It was Halloween and I was watching, "The Goddess Remembered." and Charlene Spretnak was speaking to how the Patriarchy is built on fear. There is this underlying fear of Chaos, and so everything has to be Hierarchically ordered, and everyone and everything must have (and keep.) it's place; Lest Chaos Sweep away the veneer of Civilization. Now that's not a direct quote, but I think I have captured the thought well enough, and for some reason, I really heard it that night, it really resonated with me on some level; and felt right.

A few weeks later I was watching Athens: The Dawn of Democracy on PBS, and the Narrator, Historian Bethany Hughes, mentions that women where not only excluded from the Democracy but where thought to be susceptible to possession by spirits, and where thus Veiled. It's a custom I had always believed had come from further east, but appears to have been born in Greece. I believe we can see Echo's of this fear in The Bacchae - by Euripides. It's something I guess I've always been loosely aware of, but never really thought about just how worked out in the world. I remember being taught that a bride of the period would be given a string of prayer beads, so that if any evil spirits approached they would be distracted by their compulsion to count the beads, but because they could not count to the sacred number 7, they would have to begin over and again.

I think the Two go hand in Hand - Fear of Nature and Fear of Women, because birth links women inseparably to nature, IMHO at least. I simply can't imagine how one could push a little one out of her own womb, and ever again question if she is indeed part of nature. Not to mention the reiteration of the lesson, each time the little one nurses, no?

A man, however, can pretend to himself that he is somehow separate, even superior to nature. That is the very essence of our vision of Mans Struggle Against Nature. That Nature is a Chaos, that man must wrest the treasures from; if civilization is to continue. Rather than seeing her as a Mother we must learn to live in harmony with if we are both to prosper, mother and children.

Surely Enheduanna saw the germ of this Dis-ease in the mind of man, when she wrote her poem of Innana and Mount Ebb. Which Brings us to our Cards today. For if the Story of Mt Ebb, is the first appearance of that idea that Nature can be Mastered, that the Goddess can be rendered a demure servant of man, and thus the world into a tame and well ordered garden. As represented by the Prince of Swords, the Poet and Artist in Mel's deck.

It's a dream that is bought at a terrible Price, based as it is on a denial of a fundamental part of ourselves. I've noted before how the King of Swords is the Tax collector of the Tarot, and we see and pay the taxes of that denial in the obsession with control that must be part of this vision.

Think about this if you will - at the end of the day I believe it can be argued that it was the Taxes of Fear, the tremendous waste of resources that might have been put into useful work, but where expended on scrutinizing and controlling every aspect of life that caused the Soviet Union to Implode, that is even now choking the life out of the North Korean state?

Yet If man is to Master Nature, he can never relax his grip on the reigns. If nations pay our Tax's in resources and effort wasted of control in public life, privately we all pay them in our homes, in the inherent distortion of the relationships between men and women, (no matter how individually loving) in the context of the obsessive denial and devaluing of the Feminine, that is part of this package. Personally, I feel so very lucky - as a man - to live in the West today, in a moment when this Paradigm is at least being challenged, and women are so much more free to be themselves. To me accomplished women, writers, teachers, artists, and scientists are infinitely more attractive than women where allowed to be in the past. I can't imagine how men lived with-in the trap themselves. I have no sympathy for the men that still champion this limiting vision.

We also see the taxes of this vision, in our bizarre Soul Blind paradigm, that dismisses what we know with-in ourselves, and holds up as the ONLY source of truth that which can be proven from outside ourselves, and thus we are led by people many of whom deny the existence of their own souls. In Science and Academia if not (officially) in politics. It's a terrible price to pay, for a dream of Paradise, a dream is certainly at odds with reality as we know it today. Have we, I wonder, since we set out on this path, since we turned away from Enheduanna's warning all those millennia ago, found ourselves one step nearer too Paradise.

As always I look forward to your thoughts, Ama tu ANKI, BB.

Divination:Active, Analytical, Authoritative, Commanding, Controlled. Excellent Councilor. Just. Professional.

Reversed: Calculating, Cold, Cruel. Impersonal, Unjust, Lacking Compassion. Malicious.

As always, I look forward to your thoughts.

Ama tu ANKI, BB.

ATT Card of the Week.