The Storytellers Goddess Part 24

"I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Mayahuel felt a thread of relief inside Her.

"They have that in You, Son. They have that in You. You inspire them, Son. Their lives are richer, I know, for Your visits and Your stories."

Fish Son turned to look at His Mother, and His eyes were very kind.

"I have the gift of stories, Mother," He said.

"But inspiration is not enough when the creatures are hungry. I have also the gift of green, Mother. And I must give that, too."

Mayahuel felt Her throat tighten. The relief had fled.

"How will You do that, My Son?" She whispered.

Fish Son reached out His hands to His Mother's. She took them in Her own. Both Their eyes were swimming with tears.

"I will take Fish form again, Mother. And I will lie out of the water and I will die. Then You will cut Me in pieces and bury Me. And then I will come to You and the creatures in a new form."

Mayahuel felt the mouths of Her Frog self loosen inside Her. She saw the dress of Her Woman self muddy and torn. She felt the shrivel of Her four hundred b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and She let Her Son take Her into His arms.

"It is good that You didn't argue with Him," said Snake-the-Wind. And the Mother and Father clung to each other until the morning came.

When Fish Son died, the G.o.ddess Mayahuel made of Her four hundred b.r.e.a.s.t.s four hundred eyes. She cut up and buried Her beautiful Son and watered His grave with a river of tears.

From Fish Son's body deep in the wet Earth sprang up seed-bearing plants for the creatures of the world. From His hair came cotton; from His nostrils the herb for curing fevers. From His toes came the sweet potato, and out of His knees grew the maize. Indeed, to a thousand times four hundred, Fish Son's body made all of the fruits and grains of this world. The creatures of the world rejoiced and gave thanks over and over again for the gift of green.

Then the G.o.ddess Mayahuel closed Her four hundred eyes and began to sing the song of the story that never ends. She sang it round and round and formed of Herself the maguey plant, a deep green cactus shrub with four hundred hard, pointed leaves in a rosette spiral. Into the plant She poured Herself; into its blossom She hummed the love of Herself and Her Ehecatl.

"Neither drought nor hail nor cold touch Us here, My Beloved," She sang. And She filled Herself with the wine of Her endless milking.

Endlessly milking is Mayahuel to this very day. When under Her the creatures of the world put their pots, storing Her milk for the pulque of intoxication and blessing, they hear (yes they do!) in Her voluminous white essence the story that never ends.

VII. Recovery of Her Story

Acquiring knowledge of personal history is life changing. It s.h.i.+fts att.i.tude, action, and even circ.u.mstance; things are never the same again. Deep pieces fall into place when the secrets are revealed.

Adopted child meets birth mother. The "big brother" is really the father and "mama" is really the grandmother. The meaning of the lifelong nightmare is the childhood s.e.xual abuse she never remembered until now. The "nervousness" is really mental illness; the "bad moods"

are really alcoholism. The "terrible shame" is actually a first divorce or a baby "out of wedlock." Whether the news is good or bad, we are relieved. The gnawing feeling that the story as told just does not make sense falls away. The truth is out: we are whole.

Like secrets in an individual family, our collective her stories have been hidden from us. Not only have our "photos" been destroyed and "family" mythologies doctored, but the "doc.u.ments" have been altered and even completely rewritten.

The commonly accepted Western history, for example, that humankind leapt from cave to the biblical era to Greece in a continuous stream of patriarch ally dominated culture is a colloquial lie so pervasive that it is hard to ascribe ill will to it. After all, one historian simply starts where another leaves off, and no one, until Riane Eisler, Marija Gimbutas, Barbara Mor, Monica Sjoo, and Merlin Stone, has questioned the a.s.sumptions or "facts" of this story. On the contrary, like children who repress hunches and inconsistencies in family mythology, historians and their publics have swallowed facts that are not facts and interpretations that rob us of our ability to know who we are.

Patriarchal Western "history" renders invisible the stories of ancient Europe. Long explained as a land of barbarians until the Greeks rose up out of historical void, Europe was actually peopled with women and men who together created civilizations focused on art, trade, agriculture, and architecture. From the ruins and artifacts of their cities, we know these people neither expected nor perpetrated war; they valued the creative and wors.h.i.+ped the G.o.ddess. As long ago as seven thousand years before what we accept as the common era, ancient European civilizations honored life in a way we are both shocked and thrilled to learn. We are shocked that we have not been told. How could they pretend that men have always dominated? Why did they not tell us that ma trifocal civilizations fell at the hands of patriarchal invaders, who then borrowed their knowledge while degrading their lands and rewriting their records? The lies, we find, also blanket the "middle ages." Women were healers, then, burned by the millions as witches in order that male doctors borrow their knowledge, take their lands, and rewrite their records. The story of the burning times has been silenced; only in the code of fairy tales in which witches are alive, but demonic, can we glimpse the power once held by women spiritually connected to Earth.

We are shocked, stung in a way that even all our cynicism and sophistication will never completely heal. But we are also thrilled.

We are living in the times when the secrets are out. We are naming them, touching them alone and together. We are closing our eyes and letting our bones tell us what it must have been like. Suddenly all the dropped st.i.tches are picked up again. We are finding Her image and presence in every country, every continent. We are telling Herstory: we are telling our stories. Our hearts, so afraid for the future, are madly borrowing hope from the past.

Lilith (LILL-ith) Lady of the Air (Middle East) Introduction

Related to the Sumerian G.o.ddess Ninlil, Lady of the Air Who Gave Birth to the Moon, Lilith, Hand of Inanna (see story), is identified with the lily or lotus. The lily is the Great Mother's flower Yoni, which begets Herself and the world (see stories of Juno and Astarte). The sweeping s.e.xuality of Her Person characterizes the endless mysteries of growing things over which She once unquestionably ruled. Her powers, however, were politically unacceptable to the nomadic tribes who coveted the fields of Her farming peoples. The nomadic storytellers, therefore, invented a degrading biography for the Lady of the Moon.

Except inasmuch as Her image was collapsed into that of Lucifer, the G.o.ddess Lilith lost Her place entirely in the Judeo-Christian Bible. In both Eve and the serpent, biblical writers subverted images of the Creator G.o.ddess honored by earlier Middle Eastern creation myths. In Eve, they reduced the One Who is Complete to wife or the first man, subordinate and obedient, experiencing s.e.xuality for procreative purposes only. The snake, who possesses the secret of the Tree of Knowledge, is a disguised and diaboli zed version of the G.o.ddess Herself. And Eve's very rebellion hints of the wisdom of the Great Feminine.

Rabbinical writers, on the other hand, retained the Divine Lady in the form of the Night Hag in the mystical book of the Kabbalah (see story of the Shekina). They wrote Lilith Herself into the script as Adam's first wife. She refuses to do Adam's bidding, however, and flies away when he insists that She forego Her ancient position of pleasure and lie beneath him. While G.o.d creates Eve, Adam's second wife, in this story, Lilith takes the form of a She-Demon who spends Her evenings in the beds of dreaming men, milking them for nightly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e and making of their sperm a hundred new demons a day. Beautiful temptress She is, they tell us, with long waving hair and claws for feet, like a bird of prey (see story of Cerridwen).

It is easy to see Eve and Lilith as two Sisters, both degraded versions of the G.o.ddess who, split from each other, represent two halves of a once-sacred s.e.xual whole. Eve is the Sister of Pregnancy and Motherhood; Lilith is the Sister of Menstruation and Independence.

Integrated, They represent a body of wisdom that scorns the intellectualization of truth. Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove have helped me to understand the connection of Eve and Lilith through their book, The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman.

I wrote Lilith's story as a kind of political cartoon, playing with the biblical creation myth's teaching that humans are to set themselves superior to the animals. Lilith, who can be represented by a juicy, saucy red apple, is the G.o.ddess for me who lauds the kind of knowing that builds no hierarchy.

The First Woman and the Moon In the beginning was the woman Lilith and the man Adam. They were wife and husband and lived in a garden called Eden. The garden was so green it rested the eyes like a cool cloth.

Its fruits were as many as the stars of the sky. Together Lilith and Adam grew to know the plants and animals they lived with and to lie together, quiet and joyful, under the whispering trees.

But one day Adam took an idea into his head.

"Lilith," said Adam, "let's think up a name for each of the animals."

"I don't see a need for that, Adam. Seems like we're all just fine here without names," said Lilith.

But Adam liked his new idea, and he began to spend whole days picking just the right sound for each creature. All day he paced and thought and named animals. Even at dinner he continued his project.

One day Adam said to Lilith, "Lilith, have you ever noticed how big I am? Why, I'm way bigger than you. See?" Adam showed his muscles.

"And look how tall I am."

Lilith looked quietly at Adam.

"Lilith, you know what my name is going to be?" said Adam.

"King. King. I'm king of this garden."

"I don't like the sound of that, Adam," said Lilith.

"It doesn't really matter if you like the sound, Lilith," said Adam.

"I am the biggest and the strongest. So you've got to do what I say."

"You know, Adam, there are other ways to measure bigness than in inches, and other ways to measure strength than in muscles," said Lilith.

"Oh, come on, Lilith," said Adam.

"I'm the king, and you're my queen."

"That's not for me, Adam," said Lilith.

"The way I see it is that we're all sisters and brothers in this garden. Each of us is as important as the other. n.o.body's king and n.o.body's queen."