Reading Notes: 7 Secrets of the Goddess, Part B

Gaia's Secret 1.3-1.4

This is a painting of Adam and Eve at the apple tree. 

Source: Saving Adam

Rural cultures valued fertility, and urban cultures valued obediance because it indicated control and discipline. Fertility is rooted in women and men were the enforcers of obediance. Yin and yang can be seen as two separate forces working together to create life. Yang is the masculine and yin is feminine. A patriarchal society links women with nature and men with culture, like culture domesticates nature, men are asked to domesticate women. This is explict in many epics and mythology, often ending in peace and order for the world, but at the suffering of women. 

There are battles of the sexes in Japanese mythology. There is a story about how we got night and day times about a brother and a sister. The sister was a sun goddess and the brother was the moon god. The brother picked a fight with the earth goddess resulting in the division between day and night. 

There is the reoccuring theme that cities created the need for power and competition. In cities, there is the desire to rule and be a leader, which many men become obsessed with. Mistrust is created in these communities among elders and the young folk trying to overthrow them for their power. Women are seen as the trophies of these masculine rivalries. Everyone is told to be skeptical of women because they are dangerous and value desire over rules. This projects the idea that women need rules and discipline, or else things could become dangerous because women are reckless without them. 

In Greek Mythology, Zeus gives a box to Pandora with instructions not to open the box. Pandora opens the box and releases all the world's problems. Since that day, men were advised to be wary of all women because they cannot be trusted with important duties and instructions. This can also be seen in Christianity's story of Adam and Eve. When Eve is tempted by a snake to eat an apple from a tree in the garden that they are forbidden to eat from, Eve gives in and takes a bite. Once she does, the whole world changes and they are forbidden from the safe and fruitful garden and forced into the real world where negativity and shame are felt. In all of these stories, a woman is at fault for things going extermely wrong eventhough in most of these stories, the men were as much to bame as the women. 

Source: Gaia's Secrets