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pending/1364: Friend Conquer the Language Barrier in 10 Days (pending)
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From: |
bug-gnats |
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Subject: |
pending/1364: Friend Conquer the Language Barrier in 10 Days (pending) |
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Date: |
Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:16:06 -0600 (CST) |
>Number: 1364
>Category: pending
>Synopsis: Friend Conquer the Language Barrier in 10 Days
>Confidential: no
>Severity: serious
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: unassigned
>State: open
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: net
>Arrival-Date: Sat Jan 10 23:16:06 -0600 2009
>Originator: "FastLearner" <address@hidden>
>Release:
>Description:
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<Doubtless the first deified object was Gaia, the Earth. As within the bosom
of the earth was supposed to reside the fructifying, life-giving power, and as
from it were received all the bounties of life, it was female. It was the
Universal Mother, and to her as to no other divinity worshipped by mankind, was
offered a spontaneity of devotion and a willing acknowledgment of dependence.
Thus far in the history of mankind no temples dedicated to an undefined and
undefinable God had been raised. The children of Mother Earth met in the open
air, without the precincts of any man-made shrine, and under the aerial canopy
of heaven, acknowledged the bounties of the great Deity and their dependence
upon her gifts. She was a beneficent and all-wise God, a tender and loving
parenta mother, who demanded no bleeding sacrifice to reconcile her to her
children. The ceremonies observed at these festive seasons consisted for the
most part in merry-making and in general thanksgiving, in which
the gratitude of the worshippers found expression in song and dance, and in
invocations to their Deity for a return or continuance of her gifts.
Doubtless the worship of the female energy prevailed under the matriarchal
system, and was practised at a time when women were the recognized heads of
families and when they were regarded as the more important factors in human
society. The fact has been shown in a previous work that after women began to
leave their homes at marriage, and after property, especially land, had fallen
under the supervision and control of men, the latter, as they manipulated all
the necessaries of life and the means of supplying them, began to regard
themselves as superior beings, and later, to claim that as a factor in
reproduction, or creation, the male was the more important. With this change
the ideas of a Deity also began to undergo a modification. The dual principle
necessary to creation, and which had hitherto been worshipped as an indivisible
unity, began gradually to separate into its individual elements, the male
representing spirit, the moving or forming force in the generative process
e
s, the female being matterthe instrument through which spirit works. Spirit
which is eternal had produced matter which is destructible. The fact will be
observed that this doctrine prevails to a greater or less extent in the
theologies of the present time.
A little observation and reflection will show us that during this change in
the ideas relative to a creative principle, or God, descent and the rights of
succession which had hitherto been reckoned through the mother were changed
from the female to the male line, the father having in the meantime become the
only recognized parent. In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the plea of Orestes in
extenuation of his crime is that he is not of kin to his mother. Euripides,
also, puts into the mouth of Apollo the same physiological notion, that she who
bears the child is only its nurse. The Hindoo Code of Menu, which, however,
since its earliest conception, has undergone numberless mutilations to suit the
purposes of the priests, declares that the mother is but the field which brings
forth the plant according to whatsoever seed is sown.
Although, through the accumulation of property in masses and the capture of
women for wives, men had succeeded in gaining the ascendancy, and although the
doctrine had been propounded that the father is the only parent, thereby
reversing the established manner of reckoning descent, still, as we shall
hereafter observe, thousands of years were required to eliminate the female
element from the god-idea.
We must not lose sight of the fact that human society was first organized and
held together by means of the gens, at the head of which was a woman. The
several members of this organization were but parts of one body cemented
together by the pure principle of maternity, the chief duty of these members
being to defend and protect each other if needs be with their life blood. The
fact has been observed, in an earlier work, that only through the gens was the
organization of society possible. Without it mankind could have accomplished
nothing toward its own advancement.
Subsequently, through the awe and reverence inspired by the mysteries involved
in birth and life, the adoration of the creative principles in vegetable
existence became supplemented by the worship of the creative functions in human
beings and in animals. The earth, including the power inherent in it by which
the continuity of existence is maintained, and by which new forms are
continuously called into life, embodied the idea of God; and, as this inner
force was regarded as inherent in matter, or as a manifestation of it, in
process of time earth and the heavens, body and spirit, came to be worshipped
under the form of a mother and her child, this figure being the highest
expression of a Creator which the human mind was able to conceive. Not only did
this emblem represent fertility, or the fecundating energies of Nature, but
with the power to create were combined or correlated all the mental qualities
and attributes of the two sexes. In fact the whole universe was contained i
n
the Mother ideathe child, which was sometimes female, sometimes male, being
a scion or offshoot from the eternal or universal unit.
Underlying all ancient mythologies may be observed the idea that the earth,
from which all things proceed, is female. Even in the mythology of the Finns,
Lapps, and Esths, Mother Earth is the divinity adored. Tylor calls attention to
the same idea in the mythology of England,
from the days when the Anglo-Saxon called upon the Earth, Hal wes thu folde
fira modor (Hail, thou Earth, mens mother), to the time when mediaeval
Englishmen made a riddle of her asking Who is Adams mother? and poetry
continued what mythology was letting fall, when Miltons Archangel promised
Adam a life to last>
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>Fix:
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