Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Reading Notes: The Secrets of the Goddess, Part A

This week I chose to watch some videos. I am hoping I like them so I can continue on with these videos for the remainder of the semester.

This chapter is called Gaia's Secret. 

In the first video, we heard about male anxiety and how it is outdated. Immediately, I was interested to see what the story was about. Gaia is the Earth mother. I was shocked at how many gods and goddesses were included in this story! Gaia's son, Cronus, had to kill his father in order to live. He then goes on to kill his own sons so they do not do what he did to his father. Gaia hid one son from him -- Zeus. 

(Photo from Wikipedia).

In this video, we also heard about the story of Sedna. Sedna was a woman that was not happy in her relationship. She went on a boat with her father and they were attacked by seagulls. During the attack, he threw his own daughter overboard to save himself. He even cut off her fingers and then arms when she tried to climb back into the boat. Once cut, she sunk to the bottom of the ocean and her limbs turned into animals of the ocean.

In each of the stories, there is a recurring theme. The male is competing for a female prize. This is because woman were able to birth. For example, the female peacock picks the male with the prettiest feathers. This leaves some males without females which creates this anxiety among men. Without woman, the male may feel invalidation in the human species. As time passes, we begin to see a gradual shift in the social laws, deterioration in the status of women, and rejection of Goddess-worship in favor of God-worship. I found it interesting that there used to be tribes where all of the women only valued one male. In such female-dominated cultures, the male could not refuse the woman. Also, any man that forced himself upon a woman was killed.

The Seven Secrets of the Goddess by Devdutt Pattanaik.

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