Part One: Faith

Chapter One: Elementary My Dear

1.6 Earth, Wind, and Fire

  More recent evidence that we find for religious behavior comes from the period around 26,000 BC.

Our (or many of our) Cro-Magnon forefathers were moving towards a lifestyle base upon agriculture and farming (an agrarian society), and the relationship between himself and the land upon which we gained our sustenance became a clear focal point for the "new and improved" human mind. With a keen sense of curiosity, refined over millions of years, we examined this relationship in greater detail.  And could convey more and more details to each other results of our observations.

Using language to share and accumulate knowledge of horticultural events, and using that knowledge to reason out cause and effect, we found a means of "interfering" with the natural cycles to produce hardier and more abundant plants and animals for consumption. One could well consider this to be the beginning of science¹.  Breeding in a controlled manner, sifting through the outcomes, and selecting the best answer. Very much like the scientific method.  

Men were learning to shape the earth. (Or maybe the women. There is mounting evidence that women played a much greater role in pre-historic society that was previously believed)².  And this leads us to the next evidence of religious activity for which we have evidence. Small sculpted figurines of women were beginning to appear. These reddish clay statuettes, found in caves from Russia to France, are referred to as the Venus figurines (after Venus de Milo). Over 100 have been found to date and are made out of stone, bone, and fired clay. (This is interesting because we did not start using clay pottery, a practical tool, until around 7,000 BC.) According to Heather Pringle, author of In Search of Ancient North America, these figurines "share a strange blend of abstraction and realism. They bare prominent breasts, for example, but lack nipples. Their bodies are often minutely detailed down to the swaying lines of their backbones and the tiny rolls of flesh - fat folds - beneath their shoulder blades, but they often lack eyes, mouths, and any facial expression."

Until recently, many archeologists have suggested they were the worlds first pornography. My guess is that, if they were created for the sole benefit of the men, they represented one of the first attempts at what is called Imitative Magic. Voodoo dolls are an example of imitative magic. So by creating solid images of women, this would "evoke" the actuality of a woman by his side. Now it is being suggested that these figurines were made by the women for use in ritual. Perhaps as a form of divination. Many of the clay figures were found to be of a size that would readily explode in the kiln. Maybe they were too stupid to make them smaller to ensure they would not explode, or they intentionally made them with a high likelihood of exploding. If a figurine exploded, it could be interpreted as a bad omen. If not, a good one. The fact that the area in which these figurines were made was set apart from the main living areas, as is often the case for “sacred” or holy places where rituals were held, tends to further the idea of a ritualistic use.

Margherita Mussi, an archeologist at the University of Rome La Sapienza, suspects that it was the women that created and used these figurines for religious purposes. She believes that "these women were related to the capacity of communicating with a different world. I think they were believed to be the gateway to a different dimension." This is not hard to believe. Women played a much greater role in religious activity in ancient times, as we shall see. The woman, bearer of children, were often seen as spiritually endowed, perhaps because birth was recognized as a miraculous event just as death now was. She had a special connection between life and death. Between this world and the other.

The question here is: Who in the "other" world were they communicating with? We have seen that we had established the idea that there was something in man that continued after life in the body had ceased. Since they were no longer among us, they must be somewhere! So this idea of "somewhere else" came into being. But was this other place only populated by the deceased? Or had we already conceived of Deity³? If the figurines were in fact used for divination, who was providing the answers? Spirits of the dead, or God?

These figurines, which would continue to be made for thousands of years, are believed by many to actually represent a Mother Goddess cult and one of the oldest deities next to the Sky God. A potential source of consternation for modern Christians perhaps, but the ancient world was heavily populated by feminine deity and was even believed to have influenced the early Canaan beliefs prior to the introduction of Monotheism into what would later become the Judaic Faiths. Not surprisingly these early feminine deities were closely associated with fertility and particularly at a time when we were moving towards an agrarian culture, served as a focal point of worship in which the success of crops could be requested of those divine forces, or energies (mana), which had become central to our lives.

From the life sustaining earth, shaped and strengthened in the precious fire, and blown out of the ethereal thoughts of human mind, we created porn.  I make fun only because the perception that porn is anything other than "nasty" or "disgusting" is the result of emergence from the shell of Victorian world-views that are subtly shaping the foundations of our thoughts as we come into the 21st century.

Today, by comparison to the fascination, if not total elation, those early humans must have felt seeing this small and simple "creation" come out of the make-shift kiln, we have instead an earth rapidly being poisoned, fires burning poisons and radiation all around, all from the minds of human beings with more freedom to display his innate nature than ever before.

Now, how do we have faith?  We can have faith in an intervention by our Lord at the time of the apocalypse, which seems ever more looming much to my horror, or we can have faith in the process of life.  That nature will (or has and as yet remain innate) imbue us with the moral and emotional faculties to gain consensus and act quickly as a group.  Either way, the future as it stands now is a most exciting proposition! 

I've always joked that I want to live long enough to see that huge wall of water coming at me.  The last thing I see, but I want to see it.  If Armageddon is a natural phenomena that was seen through paranormal means by a select few, I would much prefer that, personally, than a gone off his rocker world leader decide that the bible's truth must be held true, and it must be now.  The political climate of the 2008 election is coming over the horizon and the issue of faith in politics is being discussed once again - with the result that looking at any of the republican candidates, and several of the democratic candidates, give me a very VERY nervous feeling in my gut.  Actually, if we get to the 2008 elections at all will surprise me - George Bush could still "blow" at any time; particularly as we let him know publicly and with malice how little we approve of him.  I hope that there is someone to read this in another year or more...  God did choose him to be president after all.  Only a stair or two away from deity complex there Georgie.  Whoa.  It's ok, we love you.  Step back from the console.  Everything's alright.

What presents to the Cosmos one day a small clay statue, is planetary destruction the next.  All of this is the power of the word. 

#1 science: (Amer. Her. 3rd Ed.) 1.a. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. b. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena. c. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study. 2. Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science. 3. An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing. 4. Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.  [Back to Text]

#2  See Also: Discover, April 1998; pg 62 or see: http://www.discover.com/archive/index.html        [Back to Text]

#3 deity: (Amer. Her. 3rd Ed.) 1. A god or goddess. 2.a. The essential nature or condition of being a god; divinity. b. Deity. God. Used with the.  [Back to Text]