Mum’s not the word
The Asian Age, which chronicles our life and times with random bits of information that are unlikely to be of any use other than being excellent conversation sprinklers, informed me this morning that the Vatican has ordained that the Christian god cannot be a woman. This information comes via the Daily Telegraph. Feminist hackles are expected to rise and there will, no doubt, be a piece by Germaine Greer in The Guardian sometime next week. I don’t generally have much of an critical opinion on Pope Benedict XVI (I was voting for Cardinal Telesphore Toppo from Ranchi). This is a man who thinks marriage is “a stable union between a man and a woman”; how can you feel anything but pity for the old critter? However, this once, I must admit the man may be on to something.
Almost across the entire mythological board, the creator deity is male (the Aztecs and the Maoris are among the few that let goddesses into their creation myths). Hindus have Brahma, who was born out of Vishnu’s navel, so clearly there’s some hanky panky there that the Blue God hasn’t let the rest of us in on. Ironically of course, Brahma is celibate or dating Saraswati, who is technically his daughter. And you thought Hinduism was conservative…. The Babylonian Marduk made humanity out of the blood of Kingu (unrelated to the penguin and still male). In Egyptian mythology a bored god, Atum, masturbates and lo and behold! we have creation. Odin and his two brothers take credit for creation in Norse mythology. Before they took this task upon themselves, fun in Scandinavia involved licking ice or sucking the teats of Audhumla, the primeval cow. Inca mythology also has a god with an unpronounceable name who created the world as they knew it. Kamui, in Ainu mythology, made the first man out of chickweed and willow, which may have given him RSI but if we’d stuck to that system at least there wouldn’t be labour pain and Bangladesh, with its constant flooding issues, wouldn’t have a population because it would all be washed away.
Over the past couple of decades, feminist theology has been promoting “gender-neutral” phrases for “god” in the field of contemporary Christianity. These include “Creator”, which is ok but perhaps inaccurate as above mythological research indicates. There’s also “Redeemer’, which sounds a bit like the new Bajaj two-wheeler or the term for the guy who can save you from credit card debt, and Sanctifier, which sounds like the new Harpic product. Definitely not a phrase to inspire epiphany.
Leaving aside semantics, I think there’s a lot to be said for god the creator type person being a male. This explains why making babies has been thrust upon the female gender because clearly, the god had enough after the first round. Also, would a woman really create a world where the majority is heterosexual, thus subjecting those of her own gender to creatures destined for male pattern baldness and whose sense of identity is inseparably linked to a dangling bit of flesh that looks like a last-minute add-on? If you ask me, there is a god and he is a gay male who, at the time of creation, was dealing with a receding hairline and being dumped. Or his ex-boyfriend had the receding hairline, which would explain why so few hair transplant treatments actually work.
on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008, 12:27 pm in Mythology, Pope Benedict XVI, Random, trivia › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
Hindu creation theories aren’t all the same. There’s also the one where all the creators came from Mata or Kali’s womb.
Anyway, thank the goddess for atheism.
I thought Laxmi was the first divine being to emerge out of the Eternal Waters? I guess that would make the Eternal Waters the “Creator”, but without any human attributes like gender…
A, I haven’t heard of the Kali creation theory. I thought she was one of the un-Vedic goddesses that the Vedic types co-opted into the Hindu pantheon at a later stage. It certainly explains her anger management issues. If I was the first person to be a guinea pig for labour pains, I’d probably want to go on a rampage as soon as I was up and about.
Nina, Laxmi did indeed emerge but rather than out of water, didn’t she come out of the foam (a l’Aphrodite?) produced by the “churning” of the serpent during Samudra Manthan? Talk about suggestive imagery… Though, to be fair to the feminine principle, in the beginning of Hinduism, there was an egg.
The Shakta denomination of hinduism believes the supreme god to be a feminine power. This feminine power was originally knows as devi/shakti/adi-shakti. Later it took forms such as Durga/Kali/Chandi, etc. The Devi Mahatmya is the central text of shakta. Both Shakti and Shiv are born of an androgynous diety called Ardhanarishwara.
There are a number of hindu creation myths. The early ones are more male-centric in tone: one of the earliers, I believe, is that Brahma had a daughter who he raped and the children are the human race. Later myths give more primacy to females. In a later myth (from the Mahabharata, I think), Brahma splits into a male (Manu) and female (Satarupa), a la Ardhanarishwara, to produce the first man and woman. The Shaktas from around the 5th century AD are another example. It is possible that as the Aryans moved from a nomadic martial culture to an agrarian one, they started giving more primacy to the feminine force.
anon and on (great handle): you’re right. I think it’s sometimes called “the ocean of milk.” Suggestive indeed.
Both the Japanese and Maya have more balanced creation myths involving both genders. (Most groups do, actually, with the feminine aspect usually being disguised as something watery or as the great void from which all is born.) The male-dominated pantheons are just a symptom of males seizing religion from females about 7-10Kyrs back.
As for the Catholic boobery, this is not exactly news. They designated Mary as their queen of heaven almost since the start to ensure indigenous (pagan) religions in Europe would take to the new god if their goddess was given a rightful place. I guess that they’re announcing this explicitly is the actual news. Whatev, though. Germaine Greer and her ilk need something to keep themselves occupied.