Motherless House

This song that reminds me of driving around Salt Lake back in the day, as a real-life SLC Punk.

It dovetails nicely with this poem:

Motherless House
by Carol Lynn Pearson

I live in a Motherless house
A broken home.
How it happened I cannot learn.
When I had words enough to ask
“Where is my mother?”
No one seemed to know
And no one thought it strange
That no one else knew either.
I live in a Motherless house.
They are good to me here
But I find that no kindly
Patriarchal care eases the pain.
I yearn for the day
Someone will look at me and say,
“You certainly do look like your Mother.”
I walk the rooms
Search the closets
Look for something that might
Have belonged to her—
A letter, a dress, a chair,
Would she not have left a note?
I close my eyes
And work to bring back her touch, her face.
Surely there must have been
A Motherly embrace
I can call back for comfort.
I live in a Motherless house,
Motherless and without a trace.
Who could have done this?
Who would tear an unweaned infant
From its Mother's arms
And clear the place of every souvenir?
I live in a Motherless house.
I lie awake and listen always for the word that never comes, but might.
I bury my face
In something soft as a breast.
I am a child
Crying for my mother in the night.

http://notapostate.blogspot.com/2007/03/life-in-motherless-house.html

A Brief History of Mormon Feminism

A Brief History of Mormon Feminism
by Margaret Merrill Toscano

If feminism is defined as a concern with the status and equality of women and/or the questioning of gender roles, then feminism has always been a part of the Mormon religion and culture. Nineteenth-century Mormonism was radical in many ways and challenged the status quo of American culture at large, including the position and role of women. Joseph Smith's theology introduced a concept of a Mother God, acknowledged the power and equality of women, and gave them priesthood through the temple ritual, according to a number of scholars (see bibliography below). Although Mormon women in early Utah were the second group in the USA to receive the vote in 1870, which was only two months after Wyoming granted women this right, Utah women were actually the first to use their franchise and vote in an election.

Mormon women had other rights during the 19th century unknown to most women in the rest of the country: married women had the same legal rights as single women, including the rights to own property in their names, represent themselves in court, and win easy access to divorce. In the 19th century Mormon women were avid suffragettes who argued and fought for the rights of all women. They were in contact with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others in the national women's movement. Through the LDS women's organization, the Relief Society, Mormon women controlled their own money and buildings, organized a hospital and other charitable organizations (which, among other things, collected, stored, and distributed grain and other food supplies), supported home industries (such as silk farms), and ran a women's newspaper (the Women's Exponent, 1872-1914), which advocated female independence, education, and careers, and emphasized female leadership and spiritual gifts.

In the early 20th century Mormonism went through a redefinition in order to fit into mainstream American culture and rid itself of its polygamous and politically autonomous past, which had been seen by many as anti-American. In a conservative reaction to its own history, Mormonism attempted to shuck off those elements of its theology and practice which made it unacceptable to the larger culture, while still retaining enough of its uniqueness to set it apart as a religion with a divine and separate calling from the rest of Christianity in America. Among the things lost during this period were the concepts of women's spiritual gifts and their role as priestesses (a term used to define such women as Eliza R. Snow in the 19th century). Although women retained control of their own Relief Society organization until the early 1970s, they gradually lost the management of their own affairs and publications from the time of statehood in 1896 onward, along with their sense of independence. Ironically, the image of Mormon women as docile homemakers, a la June Cleaver serving jello to a smiling family in a 1950s sitcom, is just one of the many things Mormonism adopted from conservative American culture.

Influenced by the national feminist movement in the 1970s, Mormon women began to reclaim their history and to participate in women's groups as part of an attempt to redefine women's roles and opportunities in an LDS context. This is not to say that Mormon women did not participate in feminism during the first half of the 20th century.(more of this article to follow soon)

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Breaking Da Vinci Code News

official website -
http://www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/rosslyn.html

Today's breaking news videos -

ABC News

Da Vinci Code's Mystery Melody

Secrets revealed at 'Da Vinci Code' Church

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1114077983

AP's video story

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/228/popup/index.php?cl=2581801

The Rosslyn Stave Angel - Music Cipher

New Grail Book Released

From the Publisher:

Dr. Vern G. Swanson has produced a thought-provoking book on the topic of the Holy Grail and the bloodline of Jesus. His perspective on the subject has grown after reading nearly 400 books on the Holy Grail, and his 28 years of research on the topic. Going far beyond the mortally flawed best sellers, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code, his epic book will be applicable to both Mormon and non-Mormon audiences. It is certainly the most significant scholarly tome on the Holy Grail and the bloodline yet.

Click here for more info

Women's Prophetic Drumming Tradition: Ancient and Contemporary Female Shamanism in Biblical Traditions

Artist Phil Blank's illustration of the Jewish Deborah/Bee Goddesses, a possibly ecstatic group of women who played drums and were related to a bee cult that stretched from Egypt to Greece to India in the olden days. In this piece the artist contemplates mystic, ecstatic, musical, religious traditions connected to bees. According to Phil, this tradition was widespread across the Mediterranean and Asia Minor and may have included the Israelites via the prophetess Deborah (who's name, in Hebrew, is Bee). Text here is adapted from the Teruah-JewishMusic Blog by Jack Zaientz http://teruah-jewishmusic.blogspot.com/2008/09/phil-blank-lowest-of-low-and-jewish.html

Abstract: Through a combination of newly excavated artifacts and biblical textual evidence, scholars are reconstructing an ancient tradition of women’s spirituality known as “drum, dance, and song.” Mormon women are heirs to a tradition that stretches from the Bee Priestesses of Neolithic Anatolia and Crete to the later Bee Priestesses of ancient Israel and on through Mary Magdalene and early Christian sects. Mormonism contains a highly developed theology and practice of embodied spirituality, and the arts are an important aspect of the Restoration, inextricably intertwined with the Sacred Feminine.

Respondent DOE DAUGHTREY, M.A., doctoral candidate, religious studies, Arizona State University; member, Sunstone board of directors.

To download this session (MP3), or listen online - where you can also hear the response from Doe Daughtrey, M.A. (as well as Q and A from the audience) go to:
http://sunstonemagazine.com/audio/SL06124.mp3

To hear the sound of a frame-drum: turn on your speakers and right-click on this link to open a new window - http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Frame_Drum_loops

More frame drum sounds: right-click and select "open a new tab" here

To see the actual survival of this ancient female shamanic tradition caught on film (for the first and only time in history), watch FREE online, "Mystic Iran: The Unseen World,"
https://youtu.be/Omd_vYoWOK0 or order from Amazon.com

This session was opened with the music of the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble's Ancient Echoes: Music from the Time of Jesus and the Second Temple. (Listen to the full album, free, online):
https://youtu.be/vqxZ99SucPc?list=PLnzDhkD4GLGQzwSFwPfre67q-R8XFDrPY

Click on the pictures (below) to ENLARGE

Women’s Prophetic Drumming Tradition
Elizabeth Quick
Copyright 2006
All Rights Reserved

The Biblical record contains a well-developed musical lexicon demonstrating the importance of music to Biblical peoples.[1] “Artifacts and ancient texts reveal that the people of ancient Israel wove music into nearly every aspect of society.”[2] Instruments were used in various cultural contexts such as sacrifices, prophetic activity, celebration of victorious battles, and the transportation of the Ark of the Covenant.[3] Both male and female musicians were highly esteemed and music was an integral part of temple worship.[4]

The Book of Genesis credits Jubal with the invention of musical instruments, specifically the kinnor (a member of the harp family) and the ugav (a pipe, or wind instrument).[5] The first mention of music after the Deluge is Jacob’s run-in with Laban.[6] Laban complains to Jacob that if he had known that Jacob was leaving, “I would have sent you off with festive music, timbrel and lyre.”[7] Dr. Eliyahu Schleifer, of Jerusalem’s Hebrew Union College, says that this passage suggests “a farewell ceremony which was probably common among the ancient nomadic tribes.” He notes that the patriarchal period does not mention liturgical music, but that only “family and folk celebrations are described as a means to invoke divine inspiration.”[8]

Professor Schleifer observes that the patriarch Laban mentions two instruments: a tof (or frame drum) and a kinnor (sometimes translated as lyre). These two instruments along with the ugav, a pipe or wind instrument, “constituted the main musical instruments of the patriarchal period.” The ugav and the kinnor were probably considered men’s instruments. The tof, however, “was associated with women's dance songs (mecholot), such as Miriam's song at the Red Sea,” a topic which we will be returning to shortly.[9]

Easton’s Bible Dictionary states that the golden age of Hebrew music arose during the classical period of Samuel, David, and Solomon. A class of professional singers arose during this period. For the first time music was “systematically cultivated. It was an essential part of training in the schools of the prophets.” It was in the temple, however, where the great school of music was to be found. “In the conducting of its services large bands of trained singers and players on instruments were constantly employed” [10]

Interestingly, Mormon scholars have been telling us for years[11] that, “music has a strong ritual, and symbolic meaning, closely tied to the creation and the temple,”[12] that the earliest forms of drama, dance and song originated in ancient temple ceremonies, commemorating both that great shout for joy at the divine council[13] where the creation of the earth was planned, as well as, “the time when the angels shouted praises unto the Holy One of Israel at the creation, when they both sang and gave the Hosanna shout.”[14]

If the Israelites were a musical people then surely they must have been a dancing people. The Old Testament confirms that eleven Hebrew roots are used to describe the various characteristics of dance and most of these roots occur only in intensive forms “pointing out the nature and character of sacred dance.”[15]

In his 1923 book, The Sacred Dance, the Vicar of St. Albans and Doctor of Divinity W.O.E. Oesterley, notes “the universal presence” of religious or ritual dance, its origins coming down to us from “pre-historic times.” Oesterley claimed that “sacred dance” could (in spite of local variations in ritual and mythology) be found amongst so many cultures and time periods “with extraordinary uniformity” that it was either descended from “an ultimately identical tradition” or was perhaps just an inherent part of human biology.[16] “That the sacred dance originated in pre-historic times goes without saying.”[17]

Contrary to popular belief the Israelites were not so different from other cultures.[18] When Oesterley classified these dances, not according to their “outward form,” but according to their intent and purpose, he found that “the Old Testament offers evidence of the existence amongst the ancient Israelites of most of the typical sacred dances of antiquity.”[19]

In contemporary times we tend to think of dance as a recreational or spontaneous activity but historically dance has been a powerful form of religious expression.[20]

Oesterley sees ritual dance as honoring a supernatural power or diety and taking that power upon oneself in a process of imitative magic or personification of diety that leads to mystical union with the divine.[21]

It was among some of the early prophets of the Hebrew Bible that “the most interesting kind of sacred dance, the ecstatic dance, was in vogue.” In this they were no different “from certain classes of holy men” or the spiritual leaders of the world’s cultures. “The earliest prophets,” says Oesterley, “believed that this sacred dance was the means whereby the divine spirit came upon them.”[22]

Naturally, the significance of song and dance continued on into the times of Christ and beyond. In Aramaic, the Semitic language spoken by Jesus, rejoice and dance are the same word, so the New English Bible translates Jesus in Luke 6:23, as saying: “rejoice and dance for joy.”[23] Jesus refers to Wisdom’s dance in Matthew 11:17 and19.

In Matthew 11:16 Jesus asks, “But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, we have piped unto you and ye have not danced.”[24]

Hugh Nibley pointed out that:

The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches still preserve the ring dance around the altar in that most conservative of rites, the wedding ceremony, when bride, groom, and priest all join hands and circle the altar three times; H. Leisegang connects this definitely with the old prayer circle. At the coronation of the Byzantine emperor, everyone danced around the emperor's table three times. The most common representations of ritual dancing in early Christian art show pious damsels dancing around the throne of King David. And the Jewish apocryphal writings often depict a situation best described at the opening of the Book of Mormon, where Lehi sees God on his throne "surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God" (1 Nephi 1:8). Surrounding concourses are concentric circles, and the singing and praising are never static: it is a dynamic picture with everything in motion, as Lehi sees it, and as the cosmic pattern of the thing requires. The prayer circle is often called the chorus of the apostles, and it is the meaning of chorus which can be a choir, but is originally a ring dance, as Pulver designates it in the title of his study. The prayer was a song such as Paul prayed and sang in the darkness of a prison [in Acts 16:25]: “About midnight they prayed a hymn to God.” And if they sang in chorus, would they not dance? Philo says that the true initiate during the rites moves "in the circuit of heaven, and is borne around in a circle with the dances of the planets and stars in accordance with the laws of perfect music"--the music of the spheres.[25]

Nibley defined the chorus as not only a ring dance, but a circle, which comes from the Latin word, curvus, “going around.” Referring to the Greeks he said:

The chorus sings, and the chorus of the muses sings the poiema, the creation song. Remember, the blind muses? Each one is in charge of describing and studying one department of the creation. So they all get together. When they sing together, it's the poiema, the song of the creation. It's a glorious thing. It's a round dance like the Egyptian maypole. And it's the music of the spheres and those things we have heard about in literature.[26]

Mormon researcher Kevin Christensen says, “The very early Infancy Gospel of James depicts Mary as a ‘little girl in the temple, dancing before the high priest … exactly how Wisdom is described in Proverbs 8, playing and dancing before the creator.’”[27]

I can’t help but think of the cherubic Shirley Temple when I read:

“The priest received her and “set her on the third step of the altar, and the Lord God gave grace to her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her.”[28]

As for our topic today, one of the most significant Biblical passages of interest to be found is Exodus 15:20, “a recounting of an important women’s dance ritual:”[29]

And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand;

and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dances.

And Miriam answered them,

Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;

the horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea.

-- Exodus 15:20[30]

“The phrase “the women went out after her’ tells us it was a female rite,”[31] according to dance scholar Iris Stewart, and Oesterley says, “These dances, with accompanying music, were performed by women, even restricted to women.”[32] Miriam’s dance became “one of the climactic ceremonies” of the Passover festival, celebrating the Exodus. It is [also] prophesied in the Hebrew tradition, “that at the great banquet in the time of the Messiah, Miriam will dance before the righteous.”[33]

Recent archaeological discoveries are illuminating a forgotten aspect of women’s spiritual heritage. Terracottas depicting female drum players and figurines depicting other types of musicians, both male and female, have been found in Judah, Israel, Phoenicia and Cyprus. Plaques made from molds, about 4-6 inches in height, depicting women with frame drums have been excavated at Meggido, Beth-Shean, and Tel æIra, mostly dating to the Iron Age (1200-586 B.C.E.). Some of the finest pieces, depicting female drummers, are figurines in the round. They were discovered in Cyprus and several coastal cities of Israel/Palestine (Shikmona and Achzib). Archeomusicologist, Theodore Burgh, a post-doctoral fellow at Notre Dame asserts, “These figurines, and the Biblical record, clearly demonstrate that hand drums were used primarily by women.”[34]

The Book of Isaiah (30:32) paints the vivid image of a drum as an instrument used in spiritual warfare.[35] The transliteration of the Hebrew word for drum is toph, or tof, and is often archaically translated as timbrel, tabret, or tambourine. This is a play on words with the word tophet, which has the same etymological root as toph, and in the following verse (Isaiah 30:33)[36] represents a place of punishment. The word ‘tof’ is onomatopoeic meaning “the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it.”[37] Musician Daniel Bingamon emphasizes, “The term 'tof' implies the word 'tophet' which means ‘to smite,’ which is how you play the tof.”[38]

The history of the frame drum stretches back to the ancient Middle East.[39] Drummer Layne Redmond says it is, “one of the oldest known sacred ritual instruments and that, “It first appears painted on a shrine room wall in ancient Anatolia, present-day Turkey from the sixth millennium B.C.” Redmond elaborates, “Female performance ensembles of musicians, singers, and dancers appear in some of the earliest representations of religious rituals. The frame drum was at the musical and psychic center of these rituals.”[40] She continues:

The frame drum is the world's oldest known drum and for thousands of years was the primary trance inducing technology for religious and ecstatic rituals. It is the oldest means for altering states of consciousness for spiritual purposes through transformative sound. When played with hand and finger techniques, the frame drum has a long, clear, ringing tone with many audible harmonics. These overtones create a chord of magical and alluring sounds with every stroke.[41]

“These disciplines for transforming consciousness were transmitted and administered by the bee priestesses of Aphrodite, Cybelle, Demeter, Persephone, and the old goddesses of Crete – Rhea and Ariadne.”[42] Classical scholar, Jane Ellen Harrison states, “They are in a word Mellisae, honey priestesses, inspired by a honey intoxicant, they are bees…the priestesses of Artemis at Ephesus were ‘Bees,’ but also those of Demeter, and still more significantly, the Delphic priestess herself was a Bee.”[43] Interestingly, James Hastings translates the name of Israelite prophetess Deborah as “bee”[44] and Barbara Walker, author of The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, boldly titles her “the Jewish Queen Deborah, priestess of Asherah, whose name also meant ‘Bee.’”[45]

There are some interesting associations between the frame drum, the tree of life and the great mother goddess. When the Sumerian Goddess Inanna[46] descended to the underworld she asked her priestess to help her return through the beating of a drum, “the traditional shamanic path between worlds.”[47] Redmond elucidates:

In most historical forms of shamanism, the sound of the frame drum generates the trance state in which the shaman travels back and forth among the three realms – the heavens, the earth, and the underworld. The interconnectedness of these realms is universally represented by the Tree of Life, which is rooted in the underworld, bears fruit on earth, and reaches its topmost branches into the heavens…it also represented the spinal column, the channel through which divine energy traveled in consciousness raising techniques. The continuing beat of the shaman’s drum maintains the link with everyday reality so the shaman can safely return to the earth realm of the living.[48]

Redmond acknowledges, “This central image of shamanism figures prominently in the myths of Inanna, great Mother Goddess of Sumer.”[49] L.D.S. scholar, C. Wilford Griggs elaborates:

“Gilgamesh… appears on an Akkadian tablet containing a translation of the Sumerian legend, which tells… the story of a tree of life in the creation of the universe. Here the goddess Ishtar [the Babylonian counterpart of the Sumerian goddess Inanna] gives Gilgamesh a magical drum and drumstick made from the tree of life, which she has planted in her garden. Gilgamesh loses them to the netherworld—the world of the dead—and cannot retrieve them.”[50]

Like Inanna, the goddesses of the Hebrew Bible, Wisdom and Asherah, are both associated with a sacred tree. Quoting Proverbs 3:18, Old Testament scholar, Margaret Barker, identifies Proverbs’ personified Wisdom as a goddess and states that her symbol is the Tree of Life.[51] At a speech given at B.Y.U., Barker said, “The Book of Proverbs describes Wisdom as the Tree of Life and those who are devoted to her are happy, a wordplay which sounds like the name for Asherah.” She argues that the Menorah in the first temple was a stylized Tree of Life, and a symbol of “the Lady Asherah,” who was removed from the first temple during Josiah’s purge.[52]

L.D.S. scholar Daniel Peterson documents that Asherah is Wisdom, an anthropomorphic goddess as well as a tree, and that Proverbs 1-9 presents the personified Wisdom as the wife of God. Peterson’s paper, Nephi and His Asherah, highlights “two authentically pre-exilic religious symbols (Asherah and Wisdom)” found in the Book of Mormon. In it he cites I Nephi, chapter 11, where an angel asks Nephi if he knows the meaning of the tree that his father Lehi saw in a vision. “It was only when she appeared with a baby and was identified as ‘the mother of the Son of God,’ that Nephi grasped the tree’s meaning.” Peterson believes, “that Nephi’s vision reflects a meaning of the “sacred tree” that is unique to the ancient Near East.” Nephi identifies Mary with the Tree of Life.[53] Layne Redmond underscores the association between the frame drum and the Great Mother Goddess, “The drum is moon-shaped [and] the wood of the frame represents the Tree of Life.”[54]

Intriguingly, the name Magdalene is also associated with both the tree of life and sacred dance. Some scholars claim that the word Magdalene is cognate with the word amygdal, meaning almond.[55] Numerous scholars maintain that the menorah in the first and second Israelite temples represents a stylized almond tree.[56] Leon Yarden, “argues that the archaic Greek name of the almond (amygdale, reflected in its contemporary botanical designation as Amygdalis communis), almost certainly not a native Greek word, is most likely derived from the Hebrew em gedolah, meaning ‘Great Mother.’”[57]

The elements of music and dance in the legends about Magdalene have proliferated since the Middle Ages, some of the earliest legends about Magdalene's life, influenced painting and literature. She often appears as a dancer in mystery plays.[58] The Dictionary of the Dance states that Magdalene was a ritual dancer in the tradition of Delilah. Iris Stewart states that the almond is a significant religious symbol and is connected to women and their ritual dances. A European folk-dance, the Allemande, was “descended from the ritual dance for the festival of Al-monde…the dance was originally the dance of the almond,”[59] a dance connected to women’s fertility,”[60] now celebrated at the Feast of the Assumption on August 15. The almond shape was a female symbol from ancient times and the almond tree a symbol of new life, being the first flower to appear after winter.[61] In light of this, Stewart says, “it is perhaps no coincidence that Magdalene was with Jesus for his spring equinox resurrection,” and points out that in fifteenth-century France, “a ceremonial dance called Marie Magdaleine was still performed on Easter Monday, recounting the meeting with Mary and Jesus.” Despite persecution “the dance was still in full force at Ste. Marie Magdaleine’s Church, performed in the nave in rainy weather, until 1662. Even after the custom ceased in the church, it was perfomed outside. It was eventually turned into a hymn, ‘Hail Festal Day,’ as the choir circled the cloister three times.”[62]

The frame drum is still “one of the primary percussion instruments throughout the Middle East and other parts of Asia.”[63] Surprisingly, the tof has survived, virtually unchanged, into our very own day. Several significant musical traditions of the ancient Israelites[64] can be observed amongst Iraqi Jews. “The Iraqi Jewish community prides itself on the fact that it is the most ancient people in the Diaspora,” observes Galia Ben-Mordechai. They remained in Babylon for 2500 years preserving some of the most ancient traditions. One such tradition is the daqqaqat troupe, a small group of female entertainers (from about three to eight) who sing and play drums known as daff.[65]

The frame-drum still survives in a very broad region maintaining the same etymological roots as tof. Iranian percussionist, Peyman Nasehpour, notes, that the “similarity of the names of frame drums in these regions shows the common history of these drums.”

The tef can be found in Turkey. In Armenia, the dap, or duff, is a medium to large-sized frame drum mainly used in folk and classical music. The daf is also one of the most ancient frame drums in Asia and North Africa. In Egypt and Arab countries it is called the duff, daf, deff, and taf, a large diameter frame drum used to provide bass rhythm accompaniment. Persia’s ancient daf is considered a Sufi instrument, played at Kanghah-s (temple of dervishes) during Zikr (spiritual chanting) ceremony and having recently become very popular, it has been successfully integrated into Persian music. Even in India one of their frame drums is called a daf, dapphu, or daffali, and is played with drumsticks; it is quite large, about 2 feet across and commonly used in folk music but rarely heard in other styles.[66]

The tof has both survived and is being revived. The San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, also known as S.A.V.A.E., spent several years researching ancient Middle Eastern instruments, languages, musical styles and rare musical manuscripts and then recorded an album entitled Ancient Echoes, complete with a female tof player.[67] “The music itself has been reconstructed from ancient melodic themes as catalogued by Jewish musicologist A.Z. Idelsohn.[68] Dr. Theodore Burgh, declares the project to be, “well researched.”[69]

S.A.V.A.E. asserts that the music of the second temple period “is believed to have shaped chant and other early Christian music.” Co-founder of the band, Christopher Moroney says, “Christianity today has many faces. But there has been a large European cultural influence. If you go back to the Aramaic, using Middle Eastern instruments, it becomes very clear that the roots of Christianity are Middle Eastern and that Jesus was a Jew until the day he died.”[70]

For...Moroney, the project has deepened and enriched his understanding of faith. He particularly likes [the song] “Abwoon,” [pronounced av-woon] the Aramaic Lord's Prayer, because of the depth and richness of images it conveys. Taken from the Peshitta (the Aramaic term used for the Bible), the opening lines of the prayer in English are translated to read: “Oh Birth-er! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, focus your light within us. Create your reign of unity now. Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.”

“'Abwoon' is a word describing ‘the male-female, creative essence of God,’" Moroney said. "It's not male. It's father-mother combined. It can be a huge difference in how that prayer is understood. For centuries, there has been a patriarchal influence, not only in the Western church, but in all of Western culture. If you look at this prayer, it's not patriarchal. If you look at the other translations of that prayer, the meanings are very deep and very mystical and very accessible.’”[71]

Moroney, says that the songs range from meditative to danceable and claims that much of the material can be integrated into modern worship. “Especially where you would have liturgical dancers,” he said. “We've done several concerts now where we've had liturgical dancers dancing to this music. We are also performing this music at synagogues. There's both the Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition. There is a place for this music.”[72]

Modern scholarship is shedding new light on an ancient feminine tradition. Harvard’s Semitic Museum website states that female drummers in Israel “provided rhythms for singing and dancing at family and community celebrations,” and according to Psalm 68, their music was incorporated into the ceremonies of the Temple,[73] “Your processions, God, are for all to see, the processions of my God, of my king, to the sanctuary; singers ahead, musicians behind, in the middle come girls, beating their drums.”[74]

From the earliest times music has been associated with the feminine divine. The English word, “music” is ultimately derived from a Greek word for “muse.”[75] Hugh Nibley states:

The business of the Muses at the temple was to sing the creation song with the morning stars. Naturally because they were dramatizing the story of the creation, too, the hymn was sung to music (some scholars derive the first writing from musical notation). The singing was performed in a sacred circle or chorus, so that poetry, music and dance go together. (Lucian’s famous essay on the ancient dance, among the earliest accounts, takes it back to the round dance in the temple, like the prayer circle that Jesus used to hold with the apostles and their wives…some have referred to this as a dance; it is definitely a chorus). So poetry, music and dance go out in the world from the temple – called by the Greeks the Mouseion, the shrine of the Muses.[76]

Carol Meyers, of Duke University, believes that there was actually a “female prophetic tradition” that “was grounded in musical performance.” According to Meyers, Miriam is the first of five women in the Hebrew Bible to be designated by the term “neviyah,” (prophetess in Hebrew.)[77] Meyers points to a recent discovery amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, which show at least seven additional lines to the original Song of Miriam in the Book of Exodus. She asserts that “Miriam’s song was part of a broader tradition of ‘drum, dance and song’ in the Hebrew Bible, a genre exclusively associated with women.”

Meyers notes that none of the recent discoveries of ancient art depicts men playing the hand drum, only women, implying that men have not always dominated musical life:

"The women’s songs are, in a sense a product of the Divine Spirit. They represent theological statements about God's power to save. If the consensus that the poetry preserved in the Song of Miriam and the Song of Deborah and the others are among the oldest biblical texts, and that their attribution to women is authentic, then my radical claim would be that the first biblical theologians may in fact have been women."[78]

In a prophecy concerning the coming of Zion, a future society of peace to be established in the latter-days, the prophet Jeremiah personifies Israel as a female drummer, “I will build you firmly again, O maiden of Israel! Again you shall take up your timbrels and go forth to the rhythm of the dancers.”[79] The Jewish Study Bible notes that this oracle “draws upon the image of Miriam leading the women of Israel in dancing with timbrels at the Red Sea.”[80]

The use of percussion instruments fell out of use in western congregations until the Salvation Army revived the use of drums for praise and worship in the late 1800’s. “They formed Timbrel Brigades devoted to learning and playing the timbrel, especially during their outreach ministry, and they continue to this day,” write Vicky Rains and Paula Hitte. The two women run a religious ministry entitled, “A Call to Worship,” dedicated to the tof. They declare that divine creativity is reviving the arts in the Western religious tradition. They are dedicated to the revival of “drum, dance and song,” being used once again to praise God, “The Lord says in Jeremiah 31:4 that Israel will be rebuilt and that the original version of the tabret, which has been hidden from us, will be brought back in the last days. The tabret we use today is symbolic of this ancient instrument of praise, and is a forerunner of that which the Lord will restore to us. They are waved before the Lord in worship and praise to His name.”[81]

Women worldwide are reconnecting with their ancient heritage. Glenn Velez, a Grammy Award-winning percussionist, studied ancient materials and Biblical references and is applying his discoveries to modern day settings. Working with ancient visual images has inspired him to explore aspects of frame drumming, such as holding positions for the instruments as well as the incorporation of movement with sound. Glenn’s research led him to consider the role of women in drumming, He says, “In the majority of cases women were the frame drummers in ancient times. This is very different from our era when men are most often the drummers. I feel the re-emergence of frame drumming is connected with a re-emergence of an aspect of women’s nature and their power as drummers.”[82]

Here, in closing, are the additional lines of the Song of Miriam, found in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

You have put to shame.

For You are clothed in majesty;

Great are You, savior are You,

The enemy's hope has perished, and he is forgotten;

They have been lost in the mighty water, the enemy;

Praise to the heights; You gave and took;

Who does gloriously.[83]

PART 2 in this series: Emma Smith as Shaman

PART 3 in this series: The Once and Future Bee Priestess

PowerPoint illustration credits, in order of appearance:

Dore, Gustave. Jephthah Met By His Daughter, engraving, 1891, The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, vol. 3. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8710/8710-h/p3.htm#023

Tiziano, Vecellio. Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Oil on canvas, 1539, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/t/tiziano/4religio/presenta.html

Uccello, Paolo. Mary's Presentation in the Temple, fresco, 1435, Prato Cathedral, Duomo, Italy. http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/u/uccello/2prato/04prato.html

Dore, Gustave. Jephthah Met By His Daughter, engraving, 1891, The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, vol. 3. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8710/8710-h/p3.htm#023

Harvard Semitic Museum, terracotta figurine of a woman playing a hand-drum. 8th - 7th centuries B.C.E., The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic/HOAI/adultmain.cgi?article=music.htm

Art.com, Early Greek Jewelry from the Rhodes Necropolis Decorated with the Bee Goddess Melissa, Giclee print of a gold plaque from Rhodes, Greece, 7th Century B.C.E. http://www.art.com/asp/display-asp/_/id--20135/pg--5/Jewelry.htm

Reuters/STR/Iran, Photo of two Iranian women playing the daf, at Iran's first women's music festival, in Tehran, August 28, 2001. http://layneredmond.com/daughter.htm

Terracotta #2, female drummer and male pipe player. Source unknown. Please email me if you know the source for this photo.

Poynter, Edward. Miriam, relief print on paper, 1864, Dalziel's Bible Gallery, The Tate Collection. http://www.tate.org.uk/

ENDNOTES:

[1] The Semitic Museum at Harvard University, “Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine.” http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic/HOAI/adultmain.cgi?article=music.htm.

[2] Theodore Burgh, “Music and Musical Instruments in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel/Palestine,” Archaeomusicology, University of Notre Dame, http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Music.htm.

[3] Burgh, “Music and Musical Instruments in the Hebrew Bible.”

[4] The Semitic Museum at Harvard, “Houses of Ancient Israel.”

[5] M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Thomas Nelson, 1897), s.v. “music,” “instrumental music,” http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/ebd/T0002600.html#T0002625.

[6] Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary, s.v. “music.”

[7] Genesis 31.27 (The Jewish Study Bible). Eliyahu Schleifer, “Jewish Liturgical Music From the Bible to Hasidims,” Sacred Sound and Social Change: Liturgical Music in Jewish and Christian Experience, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), http://www.liturgica.com/html/litJLitMusDev1.jsp?hostname=liturgica#Second.

[8] Schleifer, “Jewish Liturgical Music.”

[9] Schleifer, “Jewish Liturgical Music.”

[10] Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary, s.v. “music.”

[11] Hugh Nibley certainly led the pack on this one.

[12] James L. Carol, The Temple: Music, Circles and the Creation, http://james.jlcarroll.net/LDS/evidence/temple/music.html.

[13] An excellent source of non-mormon scholarship on the divine council can be found at the website of Michael S. Heiser, Ph.D., http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/

[14] Carol, The Temple: Music, Circles and the Creation.

[15] W.O.E. Oesterley, The Sacred Dance: A Study in Comparative Folklore (New York: The Macmillan Co. 1923), 44.

[16] Oesterley, The Sacred Dance, 2.

[17] Ibid., 8.

[18] Ibid, 31.

[19] Ibid, 8.

[20] Ibid, 20.

[21] Ibid, 22-24.

[22] Ibid, 31.

[23] Iris J. Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2000), 61.

[24] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 63.

[25] Hugh W. Nibley, Morminism and Early Christianity, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company and F.A.R.M.S., 1987), 53 – 54, quoted in James L. Carol, The Temple: Music, Circles and the Creation, http://james.jlcarroll.net/LDS/evidence/temple/music.html

[26] Hugh W. Nibley, Ancient Documents and the Pearl of Great Price, p.2, quoted in James L. Carol, The Temple: Music, Circles and the Creation, http://james.jlcarroll.net/LDS/evidence/temple/music.html

[27] Kevin Christensen, "Plain and Precious Things Restored: Margaret Barker and the Queen of Heaven," Meridian Magazine, 2005. http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/051229plainprint.html

[28] Willis Barnstone, The Other Bible, 387.

[29] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 61.

[30] King James version.

[31] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 61.

[32] Oesterley, The Sacred Dance, 173-4.

[33] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 61.

[34] Burgh, “Music and Musical Instruments in the Hebrew Bible.”

[35] Vicky Rains and Paula Hitte, A Call to Worship, http://myweb.ecomplanet.com/mill8678/mycustompage0015.htm

[36] This wordplay was located in the original Hebrew using The Stone Edition, Tanach: The Torah/Prophets/Writings - The Twenty-Four Books of the Bible Newly Translated and Annotated (The Artscroll Series).

[37] Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “onomatopoeic,” http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=onomatopoeic

[38] Daniel Bingamon, “The Tof: Hebrew Drum or Tambourine,” Biblical Instrument Series, May 28, 2001, http://www.tinwhistles.us/tof.htm

[39] Glenn Velez, “Ancient Voices of Frame Drums,” The Glenn Velez Website: The World of Frame Drums, (2004), http://www.glenvelez.com/history.php

[40] Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 10.

[41] Layne Redmond’s Official Website, http://www.layneredmond.com/trance.htm

[42] Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women,118.

[43] Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegma to the Study of the Greek Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 442-443, quoted in Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 196.

[44] James Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s sons, 1963) quoted in Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 196.

[45] Barbara G. Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 407, quoted in Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 196.

[46] Inanna came to be identified with Ishtar and Ishtar is the Akkadian counterpart of the West Semitic goddess Astarte. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service, s.v. "Ishtar," http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9042899. Some scholars believe that the Hebrew goddess Asherah is related to the Assyrian goddess Ishtar, (see Hadley p. 8), they may have had a common origin in antiquity (see Hadley p.14, 16), Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Astarte may be a variant of Asherah, see Judith E. McKinlay, “Gazing at Huldah,” The Bible and Critical Theory 1, no. 3 (2005), endnote 11, DOI:10.2104/bc050015.

[47] Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women, 143.

[48] Ibid, 39-40.

[49] Ibid, 39.

[50] C. Wilfred Griggs, “The Tree of Life in Ancient Cultures,” Ensign, June 1988, p. 28 http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=16

[51] Margaret Barker, Temple Theology: An Introduction, (London: Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 77, 88, 90.

[52] Margaret Barker, "What Did Josiah Reform? The Earlier Religion of Israel," BYU Speeches, May 6, 2003.

[53] Daniel C. Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000), 16–25.

[54] Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women, 40.

[55] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 70. Raffe, W. G., comp. Dictionary of the Dance. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1964, 21.

[56] Carol L. Meyers, The Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult (Gorgias Press, 2003). Robert Graves, The White Goddess, (New York: The Noonday Press, 1997), 263.

[57] Leon Yarden, The Tree of Light: A Study of the Menorah, the Seven-Branched Lampstand (Uppsala, Sweden: Skriv Service AB, 1972), 44–47, 103–6, quoted in Daniel C. Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000), 16–25.

[58] H. Colin Slim, “Mary Magdalene: Musician and Dancer,” Early Music, Volume 8, No. 4 (October 1980): 460-473.

[59] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 70.

[60] "Everyone Dances, From the Angels on Down." Rebecca Jones, Park Ranger, National Park Service. From Contra Conversations #1, March 8, 2001

[61] Stewart, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 70.

[62] Ibid, 70-71.

[63] Redmond website, http://www.layneredmond.com/framedrm.htm

[64] Dating back to the time of ancient Babylon, after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E.

[65] Galia Ben-Mordechai, “The Musical Culture of Iraqi Jewry: Three Countries and Two Continents,” Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1992), http://cjtm.icaap.org/content/20/v20art3.html

[66] Peyman Nasehpour, “Daf and Other Frame Drums in Asia, North Africa and East Europe,” Drum Dojo, 2002, http://www.drumdojo.com/world/persia/framedrums.htm

[67] Cecile Holmes, “Temple Tunes: Restoring Ancient Jewish Music,” Religion News Service via The Baptist Standard, February 24, 2003, http://www.baptiststandard.com/2003/2_24/pages/savae.html

[68] S.A.V.A.E. founders, Covita & Christopher Moroney, http://tinyurl.com/hvul2

[69] Cecile Holmes, “Temple Tunes.”

[70] Ibid.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Ibid.

[73] The Semitic Museum at Harvard, “Houses of Ancient Israel.”

[74] Psalm 68.24-25, (New Jerusalem Bible).

[75] Carol L. Meyers, “Mother to Muse: An Archeomusicological study of Women’s Performance in Ancient Israel.” in Recycling Biblical Figures: Papers Read at a NOSTER Colloquium in Amsterdam 12-13 May 1997, Ed. Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 1999), 50.

[76] Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 22-23.

[77] The feminine form of the Hebrew word for prophet (nebiah) is used to describe five women in the Old Testment (Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah and the wife of Isaiah).Two of those women (Miriam and Deborah are described as cult singers (Ex. 15:20 & Judges 5:12). From, And Sarah Laughed: The Status of Woman in the Old Testament by John H. Otwell Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1977, quoted in, http://www.womenpriests.org/classic2/otwell09.asp

[78] Cynthia Ramsay, “Miriam, Music, Miracles,” The Western Jewish Bulletin, March 21, 2003,

http://www.jewishbulletin.ca/archives/Mar03/archives03Mar21-03.html

[79] Jeremiah 31.4 (Jewish Study Bible).

[80] Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 988.

[81] Rains and Hitte, A Call to Worship.

[82] Glenn Velez, “Ancient Voices of Frame Drums,” The Glenn Velez Website: The World of Frame Drums, (2004) http://www.glenvelez.com/history.php

[83] Cantor Elihu Feldman, “Cantorial Comments,” http://uscj.org/njersey/w-orange/cantor/cantor2001jan.htm

LEAP!

Chicago Tribune 14May00 A4
By Donna Seaman.

LEAP
By Terry Tempest Williams
Pantheon, 338 pages, $25

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS -- Mormon naturalist Terry Tempest Williams' latest book is getting strong reviews in major newspapers and magazines like the Chicago Tribune and Time. Williams' book, Leap, looks at Mormonism more than her previous books, "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place" and "Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape." In Leap, Williams uses a trio of paintings by 15th Century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch, "The Garden of Delights" as a jumping-off point for her examination of both

On the surface, Williams' book is a description of Bosch's trio of paintings in which she examines every detail that Bosch painted. Williams goes much farther than most that visit an art museum, examining the paintings with "the purposeful attentiveness of a wildlife biologist in the field," according to the Tribune, which notes that she surprised other museum visitors by bringing binoculars, as a way of identifying the birds that Bosch painted. "Were Hieronymus Bosch's acute skills as a naturalist appreciated?" she wonders.

But the book goes deeper, beyond just an analysis of Bosch through a naturalist's eye. Each of the details in Bosch's paintings leads Williams to memories that involve her family, her marriage, and her Mormon upbringing. In one of the paintings, Bosch depicts the creation of Eve in Paradise, and his inclusion of a grove of trees in the painting leads Williams to reflect on the First Vision, in which God was revealed to the young boy Joseph Smith. She credits Mormonism with its reliance on personal revelation and notes that it is a religion whose "sacred texts were housed and hidden in the earth." Donna Seaman, writing in the Chicago Tribune says, "The recognition of the significance of personal revelations, and of the sanctity of the earth, resonate profoundly for Williams, and become key themes in her bold and fluent interpretation of Bosch, which, in turn, inspires candid, often provocative musings on the difference between religion and spirituality, and fresh insights into our complicated and crucial relationship with nature."

Seaman says that Williams' exploration allows her to "bridge the divide between the teachings of Mormonism and the gospel of nature, and to articulate a 'living faith' based on 'the healing grace of wildness.'" Seaman goes on to call the book a "dynamic, shape-shifting and lyrically interrogative meditation," and she credits the book with covering "matters of life and death." In the end, according to Seaman, Williams "tells us that we must restore our sense of wonder, and recognize that we live in paradise, a garden of earthly delights that deserves our reverence and our love."

In a much shorter review in Time magazine, Steve Henry Madoff says that Williams' description of Bosch may be more than a match for Bosch's 'wild' painting. "Strange and endlessly fascinating, her reflections on Bosch's images of Heaven, Hell and Earth take on the burning urgency of a dream, says Madoff. "'Can a painting be a prayer?' she asks. Her answer is yes, prayer. Incantation and benediction too."

Related Links

Move Over Martha: There's a Mormon Domestic Goddess in town!

Move Over Martha: There's a Mormon Domestic Goddess in town!

Deseret News write-up on Margaret Starbird @ Sunstone Symposium

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600152175,00.html


Mary Magdalene's Role Missing, Speaker Says

By Elaine Jarvik
Deseret Morning News

"There are a lot of people who want to debunk me and send me home," Margaret Starbird announces, standing at the front of a small lecture hall at a downtown Salt Lake Hotel on Wednesday afternoon.
"Not here," calls out a woman from the second row.
"No, not here," Starbird answers. "That's what I like about Salt Lake City."
Her audience are attendees of the annual Sunstone Symposium, the annual meeting dedicated to "independent Mormon thought." This is the symposium's 30th anniversary and the second consecutive year that Starbird has been among the invited presenters. For the second time, Starbird addressed an idea she is convinced of but is also the source of recent worldwide controversy: Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had a baby with her, that Mary Magdalene was Christ's disciple and that the Catholic Church has kept this information under wraps for centuries.
The claims have gained worldwide exposure in Dan Brown's mega-seller "The Da Vinci Code." Brown cites Starbird in his bibliography and mentions two of her books — "The Woman with the Alabaster Jar" and "The Goddess and the Gospels" — in the body of the novel. Brown's and Starbird's ideas are also part of a larger debate about the role of women in the early church.
Starbird's conclusions about Mary Magdalene are part of a journey, she says, that began with her own skepticism about these radical ideas. The journey began in 1983, when she was what she describes as a Roman Catholic mother of five who taught Sunday school and a scripture studies class for women. That's when a friend suggested she read a book called "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," a book that postulates Mary Magdalene's role as Christ's bride.
Starbird says the dust jacket was enough to make her shun the book for two years. When she finally read it she says she asked God to help her discern whether the ideas in it were true. If they weren't, she told God, "I'll just burn this book."
She was looking for a sign. So she opened her Bible — to the page that read "New Testament, Revised Version." Revised was the word that jumped out at her. But she wanted to make sure. "I don't understand, Lord," she said, asking for another sign. This time she opened her Bible to a passage that read "Restore my wife, whom I am espoused to."
"Maybe he's talking about your inner bride," a friend suggested. So the friend prayed, too, for a sign. And shortly thereafter, on her hands and knees in her bathroom trying to find a leak in her toilet, the friend saw the name of the toilet manufacturer: Church.
"We didn't know whether to laugh or cry," Starbird remembers. "It was like my words had taken flesh in her bathroom."
Convinced now that this was her life's mission, Starbird enrolled in the Vanderbilt University Divinity School, where she devoted herself to answering four questions: could Jesus have been so human as to be married; if so, when; "how did we lose (Mary Magdalene); and how do we get her back."
Starbird says her research unearthed "mountains of evidence for the sacred union." To those who call her work heresy, she says, "We're not changing the gospel. We're just throwing new light on it. . . . I teach what the church taught in the beginning and then forgot."
Now living in the Seattle area, Starbird devotes her time to traveling around the country spreading the word and to continuing her research. A new book, "Mary Magdalene: Bride in Exile" will be published in November.
The importance of uncovering Mary Magdalene's role as Christ's wife, Starbird says, is that both Christianity and Christians need the "sacred feminine" that Mary provides.
"What we lost when we lost Mary Magdalene," she told her Sunstone audience, "was ecstasy, passion, a relationship with the body and with one another. We are earthen vessels filled with God."
Acknowledging Christ's marriage and Mary Magdalene's role as both a wife and disciple is a way of acknowledging the need for the feminine in both men and women, and in the church itself. "The feminine is a way of knowing and being," whereas the masculine is about "going and doing," she says. "That's why the self is a marriage of both."

Mormon Connection to Masons Explored Ahead of 'Da Vinci Code' Sequel

Holy Mackerel! I was waiting for school to start this morning at 8:38 AM and I was running out of things to do on the Internet so I just plugged in "Da Vinci Code" on Google just to see what's up with "the Code" these days. Top of the page! Number one headline, posted just 9 hours ago:
Mormon Connection to Masons Explored Ahead of 'Da Vinci Code' Sequel

Mormon connection to Masons explored ahead of 'Da Vinci Code' sequel
Mason-Mormon ties: What's fact, what's fiction
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune

Flanking the main entrance is a pair of sphinx guarding the Temple. They are comprised of a lion's body and a man's head, signifying great strength and master intelligence and are symbolic of mystery. Between the paws is a granite sphere, polished and inscribed to represent the Terrestrial Sphere (shown) and Celestial Sphere. (Chris Detrick/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Dan Brown clearly enjoys playing with legends, history, symbols and secrets. And readers' minds. In his best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, Brown wove all these - real and imagined - into a breathless mystery about Christianity, Mary Magdalene and the Divine Feminine that has spawned an industry of de-coders eager to separate fact from fiction.
Now that he has turned his attention to the mysteries of Freemasonry, the centuries-old fraternal order, the new book also might deal with Mormonism.
But rather than announce the Da Vinci sequel in a news release, Brown embedded tantalizing clues to its subject on the book's jacket. Written in typeface that is slightly larger and bolder than the rest (it requires a magnifying glass to find them all) are the words: is there no help for the widows son.
"O Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow's son?" was used historically as a Masonic distress call, but when journalist David Shugarts plugged it into Google, the first hit was a 1974 speech given by an LDS Institute of Religion teacher, Reed C. Durham, at the University of Utah.
Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reportedly began to utter the call as he fell from a second story window after being fatally shot by a mob in a Carthage, Ill., jail in 1844, Durham said.
In an electrifying presidential address to the Mormon History Association meeting in Nauvoo, Ill., he traced close parallels between Smith's account of digging gold plates out of a New York hillside and Masonic tales of Enoch and buried treasure. Smith wore a "Jupiter talisman," or what his wife called "his Masonic jewel," and LDS temple ceremonies bear a striking resemblance to Masonic rituals, he said.
The

The Winding Staircase, like all Masonic symbols, is illustrative of discipline and doctrine, and opens to us a wide field of moral and speculative inquiry. (Chris Detrick/The Salt Lake Tribune)

speech was so controversial that Durham's superiors in the LDS Educational System forced him to issue a public apology.
The speech was never published but was surreptitiously taped and has floated around on the Internet for years.
It may have also caught Brown's attention, Shugarts speculates, and may provide one plot twist in Brown's next book, tentatively titled The Solomon Key. Brown confirmed in a speech last year that the book's mystery will be set in Washington, D.C., where many architectural features were drawn from Masonry, and will feature the same lead character, Harvard-professor-turned-detective Robert Langdom.
Getting a jump on the novel's historical context, Shugarts has written Secrets of the Widow's Son: The Mysteries Surrounding the Sequel to The Da Vinci Code.
He provides a broad history of Mormonism, including its brush with Masonry in the 19th century. It also offers nuggets about Masonic history such as these: At least eight signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons, as were 13 U.S. presidents including George Washington. A Freemason released Paul Revere from British custody on the night of his famous ride, after he determined that Revere was a Mason. Mozart's "Magic Flute" and Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King were written as Masonic allegories.
The Washington Monument and a similar monument on Bunker Hill in Boston, were not just coincidentally shaped like an Egyptian obelisks, but intentionally designed to honor Masonic allusions to ancient Egyptian mystical wisdom.
Much of the symbolism is mathematical, even geometrical, which could explain why the fraternity has attracted rationalists such as Voltaire, Goethe, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain.
"We've heard from Masons

One of the rooms in the Temple. The Salt Lake Masonic Temple was completed in 1927 and was built in 1 year, 3 months, and 22 days. The architect of the temple was Carl W. Scott and George W Welch. (Chris Detrick/The Salt Lake Tribune)

that they feel that [Brown is] going to do them justice," says Dan Burstein, who wrote the introduction to Shugarts' book. "He seems to be favorably disposed to thinking of Masons as an important historical underground movement, pushing the world towards democracy and enlightenment."
Today there are nearly 2 million Masons in the United States, with 2,250 members in 29 Utah lodges.
"We have a lot of Mormons who are Masons in this state, but we don't know exactly how many," says Ridgley Gilmour, Grand Master of Utah Masonic Lodge. "Anyone with a belief in God can petition to join but we don't ask what religion they are."
Gilmour was adamant the Masonry is not a "secret society," but a fraternal order with large-scale charitable giving built on deeply held American values of family, God and country.
"The only secrets we have are little signs and passwords which we use because it's an ancient custom, and, frankly, it's fun,'' Gilmour says.
It remains to be seen how much Mormon history will feature in the novel, (Brown's wife reportedly was raised in the LDS Church) but if the reaction to Durham's 1974 speech is any indication, any link between the two could be controversial in Utah.
For his part, Nicholas S. Literski, an active Mormon and Mason living in Nauvoo, thinks Latter-day Saints misunderstand the similarities. But they are significant.
"Everybody wants to obsess over supposed similarities in ritual," he says. "But that's just one aspect. Everything about Joseph and his family was tied into Masonic legends."

The Mormon connection: Smith's father, Joseph Smith Sr. joined a Masonic lodge when the family moved to Palmyra,


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N.Y., in 1816. Later, Smith's brother Hyrum also joined. From them, Smith heard the story of a lost sacred word that was engraved upon a triangular plate of pure gold. The word was the name of God.
It makes sense that he would go searching for such treasure in the large American Indian burial mounds near his home, says Literski, author of the forthcoming book, Method Infinite: Freemasonry and the Mormon Restoration.
And when Smith reported finding an ancient record written on plates of gold, he used "distinctively Masonic language to describe the experience," Literski says.
The church, which claimed to restore ancient truths of Christianity lost through the ages, attracted many members of the Masonic fraternity who traced their own roots back centuries and had similar esoteric teachings.
By the 1840s, many Mormon leaders in Nauvoo, including Smith and apostles Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, became Masons and organized a lodge there under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of Illinois. It wasn't long before nearly every male member of the church in the area had joined. At the same time, Smith introduced LDS temple rituals that included secret handshakes, signs and symbols like the all-seeing eye, the compass and square (tools of the mason's trade) and the sun, moon and stars that echoed Masonry.
Soon, though, other Masons felt that the Mormons were dominating the fraternity. In 1842, the Nauvoo Lodge was suspended. Many Mormons believed that Masons contributed to the murder of their prophet.
Antagonisms built up between the two groups. In Utah in 1860, Masonic lodges were established but they prohibited Mormons from joining. At the same time, Young forbade Mormons from joining and refused to allow any Mason to hold priesthood leadership positions in the church, Literski says.
It wasn't until 1984 that LDS President Spencer W. Kimball removed the prohibition against Latter-day Saints becoming Freemasons. Later that year, the Grand Lodge of Utah removed its own ban on Mormon membership so that, in the ensuing years, many Latter-day Saint men have returned to this part of their heritage.

In the novelist's mind: Shugarts says it was not his intention to be a plot spoiler for Brown's sequel. He couldn't do that if he wanted. But he did offer a primer on Masonry and Mormonism for those who will want to explore, as they did with Da Vinci, just how much of what Brown writes is really history.
"I had to push out in every direction possible," Shugarts said in a phone interview from his Connecticut home. "I read five books about Mormon history and thousands of Internet Web sites. I tried to be thorough and fair."
Though he only dedicated four or five pages to Mormons in a 200-page book, he's already heard from unhappy Latter-day Saints who accuse him of misreading or a biased approach to LDS history, a charge he rejects.
"Prior to embarking on my research, I had no particular opinion of Joseph Smith or the details of the founding of the [LDS ]Church," he wrote to one critic. "But I had met a few Mormons and they always impressed me as fine people. After delving into the story of Joseph Smith, I understood a lot more about LDS. I remain impressed that Mormons are fine people."
It will be interesting to see if Brown sees them that way as well. Literski isn't worried.
"He'll weave a good conspiracy," Literski says, "but no matter how inventive Dan Brown gets in terms of the connection, he will fall short of just how deep that story does go."
Even in Smith's day, there were Masons who believed the legends were historical truth and saw Freemasonry as a deeply spiritual, mystical quest. Other, more sophisticated members, discounted the old stories, wanting to refocus it along the lines of a charitable and benevolent institution.
The Smiths were about as far into mysticism as you can get, Literski says. "Joseph was rebuilding Solomon's temple with all the legendary baggage that came along with that."
Seeing the relationship between the two groups forces Mormons like Literski to revise his ideas about how God interacts with a prophet.
"You cannot understand what is going on in Joseph's mind unless you can know what he is seeing, hearing, feeling and touching," he says. "That gives me a stronger position of faith than would this idea that revelation is ex nihilo. Joseph was not a puppet."
---
Contact Peggy Fletcher Stack at pstack@sltrib.com or 801-257-8725. Send comments on this article to religioneditor@sltrib.com.

Joseph Smith FOUGHT Polygamy ?

In the wake of Joseph's 200th birthday, why not give the poor guy a break and give him the benefit of the doubt for once...


Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy

"I want to dare to speak..."

"I want to dare to speak the language women speak
when there is no one around to correct us."

Terry Tempest Williams, Mormon Bioneer

Women's Spirituality at Sunstone

Here is a list of Women’s Spirituality-related sessions available at the Sunstone Symposium over the last few years. There may be more but I compiled a list of the most prominent sessions. If you missed the symposium this year, or in the past, you can download sessions in MP3 format via the Internet. Cost ranges from free - $4 per session:

2005 Salt Lake Symposium

This year Sunstone introduced workshops to the symposium! The highlight of which was the return of Margaret Starbird, whose workshop was entitled

MARY MAGDALENE: THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD.

Program excerpt:

Was Mary Magdalene the wife and Beloved of Jesus? What became of her after the Crucifixion of Christ? Why did the Church Fathers suppress her story, and why must we now retrieve it? This workshop will explore the legends and mythology of the Sacred Union that was once at the very heart of the Christian faith. Reclaiming Mary Magdalene as the “Sacred Bride” helps to correct the tragic “design flaw” in Western civilization—the devaluing of the Feminine—that has become painfully obvious at the threshold of the third millennium. –end of excerpt.

Unfortunately, there were technical difficultues during this session and they were unable to post an MP3 to the website. They did catch it on video however, and I emailed Sunstone to let them know that they could make some money if they decided to sell the tape, since Starbird is such a popular speaker.


SL05171, Joseph Smith, Women, and The Feminine - speakers: Margaret Toscano, Lavina Fielding Anderson, Linda King Newell - This panel examines Joseph Smith’s life and teachings in relationship to women. How did Joseph treat women? What influence did they have on him? What role did they play in his life and theology? In ushering in “the restoration of all things,” what did Joseph restore about women and the feminine?

SL05273, Advancing Feminist Sensibilities Among Mormon Men

The following session was in the preliminary program but not on MP3, does anyone know if this session took place?

This session was sponsored by the relatively NEW Moonstone!

excerpt:

PANEL. EXCAVATING THE SACRED FEMININE
In western religious cultures, female roles are often suppressed, disguised, or diminished in a variety of ways. Yet gender is central in the construction of religion, theology, texts, and culture, and women are present or integral to the formation of a religion. Panelists will discuss how their work excavates female or feminine roles from obscurity in religious contexts where they are embedded.
• MARGARET STARBIRD, author, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar and The Goddess in the Gospels (key sources used and cited by Dan Brown), also The Feminine Face of Christianity and Magdalene’s Lost Legacy.
• MAXINE HANKS, writer, lecturer, feminist theorist, Gnostic; editor, Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, editor Moonstone column; author of numerous articles and essays on feminine theology
• Additional panelists to be announced

2005 Sunstone West - California Symposium featured:

SW05051, PANEL. MORMON FEMINIST LITERATURE REVIEW - speakers: MARY ELLEN ROBERTSON, CAROL LYNN PEARSON, LAVINA FIELDING ANDERSON, NADINE HANSEN - Join panelists for a lively discussion of our favorite, provocative, thought-provoking, revolutionary, inspirational, and faith-enhancing books in the field of feminist spirituality. Re-discover the classics, and hear about newer volumes too good to keep to ourselves! A list of our top picks will be available for the audience.

2004 Salt Lake Symposium

SL04091, RECLAIMING MAGDALENE: THE LOST BRIDE IN CHRISTIAN MYTHOLOGY - speakers: MARGARET STARBIRD - excerpt: In this second Smith-Pettit lecture, Margaret Starbird will discuss the partnership of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, providing evidence from the Hebrew and Christian sacred texts that the Sacred Union was originally at the heart of the Christian mythology. The loss of the 'Bride" in the Christian story has had tragic consequences. Restoring the holy mandala of the hieros gamos--the sacred marriage tha...

SL04271, REAL GODDESSES HAVE CURVES (AND IDENTITIES) - speakers: HOLLY WELKER, DOE DAUGHTREY, MAXINE HANKS, JANA BOUCK, REMY, MARY ELLEN ROBERTSON, MARGARET M. TOSCANO - symposium: 2004 Salt Lake Symposium - excerpt: This panel invites Mormon women to talk about how they find meaning and inspiration in images of divine female power drawn from other religions and traditions. What do we learn about ourselves as women and as agents of the divine by studying the stories or representations of goddesses such as Shakti, Kali, Rhiannon, Venus, Athena, Spider Woman, White Buffalo Woman, Isis, Kuan Yin, and so forth? Es...

SL04132, WOMEN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING: SPIRITUAL PRACTICES THAT HAVE ENRICHED MY LIFE - speakers: LISA HANSEN, DOE DAUGHTREY, WENDY DUTSON, JANA BOUCK REMY - This panel will explore the contribution of spiritual practices to our connection with “that which matters most.” Panelists will discuss the way prayer, meditation, temple worship, yoga, spirit world journeys, lucid dreaming, symbol and energy work, Native American sweat lodge ceremonies, and other contem­plative activities have helped them find meaning in crisis and in everyday life.

SL04153, MOTHER EARTH, FATHER PATRIARCHY: EMBRACING A MYTHOLOGY OF RESPECT, EQUALITY, AND HARMONY - speakers: JENNIFER CHANDLER JONES, KERRY SHIRTS - Deep within human consciousness and throughout mythology, we observe the earth symbolizing the feminine energy of the cos-mos. In much of the world, human beings have inherited a mythology that promotes men’s authority and dominance over the earth and over women. This core belief has left a legacy in which women are subjugated and our planet is being destroyed. As we enter the 21st century, we are...

SL04215, PERSEPHONE AWAKENED: A POETRY READING AND DISCUSSION OF NEGOTIATING FEMALE POWER WITHIN A PATRIARCHY - speakers: DANIELLE BEAZER DUBRASKY - By contrasting the traditional Demeter/Persephone myth with a contempo­rary interpretation, this session will explore how LDS women negotiate power within patri­archy and the possibilities of creating more balance. Persephone Awakened is a book of poems written in a contemporary voice of Persephone as she addresses a childhood companion whom she loses after her abduc­tion. The poems are accompanie....

SL04371, WHAT’S BEHIND THE DA VINCI CODE CRAZE? UNCOVERING THE DIVINE FEMININE - speakers: PAUL TOSCANO, JANICE ALLRED, JODY ENGLAND HANSEN, MARGARET M. TOSCANO - This panel will be a roundtable exploration of important questions raised both by Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code, and by its enthusiastic reception in the national and LDS markets. What makes the book so popular? The desire for the divine feminine? The pos¬sibility of Jesus being married? The connec¬tion between Mary Magdalene and the holy...

SL04362, 'THE GODDESS IS ALIVE AND MAGICK IS AFOOT': MORMON PAGAN WOMEN IN THE 21ST CENTURY - Reviewed separately in this BLOG!!!


2004 SUNSTONE WEST

SW04001, IN SEARCH OF HER: WOMEN AND DIVINE FEMININE - speakers: Carol Lynn Pearson, Carol P Christ

SW04041, WHERE HAVE ALL THE MORMON FEMINISTS GONE? - speakers: Peggy Fletcher Stack, Maxine M Hanks

SW04071,PANEL. FACT IN FICTION? CRACKING 'THE DA VINCI CODE' - speakers: Maxine M Hanks, Dennis McDonald, George L Gorse, Bradley A Tepaske, Kristy Coleman

2002 Salt Lake Symposium These sessions are FREE to listen to online

SL02161, Our Greatest Challenge: Why Women's Priesthood Needs to Be Recognized in the LDS Church Today - speakers: Todd M Comptom, Vicke Stewart Eastman

SL02-212, Moonstone/Sunstone Dyad as Metaphor of Wholeness - speakers: Maxine Hanks, Linda P Wilcox

SL02254, Body, Parts, and Passions: Representing the Divine Feminine in the Mormon Church - speakers: Doe Daughtrey, Margaret Toscano - This paper examines why Mother in Heaven has been progressively eliminated from institutional discourse. Viewing Mother through the lens of iconography, I suggest that the Church’s move to designate her as “sacred” is an iconoclastic act that dissociates her from Mormon collective memory. Given Mother’s significance in Mormon cosmology, why has she disappeared from our discourse and become so “sac ...

SL02336, Anniversary Looks at Two Feminist Books - speakers: Maxine Hanks, Mary Ellen Robertson, Sonja Farnsworth, Judy Dushku, Nola Wallace, Rodello Hunter

2001 Salt Lake Symposium FREE SESSIONS

SL01123, Mormon Women in the 21st Century - speakers: Lynn M Anderson, Molly M Bennion - Six years ago, I presented 'Issues in Contemporary Mormon Feminism" at the first-ever Mormon Studies Conference at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. This paper, revised since I presented it initially at the second Mormon Studies Conference (University of Durham, UK, 1999), takes an updated look at official, quasi-official, and unofficial views of Mormon women--especially of their role...

THE ONE BELOW WAS AWESOME!!!

SL01275, Women in Religious Studies - speakers: Maxine Hanks, Janet Kincaid, Jana Riess, Mary Ellen Robertson, Cherie Woodworth - More women are pursuing advanced degrees in religious studies than ever before and a number of Mormon women seem to be following suit. This panel is comprised of Mormon women who are doing work in religious studies and/or Mormon studies. They will describe how they became interested in studying religion, what their areas of specialty are, what work they have done in these areas, and how the...

1999 Salt Lake Symposium FREE SESSIONS

SL99276, IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MORMON FEMINSM? - speakers: Sarah R Allred, Stacy Burton, Jayne Clifford, Margaret Toscano, Cherie Woodworth

SL99313, WAS JESUS A FEMINIST? - speakers: Kent E Robson, Todd M Compton

SL99331, THE EARTH AS SACRED GROUND - speakers: Larry Stammer, Eric L Jones

SL99337, WHAT NEXT? Mormon Women in the Twenty-First Century - speakers: Christine M Durham, Jill Remington, Kathy Wilson

1997 Salt Lake Symposium FREE SESSIONS

SL97165, Sarah and Her Sisters Are Alive and Well In Non-Mormon Bookstores - speakers: Molly Bennion

1993 Salt Lake Sympoium FREE SESSIONS

SL93225, If Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood since 1943--Why aren't They Using It? - All particpants: Linda King Newell, D Michael Quinn, Margaret Merrill Toscano, Maxine Hanks.