"McVickar-Edwards, Carolyn - The Storytellers Goddess" - читать интересную книгу автора (McVickar-Edwards Carolyn)

Now, we begin to think of water as the blood of the Goddess, from Whose
flow comes all life. We think of Earth as Her body and see Her curves
in the hills and mountains; tree limbs begin to look like Her arms. We
sense the air as Her breath, and the mystery of fire becomes Her will
and Her spirit. In such an attitude of worship, we no longer take for
granted electrical lighting; nuclear poison is akin to the rape of a
child by a father. When we call the weather the emotions of the
Goddess, controlling and categorizing instead of respecting and
honoring seem the efforts of a rigid, unimaginative parent. We call
Earth Woman: Mother, Daughter, Sister, Baby, Crone, Child, Lover. We
call Her Teacher, Doctor, Healer, Inventor. We look at the ways we are
She and She is we, and we want to twirl in the subway station and shake
out ribboned tambourines.

Is a metaphor real? To my way of understanding, metaphor is probably
the most powerful and complete way to understand any significant
concept. For me, the deepest spiritual concepts are elusive. My grasp
on them comes and goes, depending on my current situation. And always
they are ideas; I can't see them. I need to make my concepts tangible
if I am to understand and grasp them on deeper than intellectual
levels. When, for example, I envision the seasons of Earth as the
Navajo people's Changing Woman, the inveterate turning of the world
becomes as personal as my own menstrual cycle. In the Egyptian Goddess
Isis, I know the cycle of the grains that keep me alive as I know a
mother and her child. Knowing the Hebrew Shekina, I know wisdom as if
She were a lover, ephemeral and thrillingly present at once.

Goddess spirituality is all about making spiritual truths tangible.
More than that, spiritual truths in Goddess spirituality are tangible.
In Earth-centered spirituality, the tangible, physical world is not
shameful something to dominate while we are here and to leave behind
when we die. The physical in Goddess spirituality is the source of all
that we are and know.

Where Does the Goddess Come From?

In cultures all over the world in all times, the image of the circle
has been sacred. Before we had a spaceship to prove it, before maps
were precise, humans sensed the circularity of life and the world.
Humans have always known that the personal womb is life's entry point
and the Earth's womb is its exit.

Before the present patriarchal times, humans expressed this knowledge
in their conceptualization of the Creator as Mother.

They recognized their Creator as Preserver; they knew Her as Destroyer.
They called Her hundreds of names: Danu, Kali, Mayahuel, Astarte. They
divided Her into thousands of aspects in order to more precisely
worship Her: Queen of Light, Ruler of the Underworld, Giver of Numbers