Daughters of the Inquisition

by Christina Crawford

  In all these cultures, it was acknowledged that the Goddess created the world, was its protector and regeneratrix, and that woman was Her representative of the life-giving force on earth. It was the Goddess who gave humans the plants, the animals, water, air, heavens, the Moon and life itself. At this rather late date in human development, it must have sounded very strange to hear these new ideas of a solitary male god, located somewhere other than earth, trying to convince people that this “Lord” created everything by himself, giving only his male humans power over it.

  This new creation story continues: The male human was created, not by being born from the womb and body of a woman, but by taking dirt dust and air from the new god’s nostrils as the breath of life to become a human being. No female is present. Then a garden, eastward in Eden which would put it near Babylon, is planted reminiscent of the agriculturalist Goddess society, with good food. Man, a single male, was put in the garden, still by himself, just as the new god is by himself.

  Gen. 1:9 – The tree of life was also put in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

  Gen. 1:16 – … of every tree of the garden you may freely eat

  Gen. 1:17 – but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day you eat of it you shall surely die.

  Why? Knowledge of good and evil means what? Does it mean being able to think for yourself and make choices? Does it mean knowing what is truly evil and being able to work against it? Does it mean a higher intelligence?

  If one moves ahead to the end of the story, the answer is

  Gen. 3:22 – Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever.

  Gen. 3:23 – Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.

  Gen. 3:24 – So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east end of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

  The “tree of life” is a potent ancient Goddess symbol, common to all Her Temples, to the sacred groves on top of mountains where She was worshipped, and it is the phallic sign of union with the male and female energies necessary for balance in the communities of human beings on earth. It is also the symbol of the connection between earth and heaven, so it is the meeting place of the spiritual and secular. If humans are fully aware of the knowledge which comes from both good and evil, they are ready to partake of the fruit of eternal life. In the Goddess cultures this was the cycle of birth, death and re-birth, or regeneration. It was the basis of all Her Mystery initiations. It was the foundation of Her cyclical concept of life everlasting. Here, the new god has barred the door to the knowledge of good and evil because he does not want humans to freely become god-like and, therefore, be entitled to eternal life. That power he wishes to keep for himself.

  In Genesis, men are called “the sons of God.” Women are called “the daughters of men,” not the daughters of God!

  Genesis, chapter two: Adam, the man in Eden, is given animals to name, but no “helper” comparable to himself. So, he falls asleep and God creates woman, this time not from dust but from a rib bone of the man. Interestingly, this creation of the female harkens back to the Goddess belief system that covered skeletal remains (dry white bones of deceased humans covered with red ochre symbolizing blood of life), buried them in womb/tombs to anticipate their eventual rebirth on earth. This Goddess practice and belief system is so old that its beginnings are still unknown.

  Genesis, chapter three: “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” Probably because even this audacious young god could not pretend either to have either created or to have control of the serpent who is by now the universal symbol of the Goddess.

  However, in Genesis 3:1, the serpent speaks to the woman as a “he,” a male serpent, but not as the voice of either the new god or the ancient female Goddess.

  Gen. 3:4–5 – And the serpent said to the woman, you will surely not die … for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

  This Genesis serpent is telling woman what other women already have practiced for thousands of years because the serpent is a part of the practice of divination (i.e. the Oracle of Delphi is the Phythia, the Snake/serpent, Goddess of Crete, the serpent cobra on the crowns of Egyptian Goddess and Pharaoh royalty). Everyone in that world hearing the new Genesis story would be familiar with the idea of “talking serpents” from the divination process of Goddess priestesses, but not of seeing them in the service of others, particularly men.

  As the woman eats, she gives man fruit also and he eats, which displeased the god. He curses the serpent, Gen. 3:15: “and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”

  “Enmity” means hostility, hatred, to become enemies. So with his curse is the attempt to break the age-old bond between womankind and the sacred serpent. And, no end to the conflict is given. Rather, it is to continue into the future.

  Gen. 3:16 – to the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

  These twenty-nine words will be copied endlessly into Christian texts and Bibles, condemn all future generations of children to be born into the world of pain, and condemn all women to be tortured by birthing, the very process for which they were previously welcomed joyously into reverence for bringing humanity forward. Furthermore, women are now condemned to be “ruled” by a man. This time, not because the secular authority legislated or decreed it but because god did. These words will also be used many centuries as an excuse to prevent women from receiving modern painkilling medicine during childbirth. Midwives knew and used many ways of alleviating pain and easing suffering in the process of birthing over which they skillfully presided. But now, women – first Hebrew women and then Christian women and finally Islamic women – were under the yoke of the man and under the “curse” of pain.

  Gen. 3:20 – And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

  How completely astonishing! “The Mother Of All Living” is one of the many sacred names by which the Great Goddess is known. There is no transition between the curses toward the serpent, the woman, the man, and the giving of a Goddess name to the woman, not by the god who gave man his name of Adam but by the man who gives woman this name: Mother of All Things. It is as though the transition were expunged. How does one understand this leap from the new Hebrew into the ancient Great Goddess religion? Perhaps it is not completely understandable, but it signifies one of those gaps where perhaps censorship left only that which could not be avoided, and later scribes did not fully comprehend the deeper meaning implied by these words. Nevertheless, it would have been clear to the contemporary listeners to the story that Eve is the representation of the Goddess, and, therefore, the curses uttered by the new god are aimed directly at Her and all Her manifestations.

  Here, in the first three pages of the Old Testament, are set out the foundations upon which ensuing fanatics will build the ammunition of the Inquisition. From Abraham came the nation of Israel through his son with Sarah, and the nation of Islam was born as a son through his mistress Hagar, the Egyptian bondswoman, who was then banished to the wilderness of Beersheba, then still a Goddess center.

  Gen. 11:1 – The tower of Babel which is Goddess land, “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech,” meaning that these lands were united under the Goddess culture.

  Gen. 11:7 – Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

  Gen. 11:9 – Therefore its name is called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of
all the earth; and from there scattered them abroad over the face of the earth.

  It is clear that the intent is to sow discord and misunderstanding between people, to spread psychological distrust, to break up the Goddess centers. It is an ancient form of disinformation tactics, to displace the Goddess people, destroy their places of worship, take over their cities, and settle conflict by killing.

  Circumcision and Castration

  The Hebrews were certainly not the only desert peoples to regard circumcision as important for their male population, but they were perhaps more insistent upon it and more punitive for non-compliance.

  Gen. 17:10, 11, And 12 – This is my covenant which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins (of the penis), and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations, he is born in your house or bought with money from any stranger who is not your descendant.

  Gen. 17:14 – And the uncircumcised male child who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people, he has broken my covenant.

  A covenant is an agreement or contract requiring specific action. In this case it is a promise made by Hebrew men to their God. This agreement says that every male child of Hebrew tribes, either because they were born into the tribe or bought for the tribe to use, must sacrifice a part of his penis by having it cut off with a knife and presented as an offering to his god. Only by performing such a sacrifice of penis foreskin, generation after generation, will the people be entitled to stay in community. Otherwise, they will be banished. There are no reasons given for the necessity of this sacrifice. It is simply stated as what has to be done after the people have been given Canaan. So, it is a trade: The Hebrews get the land of Canaan and God gets an ongoing sacrifice … forever. Often one hears that circumcision is about cleanliness and health, particularly when recommended for male babies who are born into other faiths. Later, throughout the New Testament, a controversy rages over whether a man must be circumcised in order to be a Christian.

  But is this also a strange and rather convoluted imitation of what was actually happening in surrounding Goddess cultures? Once a man had engaged in sacred sexual union with a Goddess High Priestess in Her Temple bed, he was prohibited from having sex with ordinary women. Rather than risk offending the deity, many men submitted to voluntary castration. It was customary to give their castrated parts as altar sacrifices to the Goddess and then return the sacred knife after the sacrifice was completed. After these men were castrated, their testosterone levels dropped the urge for sex dissipated, tendencies toward violence abated, and the eunuch might have even gradually acquired a less masculine appearance. Post-castration, the eunuch also wears women’s clothing and although residing in separate quarters with other eunuchs, continues to live and serve the Priestess and holy women in the Temples.

  Perhaps the fierce new desert God was not to be outdone. However, it was probably a great relief to his followers that only a relatively small part was required for his sacrifice and not the whole works! It was probably also a relief that the sacrifice normally took place at the end of the first week of life with the assumption that this sacrifice would be smaller and, therefore, less painful. Most importantly, the man need not have further anxiety about future need for castration as an adult. The overall moral of this story may be that it is much better for a man to be a son of the new God than a sexual partner of the ancient Goddess.

  The Laws

  Exodus 20 gives the commandments that Moses brings back from Mt. Sinai. More than half of these commandments address the battle between the Hebrew God and the Ancient Goddess, between practices commonly found in Goddess cultures and those that will be forbidden under the new male system. There is to be only one male God. There are not to be any votives or statues or likeness of the divine or anything else on earth.

  Exodus 20:5 “You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord they God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” (Iniquity means gross injustice, wickedness, unfairness.)

  The laws continue: No gold or silver images of gods are to be made, but an earthen altar is to be constructed for sacrifice of burnt and peace offerings. Then there are prohibitions regarding building altars to look like those built for the Goddess, giving us an idea of the appearance of those altars.

  Exodus 20:25–26 “And if you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. Nor will you go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.” With short tunics as the only clothing and presumably no underwear, it would be possible for the people on the ground below the steps to see what lies beneath. Since nakedness is not prohibited in Goddess rites this, too, is an attempt to create distinct differences.

  The rest of the laws on servants, violence, animals, and property are similar to what has been seen in Hittite and Assyrian codes in the same region and which were somewhat contemporary in chronological time.

  But in Exodus 22, under “moral principles,” after a section (16–17) on men being able to pay money for virgins to become their wives, after they have had sex with them, we come to Exodus 22:18 “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.”

  Once again, this statement comes out of the blue; nothing precedes it, and nothing follows it on the same subject. A sorceress is a person exercising power through supernatural means. The Goddess Priestess did this all the time; it was one of the primary gifts of the Oracle of Delphi in Greece and of oracles through the lands of the Goddess. This statement as one of the new religious laws of the Hebrew god is the equivalent of war declared against women’s supernatural powers and against women as the individuals called sorceress. It does not say that the killings are to be against sorcerers, who are men, or against wizards who are men, or against magicians who are men. These male professionals are all noted in the Old Testament as serving in palaces of kings in many locations. It says specifically that women who are identified as sorceress are to die.

  This single sentence will be used as foundational reasoning, quoted as ancient scripture to justify the massive killing of women during the Inquisition. The Inquisitors, more than one thousand years hence, will use this sentence to prove that they have authority from the past, in addition to their present authority from the Pope, as a continuum of the systematic destruction of the rights and freedoms of women.

  As Exodus continues, those who practice bestiality meet the same fate of death. Bestiality must have been a fairly common practice because all the ancient secular law codes have many proscriptions against these activities and are adamant about their punishment. Presumably most of the culprits are men, or at least that is the way in which they are identified. From individuals to communities, Exodus continues, 23:24: “You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.” It is the specified destruction of the sacred pillars that enable us to know with certainty that what is being destroyed are the Temples of the Goddess, which had the sacred pillar in the middle of the Temple as the representation of the tree of life, the male energy, the phallic symbol of fecundity. And the reason for the destruction is, Exodus 23:33: “they shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

  The appeal of the Goddess has so much power through her women that it can always attract new followers, no matter what the new god promises or how fiercely he retaliates against Her.

  Exodus 29:33: Priestly garments which are long robes are described in great detail, including “and upon the hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple in scarlet yarn, all aroun
d it’s hem and bells of gold between them all around.” This phrase is repeated as though it is a chant in the following verse. Pomegranates are a symbolic fruit of the Goddess – often held by the ecstatic who serve Her, pictured with the Goddess Herself in Minoan Crete, in Greece, and elsewhere in warm climates where the fruit may grow. Eunuchs are also pictured holding this fruit. The reason is that when the fruit is sliced open crossways, the inside resembles the female vulva. The bells are the music of the Goddess, whose processions always include musical instruments and rhythms. Then, the scarlet color is a deep red, the color of blood, the primary color of the Goddess who creates life. Blood is put on the ears, thumbs, toes of these priests and on their clothes. It is more than probable that some version of this was ritually performed in the Goddess Temple rites and copied from them, because these are such ancient responses to the sacred.

  But time and time again, this God threatens to kill everyone, even his own people. Then the God says,

  Exodus 34:13 “But you shall destroy their altars, break down their sacred pillars and cut down their wooden images.”

  Exodus 34:15,16 “Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifices to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice; and you take of his daughters for your sons and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.”