In 2022, I chronicled the run-up to the first of the 3 deadlines w/ a series of monthly updates from July to November. In 2024, I will chronicle the run-up to the second deadline, similarly.
A series of talks & writings on the third deadline is also underway.
"Of Goddesses" is the third in this series of Gaia Talks.
The first, “Gaian Poetics & Gaian Politics,” was delivered in November 2022 & the second, "The Emerald Tablet: 21st Century Insights on Its True Nature” was delivered in March 2023.
The full text of each talk, along with accompanying PowerPoints & embedded videos, are available here. The videos also reside on my YouTube channel, "Spoken Words of Power."
God Is A Concept, God Is Dead
In the 1970s, rock star, political dissident & eventual martyr John Lennon declared "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." A century earlier, in the 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche, tortured genius, true giant of Western philosophy, had already declared,"God is dead."
In the 1970s, rock star, political dissident & eventual martyr John Lennon declared "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." A century earlier, in the 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche, tortured genius, true giant of Western philosophy, had already declared,"God is dead."
From very different vantage points, both of these magical beings were actually, albeit unconsciously, heralding the collapse of the patriarchal narrative. This has been a painfully slow & dangerous process. And now, at long last, we are finally nearing the denouement.
God Is A Woman, God Is A Black Woman
On Friday the 13th, in July 2018, Ariana Grande released her "God is a Woman," a song that celebrates both female sexual power & feminist liberation.
On Friday the 13th, in July 2018, Ariana Grande released her "God is a Woman," a song that celebrates both female sexual power & feminist liberation.
"When all is said and done, You'll believe God is a woman ..."
In February 2022, Christina Cleveland published her "God Is A Black Woman," a book that deconstructs the “whitemalegod” & reveals the Sacred Black Feminine.
“Imagination is theology; we can only believe what we can imagine. And our cultural landscape hasn’t given us many tools to imagine a non-white, non-male God.”
Grande's song and Cleveland's book epitomize vital new cultural memes.
The "God Is A Woman" meme is more accurate mystically and cosmologically than dominant "whitemalegod" thought-form. Furthermore, "God Is A Woman is perfectly calibrated for this critical juncture in the evolution of our species, i.e., the end of history and the beginning of herstory, the end of the patriarchy and the beginning of what evolves even beyond matriarchy.
The "God Is A Black Woman" meme is even more apropos for the personification of this great shift.
Cleveland explains.
“We are unable to imagine a God who is with us while we wonder if our beloved sister will survive the night. We are unable to imagine a God who proclaims #blacklivesmatter, a God who says #metoo, a God who stands not atop the social hierarchy, but at the bottom with the people who have been cast aside, silenced, and forgotten. When god is solely male, he can only show up as fatherskygod who is nowhere near us.”
“Indeed, social science scholars agree that what’s good for Black women is good for all people. The liberation of all Black women requires the dismantling of all systems of oppression—white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and more. These systems harm all of us. So, if Black women are thriving and free, it also means the oppressive systems have been eradicated and we are all thriving and free."
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| Clockwise from Bottom Left: Venus of Dolní Věstonice, Artemisia Gentileschi - Sleeping Venus (1630), Kali Yantra, A golden statue of Durga slaying Mahisasur. Delhi (Oct 22, 2004), Kiki Smith - Lilith (1994), Andres Zorn - Freya (1901), Ekajat, the Blue Tara, Ferocious, Single-Breasted, One-Eyed, Single-Toothed Protectress of Nyingmapa Lineage, Painted by Shri Ram Bahadur Lama, Kathmandu |
Pantheon
A pantheon of Goddesses smuggled Life, Nature & Reality through thousands of years of metaphysical misogyny & gender slavery providing cover for actual, literal misogyny & gender slavery, & some of these Goddesses could stand as the divine power behind the next civilization:
The Celtic Triune Goddess in the West, Durga Ma in the East, both all-powerful representations of FULL EMBODIMENT & FULL INDIVIDUATION
Freya the Nordic Goddess of BOTH Love & War.
Venus Aphrodite of course, expressive of the Ultimate Power, D-E-S-I-R-E.The incomparable Tara, in all her 21 flavors, offering, oh, boundless compassion, salvation from suffering, & so much more, e.g., Ekajat, the Blue Tara, Ferocious, Single-Breasted, One-Eyed, Single-Toothed Protectress of Nyingmapa Lineage
In the East, the indigo blue skinned Kali, in the West, the raven winged Morrigan. Holy ferocity, primal security. Self-defense. War of liberation. Sacred rage.
Lilith too. Like Daath, the abyss at the center of the Tree of Life, Lilith is the Shadow of them all.
Gaia
All of the Goddesses in this global pantheon are of the Sambhogakaya, they are like the rays of the Sun (Dharmakaya) warming & nurturing those human incarnations who open to them (Nirmanakaya). They are Mythoi, they are not unreal, they are realer than real, they are Supra Real. They feed the psychological body, the Manamaya Kosha, with the stuff of the Vijnanamaya Kosha, the Intuitive Body, The Jungians would say they are from the realm of the archetypes.
There is one Goddess who pre-exists the Pantheon, that pre-exists our species, that pre-exists all but herself, because all else is her creation. She is the ONLY truly IMMANENT Divinity, she was the forging of oceans, the flow of lava, the bacteria in a dark crevice organizing itself into the first neural network, & now many billions of years later whoever you are, when you look in the mirror you are seeing only Her. She is the Divine Intelligence. She is both the Temple and the Oracle within it. Yes, Her name was taken from the ancient Mythoi by a 20th Century scientist. But only Her name, The rest of Her new narrative is composed of scientific fact, corroborated by shamanic vision. In the South of the Americas, She is known by another name, Pachamama. Gaia-Pachamama is the only Divinity which offers direct, irrefutable proof of Her own existence every moment of every day in every place in all the world.
For those with eyes to hear and ears to see.
Without her you would not be, no five bodies, no incarnation, no path of individuation, no psyche, no soma, no karma, no you. Without her you would never have felt the sun rise from inside the stillness of your meditation or heard the coyotes massing for a hunt in the hills on a moonless night. Without her, no Iceland, no Uluru, no Kahlo, no Coltrane, no Amazon, no Congo, no Lana Del Ray.
If we are going to overcome the folly of our genius & survive the pathologies that poison us, we need to rapidly retool this scarred & conflicted civilization into a green, feminist world in which altruism & sustainability are the defining imperatives of governance. Gaia is the Goddess to place at the center of all you do to pursue this new beginning.
-- Richard Power, Yoga & Meditation Teacher, Writer, Speaker, Global Intelligence & Security Expert.
See Also
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| "Secret Engine of the World: Further Insights into Primal Reality, Gaian Politics & the Arc of Human Evolution" (2021) is available from Amazon.com [All images are sourced and published as Fair Use.] |
