Property of a Lady

Deborah Lipp goes on about Wicca, politics, movies, Paganism, and cats. Not necessarily in that order.

(We’ll see if I stick with this…I might switch it to a different weekly topic. For now, it seems enjoyable and interesting.)

You are probably familiar with the Genesis 1.7: God made the firmament and divided the waters. And perhaps, when you were a kid, you said, as I did, huh?

In Babylonian creation myth, the waters were also divided in order for the world to come into being. There were sweet (fresh) waters and bitter (salt) waters. Tiamat, the bitter waters, was the goddess who created the world, and was also a sea monster. Apsu, her husband, was the sweet waters. In the blended waters of Apsu and Tiamat, all the gods were born. Marduk was one of their children.

Marduk was a storm god, a sort of Babylonian Zeus. He rallied his brothers and sisters to make war on their parents. They were (understandably) reluctant, both because, hey, parents, and because their parents were immensely strong. Sea monsters, y’know.

But Marduk had weapons; the mace and spear as well as the lightning. And he said to his brothers and sisters that if they served him in this battle, the gods would be able to rule over nature, they would have power to change fate.

When the gods attack, Apsu urges Tiamat to fight back, but the goddess will not harm her own children, and ultimately allows herself to be killed. From her body, Marduk creates the world, and rules over the gods.

There’s a lot of metaphor and cultural history going on in this one story. Many interpret it as patriarchy defeating matriarchy, and order defeating chaos. You can certainly see how natural powers (sea monsters) are overwhelmed by civilization (the spear and mace). Joseph Campbell points out that matriarchy is always tied with fate, with the inevitability of natural cycles. As society develops, the desire to rule over nature is profound and, to a great degree, necessary, and Marduk represents the success of that desire. It’s easy to look back a few thousand years later and say, BAD IDEA, but living past the age of forty, eating nutritious food, taming animals for husbandry and the land for agriculture, these were all damn fine notions.

Tiamat is the inevitability of being overpowered by nature. Nature is, and it is bigger and stronger than you. But Marduk is the civilizing force that overcomes her; that says, we will not be destroyed by fate or by flood. And that, too, is worthy of worship.

All solved, well done!

(more…)

You know, sometimes when women are pregnant, people say inappropriate things. Maybe give too many scary details about labor or tell them “you’ll never sleep again” and other things that are kind of overwhelming to someone who’s already committed. I’ve probably done that myself more than twice.

But you know what people don’t do? They don’t say “You will hate it,” “You will wish the baby had never been born,” “You might consider open adoption instead,” “I heard about this woman who killed her baby,” “He’ll undoubtedly disappoint you once he’s born,” “You’re going to screw this up.” You don’t hear that so much.

When people get married, again, lots of unsolicited advice, some of which is wildly inappropriate, but mostly not “Well, when you get divorced, you’re going to be pretty fucking broke for a while, so maybe you should learn some rice and beans recipes now.”

But that feels like ninety percent of what people say to me when I tell them my son is going into college. I mean, I posted here about my leap of faith, and the comments were fucking scary. No one said, “yay for faith” or “congratulations” or “you must be so proud,” and I really would have liked to hear that. I’m almost afraid to tell anyone now, because I hear all that scary stuff every day, from all manner of people.

Truly I don’t get it. I know it’s scary. And I know people are just sharing their own experiences and I appreciate that. But this is a vulnerable transition for us, a life passage, a time of celebration and rebirth and yes, fear. And damn if I wouldn’t love some support. And I have no right, really, to post my business all over the Internet and then scold people for their responses, but did I mention how I also blurt inappropriately? Yeah. So this is maybe one of those. But I just don’t understand why people are SO negative. Like it’s a mistake to go to college. Or to pay for it. Or to be excited about it. Or something. And this is like pregnancy, people. If you keep telling me this shit, the baby’ll be born cross-eyed or something.