final Flashcards
The sacred feminine is not a part of the judeochristian creation myth
God creates the world and rules it alone
In genesis cosmology (“let there be light”)…
God is primary to, and distinct from, his creation
Yahweh was created
1750BCE at the dawn of the Iron Age, by the hebrews
Yahweh is no mother goddess, he is…
A masculine, tribal warrior deity, transcendent from creation
Yahweh instructs his people to make no graven image of him
The sacred is no longing found in nature, the sacred is found in the mind
In goddess culture
The divine shines forth in the beauty of nature bc mother goddess is in nature
In patriarchal religion
The divine draws wag from nature, god is alien to creation
The iron hebrews were a nomadic tribe from the desert hell bent to
Conquer the land of Canaan and steal the fertile Jordan river valley from settled farmers
The Hebrew conquest of Canaan lies behind
The story of Cain and Abel
As Judaism matures
The image and character of Yahweh softens
Result: the ethical temper of the father is mollified by the compassion of the mother
What is sophia’s ultimate fate in both Judaism and Christianity
She gets repressed, stamped down, and put under gods thumb
The presence of the scared feminine is hidden in the Old Testament
The hebrews turn her into a wicked sea monster
The scared feminine is demonized in patriarchy sky today culture
In fact, there is no word for goddess in the entire Hebrew language
Who is adams first and second wives
First: Lilith
Second: eve
Why do eve and Lilith shape an image depicting women as evil
Nature becomes evil
Iron Age deity culture
Divine is up there, alien to creation
Mother goddess culture
Nature herself is divine
Goddess culture
No shame or evil is connected with sexuality
The blessed Virgin Mary is
Antiseptic, sanitized, incorporeal version of the mother goddess
How did the cult to the Virgin Mary come about
They made Mary into an almost spiritual being
How did the church cut off Mary’s connection to the body?
Church fathers created doctrines that severed Mary from having anything to do with the body whatsoever
What is the doctrine of the assumption (literally)
Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven
What is the doctrine of the assumption (metaphorically)
You don’t have to leave your body to achieve union with the divine
Who was the mother of Mary
St. Anne
St. Anne represents
A connection to the body and nature
Does Mary really save us
Mary set the bar so high that Christian women have no choice but to associate with the evil eve
Judeo Christian role models for women
Mary, eve, or Lilith
Witches are not
Ugly hags
St bright and st Patrick
If you can’t christianize it, then demonize it and drive it out
The malleus maleficarum
Comprehensive with hunter’s handbook
The papal bull issued by pope innocent VII authorized
The two Dominicans to punish, imprison, and correct
The inquisition was a papal judicial institution to combat heresy
The use of torture to obtain confessions
Factors leading to the mass persecution of witches during the burning times
Malleus maleficarum, the papal bulls authorizing torture, the inquisition, the general atmosphere of prejudice and hostility against goddess culture
The most infamous hunt in American history
Salem witch trials - 140 imprisoned, 19 hanged, 1 crushed to death
Lesson to be learned from the Salem witch trials
Honesty is the best policy
Wiccans believe
The mother goddess is the world
Three ways to practice witchcraft
As a solitary witch, as a hereditary witch, and as a coven of witches
A spell to a witch
Connects one’s intention to the creative force that abides in the universe
Wheel of the year
Witch’s sabbath coordinate the earthly cycle of life with the cosmic cycle of life
Ostrava was the Teutonic goddess of spring
Easter
May 1
Pagan holiday of Beltane, named after belos the god of fire
The highest witches sabbath
Samhain aka Halloween
What is the mother goddess
She out of whom all life
Solar masculine sky deities symbolize
Consciousness, the mind, human reason
Lunar, feminine earth deities symbolize
Nature, the body, instincts
How did Jesus the man become god
Today - The divine realm and the mortal realm are separate
Classical age - the divine realm and the mortal realm were overlapping
Three ways to become divine in the classical age
- Exaltation
- Acclamation
- Incarnation
Two people in antiquity known as the son of god
Roman emperor Caesar Augustus and Jesus
Romans citizens worshipped both sons of god
Caesar publicly, Jesus privately
The early mystery religion of Christianity
Took place in secret and was confined to a closed set of initiatives
Did Jesus think he was a god
No he thought he was a messiah
The Hebrew term messiah translated to Greek as
Christ
Jesus saw himself not as a public messiah
But a spiritual messiah
Jesus never publicly proclaimed he was the messiah
He proclaimed it privately to his disciples
The gospel of John portrays Jesus proclaiming
He was divine
The author of the gospel of John probably was not the apostle
It is beyond’s the talents of a simple fisherman
How did early Christian’s come to believe Jesus was god
Belief in the resurrection
No one can prove Jesus appeared in a locked room after his death
But scholars can prove people believe Jesus made a post resurrection appearance
The resurrection might be fiction
But belief in the resurrection is a fact
Visions of the resurrected Jesus let to
Faith in the resurrected Jesus
Faith in the risen Jesus propelled a
Mass movement that spread through the Roman Empire
At the council of Nicaea, Jesus was declared
Not only the son of god, but god himself
Christian materialists believed Jesus was
A man, but not god
Christian spiritualists believed Jesus was
God, but not a man
Gnostic Christians believed Jesus was
One part human, one part divine
The council of Nicaea determined Jesus was
Both true god and true man
A human body died on the cross
A glorified body rose at resurrection
Three doctrines of the council of Nicaea
- Jesus is divine
- Jesus is infinite
- Jesus is consubstantial
Gnostic Christianity flourished during what centuries
2nd and 3rd
The secret type of spiritual knowledge (gnosis) states
You are a soul trapped in a body, your destiny is to get out of this body and return to your pure, original divine state
Who delivers gnosis to humanity
Jesus
Gnostic Christianity is based on
Platonic philosophy
The nag hammadi library
A treasure trove of secret Christian knowledge
Reading these gnostic texts, one gets the impression that
Gnostic Christians we’re not heretics, but sincerely devout Christian’s who led strictly ascetic lives
Theme of nag hammadi
Forms change. Essence remains.
What is the most famous Gnostic text
The gospel of Thomas
What are the five Gnostic gospels
Gospel of Thomas, gospel of Phillip, gospel of the Egyptians, gospel of Mary, gospel of truth
Four gospels in the New Testament
Mathew, mark, Luke and John
The gospel of Phillip proclaims
One needs to experience the resurrection before one dies
Revelatory dialogue
A conversation between Jesus and a disciple that occurs in that special time post resurrection and pre ascension
According to Gnostic Christian cosmology
Jesus is not the supreme grand uptime, he is lesser deity, created by one
How is the Gnostic creation myth vastly different from the creation myth in genesis
God does not create the world, an inferior manufactures a defective world
Council of Constantinople
Jesus is not only true god and true man, but he’s true spirit too
Thanks to Gnosticism
The Roman Catholic godhead is a holy trinity
Because of the council of Constantinople, Gnosticism
Ran out f gas and was gone by the 5th century
People who feel the tug of Gnosticism, feel
Isolated from society and a sense of salvation from within
Cinderella is a symbol of
Love
Two Gnostic themes of Cinderella
- The sounds ignorance of true herself and the need for rescue
- The immanence of the divine in nature
Augustine’s platonic worldview was
Very successful and dominated Christian thought from the 4-12th centuries
Augustine was a
Theologian and philosopher
Augustine used the platonic worldview to create a
Christian worldview - created the first true system of Christian philosophy
Metaphysics
What is really real are the forms
Humanity
A human being is a soul trapped in a body
Morality
We need to get as far away from our bodies and their desires as possible
The virtues life includes the constant practice of these four habits
Prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice
What does Augustine hold to live a virtuous life
Gods grace
Augustine believes we know what we know because of god, this is
Knowledge
Evil is
A negotiation, a lack of good that should be there
Augustine’s view on politics
The church is above the state
Evaluation of Augustine
He created the first system of Christian philosophy, and valued afterlife. But he diminished his interest in life and placed a negative view on the human body.
Thomas Aquinas’ masterwork
Summa theologica
Aquinas based his worldview on
Aristotle
Aristotle rejected what
Plato’s forms
Aristotle thought a human being was
A more compact unit than a soul trapped in a body
Substance is subdivided into
Matter and form
Thomas took Aristotle’s substance)accidents and called it
Essence
Aquinas added what to essence
Existence
Existence
By which a thing is real, not merely possible
To Aquinas, a human being is
An essence endowed with existence
For Thomas Aquinas, what is really real
That which exists
Thomas Aquinas equates existence with
God
Gods essence is
Existence
How did Aquinas make it possible for a Christian to be an Aristotelian
He took Aristotle’s view of humanity, and he called that an essence
How do we know what we know
The process of abstraction
Our intellect has two parts
Active and passive
Active intellect
Abstracts universal meaning out of an object
Aquinas calls the active intellect the
Agent intellect
According to Aquinas, the human substantial form is
The soul
Aquinas held that the soul was both
Subsistent and incorruptible
Any organized being is
Subsistent
The human substantial form is
Subsistent
The soul acts independently of matter for three reasons
- The soul can understand matter
- The soul is reflectively self aware
- The soul can hold universal concepts
To Aquinas, the goal of human existence is
Union with god
In the five proofs, Aquinas attempts to
Describe what is meant by god
The five proofs
- The unmoved mover
- The uncaused cause
- The necessary being
- The perfect cause
- The final cause
The problem with the ontological argument
You can’t think something into existence
You can’t argue from thoughts to being
It’s a good argument IF
It stays confined to the logical order
Thomas distinguishes four types of laws:
Eternal law
Divine law
Natural law
Civil law
What type of law is most important
The natural law
Teilhard de chardin
French priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher, and writer
Chardin theorized that
Matter was striving to be divine
In chardins worldview
The universe is a hierarchy of concentric circles
Four spheres of chardin
Geosphere (intimate matter), biosphere (life circle), noosphere (mind circle), omega point (Christosphere)
The agent of the culminating process of evolution is
One love
The omega point is
The goal and purpose of all life
The endless cycle of reincarnation of the soul is determined by its
Karma
What does unpanishad mean
Sitting close to, near
The upanishads posit a
World soul and an individual soul
What is samsara
The endless cycle of death and rebirth
What is karma
Doctrine of long term cause and effect
What is moksha
Release from the karmic cycle of death and rebirth
What is yoga
Linking, joint together (Brahman and atman)
What are the five types of yoga
Karma yoga - path of action
Jnana yoga - path of philosophical discrimination
Bhakti yoga - path of devotion
Raja yoga - royal path
Tantric yoga - secret path
What is shramana
Wandering ascetic
Who is mahavira
Founder of Jainism
What is the Jain path
Extreme asceticism
Hinduism says
Do any of the five types of yoga
Jainism says
Collect no karma at all, good or bad
Buddhism says
Take the eightfold path of morality, meditation, and wisdom
Why did the Buddha experience a virgin birth
Virgin birth is a metaphor for a birth of the spiritual life
What were the four great sights
Old age, sickness, death, salvation
What were the three temptations of the Buddha
Fear, desire, shame
What is enlightenment
A no dual awareness of reality
Buddhism and Hinduism share doctrines of
Karma, samsara, and moksha
What is the Hindu conception of the soul
Atman
What is the Buddhist conception of the soul
An-atman
What is really real for Buddha
Change
Usdhist philosphy says a human being is
A temporary aggregate of five skandas that comes together and birth and unravel at death
What are the five skandas
Physical body, feelings, perceptions habitual mental dispositions, consciousness
If there is no permanent soul in Buddhism, to what does karma adhere
The fourth skandha, habitual mental disposition
What are the six realms of existence on the Bahia chakra
Humans, gods, anti gods, hungry ghosts, demons, wild animals
What is the best existential state
Humanity
What is the worst existential state
Wild animals
What are the three kleshas
Pig of ignorance, cock of desire, snake of fear
Why are the kleshas important
Remove them, and you enter nirvana
Employ them, and you suffer in samsara
Hinduism advocates yoga, Buddhism advocates what
The eightfold path
What are the four noble truths
- All of life is suffering
- Desire causes suffering
- Stop desire and you stop suffering
- Stop desire by following the eightfold path
What statement did Buddha make in his first truth
All life is suffering
The eightfold path boils down to what three things
Morality, meditation, wisdom
What are the five precepts
Don’t kill, steal, lie. Don’t misuse sexuality. Don’t use drugs or alcohol.
The eightfold path is what
A practical guide
Buddhas view on what’s important in life
Suffering and how to escape it
What did the historical Buddha teach
The path to Buddhism
