Goddess in the Gospels
Lesson Three
Read Chapters 4 and 5. Copy and paste the following questions into an email, insert your answers and send to the Abbey Council with the subject line G in G 3 from ________ (your magikal name).
Chapter 4: The Community Emmanuel
Note: On p. 44 there is a typo in Goddess in the Gospels. The year 1997 should read 1977
1. What are some of the recurring themes that kept showing up as”prophecies” and spiritual messages to the Emmanuel group members?
2. What are locutions? p. 42
3. What might have been the message from all those broken right arms and right hands of Jesus?
4. Have you ever experienced coincidences or synchronicities that you feel were spiritual messages? If so, please describe.
EXERCISE: If you get a lot of meaningful coincidences, revelations from everyday things or world events,insights and symbolic incidents like those described in this chapter (and the next chapter about Mt. St. Helens), START A JOURNAL. Margaret Starbird mentions journaling at the top of p. 44. The members of the Emmanuel group share their journal entries via email these days. “Which is much quicker,”Margaret said while telling the story of Emmanuel at a gathering I attended.Our Order of Mary Magdala also engages in this shared coincidences reporting by collecting any such journal entries or “prophetic incident” reports of cloistermates. Feel free to send any such things to theAbbey Council to go in our brand new archive, the OMM Synchronicity Log.As we get more entries, recurrent themes and patterns will manifest (just like in a dream journal). Eventually we will fill this OMM Synchronicity Log page with many such possibly prophetic revelations. Please contribute!
Chapter 5: The Destroying Mountain
1. Where were you in May 18 and 25 of 1980 and July 22 of 1980 when Mount Saint Helens erupted three times? Do you remember the cloudiness it caused across the entire US?
Katia answers: I was in Maryland and Virginia on those dates and remember how cloudy it was from the volcanic ash in the atmosphere. My cat, as thousands of other cats and animals I later read, was very disturbed by the ash cloud (in Maryland!) and ran out in front of a car getting himself killed after the first, and right before the second eruption. Just last month on July 22, 2004, I was in Seattle speaking at the Mary Magdalene Celebration put on by Lesa Bellevie of Magdalene.org. Margaret Starbird was the key speaker that morning. Later that day a few of us OMM people climbed the Seattle Space Needle and were told by the tour guide that on May 18,25 and July 22, 1980 the downtown area of Seattle became black as night and full of choking ash. She said the cloud of ash traveled all the way around the world and 19 days later ended up right back in Seattle. Volcanoes are nasty things. There is one in the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain that will cause a 500 foot tidal wave when it erupts. This massive tidal wave will travel across the Atlantic ocean and wipe out the entire East Coast of the USA including NYC, Baltimore, Miami, Boston, etc. Tens of millions of people will drown. Southern England and parts of the west coast of Europe will be devastated as will the entire northwestcoast of Africa. It’s supposed to erupt within the next 20 years. Talk about apocalypse now…
2. Where in the Gospels can we find where Jesus utters his famous words,”In Her Memory,” regarding Mary Magdalene / the Woman with the Alabaster Jar? p. 62
3. In Canticles 8:6 (Song of Solomon/Songs) the Bride tells her Groomto set her as a seal or mark upon what two body parts? Why are these significant? I thought of the modern phrase, “wearing your heart upon your sleeve,”and wrote it right in the margin of page 62.
Note: Oct. 6, 2004. This past week, Mt. St. Helens has been acting up again — we’ve had two steam eruptions and a big one supposed to come. Some Magdalene thinkers are wondering.
Debbie Cooper of Magdalene-list writes today 10-6-04: Anyone have thoughts about connections with the emerging feminine energy of MM and the latest eruptions of Mt. St. Helens? I live in Washington so her Lady is big news. Another bigger release of energy today. I feel strongly that something is wanting to come through but I have not connected with what it might be yet….
Loretta Kemsley writes:
After hearing Mary Magdalene associated with Mt. St. Helen’s I became curious about gods, goddesses and volcanos in general. It was interesting to find that Europe identified volcanos with gods while the people on the Pacific rim and other areas identified both volcanos and mountains with goddesses. There is probably more to be found, but I only had limited time for my search.
There is also ample literature, including Dickinson poetry, “A still–Volcano–Life–,” Marvel Comics Avengers series (Peliali, Volcano Goddess of Costa Verde), and Sega’s Ooga Booga video game, that refer to volcano goddesses or refer to volcanoes in the feminine. Alicia Suskin Ostriker, relates volcanoes to Shekinah and has a poetry book called “The Volcano Sequence.” She is known as a midrashist. Tori Amos also has a CD, “Boys for Pele: Voice of the Volcano Goddess.”
Here are summaries below on spiritual beliefs in the various countries. I wonder how the Mt. St. Helen’s and Mary Magdalene connection fits or doesn’t fit into the pattern.
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The term volcano originates from the little island of Vulcano in the Mediterranean sea off Sicily. Centuries ago, the people living in the area believed that Vulcano was the chimney of the forge of Vulcan – the blacksmiths of Roman gods. It was believed that the hot wave fragments and clouds of dust erupting from the Vulcano came from Vulcan’s forge. Vulcan – Hephaestus for the Greeks – kept a forge in a underwater cavern in the Mediterranean Sea, where he crafted weapons, thunderbolts and jewels for all the other gods. His assistants were the Cyclops, surpassingly strong one-eyed giants; the eye in the middle of their foreheads symbolized the mouth of a volcano.
Although European volcanos are associated with the god Vulcan, Mount Etna has been called the “Queen of European Volcanoes” due to its beauty.
The Pacific “Ring of Fire” volcanos were often associated with goddesses.
Ecuador’s Cotopaxi ( roughly translated in a pre-Quechuan tongue “The Sweet Neck of the Moon”) is honored as a goddess to the indigenous peoples of the Andes. In 1742 after Cotopaxi erupted, the Virgen de las Mercedes was declared Patroness of the Volcano. On her Saints day, the Ritual of the Mama Negra is performed: a sacred tragedy that dramatizes the liberation of the black slaves. Mestizo men play all the roles including Mama Negra. (Latacunga)
Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec Moon Goddess, was the mother of Huitzilopochtli. It is also said that Huitzilopochtli was born from a volcano which issued serpents of turquoise or fire.
Dzalarhons is the Frog Princess and the Volcano Woman of Haida mythology who arrived from the sea with six canoe-loads of people. Her husband was Kaiti, the bear god. The Haida is one of the First Nations of Canada and live on islands off the west coast of North America.
Alaskan native artist Phillip John Charette “Aarnaquq” focuses on Tuunrissuutet (feminine volcano helping spirit)
The volcano, Mount Rinjani (Northern part of Lombok), is the second highest mountain in Indonesia. For the people of Lombok, both Sasak and Balinese, Rinjani is a holy place and they believe that the summit is the home of the Mountain Goddess Dewi Anjani. A new volcano called Mount Barujari appeared in the crater of the lake “Segara Anak”. It is an active volcano and there is hot spring that can cure diseases.
Pele, Goddess of Fire (“She-Who-Shapes-The-Sacred-Land” in ancient Hawaiian chants), is also known as Goddess of Awakening and Goddess of Volcanoes. The beautiful but tempestuous Pele had frequent moments of anger, which brought about eruptions. She was both honored and feared. She could cause earthquakes by stamping her feet or volcanic eruptions and fiery lava by digging with her Pa’oa, her magic stick. Pele is passionate, volatile, and capricious. Each of Hawaii’s volcanos — and thus each island — was created after another fight with Pele’s sister, who was trying to murder her. The Hawaiian feminine image for the volcano is reinforced by a kind of lava that looks like twisted ropes of jet-black hair, and then there is the continual birthing of land.
Iztaccihuatl was the daughter of an Aztec emperor in the Valley of Mexico. She had the misfortune of falling in love with one of her father’s warriors. As soon as her father discovered their relationship, he sent her lover away to a war in Oaxaca. He told the young man that if he survived and returned, he would give him Iztaccihuatl as his wife. The emperor never intended for the young warrior to return as he planned to marry Iztaccihuatl to another man. While her lover was away, Iztaccihuatl was told he was dead and she died of grief. Upon the young warrior’s return, he took Iztaccihuatl’s body in his arms and carried her to the mountains. He placed her down on the ground and knelt beside her, himself dying of grief. The gods took pity on them, covering them with a blanket of snow and transforming them into mountains. Iztaccihuatl today is known as the “Sleeping Woman” as the volcano appears to be a woman laying on her side. He became Popocatepetl, or “Smoking Mountain,” the volcano that still rains down his revenge for the death of his lover.
Although not a volcano, Mount Everest is also known by the Tibetan name Chomolangma (Goddess Mother of the Snows), and by the Nepali name Sagarmatha (Goddess Mother of the Universe).
Another Note: On the bottom of p. 55 the date for legitimizing Christianity is given as A.D. 315. But actually the Edict of Milan stopping the persecution of Christians and legalizing Christianity was issued by Constantine in A.D. 313. A.D. 315 may be the year he made it the official state religion, though.
Questions by Katia Prioress
