World Goddesses

If you get an hour to sit and watch the video i have posted I highly recommend it.  In this video Joseph Campbell, not Mr Bell, discusses the power of Love and the feminine in mythology.  It is a transformative  experience to see true love in action where the importance of the other eclipses the self.  


The reading for today was intended to make you consider the cosmic significance of the goddess and the universal association she has. The first thing to consider is the similarities between the stories of Innana, Isis, and Demeter. Here we have very close association of deeds and significance. These stories all contain an association between sex and death as the correlates of temporality. The life we have is only possible with the death of others. The goddess becomes an all encompassing figure that contains all the possibilities of life and death. Many traditions separate these aspects of goddesses divinity but a few bring them all together as well. Kali from the "Hindu" tradition is a good example of the goddess of all existence. She carries a sword to cut life down, an open hand affirming life and a drum to tap out the minutes and hours of time.

In the case of Isis we see many parallels to Demeter in her story and function.  In agrarian societies the goddess is the earth and so she is very important.  In many images Osiris can be seen sitting on a throne with Isis in the background.  This is not because she is less important but because she is IS the throne upon which he sits.  She is all of creation and he is living upon her as a representative of human society.  One further note about that story:  Campbell once stated that in the older versions of the Isis and Osris story the birth of Horus occurs when Isis is morning the loss of her husband on the river and she actually has sex with his corpse and conceives Horus.  Most of the stories we read will make reference to Isis laying down with his corpse or some other vague reference to this act.  This simply shows that, as we noted earlier, sex and death are closely bound and we cannot have one without the other.  Furthermore, Horus becomes an important god, the patron of Pharaohs and the arch-nemesis of Set, his fathers murderer.
 

If the goddess is the material of life, the god is the one who moves it into action. The god creates reality out of possibilties. It is through the god that we find that even though we may be reluctant to bring life forward "life must be". He (as the text notes) is "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower".

Consider this poem (a favorite of mine) as we continue:


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Dylan Thomas