The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

And her months were fulfilled, and in the ninth month Anna brought forth. And she said unto the midwife, “What have I brought forth?” and she said, “A girl.” And Anna said, “My soul has been magnified this day. And she laid her down. And the days having been fulfilled, Anna was purified, and gave suck to the child, and called her name Mary.
(Protoevangelium of James, V 2)





Mary was born of Anna (Hannah), whose name means, in Hebrew, grace or gracious. In Hurrian, a Middle Eastern language spoken in parts of ancient and nearby Syria, Anna means mother. Yet the name is remarkably similar to the ancient Sumerian An or Anu, which  meant the “heavenly one,” or simply, “the heavens.”

The feast of Mary’s birth is celebrated on September 8th, mid-way through the astrological sign of Virgo. We now use the Gregorian calendar, but by the old Julian calendar this date would have been August 29th, which was celebrated in Egypt as the feast of the Nativity of Hathor, and also as new year’s day in the fixed Alexandrian Calendar that was used by the Egyptians from 30 B.C. onward. (James Frazier, The Golden Bough).

September was a time of harvest; the association of the sign of Virgo with harvest time is well known: she is depicted as a winged woman holding sheaves of grain. This woman is Hathor, Isis, other goddesses of the harvest, and for the last couple thousand years, the Virgin Mary.


What is not so well known is that Hathor was associated early on with the Milky Way Galaxy —  she was said to be a personification of the milk that flowed from the divine Heavenly Cow, Nuit.

Hathor’s name means House of (i.e. womb that birthed) Horus. Horus was associated with the sun, as later Jesus would be, and his birth was, like that of Jesus, celebrated at the Winter Solstice. It was also said that Hathor gave birth to Horus each morning, and as he died each night accepted him back into her womb to be born again at the following sunrise.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which means “House of Bread.”  Bread is, of course, made of grain, which ties us back into Virgo, the Virgin Mother, and the harvest.

Many of Hathor’s functions were later absorbed by Isis, including her motherhood of Horus and her association with the Milky Way. And, “since Isis was, at the advent of Christianity 2000 years ago, the most popular goddess of the ancient Middle Eastern and Western European world, it is not surprising that her successor, Mary, Mother of the Piscean Age avatar Jesus, should fall heir to many of her titles and attributes.” (Margie McArthur, Lady of the Sea: 2012 and the Mother Who Births the New Age)

As the river of stars that comprised the Milky Way, Hathor represented the earliest expression of the life force of the heavens manifesting itself in the form of stars. The heavens gave birth to the stars –  the light – just as Hathor gave birth to Horus, the light of Sun, and Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Son/Sun and Light of the World.

In addition to being seen as the nourishing starry milk of the Mother Goddess in her form as the Heavenly Cow, the Milky Way was also seen as a river of stars—which is yet another form of nourishment as the lands are nourished and made fertile by the rivers that flow and flood through them. The Nile was seen as the earthly counterpart of the Milky Way. Since Hathor was this heavenly river, this flow of nourishing essence from the sky, the Milky Way, she was also linked to the waters of the earth. Mary’s iconography and lore depict similar resonances. She is Queen of Heaven, Queen of the Angels, Star of the Sea.

The sun is a star, part of that heavenly river of stars that is the Milky Way, and is our very own heavenly messenger.

Why were Hathor and Mary said to be born in the sign of Virgo, the time of the harvest and beginning of the new year?

The harvest marked the end of a cycle. The time just after the harvest/birth of these divine mothers was, in Egypt, the Time of the Inundation – the time when the Nile flooded the lands, leaving the soil fertile. It was also the time of the rains in other parts of the Middle East; the beginning of the Hebrew new year, which celebrated the beginning of creation, was celebrated less than a month later.

In all ways, Hathor and Mary represented the birthing, mothering, and nourishing of the “child” that was life and light.

Mythologically speaking, stars are equivalent to angels, whose very name means “messengers of God.” The stars shine down upon us from above, their brilliance and beauty beaming us the message of light and life from their vast, dark, heavenly source.

In Canaanite and early Hebrew mythology, Asherah was seen as the Mother of 70 sons. These “sons” became the 72 angels of later Hebrew mythology, and were still linked with Asherah till her shrines were destroyed and her cult in the temple ended by the Hebrew reformer, Josiah.

But later on, the divine feminine, in the form of Mary, was hailed as Queen of the Angels and Queen of Heaven, just as her divine feminine predecessors had been....

Mother Night

Here is an excerpt from Chapter One of my forthcoming book,
Lady of the Sea: 2012 and the Mother Who Births the New Age
(c) Margie McArthur, 2002-2011, All rights reserved.
 

Just as all life on Planet Earth was birthed from Mother Ocean,
So all life in the universe was birthed by the Great Cosmic Mother
Whom we know as the vast dark sea of deep space.
She is the Darkness that gave birth to the Light.
 She is the No-Thing which is full of the potential of All Things
Of old she was known by many names:  
Dame Night, Dame Dark, Dame Nox,
Dame Hell, Dame Wisdom
Mother Night, Mother Darkness,
 Old Fate, Old Veiled One, Old Night,

Nyx

She is SHE -
The Great One, Darkness.
And from her emerged HE – the Limitless Light.
 
From their dance of love
Came forth the Many Other Lights -
Elements, Stars, Planets,
Mountains, Plains, Oceans,
Trees, Plants, Animals...

She is the Mother, the feminine aspect of divinity.
The one who conceives, gestates, births, nourishes,
And ultimately, takes life back into herself.

She is the Birther and yet also the Destroyer.
Queen of Life, Queen of Death,
Queen of Day, Queen of Night
The Great Mother of All

* * *

In the beginning was the Darkness. Limitless Darkness. She was vast and full of potential. No empty darkness here, but rather, fullness, unexpressed. She brooded, like the vast sky over the vast sea. Over time she began to feel, and what she felt was a longing, a pulling, a movement. And as she noticed this, became aware of it, it pulled away from her. It moved outward and came into manifestation as another. It was He, her other self, her Divine Twin.

This first movement of energy, this longing, pulling, as well as her awareness of it, constitute the first manifestation—the Other, the He—coming into being. Light, Limitless Light—the Bright One—born from the Vastness of Dame Dark, the primeval and ever-veiled Chaos or field of possibilities.

As HE came into being they became aware of each other, and a longing for reunion occurred. They merged—as separate beings—making love. Their lovemaking created huge waves of energy, from which all life was eventually sparked into being.

Their first children were the clouds of great, beautiful magellanic stardust. These stardust clouds spun and danced with the joy of life—swirling, glowing, spiraling—finally coalescing into stars beings. These star being often clustered together in great star-swirls called galaxies, and sometimes many galaxies clustered together as families. The stardust and star beings also gave birth: to comets, planets—including our own dear planet—and other celestial beings.

Some of these star beings had special tasks given them by Dame Dark and her consort, the Bright One. These particular star beings are those we now sometimes refer to as Angels and Archangels—terms which mean messengers and high messengers. They were messengers because by performing the specific creation tasks assigned to them—in the language of light, sound, and structure—they were carrying forth the message of the Divine Parents. Some call these beings the Lords of Flame and the Lords of Form, though they were, of course, beyond gender, containing both. So perhaps we should call them the Lords and Ladies of Flame and Form. Or perhaps, we should just call them angels.

Angels go by many names and have many very specific jobs. It is said that there were several whose particular job was to assist in humankind’s evolution into beings who possessed the fire of mind. These angels have, in legend, been referred to by many different names - among them the Watchers, the Grigori, the Sons of God, and the Annunaki, a Sumerian/Babylonian word which means ‘heaven and earth.’
                           
But...from the One came the Two...and from the Two, the Many. From Dame Dark came the Bright One, the Light—and then, all other manifestations of life.

Our star, the Sun, gave birth to our planet, our planetary system, and all life within it. Reaching out, its long arms streaming forth light and energy, it enveloped and embraced our planet Earth and its star-sparkling arms of light flashed streaks and streams of lightning. And in a twinkling of stellar time, the body of the Earth responded to this embrace. Microscopic life forms were sparkled into being as beams of starfire touched the Earth’s surface and  reached down deeply into the heart of the planet. Earth’s starry core responded to this touch, reaching upward in mutual embrace.

Life is everywhere in the universe. Beings floated to Earth on comet tails, they came in on the space winds, on the solar winds. The star-children, tiny living beings of all kinds—water vapors, gaseous vapors, starsparks—speeding through space in their tiny arks of metallic ore, vapor, and stardust. They met and mingled with the tiny beings which had arisen on and in the Earth. They joined, and became one family.

From the dance of the elements and the streaming of stars came forth many creatures on the Earth, including, eventually, humanity. And humanity, knowing that all life is born from a mother, recognized both Earth and Sky as Mother. And in the night sky’s thick band of stars, many saw the nourishing milk of the Sky mother, who is also the Star Mother, and so it became known as the Milky Way.

Bible Study #3

A Continuation of our Look at the Creation Story in Genesis 1


Genesis 1:11-13
11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Having made a congenial place for further creation, God now plants a garden; this garden will provide food for the creatures he will bring into being. But there’s a catch: he brings them into being because he needs someone to tend his new garden! This is mentioned early in the next chapter of Genesis where it says: “and there was not a man to till the ground.” (Genesis 2:5)

So, too, did the Sumerian gods have a lovely garden spot.... It was called Dilmun and was the place where Enki (called Ea in Babylonian myth) and Ninhursag created humans. It was referred to as “the place where the sun rises” (which usually indicates the direction of east) and “the Land of the Living.”

Genesis 1:14-18
14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15. and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18. and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

God realizes that the light of consciousness is not going to be quite enough; his creation now has physicality—substance—and to go along with that God fashions light of a physical kind. He makes a light to rule the day—the sun—and a lesser one—the moon—to rule the night. In addition, he makes the stars. Then he sets sun, moon, and stars in that dome of a firmament to give their light and mark the division between day and night.

Genesis 1:19
19. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The fact that the time periods referred to in Genesis do not refer to 24 hour periods should be evident by the fact that the earth itself is not created till the third day, and the time-marking, day-creating solar body does not come into being until the fourth day. So when God said, “Let their be light” on the first day, it was not the light of sun or moon he was referring to. It was the light of consciousness.

Genesis 1:20-25
20. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

In this newly created planet earth, there is now air, water, and land, so God seeks to fill each of these with appropriate forms of animal life, all of which can reproduce themselves so that life may continue. They live in his lovely garden, but he requires someone to tend his garden....

Genesis 1:26
26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

The creation of humankind has been dealt with in a previous posting, Bible Study #1, so I refer you to that:


In verse 26 God gives humans “dominion” over the rest of earth’s animals. The Hebrew word translated as dominion is rdh or râdâh It means to govern, to hold sway over. It implies a position of responsibility for what is governed, which, in turn, implies a duty to care for it properly. The word does not mean “dominate” with that word’s usual implications of conquering and subjugating.

In these verses God says—or the gods say to each other—“We’ve made this beautiful place, this garden, and many wondrous creatures to inhabit it. Let’s make beings who can caretake it for us.”

Genesis 1:27
27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

This, also, has been dealt with in a previous posting but I’d like to add a few more thoughts.

What is the “image of God?” This has been argued over the years, some holding that it refers to man’s immortal soul, and some thinking that it refers to mankind’s special mental abilities, the ones that separate us from the animal kingdom. Some believe that this verse means that God has a physical body, complete with all the parts possessed by humans. This last belief seems to echo the stories of the ancient gods and goddesses of mythology, who were quite often portrayed as having human type bodies and being subject to human type injuries and emotions.

I think the intention in this passage is the second option—to indicate that humans, although animal in physical form, do possess mental and spiritual abilities beyond those of the rest of the animal kingdom.

Genesis 1:28
28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

There’s that word “dominion” again. To me it seems that in this passage God is saying, “Here’s the lovely garden I’ve made you. It’s now your home and contains all you need to live. But you must take care of it so that it will continue to be healthy. In fact, I’m appointing you my deputy, my proxy here, to make sure all goes well and the garden—and all its plants and animals—stay in good shape.”

The implication being that if they fail to do their caretaker duties, they themselves will not thrive.

It should be noted that in the Babylonian version of the story, humans were created as workers to serve the gods, who were tired of all the grunt work and warfare they’d been doing. After the battle with Tiamat, Marduk announces:

My blood will I take and bone will I fashion
I will make man....I will create man who shall inhabit the earth,
That the service of the gods may be established, and that their shrines may be built.

Genesis 1:29-30
29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

God now has his gardeners. Previously he has encouraged them to reproduce. Now he shows them all the lovely things that are there to eat so that they and their progeny may continue in life, and continue to care-take his beautiful garden. He even tells them about seeds, so they can plant new herbs and trees.

Genesis 1:31
31. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

This is an interesting and unique feature of the Hebrew version of the story. At the end of every day of creation, God looks upon it and is pleased with his handiwork.

Genesis 2:1-3
1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

The “host of them,” when referring to the earth means all the creatures of the earth; when referring to the heavens the term means the stars and planets. In Sumerian & Babylonian mythology these were the gods and goddesses.

2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

And of course we all know that on the final, the seventh day—the day after creating humanity to tend his garden—God rested, just as the Babylonian gods rested after humans had been created to be their servants.

It should be noted that biblical scholarship tells us that these first chapters of Genesis were most likely written in the late 7th century BCE. The parallel Sumerian and Babylonian stories date back to perhaps 2000 years before that time.

Bible Study #2

Creation 101

Since humans have enquiring minds, almost all cultures have creations stories. Why are we here? How did we get here? How did things begin? What does it all mean?

Genesis 1:1-2
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

New religions, at their start, always use cosmologies that are current and familiar to their followers, though they may expand on them later. And so it was with early Hebrew religion. The writers of the sacred texts used the basics of Middle Eastern, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Persian cosmology—in short, every religious concept to which they’d been exposed over centuries had helped form their world view and thus figured into their writings.

In the Hebrew scriptures, the word used for “the deep” was the Akkadian/Semitic word tehom, meaning abyss or deep. It refers to the great deep of the primordial waters, referred to in Babylonian mythology as the goddess Tiamat and in the Sumerian stories as the goddess Nammu (also called Nanna), and Egyptian mythology as Nun/Nunet. We can gain a better understanding of the Tehom, the Deep, by looking at its mythological roots: both Tiamat and Nammu were looked upon as the Primeval Sea that gave birth to the first gods, including the sky god and the earth goddess. Nun and Nunet were part of the original Ogdoad—the eight deities who symbolize outer space, the primordial darkness, air/invisibility, and the primordial waters—which represent the “beginning state” from which the rest of the world was later formed.

The first verse of Genesis is merely a statement of what is to come; the rest of the story follows in the subsequent verses. The second verse begins this process by telling us how things were before this creation started: It was dark and nothing was formed; all that existed was the Deep, the Tehom, Tiamat, Nammu, Nun. The Tehom was the primal state—the great, undifferentiated Sea of Being, the Void that is not empty, but full of potentialities.

Genesis 1:2
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Within that primal Void, that sea of being, a movement occurs, and that movement is the awakening of that Sea of Being into Consciousness, a Consciousness that will soon, and intentionally, call other beings into existence.

The Original Oneness has become Two–the first separation—and the Two will eventually become the Many.

As with the Egyptian Nun and Naunet, the Babylonian Tiamat had a partner: she was the salty waters; her partner, Absu, (means abyss) was the sweet waters. They mingled their waters and thus engendered the first gods.

Genesis 1:3.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

With Consciousness comes Awareness....

In many old mystical traditions, the Cosmos is breathed into being on the Divine Exhalation, and out of being on the Divine Inhalation, of the great divine creative power we call God. This Great Power breathes in and out, expands and contracts, creates and destroys. As the Great Breath spirals outward, its movement creates vibration, and thus sound. The Sound is Tone; the Tone becomes the Word. The Word is uttered—“Let their be light,” and the Word, creating light, creates the world. (1)

Genesis 1: 4.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

This is the second separation of the Primal Oneness. When consciousness gives rise to awareness, things can be perceived, differentiated, evaluated—and thus Cosmos created from Chaos, because creation is, essentially, creating order, or cosmos (which means patterned or ordered world) out of chaos.

Genesis 1:5
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

With this verse the writer informs us that the cycle of time has been launched, and the very first vibrations/emanations/variations of the Word have been given names.

Genesis 1:6-7
6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

This is the third separation. What was previously one big chaotic watery “abyss” is now separated into the above and below. In ancient Babylonian myth it was believed that the earth floated on a vast sea of water; this sea was the “waters below” and the source of springs and rivers. The heavens were the “waters above.”

In the Babylonian stories Tiamat and Absu had an “intermediary” called Mummu (or Mommu), the god of mist. He was said to be the son of Tiamat and Anu, god of the heavens. As intermediary Mummu was the “mist” (moist air) which separated the sea of the sky—the waters above—from Tiamat and Absu—the waters below.

Mummu was also said to be a craftsman god, a god of technical skills; in other words, a “maker” type of god. Some scholars see him, along with Tiamat and Absu, as part of the original Babylonian Trinity.

So with Mummu, mist and craftsman god, we now have both the space made for further creation to take place— just as God’s separation of the waters and establishment of an Above and a Below formed a space for his work of creation to continue—and the emergence of one with skills to do the further creating, a role performed by God himself in the Hebrew story.

Genesis 1:8
8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The word “firmament” has been taken to mean sky, and one can see why this word was used, as the sky does indeed seem to divide the above and below. Our English word firmament is a translation of the Hebrew, raqiya, meaning wide expanse, or raqa, which means to pound or stretch something into a wide expanse. In Mesopotamian cosmology, the sky was thought of as a dome or high vault that covered the flat earth as it floated on the sea of the “waters below.” On the other side of the sky/firmament were the “waters above.”

Picture, if you will, floating in the depths of a great sea, a flat-bottomed half-sphere covered with a dome.

Genesis 1:9-10
9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

The major preliminary essential elements of consciousness, awareness, time, and the directions of up and down being taken care of, attention is now turned to how to turn the watery space into a habitable place. This is, once again, a separation—the fourth one. The waters under the heavens—the ancient primal sea—are separated from part of the planet’s surface so that the land beneath that water can emerge, dry out, and become fit for habitation.

In the Babylonian stories, the primeval mother Tiamat, after giving birth to the first gods, was disturbed by all the noise they made—all those further “movements and separations.” This ultimately led to Tiamat being slain by her grandson Marduk, who makes order from the chaos that was Tiamat by creating the world—earth and sky—from the various parts of her body.

“He sliced her in half like a fish for drying: Half of her he put up to roof the sky, drew a bolt across and made a guard to hold it. Her waters he arranged so they could not escape.” (2)

Here we see Marduk, in the Babylonian myth, creating a firmament from half of Tiamat’s body, to hold back the “waters above.”


Notes:
1. McArthur, Margie, Wisdom of the Elements. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1994.
2. Dalley, Stephanie, ed. and trans. Myths from Mesopotamia. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.

Bible Study #1

There is a curious notion prevalent these days. It’s the notion that both Judaism and Christianity were always the great monolithic belief structures that they are today: that the basic core beliefs of those religions were divinely revealed early on, and therefore present in those religions from that moment onward. And that those core beliefs, and the situations in which they came into being, are written down in Bible pretty much exactly as they happened. And that nothing much has changed except for people’s “unfaithfulness” to those beliefs and the struggles of various prophets to bring the people back into line. With regard to the Old Testament, many people seem to think that Moses sat down to take dictation one day, writing out the first five books of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch. With regard to the New Testament, people seems to think that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were following Jesus around taking shorthand.

Oh, I know not every Christian or Jew believes that; but many do. But it’s simply not true. Both of these religions developed over time, adding and expanding concepts because that’s how things work. Biblical scholars have identified no less than five different “author voices” in the Old Testament; these voices have been labeled J, E, D, P & R. More about this in another post.

Within the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis there are two different stories of the creation of humankind. The first account is found in Genesis 1:26-27:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (26) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (27).

Please note the use of the plural terms—us, our, and them—which I have rendered in bold text. Although this is not so in the first part of verse 27, in general, the verse seems to indicate that the voice (i.e. God) that is speaking is talking to someone—someone who is going to help in the job to be done—and that the “man” to be created is plural as well. Male and female created he them.

The second account of humankind’s creation is found in Genesis 2:7 to 2:22. In this scenario, the Lord God creates Adam from the dust of the ground and breathes life into him.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul.

Later, he decides man needs a “helpmeet,” and after none of the newly created animals fill the bill, God casts Adam into a deep sleep, removes one of his ribs, and makes a woman from it.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; (21) And the rib, which he Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. (22)

This account differs from the first in that the “Lord God” is a singular entity who creates the male first and the female secondarily. This is the account that has been used ever since to justify the position that women are inferior beings and subject to men.

In the next chapter of Genesis, Adam names his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all living.” It should be noted that the word Adam means "earth, clay," and that Eve means "life."

Why these differing accounts? Well, as previously mentioned, biblical scholars have identified at least five different “author voices” in the Old Testament, writing at various times hundreds of years apart. These early chapters of Genesis give evidence of that. In addition, by the time these stories were written down, the people calling themselves Hebrew had incorporated into their culture influences from Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, and the surrounding Canaanite culture. The scriptural texts written and edited over hundreds of years reflect this.

There are traces of both Sumerian and Egyptian myth in this story. The god Enki and goddess Ninhursag (also known as Nintu or Ninti) created humans using clay and blood. Later, their daughter Ninti, whose name means “Lady of the Rib,” heals Enki’s injured rib, thus giving him new life—a sort of echo of the much later Hebrew myth later wherein Eve is created/given life from Adam’s rib. In Egypt it was the potter god, Khnum, who made humans using clay (and his potter’s wheel) and breathing the breath of life into them—just as the Lord God created Adam from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him. 


Clay/dust/earth and the breath of life....In a sense, Eve, whose name means Life, is the form the animating spirit of God takes when it enters into the dust of the earth. Eve is the life that is breathed into the sculpted dust that is Adam — who, both legends and Kaballah say, contained both male and female essences and energies within "his" earthen body. 

Thus Eve IS the mother of all living, because if it weren’t for Eve the human entity would be incomplete—without breath and therefore not “alive;” a hermaphroditic physical form incapable of reproducing itself and thereby continuing Life.

The Stone of Beginnings: The Shetiyyah Stone and Peter the Rock

In one Hebrew creation myth, God began the creation of the world by casting down a stone into the primeval waters and then building up dry land around it. This stone is referred to as the Shetiyyah stone. This tale is somewhat reminiscent of the Egyptian creation story in which the world begins as an earthen mound that emerged from the primeval waters of Nun.

This story makes use of the motif of a foundation stone or mound as the sacred center around which the world is built at the very beginning of creation. A concept found in many cultures, this sacred center is referred to as an omphalos (Greek), which means “navel,” hearkening back to an old belief that the very first part of a thing (i.e. the world, human bodies, animal bodies, etc) to come into existence was the navel and that all the rest of the thing is then built up around it.

Roughly 3000 years ago the holiest structure in Judaism, the Jerusalem temple, was built upon Mount Moriah, with the Shetiyyah stone marking the temple’s most sacred precinct—the Holy of Holies. This indicates that the site of the stone, a flat rocky outcropping atop Mount Moriah, was the sacred center of the Hebrew nation both politically and spiritually. Some of Israel’s most important national myths were rooted there: it was thought to be the place where Abraham, ever obedient to God’s command, intended to sacrifice his son Isaac. It was said to be the place where Jacob dreamed of the ladder that ascended to heaven, with angels ascending and descending. It was believed that the Shetiyyah stone was the boundary that separated the Underworld—the Abyss, the Tehom, place of primeval waters—from the surface world. Not only a boundary, it was a “stopper” which held back those primal waters from flooding the land (as they had during Noah's time), and also was a gateway to that realm.

The Shetiyyah stone, also known as the Foundation Stone, marked the center of the Hebrew nation and culture. Much later in time Islam honored the spot as one of its holiest by building a shrine there, now known as the Dome of the Rock.

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Jesus said to Peter —
“Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.”

Just as Hebrew culture and religion was founded upon the Shetiyyah, the Foundation Stone, so also was the Roman Catholic Church founded upon a foundation stone—the apostle Simon, who was also known as Peter.

The above quote, attributed to Jesus, is another example of the use of the ever-important omphalos, or center.

The presence of the Foundation Stone on Mount Moriah marked the place as the center of the (Hebrew) world. Similarly, by Jesus’s proclamation, Peter is being designated as the Foundation Stone or center point of the new Christian world that is about to begin; the physical stone, the center point, is now a person. As such, this particular passage of scripture may well be a later interpolation, planted there by someone aware of the symbolism, in order to add validity to the Papacy.

Although renamed Peter by Jesus in scripture, Peter’s actual name was Simon bar Jonah, which means Simon son of Jonah. This is an interesting name, with many layers of possible meaning and significance.

Besides possibly being the father of Simon, who was Jonah?

The prophet Jonah of the Old Testament is famous for being swallowed by a whale—as he tried to run away from God’s command to preach—and spending three days in utter darkness inside the whale’s belly as it lay on the floor of the sea. This scared him sufficiently to agree to God’s command and pray for deliverance, at which point the whale then resurfaced and disgorged him.

This story is symbolic and most likely refers to the well known classic three day initiation ceremony of the ancient world’s mystery schools, during which the initiate was confined in a dark chamber of some sort for three days before being ‘reborn’ into the light and a new life. It is reminiscent of some of the old Egyptian initiation tales wherein the candidates were taken blindfolded into a chamber of the temple, sometimes placed within a coffin-like stone sarcophagi, and closed in. In some cases they were instructed to find their way out again through pathways beset with poisonous snakes, dead ends, and other terrifying ordeals. The image of Jonah, sitting at the dark bottom of the sea, inside the darkness of the whale’s belly, pretty well fills the criteria for an appropriately terrifying and seemingly dead-end initiatory scenario.

Was the whale that swallowed Jonah the Leviathan, the great dragon/serpent beast of the deep mentioned in Hebrew legends and Bible stories? In nearby Babylon the great beast of the deep was Tiamat, the great dragon/serpent mother who was the great goddess of the Deep, the Tehom, the Void. Being “inside the whale” is akin to being in her womb and is indicative of an initiation process that lead to a spiritual rebirth. Jonah was within the whale for three days before being disgorged to a new life, Lazarus was in the tomb for three days before being raised from the dead, and later Jesus was in the tomb for three days before he arose, just as ancient Egyptian initiates spent three days undergoing their ordeals in the temples before emerging spiritually reborn. The “whale’s belly” is, therefore, symbolic of the same dark underworld testing place as the tomb -- the death that leads to resurrection and new life.

So the Jonah story is most likely an initiation story and the name Simon bar Jonah in the New Testament might well refer to a person who had passed an initiation. The name Simon means “one who hears,” “he has heard,” or “he hears.” The word bar means “son of.” The name Jonah means “dove.” In Christian iconography, the dove was a symbol of the Holy Spirit. But for many centuries prior to Christianity, the dove was, in the Middle East, an image for the Goddess.

On one level, Simon’s name might simply mean that his father’s was named Jonah. But another possible interpretation of the name Simon bar Jonah might be “He hears/has heard the Son of the Dove (i.e. Goddess).” How appropriate for a disciple of Jesus, the Son of Mary—Mary being the Sacred Feminine figure of the Christian dispensation.

Another possible interpretation is that Simon is himself the “Son of the Dove,” i.e. he has passed an initiation and been found worthy to be called the Son of the Dove/Goddess/Holy Spirit.

The fact that Simon bar Jonah is later called Peter—the “rock” upon which the church (i.e. temple) is to be built—might indicate that he did pass an important initiation, one that allowed him to be designated as the "foundation stone" of the new dispensation.