The Holy Spirit: the Christian Goddess

[Guest guest]

The Holy Spirit: the Christian Goddess

 

So Elohim created man in his own image,

in the image of Elohim he created him;

male and female he created them.

 

Genesis 1:27

 

It is my intention in this article to uncover and expose the semantic,

historical, and theological truth behind this third divine person of the

Christian Trinity. I am aided in this by scriptural and semantic evidence, as

well as sound theology. I will first refute Mary's conception 'by the spirit'

and my arguments behind this stance; I will then present a more accurate

(meaning, gendered) depiction of the Holy Ghost than the traditional one based

on the historical Jesus' teachings and scriptural, historical and mythological

evidence.

 

Get it Right! Ruach is not a Boy's Name! (Good News according to Phillip)

 

The idea that the Holy Ghost intervened in Jesus' virgin birth is met with open

hostility in the gospels of the Nag Hammadi collection, where Phillip the

Apostle even says: " when did a woman ever conceive of another woman? " , which is

a clear reference to the Ruach, or Holy Spirit. This is the one time in the

Christian scriptures where the Holy Ghost is referred to clearly and directly as

a 'woman'. It is no wonder that Phillip's gospel is excluded from the

patriarchal canon, which was organized by the Pauline School.

 

The term 'Ruach', which is the word used by Jesus to refer to the Spirit, is a

feminine Aramaic term translated as the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost in English,

which came through Latin as the Spiritus Sanctus. The (Pauline influenced)

Romanization of Christianity brought about the masculinization of the Ruach,

whose feminine gender is CENTRAL to the Christian mystery, and I will explain

why later in my article.

 

In Romance languages, words have gender, that is, they are grammatically

considered either masculine (as in EL hombre: the man, or EL carro: the car) or

feminine (as in LA mujer: the woman, or LA casa: the house). The same applies to

the Latin language. The Latin word spiritus is a masculine word. But the

original, Semitic word that was used by Yeshua, the rabbi we know as Jesus, was

Ruach, and this is a feminine gendered word. Ruach is the (female) Spirit, the

Soul, the accurately gendered Latin translation of which should have probably

been Anima. This is the term that Jungians are now using to refer to the inner

feminine, or the Divine Feminine. In translating Ruach as spiritus, the

association remained between soul and breath, but the original gender of the

divine being that Jesus referred to as Ruach was changed.

 

Phillip, who walked with the historical Jesus, was in fact adamantly rejecting

the view of the Pauline School and other Christians on the Holy Ghost and the

fathering of Jesus by this agent, because Ruach is a female.

 

Keep in mind that Paul never met Jesus or heard his teachings in person. For

this reason, Paul's teachings, particularly where they entirely divorce

themselves from Jewish tradition, may have been an affront to many traditional

Jewish followers who were more familiar than him with the teachings of the

historical Jesus and knew Paul's theology to be contradictory to that of their

Messiah.

 

Paul's view reflects a strong gentile influence, particularly where he

constructed a Christian theology almost identical to Orpheic Dionysian religion,

which is a Greek Mystery Tradition. Anyone who knows about the Orpheic tradition

will agree with me that the Christian theology that the Pauline School produced

was a new form of Orpheism: a mortal is born of a virgin, performs superhuman

feats, dies and is miraculously reborn, and becomes a Man-God. He is the new

Dionysus, the Son of God (Theos, or Zeus), the God of wine who initiates mortals

in the mysteries of wine, and the one who brings, with his mysteries, a promise

of a better lot in the afterlife. Jesus himself said: I am the Vine. Jesus

himself established his identity within the context of a Dionysian mystery.

 

The religions of Dionysus and the Christ are even observed similarly, via

mysteries known as sacraments. In the Old Testament, and in Jewish tradition,

the idea of 'mysteries' apparently does not exist. Mysteries were central to

Greek paganism, and they're defined as sacraments, or ritual events, often of an

initiatory nature, that produce an ineffable experience. It's only when belief

in Jesus' salvific religion is proclaimed that we read of mysteries in the

Bible. Before the idea of salvation, there were no mysteries in the Essenean

form of Judaism that Jesus and John the Baptist practiced.

 

The Christian sacraments clearly derive from the Greek Mysteries, and share some

similarities with the Dionysian and even the Eleusinian mysteries. We need only

look at the Dionysian and Orpheic consumption of goat meat or bread and wine in

order to attain communion with the Son of God (Dionysus) to see a clear pattern

which all salvific religions share: the consumption of the sacrificial victim

implies one's participation in his salvation and grace, and this is how one

benefits from the man-god's sacrificial merit.

 

Having lived among gentiles his whole life, Paul must have been familiar with

their theologies and beliefs, and was quite brilliant in his retelling of the

Jesus myth in line with the more familiar tradition of Greek heroes and

men-gods, which was an appealing theme to Greeks and other gentiles. In fact,

mystery religions were in the process of replacing traditional, classical

paganism throughout the Mediterranean.

 

The Pauline salvific faith is, therefore, not entirely contradictory to the

Essene Jewish teachings of Jesus, but Paul's mysteries or sacraments erase the

memory of an important early Christian person: the Holy Ghost. And it is here

that Phillip takes a stand against Christians who don't understand the true,

original Christian teachings, and are perpetuating false doctrines.

 

Keeping in mind that Phillip (unlike Paul) walked with the historical Jesus and

heard the teachings directly from his mouth, we have to interpret Phillip's

remark in his gospel as meaning that the Pauline School was teaching a false

doctrine that contradicted what Jesus taught while alive. This means that there

is a Goddess, which is hidden or silenced in the Christian tradition, and that

the Holy Ghost is a woman. It also means that there is another explanation,

other than our familiar immaculate conception, for Mary's virgin birth. The

theological implications of this for Christians are many. Let's look within the

Bible for references of the Holy Ghost.

 

The Waters of Life

 

Jesus hints at the Holy Ghost's gender when he refers to his 'mother' in heaven,

and compares her in the Nag Hammadi gospels to his earthly mother, saying his

earthly mother gave him death but his heavenly mother gave him life. He also

mentions that his followers are to be born again of the Ruach or Anima, and he

speaks of baptism as a ritual of rebirthing, where we are BORN again of the

water. Everyone knows there is no birth without a womb, without a mother. Jesus

explains this so that the gender of the Ruach is not only incidental, but

central and crucial to the mystery of baptism, and the one being baptised is

reborn as a child of the Holy Ghost, he or she is born again of the Holy Ghost,

a son of the Goddess. I have presented all these facts to conclude that Jesus,

and his rabbi John the Baptist, both of whom were Essenes, were beyond a shadow

of a doubt teaching a form of Goddess spirituality and a Goddess mystery

tradition WITHIN Judaism, and that the Ruach's status as a Divine WOMAN was

central to the true mystery and meaning of baptism (3).

 

Like all initiations, in the baptism performed by John the Baptist and the

Essenes, the old self must die and one is reborn again. The Gospel of Phillip

sheds light on this mystery when it teaches us that 'a horse can only beget a

horse, a man can only beget a human, and a god can only beget a god'. This

further illuminates what it means to be 'born of the Ruach'. If the Ruach is

spirit, then one reborn from Her becomes spirit and shares her divine, immortal

nature, and receives the Holy Ghost as his mother. This new relationship between

humans and the Ruach is one of the things that identifies the new Christian

community and Christian mysticism.

 

The mystery of baptism is clearly a Goddess mystery, where the sacred waters

grant us new life just as they did in Genesis. In fact, the creation myth that

we find in Genesis is based on an earlier, Sumerian myth where the Sumerian

Father God (El) and Mother Goddess (Asherah) (1) copulate [are in union] at the

beginning of creation. We know of the identity between the God of Abraham and

the Heavenly King in Sumerian myth from the name: El. Most prophets and angels

in Jewish traditions have names that end in -el, such as Daniel, Gabriel,

Mikael, etc. This is a reference to El, the Sumerian God, with whom Abraham

believed to have made a pact or covenant that extended to all his descendants.

Abraham came from Ur, where El was the main God, even if one among many.

 

We also know of the identity between the Holy Ghost and the Asherah because both

are the waters of life. Lady Wisdom, in the Bible, says that She existed before

creation and witnessed it, which means that She is non-created, and therefore

her nature is divine. In the Sumerian myth, the spirit of El is hovering over

the Asherah, and they are copulating [in union]. In the Genesis myth, the waters

of life are no longer personified, and we see a plain sea where the Sumerians

saw a watery primal Goddess. But the myth, otherwise, is almost identical.

Asherah is the consort of the God of Abraham, the co-Creator, and this must have

been the reason why Jewish women used to commit transgressions against the

prophets' warnings and pray to Her during early Judaism, because they saw their

pagan cousins and neighbors praying to her alongside their more familiar God,

and they knew that they had a spiritual Mother who had been stolen from them by

patriarchal Jewish religious authorities. Lynn Gottlieb makes the point that had

Jewish women - as opposed to Jewish men - written the Bible, the story of the

evolution of their religious thinking would have been told very differently.

 

In the African Yoruba tradition, known as Santeria in the diaspora, there is a

type of once in a lifetime initiation where a mortal becomes a priest of an

Orisha, which resonates with the Christian baptismal Goddess mystery. One of the

many rituals that has to take place before initiation is, as in Eleusis, a

ritual bath. This takes place in the river, as Oshun is the Goddess of the sweet

waters of life, of fertility, and of the rivers. Oshun's name means 'source',

and like Asherah She is a water Goddess. She is therefore identical to the

pre-Biblical the Sea Goddess hinted in Genesis only as a de-personified metaphor

in her role as the initiator in a new spiritual dispensation. Once the initiate

has bathed in Oshun's waters and once he has been cleansed of his past crimes,

he is fit for rebirth. In Eleusis, the ritual bath and sacrifices also took

place before the initiates entered the Telesterion and underwent the more

important secret rites. I won't get into any more details as it's not within the

scope of this article, but Yoruba religion is the only pagan mystery religion,

which has existed consistently and without interruption since pagan times.

 

Then have them make a sanctuary for me, that my Shekinah may dwell among them.

Exodus 25:8

 

The Jewish Holy Ghost is known as Shekinah. Her name means 'presence', and

according to Lynn Gottlieb (2), her descent among the Jews seems to have been

the fulfilment of the terms of the alliance between the God of Abraham and the

Jewish people. Hence, the Ark of the Alliance was built so that She may dwell

among them.

 

In the Christian tradition, some of the boons of the Holy Ghost include

creativity, inspiration, counsel, and the transformation of both the individual

and the culture by its grace. These are all attributes of Divinity that are

associated with the Shekinah, and these have become evident in the modern

Goddess movement, which accentuates the importance of intuition and creativity.

They also are in line with the Jungian concept of Anima as the Inspirer, and

with scriptural references to Sophia, or Divine Wisdom in Proverbs, Wisdom, and

other books of the Bible. In her attributes and roles, the Ruach, the Shekinah,

Sophia and the modern pagan Goddess seem to be one and the same.

 

I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.

Proverbs 8:23

 

In the scriptures, Wisdom (Sophia, in Greek) is the Lady that inspires men to be

good, righteous, and wise, and to perform virtuous deeds. She is the Goddess of

philosophers (literally, 'lovers of Wisdom'), King Salomon seems to have been

inebriated with Her beauty and power, and the eighth chapter of Proverbs is the

one chapter in all of the Bible where She speaks for herself, in the first

person.

 

In our day, the Ecclesia Gnostica and Essene reconstructionist groups are

celebrating Christian tradition in a way that is truer to the original form than

the orthodox, more familiar forms of Christianity. Other, more mainstream

churches have also stepped in and, mainly with insights from the Nag Hammadi

library and the Dead Sea scrolls, are revisioning Christianity in a way that

will help it stay true to the original spirit in which these mysteries were

taught. They also are coming to terms with the fact that there were various

original forms of Christianity and that there was a struggle for power between

these different schools, which is only normal in all human institutions. This

may indicate a need for research beyond the politics and the egos involved in

the process of distilling a Bible and a Christian tradition that was acceptable

to all. I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide these efforts to retell Her story

and revitalize the culture. Peace,

 

Saadaya

 

Notes:

1. The descent of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus is described in Matthew 3:16, where

the 'signal' that is given is a dove. Anyone familiar with Sumerian, Phoenician,

and Canaanite religions will be reminded - and surely Jews in those days were -

of Asherah, the Mother Goddess, whose sacred symbol is a dove, and who was

worshipped alongside the Father God El as his consort by the neighbors of the

Jews. Unfortunately whenever a (usually feminist) theologian dares look beyond

the Judeo Christian tradition in her work, she's usually considered an

anthropologist instead of a theologian, but in the case of the Asherah the

evidence linking her and the Divine Feminine in the Jewish and Christian

traditions is strong enough that it's almost impossible to miss.

2. Lynn Gottlieb is a brilliant feminist theologian who wrote 'She Who Dwells

Within'.

3. The Catholic and other churches that perform baptism shortly after birth have

forgotten the true nature of the baptismal mystery. The person being baptised

must be mature in order to experience transformation. There is another, also

important, ritual which has replaced the true baptismal mystery in the Christian

tradition: that of naming a newborn and welcoming him into the community. It is

important that a newborn be presented to the elders in a community in order to

ensure that they will take an interest in him and protect and guide him. Freya

Aswynn, in fact, mentions that there seemed to be a form of 'baptism' in

Northern Europe * before * Christianity was officialized. The Havamal contains

the instructions for this ritual, where water is sprinkled on the child and the

rune EIHWAZ is chanted. This is a protective rune. The ritual of welcoming a

child into the community by sprinkling of water also exists among the Yoruba, so

that it seems to exist in several cultures that engage in ancestor reverence.

While this is an important ceremony, it serves quite a different purpose from

the baptism that we see in the Bible. Jesus himself was not baptised until he

was 30, and baptism was only performed if the person made a decision to enter

the New Covenant.

 

*

 

The Nicene Creed, revised

 

We believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all

things visible and invisible;

 

and in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten before all worlds, God of God,

Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance

with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us humans, and for our

salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate of Mary, and was made man,

and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried,

and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into

heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again

with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no

end;

 

and we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of Life, who with the

Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the

prophets.

 

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/saadaya/Ruach.html