To understand the defilement of The Great Mother we need only look to the language of our times. As children we were instructed not to say certain words, because they were "bad words". "Cunt, bitch and whore", are representative of those words. Yet when we investigate their etymology we find not words of debasement, but words of honor and names of the Great Mother.
The Bitch Goddess of antiquity was known in all the Indo European cultures, beginning with the Great Bitch Sarama who led the Vedic dogs of death. Artemis-Diana, leader of the Scythian alani or "hunting dogs" was another such Bitch Goddess. Harlots or "bitches" were identified in the ancient Roman cult of the Goddess Lupa, the Wolf Bitch, whose priestesses the lupae gave their name to prostitutes in general. [read the poem!]
Cunt (Kunda): Derived from the Oriental Great Goddess Cunti, also known as The Yoni (vulva) of the Uni-verse. Other words coming from the same source are "cunabula", a cradle or first abode, "Cunina," a Roman Goddess who protected children in the cradle, "cuntipotent, having all powerful cunt-magic, "cunicle", a hole or passage, "cundy"; a culvert; also cunning, kenning and ken meaning knowledge, learning, insight, remembrance and wisdom. In ancient writings the meaning of the word was synonymous with "woman". Kunda : Saharan, Goddess of the Kuntahs a tribe who traced their beginnings to "the cleft of the Goddess". Kundas were children begotten out of wedlock and were considered divine gifts of the Goddess Kunda.
Horae : Multi Cultural, Known in Persia as "houris", in Egypt as "Ladies of the Hour", in Babylon as "harines". Semetics called them "whores" after Hor (meaning a hole) who was the ancestress of the Horites. In Greece the Horae were Aphrodite's celestial nymphs, who performed the Dances of the Hours, acted as midwives to the Gods and inspired earthly Horae (harlot priestesses) to train men in Sexual Mysteries. The dance the hora was based on the priestesses' imitation of the zodiacal circling of "hours". Time-keeping is known as horology because of the systems devised by these ancient priestesses of the Goddess. The Horae were called "fair ones, begetters of all things, who in appointed order bring on day and night, summer and winter, so as to make months and years grow full." The Vestal Virgins serving in the temples of Vesta and Hestia in Greece and Rome were originally harlot-priestesses. The temples of Aphrodite at Eryx, Corinth and Cyprus were served by a thousand sacred harlots apiece. The promiscuous priestess-shamans of Japan were called Holy Mothers. Every Babylonian woman prostituted herself in the temple before marriage. The original meaning of the word prostitute is "unmarried woman". (Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. . .Walker, B.)
The words "cunt, bitch and whore" are not slang, a dialect or any marginal form but true language words of the oldest stock. Words are not evil or good, they simply are. It is the connotation that society gives them which labels them "bad". In the case of these Goddess related words it was society (now ancient society), indoctrinated by pagan-hating religious hierarchy who sought to defame the feminine in any and all forms. It is time we become reeducated to the true meanings of language and seek to reinstate The Great Mother on her rightful throne of authority, wisdom and knowledge.
In all things there is polarity and the polarity allows balance. White is to black, day is to night, male is to female, positive is to negative, up is to down, in the same way that virgin is to the whore or creator is to destroyer. We do not judge the day as being "better" than the night, nor black as being more powerful than white. We only experience day because it is balanced by night, or summer as balanced by winter. Who are we then to judge a whore as being less righteous than a virgin? When we understand that, all is balance; all has an opposite pole. We can even make peace with the atrocities of the dark ages for they were balanced by the strides made in the Renaissance. A dark age vs. an age of enlightenment. One of the most revered and most powerful Goddesses of all time is Kali. Her worship and unbroken Hindu lineage stretches back into antiquity. She is the Great Goddess in her Destroyer aspect, balanced and counterpoint for the Goddess in her creator aspect yet, she is the three in one. In her emanation as Anath she ruled the Middle East back to Neolithic times. In Central America she is The Lady of The Serpent Skirt, her skirt an apron of severed phalluses. Lurena Bobbitt is her modern day emanation. Kali is depicted with black skin. She wears a necklace of skulls, carries a knife to cut through illusion, a mirror of reflection and drinks from a skull cup of blood. She stands above her disemboweled lover, phallus erect, his blood feeding the earth. Her visage is terrifying. She is loved and feared for her destructive powers, for she is both womb and tomb simultaneously. It is upon Kali's destroyer aspect that the angry, punishing, castrating Father God was based. Yet how much more terrible does she seem than her watered down male version?
It is confusing to think of the Goddess as virgin and the Goddess simultaneously as whore. Yet even in the cheap imitation (Christianity), both Mary's were adopted in their respective positions. The virgin/whore split into two aspects of the same divine feminine. In truth, prior to Christianity the temple virgin was the temple whore (Isis the woman in Red, She of the Red Apparel, Vieled Isis). Two sides of the same coin. This can only be true because the sacred prostitute was ordained by the Great Mother herself. The divine feminine does not seek to condemn sexuality but to raise it to it's true place as an act of spirituality. In ancient times the temples of the Goddess served as healing and cleansing centers for warriors returning from battle. Only by lying with a sacred prostitute (who became the earthly incarnation of the Goddess) could a man cleanse himself of the acts of violation committed in war and be reborn through the Mother and into society. Women as keepers of the secrets and mysteries of sexuality are the teachers and must reclaim their rightful place as the path to the Goddess.
The founding church father's understood the power inherent in sexuality. They understood that to repress and suppress the populace they needed to control the very act of sexuality. They accomplished this by condemning it as diabolical and women along with it. The church said, "Women are without souls." and thus no better than demons. Women became the fall guys so that a handful of clergy could hold power, authority, and the purse strings in their ever widening grasp. The word "devil" comes directly from the word "deva". The original devas were the nature spirits of the pagan Earth centered religions. The church took all things sacred to The Great Mother and made them profane, even to profaning the Earth herself. She has been raped and plundered and torn end to end. In her death throes she coughs up poison gases (in the form of volcanoes) in resistance. She shifts and quakes grinding her plates in tutonic activity trying to rub the burr from under the saddle of patriarchal oppression. She is not giving up easily but her struggle is apparent. And through all this sickness and pestilence we see rising signs of repentance.
As in the days of the Christos when the sacrificial gods Tammuz/Dumuzi were consorts the powerful Ishtar and Innana, men seeking to honor the Goddess entered the priesthood performing self castration as an act of contrition. To become closer to the Goddess they emasculated themselves in an attempt to be more like women, having a hole instead of a phallus. Later the church fathers emulated the attire of women by adopting robes as an emblem of their "holy" office. Today the numbers of men seeking to have sex changes is growing as men protest the rape of the Great Mother and seek to emulate femininity. Often times they take jobs working in sex clubs or find themselves on the street as "outcasts" of society who now "service" the men they themselves no longer wanted to be. Patriarchal traditions, so long upheld as "the only way" are falling apart as the foundations of society collapse heralding the new millennium. In some cases the sex changed men become dominatrix, stylistically punishing "establishment man" for his acts of control and domination in the outside world. The controlling men (lawyers, company presidents, high profile businessmen) seek ritual debasement and submission to purge their day to day guilt. These scenes recall the flailings of early devout monks and nuns beating themselves into a frenzy of zealous ecstacy. (For an informed and enlightened view of Domina work follow this link to another site.)*
How do we make sense of such seemingly alien behaviors? We must search our own closets, basements, attics and backrooms for clues. As we are still products of our parents, many of whom were dominating, controlling and abusive, we have within us an ingrained sense of guilt for wrong doing, imagined or otherwise. The abused child becomes the child abuser. When there is no sense of love, acceptance, warmth or forgiveness what might pass for feelings of "love" may in fact be those of the opposite pole. If our parents always yelled at us and hit us (saying, "I'm only doing this because I love you."), we may now experience "love" in a raised voice and a violent touch. By submitting to dominating behaviors are the dominators (of patriarchal society) simply trying to tap into the "love" feelings of their childhoods? Only by going back to the source and finding the point of departure can we seek to heal the rift that separates so many abused from a conscious awareness of what real love is, rather than simply what feels like "love" because that is what is remember.
Exploring the "shadow" within ourselves in not a "bad" thing nor something to be feared or condemned. It simply is an opportunity to experience the polarity of the light. The Dark Mother is calling us to witness her death and destruction at the hands of the tyrant. We are microcosm in a macrocosm. By taking such paths and finding where they lead we can better walk the 180 degrees around the circle and reemerge into the day light. The return of Quetzalcoatl is eminent. The winged serpent who unites the power of sexuality with the purity of spirit taking both to a higher level. By "becoming" our dominating parents we can understand, forgive and heal their behaviors so that we do not perpetrate "insanity" on the next generation. We see the light only because we experience darkness. The cycle is endless as is the Great Mother in her many guises and rotations. It is up to us to find the balance point, to seek to raise conscious awareness. To find and found a new Earth centered religion that seeks to honor the Great Mother in all her forms and guises, to honor the feminine and most of all to reclaim our sacred sexuality. It is time to reinstate the SACRED "prostitute" to a place of honor for through her we reach the Goddess within ourselves, a Goddess who exists within men as well as women.