Cyber Sofreh: Day 18

When I first "left" my life-long role as a religious believer in the Bahá'í Faith, I was struck by the lack of terminology or respect for the Divine Feminine in my previous God concept. Although lip service was paid within the community to a non-anthropomorphic God who was an "unknowable essence" and not a stock character patriarchal deity, the God I had been taught to pray to was a "he." Although a certain argument can be made that *all* "he's" are unknowable on one level or another, this "he" came with a backstory that included all kinds of gendered division-of-labor tasks, like smiting. If the God of the Torah and Bible and Qur'an was still the same "Unknowable Essence," I was directed to call "he" in the here and now, I knew what ground I stood on.

I honestly hadn't thought about it until I met my first witch and I became incredibly uncomfortable. She talked about Divinity having male and female aspects, which she referred to symbolically as Gods and Goddesses. Intellectually, I told myself that was no different than a Bahá'í reading of God as an Unknowable Essence. Some names of Allah would correspond to what we considered masculine, and some to what we considered feminine. But *emotionally* I rejected the idea of worshipping God as a Goddess out of hand as sacrilegious. It frightened me because it felt disobedient. Recognizing my feelings on that one made me realize just how Male the Bahá'í God-concept really was for me. And unfortunately, reading the Bahá'í Writings only made it worse. There is a line in an Ani DiFranco song, Alla This, where she sings, "I won't pray to a male god cuz that would be insane:"

"i will not stand immersed
in this ultra violent curse
i won't let you make a tool of me
i will keep my mind and body free
bye bye minutiae
of the day to day drama
i'm expanding exponentially,
i am consciousness without identity

i am many things
made of everything
but i will not be your bank roll
i won't idle in your drive-thru
i won't watch your electric sideshow
i got way better places to go


i will maintain the truth
i knew naturally as a child
i won't forfeit my creativity
to a world that's all laid out for me
i'll look at everything around me
and i will vow to bear in mind
that all of this was just someone's idea
it could just as well be mine


i won't rent you my time
i won't sell you my brain
i won't pray to a male god
cuz that would be insane

and i can't support the troops
cuz every last one of them's being duped
and i will not rest a wink
until the women have regrouped


i am many things
made of everything
but i will not be your bank roll
i won't idle in your drive-thru
i won't watch your electric sideshow
i got way better places to go"

Think of what it does to little girls to grow up worshiping a male god. Exclusively. Think of what it does to their sense of self. To their relationships. Righteousness becomes male, falling from grace female. Who will have the power in that relationship? Who will have their say?

The Goddess Persephone was Queen of the Underworld. She lived there half the year with her husband-abductor Hades and returned to the fecund above-ground world each Spring. Her absence from the world above provoked Winter and grief. Nothing could grow without her presence. I wonder if anything can grow without her presence now.

The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton (1891)

Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate made up a trinity of Divine aspects older than the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Maiden, Mother, and Crone- they represented the wheel of life, growth, and decay- and nothing could move forward without them. The Underworld, the place where Persephone breaks open before returning above ground as Spring, is where all new life takes shape. These three represented the seed-grain cycle on which human life depends. It's no coincidence that Christianity implanted it's Easter celebration- a seed falling from a tree to die for our well-being, only to return from the dead in new life alongside pagan seasonal celebrations of just that motif. But when did we actually start believing it was Jesus, the Son of the Father, and not the grain, that did this birth-giving reinvention annually? When did we forget the punchline, exactly?

On my haft sin I have sprouting wheat grass I planted from seed. I have sweet sprouted wheat pudding, samanoo. And I have vinegar. Each third of the grain trinity is there. Persephone had a name that became taboo to speak. But it's in every bit of sustenance we draw from the earth, and remains imprinted in the basic seasonal rituals stolen from her and given over to a male god.

Day 18- Samanoo, Sprouted Wheat Pudding.