Sometimes though, I check my newly curated smart-people-only feed on facebook, and am relieved to see words I resonate with deeply. It's nice to know it's not just me going crazy here, that others see what I see and are analyzing current events so eloquently. And to affirm their ideas and add my similar experience and have my thoughts validated too. I definitely know now who my tribe is now, in all the ways. Grateful.
Speaking of being a nerd, this morning I scoured the internet until I found The Sibylline Oracles. It's a heavily edited and patriarchalized version of the original sacred "pagan" texts that were housed in ancient temples, but the voices of the original prophetesses and "mythologies" can be detected in many places. (Why do we not call modern religion "mythologies" just because the previous religions were conquered? As if it wasn't rude enough that their sacred places were destroyed and their priestesses burned as witches. Yet we're still culturally insensitive, still othering them by calling ours "religions" and theirs "myths." I will accept calling everything a religion or everything a myth, but one is not above the other, although if I must choose, I'd say any religion that has to threaten you into submission is probably the myth of the two.)
Anyway, ancient texts are cool. You pretty much just have to omit "god" and "idolaters" every few sentences and then you can imagine how it used to be. It excites me.
Like this interesting passage:
And a flaming power shall come
By billow to the earth, it shall consume
Both Beliar and all the haughty men
Who put their trust in him. And thereupon
Shall the whole world be governed by the hands
Of a woman...
— Sibylline Oracles book III, 85-95
A woman you say!
And this line, same chapter, before a predicted matriarchal future saves the day:
"For on all the nations which dwell on earth the Highest shall send dire plague."
Welp. Guess we shoulda listened to the lady.
2:16 p.m. - 2021-01-23