time clearly identify `Asherah' as the consort of Yahweh, at least in some circles in ancient Israel ... We cannot avoid the conclusion that in Israel Yahweh could be closely identified with the cult of Asherah, and in some circles the goddess was actually personified as his consort.12
Excavations at Ras Sharma (ancient Ugarit) have unearthed 14thcentury BCE tablets on which it states that the `wife of El', the `Progenitress of the God', or Asherah, was one and the same as most Mother Goddesses, including the Sumerian goddess Astarte" and the Phoenician Tanit, whose temple in Carthage was called the Shrine of the Heavenly Virgin, while the Greeks and Romans referred to it as a `temple of the moon'.14 Elath, on the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, may have been named after the great goddess, who was clearly celebrated as the personification of the Feminine Principle throughout the Near and Middle East. Walker writes:
In Egypt [Asherah] was also a Law-giving Mother, Ashesh, an archaic form of Isis; the name meant both `pouring out' and `supporting', the functions of her breasts. Her yonic shrine in Thebes was Asher, Ashrel, or Ashrelt. Some called her `Great Lady of Ashert, the lady of heaven, the queen of the gods."5
The Canaanites called her Qaniyatu elima or `She Who Gives Birth to the Gods', or Rabbatu athiratu yammi, Lady Who Traverses the Sea - in other words, the Moon.16 All three major manifestations of the Great Mother were associated with the three phases of the Moon: the Virgin goddess with the New Moon, the Mother with the full Moon, and the crone or older wise woman with the dark of the Moon. Significantly, too, as Barbara Walker notes, `Rabbatu was an early female form of rabbi'." Wife of God and a rabbi! To the grey-bearded patriarchs this situation could not be allowed to last, whatever God's own views on the subject. (There is archaeological evidence that it was common for blessings to be invoked `by Yahweh and his Asherah','" a turn of phrase that implies a touching, even tender, closeness.) Clearly Asherah's days of power were numbered.
Walker writes dryly:
Predictably, women who were believed to consort with demons - as we will see - caused more fear and horror among the Godfearing than the imps of Hell themselves. An Anglo-Saxon book suggested the use of magic potions - or rather `holy salves' - not against the incubi themselves but against the women with whom Satan had allegedly fornicated. In Toulouse in the south of France in 1275 a woman of 56 was tortured until she confessed to nightly romps with an incubus and having given birth to `the demon's child, which was half wolf and half snake'' But as Barbara Walker notes grimly: `Perhaps the ultimate irony was the church's official opinion that all the activities of incubi were performed "with the permission of God ".10 But what God allowed, men punished."'
All that was in the bleak future, when men had discovered how to deal with the daughters of Eve and Lilith. Back at the beginning of all things, however, even Yahweh clearly had no idea how to cope with the latter bad girl - it seems never to have occurred to him to adopt the smiting mode that distinguished his later career - and his angels appear to have been similarly impotent in the face of her feisty response. Perhaps the Lord should have sought advice about how to deal with Lilith from his wife, who was already a force to be reckoned with in the ancient world. American Scholar William G. Denver wrote in 1984:
Recent archaeological discoveries provide both texts and pictorial representation that for the first time clearly identify `Asherah' as the consort of Yahweh, at least in some circles in ancient Israel ... We cannot avoid the conclusion that in Israel Yahweh could be closely identified with the cult of Asherah, and in some circles the goddess was actually personified as his consort.12
Excavations at Ras Sharma (ancient Ugarit) have unearthed 14thcentury BCE tablets on which it states that the `wife of El', the `Progenitress of the God', or Asherah, was one and the same as most Mother Goddesses, including the Sumerian goddess Astarte" and the Phoenician Tanit, whose temple in Carthage was called the Shrine of the Heavenly Virgin, while the Greeks and Romans referred to it as a `temple of the moon'.14 Elath, on the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, may have been named after the great goddess, who was clearly celebrated as the personification of the Feminine Principle throughout the Near and Middle East. Walker writes:
In Egypt [Asherah] was also a Law-giving Mother, Ashesh, an archaic form of Isis; the name meant both `pouring out' and `supporting', the functions of her breasts. Her yonic shrine in Thebes was Asher, Ashrel, or Ashrelt. Some called her `Great Lady of Ashert, the lady of heaven, the queen of the gods."5
The Canaanites called her Qaniyatu elima or `She Who Gives Birth to the Gods', or Rabbatu athiratu yammi, Lady Who Traverses the Sea - in other words, the Moon.16 All three major manifestations of the Great Mother were associated with the three phases of the Moon: the Virgin goddess with the New Moon, the Mother with the full Moon, and the crone or older wise woman with the dark of the Moon. Significantly, too, as Barbara Walker notes, `Rabbatu was an early female form of rabbi'." Wife of God and a rabbi! To the grey-bearded patriarchs this situation could not be allowed to last, whatever God's own views on the subject. (There is archaeological evidence that it was common for blessings to be invoked `by Yahweh and his Asherah','" a turn of phrase that implies a touching, even tender, closeness.) Clearly Asherah's days of power were numbered.
Walker writes dryly:
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