The Advanced Class Down The Hall

Oh yeah?
I can see this is going to be a long day of writing for me. Where to begin?
"The emphasis of traditional paganism, in the vast majority of its forms across the globe, was to maintain the status quo. Recognize the cycles, keep them going, keep the tribe together and unified, keep the seasons going, keep the land fertile. Keep the king on his throne, the women in the kitchen, and the slaves in their hovels."
Uhuh.
"11 Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. 12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. 1 Tim.ch 2

1 Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. 2 Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these duties. " 1 Tim. Ch 6
Oh that zany St.Paul.
I bet this is what all those southern plantation owners quoted at each other so that they could breathe easy and go on to convert their African pagan slaves to the faith to save their souls and make them better workers.
I bet they were happier as pagans.
This is not a shot at my beloved priest, nor at the teachings of Jesus, which I, and many witches, revere as great wisdom. It is to show that from the first they were incompletely understood, and that even the earliest and most devout followers, nay, developers of the official Christian faith were not above warping it with their own biases.
I have read that Paul did not think of himself as "creating scripture" when he wrote his letters, that he did not imagine that those writings would become part of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity. I wonder if he would have been more careful, if he had known, to search his own heart to find the difference between the truth and the conditioning of the status quo of his own society, his own biases and attitudes that managed to carry through even such a revolutionary and transformative conversion experience as his was.
Would he? Or would he still say only "I've determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah and him crucified," and continue wrapping his interpretation of his messiah's teachings around the status quo he still maintained in his own mind, which he could not see because he placed his spirituality, his truth, outside himself.
Where is the personal development? What is the point? How can it be possible to be holy, to live a life which is truthful and whole, reconciled with God, ignoring ones own innermost experience of God? Dishonoring the divine within? We are to focus, if we look within at all, only on our hopelessly sinful natures, only on the negative. We are not to speak or to think of our own goodness, our own virtue. "Boast not of yourself, but of Christ"
We are to place all goodness, all virtue, all divinity on ONE man, one untouchable, perfect, fleshly being who lived once on the earth, who was the only human being ever worth anything, and the rest of us nothing but refuse to be consigned to the incinerator of hell if not for him, no matter what we do, how sincere and genuine our intent, our love for the divine or for each other. Ironically this is the same man who took all our sin, evil, and alienation upon himself so we would be free to experience God for ourselves. But we have to take it right back, reject the true gift of his salvation, and go back to wallowing in the consciousness of our evil and hopelessness.
Modern occultism’s emphasis on masculine/feminine duality is partly in recognition of the example we have been given of nature’s way of making magick, partly also a counter-statement to the duality of good/evil. Few things are ever so simple, and masculine/feminine duality is as much a childish oversimplification as good vs. evil.
I must remember that my priest has not the occult education to realize that when I speak in terms of masculine and feminine energies I am not necessarily speaking of male and female beings.
The masculine qualities are generally considered to be the linear, light, obvious, phallic, thrusting, penetrating dynamic forces of nature. Literal, rational, left brain, questing, hunting, conquering, ascending, outer, yang.
The feminine is considered to be the dark, cyclic, receptive, hidden, vaginal, surrendering forces. Intuitive, interpretive, right brain, creative, gathering, maintaining, descending, inner, yin.
Either of these energy forms can be used for good or ill, but are not inherently so in themselves. Neither of these are taken strictly literally, as it is recognized that male and female beings exhibit qualities commonly attributed to either gender in various different combinations. Two men or two women together can still enact the sacred drama of divine union by embodying those forces within themselves. Between positive and negative polarities all else is encompassed. They are two aspects of one thing. They can exist independently of each other, but each is still only half. When they join, something greater than the sum of its parts is created.
The point is that while they are recognized as different as night and day, one is not valued above the other. Though (alas) many of the feminine qualities I mention above have been villainized by conventional religious thinking. The insistence on associating evil with the feminine, via original sin, has been largely responsible not only for the retardation of the egalitarianism that could have emerged from the early Christian movement (perhaps if Paul had not been such a fucking misogynist, for example) but also the rejection of feminine sexuality which has caused repression, double standards and hypocrisy across the board.
Modern paganism revival, occultism, the new age movement, etc. are about reconciling the two estranged halves of the human psyche. A greater emphasis is placed on the sacred feminine because frankly women need a little something to counter centuries of being treated as chattel, getting told we are the devils gateway and being bullied and brainwashed into complicity with these attitudes. That shit really hurts, you know, and really has slowed down the development of humankind.
Absolutism denies all but itself, and represents only a tiny sliver of reality, a paper-thin layer of a multidimensional truth. Hows about some balance? Help others, but also help yourself. Love others, but also love yourself. Live in light, but do not fear the dark. Be rational and logical, but be prepared for that which defies logic. Honor God, and Goddess. Indulge when appropriate, abstain when appropriate. Have good sex at night, feed the hungry and clothe the naked by day. Why not? This is wholeness. Black and white are equal, but between them are infinite shades of grey, and all have their value, and none can be judged except in relation to the others.
All existence IS sacred, and by denying that we blind ourselves. All existence IS God, and therefore each of us is alienated from the divine only in our awareness. To deny the inner is to deny one half of the human relationship with God, and to deny that half is to make it no relationship at all, no matter who stands between to mediate.
4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
1 Tim. Ch 4
So there.