Healing the (false) Mesopotamian bad press
Post here your findings on how a bunch of dedicated scholars and mystics are trying to heal the bad press Mesopotamia has suffered by the ones who inherited from this great civilization, but did not acknowledge their sources.
It is with great delight and reverence that I start...
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Page 2:
"If we study the literature of the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians, we can no longer believe the description of pagan religion that has long been part of Western tradition, and is still often found in modern religious writing. Instead of capricious gods acting only in pursuit of their own desires, we meet deities concerned with the proper ordering of the universe, and the regulation of history. Instead of divine cruelty and arrogance, we find deliberation and understanding. Instead of lawlessness and violence, we see a developed legal system and a long tradition of reflective jurisprudence. Instead of immoral attitudes and behavior, we find moral deliberation, philosophical speculation and penitential prayer. Instead of wild orgiastic rites, we read of hymns, processions, sacrifices, and prayers. Instead of the benighted paganism of the Western imagination, cuneiform literature reveals to us an ethical polytheism that commands serious attention and respect".
The full reference of this book, which is born a classic and indispensable reading, is
Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. (1992) In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York, Fawcet Columbine. ISBN: 0-449-90746-5
All of us who love Mesopotamia have known deep in our hearts the veracity of Professor Frymer-Kenskyīs words. It is a privilege to share these thoughts with you and ... (why not?) to turn the tables round with lots of wit, sound data, scholarship, love, light and quiet laughter unto ... the less wise who donīt know of our true ways!!!
Yeah, we can be generous with... post-Mesopotamians.... simply because we know better and from the right interpretation of our sources!!!! Yeah, I am dancing with joy in cyberspace!!!
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
From the Book of Revelations to Luther
Perhaps the most damaging quote ever created to belittle an ancient civilization is the following:
"And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her foreband was a name written: Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and abominations of the Earth", from the Book of Revelation.
How can we attempt to understand such bunch of misogynist sentences, which do not hold water when compared with fact and historical evidence on Mesopotamia?
First and foremost, these lines of the Book of Revelation of the New Testament Bible, which associate Babylon with depravity of the senses and the iniquities of sex, should be understood within its context as the product of an unbalanced mystical vision of someone very much afraid of contacting his inner feminine, thus projecting upon them a full load of hatred and misogyny. It reflects the awe and fear of being absorbed by a stronger and more appealing, liberated culture and values. Because Mesopotamia, or better still, Babylon, was the New York City of ancient times, the place the world came to. Fantastic, exciting, full of its own dangers, but nevertheless, the cosmopolitan metropolis of antiquity before all others. Indeed, a city of seduction and a million surprises... for the daring and wise, not for those ridden by fear and anxiety... as our hypotetical mystic of the Book of Revelations.
The problem is that the damage of the ill-phrased and historically inaccurate bunch of sentences of the Book of Revelation did not stop there. When Luther attacked the Roman Church for her low moral standards, he also turned to the Whore of Babylon (see his Address to the German Nobility in 1520). Well, at least Luther can be excused for his lack of knowledge of historical Mesopotamia. He just quoted from the Bible and added his own views on the lazy nobility of his time. Nevertheless, Lutherīs ignorance and his misguided thoughs associating Mesopotamia to vice and depravity and women are, to say the least, criminal to the image of a great civilization.
My response:
It is only some 200 years that the modern world rediscovered tangible remains of Assyria and Babylon. Only in the last 40 years the wealth of Mesopotamian corpus of literature became available to bring to life a totally different view of a civilization that commands attention for her high moral values and standards. The Book of Revelation is thus historically inaccurate, and to say the least, the vision of someone who needed psychiatric treatment for his unbalanced visions. I will be generous and just add that this is a person who needs to contact the feminine in himself, instead of running away telling innacuracies about his insecurities aloud... for a bunch of equally unbalanced macho-boy types.
Thus, we can discard with a shrug ill-conceived formulations as the above.
How do I interpret the quotation of the book of Revelation?
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
Re: From the Book of Revelations to Luther
... and my version on the healing of this quotation:
1. 'The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour' - the woman is definetly a Goddess figure, dressed in purple and scarlet, which are colours associated to blood, life-force, passion and royal office. Scarlet and purple are also the colours of the Warrior Gods and Goddesses, indicating that Theirs is the power to use force to restore balances lost;
2. '... and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls' - again, symbolic of the high rank of the Lady dressed in Purple and Scarlet. She is, no doubt,a Sovereign ;
3. ' having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications' - the golden cup identifies the Lady with Siduri, the Veiled Inanna, Sacred Barmaid and Cup Bearer who knew of ecstatic drinks and was the Comforter of all who journeyed to the realms of Otherworlds mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This golden cup, which is defiled in the Book of Revelations, became later one of the holiest symbols of esoteric Christianity, the Grail. In a world where matter is completely divorced from the spirit, the hand of the Sacred Hierodule is seen as filthy, and sexuality equality despised;
4. ' And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH' - indeed, in the last 2,000 years any gnostic or mystery teaching suffered all sorts of persecutions: the last widely known initiate who went to the Underworld was Christ, and, contrary to Dumuzi, Tammuz, Osiris, we don't know WHO Christ met down below! Although it is in the Gospels that Christ himself said that after his death, the Holy Ghost would be the Teacher. The Way of the Holy Ghost is the Path of the Mystic and Revelation, the path which was fought so fiercely by fundamentalist Christianity with the systematic externination of the Gnostics, of the followers of Valentius, the Cathars, the Templars, the witch hunts and the unspeakable Inquisition, to name just a few.
Therefore, I propose that we read the inscription in the forehead of the Cup Bearer Dressed in Scarlet and Purple as the Lady of the Mysteries of Mind, Body and Soul, Utterly Unknown by the Unwise, Babylon the Great, Mother of Hierodules and Blessings of the Earth.
From the Depths and To the Heights to share in all spheres
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