General – Page 190 – Feminism and Religion

What to do with Trump? by Barbara Ardinger

The United States used to get some respect. But now, except for the most gullible Trumpeters, people all over the world are seeing the damage the Troll-in-Chief is doing to our nation with his narcissism and corruption. What can a community like ours do? We can certainly vote next month and in 2020…and maybe we can also create some magic.

In her book The Cosmic Doctrine, originally written in 1923-24 as channeled from the Inner Planes, British occultist Dion Fortune (1890-1946) describes the Ring-Pass-Not, which is the ultimate outer limit of the universe. Fortune tells us that the Ring-Pass-Not (which was also described, but in a different way, by Madame H.P. Blavatsky) is a purely abstract ring of energy that protects our universe from the demons in other universes. Primal atoms also exist at the Ring-Pass-Not. It sounds like a highly useful place to send the Ogre-in-Chief so that, for once in his narcissistic life, he can clearly face the multitude of demons he embodies. Let us visualize a magical journey for him.

Continue reading “What to do with Trump? by Barbara Ardinger”

Queen of Pentacles: Sensual Materiality by Elisabeth Schilling

Most of us are trying to make it to a place of material comfort where we are living in a way that feels honorable. Some of us feel we could have made better decisions in the past so that we might have figured out how to do such before the age we are now. I recently did a tarot card reading that I interpreted as mainly positive or neutrally-revelatory. But one of the cards stood out from the rest, and I really didn’t understand it. I was feeling positive that day, and, even though I have often felt unsure and longing in my recent travels despite all I have accomplished materially and psychologically, I have to say it wasn’t a card I was expecting: the III of Swords, which symbolizes disappointment and heartache, especially due to mental happenings. What could I feel heartache at? Perhaps I am disappointed that creating that place of safety and material comfort seems a long way down the road.

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Fuck This Sexist Shit by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Our whole lives, we are taught to be nice. To be considerate of others. To play fairly. To fess up when we mess up. Do unto others, turn the other cheek, respect your elders, obey the rules.

And for what? For what?

So some hyper-entitled coldhearted sneering rapist fuckheads can cheat and steal and lie and game the system until rape survivors are criminals and rapists are victims, while they rob us all blind, crush our freedoms, and rip away our future?

Fuck this sexist shit.

I am so done with this fucking misogynist society, where the president of the most powerful world empire mocks a rape survivor and laughs about assaulting women.

Continue reading “Fuck This Sexist Shit by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Falling Rocks by Natalie Weaver

My dad took me to see Bill Cosby in Columbus, Ohio when I was a kid. We used to listen to a record of him talking, which I could only pretend to find funny even then, but dad liked it and wanted to see him in person. The venue had really narrow seating, and although I could barely hear Cosby’s routine, I laughed for most of the show. I had brought a friend with me, who was heavier set, and she squirmed miserably the whole time, at one point looking pleadingly at me and whispering, “I’m trying to get comfortable.” Now, he’s in the slammer, and I get a little ill every time I think of Pudding Pops.

Not too long ago, Uncle Frank died. He terrorized three generations of women in my family. My mom was a little girl when he exposed himself behind a door jam, so that all she could see was his ghostly pale member protruding through the open walkway. She would laugh when she told the story but reminded us to stay clear of him. He was regarded as a family clown, but on his death bed, as my mom put it, he finally “got her.” As she sat at the edge of his bed to bid him farewell, his toes wriggled contentedly into her buttocks. He died with a smile on his face. We laugh, but it isn’t funny. Who knows what he did on his free time?

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I Believe Dr. Blasey Ford by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette

I had a completely different post that I was going to submit for my FAR contribution this month, but that went out the window on Thursday September 27^th with the Supreme Court Justice Nomination hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford. And with the Friday’s senate committee’s vote to allow for Brett Kavanaugh to be one step closer to being sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice, I am reminded once again how important our work here on Feminsmandreligion.com is. It has put a spotlight on the pervasive and pernicious rhetoric that surrounds sexual violence, toxic masculinity, and hatred.

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The Great Seal: Yom Kippur and The Ancient Practice of Making Incantation Bowls by Jill Hammer

The liturgy of Yom Kippur states: “On Rosh haShanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed: who will live and who will die, who by fire and who by water…” This prayer refers to a legend mentioned in the Talmud, in which the righteous are written in the book of life while the wicked are written in the book of death (and those of us who fall in-between get our own book of “in between” people.). During the High Holiday season Jews pray again and again to be written in the book of life, but by the end of Yom Kippur the language has changed: we pray to be “sealed” in the book of life. But what is this “sealing”?

This season, as part of my sabbatical writing project, I have been studying the magical practices of Mesopotamia in the 6^th-8^th centuries. One fascinating example of these practices is the making of “incantation bowls.” This ritual, done by Jews as well as Christians and Mandaeans, involves inscribing a ceramic bowl with a spell of protection or healing, and then burying it under a threshold or in the corner of a home. The words frequently are written in a spiral or other pattern, and sometimes include an image of a chained demon at the bottom of the bowl. Typically the spells invoke divine and angelic names against demonic forces. Sometimes the bowls even speak of “divorce”—particularly, divorcing the demon Lilith and sending her away. Most typically, the bowls use the language of “sealing”—i.e. sealing demons out of a home. Continue reading “The Great Seal: Yom Kippur and The Ancient Practice of Making Incantation Bowls by Jill Hammer”

Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd

My grandparents and mother at their home in 1929. In 1929, my grandmother wrote the word “HOME” in resounding letters across the bottom of a photo of a herself and my grandfather, smiling lovingly and confidently, with my infant mother propped in between them on a rattan chair. Within a few years the Great Depression stole that house, rendering them desolate and homeless, cutting a psychic wound so deep that it never healed.

I recently found the photo and thought of our family’s ancestors who, millennia ago in Old Europe, worshipped the Goddess in peaceful, egalitarian societies. Then and there, as in so many cultures outside modern western societies, “home” was a sacred place. As discovered by Marija Gimbutas and others, small statues of the Goddess were frequently found by the ovens inside family dwellings, and temples included rooms for both sanctuaries and workshops for making bread and weaving cloth. Houses and temples were extensions of one another.

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Pig/Sow – Animal Spirit Guide by Judith Shaw

Pigs, who were called boars in the wild, were the first animals to be domesticated. Pig domestication occurred about 9,000 – 10,000 years ago in two places – central China and Neolithic Anatolia in modern day southwestern Turkey.

Around 7,000 years ago when the Anatolians moved into Europe with their domestic animals and plants, they interacted with the indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and facilitated an interbreeding of their domestic pig and the local wild boar. The European swine descends from this interbreeding.

The mythical and cultural associations assigned to Pig in all its forms is very contradictory – sacred and beneficial to some, demonic and unclean to others. For our purposes here, we will concentrate on the positive associations. Continue reading “Pig/Sow – Animal Spirit Guide by Judith Shaw”

The Cost by John Erickson

Brett Kavanaugh is a piece of shit.

KavaNope

There, I said it. I know that we are supposed to “use our words” or “take the high road” but I no longer can. I am completely and totally done with the fact that it is Sunday night and I sit here wondering whether or not our Democracy will be around by the end of the week.

If you are like me, you have found yourself, more times than one I am guessing, watching the news, mouths agape, mind in disbelief, and your heart heavy with grief and sadness. While these great travesties occur, I find myself wondering what is the cost? How many children must be locked in cages? How many women must come forward with accusations of sexual assault and rape? How many more people must accuse the President of harassment and assault? How many more anonymous op-eds and faulty promises must be made before we finally all see that the real cost, is that these great travesties themselves (too many to recall here) are what it really takes to take down imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Continue reading “The Cost by John Erickson”

EcoJustice and Our Relationship with God by Gina Messina

Version 2 This semester I am teaching the course EcoJustice and chose Sallie McFague’s A New Climate for Theology as our foundational text. Something I greatly appreciate about McFague is that she continually calls us to radically redefine our understanding of the Divine and of our roles as human beings — fundamental questions that could easily lead to an existential crisis as one student reminded me.

My class and I ponder these questions, discussing our own interpretations of God, why we exist, what it means to pray, and understandings of salvation. Not surprisingly, many of us have an anthropocentric theology — one that puts ourselves at the center. We are so focused on what we need from God, we forget to ask what God needs from us. Continue reading “EcoJustice and Our Relationship with God by Gina Messina”