|
Dear
Readers,
You’re invited to visit my website www.lynnesims.com
each time you receive my Albeit newsletter. It contains
helpful and humorous information throughout its pages, which
include:
·
Home Page
· Albeit Archive
· Resources
· Vital Statistics
· FYI (for your information)
· About Lynne
· Giggles Page, and
· Poems. |
I’m
especially interested in your feedback, which you can provide
by clicking on the Email
Lynne tab provided for your convenience. My goal is to
add new material to each page every week; and I will greatly
appreciate your recommending my website and Albeit
newsletters to your friends, family, and peers. Thank you!
And now,
on with the latest edition…
‘Copts’
and Robbers
What started
in Egypt, the African land of humans’ origin, more than
4,000 years ago has morphed into the world’s religions
of today.
The Sun
(Re or Ra) was our ancient ancestors’ first deity. Sun’s
only enemy was darkness, which occurred when Sun disappeared
below the horizon each night. But Sun was not allowed to rest
after descending, as ‘his’ job was to fight the
darkness ‘underground’ and emerge victorious with
each new dawn of day.
As time
passed, Sun ‘spat out’ the children of Earth,
and a subsequent cadre of nine lesser gods and goddesses were
born in their imaginations. They ruled the air, moisture,
sky, earth, fertility, the underworld, crops, death, and darkness—everything
associated with daily life. The gods and goddesses were said
to be able to merge with each other, and thus began the pantheon
of many gods, both ‘national’ and local.
Isis,
whose name meant ‘Queen of the throne,’ was worshipped
as the archetypal wife and mother— the Mother Goddess
of fertility and life. She was relegated to second chair in
the orchestration of early deities, subjugated by Re, the
supreme Sun God. They were later joined by her incestuous
boy-child when her earthly husband was murdered. This son
was subsequently proclaimed the God-King (half deity, half
human). Descendants of the God-King known as Pharaohs became
the ‘bigger than life’ rulers of ancient Egypt,
and demanded to be worshipped by ‘ordinary’ humans.
For thousands
of years, homo-sapiens exited and re-entered the fertile Nile
delta, and the mixture of loam, home, and homos became richer
and more diversified. The bouquet of cultures, beliefs, and
allegiances changed with each passing tourist, season, and
advancement of intelligence.
Members
of a people descended from these ancient Egyptians were labeled
as ‘Copts’ (ca. 1520) by the Monophysite Christian
church originating and centered in Egypt. Jews of The Old
Testament, and eventually Muslims with their Koran, recognized
only God and Allah in their monotheistic styles of worship.
By this
time, the originally enthroned Egyptian ‘trinity’
of Father (Re), Mother (Isis), and Son (Horus) had been replaced
by the triple-male figure heads Christians worship today—Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost all rolled into one. Jews and Muslims
however stuck to their polytheist God. ‘Mother,’
although still honored but not necessarily worshipped, was
ultimately replaced by the illusive ‘Holy Ghost’
of the early Coptic Church.
Why
was the female gender side-lined in most of the world’s
ensuing major religions? Too busy birthing and nursing the
off-spring? Too unpredictable and mysterious? Lack of worldly
education? Too ‘magically’ intuitive? Too ethereal,
rather than ‘reasonable’? Scapegoats for men
to avoid the responsibilities of this life? (As one Burmese
girl explained in a recent documentary, the father’s
job is to prepare for the after-life, and it is the mother’s
job to prepare for this life. Ring any bells, ladies? This
separation of ‘roles’ could certainly be perceived
as consistent with the pie charts
on my Home Page, i.e., delegation of the world’s
working hours and imbalance of the distribution of the world’s
income. Apparently, it pays to be a man and always has!)
And yet
in congregations (or on behalf of their religions), don’t
women do all the things that men don’t want to do? Are
not women of the major religions excluded from decisions affecting
their lives—directly or indirectly? Are women allowed
the same privileges as men; or are females just used, excused,
excluded, and abused by the rules perpetuating the supremacy
of men? Must women and girls eternally defend and alter themselves
to please the man-gods? The original one God, Sun, was and
still remains no respecter of persons, and will one day snuff
the lives of both genders without the slightest differentiation,
even if his-story may depict otherwise.
Who are
the robbers of dignity bestowed upon women? When and where
and why was the sacred formula of honoring both genders altered
beyond recognition? Is there a way for women to reinstate
our queenly positions and place ourselves on the thrones of
balanced partnership in perpetuating the holy human family?
Or is it too late already?
These
multiple questions have often been asked through whatever
medium was available to the questioners of such practices—most
recently The Da Vinci Code, a controversial book
and movie filled with Copts’ and robbers’ theories.
Perhaps
the greatest lesson to be learned from asking these questions
is that the human brain, once stretched to encase a new idea,
will never revert to the way it was before asking. The very
action of thinking is the rising sun of humanity’s potential
immortality. |
