By Victor M Fontane
The ancient lunar priestesses were called virgins. “Virgin” does not mean a woman who never had sexual relations with a man as the church says today. The Latin word “virgin” comes from the root “vir” which means strength, power, and powerful woman. It was applied to goddesses who were called virgins not for their purity, but for their vigor, for their independence.
Many women like Marie, Isis, Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, were called virgins, which was not a sexual reference. And all the great cultural heroes of the past, mythical or historical, were born of virgin mothers or powerful mothers: Osiris, Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Dionysus, Jesus;
all were affirmed as children of the Great Mother, because their power comes from her.
But religions, when they stopped being spiritual and became dogmas, tell a different, distorted story. And everyone has been wondering how a "virgin" can become pregnant.
Christians could not conceive of the Virgin Mary as a woman not dependent on man, that is, the notion that woman was born from the rib of man, so, they invented the idea of "conceived without sin" to denigrate sexuality and especially those women who did not submit to the patriarchy.
They have distorted religions meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched.
When Jeanne d'Arc, with her witch associations, called herself La Pucelle d'Orléans, "the young woman", "the Virgin", the word retained part of its original pagan meaning of a strong and harmonious woman.
And that is what is needed today, an encounter between man and woman without submission, but, the church, the conservatives, oppose it.
But the way out is not through radicalism, which only wants to replace the Pope with a Mama, a Franciscan with a Francisca. That would be deepening the patriarchy. In addition, the issue is not only about gender but also about classism, racism and other isms. That will be only possible from the community otherness.
We must recover the Great Mother, who is Pachamama or Cosmic Mother, as a giver of life, who together with Pachakamak or Cosmic Father, as a force of life, contain, sustain and maintain existence. We must get rid of religions and atheisms to recover spirituality.
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