In January of 2013 I experienced my first prophetic vision.
It wasn't something I was seeking but I came to find out later that in the past few years (and exponentially so) many people from various walks of life - young and old, rich and poor, male and female - have been receiving visions for the first time in their lives, usually accompanied with a (sometimes unexpected) renewed and much closer personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or even a first-time relationship with Jesus Christ. This is truly the fulfillment of Joel 2:28-29 / Acts 2:17-18:
‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my Spirit even on my servants—men and women alike— and they will prophesy.
In January of 2013 I began my first semester in a Ph.D. program in philosophy and religion. One of the classes I registered for was a class (in a different department) on dreaming. I was required to keep a pen and paper by the bed and record any dreams that I could remember.
I had a history of recording my dreams on and off for years so I was surprised when this time around I experienced something I had never experienced before which was a short, prophetic vision of the future.
VISION #1
In the vision, I knew an earthquake of catastrophic proportions had taken place in California (where I live). I did not see the earthquake or any of its effects. I just knew that it had already, or was, happening.
What I did see was myself and son in a car (from outside of the car), and there was a caravan of cars behind us. We were driving up through the Sierras on Interstate 80, and gaining elevation, headed in the direction of Utah and the Rocky Mountains. This is a trip I have made in waking life a number of times. I did not know if the earthquake happened before we left, while they were leaving, or after they left.
At the end of the vision we were smiling and happy.
VISION #2: March 2013
On March 19, 2013 I had no way of knowing and no expectation that my life would be changed forever. I found out that evening that my mom had been fasting and praying for me that day, just for my general welfare since she knew that my first semester at school was turning out to be more logistically challenging than I had anticipated - not the coursework but the bureaucratic and financial aid process.
After I talked to my mom on the phone, I laid down to go to sleep. The moment I laid down and closed my eyes a date flashed in my mind's eye: JUNE 30, 1934. I was surprised and grabbed the pen and paper that I kept next to my bed. I also noted that I saw a quick vision of camping in the wilderness immediately following. The next morning I Googled the date since I had never heard of it and had no idea what it meant.
Many pages came up, immediately, describing "THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES," also known as "OPERATION HUMMINGBIRD," a political purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30, 1934 - where the S.S. and Gestapo went door to door in the middle of the night assassinating and arresting any German citizens who did not support the new regime, Hitler's "New Order."
Well, history repeats itself. The Nazis were imported to America after WW2 (Operation Paperclip.) I have personal knowledge of the history of their operations in Contra Costa County and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as documentation of this.
The next day (March 20, 2013) The Lord sent me a powerful second witness of what he had revealed to me was about to take place.
The night I was shown this short vision (March 19, 2013) a man named Steve Quayle was a guest on a radio show called The Hagmann and Hagmann Report. I had been looking forward to listening to the show when it aired LIVE on March 19 but I was too tired so I decided that I would download the archived MP3 the next day.
I had no idea what the content of the show would be but I was looking forward to it because I had just recently re-discovered Steve Quayle in 2013 and was excited about something new he was doing.
I had first heard about Steve Quayle many, many years ago when he was a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM. First Steve was famous for being the original "prepper" and starting the Preparedness movement. He was also a dealer for precious metals and later became a famous author of books on the Fallen Angels and their offspring The Giants (see Genesis 6), ancient civilizations, the lost and suppressed history of our planet, the political and spiritual implications of these "angel wars" such as "genetic Armageddon" and resisting the New World Order. He later had his own radio show and because a frequent guest on Alex Jones' INFOWARS radio show.
Well, this year the Lord had led me to find some recent interviews that Steve had done with a number of talk show hosts this past year that I had never heard of such as the Hagmanns and Omega Man Radio. I had not set out to find Steve Quayle but the Lord led me to him and Steve had something NEW to say which I found very compelling and interesting.
First of all, I heard him bearing his testimony about meeting Jesus Christ in the flesh and looking into the eyes of Jesus 40 years ago. I had never heard Steve mention that before. Second, Steve said that "due to the lateness of the hour" that he wasn't going to do any more talk shows unless he could talk about Jesus.
So I listened to a few of these types of interviews with Steve over the last year hearing different aspects of his testimony such as the "Joseph's Ministry" that Jesus had given to him (which is why Steve was one of the original preppers), and some prophecies that Jesus had given Steve to share.
At least one of the prophecies Jesus told Steve that he would not be able to release UNTIL RIGHT BEFORE THE TIME IT WOULD BE FULFILLED. I had heard Steve say that some of this stuff he had been waiting 40 years to share BUT DID NOT WANT TO HAVE TO because it was so horrible.
Well, about a week before March 19 I had heard that Steve would on the Hagmanns and THAT HE HAD AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT but I had no idea what he was going to talk about. So, as I said I was too tired to listen when it came on LIVE on the AIR. So, I laid down and that's when I had that quick vision.
The next day I downloaded the show and heard Steve say that the Lord told him it was time to reveal the prophecy that had been given to him 40 years ago. The Lord also told Steve that He was removing his hedge of protection from America and that His judgments would begin to fall upon this nation from that night forward (March 19, 2013).
Steve noted that people should take everything he says to God in prayer and to pray to know the truth of all things.
Well, that was only the beginning because I was given a specific second witness to my revelation from the previous night. The Bible says that out of the mouths of two or three witnesses shall all truth be established, (2nd Corinthians 13:1, John 8: 17, Matthew 18).
Roughly an hour and twenty minutes into the show Steve read a prophecy by "Brother Bob" that was given to Bob in 2006 or 207 but Steve had only just received it. You can read it HERE: http://www.stevequayle.com/index.php?s=294&d=146
Steve added: "and for the record, Doug, no one knew that [the color coded lists] until the man, Gary, who was the head in the western United States for the Environmental Protection Agency made that stuff known to me and then he was murdered."
Then on June 9th there was further confirmation from earthly sources as to not only Steve's color coded lists and my prophecy regarding June 30, 1934 but the possible timing - Doug Hagmann's report in the Canada Free Press: DHS INSIDER'S ULTIMATE WARNING! "It's about to get very ugly." http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/dhs-insider-its-about-to-get-very-ugly
Doug was predicting an event THE FIRST WEEK OF JULY which was the anniversary of THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES - but which have been forestalled due to the massive publicity that Doug's article generated.
UPDATE: THE FIRST FULFILLMENT OF ONE OF THE VISIONS I WAS GIVEN HAS COME TO PASS, 6 MONTHS AFTER THE VISION. I MENTIONED A VISION THAT "HAS BEEN FULFILLED" ON A RADIO SHOW THAT I DID (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/prophecykeepers/2013/10/13/new-great-traditions-of-knowledge-w-dr-elizabeth-russell), AND THAT MY FRIENDS HAD BEEN EVACUATED, BUT GOT SIDETRACKED AND NEVER GOT TO FINISH THE STORY. I HAVE AT LEAST 4 WITNESSES TO MY ACCOUNT OF THIS THIS VISION, INCLUDING MY MOTHER AND MY SON, WHO ARE ALWAYS WILLING TO TESTIFY TO THE TRUTH OF THIS.
HERE IS A CUT AND PASTE OF THE EMAIL THAT I SENT TO MY MOTHER ON FACEBOOK UPON FULFILLMENT OF THE VISION:
March vision fulfilled. Remember how I was shown flames coming out of the top of Mt. Diablo in March? I also told Sage and others. I interpreted it as Mt. Diablo going off like a volcano. A few nights ago Sage and I went outside and there were flames on top of Mt. Diablo. Worst wildfire in decades. I said: SAGE, THAT"S EXACTLY WHAT THE IMAGE IN MY DREAM LOOKED LIKE! Ashlynn's family and many others were evacuated in Clayton. I told Sage I think that God was using the fire as a warning and that it will still erupt eventually but that this was a harbinger and a warning.
UPDATE: Unprecedented swarm of 600 earthquakes in the city I grew up in at the base of Mt. Diablo. The reason that I think that we are seeing something like this (never before recorded in history) is because these are not normal earthquakes. I believe that this is actually magma movement which will lead to this dormant volcano (as I was taught growing up in school in San Ramon, although people deny it now) erupting as per the vision that I was shown. http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/583-Earthquakes-in-San-Ramon-During-Recent-Swarm-USGS-342026921.html
More of my testimony and visions:
My arrival in Jones Prairie, Texas
I left out the most important detail of the initial fulfillment of the Texas vision – please read this before watching the video above – In the 3rd vision I was shown in 2013, I saw myself standing to the left of but with documentary filmmaker, radio show host, and American patriot, Alex Jones and looking out at the view of golden prairie grass covering rolling hills. Then I saw a car (which I hovered over and followed) as it began driving through hill country. I knew I was in Texas and later I knew that the Lord was telling me he wanted me to go there. I had never been there as an adult and didn’t know anyone there. It took me a few months of searching maps but he led me to central Texas because that is where the prairies and the hill country are. When I finally drove to the destination that the Lord had selected I knew it was the right one because as I drove there I drove through hill country that looked exactly like what I had seen in the vision and when I arrived at Sand Creek Farm in Cameron, Texas the farm was located on golden prairie grass and rolling hills, just like the initial scene in my vision – but here is the kicker and what I left out of the account in the video (below). The farm address was Cameron, Texas but when I arrived I discovered something that could only be found out by being there in person, and that is that the city of Cameron is actually 10 miles away and that the farm had originally been located in a small town named “JONES PRAIRIE.” But after the town’s post office burned down some years back the mail had to be sent to the post office in Cameron so they designated that area as Cameron even though people in the area still referred to it as Jones Prairie and even though there was still a sign very close to the farm that said, Jones Prairie, so I knew then that I had found the exact place being referred to in the vision. I also forgot to mention in the video below that the American Indians and other Americans (including hundreds of U.S. Army veterans - one of which said he was there to defend the United States Constitution) is also a fulfillment of my vision of “stand”-ing with an iconic American. In the interview (below) you can hear one of the women standing at Standing Rock mention that this is the first time in 200 years this large of a group of American Indians have lived together and functioned together as a group (fulfilling D&C 49:24 and Joseph Smith’s White Horse prophecy – which is also linked to D&C 49:24 and the Times of the Gentiles ending.) I see the same golden prairie grass in photos of the “Stand”-ing Rock Reservation. I also saw golden prairie grass and rolling prairie hills in Northern California (also known as the future State of Jefferson) when the Lord unexpectedly moved me to Oregon in August of 2016, not knowing that he was sending me there (among other reasons) to “stand” with the Patriots that made news headlines around the world in 2016. Part of Oregon wants to join Northern California to create the 51st state. A lot of the hills and curvy roads in Oregon remind me of my vision as well. There are many references to Jefferson and the founding fathers here in Oregon, especially in the city where I live. There is much evidence that God has his hand on Oregon, the area known as the future State of Jefferson, Texas, Utah, the Standing Rock reservation, and certain other places in America where places of refuge will be prepared by the Lord for Tribulation saints to gather.
(Steve asked why I call myself a Christian shaman in the description box on this blog).
First, I want to thank you for taking the time to check out the blog and to make a comment, I pray that you will be blessed for doing so.
I just want to state for the record that at this point in my life I am nothing but a humble follower of Jesus, all of my fancy lingo and playing with words aside. Ultimately, serving Jesus and doing/discerning God's perfect will for me every day is all that matters.
But, God gave me a gift for writing and a playful spirit so there is still a lot of that on my blog from over the years.
I refer to myself as a Christian shaman because I am a good deal American Indian. On my mother's side I am a seventh generation Mormon. As a seventh generation Mormon I have inherited the "magic world view" of the early Mormons (D. Michael Quinn). As a Native American I use a part of my brain everyone on the earth used anciently but is seldom used in contemporary American society (see Brother Marcus, a Christian minister to the Indians of Pine Ridge, South Dakota - http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cfp-radio/2013/07/12/the-hagmann-hagmann-report - he also discusses Christ's visit to the ancient Americans ). I am also descended from African - Americans, Jews, and the British Isles.
From my perspective / Holy Spirit led study combined with a graduate level study of anthropology and religion it is my opinion that that the laws of magic are part of a larger body of spiritual laws that are no less scientific or real than the scientific laws that we acknowledge in our secular society. In my understanding there is also no difference between magic and religion.
Llewellyn's Encyclopedia definition of magic:
According to the famous occultist Aleister Crowley, magick is "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." ... In fact, Crowley... says that "every intentional act is a Magickal Act." If you follow his line of reasoning, there is a great deal of validity in what he says, although it is not what we are seeking at this time. We need to make the definition of magick a bit longer: Magick is the science and art of causing change (in consciousness) to occur in conformity with will, using means not currently understood by traditional Western science.
Allen Greenfield adds:
Aleister Crowley used to say that the correct magical operation for leaving a room is turning the doorknob and pushing the door. -- Secret Ciper of the UFOnauts, p. 70.
It is easy to spot the misuse of such laws in the practice of black magic in our society today such as the rituals at the Bohemian Grove (not to mention the underground ones so prevalent in our society that we don't see).
But unless you know enough about the laws of magic it may surprise some that Jesus Christ's Atonement was also based on spiritual laws that put that act squarely in the realm of magic and in my opinion Jesus' Atonement was the ultimate magical act and therefore Jesus was the ultimate magician. But as the Creator of the Universe how could he not be? As the creator of the video game how could he not beat the game?
The final lynchpin that really sealed this understanding for me was in the last few years when I was watching C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (animated, American version, 1979 - Watch on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/user/847ChicagoGuy/videos) after watching it a million times when I was a kid. My family used to have this version on videotape. The British Isles are also one of the few places left on earth where a magic world view has managed to survive.
There is a section in the middle of the film where Jadis the Witch thought that they had successfully used the laws of magic to kill Aslan and boy was she surprised when he killed death with death. Then there is another section after Aslan's resurrection talking about the laws of "deeper magic."
Jadis, The White Witch: "Does that fool Aslan think he can rob me of my rights? He knows the deep magic better than that!
Have You forgotten the deep magic?
Aslan:Let us say I have forgotten it. Tell us of the deep magic.
Jadis: Tell you?! Tell you what is written on that table of stone?! Tell you what is written in letters deep as he spear is long on the trunk of the World Ash Tree? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor Beyond the Sea? You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning! You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill!
Beaver: Oh, so that's how you came to imagine yourself as a queen - because you were the Emperor's hangman!
Aslan: Peace, Beaver!
Jadis: That human creature is mine! His life is forfeit to me! His blood is my property!
Buffalo: Come take it then!
Jadis: Fool! Do you think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the deep magic better than that! He knows that unless I have blood, as the law says, all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water!
Aslan: It is very true. I do not deny it.
Susan: Oh Aslan, can't we do something about the dee magic? Isn't there something you can work against it?
Aslan: Work against the Emeror's magic? Fall back, all of you, and I will talk to the witch alone.
ASLAN RETURNS.
I have settled the matter. The witch has renounced the claim on your brother's blood.
Jadis: And now who has won?! Who has won?! Fool! Do you think by this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was.. And so the deep magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? Understand that you have given Narnia to me as well - forever!
You have lost your own life and you have not saved the human! In that knowledge - despair and die!
ASLAN IS KILLED.
Jadis and her minions: The cat is dead! The fool lies dead!
Susan and Lucy: Oh no! What are they doing to him? What does this mean? More magic?
The Ressurected Aslan returns: Yes, although the witch knew the deep magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of time, but id she could have loooked a little farther back - in the stillness and the darkness before time dawned - she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had commited no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead the table would crack - and death itself would start working backwards!
Ceremonial magician, Kenneth Grant, writes about "the magical significance" of the Fall of Adam and Eve in chapter 7 of his book, The Nightside of Eden. So maybe we should not be surpirsed that the antidote to the Fall would require the ultimate magical act.
There is a lot of overlap between shamans and magicians. If Jesus was the ultimate magician and His Atonement, the ultimate magical act...and if Jesus was the ultimate healer (shamans are also usually healers) then Jesus must have been the ultimate shaman.
So a shaman is just another word for a spiritual / religious practitioner usually to a community of people in a traditional, tribal society. Many scholars of religion and anthropology have done cross-cultural studies of magico-religious practitioners and seen patterns of similarity that are sometimes classified under the generic term "shaman" which is a Siberian word for the earliest spiritual technicians of their ancestors (who just happened to be female by the way. The earliest shamans around the world were all female. Male shamanism is a later development).
One of the common features of shamans from many cultures is that they are often set apart in some way from a young age or birth. So regardless of whether there is formal training available to them from their tribe it is ultimately the divine that chooses them to begin with by marking them in some way whether physically or through intense life or death events surrounding their birth or youth. Anyway, all I am trying to say is that if the shaman is benevolent he or she is probably usually chosen by God (and there are evil ones, not necessarily chosen by God, although it's possible, people have their free agency).
Anyway, there are a lot of aspects to this cross cultural phenomena, so not being exhaustive, I would say that shamans are engaged in activities such as healing, revelation and prophecy for their community members. Some evil shamans use black magic to harm others.
Shamans live on the borders of consciousness, they are bridges between worlds, they have been to the spirit world and back. They have often survived horrific trauma (such as Joseph Smith) which gave them certain mental and spiritual abilities. In the last few hundred years, shamans are often mixed-bloods, which makes those shamans a bridge between cultures as well.
The above paragraph also describes my life. When I look back on my life (43 years) I see classic shamanic patterns, abilities and experiences. I see how God has used me in a shamanic capacity on this earth. It is not a badge I wear; not a title or occupation or a shingle I hang out. I think that it is more a state of consciousness, as well as being engaged in certain activities at God's behest.
Although I have to say that God and the Holy Spirit have given me training through the academic work I have done in reconstructing the ancient ways of our ancestors, European and Israelite included. And I believe that it was the Spirit of Elijah (as taught in the Mormon traditions) that was responsible for restoring this knowledge and this consciousness to me and the impulse for creating the unique academic programs that I have had the blessing of participating in since they were at cutting-edge schools that acknowledge the spiritual dimension and where I was able to research and write freely.
I think that it is possible for God to use someone in a shamanic capacity whether one is traditionally trained or not, or even whether one is conscious of it or not. Sometimes there is also a genetic aspect to it and the office and calling and spiritual gifting can be passed through the generations. I am certain that this is true for me as well.
A shaman is also often adept and called upon in the capacity of spiritual warfare. So it is interesting that you should ask this question on the Bohemian Grove article. I have been under heavy spiritual attack since I was a child by the demons, principalities and powers referred to in Ephesians 6:12 and have learned how to use the Lord's power and authority in good old fashioned charismatic Christian spiritual warfare. Ultimately it is my use of the power of God that brings to my mind the image of a Christian shaman.
Your question is particularly interesting because the subject of my PhD dissertation is to be the first biography ever written on a woman named Essie Parrish. She was the spiritual and religious leader of the Pomo Indian people from coastal Northern California roughly from the 1950's through the '70s. Also synchronistic that their territory is near the Bohemian Grove.
She was a healer, a "dreamer," a prophet and a famous basket weaver. Some call her a shaman. She was also a Mormon. She once had a dream about the Book of Mormon prior to LDS missionaries appearing on the scene. As a result, this led to the conversion of a large percentage of Pomo to the L.D.S. Church. To this day a large number of Pomo people are still active in the L.D.S. Church. She also had an "adopted" sister named Mabel McKay who was also a shaman, or sucking doctor (as was Essie), a dreamer, and a basket maker. She also joined the L.D.S. Church and there is a famous book written about her called "Weaving the Dream" by Greg Sarris. It's an extremely entertaining and educational book. Really well written, all of Greg's conversations with Mabel.
So there are actually Mormon shamans and Christian shamans. I have posted some of my symposium papers on the subject below:
Ancient and Contemporary Female Shamanism in Biblical and Mormon Traditions: Women's Prophetic Drumming Tradition
Dr. Beckstead's Sunstone paper - The Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom: Did Joseph Smith Use Psychedelic Substances to Facilitate Visionary Experiences?
I have also come across this interesting example of Christian spiritual warfare which resembles shamanism in other cultures. One cross-cultural idea in shamanic traditions is the idea that trauma can create "soul loss" or "soul fragmentation" and a shaman is able to go into other realms to locate soul fragments and restore them to a person's soul which results in healing, restoration and greater wholeness and vitality.
Psychiatrist, Bern Zumpano, M.D. includes this similar practice in his book Spiritual Warfare Prayers (I have used this on myself and others with noticeable results):
In Romans 7 and 8, St. Paul refers to the soul as the mind, will, and emotions. In Romans 12:1, 2 he tells us that we must have a renewed mind in Christ. The mind is the soul, according to scripture. When you see people who have mental disturbance or impaired mental function after trauma, defilement, demonic oppression from any cause, or from a possession, scripture states the soul has become fragmented.
Indeed, practicing experienced witches even boast about projecting their souls into the mind of vulnerable individuals and “stealing” soul fragments. Satanists can do this also. I once ministered to a young man who escaped a satanic cult and became a born-again Christian. He moved out-of-state in order to escape those who were controlling him. In his new location, he was able to discern that the satanists had projected themselves by soul-projection (what occultists call astral travel) into the living room of his home where they would talk to him in his thoughts and tell him that they were waiting for him to return and that they believed that he would come back to them. He was even able to recognize the voice of the individual person that he knew was projecting into his thoughts.
Occultists even claim to be able to take soul fragments and to keep them in captivity in jars or bottles. To say the least, the Christian believer who becomes experienced in spiritual warfare and in dealing with the chaotic world of Satan and the demonic, will quickly come to realize how bizarre and unusual it is, if not surrealistic in human terms. The best discussion that I have seen on soul fragmentation, and the scriptural basis for soul fragmentation, is in the writings of Pastor Win Worley, whose entire church is dedicated to the deliverance ministry. Let us suffice to say that the importance of soul fragmentation is to recognize that it is probably a consequence of all major spiritual or demonic attack and involves demonic oppression or possession. There is a scriptural basis for it and it has myriad causes (Ps.7: 2; Ezek. 13: 20). The important thing is that as part of renewing of the mind, or as part of healing or immediately upon completion of deliverance, the soul fragments need to be retrieved and reintegrated into the person’s soul. This is done by commissioning angels of the Lord Jesus Christ to go forth to do so, through the spirit of power and might of the Holy Spirit.
Pray something like this:
“Father, in Christ Jesus’ Name, I commission warrior angels of the Lord Jesus Christ to go forth to retrieve all soul fragments of (name of person), wherever they arc, to take them by force, and to cause them to be immediately returned and reintegrated into the soul of (name of person), all through the spirit of power and might of Your Spirit, for your glory, Father, and all in Christ Jesus’ Name. I call all soul fragments back and restored, and his/her mind renewed, all in Christ Jesus’ Name. Warrior angels and watch angels of the Lord Christ Jesus, go forth immediately to cause this prayer to be, in Christ Jesus Name.”
Many people who appear and behave in a lost and forlorn manner from demonic oppression, or from trauma of any kind, may need to have this prayed over them. The time that passes afterward, and the fruits of persistenteffort will certainly reveal if it was necessary. The believer who ministers this type of prayer should do so discreetly, even in the absence of the person being prayed for, in order not to further traumatize the person at a time when they are emotionally and spiritually still vulnerable. Prayer for discernment, seeking the Lord’s guidance, will provide revelation as to when this is needed.
Hope this begins to answer your question. If you have any more let me know.
Most cutting-edge scholarship to date by top Biblical scholars. This stuff is AMAZING!!!
Are there Old Testament roots of the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Margaret Barker traces the roots of the devotion to Mary as Mother of the Lord back to the Old Testament and the first temple in Jerusalem. The evidence is consistent over more than a millennium: there had been a female deity in Israel, the Mother figure in the Royal cult, who had been abandoned about 600BCE. She was almost written out of the Hebrew text, almost excluded from the canon.
This first of two volumes traces the history of the Lady in the Temple, and looks forward to the second volume in which Barker will show how the Lady of the Temple is reclaimed in the advent of Christianity, and becomes the Lady in the Church. The result is breathtaking, and like all Barker's work, is impossible to put down.
A Great Mystery: The Secret of the Jerusalem Temple by
Eugene Seaich
In this thoroughly provocative book, the late Eugene Seaich made a detailed study of the intractable mystery of the Jerusalem temple. Using historical sources and ingenious detective work, Seaich suggested that the cherubim in Solomon's temple were portrayed in a copulatory embrace. Aware that this thesis was not entirely novel, the author built a substantial case in its favor and traced the influence of the atonement (at-one-ment) theology behind the concept through the periods of Israel's wisdom school, into the New Testament and Gnostic sources, up through the Middle Ages.
Seaich was a close associate of Patai and took this line of research even farther. He also was a Mormon who authored an amazing book on entheogens and religion:
"In The Far Off Land Eugene Seaich discusses the perennially fascinating topic of such mind-altering drugs as mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD, both how they appear in Nature and in the laboratory. This road has been traveled before, but Eugene takes a fascinating detour. He goes back millennia, glimpses the future, and goes deeply within his own psyche leading to a better understanding of the mind and our consciousness. These chemicals can be used as tools to help better lives, cure mental illness, transcend our conciousness and ultimitly to improve humanity . The reader might start reading about this "far off land," thinking that is an exotic destination. But after a few chapters, the engrossing prose will be reminiscent of one's home turf."
-Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.
THIS IS AN AMAZING PODCAST (MP3) ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. SEAICH:
'Also in the first hour, theology expert Margaret Barker provided an update on the Jordan Codices. She cited metallurgical tests on the lead books suggest that they are "certainly too old to be described as modern fakes" and likely date back to around the early Christian era. That said, Barker was fearful that the Jordan Codices will suffer the same fate as the Dead Sea Scrolls, where scholars' access to the artifacts was severely limited for decades. As such, she stressed patience in proving the veracity of the books and acknowledged that the academic sphere works slower than the expectations of the media and the public.'
This earth was once a garden place,
With all her glories common
-- Adam-ondi-Ahman
(early Mormon pioneer hymn)
Is this the once and future society of peace called Zion by Jews, Christians and Mormons and prophesied by cultures worldwide?
"A long-running prejudice of historical studies holds that civilization and written language were born together in the ancient Middle East amid an orgy of empire-building. Some of the oldest extant writings record the exploits of conquering kings. [Archaeologist Marija] Gimbutas challenged this view by showing three things:
First, that Neolithic urban settlements greatly pre-dated the "first cities" of the patriarchal tradition;
Second, that at least some of these settlements had no defensive walls, no military burials, and no artwork recording warfare;
Third, that the decorative designs of the artwork of these cultures may actually be a sophisticated system of symbols through which ideas and values could be recorded and transmitted."
"Portraying the life and works of one of the most prolific archaeologists of the twentieth century is a daunting undertaking. Compressing it into a one-hour documentary seems well-nigh impossible.
That they succeed is a tribute to the understanding and film-making skills of Donna Read and Starhawk. A decade after their collaboration on the 'Goddess and Spirituality' trilogy, the two team up to present this film-biography of one of the true prophets of our hidden past." Narrated by Olympia Dukakis.
Internet Talk Radio Show - Prophecy and predictions for the New Millennium from Prophets Ancient and Modern - Native, Aborigine, and Indigenous prophecy
I am thanking my donors this holiday season with a pre-publication pdf of my book, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia and the Sacred Feminine. You can read it on a Kindle, Nook or a regular computer.
181 pages.
tags: goddess spirituality, pagan spirituality, feminist spirituality. women's spirituality, esoteric Christianity, Holy Blood Holy Grail, Margaret Starbird, Merovingian, Da Vinci Code, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Templar, Templars, Baz Luhrmann, Australia, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Nullah, Lady Sarah Ashley, Wizard of Oz, Mary Magdalene, Jesus was Married, Daughter of Zion, Daughter of Sion, Zion, Sion, gylany, golden age, aborigines, aboriginal, female shaman, female shamanism, The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler, matriarchy, matriarchal, matriarchal studies, archaeomythology, prehistory, lost civilizations of the Stone Age
So, a great page on FACEBOOK, ETHNOBEEOLOGY, posted this amazing artwork today with the following caption:
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 Zaientzhttp://teruah-jewishmusic.blogspot.com/2008/09/phil-blank-lowest-of-low-and-jewish.html
I was ill before the conference and I didn't have as much time to put my presentation together as I'd hoped, so I am still in the process of preparing the paper for publication.
I also didn't have time to include the section on Marija Gimbutas during my presentation and so I am posting a documentary on the life and work of Marija Gimbutas (narrated by Olympia Dukakis) for more background :
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
This is the 3rd installment in what I term a triptych, or a 3 part series which includes the first 2 papers that I have presented at Sunstone: Women’s Prophetic Drumming Tradition, and Emma Smith as Shaman. This 3rd installment arose out of a term paper I did for my M.A. program titled The Mormon Bee Priestess. Since my original presentation of these papers some significant new material, including astonishing archaeological discoveries have come to my attention that have persuaded me that this material should be published together as a book which I am tentatively titling: The Once and Future Bee Priestess: Ancient and Contemporary Female Shamanism in Judeo-Christian and Mormon Traditions. I will soon be seeking a publisher so if anyone is interested or has any referrals please contact me. If I am unable to find a satisfactory publishing arrangement I will move forward and self-publish the book, so if anyone would like to be notified when the book becomes available I will now pass around a clipboard where you can provide your contact information.
For the best experience during this presentation, please watch the 59 minute documentary narrated by Olympia Dukakis, Signs Out of Time, the Story of Archeologist Marija Gimbutas.
In my first presentation Women’s Prophetic Drumming Tradition (a copy of which you can purchase from Sunstone on MP3 today if you’d like) I discuss the Biblical evidence for the presence of a female shamanic tradition in ancient Israelite culture, so imagine my delight when just 3 months later headlines announced around the world that the oldest shamans grave had been discovered, and not only that but that she was female, and not only that but she had been found in the land of Israel. They were calling her, “The Petite Priestess.”
Right off the bat I was not surprised that she was female since I asserted in my Emma Smith as Shaman paper, citing the research of many of the world’s finest archaeologists and ethnologists, that all of the world’s earliest shamans were indeed female. Calling her the oldest shaman is a bit of a misnomer, however, since anthropologist Barbara Tedlock states in one of her books that the oldest shaman’s grave to be discovered was much older, that of another female shaman who lived about 20,000 years ago in the Czech Republic (The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, page 4).
POWERPOINT 1 and 2
At just 5 feet tall, and approximately 45 years old at the age of death, the tiny shaman is said to have come from the prehistoric Natufian culture which existed between 13,000 and 10,000 years before present in the area of the Levant which includes modern Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
POWERPOINT 3
Among other artifacts, she was buried with over 50 complete tortoise shells, and the body parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, two martens, and a complete human foot, and if you saw Margaret Toscano’s slide show a couple of days ago what we are looking at right here is a real life, “Lady of the Beasts.” Scientists also discovered a spinal defect which gave her a limp, perhaps a “sacred limp,” which I thought might be of interest to Brother Portlock over here.
There is still debate about the origins of the Natufian culture: whether they were from North Africa or of Eurasian stock. They are of interest for a number of reasons including the pioneering of agriculture, the domestication of the dog, and the world’s oldest known depiction of lovemaking.
There is probably a lot more research to be done to know for sure whether or not the Natufians were some of the ancestors of the Biblical patriarchs but my preliminary research suggests that it is very possible, if not probable. Either way, the synchronicity itself is compelling enough.
In Women’s Prophetic Drumming Tradition (2006) I made mention of the ancient Bee priestesses of the Mediterranean world which includes the Biblical Deborah (whose name means bee) since their technologies for transforming consciousness included the use of the frame drum. Coincidentally, around that same time the sacred bee began swarming out of the woodwork from a multitude of directions, reemerging in contemporary consciousness.
Although the phenomenon was recognized earlier, in late 2006 / early 2007 much publicity was suddenly given to the mysterious vanishing of the bees which began to be known as ‘colony collapse disorder,’ due to “the rate of attrition [which] was alleged to have reached new proportions” (“Colony Collapse Disorder,” Wikipedia, 2012). That same year, a book, The Shamanic Way of the Bee: Ancient Wisdom and Healing Practices of the Bee Masters by Simon Buxton was released in January of 2006; In 2007, a germinal Ph.D. dissertation by Marguerite Rigoglioso, was published titled, Bearing the Holy Ones: The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece, which gives an in-depth look at just one of many groups of Bee Priestesses in the ancient world; and in October of 2008, an American feature film was released (based on a 2002 novel by Sue Monk Kidd) titled, The Secret Life of Bees, which contained a powerful depiction of the feminine divine. In December of 2008, I wrote a term paper for Vicki Noble’s graduate course, “The Priestess: Sacred Woman in Ancient, Tribal, and Contemporary Culture” at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology which I titled, The Mormon Bee Priestess. One of my sister-scholars in the class, Barbara Framm, also wrote a paper on, The Bee Priestess in Ancient and Modern Times (http://uraniamusings.blogspot.com/2009/01/bee-priestess-in-ancient-and-modern.html), and as part of her coursework produced, “An Evening in Honor of the Sacred Honeybee” (http://uraniamusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/evening-in-honor-of-sacred-honeybee.html) which included ancient songs and dances celebrating the bee from Bulgaria. In 2010, Layne Redmond, award-winning frame drummer and author of When the Drummers Were Women which inspired my paper, Women’s Prophetic Drumming Tradition, came out with a new album titled, Hymns from the Hive, “built on the actual drones of bees…framed by acoustic percussion, vocalizations, and other instruments [and] inspired by sounds from the beehive.” (http://www.myspace.com/thebeepriestess; http://www.layneredmond.com/Hymns_from_the_Hive.html).
Just prior to all of this in 2004, artist Nancy Macko released an experiemental video titled, Lore of the Bee Priestess, which she describes as, “a visual narrative of the lost history of the ancient bee priestesses –an ancient, long dead matriarchal culture-- evokes aspects of utopia, feminism and spirituality: values that I believe are crucial to awaken and sustain in contemporary times. It is a piece created to evoke the spirit of a feminine odyssey, autonomy and transformation for which the bee priestess functions as the metaphor. The messages of transformation and regeneration are both visual and aural incorporating original footage and sound from locations around the world” (http://vimeo.com/19419904; http://www.nancymacko.com/HIVE_UNIVERSE/images/Orenstein.pdf)
Marguerite Rigoglioso’s dissertation Bearing the Holy Ones: The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece has since been published into a series of books (which are available at cultofdivinebirth.com). Although her thesis looks at the Bee Priestesses in the ancient Mediterranean world, she says that she had seen evidence of these types of ancient priestesshoods, “worldwide.” (Divine Ancestors: The Virgin Birth Tradition and the Incarnation of Avatars, 27th Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Shamanism, Healing and Transformation September 4, 2010, San Rafael, CA). She also came “to a conclusion that a belief in Virgin birth was not only at the foundation of Greek and western religion but it was at the [very] foundation of western civilization itself” (ibid.)
Her dissertation also gives us, “a new and deeper understanding of the
meaning of two important symbols, the dove and the bee, which were associated
with Dodona and Delphi, the two major oracular sites in Greece” (p. 48).
The bee was a symbol of both Virgin birth and a matrifocal society:
She says, “The Queen is the only sexual being in the hive and she reproduces two ways…one… is a midair sexual encounter with several of the drones and they impregnate her with the sperm and that gives birth to the female worker bees. But the drones themselves, the males of the hive whose only role is to impregnate the queen, after that they’re sort of banished from the hive. The drones themselves are produced from the queen’s body parthenogenetically, that is, she does not have sex with drones in order to fertilize for the drones, she just spews them out of her body spontaneously. So she’s both sexual and asexual – she’s a virgin mother, the bee, as well as being the matriarch of the hive.”
She argues that like the bee, the dove was a symbol of parthenogenetic birth (p. 384). And like the bee, the birds were also said to give prophecy (p. 397). These symbols also immediately bring to my mind The Christian and Mormon traditions, respectively, and I see Biblical parallels throughout her work.
Throughout her work, her cross-cultural studies reveal that the more “advanced spiritual practitioners” of this planet have engaged in disciplines which result in seemingly extraordinary powers. She says that the Buddhist tradition calls those powers siddhis, which are obtainable at certain stages of the training of their consciousness (p.1). All we have to do in our own tradition is look no farther than Jesus Christ for the most obvious example of these types of abilities.
Rigolioso says that whether you believe these things are possible or not, she finds it reasonable to assume that the “final frontier” for a “magico-spiritual practitioner” would have to be, “the ability to reproduce life from one’s body in non-ordinary ways,” calling it, “the ultimate accomplishment of mind/spirit over matter be to generate life within oneself through magical means” (p. 2). She cites, “the foundational myths of many religions,” which are tales of, “non-ordinary methods of conception and birth.” the most famous story being, “Mary’s divine birthing of Jesus” (p. 2). She says that historically we have tended to, “focus on the product of the birth, the child, not the producer of the birth, the mother… In the patriarchal age, religious traditions have been dominated by male clergy, and writings have focused mainly on the spiritual accomplishments of male practitioners. In such a milieu, the fact that the experience of the mother in miraculous birth situations figures outside of the male realm renders it a topic unworthy of exploration (p. 3).” She questions whether these women were not passively submitting to the event but actually, “proactive instigator[s]” (p.4). She asks, “Could the practice of attempting to achieve miraculous birth have been a bona fide siddhic aspiration?”
A few excerpts from a conference presentation she gave summarizes her findings:
“All of the legendary kings and rulers and quite a few holy people…historical figures such as Plato and Pythagoras and Alexander all have virgin birth legends around them so clearly this is something that has been ignored and obscured that was first done on the part of the Greek writers themselves which started to veil this tradition and then of course we have scientism which has entered into the picture and secondary scholarship which does not allow for this paradigm to come through and so this is the beginning of the unveiling of this paradigm which really when we think about it has been at the foundation of Christian religion and also Jewish religion with the miraculous story of Sarah’s birth of Isaac, Mary’s birth of Jesus, Anne’s birth of Mary, Elizabeth’s birth of John the Baptist. It’s really, really deeply ingrained in our tradition and as I’ll show you it was deeply ingrained in the Greek tradition, the Egyptian tradition and even the Roman tradition.”
Rigolioso [quote], “began to find a tremendous amount of material that there were virgin priestesshoods in ancient Greece that existed whose purpose was to bring in high, holy- level beings, avatars to the planet and that basically this was the highest form of shamanic practice possible and that it was a road only open to women by virtue of their physiology so we can begin to understand under patriarchy why this type of tradition would have been veiled.”
“Also important is the finding that achieving this feat on the part of the priestess was considered the highest level of magico-spiritual achievement possible and what would happen is it would result in her own apotheosis, that is her own divinization at the end of her life…If we think of Mary as a paradigm for this the ambiguity as to her ontological status – was she human, was she divine? is the fact that she was a human woman who became divine as a result of achieving this feat and so then she could operate on the astral-etheric realm as a diety and she could be accessed that way.” [end quote]
[I would add that this type of language and these types of ideas would probably have a familiar ring to members of the L.D.S. Church]
She continues, “One of the methods that I use is taking myth seriously as repository for history and that’s the neo-euhemeristic tradition, but I try to cross-reference the myth with history as much as possible.”
She explains that there were “stages of divine birth depending on the cultural stage, ”and she makes a, “case that the original cultural form of humanity was matriarchy, which was not women bashing men over the head but rather as we have contemporary matriarchal societies today, these would have been egalitarian, ecologically balanced societies of subsistence. So that was the original social form: women were at the center and had high social value, economic value and spiritual value and under this form what I discern is that the miraculous conception involved women in pure parthenogenesis meaning conception without male sperm. How is this possible? Well, think about Tantra. This is a tantra that is turned inward and it requires virginity because it requires the inner conjulation of the tantric energies of the woman and it requires her to be in a deeply altered state of consciousness; It requires a high level of spiritual understanding; it requires and ability to work with light and matter and her own biological processes and DNA and this is how it would have been possible. The conception under this practice would have been to conceive female avatars only, again this is under matriarchy so we are creating lineages of queen-priestesses, who are representations of the great goddesses…” This is the first stage which she calls, “The pure daughter-bearing parthenogenetic priestesshood.”
She believes this is, “encoded in the Demeter / Persephone story,” and she believes, “that it is also encoded in these many, many, many so-called “double goddess” images that are all around the world. I think this is representing parthenogenetic reality - women’s magical, shamanic practice.”
However, Rigoglioso doesn’t believe this about “doing away with sexuality [or] heterosexuality. It’s not about doing away with men,” she says, “this is simply about women utilizing their creative capacity to bring in beings who will advance humanity in some way, but of course it can also be misused.”
In the “secondary phase of pure parthenogenesis where the women started bringing in male avatars. She terms this one, “The pure son-bearing parthenogenetic priestesshood.” It seems to be a stage in which where male gods are coming into ascendency, or attention but it’s still a parthenogenetic practice. There’s no encounter of the female either with a male human or a male divine entitiy, and this is representing the mystery of the male’s containment within the female, and this is a very primary understanding, that [she] believe[s] we must return to because that type of conception would allow us to right our gender relations again and put them back into a respectful order.”
“Then [she] see[s] a rift…a change where [she] grouped all of the stories of the so-called rapes of the women, the nymphs and the virgins.” She terms this stage “heiros gamos, or sacred marriage with the god.” What this represented was a period in which the women’s shamanic trance state was being interrupted by the advent of the male god, an unwanted male god into her tantric trance space when she was attempting virgin birth. This was a predatory activity. This was a reflection of deep astral events that were going on because the myths actually tell us exactly what was happening they are not fictional they tell us about these astral dramas and this was it: the male gods were forgetting that they were emanations of the feminine and they were starting to come out of the power balance and because they could not parthenogenetically reproduce themselves through their own bodies because on the astral level they lacked a womb space they had to use the bodies of the females and so we have the rapes of the goddesses as well as on earth - as above, so below - we have the rapes of the priestesses…these start out as rape situations…we [also] see stories… where the women actually shapeshifted to try to avoid the penetration by the male god.” She believes, “that what these stories are talking about are shamanic suicides in trance state on the part of these women who would rather die than give birth to these heroes because these heroes were the issue of the gods. They were patriarchal; they were warring; they were Heracles; they were Theseus; they were Perseus; they were the men who actually came in through this means and then went about destroying virgin birth. They went about destroying the matriarchy…”
The, “next stage,” she found “in this… activity” was that, “eventually the women started giving in to the practice because they would still accrue benefits from this. But…the human male would come in as a sexual actor with the priestess and this represented a degeneration of the form. It was how the Egyptian civilization and the Pharaohs came to be born but it was a means of acquiring the practice into the male line now because now you did have male sperm involved. There was a male actor and even if the practice was not properly accomplished there would generally be a pregnancy and it could be said that the child was divine…[so] then you can accrue all of the benefits and the lineage into the male line [wheras] before it was exclusively the female there was no male involved, so we have the encroachment of patriarchy…”
She concludes that “the Greek understanding of conception was similar to the English word ‘conception’ which means to conceive in the mind as well as to conceive in the womb and this is reflecting the understanding that the woman’s body is porous. She can be both the oracle for the god’s wisdom in the third eye but that can also literalize by her being the receptacle for the god’s child in her womb this is why the oracles were both virgin birth priestesses and [emphasis mine] prophets because these priestesshoods would be the ground where both of these things were going on…” (last eleven paragraphs - Divine Ancestors: The Virgin Birth Tradition and the Incarnation of Avatars, 27th Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Shamanism, Healing and Transformation September 4, 2010, San Rafael, CA)
Marguerite also explains the, “longstanding relationship between bees and prophecy particularly as an art carried out by women.” She says that Homer’s hymn to Apollo:
describes three prophetesses who lived in the heights above Delphi…and above them was an even older oracular cave and these three priestesses who were called the Thriai were described in this poem in bee-like terms. He describes them as, ‘swarming,’ and, ‘flitting about,’ …and they were said to have prophesied only after imbibing honey and that if they did not imbibe honey they were not speaking the truth but when they were imbibing honey they were speaking the truth and it’s these very Thriai, these earlier, older priestesses that apparently taught Apollo the art of prophecy when he was a child. So This is really referencing the oldest cult that women were associated with …they were associated not only with the bees but with the product of the bees which is the honey (emphasis added, Marguerite on Karen Tate’s Voices of the Sacred Feminine, 7/25/11).
Interestingly, A woman named Shirley Tanenbaum told Marguerite that she went on a tour at Delphi, “and she was told by locals that at certain times of the year they have to take some of the hives down because they are infused with a psychotropic element due to the bees collecting pollen from a certain type of flower” (Ibid, Voices of the Sacred Feminine, 2011. Marguerite also told us this story in Noble’s “Priestess” class).
In light of all of this information imagine my surprise the following year, summer of 2008, when I was sitting in my sister’s home, my brother-in-law-to-be is an archaeologist, and I was flipping through his the then-current copy of Biblical Archaeology Review (July / August 2008). where a major, major archaeological discovery was reported. Now Israel has always been known as the Land of Milk and Honey, but no one had ever discovered any actual evidence of beekeeping in ancient Israel until now. If this had only been a discovery shedding further light on the history of ancient agriculture that’s huge in and of itself especially to the Mormons I later saw publishing in their blogs that this was further evidence for the truth of the Book of Mormon, as well. But what was discovered went beyond far agriculture as there turned out to be an overt religious connotation in their honey producing practices. When I stumbled across the images in this article I just about fell off my chair:
The article is titled, “To What God? Altars and a House Shrine from Tel Rehov Puzzle Archaeologists.”
Tel Rehov is a 25 acre “ mound” in Israel half way between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Valley (p.40). The archaeological term mound is also known in Hebrew as a “tel,” hence the name, “Tel Rehov,” and is, “created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a flat top and sloping sides” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell).
The article says that although Rehov is not mentioned in the Bible, it is mentioned in the Egyptian records and, “must have been an important city in the Biblical period” (p. 40). Excavations have revealed a number of, “well planned and densely built cities,” dating from 1000 to 900 B.C.E, or 3000 years before present.
The middle of three superimposed strata may be the one mentioned in the Egyptian [Sheshonk] Shoshenq inscription and was destroyed violently by fire possibly by the military campaign of the king of Egypt, [Sheshonk] Shoshenq 1, aka Shishak in the Hebrew Bible (p. 40 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshenq_I). The rebuilt city was again violently destroyed possibly due to, “the wars between Israel and the Aramean kingdom of Damascus ruled by Hazael, who invaded Israel between 840 and 830 B.C.E,” which is described in the Biblical book of 2 Kings. (p. 42). Bad news for them, but the good news for us is that all of this destruction has yielded a treasure trove of, “restorable pottery vessels, seals and sealings, clay figurines and some unique cultic objects” (p. 42).
[ALTAR 1 slide]
Among the treasures of interest includes a, “complete, almost fully restorable altar,” about 1.5 feeet tall and “resembles a city gate, the significance of which eludes” researchers. There are rounded horns on each of the four corners, “each horn is incised with palm tree branches.” Traces of burning on the top indicate it was probably used for burnt offerings, although we only have speculation and many theories as to what was burned – from incense to animal meat (p. 45). But most significantly, “Between the window-like openings…in the altar’s ‘tower’ is an incised schematic palm tree. On either side of the two lower windows, a mold-made figure of a nude female goddess was applied” (p. 44).
[APIARY SLIDE]
The article states [quote], “The complete altar was found together with a beautiful, painted chalice and other bowls and vessels, about 15 feet from an area devoted to producing honey and beeswax. This apparently was what we might call a cultic corner related to this industry. In this area we uncovered rows of unbaked clay cylinders shaped just like the traditional beehives that are well known in villages throughout the eastern Mediterranean basin, as well as from pictorial depictions from ancient Egypt” (p. 42). This identification has been analyzed and proven (p. 42). They, “found molecular traces of beeswax embedded in the clay,” and, “as far as [they] know, these are the only beehives ever discovered in an archaeological excavation in the entire ancient Near East” (p. 42). They add, “The proximity between the altar and the apiary confirms what we know from other sites: religious rituals were often performed in direct relation to the production of a certain item, such as copper…or olive oil...” (p. 42).
[ALTAR 2 slide]
A second altar, of much higher quality, was also discovered depicting nude female goddesses, as well as fragments of other altars. Only 1 percent of the site had been excavated at the time of publication but they estimate there are probably hundreds more of the same kind. Archaeologists assert that, “these altars must have played an important role in the daily routine of Rehov’s inhabitants” (p. 42). A third altar was discovered, “located in an open air sanctuary…serving a neighborhood or a group of families” (p. 45).
The building where these discoveries were made is also considered “unique,” but “it’s function remains a mystery” (p. 46). “Adjoining the western side of the main room were
four small consecutive rooms, each of which was lined with benches. In the innermost room was a large heavy clay crate that may have been used to store valuables. It was found with its lid upside down next to it, as if it had been emptied hastily before the fiery destruction of the building” (p. 46). A storage jar was found inside bearing an inscription with the name “Nimshi,” which just happens to have been the name of the father or grandfather of Biblical King Jehu known from the 1st and 2nd Book of Kings.
To conclude, the archaeologists tentative interpretion of these finds contains far more questions than answers:
The most difficult question for us to answer is, who produced the altars and the house shrine found at Tel Rehov? From a geographical perspective, Tel Rehov was clearly in the northern kingdom of Israel during the late tenth and early ninth centuries B.C.E. We have traced the artistic and cultic functions of these objects, however, to the second millennium B.C.E. [1000 years earlier] in Israel and Syria, before the emergence of the Israelites. It can be assumed that although Rehov was part of the United Monarchy and the northern kingdom of Israel, much of its population remained Canaanite and retained traditions— particularly of northern origin—that were hundreds of years old. This affinity is expressed in other aspects of the material culture of Rehov in the tenth ninth centuries B.C.E., such as the architectural plan of the buildings (for example, the lack of pillared four- and three-room types so common in Israelite architecture) and the building techniques (brick construction without stone foundations, which are not found in other Israelite architecture). The continuity of the Canaanite population in the Beth Shean and Jezreel Valleys is often noted in the Bible. For example, the Book of Judges tells us, “But Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth-Shean or Taanach or Dor or Ibleam or Megiddo and their surrounding settlements, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land. When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely” (Judges 1:27–28).
It may be that this Canaanite population retained its traditional religious practices, worshiping deities like Baal and Asherah. No doubt, at the time of the Israelite Monarchy, the worship of Yahweh was slowly adopted by this local population. The struggle between the emerging Israelite religion and the worship of Canaanite deities is a prominent theme in the Biblical narrative—for example in the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 19).
The altars and house shrine from Tel Rehov were probably used in the local private cult practiced in homes and workshops; offerings were made for both personal well-being and industrial success. Such private religious practices, serving individual families or local communities, stood apart from the royal, official religious centers like the Temple in Jerusalem or the royal shrine in the northern kingdom of Israel at Dan.† Popular religion in Israel is well known from various archaeological finds such as the many fertility figurines found in both Israel and Judah,‡ but the popularity of pottery horned altars and the unique depiction on the house shrine from Tel Rehov are unparalleled elsewhere.
So who knows but very interesting and compelling and synchronistic…
In his brilliant essay on the sacred bee, independent Mormon scholar, Kerry Shirts asks this question, “Why has the bee been brought back into our consciousness in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ? Well repeated echoes from the remote past keep reminding us that the office and calling of the bee was to bring about the stirrings of life, reviving the biological cycle in a world that has been totally ravaged by the cosmic forces of destruction. Is, then, Deseret waiting in the wings, held in reserve against the day, soon to come, when its salutary services will be once again required?”
Interestingly, archaeologist Marija Gimbutas states that the bee was a symbol of regeneration and an epiphany of the Great Mother Goddess in her representation of regeneration. Other bee symbolism includes: the precession of the equinoxes and the transition between an old world and a new world, as well as a symbol of resurrection and a millennial forerunner. In my December, 2008 term paper for Vicki Noble’s Priestess class I wrote:
The Mormon tradition as a vehicle, or religious system, emerged in the early-to-mid-1800’s, but it claims to part of a larger tradition, or stream, that is primordial. The tradition itself claims, internally, to be non-sectarian, but in accordance with human nature many sects have emerged over the last century-and-a-half claiming the correct interpretation. The largest, most well-known sect is the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (L.D.S.), of which I am a seventh-generation member. But at this time I consider myself a non-sectarian Mormon mystic.
In lieu of a comprehensive examination, it may be important to note a few things here. Cosmologically, spirit and matter are considered essentially the same substance, one being “finer,” or vibrating at a different rate than the other, as on a spectrum. Matter and form are considered to be what allows spirit and consciousness to express itself and “have joy,” and are seen in nothing but positive terms. A human “soul” is defined not as “spirit” but the spirit and the body joined together, into a soul. Spirit is believed to infuse “all things.” Everything is considered to have a divine nature. In Mormon scripture the earth is called our “Mother.” She speaks to humans and vice versa, is fully conscious and sentient. Animals are also living souls, and many Mormons expect to be reunited with beloved pets at future times in their spiritual journey. Another belief is human apotheosis and the existence of divine, celestial ancestors, including a divine Mother and Father in Heaven. Existence is cyclical and includes the idea of “eternal progression,” perhaps what we in contemporary times might call “spiritual evolution.”
The Mormon tradition is neither Catholic nor Protestant. It is more closely related to the underground stream of western esotericism. The Mormon tradition rejects the cross as an icon. The tradition also rejects the notion of Original Sin. Mainstream religious critics of the tradition frequently accuse it of being pantheistic, animistic, and pagan. The tradition posits that there was once a primordial golden age which was a sacred culture. Paradise was lost, history happened as we know it, but a new golden age approaches. Mormons believe their tradition to be not so much a religion but a “great work,” the work of “restoration” of a once and future sacred society they call Zion. Mormons do not believe they are the only ones engaged in this work, but that it is a divinely orchestrated world-wide phenomenon. The restorative work of this women’s spirituality program at I.T.P. fits very easily within the Mormon paradigm, and from a Mormon perspective scholars, such as Marija Gimbutas, could be seen as a prophetess or seer.
The book, Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, examines the origins of the concept of the divine feminine, and the origins of the priestess in early Mormonism. The anthology edited by Maxine Hanks, traces the emergence and decline of the priestess in the Mormon tradition with essays such as, “The Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven,” “The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood,” “Mormon Women as "Natural" Seers: An Enduring Legacy,” “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood since 1843,” and “Women as Healers in the Modern Church.” Further documentation can be found in Carol Lynn Pearson’s Daughters of Light, a collection of historical accounts of nineteenth-century Mormon women acting as priestess, healing the sick and performing miracles. Claire Noall’s book, Guardians of the Hearth: Utah’s Pioneer Midwives and Women Doctors, is another crucial source, providing accounts of the former practice of “setting apart” or consecrating with a prayer or “blessing” female midwives and doctors in Utah as a priesthood office. Some of the earliest trained and educated female doctors in America were from Utah. In Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology, Margaret Toscano traces “the evidence of priesthood for women and the existence of a female divinity in Mormon (and Judeo-Christian) traditions” (Toscano, “Put on Your Strength,” 411).
The work of Gimbutas also resonates strongly with Mormon ideas. Mormon scripture predicts that a stream of sacred records will begin to pour forth from the ground in the “latter-days.” So many Mormons enthusiastically expect the types of discoveries made by archaeologists like Marija Gimbutas. One point of resonance that I’ve located in The Living Goddess is Gimbutas’ analysis of the sacred nature of the primordial temple-centered society. Gimbutas states, “Our Neolithic ancestors intimately wove their secular and sacred lives together without ideological segregation. Art, craft, and religion were one” (74). She says that the contemporary mind finds the Neolithic temple-centered society “incomprehensible because our daily activities normally are separate from our spiritual lives” (74). The Mormon tradition, however, is not a once-a-week religion but a prophetic movement engaged in the ushering in of the future Zion: a sacred, temple-centered society that creates heaven on earth, or the hermetic maxim: “as above, so below.”
Gimbutas found that, “old European temples integrated women’s daily activities, particularly bread baking, cloth weaving, and pottery making into sacred practice…spinning and weaving constituted other activities carried on by women in temples” (73).
Abstruse, arcane rituals did not take place here. The temple sanctified everyday activities. In fact, the location of the temple among dwellings further strengthens the connection between the temple and everyday life. In Old Europe and throughout much of prehistory, people did not separate the sacred from the mundane. The sacred force imbued every activity (98).
Unfortunately, Gimbutas says, “Drastic cultural transformation eventually caused the devaluation of “women’s work” and its removal from the spiritual sphere” (98). She concludes that, “The temple evidence confirms the strong position of these groups of Neolithic women. Perhaps we can even say that the temple belonged to the realm of women, who both supervised and participated in its rituals” (98).
A comparison of Gimbutas findings with Mormon history is of interest. The temple (and where there is not a temple, a tabernacle) is the literal geographical center of the hundreds of villages that Mormons established in the Western United States in the nineteenth century. Mormon scholar, Hugh Nibley, states, “Latter-day Saints believe that their temple ordinances are as old as the human race and represent a primordial revealed religion that has passed through alternate phases of apostasy and restoration which have left the world littered with the scattered fragments of the original structure, some more and some less recognizable, but all badly damaged and out of proper context” (xxvii). Keeping in mind that Mormons believe the restoration has only just begun and that we are far from the completed world-wide sacred culture, these early Mormon writings are fascinating to juxtapose with Gimbutas.
In his book, The Women of Mormondom, nineteenth-century Mormon writer, Edward Tullidge hailed Mormon women as “apostolic mediums of a new revelation,” who upon coming into contact with the Mormon tradition, “were not as sinners converted to Christianity, but as disciples who had been waiting for the ‘fullness of the everlasting gospel.’” (2). He prophesied “The Coming Age of Woman,” predicting a new age of women’s spirituality and the future “Apostolic” mission of women that would transform the planet (546).
His discussion of the temple as the ‘place of woman’ brings to my mind Gimbutas’ comments:
The divine romance of the sisterhood best opens at Kirtland [Ohio]. It is the place where this Israelitish drama of our times commenced its first distinguishing scenes, the place where the first Mormon temple was built (26)… Thus Kirtland became an adopted Zion, selected by revelation as a gathering place for the saints; and a little village grew into a city, with a temple (27)… There is a rare consistency in the mysticism of the Mormon Church. The daughters of the temple are so by right of blood and inheritance. They are discovered by gift of revelation in Him who is the voice of the Church; but they inherit from the fathers and mothers of the temple of the Old Jerusalem (28)… How stands woman in the grand temple economy, as she loomed up in her mission, from the house of the Lord in Kirtland? The apostles and elders laid the foundations, raised the arches, and put on the cap stone; but it was woman that did the “inner work of the temple.” George A. Smith hauled the first load of rock; Heber C. Kimball worked as an operative mason, and Brigham Young as a painter and glazier in the house; but the sisters wrought on the “veils of the temple.” Sister Polly Angel, wife of Truman O. Angel, the church architect, relates that she and a band of sisters were working on the “veils,” one day, when the prophet and Sidney Rigdon came in. “Well, sisters,” observed Joseph, “you are always on hand. The sisters are always first and foremost in all good works. Mary was first at the resurrection; and the sisters now are the first to work on the inside of the temple.” ‘Tis but a simple incident, but full of significance. It showed Joseph's instinctive appreciation of woman and her mission. Her place was inside the temple, and he was about to put her there, a high priestess of Jehovah, to whose name he was building temples. And wonderfully suggestive was his prompting, that woman was the first witness of the resurrection. Once again woman had become an oracle of a new dispensation and a new civilization. She can only properly be this when a temple economy comes (76) round in the unfolding of the ages. She can only be a legitimate oracle in the temple. When she dares to play the oracle, without her divine mission and anointing, she is accounted in society as a witch, a fortune-teller, a medium, who divines for hire and sells the gift of the invisibles for money. But in the temple woman is a sacred and sublime oracle. She is a prophetess and a high priestess. Inside the temple she cannot but be as near the invisibles as man nearer indeed, from her finer nature, inside the mystic veil, the emblems of which she has worked upon with her own hands (77).
In the temples, both of the heavens and the earth, woman is found. She is there in her character of Eve, and in her character of Zion. The one is the type of earth, the other the type of heaven; the one the mystical name of the mortal, the other of the celestial woman. The Mormon prophet rectified the divine drama. Man is nowhere where woman is not. Mormonism has restored woman to her pinnacle. Presently woman herself shall sing of her divine origin. A high priestess of the faith shall interpret the themes of herself and of her Father-and-Mother God! (177).
In our third textbook, The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power, I have discovered a number of auspicious synchronicities between the early Mormon priestess and the ancient bee priestess (Noble 97).
J.Michael Hunter says:
"The bee and beehive symbols had deep religious significance for Mormons of the nineteenth century. The bee and beehive represented the sum total of all the L.D.S. Church was trying to achieve – the building of the kingdom of god on the earth. In representing God’s kingdom, the bee and beehive symbols encompassed all aspects of Mormon life and culture. The bee and beehive symbols, in effect, encompassed all other symbols used by the Mormons. The symbol’s religious significance is evidenced by their common use in the most sacred of Mormon buildings the temples. They were also commonly used in chapels, on caskets, and on tombstones” (4).
In the 19th century Mormons also placed beehives on “quilts, furniture, sculptures, paintings, architectural designs, poetry, music and sermons”(3). After Utah became a state, the beehive was incorporated into the state seal, and to this day Utah is known as the Beehive State. The symbols are still so ubiquitous in Utah that they appear on sidewalks; highway signs; ambulances; government patches, badges, and police cars; hundreds of business signs and logos; and folk art (Cannon). In 1980, Hal Cannon created a photographic exhibit featuring all of these past and present hives. The exhibit was so successful that it was brought to the Smithsonian in 1981.
Like the bee priestess of old, early Mormon women (some well into the late-nineteenth century in communities like Orderville, UT) lived in communitarian settings with collective ownership of property and cooperative-style businesses. Until the 1970’s the Relief Society was the autonomous organization of Mormon priestesses, when it was finally, fully absorbed into the L.D.S. corporation. Into the twentieth century, the Relief Society independently operated a communal grain storage program, in close physical proximity to the temple, reminiscent of the ancient bee priestesses.
Jessie L. Embry says, that “the Relief Society’s attempts to direct economic affairs was unique for women in the nineteenth century…the grain storage program was also important because of what it reveals about the independent role that women and the church’s organization of women…played in Mormon church government” (73). One interesting aspect of the program according to historian, Leonard J. Arrington, “is the manner in which it assisted the women to achieve an independent position in Mormon government (74). Non-Mormon, history professor, Peggy Pascoe says, in her review of Women of Covenant: the Story of Relief Society, that the list of Relief Society innovations is long and impressive…[but] the Society “created a grain-storage program that to me seems so innovative as to be almost unique in women’s organizational annals.”
Historically, some examples of women serving in a capacity similar to a mission administrator come to mind. Emmeline B. Wells was called by Brigham Young in 1876 to preside over the church's grain saving effort, commonly termed a “mission.” “Wells, though overwhelmed by the size of the grain storage project, saw herself `a modern Joseph . . . in Egypt' and asked for the support of the Relief Societies.” [Previous] Relief Society president Eliza R. Snow appointed Wells “chair of the Central Grain Committee.” This program or "mission" developed into an extensive real estate and commercial enterprise churchwide; bishops later became involved on the ward level. Emmeline, who presided from 1876-1918, could be considered the church's first female mission president (Hanks, “Sisters”).
Emmeline B. Wells, the president of the Relief Society, and Utah’s “vice-president of the National Woman Suffrage Association…who built coalitions with the best-known feminists of her day, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” said herself: “The work that has been done in the saving of grain is unusual and unique for women. Joseph in Egypt was the only one that saved and stored wheat for a great nation.” Great indeed, in 1907, the Church’s general membership voted to send 20 tons of flour from the grain storage program to China for famine relief (Quinn, “Mormon Hierarchy”).
Additional parallels between the Mormon and ancient bee priestesses of old include a sacred relationship with gold, its ideal use being viewed as a sacred technology for spiritual purposes and not for materialistic gain (Noble, 105; A Legacy More Precious than Gold, Journal of Discourses); the divinatory practice of scrying (Noble, 67, 108; Quinn, “Early Mormonism”); and the use of entheogens (the sacred use of plants to induce mystical states of awareness) (Noble, 99-100; Beckstead).
Sadly, throughout the twentieth century the role of the Mormon priestess diminished until the only remaining place in the contemporary LDS Church where the priestessing of women is still sanctioned is in the LDS temples. How did this happen? Margaret Toscano explains:
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 (Toscano, “A Brief History of Mormon Feminism”).
“Currently,” Toscano says, “Mormon doctrines of female priesthood and female divinity are not seen as essential or fully legitimate, nor have their implications been sufficiently explored or ramified. Though these concepts are rooted in Mormonism, they have remained as dormant seeds, planted in the early days of the church. It appears to be the work of women and men of our day to water these seeds, to let them sprout, grow, blossom, and bring forth fruit” (Toscano, “Put on Your Strength.”) But, I would add, in conclusion, that the Mormons are told in their own scriptures that the work of restoration will roll forth - with or without them.
Finding Altamira - official Trailer 1 (2016) - Antonio Banderas Movie
Signs Out of Time: The Life and Work of Marija Gimbutas
