I so often get teary-eyed when reading about the original religions (that we refer to as "mythologies" for some reason) that were conquered and erased by xtianity. I am more well versed in middle eastern and eastern mediterranean regions, but this morning I'm learning about pre-xtian Baltic history.
The Baltic tribes worshipped the Sun Goddess Saule and a moon god. The moon god cheated on the Sun Goddess with Venus, so the Goddess divorced him. But they both wanted to visit their daughter (Earth), so they got joint custody, one visiting her in the day, the other at night.
I like this, because the gist of the story is fairly universal to the roots of many other cultures I've studied. The Sun Goddess was worshipped in Turkey too, and south Arabia (Yemen) worshipped a moon god. I like that this older religion had a "Daughter Earth" rather than "Mother Earth", showing the evolution of a very ancient belief.
I like thinking of the Sun as Goddess, because for some reason in modern times we think of the moon as feminine. But the sun is big, fiery, dominating, all powerful. The moon is cool too but, I wouldn't mind returning to a collective understanding of the giant all powerful sun as feminine. I feel it would resolve some of our modern day problems to give more recognition to feminine power. It wouldn't hurt for people to give credit where credit due, and the fact is that a woman created every single one of us, and biologically females existed before males, so the concept of a male god is really just wishful thinking on the part of men.
I'm personally tired of all this denial just to maintain the fragile egos of men. A male god is not even believable, unless I look at the poor state of the current world as the result of an irresponsible male trying to lead. I come from at least three generations of women who were raped and abused by men. The women in my family were the capable ones who did all the important work. The men in my family were okay, but not nearly as capable or responsible at running the family, and behaved more like additional children if anything. I just can't visualize a masculine god being trusted to do any important work for humanity.
Maybe masculine god has been away all day at work, on business trips, cheating or drinking like a jackass and that's why the world sucks now. I guess according to ancient Baltic belief, our parents are already divorced. Mother is with us during the day, and dad only comes home very late at night. Just like society, mom does all the real labor and dad just comes home to hang out and enjoy the house and family that mom created but receives no appreciation for. And daughter earth suffers from this unhealthy family dynamic.
I should be a mythology therapist.
10:41 a.m. - 2021-09-24