The Hind of Hinds - Continued

From Woman’s Encyclopedia, pages 51-54: Arabia

Before Islam arrived in the 7th century A.D., Arabia was matriarchal for over a thousand years of recorded history. The Annals of Ashurbanipal said Arabia was governed by queens for as long as anyone could remember.(1)

The land’s original Allah was Al-Lat, part of the female trinity along with Kore or Q’re, the Virgin, and Al-Uzza, the Powerful One, the triad known as Manat, the Threefold Moon.(2) [Side Note: Annals of Ashurbanipal – Assyrian royal chronicles on cuneiform tablets, dating form the 7th century B.C., found in the king’s famous library at Nineveh by 19th-century archaelogists.]

At Mecca the Goddess was Shaybah or Sheba, the Old Woman, worshipped as a black aniconic stone like the Godess of the Scythian Amazons.(3) The sacred Black Stone now enshrined in the Kaaba at Mecca was her feminine symbol, marked by the sign of the yoni, and covered like the ancient Mother by a veil.(4) No one seems to know exactly what it is supposed to represent today. [Yeah, but all those Arab dudes still kiss it as part of their worship ritual!]

The Black Stone rests in the Haram, "Sanctuary", cognate of "harem," which used to mean a Temple of Women: in Babylon, a shrine of the Goddess Har, mother of harlots.(5) Hereditary guardians of the Haram were the Koreshites, "children of Kore," Mohammed’s own tribe.(6) The holy office was originally held by women, before it was taken over by male priests calling themselves Beni Shayban, "Sons of the Old Woman."(7)

Mohammed’s legends clearly gave him a matriarchal family background. [He would not have been seen as legitimate, otherwise, by the people of the time unless he HAD the necessary matriarchal lineage!]  His parents’ marriage was matrilocal. His mother remained with her own family and received her husband as an occasional visitor. Mohammed lived with his mother until her death, because she was his true parent according to the ancient system; "children belonged to the woman’s family … paternity in the biological sense was relatively unimportant."(8) She may well have been one of the "aged priestesses" who served the temple in Mecca.(9) The traditions of such priestesses may well date back to Assyro-Babylonian um-mati or "mothers," the only people permitted to enter the Holy of Holies. Archaic Arabian shrines were usually served by seven high priestesses, recalling the lawgiving Seven Sages, who were women.(10) The first collection of the books of law called Koran – the Word of Kore, or Q’re – was attributed to them. [Side Note: Seven Sages – Legendary figures in both Greek and Arabian lore, identified with a variety of seers and philosophers, the earliest ones usually female, confused with the Seven Sisters, or Pleiades.]

Pre-Islamic Arabia was dominated by the female-centered clans. Marriages were matrilocal, inheritance matrilineal. Polyandry – several husbands to one wife – was common. Men lived in their wives’ homes. Divorce was initiated by the wife. If she turned her tent to face east for three nights in a row, the husband was dismissed and forbidden to enter the tent again.(11)

Doctrines attributed to Mohammed simply reversed the ancient system in favor of men. A Moslem husband could dismiss his wife by saying "I divorce thee" three times. As in Europe, the change from matriarchate to patriarchate came about only gradually and with much strife.

Many Koreshites remained faithful to the Goddess and to their queen, Hind al-Hunud: the Hind of Hinds, similar to the title of Artemis. She was also called Lady of Victory. But her victories came to an end with one of the last queens, whose husband betrayed her and surrendered her city of Makkah to the enemy.

Legend claims the stepdaughter of the divine Hind married Mohammed himself.(12) However, the history of early-medieval Arabia is nearly all legend. Like Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and other founders of patriarchal religions, Mohammed lacks real verification. There is no reliable information about his life or teachings. Most stories about him are as apocryphal as the story that his coffin hangs forever in mid-air "between heaven and earth," like the bodies of ancient sacred kings.(13)

Footnotes omitted. 

See also The Hind of Hinds, February 28, 2008, Goddesschess blog. 

Friday Night Miscellany

Hola! Whew, what a week at the office. End of year in our practice is always the busiest time of the year and I'm exhausted. After my candlelit aroma-therapy bath ritual later this evening, I'll be calling it a night early. Tomorrow promises to be absolutely horrid outside weather-wise. In the morning, temperatures in the teens with snow starting, changing later on when a "warm front" comes through to freezing rain and sleet. By Sunday morning we may have an inch or more of ice over 4 inches of snow on the ground. Great. Just great. Unfortunately, I have to be out in it for several hours in the morning, and hope to be back home before the worst of it hits. (Please, Weather Goddess, let it be so...) I stopped at the supermarket tonight on the way home from work - like about a kajillion other people - to stock up on essentials in anticipation of the storm. Does everyone in the world have ill-tempered, screaming, nasty bratty children - and why, oh why, do they have to haul their sorry butts to the grocery store where, after a long, hard day at the office, I am subjected to their non-stop screaming, whining and conniption fits in the middle of the aisles? Some of the little monsters even THROW things at people - swoop they pluck something off a shelf and you have to duck for your life! And don't you DARE say anything to the oblivious parent about their precious little darling's behavior. One of these days, I'm going to throw my own conniption fit right in the middle of the meat aisle - I will scream at the top of my lungs, jump up and down, fling myself down and flail my arms and legs, and curse the day the Goddess created children. We'd be much better off if we hatched out of eggs fully grown and matured. Anyway, I stocked up on the essentials - nuts for the squirrels, delicacies for myself, croissants for breakfast for the next few days, and double-dark chocolate coated Pepperidge Farm cookies. I have coffee, wine, Christian Bros. (HAR!) egg nog stocked and my fireplace is ready to go. Plus, I have a new flat screen LCD HDTV. What an amazing thing. No giant tube sticking out the back; the TV is perhaps 3 inches deep. It's sitting on top of the fireplace mantle, which is 12 inches deep, with lots of room to spare. Perfect! And Absolutely Amazing. So I'm more or less ready for whatever winter throws at me this weekend, as long as the electricity stays on. Man, it was cold as hell walking home from the supermarket in the dark - and it wasn't even windy! It felt like near zero. We are cursed this week with a "clipper" from Canada. Curse the Canadians and their clippers! How will I survive when it drops to below zero with 40 below windchills? To cheer myself up, I've done some Christmas shopping online. I love shopping online, and one of my favorite places to shop is Wine Country Gift Baskets - they make it so easy to order multiple baskets and you can designate individual shipping instructions for each basket, all in one order. I ordered four gifts from Wine Country - shipping rates in the US are quite reasonable. As I've ordered from Wine Country before, I can attest to the quality of their products. When unwrapped from their protective shipping packaging, the towers I've ordered come in individually stacked, decorated gift boxes, five high, wrapped in ribbon, loaded with all sorts of delicious goodies. I've also done a good deed at the start of this Christmas season, I'll be getting a gift for a young person who requested a chess set through the "Giving Tree" program. Okay - to work here. If you are a religious Christian, you may not want to read this: The Nine Most (bleep) Bible Verses. I laughed my head off - and I'm religious! But then, I've always been a strange one...a blend of Pagan and Christian and Animist and lots of other stuff. That's what happens when you let your children read without supervision, parents, and THEN let them attend night-school at a state-funded college in order to earn a college diploma. Be warned! You may end up with a child like - MOI! Quel horreurs! On a sad note, Richard Leigh, one of the co-authors of the best-selling work The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail (with Michael Baigent and Henry Lincoln) died at age 64 on November 21, 2007. There is an obituary published on The Daily Grail, posted on November 29, 2007. The authors brought a law suit against mega best-selling author Dan Brown for plagarism (The Da Vinci Code), but they lost the suit. Still, the law suit, along with Brown's novel, kindled renewed interest in The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail and introduced an entirely new generation to an intersting hypothesis about the Priory of Scion and the bloodline allegedly produced by the marriage of Jesus Christ (who did NOT die after all) and Mary Magdelene. For those interested in geology, new research from geoscientists at the University of Michigan and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln calls into question the accepted timeline/scenario about when and how the great pan-continent called "Pangea" began to split apart, forming the present continents we all see on modern maps of the world today (for the map challenged, that's seven continents, darlings, although actually "Europe" and "Asia" are joined together at the waist, and are not really separate at all). Traditional theory holds (allegedly supported by geomagnetic evidence) that the portion of the ancient supercontinent of Pangea that is now the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah shifted more than 1,300 miles north during a 100-million-year span that ended about 200 million years ago in the early Jurassic Period, when Pangea began to break up. However, the new research says the area must have remained at the equator during the time in question. The scientists cannot reconcile the conflicting evidence. "It's a conundrum" they say. "Further research is needed", they say, in order to reconcile the conflicting evidence. They have no idea how that may happen. Ha ha ha! Maybe their entire "Pangea" continent theory is a lot of hog-wash - ohhhh, slap my face for even thinking such a thing! These silly people. If "God" supposedly dies in The Golden Compass book/film, what does this say about the faith these so-called "Christians" have - and the faith they are supposed to be passing along to their children? If they really had faith, they'd know that obviously Phillip Pullman's books are pure fantasy, because - as a FUNDAMENTAL element of faith - GODDESS can NEVER die. She is everlasting, without beginning, without end. A Mystery, as it were. Accept it - or not. And just shut up already, hey? I'm really sick of their whining. They're all as bad as their nasty, ill-manner kids they haul along to the supermarket! "Source: KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and swords and beating drums, burned pictures of a British teacher Friday and demanded her execution for insulting Islam by letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad." These people need to do some seriously chilling-out. How about dancing around a bonfire to "Boogey Wonderland?" while drinking lots of fire-water. Oh - sorry - that might possibly be construed as a racist comment. Should I add a disclaimer? Should I say what I REALLY think about these people? [White Angel, sitting on Jan's right shoulder is now saying "Now Jan, you know better than that. Where is your charity? Where is your forebearance and tolerance?" Red Devil sitting on Jan's left shoulder is saying "Go for it Hot Momma, blast those suckas. Tell it like it really is." At which point I interject to Red Devil that while I am Hot (particularly with my new "do"), I am NOT a momma. Heaven Forbid!] Oh, geez, just had a hot flash! Now I know I'm on the right track (hot flashes are signs from Goddess, you know). So, all those Sudanese "Muslims" who supposedly believe in the Koran, but who can't read or write and are utterly depending upon the "imans" giving them The Word (rather like Christians were dependent upon "The Church" feeding them their own Word prior to the invention of the printing press) should gather around gigantic bonfires shaped like a woman's reproductive tract (that's what the Ka'bah is, after all, a gigantic Goddess symbol embodied in a carved meteorite - do some research on the subject if you don't believe me), and do a jig in honor of the Arabic Triple Goddess whose sacred shrine underlies the most sacred site in Mecca. The ancient Arabic tribes prayed to the Triple Goddess three times a day, and the Muslims continue the tradition today, although they don't know it. See what "unsupervised" reading can do for a woman? Tsk, tsk. GODDESS POWER!