I once read that when the idea of god first came into existence and when god first had power, she was feminine. But she was not called “god,” she was a supreme being.
A supreme being that represented everything that came to be understood as feminine. Fertility, birth, life, growth, nurture. People watered their lands and buried their newborn’s placenta in the earth and she would reward them with flourishing crops, good harvest, sunshine and rain.
She was everything they needed for their agriculture to grow. She represented the promise of a future that would prove fruitful. She gave not a lot but it was equal for everyone.
As time went on, she was lost and replaced by a man. Where she was everything that guaranteed a future, he was everything that guaranteed a test of survival. He replaced her with himself, he was judging, he was powerful, he could change your fate from rags to riches (or so he had you believe because that’s what the system wanted you to believe.) He was all-knowing but his knowledge didn’t exempt you from the trials and tribulations you would suffer which were only there to give you a better future and to ensure your hard work pays off. He gave a lot but only to some.
Slowly, the people, that once relied on the supreme being who was life herself, changed. Most became like him. Cold, calculating, cunning, distant. Looking for ways to get everything out of you while doing nothing themselves. Taking the credit when it is something truly remarkable. Why else would god stand by and watch wars? So he can test you, of course. Why else would god punish you with diseases? So he can give you a cure, of course.
They also told me god is merciful. I am supposed to get on my knees, bend over and beg for dominion at his feet (where have I heard this before?). Is it mercy or sadistic? Is it a form of his power: cruelly watching all that he can provide but not providing it? I think he needs the existence of those weaker and vulnerable than him so he can continue to feel and exercise his power.
What is power if there’s no one beneath him? Will he survive without us? Does he exist without us?
Some have tried to replace him but it is so hard to evade him. How else will they sell the false promise of delayed gratifications and a futile vision of an afterlife for the sufferings experienced now? No one is cognizant of the monster they’ve created.
It does not surprise me that it is his wrath and anger that is more famous instead of his claims of love. His love is supposed to be 70 times greater than that of a mother’s but I find that hard to believe: a mother whose body changes, bleeds, wrecks itself open for you, comparable to the love of this cold being.
What does he change? What does he bleed? Not himself. Never himself. He relies on the opportunities of “sacrifice” he gifts us. These sacrifices become exemplars of the love, chances and blessings he provides us. Is it even love if it is contingent on someone’s suffering and torment?
It is all a pile of make-believe and folklore. But as I see men in positions of power, I see everyone else suffer. I see so much wrong and it pains me to say this but they’ve successfully used his name and ploys enough for their own agendas that they can never rid of him (he is them).
It does not escape me that the more he and his men wreak havoc on the world, it is her life that suffers. Earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, rain, diseases, poverty. I can go on to list how they make her bleed. She could already be dead. She probably is. She was never fragile but they destroyed her enough that perhaps there only exists a hollow shell of what she was, disrupted by her own creations (did she create it all or did they create it all?)
When I hear tales of the origins of life, I scoff at his. He creates a man (of course) and fashions a woman out of him. Already a metaphor for how it becomes: a woman is a spare collation of his parts. Then I think of how she created.
It is such an old story I heard so long ago that I can barely remember it (just like her) because he has been trying to drive her out but as much as he wants, she still lingers faintly. It starts as a story of pining: she was the sky and she was also the land. The land yearned for the sky and the sky yearned for the land, time passes and the craving only grows. One day, the love was so full of longing that the sky created a drop of water out of the tortured predicament of the two. It was a tear, symbolizing the tragedy of the land and the sky: together forever yet forever apart. The drop fell to the land and the land changed.
It drank it, it worshipped it. It slipped into her valleys, changing and making, growing and shaping until the land did start creating. She was overjoyed because finally, the proof of her love existed. Her love for the sky and her land (she was both). Her love only created more until it became life as know it (before he replaces her).
So tell me again how the stories are the same when the foundations are on unequal grounds. Out of boredom, he creates a man and from his parts, a woman. Out of love, she creates the start of life as we know it.
We already know how this ends: he has been erasing her until she has all but disappeared (just like all women in history do). He is enabling us to chase his kind of power. I wonder if it will lead to the annihilation of all those who created and they will turn into nothing as theorized by the great philosophical conundrum.
But I am willing to bet on something: she will endure and survive — god and those who created him will not.
