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Note: these excerpt threads are
subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority
permits
Raphael Patai: "The Matronit is thus the projection of everything a woman can be in order to sustain man. She symbolizes in her manifold aspects the great affirmation of life, the basic satisfactions one derives from existence, the comforts one finds in mother, nursemaid, lover, bride, wife, wanton seductress, warrior-protectress, and opener of the gates of the Beyond... The Matronit, in common with the great ancient love-goddesses, is both virgin and wanton. Virgin, because man must idealize woman: he wants his woman to be virginal, to have waited for him through counless aeons, and to remain virginal and chaste even while yielding to his embrace, and to his alone. Wanton, because at the same time, he imagines the woman whose body holds the promise of lust for him as the embodiment of desirability, loved by men and gods, as one who not merely yields to him but arouses him, makes him follow her into and through the labyrinthine mysteries of love. And, paradoxically, but with deep inner inevitability, he imagines his virgin bride and wanton woman to be one and the same person and projects both self-contradictory characters into one and the same goddess... As if this were not enough, the conflated image of the virgin-wanton-mother, in turn, appears as merely one of the two overall aspects united in the goddess: the love aspect, as against which she has another aspect, a cruel and frightening one, that of the pitiless warrior-goddess who sheds blood, extinguishes life, and enjoys doing this as she does making love. And, what is equally paradoxical, man feels himself attracted by the wrathful countenance of this goddess of battle and blood as much as to the virgin-wanton who beckons to him with her chaste experienced smile, or to the mother who offers him her ample, nourishing breasts. The goddess thus speaks to man with four tongues: keep away from me because I am a Virgin; enjoy me because I am available to all; come shelter in my motherly bosom; and die in me because I thirst for your blood. Whichever of her aspects momentarily gains the upper hand, there is a deep chord in the male psyche which powerfully responds to it. Her voices enter man and stir him; they bend man to pay homage to her and they lure man to lose himself in her, whether in love or in death." [153-154] The Hebrew Goddess "Thus, for the Jew reared in the great mystical tradition of his faith, the Sabbath was a day whose pleasures, both physical and spiritual, amply compensated him for the drabness, narrowness, and frequent sorrowfulness of the weekdays. With the Sabbath, a queenly visitor entered even the humblest abode, which, due to her presence, was transformed into a royal palace, with the table set, the candles burning, and the wine waiting. The mistress of the house became mysteriously identified with the Queen Sabbath, who was also identical with the Shekhina, the divine Matronit, God's own consort. As for the master of the house, he felt his chest swell and his consciousness expand due to the 'additional soul' which came down from on high to inhabit his body for the duration of the Sabbath. All these supernal presences made man and wife feel part of the great spiritual world order in which every act and word was fraught with cosmic significance, and in which the supreme command of the day was 'Rejoice!' When midnight came, and the fulfillment of the commandment to rejoice on the Sabbath found its most intense expression in the consummation of the marital act, this was done with the full awareness not only of obeying a divine injunction, but also of aiding thereby the divinity himself in achieving a state of male-female togetherness which God is just as much in need of as man. It is certainly a very far cry from the ancient Canaanite mass orgiastic festivals performed in honor of Astarte, the goddess of sexual love and fertility, to the mystically oriented and privately observed celebration of marital sex in honor of the Sabbath, the divine queen and consort of God. Yet, quite apart from the historic development which led from the first to the second in the course of nearly three millennia, one can discover in both at least one common feature which indicates their generic relatedness. Both observances are culturally conditioned and traditionally formulated responses to the basic human psychological need to elevate and sanctify the sexual impulse by attributing to the sex act a higher, a religious, a divine significance. In both, the act becomes more than the end-in-itself that in physiological reality it actually is; it becomes a sacrosanct observance directed at a loftier and greater aim: the exertion of beneficial influence upon the great ultimate realities of the metaphysical world. And in both it is a female deity whose invisible yet omnipresent countenance is supposed to light up into a benign and pleasurable smile when she observes the fervid performance of her favorite rite." [275-276] THG |