III. Spare Wings (Apples and The Fall)
Hermeneutics is the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible; it can be understood as a search for hidden meaning in texts. Christian feminist theology seeks to restore the lost female players of Biblical times. Innovator of the concept and feminist theologian, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza believes reconstruction of biblical-historical theology as feminist theology is necessary because as the world’s dominant religion, it is impossible not to reckon with it. As long as “…the gospel, biblical texts, and traditions [are] formulated and codified by men, they will remain oppressive to women.” Reading the Bible critically, a hermeneutics of suspicion guides one in cleansing the text from its hetero-sexist patriarchal overlay.(1)
Fiorenza’s hermeneutics of suspicion is a revelation, and the following is a hermeneutical investigation of Genesis and The Fall. I often articulate myself as rejecting Christian doctrine, but I am actually interested in restoring the lost Gnostic beginnings – Gnosticism as self-knowledge. Understanding the divine as emanating from within, there is no middleman. What is later translated by church patriarchs as sin, is understood as ignorance from a gnostic perspective. Sin marks you forever, but ignorance is something you can correct. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, among others, has been recovered and confirms this.(2)
I both reject and revise the story of Genesis when I understand it as a documentation of the demotion of the divine feminine. When I read Genesis, I do not hear (as Sunday school taught me) a declaration about how it has always been, but a curse for how it is going to be for women during the patriarchal era. As the handmaiden of colonialism, the creation narrative of Genesis impacts Christians and non-Christians alike in unconscious ways. I agree with Fiorenza on the need to correct the record. This is critical work and I love the elevation of it through the hermeneutical lens. I do not have to identify as Christian to participate. Unraveling Genesis has been a lifelong thread for me.
Spare Wings: Apples and The Fall
There is time, there are places;
there is time, so many faces.
There are needs, so much desire-
and only seeds survive this fire.
In the beginning there was the word
and this was the beginning, how absurd.
Flesh was the beginning, massing matter to form-
from one womb to another, mysterious transformation.
Is my flesh dirty, is it obscene?
What do the boys see when they look at me?
Is my flesh dirty, is it obscene?
That word meant holy before Latin or Greek.
But 3,000 years of lexigraphic change
left my sisters’ bodies in a state of defamation.
A prostitute was a priestess, that’s what that word meant:
oracular vision, Mary Magdalene.
Was Mary dirty, was she obscene?
St. Augustine thought so, but Jesus never did.
Don’t you know the ones who talk now, talk too much?
Don’t you know the ones who come out, don’t know quite what for?
Don’t you know the ones who call out, this is a surprise –
didn’t quite open their eyes soon enough.
Is my flesh dirty, is it obscene?
Stop, stop, stop.
What makes the apple fall to the ground?
The desire to be eaten – the action that sets the seed free.
Free.
Conclusion
My “muse-ings” examine the dualistic nature of human thought and deliver a veritable theogony of Goddesses and ancient bad girls from the Egyptian Hathor to modern day Xena Warrior Princess. My focus is on re-wilding and the modern-ancient soul. I work best with the whimsicality of the ukulele, a kind of modern-day harp, to tug at our cultural amnesias and personal mythologies. More importantly though, these songs are personal mantras and a kind of myth-building for my own healing in a time bereft of the divine feminine. A living archetype has the ability to activate human potential. Calling these ancient goddesses and archetypes to life in song is a deep aspect of my spiritual practice. It reconnects me to my lost birthright.
Layne Redmond shares a similar experience in which music, through drumming, led her to connect with the world’s oldest traditions of women in spiritual agency.(3) Her story is powerful and took her on a lifelong journey. I connect deeply with that, my own search sparked by the Homeric reference to the Cow-eyed Hera over 25 years ago. With so much lost, where else do we start but with ourselves? The temple was introduced in pre-patriarchal East Asia 6,000 years ago as a “female house of music.”(4) Sing now Muses, I shall remember you and a new song, as well.(5)
(End of the series)
- Elisabeth, Schussler Fiorenza, “In Search of Women’s Heritage,” in Weaving the Visions, Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ, editors (New York, NY: Harper One, 1989), p. 31.
- Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 64.
- Redmond, 18.
- Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “The Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea, & Her Mythology,” in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, ed. Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (California: Mago Books, 2018), 274.
- This is the last line of Demeter’s Hymn. Helen P. Foley, trans., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994), line 495, 26.
(Meet-mago-contributor) Jen Taylor
Bibliography
Angeles, Arrien. The Nine Muses: A Mythological Path to Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2000.
Foley, Helen P., trans. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Hwang, Helen Hye-Sook. “The Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea, & Her Mythology.” In Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, 251-275. California: Mago Books, 2018.
Mayor, Adrienne. The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979.
Redmond, Layne. When the Drummers Were Women. Brattleboro, VT: Echo Point Books & Media, 1997.
Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. “In Search of Women’s Heritage,” in Weaving the Visions, Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ, editors. New York, NY: Harper One, 1989.
Olga Sohmer, Olga. “The Mythic Cow and the Dairy Industry: An Archetypal Activist Exploration,” Olga Rose Sohmer, December 16, 2015. http://olgasohmer.com/on- mythic-cows-and-the-dairy-industry-an-archetypal-activist-exploration/.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.