INTRODUCTION

 

"You adulteresses. (feminine in Greek) Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Whoever is a friend of the world (system) makes himself an enemy of God."

 

 

The concept of the Sacred Feminine is an ancient one, often misunderstood, or worse misinterpreted.

When the misinterpretation is deliberate, and becomes misrepresentation, we should look for an underlying reason!

 

I shall be adding further articles to these pages, as time permits.

HARLOTRY: "A-Whoring after Other Gods" 

According to scripture, in ancient Israel a harlot or zona was a woman to be both abhorred and reviled. Prostitution, as in the selling of sexual favours for monetary gain, was perfectly legal providing the woman was A] single, and B] was not the  daughter of a Priest.

    

The first would have involved adultery, the latter "profaning her father" - for which she would be “burnt with fire” (Lev. 21:9) For women in Old Testament society, neither of these courses was an option. Women were effectively owned, firstly by their fathers, and after marriage, by their husbands. Note that Zanah is the verb form for sexual intercourse outside marriage.The Apocrypha (2 Esdras 16:49-50) states that right abhors wrong "just as a respectable and virtuous woman abhors a harlot". Indeed, women were not only left dependant upon their men, they were encouraged to despise their sisters who were “free” to engage in what has become euphemistically referred to as “the oldest profession”! How ironic then, that in Genesis (38:13-18) Jacob's son Judah mistakes his own veiled daughter-in-law for a roadside harlot, and immediately hires her services…

 

And not content with making women into a sub-class of inferior chattels, owned body and soul, if not by God, then certainly by the men who should be her protectors, men too are warned of the dire consequences of engaging in sexual relations with harlots. At last – some balance is to be brought into the equation - after the shenanigans of Judah!

Proverbs, 29:3 states, “He that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance" In other words, the Bible of the Hebrews warned that consorting with prostitutes would destroy a man’s virility, his ability to procreate. In Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son, a young man's whoring leads to his ruin* (Luke 15:11-32), and the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians, 6:13-16) warns that any man who becomes "joined to an harlot" becomes "one body" with her, thereby profaning that which belongs to the Lord*…

"Whoremongers" are among those who "shall have their part," says the book of Revelation, in the lake of fire and brimstone (21:8; see also Eph. 5:5 and Heb. 13:4;

* My italics

In the Old Testament, harlotry or whoredom (zenut) becomes a metaphor for the Hebrew peoples’ recurring need to revert back to the ways of their old Gods. They are described as "playing the harlot" (Ezek. 16:41) and "a-whoring after other gods" such as Baal of Canaan (Ex. 34:15-16; Judg. 2:17, 8:33;  Note that by linking the Feminine with “false Gods” the Old Testament successfully created a meme which continues to portray women as somehow “evil”!

The prophet Jeremiah accuses "backsliding Israel" of playing the harlot "upon every high mountain and under every green tree," another reference to the Pagan practice of celebrating sexuality, rather than demonising it!

Then, just to ensure everyone has got the message that whoredom is evil, actual cities are condemned in similar terms, as wicked!  Chapters 16 and 23 of the book of Ezekiel contain perhaps the most striking sexual imagery -symbolizing Israelite idolatry as well as alliances with foreign powers - to be found anywhere in ancient literature. Ezekiel 23 describes the dissolute activities of Oholah and Oholibah, symbolizing Samaria and Jerusalem, brcause they have had the temerity to disobey the status quo – they have had relations with other nations and their beliefs, thus becoming despoiled “whores”. Then the prophet Nahum condemns "the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot" Nineveh (3:2); Isaiah describes Tyre as a whore who fornicates internationally (23:15-17); and Revelation (17:1,5) depicts imperial Rome i.e. Babylon as "the great whore" and "the mother of harlots"!