im not a wiccan but im a psychic reader and i also read tarot

Hmm Ruth still deactivated? Well in an effort to keep the thread going I found some interesting Goddess religion information. I will post it with credits.

Although Adam, Eve, and a nasty serpent define images of origin in this culture, historical, mythological, and archaeological evidence indicates:

* a male-oriented view of divinity can claim only about 5000 years of history.
* female deities were worshipped at least 7000 bce, thousands of years before Abraham served as prophet of Yahweh, and some say as far back as 30,000 bce (based on Upper Paleolithic figurines, cave paintings, and other archaeological finds in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa).

The Goddess would have been thought of as the original creator (since this makes sense as a female role) and as patroness of sex and reproduction. These early social and religious structures, when acknowledged to have existed, have traditionally been dismissed as "fertility cults."

SERPENTS

The serpent of Genesis was a deity in its own right, revered in the Levant for at least 7000 years before Genesis was written. Trees and gardens were involved in these early religions also, with no associations concerning guilt, sin, disobedience, or unpleasantness.

The serpent’s divine association has been insistently (and hopefully) interpreted as phallic, but the serpent was revered as female in the Near and Middle East (based on Sumerian and Babylonian texts, artifacts from Crete). (Did pre-dynastic Egyptians flee to Crete in 3000 bce with their belief in the cobra goddess?)

In ancient myths, the female deity was often symbolized as a serpent or dragon. The picture of the cobra as symbol of mystic insight and wisdom is used as a hieroglyphic sign signifying goddess, and it precedes the name of any goddess in Egyptian writing.

THEORIES OF EVOLUTION

Previous theorizing as to what happened, how did the shift to male deities occur, include the so-called "big discovery" which assumes that the ancients were in awe of reproduction (Hebrew and Aramaic terms for "magic" derive from words meaning serpent). But eventually people came to realize men’s role in reproduction. Lately this theory has been seen as absurd since these same early peoples were animal breeders.

Actually, sporadic invasions from the north seem to be responsible. During the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age came the violent entry, massacres, and territorial conquests of the cattle-herding Indo-European or Indo-Aryan tribes with their own concepts of light and good vs. dark and evil, and worshipping a male storm god often conceived of as residing high on a mountain and blazing fire (volcanos?). (To some extent also, Semitic sheep-and-goat-herders from the south also invaded.)

These invaders either subjugated and suppressed, absorbed, or eliminated goddess worship. Male became valued above female, kings and priestly classes were established. In these new religions, goddesses/women were more likely to be associated with darkness/evil. Sometimes, as with the Greeks invaded by the Indo-Europeans between the 14th and 12th centuries bce (Homer’s "Achaeans"), the female was symbolically included into male god myths, but as reduced and conquered. Here the patriarchal gods marry instead of exterminate the goddesses indiginous to the land they conquered.

The Hebrews retain a shady memory of the mythic battle between Yahweh and the primordial serpent, Leviathan, although this has mostly been removed from scriptures; but see Job 26:13, Psalms 104, 74. Leviathan was known in northern Canaanite texts as the foe of the storm god Baal at least as early as the 14th century bce (var. Lotan, Lawtan, and Lat = goddess in Canaanite).

This mythic battle of male antropomorphic god and serpentine goddess emerges indirectly again in the Greek myth of Heracles/Hercules killing the serpent-dragon Ladon, said to be guarding a sacred fruit tree of a goddess.

Other Greek indications of cultural dominance include Athena born from the head of Zeus so that the male takes the role of creator (and Zeus is one of the few Greek gods never appearing with a snake), and Aphrodite being born from the genitals of Kronos. The Amazons are worrisome, perhaps reflecting the memory of a goddess-worshipping people who fought the initial seizure?

In Hebrew texts, Yahweh advocates the destruction of the shrines to female deities, so they did continue to exist, attract fans, and offend the Levite priests who established male authority and revised circulating creation myths. The shrines themselves probably involved a priestess who would give divine revelations of the goddess. The tree involved would probably have been a fig tree, the fig = "flesh and fluid of Hathor the goddess" in Egyptian texts, and fig leaves are mentioned in the story of Adam and Eve, displaced, with the fruit they ate unspecified. There may have been a type of communion with the goddess involved in eating the sacred fruit. The snakes involved may have been used for their bites, known in some religions to be used like sacred mushrooms -- the venom acts like an hallucinogen, yielding mystical perception changes.

Works Consulted

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. NY: Penguin, 1964. Chapters 1 &3.

Condren, Mary. The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1989.

Eisler, Riane. "Our Lost Heritage: New Facts on How God Became a Man." Writing About the World. Ed. Susan McLeod et al. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. 550-555.

Leeming, David, and Jake Page. Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine. NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Pub., 1976.

Sept. 15, 5:13 a.m. EDT — Full Harvest Moon. Traditionally, this designation goes to the full moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal (fall) Equinox. The Harvest Moon usually comes in September, but (on average) about every three or four years it will fall in early October. At the peak of the harvest, farmers can work into the night by the light of this moon. Usually the full Moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the U.S., and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice — the chief Indian staples — are now ready for gathering.
Shine On Harvest Moon
By Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth (1903)


Shine on, shine on harvest moon
Up in the sky,
I ain't had no lovin'
Since January, February, June or July
Snow time ain't no time to stay
Outdoors and spoon,
So shine on, shine on harvest moon,
For me and my gal.

I'm off to my tarot card meeting.

Energy is the knight of wands and the tower. Creativity and a spiritual awakening. The truth shall be known.

JB

Anyone have a spell to ward off crazy women? I need one.

Got a stalker now do ya? There are spells that aid in protection of one from another but you might also want to contact the authorities if it is actually becoming a problem.

I'd like to know where Ruth went ??????

Unknown. She might come back because she deactivated once before and said it was due to computer problems. Its just this time its been longer.

You think someone can use their tarot cards to find out what's up?

I am also wiccan. nice to meet you.

I feel like everybody, christian or other should respect everybody elses spiritual or religious beliefs. No need to judge or try to have a debate on who's right.

Hi Lilith and welcome. I like your nick by the way. I am Pagan/Wiccan friendly though not actively practicing. Feel free to post or bring up any discussion that you would like. We are not picky here in the least.

LILITH

Lilith is the most important of a small collection of named female demons in Jewish legend. Historically, she is actually older than Judaism (at least Judaism as defined as a post-restoration phenomenon). Her earliest appearance is probably in ancient Sumer. Although it is far from certain, she may be a minor character in a prologue to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the ancient world she also sometimes appears in magical texts, amulets, etc., intended to thwart her activities. She appears once in the Bible (Isaiah), in a context that associates her with demons of the desert, and again in some Dead Sea Scroll passages clearly based on the Isaiah reference.

We see somewhat more of her in late Roman/early medieval Judaism. She appears frequently on prophylactic magical bowls. In this context, she is clearly associated with childbirth (e.g. as a threat), and perhaps also as a succubus against which men need protection. In these bowls she is often countered by invoking the powers of her nemesis angels: Snvi, Snsvi, and Smnglof (we don't know what vowels to use with these names, but presumably they were intended to be pronounceable). She also shows up in the Talmud, and is clearly linked with the demonic world. Here also, her role as succubus begins to take clear shape.

Somewhere between the eighth and tenth centuries, CE, she makes an appearance in a satirical work entitled the Alphabet of Ben Sira. It is here that she is first given what has become her most famous persona: the first wife of Adam (before Eve). In this story, she is created at more or less the same time as Adam, and, as was Adam, out of the ground. Because of this she tries to assert her equality -- an assertion which Adam rejects. Refusing to conform to Adam's desires, she escapes from Eden, and is subsequently replaced by the more subservient Eve (who has less claim to equality, since she was made out of Adam's side). Having escaped Eden, Lilith takes on her renowned role as baby-stealer and mother of demons. She also promises to leave babies alone who are protected by amulets with the names of the three angels mentioned above.

While it is true that there was a rabbinic tradition that Adam briefly had another wife before the creation of Eve (Genesis Rabbah), there is a great deal of doubt as to whether Lilith had any connection at all to this first wife of Adam story prior the publication of the Alphabet. The satirical nature of the Alphabet casts further doubt on the authenticity of this Lilith connection. But whatever its origins, the connection between Lilith and the first Eve seems to have struck a chord with Jewish folk imagination and it is now an inexorable part of those traditions. It has been able to function both as a 'woman's story' (in which Lilith is a role model for uppity women), and as a patriarchal story (in which we see the dire consequences of being an uppity woman). As a midrash, it also helps to solve a problem that arises from the fact that Genesis 1 has mankind created "male and female," but when we get to Genesis 2, Adam seems to be alone and in need of a partner.

Kabbalistic literature is occasionally aware of the Alphabet story, but more frequently not. Here Lilith usually appears as a partner for Samael (=Satan), and as the chief feminine expression of the Left (evil) Emanation. In some passages, she participates in the temptation of Eve/Adam, and, after the expulsion, she serves as succubus to Adam, generating hoards of demons from his seed. She is also the personification of temptation, and is for all intents and purposes identified with the woman Folly from the early chapters of Proverbs. In one story, she actually serves as consort to the Holy One.

She also appears in Christian iconography. Most late medieval and renaissance paintings of the temptation of Adam and Eve have portrayed the serpent as having a woman's head and often torso as well. This is usually referred to by art historians as 'Lilith,' but there is no Jewish story which easily corresponds to the pictorial representations (the one exception is Bacharach, 'Emeq haMelekh 23c-d, but it is confusing, and problematic at best). I am led to presume that there were Christian versions of the Lilith myth in which the identification between her and the Serpent were made explicit. Unfortunately, none of these versions have survived in either text or known folklore.

Lilith enjoyed something of a revival in literature beginning in the mid 19th century. Usually she represents the feminine dark side (the part that men subliminally fear). Carl Jung made use of her as prime expression of the anima in men (the suppressed feme within), and the best monograph on her still belongs to one of Jung's disciples (Siegmund Hurwitz).

She has also been embraced by many modern, particularly Jewish, feminists. Based mainly, or entirely, on the Alphabet, she is presented as the proto-feminist, willing to sacrifice even the paradise of Eden as the necessary cost of freedom and equality. Of course, her role as baby-stealer is usually down-played (or assigned to a patriarchal layer of the tradition). Some neo-pagan groups have taken up her cause as well, either accepting her dark nature as part of larger sacred reality, or finding the erotic goddess within after removing the clutter of what they argue are patriarchal and monotheistic condemnations.

Finally, she has a place in vampire lore either as the first and most powerful of the vampires, or at least as their queen. She is sometimes presented as either the daughter or the consort of Dracula. In her role as succubus, she has, of course, particular control of nightmares and erotic dreams. She also rules a horde of other succuba and incubi.

-Alan Humm

Hi guys.....sorry for the disappearing act. I needed some time away. Thanks so much for keeping this thread going. I found this poem to Nyx, the Goddess of the Night on the net. I don't know who the author is, but I really like it.

In war you are our friend,
in love you are the shield,
of Day you are the end,
in Night you are revealed

Of light you are the absence
of theft you are the shade
the darkness is your presence
of you we are afraid

So goddes Nyx, name of naught
though nothing you may seem
O goddess Nyx, we are taught
You bring about the Dream

The Dream may be what Cronos knows
or perhaps it's from your son-
Sleep is he, with Death he goes-
your bidding then is done.

You are of old, of ancient days
and thus you render awe
and from Zeus and others praise
for Chaos is your law.

We understand needing personal time, just give us some warning next time.

Welcome back Ruth! We pretty much kept the thread going.

I saw this and I had to share:
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1007/zerowiccans.html

I think someone is still living in the middle ages.

TY!

I am pretty sure that is a spoof website. I have seen them before through work and that's got all the indicators of being fake. However, Baptists do tend to be the denomination, more often than not, to lead similar crusades against anything non-Christian.

I didn't think it was real, but I was floored that someone could even think that way.

Yes that was my impression, a spoof article. It does however, still occur. Wiccans can be singled out as any non-Christian belief will be. They tend to enjoy lumping them all together as "Satanism". The element of personified evil in the form of a devil or satan does not even exist in Wiccan spirituality. Thats where it becomes obvious that it is clearly a projection of fear or a failure to research.