The Matriarch: A story told by a whale

A Story by Ugo Bardi


- Matriarch, Matriarch, where have you been? 

- We were searching for you! 

- Matriarch, are you there?

- Oh, children, where do you think I would go, as old as I am? I was just here, as I do all the time.

- Matriarch, we are glad that we found you
- Matriarch, we are coming from the edge of the great ocean.
- Matriarch, listen to us! Strange things are happening
- Matriarch, things never seen before!

- Children, children, I see that you are swimming so fast around me that you look like little fish. You make me feel confused. Calm down, children, what is that you want to tell me?

- Matriarch, the two-tails!...
- The two tails, matriarch! Something is happening to them....

- Children, calm down. What's happening to the two-tails? Tell me.

- They are dying matriarch!

- Many of them, they are all dying!

- Children, everything alive must die, sooner or later. But tell me more. What's happening?

- Matriarch, we were close to the edge of the water.
- Yes to the place where the great ocean fades.
- To the place where it becomes the-bottom-that's-out-of-the-water.

- You know you should not go there, children. It is dangerous!

- Matriarch, we know that.
- Matriarch, we are sorry, but.....
- You see, Matriarch, the black and white people told us about what was happening.

- The black and white people? What did they tell you?

- You know the black and white people, Matriarch. You know that they are strong.
- They can swim all the way to the edge of the water.
- And even climb out of the water, a little.

- I know, children. The black and white people are not so big as we are. But they are strong and powerful, and they can climb out of the water, a little. But that doesn't mean you should try to do that.

- Matriarch, we didn't try to do that.
- We didn't climb out of the water.
- There was no need to do that.
- We saw them in the water!

-  Whom did you see, children?

- The Two-Tails, matriarch. So many of them!

- Were they swimming in the water?

- No, Matriarch, they were not swimming.
- They were still, they were not swimming.
- They were dead, matriarch. So many of them. 
- So much blood, Matriarch, so much blood in the water.
- Matriarch, we had never seen anything like that.

- Is that true, children?

- Matriarch, it is true. So many of them!
- Yes. We had seen the two-tails swimming, sometimes.
- But never so many of them in the water!
- And, Matriarch, you can't believe, the big mouths. 
- Yes, the big mouths, Matriarch, they were all there!
- What a feast for them, Matriarch! 

- Oh, Children, what a sad story is this? The big mouths were eating the two-tails?

- Yes, Matriarch, you know that the big mouths eat everything.
- They eat fish and whales, and they even eat the two tails, when they can.
- The black and white people never do this. 

- I know that, children. The black and white people say that they have a pact with the two-tails. That they don't eat them, and so the two tails don't chase them.

- Matriarch, this we know. We know that the two-tails are strange.
- And that they kill us, they have those strange teeth that they can throw at us.
- Yes, they throw teeth at us from their floats. 
- Their floats are big. And they kill us. 
- We were not sorry to see so many two-tails dead in the water. Eaten by the big mouths.

- Children, children, you should not be happy to see any creature die. That's not the way of the Goddess of the sea.

- We know, Matriarch, we know. 
- Still, we couldn't feel sorry for the two-tails.
- But we felt worried. What we saw troubled us.
- The black and white people have big eyes. Good eyes. They told us that they could see even more two tails dead on the bottom-that's-out-of-the water.  
- Matriarch, we are troubled, because we had never seen so much death in the water,
- Matriarch, you know many things. What could have happened to the two tails? Can you tell us?

- Children, it is a strange story that you are telling me. And I am sorry to hear that so many two-tails have died because I cannot rejoice at the death of living creatures. But perhaps I know more than others of the people of the sea about them, because I am an old whale and you call me the matriarch, and there has to be a reason for that. And maybe I can tell you a story about the two-tails and maybe we can learn something from this story, both you and me.

- And so, children, you know that long ago there were many more whales in the sea than now. And many more fish, and many more sea creatures of all kinds. And some old whales are so old that they remember that time, even though many of the old ones of those times are not anymore with us, they are with the old ghosts at the bottom of the sea, where all of us must go. There are old stories that say that, in the old, old times, nobody ever had seen a two-tails in the sea, or maybe yes, just a few of them, because they can't swim so well even though they have two tails. They move their two tails in a strange way, making a lot of noise and yet they don't move fast. But that was how things were long, long ago.

- And then things changed, and those things we call floats started to appear. And it took some time for us to understand that those floats carried the two tails on top of them. Then, the two-tails started throwing their teeth at us. They had those teeth that were long and sharp. And many of us died, oh, so many! But you know this story, children, you heard it many times.

- We know this story, Matriarch, but who are the two-tails?  
- Why do they throw their teeth at us?
- Why do they kill us?

- This I cannot say for sure children, but maybe the two-tails eat us, and that would be according to the way things are in the world because it is the law of the sea that the big creatures eat the small creatures. But I can't understand how the two-tails killed so many of us and of other creatures of the sea that they nearly emptied the sea of living creatures. There are so few of us left and that's not a good thing, not even for the two-tails themselves. And maybe that the two-tails would never learn the ways of the Goddess of the sea.

- Children, what you told me made me think of something. And I have story about the two-tails to tell you, a story that I didn't tell many other whales and I think those whom I told it are now staying with the other ghosts at the bottom, and so I think you didn't hear it and you would like to hear it.

- Matriarch, you never told us this story. 
- Yes, Matriarch, we would love to hear it.
- Matriarch tell us this story!

-  Oh, it was some time ago, indeed. And, you see, I was young at that time, way younger than I am now and nobody called me Matriarch. And I was young enough that I liked to explore. And sometimes I went close to the end of the water. Maybe a little too close to be safe, but I was young and I loved to eat because I had to grow. So, I found a place where fish were truly abundant and it was at the end of a narrow body of water, a sort of a channel. Not so narrow that I couldn't swim in it, but I would wait at the end of it and wait for the fish to arrive. Plenty of fish for a young whale as I was.

- I went there often, and I learned when it was a good moment to find plenty of good fish. It had something to do with the Big White Circle in the sky, and the little fish would swim in an out of that channel when the Big White waxed. And so I knew when to go and I think the two-tails knew about me because some of them they would collect on the edge of the water and look at me. And I saluted them with my fin, and I splashed my tail. I thought it was a good thing to do, but maybe I shouldn't have done that. 

- And that went on for some time, and I had a good time with those fish and I put up some fat. And then, I think I grew a little too bold. I kept following the fish and I found myself swimming inside the channel, following them. It was a little narrow, and didn't feel so comfortable, but I thought there was nothing wrong in doing that. But, you know, children, that sometimes it is easy to get confused with our sounds. And that happens when you are close to the bottom-that-has-no-water. I think I had gotten too close to there.

- So, I was hearing my sounds coming back to me, but I couldn't find any direction where I could go. I got confused, I started swimming in circles. And in whatever direction I went, I got my sounds back, telling me that I couldn't go in that direction.

- That must have been terrible Matriarch
- You couldn't find the way to the open sea anymore?
- You could have died on the bottom-that-has-no-water, Matriarch

- Yes, children, this is why you should never get too close to the bottom-that-has-no-water. You know that sometimes one of us gets too close and then they can't get back to where they can swim. And I think it must be terrible, because you die away from the bottom of the ocean and your ghost can't join the ghosts of the ancestors, there. But that didn't happen to me. Of course not, because I am here!

- Yes, Matriarch, but did you find your way out of that narrow channel? 
- How did you do that?
- Tell us, Matriarch!

- Children, I told you that this story has to do with the two-tails, so let me keep going. And I told you that I was swimming in circles. And, I prayed the Goddess that she could help me and, at that moment I heard the sound of a float coming. Yes, one of the floats that carries the two-tails.

- I had always been careful to stay away from those floats as much as I could but it was coming straight toward me and I had no place to escape. And the float was coming. Then, children, the float got so close to me that I could see the head of a two-tails looking down at me. You know, they have those small heads that they can move in different directions. And they have those big eyes, looking forward all the time. I wonder how they can understand what happens around them if they can look only forward, but that's not for me to say.

- I had never seen a two-tails so close. They have a strange mouth, and this two-tails opened it up a little to show me her teeth. And I say her because I had this distinct sensation that this two-tails was female. Yes, a female two-tails - I am not sure of how I could say that, but I was sure of that. I didn't know what they mean when they show their teeth just a little, but it didn't seem to me that she wanted to bite me. Surely they are not like the big-mouths that eat anything. I wonder how the two-tails can eat enough to survive: one of us won't last a day with such a small mouth. But it seemed to me that the teeth she was showing to me was a friendly gesture. In some way, she wanted to tell me that she was not going to bite me, you see? It is like what we do something among friends when we pretend to hit them full force with the tail.

- So, this female two-tails spoke to me. Yes, I say that she spoke to me and we were so close that I could hear her, not so well, but I could hear her. Of course, none of us understands the language of the two-tails, but I was sure that whatever she was telling me, it was something said in kindness. And she leaned over the edge of her float and with one of her front fins, she touched me.

- Really, Matriarch?
- Did a two-tails speak to you?
- And a female two-tails?
- And she touched you?
- This is amazing, Matriarch!

- Yes, children, it was amazing. But what happened afterward was even more amazing. She went back inside her float and the float restarted making that throbbing noise, but slowly, and the float started moving. And she was moving her front fins in some ways as if she wanted to tell me something and I thought I understood what she was telling me. So, I started swimming close to the float, very close to it, and the female two-tails was looking at me and showing me her teeth. I think that the Goddess had really sent her. 

- Oh, that I was afraid, but I kept going, and I never moved too far away from that small float. And, truly, at a certain moment we were so close to the bottom that I felt it scraping my belly and I was afraid that I would be stuck there, and die there, and never see the land of the ancestors, at the bottom of the ocean. But that didn't happen. The bottom receded from me and I kept following the float and I saw we were in another channel, different than the one I had entered before. And on we went, until we were in the open ocean and I could swim free! And I swam away, but before doing that, I saluted the two-tails with my front fin, and she did the same with her front fin. And also the float turned around and went back toward the bottom-that-has-no-water.

- So, this two-tails saved you, Matriarch!
- That's amazing, truly. 
- The two-tails can be friends of the people of the sea?
- We can't believe that, Matriarch!

- Oh, children, there is more. There is more that you may not believe. I met again that female two-tails! Yes, I met her many more times. She would come out with her small float and I would find her and she would find me. We did it at night, usually, I think we both understood that if other two-tails were to see me, maybe they would try to kill me. It was strange, I never met a whale who would tell me having done something like that, becoming friend of a two-tails. But I would get close to the float, she would touch me with one of her front fins, and I would do the same with one of my front fins. I had to be careful, of course, she was so small! I didn't want to hurt her. Sometimes I was so happy to see her, that I splashed too close to her boat and I almost had it sinking. You know, when they sink the floats of the two-tails can't re-emerge. They go to the bottom and die.

- So, I got used to this two-tails, to that strange head of hers: those eyes always fixed forward, I have been always wondering how they see the world. They must miss so many things happening around them. With those small heads, how can they hear the sounds of the ocean? But that was how she was, and maybe she thought that I was strange, too. You see, we always tried to talk to each other, but we never could understand each other. All what we could do was to sing song for each other. Yes, singing. I don't think the two-tails can hear our songs when they are over the surface, but she would jump into the water close to me, and then she could hear my songs. I am sure about that because, she listened so intently. Funny, she could change her skin before jumping into the water! Before, her skin was soft and pink. But in water her skin was darker and harder, a little like our skin.  And also her face, she changed her eyes from two into one, but it was still pointed forward. But, can you believe that I learned some songs from this two-tails?

- Matriarch, that's why other whales say that your song are a little strange.
- That you sing a little differently.
- Is it because you learned these songs from a two-tails?
- We almost can't believe that, but we believe you. 
- Matriarch, tell us more, what happened of that female two-tails?

- Ah, children, what can I say? It was a sad story. One day, I was waiting for the female two-tails in the place where we sang songs together. And she wasn't arriving. I waited a little, I thought there was nothing wrong with that. Then, suddenly, I heard a big noise. It was one of those large floats, those that kill us, you know, children, those that throw their teeth at us. 

- Matriarch, really?

- But that big float came in place of the small one of your friend?

- And they were trying to kill you?

- Yes. They tried to kill me. And I was foolish enough that I waited: I thought that the female two-tails who was my friend was riding that float. Only after that it was close, I understood. Fortunately, I was young and strong. And I swam faster than I had ever swam in my life. They shot one of their big teeth at me, and it barely missed me. I felt the tooth bouncing away from my back. I saved myself by getting close to the bottom-that-has-no-water, I knew that those big floats don't like to go there. But I had learned from the two-tails of the little float how swim in that region. So, I made it. Children, I had never been so scared in my life. Blessed the Goddess who saved me. 

- What a story, Matriarch!

- The goddess truly protected you, Matriarch

- But the two-tails on the small float? The female one?

- The one who sang songs with you?

- For many years I never swam again in that place. You know, I thought that she had betrayed me. That she had told to other two-tails where we were meeting, and that they had been looking for me just there. But of that I can't be sure. Maybe not. Maybe it was something different. Maybe they just had seen where she was going. Who can say? Maybe she had died on the bottom-that-has-no-water. The last time I saw her, she seemed sad, and she didn't want to swim with me. But how could I know? I can only say that later, much later, sometimes I returned to that place, and waited for my two-tails friend to return. But I never saw her again. Maybe she is still there, on the bottom-that-has-no-water. But I don't think so, because it was many years ago those two-tails are short lived. And so is life. It is a long life of us, the whales, and we keep learning many things. 

- Matriarch, we are sorry to hear this. 

- We would have loved to hear the songs that your two-tail friend sang

- That I am afraid won't happen, children. But, about those songs, there is something that I wanted to tell you. You see, I never could really speak to this two-tails friend of mine. But I learned some of her songs. And I understood something about her and about what she was thinking. You see, there was a certain sadness about her song. A sadness that at the beginning I couldn't understand, but that now I think I do. She seemed to be worried about the future, about something terrible that was going to happen to her. And not just to her. To all the two-tails. 

- Matriarch, she was right. 

- So many two-tails have died

- We saw so many of them dead

- Yes, children. I am afraid she was right. Something very bad happened to the two-tails. And I am saddened by that.  

- Matriarch, maybe we are not so sad

- Matriarch, it is what they deserved

- Matriarch, that may mean that they will stop killing us with their long teeth

- But, children, I cannot be happy of the death of any creature. Yet, perhaps it was something that had to happen. Because they never learned the way of the Goddess and that they should have been more careful with killing so many creatures in the great Oceans. And they killed so many creatures that maybe they started killing each other. How can I say? Maybe some of them are still alive and they now understand what they were doing that was so wrong. But life keeps going in the great ocean and in the great bottom-that-has-no-water. And it will keep going on for a long, long, time for us, the people of the sea, and for the two-tails as well, perhaps. 

- Blessed be the Goddess, Matriarch

- She gives life to everything, Matriarch

- This we know, Matriarch.

- And so be it, children. Now keep swimming and remember the story I told you. One day you'll tell it to your children and that's the way of the Goddess who gives life to everything!

Gaia, the Return of the Earth Goddess

Temple worship in Ur, from Sumerian times. Note in the lower panel people are bringing all sort of goods to the temple represented as the abstract structure on the right. 

House founded by An, praised by Enlil, given an oracle by mother Nintud! A house, at its upper end a mountain, at its lower end a spring! A house, at its upper end threefold indeed. Whose well-founded storehouse is established as a household, whose terrace is supported by lahama deities; whose princely great wall, the shrine of Urim! (the Kesh temple hymn, ca. 2600 BCE)

Not long ago, I found myself involved in a debate on Gaian religion convened by Erik Assadourian. For me, it was a little strange. For the people of my generation, religion is supposed to be a relic of the past, opium of the people, a mishmash of superstitions, something for old women mumbling ejaculatory prayers, things like that. But, here, a group of people who weren't religious in the traditional sense of the word, and who included at least two professional researchers in physics, were seriously discussing about how to best worship the Goddess of Earth, the mighty, the powerful, the divine, the (sometimes) benevolent Gaia, She who keeps the Earth alive.

It was not just unsettling, it was a deep rethinking of many things I had been thinking. I had been building models of how Gaia could function in terms of the physics and the biology we know. But here, no, it was not Gaia the holobiont, not Gaia the superorganism, not Gaia the homeostatic system. It was Gaia the Goddess.

And here I am, trying to explain to myself why I found this matter worth discussing. And trying to explain it to you, readers. After all, this is being written in a blog titled "Chimeras" -- and the ancient Chimera was a myth about a creature that, once, must have been a sky goddess. And I have been keeping this blog for several years, see? There is something in religion that remains interesting even for us, moderns. But, then, what is it, exactly?

I mulled over the question for a while and I came to the conclusion that, yes, Erik Assadourian and the others are onto something: it may be time for religion to return in some form. And if religion returns, it may well be in the form of some kind of cult of the Goddess Gaia. But let me try to explain

What is this thing called "religion," anyway?

Just as many other things in history that go in cycles, religion does that too. It is because religion serves a purpose, otherwise it wouldn't have existed and been so common in the past. So what is religion? It is a long story but let me start from the beginning -- the very beginning, when, as the Sumerians used to say "Bread was baked for the first time in the ovens".

A constant of all ancient religions is that they tell us that whatever humans learned to do -- from fishing to having kings -- it was taught them by some God who took the trouble to land down from heaven (or from wherever Gods come from) just for that purpose. Think of when the Sumerian Sea-God called Aun (also Oannes in later times) emerged out of the Abzu (that today we call the abyss) to teach people all the arts of civilization. It was in those ancient times that the Gods taught humans the arts and the skills that the ancient Sumerians called "me,"  a bewildering variety of concepts, from "music" to "rejoicing of the heart." Or, in a more recent lore, how Prometheus defied the gods by stealing fire and gave it to humankind. This story has a twist of trickery, but it is the same concept: human civilization is a gift from the gods.

Now, surely our ancestors were not so naive that they believed in these silly legends, right? Did people really need a Fish-God to emerge out of the Persian Gulf to teach them how to make fish hooks and fishnets? But, as usual, what looks absurd hides the meaning of complex questions.

The people who described how the me came from the Gods were not naive, not at all. They had understood the essence of civilization, which is sharing. Nothing can be done without sharing something with others, not even rejoicing in your heart. Think of "music," one of the Sumerian me: can you play music by yourself and alone? Makes no sense, of course. Music is a skill that needs to be learned. You need teachers, you need people who can make instruments, you need a public to listen to you and appreciate your music. And the same is for fishing, one of the skills that Aun taught to humans. Of course, you could fish by yourself and for your family only. Sure, and, in this way, you ensure that you all will die of starvation as soon as you hit a bad period of low catches. Fishing provides abundant food in good times, but fish spoils easily and those who live by fishing can survive only if they share their catch with those who live by cultivating grains. You can't live of fish alone, it is something that I and my colleague Ilaria Perissi describe in our book, "The Empty Sea." Those who tried, such as the Vikings of Greenland during the Middle Ages, were mercilessly wiped out of history.

Sharing is the essence of civilization, but it is not trivial: who shares what with whom? How do you ensure that everyone gets a fair share? How do you take care of tricksters, thieves, and parasites? It is a fascinating story that goes back to the very beginning of civilization, those times that the Sumerians were fond to tell with the beautiful image of "when bread was baked for the first time in the ovens,"  This is where religion came in, with temples, priest, Gods, and all the related stuff.

Let's make a practical example: suppose you are on an errand, it is a hot day, and you want a mug of beer. Today, you go to a pub, pay a few dollars for your pint, you drink it, and that's it. Now, move yourself to Sumerian times. The Sumerians had plenty of beer, even a specific goddess related to it, called Ninkasi (which means, as you may guess, "the lady of the beer"). But there were no pubs selling beer for the simple reason that you couldn't pay for it. Money hadn't been invented, yet. Could you barter for it? With what? What could you carry around that would be worth just one beer? No, there was a much better solution: the temple of the local God or Goddess.

We have beautiful descriptions of the Sumerian temples in the works of the priestess Enheduanna, among other things the first named author in history. From her and from other sources, we can understand how in Sumerian times, and for millennia afterward, temples were large storehouses of goods. They were markets, schools, libraries, manufacturing center, and offered all sorts of services, including that of the hierodules (karkid in Sumerian), girls who were not especially holy, but who would engage in a very ancient profession that didn't always have the bad reputation it has today. If you were so inclined, you could also meet male prostitutes in the temple, probably called "kurgarra" in Sumerian. That's one task in whicb temples have been engaging for a long time, even though that looks a little weird to us. Incidentally, the Church of England still managed prostitution in Medieval times

So, you go to the temple and you make an offer to the local God or Goddess. We may assume that this offer would be proportional to both your needs and your means. It could be a goat that we know it was roughly proportional to the services of a high-rank hierodule. But, if all you wanted was a beer, then you could have limited your offer to something less valuable: depending on your job you could have offered fish, wheat, wool, metal, or whatever. Then, the God would be pleased and as a reward the alewives of the temple would give you all the beer you could drink. Seen as a restaurant, the temple worked on the basis of what we call today an "all you can eat" menu (or "the bottomless cup of coffee," as many refills as you want).

Note how the process of offering something to God was called sacrifice. The term  comes from "sacred" which means "separated." The sacrifice is about separation. You separate from something that you perceived as yours which then becomes an offer to the God or to the community -- most often the same thing. The offerings to the temple could be something very simple: as you see in the images we have from Sumerian times, it didn't always involve the formal procedure of killing a live animal. People were just bringing the goods they had to the temple. When animals were sacrificed to God(s) in the sense that they were ritually killed, they were normally eaten afterward. Only in rare cases (probably not in Sumeria) the sacrificed entity was burnt to ashes. It was the "burnt sacrifice called korban olah in the Jewish tradition. In that case, the sacrifice was shared with God alone -- but it was more of an exception than the rule.

In any case, God was the supreme arbiter who insured that your sacrifice was appreciated -- actually not all sacrifices were appreciated. Some people might try to trick by offering low quality goods, but God is not easy to fool. In some cases, he didn't appreciate someone's sacrifices at all: do you remember the story of Cain and Abel? God rejected Cain's sacrifice, although we are not told exactly why. In any case, the sacrifice was a way to attribute a certain "price" to the sacrificed goods.

This method of commerce is not very different than the one we use today, it is just not so exactly quantified as when we use money to attach a value to everything. The ancient method works more closely to the principle that the Marxists had unsuccessfully tried to implement "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." But don't think that the ancient Sumerian were communists, it is just that the lack of method of quantification of the commercial transaction generated a certain leeway that could allow to the needy access to the surplus available, when it was available. This idea is still embedded in modern religions, think of how the holy Quran commands the believers to share the water of their wells with the needy, once they have satisfied their needs and those of their animals. Or the importance that the Christian tradition gives to gleaning as a redistribution of the products of the fields. Do you remember the story of Ruth the Moabite in the Bible? That important, indeed.

But there is more. In the case of a burnt sacrifices, the value attributed to the goods was "infinite" -- the goods consumed by the flames just couldn't be used again by human beings. It is the concept of Taboo used in Pacific cultures for something that cannot be touched, eaten, or used. We have no equivalent thing in the "market," where we instead suppose that everything has a price.

And then, there came money (the triumph of evil)

The world of the temples of the first 2-3 millennia of human civilizations in the Near East was in some  ways alien to ours, and in others perfectly equivalent. But things keep changing and the temples were soon to face a competition in a new method of attributing value to goods: money. Coinage is a relatively modern invention, it goes back to mid 1st millennium BCE. But in very ancient times, people did exchange metals by weight -- mainly gold and silver. And these exchanges were normally carried out in temples -- the local God(s) ensured honest weighing. In more than one sense, in ancient times temples were banks and it is no coincidence that our modern banks look like temples. They are temples to a God called "money." By the way, you surely read in the Gospels how Jesus chased the money changers -- the trapezitai -- out of the temple of Jerusalem. Everyone knows that story, but what were the money changers doing in the temple? They were in the traditional place where they were expected to be, where they had been from when bread was baked in ovens for the first time. 

So, religion and money evolved in parallel -- sometimes complementing each other, sometimes in competition with each other. But, in the long run, the temples seem to have been the losers in the competition. As currency became more and more commonplace, people started thinking that they didn't really need the cumbersome apparatus of religion, with its temples, priests, and hierodules (the last ones were still appreciated, but now were paid in cash). A coin is a coin is a coin, it is guaranteed by the gold it is made of -- gold is gold is gold. And if you want a good beer, you don't need to make an offer to some weird God or Goddess. Just pay a few coppers for it, and that's done.

The Roman state was among the first in history to be based nearly 100% on money. With the Romans, temples and priests had mainly a decorative role, let's say that they had to find a new market for their services. Temples couldn't be anymore commercial centers, so they reinvented themselves as lofty place for the celebration of the greatness of the Roman empires. There remained also a diffuse kind of religion in the countryside that had to do with fertility rites, curing sickness, and occasional cursing on one's enemies. That was the "pagan" religion, with the name "pagan" meaning, basically, "peasant." 

 

Paganism would acquire a bad fame in Christian times, but already in Roman times peasant rites were seen with great suspicion. The Romans burned witches, oh, yes, they loved to burn witches -- they burned many more than would ever be burned in medieval times. And the victims were most likely countryside enchanters and enchantresses. They were considered dangerous because the real deity that the Romans worshiped was money. An evil deity, perhaps, but it surely brought mighty power to the Romans, but their doom as well, as it is traditional for evil deities. Roman money was in the form of precious metals and when they ran out of gold and silver from their mines, the state just couldn't exist anymore: it vanished. No gold, no empire. It was as simple as that.

The disappearance of the Roman state saw a return of religion, this time in the form of Christianity. It is a long story that would need a lot of space to be written. Let's just say that the Middle Ages in Europe saw the rise of monasteries to play a role similar to that of temples in Sumerian times. Monasteries were storehouses, manufacturing centers, schools, libraries, and more -- they even had something to do with hierodules. During certain periods, Christian nuns did seem to have played that role, although this is a controversial point. Commercial exchanging and sharing of goods again took a religious aspect, with the Catholic Church in Western Europe playing the role of a bank by guaranteeing that, for instance, ancient relics were authentic. In part, relics played the role that money had played during the Roman Empire, although they couldn't be exchanged for other kinds of goods. The miracle of the Middle Ages in Europe was that this arrangement worked, and worked very well. That is, until someone started excavating silver from mines in Eastern Europe and another imperial cycle started. It is not over to this date, although it is clearly declining.

So, where do we stand now? Religion has clearly abandoned the role it had during medieval times and has re-invented itself as a support for the national state, just as the pagan temples had done in Roman times. One of the most tragic events of Western history is when in 1914, for some mysterious reasons, young Europeans found themselves killing each other by the millions while staying in humid trenches. On both sides of the trenches, Christian priests were blessing the soldiers of "their" side, exhorting them to kill those of the other side. How Christianity could reduce itself to such a low level is one of the mysteries of the Universe, but there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. And it is here that we stand. Money rules the world and that's it.

The Problem With Money

Our society is perhaps the most monetized of history -- money pervades every aspect of life for everyone. The US is perhaps the most monetized society ever: for Europeans it is a shock to discover that many American families pay their children for doing household chores. For a European, it is like if your spouse were asking you to pay for his/her sexual services. But different epochs have different uses and surely it would be shocking for a Sumerian to see that we can get a beer at the pub by just giving the alewives a curious flat object, a "card," that they then give back to us. Surely that card is a powerful amulet from a high-ranking God. 

 

So, everything may be well in the best of worlds, notoriously represented by the Western version of liberal democracy. Powerful market forces, operated by the God (or perhaps Goddess) called Money or, sometimes, "the almighty dollar," ensure that exchanges are efficient, that scarce resources are optimally allocated, and that everyone has a chance in the search for maximizing his/her utility function.

Maybe. But it may also be that something is rotten in the Great Columned Temple of Washington D.C. What's rotten, exactly? Why can't this wonderful deity we call "money" work the way we would it like to, now that we even managed to decouple it from the precious metals it was made of in ancient times?

Well, there is a problem. A big problem. A gigantic problem. It is simply that money is evil. This is another complex story, but let's just say that the problem with evil and good is that evil knows no limits, while good does. In other words, evil is equivalent to chaos, good to order. It has something to do with the definition of "obscenity." There is nothing wrong in human sex, but an excess of sex in some forms becomes obscene. Money can become obscene for exactly this reason: too much of it overwhelms everything else. Nothing is so expensive that it cannot be bought; that's the result of the simple fact that you can attribute a price to everything.

Instead, God is good because She has limits: She is benevolent and merciful. You could see that as a limitation and theologians might discuss why a being that's all-powerful and all-encompassing cannot be also wicked and cruel. But there cannot be any good without an order of things. And order implies limits of some kind. God can do everything but He cannot do evil. That's a no-no. God cannot be evil. Period.

And here is why money is evil: it has no limits, it keeps accumulating. You know that accumulated money is called "capital," and it seems that many people realize that there is something wrong with that idea because "capitalism" is supposed to be something bad. Which may be but, really, capital is one of those polymorphic words that can describe many things, not all of them necessarily bad. In itself, capital is simply the accumulation of resources for future use -- and that has limits, of course. You can't accumulate more things than the things you have. But once you give a monetary value to this accumulated capital, things change. If money has no limits, capital doesn't, either.

Call it capital or call it money, it is shapeless, limitless, a blob that keeps growing and never shrinks. Especially nowadays that money has been decoupled from material goods (at least in part, you might argue that money is linked to crude oil). You could say that money is a disease: it affects everything. Everything can be associated with a number, and that makes that thing part of the entity we call market. If destroying that thing can raise that number, somewhere, that thing will be destroyed. Think of a tree: for a modern economist, it has no monetary value until it is felled and the wood sold on the market. And that accumulates more money, somewhere. Monetary capital actually destroys natural capital. You may have heard of "Natural Capitalism" that's supposed to solve the problem by giving a price to trees even before they are felled. It could be a good idea, but it is still based on money, so it may be the wrong tool to use even though for a good purpose..

The accumulation of money in the form of monetary capital has created something enormously different than something that was once supposed to help you get a good beer at a pub. Money is not evil just in a metaphysical sense. Money is destroying everything. It is destroying the very thing that makes humankind survive: the Earth's ecosystem. We call it "overexploitation," but it means simply killing and destroying everything as long as that can bring a monetary profit to someone.

Re-Sacralizing The Ecosystem (why some goods must have infinite prices)

There have been several proposals on how to reform the monetary system, from "local money" to "expiring money," and some have proposed to simply get rid of it. None of these schemes has worked, so far, and getting rid of money seems to be simply impossible in a society that's as complex as ours: how do you pay the hierodules if money does not exist? But from what I have been discussing so far, we could avoid the disaster that the evil deity calling money is bring to us simply by putting a limit to it. It is, after all, what the Almighty did with the devil: She didn't kill him, but confined him in a specific area that we call "Hell" -- maybe there is a need for hell to exist, we don't know. For sure, we don't want hell to grow and expand everywhere.

What does it mean a limit to money? It means that some things must be placed outside the monetary realm -- outside the market. If you want to use a metaphor based on economics, some goods must be declared to have an "infinite" monetary price -- nobody can buy them, not billionaires, not even trillionaires or any even more obscene levels of monetary accumulation. If you prefer, you may use the old Hawai'ian word: Taboo. Or, simply, you decide that some things are sacred, holy, they are beloved by the Goddess and even thinking of touching them is evil. 

 

Once something is sacred, it cannot be destroyed in the name of profit. That could mean setting aside some areas of the planet, declaring them not open for human exploitation. Or setting limits to the exploitation, not with the idea of maximizing the output of the system for human use, but with the idea to optimize the biodiversity of the area. These ideas are not farfetched. As an example, some areas of the sea have been declared "whale sanctuaries" -- places where whales cannot be hunted. That's not necessarily an all/zero choice. Some sanctuaries might allow human presence and a moderate exploitation of the resources of the system. The point is that as long as we monetize the exploitation, the we are back to monetary capitalism and the resource will be destroyed.

Do we need a religion to do that? Maybe there are other ways but, surely, we know that it is a task that religion is especially suitable for. Religion is a form of communication that uses rituals as speech. Rituals are all about sacralization: they define what's sacred by means of sacrifice. These concepts form the backbone of all religions, everything is neatly arranged under to concept of "sacredness" -- what's sacred is nobody's property. We know that it works. It has worked in the past. It still works today. You may be a trillionaire, but you are not allowed to do everything you want just because you can pay for it. You can't buy the right of killing people, for instance. Nor to destroy humankind's heritage. (So far, at least).

Then, do we need a new religion for that purpose? A Gaian religion?

Possibly yes, taking into account that Gaia is not "God" in the theological sense. Gaia is not all-powerful, she didn't create the world, she is mortal. She is akin to the Demiurgoi, the Daimonoi, the Djinn, and other similar figures that play a role in the Christian, Islamic and Indian mythologies. The point is that you don't necessarily need the intervention of the Almighty to sacralize something. Even just a lowly priest can do that, and surely it is possible for one of Her Daimonoi, and Gaia is one.

Supposing we could do something like that, then we would have the intellectual and cultural tools needed to re-sacralize the Earth. Then, whatever is declared sacred or taboo is spared by the destruction wrecked by the money based process: forests, lands, seas, creatures large and small. We could see this a as a new alliance between humans and Gaia: All the Earth is sacred to Gaia, and some parts of it are especially sacred and cannot be touched by money. And not just the Earth, the poor, the weak, and the dispossessed among humans, they are just as sacred and must be respected. 

 

All that is not just a question of "saving the Earth" -- it is a homage to the power of the Holy Creation that belongs to the Almighty, and to the power of maintenance of the Holy Creation that belongs to the Almighty's faithful servant, the holy Gaia, mistress of the ecosystem. And humans, as the ancient Sumerians had already understood, are left with the task of respecting, admiring and appreciating what God has created. We do not worship Gaia, that would silly, besides being blasphemous. But through her, we worship the higher power of God.  

Is it possible? If history tells us something is that money tends to beat religion when conflict arises. Gaia is powerful, sure, but can she slay the money dragon in single combat? Difficult, yes, but we should remember that some 2000 years ago in Europe, a group of madmen fought and won against an evil empire in the name of an idea that most thought not just subversive at that time, but even beyond the thinkable. And they believed so much in that idea that they accepted to die for it

In the end, there is more to religion than just fixing a broken economic system. There is a fundamental reason why people do what they do: sometimes we call it with the anodyne name of "communication," sometimes we use the more sophisticated term of "empathy," but when we really understand what we are talking about we may not afraid to use the world "love" which, according to our Medieval ancestors, was the ultimate force that moves the universe. And when we deal with Gaia the Goddess, we may have this feeling of communication, empathy, and love. She may be defined as a planetary homeostatic system, but she is way more than that: it is a power of love that has no equals on this planet. But there are things that mere words cannot express.

 

The Sound of Waves

Painting by William Trost Richards 1833 - 1905)

by Ugo Bardi – 2020

Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away. – Sarah Kay

It is said that, once upon a time, there was a child in the city who woke up one morning and he spoke to his mother.

Mother, I heard a strange sound tonight.

My son, what did you hear? Were you afraid of monsters walking in the night? Or of ghosts haunting the house?

No, mother, it was not the sound of ghosts or monsters. And I was not afraid.

Then, what was this sound?

Mother, it was the sound of waves, the sound of the sea.

Oh, my son, how can you say that? You never saw the sea. And I never saw it, either. And your father never saw the sea, nor any of your relatives. The sea is far, far from the city, and some say that such a thing doesn't even exist. It is a legend, a fancy story, a dream that someone dreamed.

Mother, dear mother. I heard this sound and it was the sound of waves. I know that.

My son, be careful in what you say, because people could think ill things of you and of our family if you tell them of this strange dream of yours. Are you sure of what you heard?

Mother, I am sure that I heard the sound of the waves, I heard the swell of the waves, sometimes roaring, sometimes murmuring. And I heard the water coming and returning to the beach, as if they were mother and child, never tired to embrace each other.

Son, do promise me that you won't tell anyone.

I promise that to you, mother.

Years passed and the child became a man, and he took the name of Lugalzid, which means “strong and trusted.” And one day he went to see his mother and he spoke to her.

Mother, dearest mother, I came to say goodbye to you because I am leaving the city.

Lugalzid, my dear, I thought you would tell me that. And I know where you want to go.  It is because of the dream you had when you were a child, the sound of waves. Am I right?

You are right, mother. It is because of that. From the first time when I told you about the sound I was hearing, I heard that sound every morning. And every morning I woke up lulled by that gentle murmur of the waves crashing on the beach, one after the other. And I still hear it every morning. But I promised to you I won’t tell anyone about that, and I didn’t. But now I want to leave the city and search for the sea that they say exists on the other side of the mountains.

My son, my dear Lugalzid, I can tell you that every morning when I saw you waking up, I knew that you were hearing something that was denied to me to hear. And sometimes I thought that you were possessed by a demon who was sending that sound to you.

Mother, sometimes I thought the same, but the sound I heard was so sweet and so beautiful that I can’t believe it could have been a demon sending it to me.

And I believe that, too. My son, you are grown up and I cannot tell you anymore what to do. You are an adult and you know the path that you are to follow. But, my sweet son, my heart bleeds at the thought of the dangers that you will face. And I could die at the very thought of not having you with me anymore.

Mother, my heart bleeds too at the thought that I couldn’t see you anymore. But I had been thinking to do what I am going to do for a long time, and this is what I will do.

But you know that the way across the mountains is long and difficult. And they say that there are demons in the mountains who attack travelers.

That I heard, too, mother. But I am not afraid and I will be careful.

I know you will be careful, Lugalzid, still it will be a difficult travel over the dry mountains. And if the demons attack you, you will need the sword that belonged to your father.

A sword? Mother, I didn’t know that my father had a sword.

Lugalzid, your father was a good man who pulled water out of the well, and who worked hard in the garden. He took good care of his family, so he never needed a sword. But he had inherited a sword from his father, who had inherited it from his father, and maybe from his father, but none of them ever used it. But there was a time, long ago, when the city was rich and populous, not like it is now, half ruined and with so few people. And at that time the city had a King who led men in battle. And your ancestors were warriors, my son. This is the sword that you are inheriting from them, because at heart you are a warrior, too.

So, mother, I take this sword with pleasure in honor of my ancestors, although I hope I will never have to use it. But if my destiny will be that of being a warrior, I will follow it.

Lugalzid, do you know of the old legend that says that one day a warrior will make the river flow to the sea again?

I heard of that legend, mother.

Maybe you could be that warrior? If you heard that sound, the sound of waves, it must be because the Goddess send it to you as a sign.

This I cannot say, mother. I can only say that I heard that sound and that now I want to see if there really is a sea on the other side of the mountains.


My son, Lugalzid, do you know that they say the sea is blue?

So I have heard, mother. They say the sea is vast and deeply blue.

Dear Lugalzid, I know that I won’t see you again, but make a promise to me.that when you find the sea that you have been searching for, you will say a prayer to the Goddess for my soul.

I will do that, mother. I promise. When I found the sea, I will say a prayer for your soul to the Goddess.

They say that Lugalzid marched for many days, and months, and years. And that he fought thirst, and hunger, and cold, and strong winds, and landslides. And that, one day, he arrived at the ancient shoreline of the sea.

He marched onward and he saw that there were huts lined along the beach and that all the huts were ruined and empty, and the pathways between huts were dusty and empty, swept by the wind. And there were many strange ruined wooden hulls that he thought were what was left of very old boats. And on the ground, there were strands of what he thought were old nets. And he marched onward until he saw the sand gently sloping down. And that seemed to him that the sea should have been in front of him, but there was just brown sand all the way to the horizon. And no vast and blue sea to see, nor the sound of the waves to hear.

Lugalzid marched on the dry sand and he knelt down on the sand, bowing to the setting sun. As he was there, he heard the sound of steps behind him. He rose up and in front of him, there was a woman. Dressed in black, her head was covered by a cape and her face was covered by a scarf, but her eyes were black and penetrating. And the woman spoke to him.

Who are you, sir? What are you doing here?

Lady, my name is of no importance. I come from the city on the other side of the mountains. And I came here to see if it is true that there is a vast blue sea on the this side of the mountain. But what is your name, lady? Where do you come from?

My name is of no importance, sir. I am the last inhabitant of the village that once was full of people. And you can see by yourself that there is no sea on this side of the mountains, although once the water was arriving all the way to were you stand now. But, what were you doing, kneeling on the sand?

Lady, I waspraying the Goddess for the soul of my mother to whom I had promised I would do that once I had arrived to the sea

That was kind of you, sir. But did the Goddess send you here?

Lady, I came because I had been hearing the sound of waves in my mind from when I was a child. And my mother said it could be a sign that the Goddess sent to me, but of this I can’t say anything.

This is strange, because there is an old legend that my mother told me that says that the waters of the sea would return one day when a warrior would plow the sand with his sword. I see that you carry a sword with you, are you a warrior? Maybe you used that sword to defend yourself from the demons of the mountains?

Lady, I found no demons in the mountains. Only whirlwinds of sand, and much dryness, and I almost died of thirst and hunger, or because of the dusty wind that nearly swept me away, or because of the landslides that almost buried me alive. So, I didn’t need the sword to defend myself, but I carry it in honor of my ancestors who were indeed warriors.

But if you are a warrior, maybe the legend refers to you, sir. Would you plow the sand with your sword?

Lady, if you tell me that you would like me to do that, I can try.

And Lugalzid unsheathed his sword and stuck the blade into the sand and down it went all the way to the hilt. And the sun was slowly falling at the horizon, and a gentle wind was blowing. Lugalzid looked at the hilt sticking out of the sand, and the woman looked at the hilt sticking out of the sand. And they looked at each other, and they smiled at each other. And then they both laughed. And when they couldn’t laugh anymore, the woman spoke first.

I am sorry, sir. I told you a silly old legend.

Lady, don’t worry. It was fun to try. Who knows? The legend could have been right.

Oh, sir, we could have imagined that we won’t gain anything by planting a sword in the sand. Why don’t you take it back?

Lady, I will take the sword back, although it just encumbered me all the trip to here and it never was useful to me for anything. Yet, I think that my ancestors were proud of this sword and so, in honor to them, I’ll take it out of the sand and keep it with me

It is good that you honor your ancestors, sir, just like you honored your mother by praying for her. But I think you are tired. And you must be thirsty and hungry.

That is right, lady. I am tired, and hungry, and I have no food left and no place to rest. But I won’t impose to you to feed me and to provide rest for me. Because I saw that the village is ruined and certainly you must not live in abundance.

That’s right, kind sir, I do not live in abundance. But the goddess has been kind to me and She made sure that the well near my home never gets dry and with the water I can take from the well I can cultivate a small garden and that gives me food enough to live. And with the barley I cultivate I can make good ale, too. And I’ll gladly share this food and this ale with you. You can come with me, you eat and drink, and then rest at my home.

Lady, I accept your kind offer and I am now obliged to tell you my name, which is Lugalzid, which means the strong and trusted man. And because of your kindness in offering me food and drink, I take the vow to help you in any way I can, and that I will defend you with the sword I inherited from my ancestors.

Lugalzid, since you accepted my offer, I am obliged to tell you my name, which is Siduri, which means the woman who makes beer. And I am greatly honored because of your kindness, although I hope that there will never be a need to defend me with your sword, I am grateful to you for offering me to do that. But I would say that it would be more useful to me if you were to help me to raise water from the well, because the well is deep and sometimes my bones ache because of the effort.

And I will do this for you with pleasure, Siduri. 

And Lugalzid went with Siduri to her hut and he helped her to raise water from the well. Then, Lugalzid ate a meal in Siduri’s home and drank the beer that Siduri had made. And then Siduri took Lugalzid to the door of the home and they stood together, looking at the sea of sand lighted up by the Moon. And then Siduri spoke to Lugalzid.

Lugalzid, they say that the sea was once vast and blue, and that must have been beautiful to behold.

That is what they say in the city, too, Siduri. And, yes, it must have been beautiful to see it.

I never saw the blue sea.

Neither did I.

But you told me you can hear the sound of waves.

This I told you, and it is true.

But nobody has heard the sound of waves here for many, many years. What is it like?

Siduri, I cannot tell you exactly what the sound of waves is like. But I can tell you that it is a gentle sound, it is the sound of water crashing on the beach, it is coming and going, never stopping, it is like two lovers always searching each other and never stopping to embrace each other.

Lugalzid, maybe I know that sound.

Siduri, do you really?

Listen to me, Lugalzid. Is this the sound of waves? Listen to the sound I make as I breathe.

Siduri, it is like the sound of waves, indeed.

It is the sound of a woman in love, Lugalzid.

I can hear it, Siduri. It is like the waves that love the beach and never get tired of crashing onto the shore.

And the beach that loves the waves never gets tired of the waves crashing on it. Will you love me, kind Lugalzid?

I will, gentle Siduri.

And Siduri took down the cape she had on her head and showed to Lugalzid her black hair, shiny in the moonlight. Then Lugalzid loved Siduri many times, and then they slept together on the couch of the hut, and Lugalzid slept sound and well. And when he woke up, he heard the sound of waves as he was used to hear in the morning. But this sound was a little different. And Lugalzid opened his eyes and he saw Siduri in front of him. And Siduri took Lugalzid’s hand and she led him to the door of the hut. And there, in the bright light of the sun, the sea was vast and blue, stretching all the way to the horizon. And the waves gently crashed on the beach, murmuring and roaring as two lovers who never tire to search for each other.

And Lugalzid marveled at what he was seeing and he could not tire to look at the blue waters, and the waves, and the clouds reflecting on the water.

What happened, Siduri? How long did I sleep?

For quite some time, Lugalzid, my love. The legend was right, after all. It only referred to another kind of sword, the one you used to plow my body. And after you did that, you slept, and the clouds come, and much rain came. And you were sleeping so well, that I didn’t wake you up. And day and night, more and more rain came. And you were still sleeping so well that I didn’t wake you up. And many days passed, perhaps weeks, perhaps months, perhaps years. And then so much rain came that the mountains were dripping it in streams everywhere, and the waters from the river came in a great rush of waves, foam, and bubbles, rushing to the sea as a lovers return to each other after having been away from each other for a long time. And many more days passed, and more water flew into the sea, and the sea became full.

That must have taken a long time, Siduri.

Such a long time, Lugalzid. You slept for a hundred years, maybe.

A hundred years? But who are you, Siduri?

Lugalzid, you know that my name is Siduri, which means the woman who makes beer. But it is only one of my names. You can call me also Inanna, the Goddess of Heaven who is also the Goddess of Earth. And know, Lugalzid, that it was humankind that destroyed the sea with their greed and that a great offense to me, since I am also the Goddess of the Sea. And that's why the sea became dry and the river became dry, and men and women suffered so much. But the Goddess had sworn that she would give another chance to them if she could find a man who was worth of her love. And it was because of your kindness in honoring your mother, your ancestors, and me, that I thought you are such a man, and because of that I loved you and I still love you. And in reward for your efforts that I bestowed on humans another chance to deal with the bounty of the Earth, which is always abundant for human needs, although never sufficient for human greed. But if now they will use only what they need, then the Goddess will give them plenty more, because I am benevolent and merciful and the fruits of my benevolence flood the whole Earth.

Siduri, I am amazed at what you are telling me. Was it all because of me?

Not just because of you, Lugalzid, you were the vessel that carried the blessing of the Goddess and that blessing is now spreading in the world. But you have great merit for what you did.

I don’t think I deserve that merit, my kind Siduri.

I know that you are modest, Lugalzid, and that is one more reason why you deserve it.

But what should do, now?

You may go back to the city you came from if you like. Or you may stay here, and live as a fisherman in the village in front of the deep blue sea. Because people will come here to restart fishing and some are already here.

But, you, Siduri, what will you do?

Oh, I may go back to heaven. See, I have a palace in the clouds. But, if you like . . .

If I like what?

I can stay with you.

Really? A Goddess staying with a mere man? How could that be?

Sweet Lugalzid, a goddess can do many things. I will stay with you and you will fish for me and I’ll cook for you and make good ale for you, and we’ll stay in this nice hut and we will be happy to be husband and wife and we’ll have many happy children. Because the Goddess gives life to everything and she is loves everything and gives life to everything, and nothing and no one is too humble for Her or too small for Her. And now, come with me, my sweet husband. I want to love you again and to love you many times. Kiss me and you can go fishing tomorrow.

Note: this story is inspired by Sumerian lore, in particular by the saga of Gilgamesh. Lugalzid should be a real Sumerian name that I built mixing the terms Lu (great), gal (man), and zid (trusted), although I don’t know if such a name was ever used in Sumerian times. Siduri, instead, is a real Sumerian name and she is the “alewife” that Gilgamesh meets in his travels. “Siduri” actually means “young woman” in Accadic, but in the saga she is both a goddess and a woman who makes beer. The hero sleeping for a hundred years is inspired by the Japanese children story “Urashima Taro”.

The Eyes, The Eyes! The Return of Inanna, the Warrior Goddess

Alita: the eyes of a beast of prey. 


The new film by James Cameron, "Alita, Battle Angel," is clunky, at best. Some creative scenery, some fascinating visual details but, the rest, well, it makes little sense. A classic failure of science fiction movies: cartoonish characters, a plot that doesn't go anywhere, clumsy motivations, silly bad guys, all that.


But Alita, well, she keeps the whole movie together. She is not cartoonish, she is perfect in her role. We recognize her. We know who she is from the scene in which she takes a battle posture facing the giant mechanical crab. It is her, she can only be her. Five thousand years after that the Sumerian Priestess Enheduanna told her story, she is back: Inanna, the warrior goddess fighting the giant dragon called Ebih.


Lady of blazing dominion
Clad in dread
Riding on fire-red power

Inanna
Holding a pure lance
Terror folds in her robes

Flood storm-hurricane adorned
She olts out in battle
Plants a standing shield on the ground

Great Lady Inanna
Battle planner
Foe smasher




(translation by Betty De Shong Meador)

Kill the Witch, Kill the Spy: Mata Hari and the Hollywood Universe

This is an interview with Maria Butina, alleged Russian spy, released after she spent 15 months in jail in the US. Her case is remarkably similar to that of Mata Hari, shot for espionage in 1917 in France, some one hundred years before. Fortunately, though, Maria Butina was not shot.

Sometimes, it is amazing how history repeats itself. It seems that whatever we do is always a repetition of an old story, that we live in a sort of Hollywood universe, where there exist a limited number of TV tropes, repeated over and over, always the same, just with a few changed details.

Think of Mata Hari: the evil spy. Yes, the one who caused the death of "perhaps 50,000 of our children" during the Great War, as one of her accusers said. How did she accomplish such a remarkable feat? Well, it seems that somehow she was able to understand the French war plans by gathering intelligence while staying in a hotel in the back of the front line. And that the Germans were killing French soldiers because they were told how to do that by an aging Dutch dancer who had styled herself as a Hindi priestess.

Madness? Sure, but she was not shot not because of something she had done, but because of what she was. A foreigner who had made the mistake of accepting the offer of the French secret services to embark on an improbable plan of spying on the Germans. Possibly, it was because she really thought she could help France. But, of course, it could never have worked and it never did. Rather, it put Mata Hari in a very dangerous position. A foreigner, a beautiful woman, and, avowedly, a prostitute, and she meddles with things larger than her. And when it is a question of finding a scapegoat, that kind of women make the perfect target.

Fast forward of a hundred years, and we have the case of Maria Butina. A good looking woman, although not a prostitute. Nevertheless, she went through an ordeal similar to that of Mata Hari, the target of accusations so improbable that you wonder how in the world anyone could even remotely take them seriously. Would you believe that the Russian secret services would gain anything by "planting" a spy in the US in the form of a student of international relations? What could they learn from him or her that could be even remotely important for the current confrontation?

Rather, Ms. Butina found herself in the wrong place, just as Mata Hari had: a foreigner who could be demonized at will. Ms. Butina had made her big mistake with enrolling in the US National Rifle Association (NRA). She believed that the right to bear arms was a good thing that should be adopted in Russia. She didn't realize the danger she was putting herself into. The NRA is notoriously among Trumps' supporters and by hitting Butina they were hitting the NRA and, indirectly, President Trump himself. Like Mata Hari, Butina was meddling with things much larger than herself.

So, we had another variation of the theme of the evil, foreigner female spy. Fortunately for Ms. Butina, she was not shot like Mata Hari, if times had been more difficult, it might have happened. And we keep living in a Hollywood universe where things that you believe are true become true. It is the infinite power of propaganda to create its own reality.

Daenerys Targaryen: the Return of the Goddess

Daenerys Targaryen is, no doubt, one of the most interesting characters of the TV series "the Game of Thrones." An assertive, dominating queen portraited in a positive light; a character that would have been inconceivable in the fiction of just some decades ago. Something seems to be changing in the human mindscape.

The article by Gunnar Bjornson reproduced below (from "Katehon") reflects this mindscape change. It is dedicated to exploring the idea that some of the themes of "The Game of Thrones" are influenced by a return of the Goddess in the mindsphere; a creature that he identifies as "Cybele", the Graeco-Roman version. 

This article is highly questionable in several respects; not the least one that of dividing the human views of the world into three well-defined categories, inspired to Apollo, Dyonisius, and Cybele. It is a much more complex story than that and this kind of forcing the narrative into categories often has quite some problems in maintaining even a minimum contact with reality: See, for instance, this sentence: 

The Logos of Cybele thus concerns materialism, the dominance of the female over male, progressivism (development from highest to lowest), linear time, and the possession of wealth as the sole purpose of life.

Hmmm.... did I say "questionable?" Yes, I did. VERY questionable with its negative view of women in power. You can say a lot of bad things about some women who have been in power in the past, but it will always be difficult for women to beat the records of cruelty, madness, and wanton violence of most male rulers in history. 

Yet, I thought that it was worth reproducing this piece in the "Chimera Myth" blog, where I have often discussed the theme of the Goddess. 

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GAME OF THRONES: THE TRIUMPH OF CYBELE

30.06.2016

Gunnar Bjornson


The sixth season of the popular fantasy saga "Game of Thrones" has concluded. True fans are worrying about the events of the last 10 episodes. The series has turned out to be surprisingly successful, with a both sudden and drastic development of story lines and in terms of the actors' performances and music and special effects. But most importantly, the last season demonstrates the triumph of well-defined archetypes underlying modern Western civilization. Perhaps not a single piece of recent popular culture has revealed this so vividly as “Game of Thrones.” Thus, it is necessary to turn once again to the mythology and philosophy of this popular show.


The victory of women

One of the most important results of the storyline at the end of the sixth season is the triumph of the female characters in the saga. Cersei Lannister takes the Iron Throne of Westeros and kills all of her opponents. In the kingdom of Dorn as well, all power goes to women. Having killed ruler Prince Doran Martell and his cousin, Ellara Sand declares that the government no longer "belongs to weak men." In the North, Sansa Stark makes a decisive contribution to the victory over Ramsey Bolton. Arya Stark begins to implement her plan of revenge and stabs Walder Frey. On the Iron Islands, the lesbian Yara Greyjoy aims to become the first woman on the throne, and then joins Deyneris Targaryen, another strong woman who seeks to conquer the whole of Westeros. Both Dorn and the House of Tyrell, which is also headed by a woman, Olenna Tyrell, are ready to join Deyneris. And even Northern lords are humiliated by young Lady Mormont.

The unconditional domination of the feminine is thus the main feature of the sixth season. Male characters go by the wayside in a context of female domination. In medieval surroundings, an entirely strange picture is recreated. Of course, the European Middle Ages knew the reign of Queens. But not on this scale. The Middle Ages were foremost the era of the dominance of patriarchal relations and the male heroic type.

The rise of power-hungry women in the series is clearly consistent with the trends of real politics. Hillary Clinton, in the country where the series is produced, enjoys the sympathy of its creators. However, it is not only in this way that the series’ authors are trying to promote Clinton. Rather, there is another reason tied to the working of myths.

European society ceased to be the Christian one of the Middle Ages when it became “modern.” The modern world triumphed because it killed, crucified, and subjected directly to genocide (as in Ireland and the Vendee) the “old order,” the spirit of the old patriarchal-aristocratic and traditional Europe. Because of this, any clash between modernity in the Middle Ages is always hysterical. In this feminine hysteria, modernity reveals its true nature.


Gynecocracy

The series, like any other product of mass culture that works with images of the past, projects such on current trends. Romantic and unnatural surroundings are made more brighter and more visible than they are in real life. Gynecocracy, or women's dominance, is a feature unnatural to patriarchal Indo-European civilization, and especially for the type of thinking that dominated the historical era of the Middle Ages. This thinking was based on the celestial Apollonian philosophy of Platonism, which was adopted by Christianity. In its origins, it was based on the domination of celestial male deities over the chthonic creatures of Mother Earth (Titanomachy and Gigantomachy of ancient mythology) and the paternal principle over the mother’s one, heaven over earth and the chthonic, a priority that in religious and philosophical systems was given to the idea of the world. This was characteristic of the Indo-European worldview before the adoption of Christianity. The dominance of spirit over body, hierarchy, discipline, duty, sacrifice, honor, order, tradition, faith, and patriarchal family were the principles inherent to this particular civilization of true Europe.

On the contrary, matriarchal traits, such as the dominance of earthly sensuality and material wealth, were always associated with women in Indo-European families and cults. This, together with the legalization of every form of perversion and degeneracy, a distinctive feature of modern times in Europe, broke with traditional institutions. The famous traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola noted that the modern civilization of the West is based on the ideas which the ancient Indo-Europeans attributed to the feminine principle:

With the advent of democracy, the proclamation of 'immortal principles’, the 'rights of man and citizen’, and the subsequent development of these 'conquests' in Europe into Marxism and Communism, it is exactly the 'natural right', the leveling and anti-aristocratic law of the Mother, that the West has dug up, renouncing any ‘solar', virile Aryan value and confirming, with the omnipotence so often granted to the collectivist element, the ancient irrelevance of the individual to the 'telluric' conception.

Three Logoi

The contemporary Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, in his complex project “Noomahy", (“war of minds” in Greek) offers an interesting interpretive model in which he reviews the structure of the three fundamental paradigms of thought corresponding to the three types of philosophy, religion, mythology, ritual, symbolism, epistemology and anthropology, which correspond to three mythological figures from Greek mythology: Apollo, Dionysus and Cybele.

The Apollonian Logos is related to Platonism and the traditional Indo-European solar theme. It emphasizes eternity, heaven, the paternal, and the spiritual, as opposed to the earthly, temporal, maternal, and material. This paradigm of thought states that only the divine and celestial, for example Platonic ideas, really exist. The world, as the organized cosmos, has a hierarchical structure which is aimed at the apophatic horizon of the inaccessible One. In politics, such a logos preaches monarchy, the reign of the philosophers, the idea of an eternal empire, hierarchy and caste society.

The Dionysian Logos is that of mysteries, battle and marriage, death and resurrection, the interpenetration of earth and heaven, earth’s subordination to the heavens, and the soul reigning over body, as form over matter. This is the philosophy of Aristotle, the metaphysics of the Son in Christianity, and Catholic Thomism. In politics, this is the idea of the imperial, eschatological savior king. It entails a distinctly messianic eschatology.

The Logos of Cybele, named after the Goddess of Asia Minor, is a matriarchal cult of the Great Mother, the Earth, believed to generate all. This is the idea of the material origin of things and the solely material nature of the world. This is the philosophy of Epicurus and Democritus, the ancient materialists, and the ideas of the Roman Titus Lucretius Carus of the evolution of species and the spontaneous generation of life from Mother Earth.

In fact, this logos is an extrapolation of the ancient feminine chthonic myths that have since become the axioms of modern science. These were chtonic cults where the dogmas of modern science first originated. The is the dominant Logos in modern times which manifests itself in the form of scientific thinking. At the same time, however, it is still an archaic mythology inherent to pre-Indo-European ethnic groups in Europe. The Logos of Cybele thus concerns materialism, the dominance of the female over male, progressivism (development from highest to lowest), linear time, and the possession of wealth as the sole purpose of life.

The religious centers of the matriarchal goddesses, such as the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, served as the first banking centers. The Greek philosopher and atomist Democritus was one of the first to put into practice the method of speculation and considered democracy to be the ideal political system (Plato and Aristotle considered it to be the worst). The same Democritus blinded himself in order to refrain from looking at women, a fact which resembles the ritual self-castration of the priests of Cybele in Asia Minor.


The Face of Cybele

Democracy, progressivism, evolutionism, feminism, egalitarianism and the destruction of traditional hierarchies, the revolt against the gods, gender ideology, atomism, materialism, capitalism - all of these ideas are very archaic phenomena that have become modern only because Europe chose them in the early modern period and abandoned its former identity. These are in fact integral elements of the cult of the Great Mother. And the further we are from the historical Middle Ages, the more the ancient goddess veils her face under the guise of modernity.

And in Game of Thrones, the Gestalt of Cybele is extremely open. One of the key characters of the series, Princess Daeyneris Targaryen, embodies this archetype more than any other character. Let us recall that the Great Mother (Cybele, Rhea, Ishtar) in Greek, Asia Minor’s and Semitic mythologies is surrounded by chthonic monsters. Her priests practiced ritual castration and, in addition to the court of monsters and eunuchs, there were also dwarfs. Throughout the whole story, Deyneris is accompanied by chthonic monsters, dragons, to which she refers as to her children, and she is worshipped by an army of castrated slaves. Other male characters finally come to Cybele-Deyneris having experienced the act of castration, such as the eunuch Varys and Tyrion Greyjoy, whose sister Yara is also an embodiment of the archetype of the insurgent Cybele.

Naturally, the only dwarf in the series, Tyrion Lannister, is also in the end included in the court of Daeyneris. She destroys social hierarchy in the conquered cities, eradicates slavery and introduces election management insisting on equality and multicultural democracy. The egalitarian masses proclaim her to be “Mother" (Misa). As the Mother of Dragons and mother of rebellious slaves, it is is symbolic that the Phrygian cap, the headdress of Cybele’s lover Attis, became a symbol of the rebel slaves in Rome, and then the symbol of the French Revolution.

The main centers of Cybele’s cult were located in Asia Minor. Coincidentally, in these cults was the culture and geographical design of the continent of Essos, where Daeyneris begins the invasion of Westeros, which resembles ancient Asia Minor. Thus, her war is a war of Cybele’s Logos destined to conquer Europe and suppress all the remains of old traditional order.

Of course, she is not the only embodiment of this principle. Other facets of the archetype of Cybele are revealed in the character of Cersei Lannister who creates children from sexual relations with her own twin brother, the person most biologically identical to herself. In this can be seen the myth of parthenogenesis, the birth of Mother Earth’s children by and out of herself. They are destined to fail and be killed as are many of the creatures of the earth like the numerous offspring of the goddess Gaia in the Greek myths of the Olympic gods. Everything that she likes is associated with death since her love is insatiable and proprietary and killing is the love of Cybele. It is this archetype which leads those she loves (like her lover Attis) to their death.

In modern mass culture, we see the resurgence of ancient myths earlier veiled by the hypnosis of scientific thought, rationality or “common sense.” But, as the prominent German conservative and specialist in Greek mythology, Friedrich Georg Junger, said, when the gods are gone, the titans occupy their place.

Rejecting the celestial spirituality of Christianity, the West was doomed to chthonic matriarchal cults and to the resurgence of ancient mythical figures in its imagination. Cybele’s trend in Game of the Thrones is just one example of the changing gender mythology of the West which is renouncing its masculinity in psychological self-castration. From imagination, this will turn into real politics to the point that we will soon see the deadly incarnation of the bloody goddess enthroned.


Catastrophe

Catastrophe is the fate of the titans, the sons of Gaia, just as it is her own. The catastrophic absence of a “happy ending” is a distinct feature of Game of Thrones. The series’ credibility and success is largely due to the fact that the authors allow the myth to work. The myth of female domination and titanic power, as the above-mentioned Friedrich Georg Jünger noted, is inevitably linked with the prospects of disaster and catastrophe. The Greek word for catastrophe literally means to turn to the bottom, to matter and the Great Mother. The disaster awaits those who stand on the side of chthonic power, who follow their passions, and stand in the ranks of the army of titans. Their lack of the harmony given by God to the world will be punished. The disaster is always present where there is an immoderate desire for power. Another leitmotif of Game of Thrones. In the world of Game of Thrones, the Middle Ages without Christ, there is no other possible outcome than one of total destruction. The imaginary world of the West shares the fate of and projects the future of the real world.


GUNNAR BJORNSON

Moon Goddess

The Goddess goes through many cycles of varied lengths, and She returns over and over in many forms. Here, She appears in a painting by the Neapolitan master Giovanni Ricca, probably made around 1630.

Note the play of light and shadows on the face of this beautiful woman - reminding those of the half moon. The human features of this image are, probably, those of Ricca's wife, Caterina Rossa ("Red Catherine") as she appears in a red dress in the full painting. But she is just an avatar of the true Goddess.

If you ever thought that Baroque painting was all about mannerism, think it over. If you think that no Baroque master could emulate the master of them all, Caravaggio, think it over. This is a painting that, alone, can justify the existence of the human species as it evolved in order to, eventually, produce it.

But women partake the nature of the Moon Goddess in many forms, and sometimes you don't even need a master painter to see it appear, as it does in this image of Ugo Bardi's daughter, Donata, photographed in 2016 at the Escher Museum in Delft, Holland.

A Cli-Fi Story: Winter Solstice in Antarctica

Antarctica deglaciated and uplifted, as it could appear ten thousand years after the Great Warming of the 21st century (from global warming art). 


The text below is part of my cli-fi novel "Queen of Antarctica" that one of these days I might be able to publish, somewhere. The novel takes place in a remote future and it is based on the idea that, after the runaway climate change of the 21st century, the survivors managed to colonize the extreme North and the extreme South of the planet, including Antarctica. And here is how their remote descendants living in Antarctica would tell the story. Note that the story assumes a relatively warm Antarctica, but it reflects the peculiar conditions of a civilization living near the South Pole that would experience six months of light followed by six months of darkness.In this world, people would spend the dark winter in a sort of hibernation. For them, seeing the stars in the dark sky would be something special, worth celebrating. 

Children, come. Come here, because this is a special night. It is the night when the Moon is highest in the sky, and the night when the Moon starts to go down and, slowly, to let the sun come back, and give us light again after the long winter night. And we call this night the night of the winter solstice.

So, children, you have been sleeping through the long winter night, but now you are awake, and it is good that you are awake because this is a very special night. It is the night when we all wear heavy clothing and we go out to look at the stars! Yes, children, the sky is dark during the solstice night, and this night is darker than all the other nights of the year. So, we go out and we look at the stars, and at the moon, and at the planets above us. It is beautiful, and many of you have already seen it, and some of the youngest among you see the dark sky for the first time because they were too young to go out the last solstice.

But before we go outside to see the stars, children, it is the time for me to tell you a story. I'll tell you the story of the land where we live, that we call Antarctica; and of the city where we live, that we call just the city. And it is for me to tell you this story, children, because I am the oldest woman of the city and some say that for this reason I am a wise woman; and some call me witch because I know many things. And this may be true, though all that I know I learned from other wise women who came before me, just like you, children, are learning this story from me. And maybe, one day, when you'll be old as I am now, you'll be telling this story to the children who will be here because this is what has happened in our city for a long, long, time, since it was founded long, long ago.

So, children, listen to me. You know that the world was created when the Goddess separated the waters from the land, and then She created the Sun and the Moon, and she made the Sun so that it would shine light on the land during half of the year, and She made the Moon so that it would stay in the sky for the other half of the year. And it is the light of the Sun that makes grain grow and makes us live. And then, it is the time for the Moon to be alone in the sky, then the land rests, and the people of the city rest, all the creatures of Antarctica rest, ready for the new cycle to start, when the sun comes back, the snow melts, and grain grows again for us.

But, children, you must know that Antarctica has not been the same forever. And this is a story that I have to tell you, children, because it is an ancient story that comes from the time of the founders and that the wise women of the city have kept by telling it to one another for a long, long time. And the story says that long, long ago, Antarctica was not the same as it is today; no, it was colder. Much colder than it is today. And the land was covered in ice, by mountains of ice! So big and so tall were those mountains that you can't even imagine how big and how tall. But they say that the tip of these mountains of ice was as tall as the mountains you see today. So tall that and so big that nothing of what you see today was visible. The land where now our city stands was covered in ice and the grain fields around the city were covered in ice. Everything was covered in ice.

Long, long ago, when Antarctica was covered in ice, no one lived here. People lived far, far away, on the other side of the sea. And the lands in which they lived were not so hot as they are today, and people lived there. And people had built cities there, great cities with tall buildings. But those cities don't exist anymore and the people living there have died. It was because of something terrible that happened in those ancient times and that was what the founders called the Great Warming. Some say that it was the will of the Goddess that caused the world heat up so much that so many people died and they say that it was because people had become too proud and they were not paying to the Goddess the respect she deserved.

But the founders say otherwise and they say that it was a fault of the ancient who had done something that had caused the Great Warming without knowing what they were doing. The founders said that the ancient had found something underground, a dark stuff that they could burn as if it were wood, but that was not wood. They dug it out and they burned it to warm themselves, to cook, and to smelt metals. And this dark stuff was easy to find and easy to burn, so they burned a lot of it. And they burned so much of it that it poisoned the air and made it warmer. It was like when you warm yourself in a sealskin and it may be too warm for you if you do that during the summer. And this blanket made the world much hotter than it used to be, and it covered the whole world. And it covered Antarctica, too.

The founders say that the wise among the ancient understood what was happening and warned the others, but that the less wise among the ancient did not believe what the wise people were telling them and so they didn't want to stop burning that dark stuff, and that was perhaps how they offended the Goddess, as some people say. So they kept burning that dark stuff and the world became hotter. And then, the founders they say that something came out of the depth of the earth, something that made the air even hotter and did it faster, so fast and that could not be stopped, no matter what the ancient tried to do. And that was the Great Warming that some say was a punishment sent by the Goddess.

When the great blanket of ice that covered Antarctica felt the heat of the Great Warming, it started melting. And all this ice that melted went into the oceans as water, and the oceans rose. And the cities that had been on the coasts of the continents in the North were submerged, and the people who lived in those cities had to move inland, and they didn't have enough food to eat because the Great Warming had dried up much of the land, and many places were too hot for people to live. So, many of them died, many, many of them. And those who survived migrated to the Northern Lands, where they say that their descendants still live today, although it is so far away from us that nobody has been there for a long, long time.

Here, in Antarctica, when the ice melted, much of it crashed into the sea very fast, because the great ice sheets slid over the water under them, and they moved very rapidly and, soon, there were great stretches of land in Antarctica that were free of ice. But there was nobody living in there because nobody had ever lived in Antarctica up to then. It was at that time that the founders came. They came from the North, they were some of those who had survived. They came by boat, and it was a difficult trip for them because the currents that circle around Antarctica were strong and dangerous at that time and they are still strong and dangerous today. But they crossed the Antarctic Ocean and they landed in the land that we call the Peninsula, even though it is an island, because at that time it was connected to the mainland of Antarctica.

The founders came, and they came to Antarctica to settle. They were wise and learned, they brought tools and machines that today we don't know anymore how to make, but so many years have passed and perhaps we don't need to make those tools and those machines anymore. And they brought animals with them that we don't have anymore because they died and so still today Antarctica has no other animals than the birds who flew here by themselves; and the creatures who swam here by themselves, seals and iguanas, and others. It was a difficult time for the founders because the land was bare, there were no plants and no animals, and the sea was growing in height as the ice kept melting. But the founders were resourceful and they had brought seeds with them, and they sowed grain, and they planted trees on the land left free by the ice.

In time, there was no more ice on the land of Antarctica and much of the land was submerged and under the sea. But they also say that, slowly, the land rose, little by little the waters receded. It took many centuries, millennia, and the land is still rising, but much more slowly by now, so that Antarctica is now the way we know it; without ice, and with its coasts that fall rapidly into the sea.

And while the ice was receding, the founders moved inland and they built cities. And they built the city in which we live today. We live in this city and we remember the old times, and we remember of the founders, and we remember the things that happened so long ago. And some say that, one day, the ice will return; and some say that in the mountains, something is now happening that never happened before; and it is that when summer is at its height, there still remains a little snow on top of the mountains. And some say that the snow will grow and it will become ice. And that, one day, Antarctica will be covered with ice again. But that will take a long, long time, longer that we can say, longer than we can ever imagine. If that happens, then the people of the cities of Antarctica will have to move to somewhere else, because things always change and as the founders came here, so long ago, we can go back to where they came from, if that will be necessary.

But now, children, it is time to go. It is the solstice night, and you'll come with me and we'll go outside; to see the stars. The stars that you never see during the summer, the stars that come out when we are all sleeping during the winter, the stars that we see together on the night of the solstice. And you'll see the moon shining bright, and bright stars that the ancient told us are not stars but are called planets. And you'll see how beautiful is the dark sky, how beautiful is the moon, and how beautiful are the planets! Then, children, you'll go back inside, and you'll be warm and comfortable in the city until the next cycle starts and the sun comes up again, and this is the cycle that keeps us alive, and it has been going on like that for a long, long time, and it will keep going like that for a long long time. And you'll grow in this city, children, you'll become adults, and then you'll become old, and then you'll go dreaming underground. And then you'll become grain, and then you'll become people again. And that's the great cycle that was created by the Goddess, as it has been, as it is, and as it will be for a long, long time to come. May the Goddess bless you, children! And now come with me, to see the stars!