The issues Mary Condren raises in The Serpent and the Goddess have been with me for what seems a
tremendously long time. As a young boy of seven I read of the knightly orders suppressed by the papacy, the Cathers
and the Templars By the time I had reached eleven I had begun delving into witchcraft and the occult. The
suppression of the feminine in western culture has been a theme of continued discourse for me, for about sixteen
years. In the archaic cultures of the early Indo-Europeans, time was an ever-continuing cyclic spiral turning upon
itself represented by the 'pagan' festivals associated with the agricultural effort. The covenant struck with Jah's
people was an effort to take them out of this natural progression of seasons to one of linearity, land and seed forever.
In a word, fame, that is history or temporal perpetuity, or immortality, the cheating of death which shatters the
cycle of the spiral. One of the more psychologically damaging aspects of this new form of time was the separation of
what had, here to fore, been a duality conjoined. Now this unity in diversity was ruptured and like Humpty-Dumpty
or virginity, could never be put back together again.
One of the chief elements in this would be destruction of the archaic, was the use of external and internal threats.
In the early part of this usurpation, it was necessary to focus on those threats immediately identifiable as being
outside the oppressors religious views. Women's power to control their body, their kin, and their possessions, had to
be wrested from them, so the boys in their dresses could take on the responsibilities and roles that had been the
purvey of the Mother Goddess and her faithful One of their chief targets was the serpent, image of Goddess worship
going back to the Neolithic. In hindsight we can say Qui bono? At first the transition required that the soon to be
marginalized had to have their God/desses turned on their heads, in order to represent the forces to be overcome,
that all could be unified in the worship of Jah Once this had been accomplished, it was time to attack those enemies
within their midst, the Irish, the Cathers, the Templars, and any would be Christians who still held on to any form
of the heretical 'pagan' beliefs or idols. The warrior Celts, whom so many today admire for their pre-Christian
heritage, were part and parcel to this usurpation of the Goddess imagery. Whether it be turning the sun Goddess
Macha into the horse/warrior Goddess Epona, or the stressing of kingship honor over the 'milk-ties' of maternal
kinship or clans, in order to prop up their petty kingdoms. It isn't until we learn to oppress ourselves that the
oppressor will let go the reins of control, and the warrior culture was the first to make inroads into the destroying of
a mother's power over her children.
Nine million dead, I read this figure when I was in my teens, I immediately renounced my association with the
Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole; it was too heavy a weight on my conscience. The image of Fergus and
Cuchulainn attacking the three hills associated with Brugh na Boinne and Dun Ailinne brings to
mind the taking of breasts of women in this warrior world, and shows to what extant this phallus-worship would
change not only the land, but the people. How many people have died in the name of the Fisherman (he was
historically a revolutionary trying to force Rome out of Palestine) from Nazareth? How far has the Church, headed by
the misogynist ideals of Peter, as expressed in the Gospel of John, fallen from the original message? It seems
incredible that the warriors, insecure in their paternity, could go to such links that they would turn on their
kinship ties with their mothers, or go against the tradition of women healers in order to further the consolidation
and centralization of power (into their genitals). It is reminiscent of the current attacks both on the peacekeeping
forces (notice the ironic oxymoron) and the healers of the Red Cross in Bosnia. The continued oppression of the
feminine in the militant Islamic faiths of the Taliban and Shiite finds it's expression in the veiling of women in
public, and their genital mutilation to insure their sexual continence. The papacy still maintains the vestiges of
feminine iconography in their use of dresses, the chalice, and the holy (well) water. The medical profession has
used for millennia the symbol of two serpents twined about a staff. When will our culture acknowledge the spiritual
bankruptcy we have inherited from the dead women of the witch-craze? Why is it that even today we have religious
groups attacking homosexual, neo-pagans, and eco-conscious individuals? When I heard that the Church in Ireland
was falling into the same death throes that have gripped the American Christian community, I was elated. There
is a prophecy that lists all of the popes, including the Papess Joan (ironically discovered because of childbirth while
in procession), which suggests that we have but one more Pope after John Paul II is caput One of my favorite books
in youth was Dune wherein was a religious body called the Bene Gesserit, who utilized the techniques of the
aesthetic body-control so much a hallmark of Christian culture. They also passed on their knowledge from one
woman to her successor. Men were unable to go to this place of transmission in order to access the "memories"
of their ancestors. Frank Herbert read to the core the nature of the patriarchy's insecurity and fear in regard to
paternity.
It is ironic to consider how the various techniques and attitudes of the Church have turned on themselves in order
to expedite their twisted policies of usurpation. Like a Mobeius strip, the image one holds turns on itself and
becomes it's opposition, while still maintaining the integrity of the original image. The best representation of this
is the serpent that guards the Tree of Knowledge against the uninitiated hands. Whilst in the Hebrew story we have
the serpent offering the fruits and discussing it's potential benefits, oddly enough, immortality. Or the 'patriarchal
reversal' of maintaining that there is no such thing as witchcraft in the Dark Ages (when the female healer network
was needed to fight the plagues) and the Dominican introduction to the Malleus Maleficrum that
"to not believe in witchcraft was the greatest of heresies". Another example of this irony is the idea of a male
creator bringing forth life, or as Zeus internalizing the feminine in order to take her power of birth, not unlike the
use of the pangs in the warrior couvade.
It is as Mary Condren says in the introduction, "not enough to knock on the doors of the patriarchy to get in, we need
to overthrow the 'gods of displaced responsibility', together with their warriors and priests if our world is to survive."
The 1980's were a watershed in the sense that so much of the media propaganda discussed the ludicrous nature of
'mutual assured destruction' and the use of "oppenbeimer's deadly toy". Our world is still plagued by the warriors and
priests, in danger of total annihilation through nuclear warheads and ecocatastropy. All of these immanent dangers
are a result from our turning our backs on our Earth(ly) Mother Goddess, and excepting the yoke, spiritual and
temporal, of a transcendent Father God.