[Helpers] 03matgod essay new

[Mystress Angelique Serpent]

  Western culture is patriarchal.  I was raised in a Christian home, where 
the Divine was always referred to in masculine terms.  The Lord God the 
Father.  If you grew up in a Patriarchal culture, then you probably 
associate the Divine with masculine identity, even if you are an atheist.

   Patriarchal religions always have God off in the sky somewhere 
distant:  external, vengeful and righteous.  As human beings in male 
dominated Western culture, we have been immersed in Patriarchal ideals that 
are so habitual they are rarely questioned or considered; we take them for 
granted without seeing them.

   Matriarchy focuses on the infinite spark of the Divine within in 
everything, including inside of you.  Goddess is All that Is, including 
me!  Wheee!  Joy.

Patriarchy = external God.
Matriarchy = Goddess is within you, within everything.

Sometimes people take issue with my calling God, by a feminine pronoun: 
Goddess. They insist that God is genderless, infinite spirit.

   They are right, and they miss the point:  The term "Goddess" is 
functional in how it changes one's thinking and identifications.

The purpose is to make a shift of thinking; to break away from thinking of 
God in the way Michelangelo painted: as an old white bearded guy in the 
sky... or as described in the old testament, a judgmental Father God with a 
tendency to smite people with lightning from his home in the heavens, and 
reward the faithful with crucifixion.

   A conscious choice to refer to the Divine as feminine, brings the 
masculine cultural associations from the unconscious into awareness, so 
that they can be acknowledged and surrendered. Choosing to think of the 
genderless Divine as female, draws your attention to the unconscious male 
gender ideas you carry, so you can let them go.

   The imperative of Kundalini is surrender, and it is difficult to 
surrender, if you do not trust.  Resistance makes the process more 
difficult.  The way to a smooth Kundalini process is to trust that the 
Divine spark within you, your Infinite Mind knows what it is doing and 
intends your highest good, so you can get out of the way and let the 
process unfold peacefully.

Many people have issues with the religion of their birth, and mistrust the 
punishing Father God of patriarchal culture.  It can be difficult to 
reconcile the cultural God archetype, with the idea of the Divine, manifest 
as the true nature of us mortal, fragile, fallible human beings, but this 
is the experience which unfolds through the Kundalini process.

Changing your gender identification of the Divine to an unconditionally 
loving Mother, can be useful for releasing the intimidating concepts of the 
righteous angry Father God on his lofty throne.  "Goddess" is a new idea 
that does not have the negative associations.

In order to release the cultural programming first you have to find 
it.  The beliefs that tend to be hardest to find, are the ones that are so 
habitual, so common as cultural beliefs that they are never questioned.

As a teenager, I was impressed by a quote from David Bowie in a Playboy 
magazine interview I was too young to be legally reading.  He said that he 
believed it was good to take himself to extremes, to add deeper cuts to his 
personality. He is an artist who keeps re-inventing himself, by moving 
headlong into experiences that ordinary people would shy away from.  He 
deliberately goes places that are new, difficult, sometimes uncomfortable 
in order to push himself to be more open and creative.

It is a Zen idea, that if one gets off balance in one direction, it is 
useful to find balance by going to the opposite direction.  I advocate the 
"middle path" of moderation, but I also believe that sometimes you cannot 
know where the middle is, until you have measured the distance to the 
edges.  Until you have pushed your own limits and expanded them. The place 
of detachment is found by collapsing opposites, bringing polarities together.

So, the Yogis go to the cremation grounds to meditate on life. Awareness of 
life is sharper in the presence of death.  The presence of the polarity 
brings it into sharper focus. By going to the extreme they can grow to see 
the underlying unity of life and death; that they are two sides of a coin, 
a turning wheel.  Death is illusion, yet its presence and inevitability is 
what makes life precious and beautiful.

The idea of the middle path comes from Buddhism.  The young Prince 
Siddharta was raised in a luxurious palace. His father had decreed that the 
Prince should have no knowledge of the dark side of human 
experience.  Siddharta knew nothing of illness, death or poverty. The first 
time he left the palace and saw the impoverished, the sick, the dead and 
the aged,  he abandoned his royal lifestyle to follow a spiritual path. He 
joined a group of ascetics, who starved and beat themselves, practiced 
abstinence and lived in the forest without shelter in the hope that by 
denying the body they would be rewarded in spirit.
  One day a pretty cowherd came by and gave Siddharta food, a bath and 
intimacy. The other ascetics where shocked and rejected him, but he was 
pleased with what he had done, how much better he felt indulging the body's 
needs instead of denying them and from this he was inspired with the idea 
of the Middle path. From royal luxury to hermit poverty, the Buddha 
explored the edges and found the middle road.

Matriarchy is about a change in consciousness... a different way of looking 
at the world, at Spirit, at ourselves and our relationship with 
others.  It's about moving into the opposite polarity, from the Patriarchy 
of Western culture, to find the edges of both paradigms, so you know where 
the middle path is.

The spiritual imperative is "Know Thyself."  Spiritual growth is about the 
process of self discovery. Learning where the edges are, is about getting 
to know your Self.

   Moving from one gender polarization to the other, eventually leads to 
the middle path... the genderless, formless, Self, that is Realized through 
the spiritual evolutionary process.

Spirit, what some call God or Buddha nature, Source, is infinite, 
genderless, ineffable, nameless. It, the Self, the  I AM, does not care 
what we call It; for no names can hold It or define It. We are the ones, 
who care... and what a lot of names we have come up with! What a lot of 
Holy Wars have been started, over this simple thing: what to call, that 
which is nameless.

The energy Itself doesn't care what we call It... Unconditional love does 
not judge. It is infinite, and nameless, words cannot encompass or describe 
it. The infinite energy of All that Is, is infinite, nameless, genderless. 
It is bigger than the limitations and definitions of gender. When one 
reaches beyond all dualities, including the polarity of gender, there is 
only Being.  It just Is. The Self is bigger than any limiting ideas of 
religion or dogma, including mine
 yet, It is me, the infinite part of me. 
It is you. The part of you that is Infinite, unconditional love.

We are the ones who care about what we call our Gods. We are the ones who 
have the power to change our selves, by changing our beliefs, which in turn 
change our decisions, and thus, our lives. Moving into a Matrifocal belief, 
brings the Patriarchal, male dominant programming of culture, into sharp 
relief, so we can see it with awareness. So we can have the option to make 
better choices.

At that metaphysical level of existence, beyond duality, beyond the 
polarities of male-fem, light-dark, everything is True, and nothing is 
real. Religion and philosophy don't matter, in that place, they are limited 
human conceptions that cannot hold the Infinite. Since time and space don't 
exist at that level, that place is nowhere. It is now here. It is within 
our consciousness, as much as it is everywhere else.

In order to expand consciousness and come into awareness of that higher 
reality underlying creation, you have to discard the beliefs about yourself 
that say you, and everything else, are less that that. Let go of believing 
that the Divine is something off in the sky, outside of you.

Often when seekers are resistant to the concept of surrender, it is because 
they are afraid of giving power away to something they perceive as being 
outside of themselves.  Many people have a deep unconscious mistrust of the 
external, Patriarchal God. They have too much anger to be able to surrender 
fully. With the Goddess, you can make a fresh start.

Traditionally, in Hindu texts, the Kundalini Shakti is referred to as a 
Goddess; In most Kundalini oriented writings, you will find this 
convention. Kundalini is the Goddess. Goddess Shakti. Goddess is within 
you, the smarter part of your own mind, which guides and directs the 
Kundalini process.

     For decades male archaeologists and scholars insisted that 
Matriarchal, female dominant cultures were a myth, that the status quo of 
the Patriarchy was how things have always been.

It was not until women became archaeologists that the symbols of the 
Goddess were recognised. It was when we had a sufficient number of feminine 
voices speaking of their conclusions and discoveries to be heard as a 
dissenting voice, that the evidence of the Matrifocal history of early 
human culture started coming to light.  Great female archaeologists and 
scholars like Marija Gimbutas saw the signs of the Goddess  birds, spirals 
and chevrons- through feminine eyes and brought about a radical change in 
how we understand prehistoric mythology, religion and culture.

 From an historical, evolutionary viewpoint, Matriarchy long predates 
Patriarchy.  The earliest roots of religion were Matriarchal. The oldest 
idols are feminine, the most ancient tombs are shaped like a uterus and 
vulva; womb shaped.  Birth and death, a cycle.  Birth, and the mysteries of 
menstruation are the oldest miracles, blood and birth and death belonged to 
the Mother Goddess. At death, people went back to the Mother, to be reborn.

Mother is still our "first God". She is the power we first learn to 
surrender to, as the source of life, food, comfort... survival. The rhythm 
of her heartbeat was the first tune we danced to, floating in the amniotic 
sea of her womb.

The earliest Goddesses were associated with Serpents. Serpents were 
considered a symbol of the Earth itself. Shedding skin was considered a 
sign of rebirth. The Oroborus, a serpent with it's tail in it's mouth, is a 
symbol of the Infinite, and the circle of life. Life eats life, with out 
beginning and with out end.

In nature, creation springs from the feminine... as the Wiccan chant goes,

"We all come from the Goddess,
and to Her we shall return,
like a drop of rain,
flowing to the ocean."

   Returning to the Goddess, and merging with that Infinite Self is the 
final result of the Kundalini process. Surrender is letting go of the small 
self, and turning your life path over to the love and wisdom of the part of 
you that is Infinite.

In Wiccan theology, the Goddess is considered primary. She is eternal, 
immortal, endlessly creative, always giving birth. The God is Mortal, the 
Stag King Her consort, dying with the cut grain, with the fading seasons to 
be reborn again and again through the Goddess.

Matrifocal religions tend to be permissive, using the power of sacred 
sexual energy for magical purposes: making the crops grow better by sharing 
sexual energy on a full moon in the fields.  Modern scientific studies have 
proven the effectiveness of these ancient rituals!

   Matrifocal spiritual paths tend to focus on cherishing of the body as a 
sacred vessel, on life itself, as a gift of Goddess.  Matriarchy says: 'Let 
us follow the instincts She gave us, in Her wisdom, and worship Her with 
acts of Love and Pleasure.' This is a much more humanist attitude than "God 
is up there in heaven disapproving of the physical mud people having 
sex":  The programming of puritan Christian western culture.

Asceticism and deprivation is the difficult road to enlightenment... denial 
of the body wisdom is the Patriarchal way. Your body knows that the 
quickest path to Goddess is through pleasure and bliss.  Goddess comes 
through with that message, even if She has to eroticise patriarchal sexual 
guilt and pain/punishment itself, to turn you on to Life.

Goddess designed your body to have the path of enlightenment built right 
into your DNA, as instinctive as learning to walk.  For patriarchal 
religion to complete it's power grabs over the much stronger matriarchal 
religions, all trappings of the sacred power of sex had to be strictly 
suppressed. Women had to be programmed to believe that their sexual 
appetites, free will, and even their sacred moon blood was unclean and 
sinful, a sign of weakness instead of a sign of Her power and fertility.


It is the winners of wars who write the history books
 and there were wars 
in the transition from the early Matrifocal religions, to the Patriarchal:

  The Priestesses of Goddess Bridgit of Ireland used the Serpent as their 
sacred symbol, even though there are not, and have never been snakes in 
Ireland. It was these women, midwives and healers who were the "snakes" St. 
Patrick drove into the sea. The Pope forbade healing because illness and 
pain of childbirth was believed to be God's punishment for sin. The 
Priestesses drowned themselves in the sea rather than be converted, and 
forbidden to use their healing power.

The "Song of Solomon", or "Song of Songs" in the Old Testament was 
originally a Sumerian invocation of Inanna, the Goddess of love.  She who 
was worshipped in the sacred groves on the hill tops.  Solomon worshipped 
in those groves. His son David cut them down, killed the worshippers, and 
cut the Goddess out of the Hebrew faith.

In the Song of Solomon, Inanna's lover, the God has been taken by death, 
and she wanders lonely seeking him to resurrect him, just as Isis wandered 
seeking Osiris, after he had been torn to pieces and killed. It follows the 
theme of the God dying, and being reborn through the Goddess.

In 1500BC, the Aryan Horsemen from the North, invaded the Indus Valley, 
where the peaceful, Matriarchal culture of the Dravidians had resided for 
1500 years. The Dravidian culture originated what we now know as sexual 
Tantra.  The winners write the history books, and the Aryans did their best 
to smash the culture they had conquered, replacing the Goddess Mother with 
Patriarchal Gods of War.  However, as with the Christian missionaries, the 
result was a merging, not a replacement, of the original culture.

The early Christians referred to the Holy Spirit as "God the Mother."  What 
happened to that idea?  Around 500 AD, Rome was at war. Constantinople, a 
Roman general claimed to have seen a crucifix in a vision that promised him 
victory. At that time, Christians used the symbol of the fish.  He won, 
became Emperor of Rome and spent the rest of his life rearranging 
Christianity to be a political tool of oppression, and burning anyone who 
did not agree, as a heretic.  He did not convert to Christianity himself, 
until he was old and at death's door. His sons continued the work of 
editing the New Testament into the perfect tool of political subjugation.

For patriarchal religion to maintain it's mind control idea of a forbidding 
punishing God, it was vital that the best sources of true awakening and 
spiritual ecstasy be suppressed... because folks who are awakened have 
direct irrefutable evidence of Goddess within, and cannot be controlled or 
convinced otherwise.  They will not listen to anyone telling them God needs 
a middleman, a Priest. People who are awakened tend not to listen to 
outside authority telling them things that disagree with their own spirit.


I don't expect you to, either.  I am not a Guru, for you to have 
unconditional trust and faith in
 that would be patriarchal, trying to find 
God-dess outside of yourself, in me.  I won't take the Guru role, to be God 
for you. You are the God of your own life.

   I experimented with the Guru role for a few years, and I took it to some 
interesting extremes, in a consensual way. I had devotees who went from 
zero to self realized in six months, they could not sustain it. I had taken 
on their karma and transmuted it for them, so they did not really know 
themselves.  They recreated, or fell back into their karmic tendencies 
because they had not built a strong spiritual foundation of self knowledge. 
They did not know how they got there, because they were carried instead of 
walking the road with their own feet, so they did not know how to find the 
way back when they went astray.

   Some seekers find this course after becoming disaffected with a Guru, 
there is an instinct within them that cannot wholly trust what is outside 
of themselves. Their instinct is correct. Even with a successful 
Guru-devotee relationship there is a hierarchy that lingers even after the 
Devotee is self-realized. For example, Yogananda's achievements with the 
Self Realization Fellowship far outstripped the accomplishments of his 
Guru, Sri Yukteshwar.  Yet, in "Autobiography of a Yogi" there is a scene 
where Yogananda's dead Guru appears and Yogananda falls to his knees.  Why 
were they not yet equals?  Respect for the teacher I can understand, but 
his reaction is extreme.


    Enlightenment, is a do it yourself process.
    I am a Priestess, Mystress
 teacher, trainer.  I see Goddess in me and 
in you, and my work is to train you to hear and surrender to the will of 
Goddess within yourself, and have none before.  To teach you how to set 
your ego self aside and turn your life over to the will of your own soul, 
and not another.  I will teach you discernment, how to hear the signals of 
your own body instincts, Goddess within you, telling you what is true for you.

   Look upon some of these ideas as "thought experiments"... try them out 
for yourself, see how they fit. Change your beliefs for a day, or a week, 
and see what comes up for you: how that affects how you make decisions in 
your life. Change your world, by changing inside of yourself... by changing 
your mind. You can always change your mind again, later if it does not work 
for you. In the meantime you will have gained insights into the inner 
workings of your own mind: the spiritual imperative "Know Thyself."

Find out, what is true, for you.


  new links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marija_Gimbutas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_movement
http://www.levity.com/mavericks/gim-int.htm