Bernard Katz has contributed more articles to the magazine than anybody else—at least such is the case to the best of my knowledge. Not only is Bernard the most prolific AR writer, he has also covered more topics than anybody else. The breadth of his intellectual interests is astonishing. On the average, Bernard would submit several pieces for each issue of AR I have edited over the past ten years (and he had long worked for AR before I took over its editorship in 1996). Of his countless articles, I would typically run only 3 or 4 per issue, meaning that I have accumulated an impressive backlog of Bernard’s submissions, submissions which are all publishable but which I am afraid I will never be able to publish, not all of them anyhow and not anytime soon.  Below just a mere couple to give you a little flavor of Bernard’s impressive knowledge:

—Kaz Dziamka, Editor

 

 

THE SYMBOLS OF THE FEMALE

 

by Bernard Katz

 

I recently taught a class of the elderly about the Bible and phallic worship. My students were very responsive, one reason being that in all their Bible studies and religious schooling they had never had so much as a hint about sex worship of the male. During the next-to-the-last class, one woman asked that since there was a symbol for the male, why wasn't there one for the female? Oh, I said, but that's for another course. However, if you can't wait, I'll give the class a brief run-down next week. And this is what I said.

      The horseshoe shape was one of the most sacred in the ancient world because it was a stylization of the yoni, signifying entrances and exits in general. "Yoni" is a Hindu word for our familiar "vulva," and its male counterpart is the Hindu word "lingam"—and you know what this means from this course.

      Druidic temples, Hindu and Arabic arches testify to the importance of the yoni.

      The sacred alphabet of the Greeks enclosed all things (i.e., letter symbols) between the birthletter alpha and the horseshoe-shaped omega, the name of which means the "Great Om." The Upanishads referred to Om as "the supreme syllable, the mother of all sound," and sound was the Great Goddess's tool of creation. She invented the Sanskrit alphabetical letters, which were matrika, "mothers." Om was the mantramatrika, the Mother of Mantras—that is, the first of all the creative spells spoken by the Goddess to bring the world into being. The Goddess created all things by speaking their names in her magic language, "as from a mother comes birth, so from matrika, or sound, the world proceeds."

      The meaning of Om was something like "pregnant belly," certainly a prerequisite for symbolic maternal creation, comparable to the deep of biblical and Middle Eastern creation myths, which bore the name of the Mother (tehom) even in Hebrew. The Arabic cognate of the word, Umm, meant mother, matrix, source, principle, or prototype: all concepts derived from the primal womb.

      The Oriental teachings surrounding the Om as the "creative Word" were the true roots of the Christian doctrine of the Logos—the Word of God that was supposed to have made the world and to have become incarnate in Jesus. Before it was Christian, this doctrine was Greek (Hermes was the Logos of Zeus). And before that, it was the common  property of Mesopotamian gods like Marduk and Enlil, who claimed to create by the power of their words. It was also the doctrine of hekau, words of power, in Egypt, where it was under the jurisdiction of the Crone goddess Hekit (Hecate). Priests of the male gods seized eagerly upon the idea of creating by a word, because it avoided the impossible problem of assigning creativity to a nonbirth-giving entity, the male. Thus the Logos became a prominent part of nearly every patriarchal religion.

      The Christian God's description of himself as "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending" (Revelation 1:8), was usurped from older titles of the Mother of birth and death.

      The omega-shaped horseshoe continued to be hung "for luck" over doorways throughout the Christian era, protecting the threshold as it did in pagan times. There was always controversy, however, about whether its opening should point upward or downward. Orthodox piety insisted that the omega should be reversed, so "the luck wouldn't run out." Pagan tradition said the symbolic yoniform doorway should retain its original upward arch. The two ways of hanging the horseshoe actually echoed the magic signs called Dragon's Head and Dragon's Tail, the ascending node and descending node, connected with the path of the moon above and below the ecliptic, which when plotted would result in the wavy line representing the lunar serpent. And, once again, lunar (or the moon) was a female symbol because of the monthly periods of women.

      Another very important female symbol is the mandorla, meaning "almond," which was one of the more cryptic synonyms for this symbol. It was also known as vesica piscis, the Vessel of the Fish, and more simply as the yoni. Almonds were female-genital symbols and maternity charms from very ancient times. The virgin birth of the god Attis was conceived by a magic almond. Even the Israelites' tabernacle made use of its fertility mana (Exodus 37:20), and Aaron's rod produced almonds in token of a general power of fructification (Numbers 17:8).

      Although the yoni meaning of this sign was well known in the ancient world, it carried such sacred overtones that Christian artists seized upon it to frame the figures of saints, the Virgin, or Christ. Christian mystics redefined the mandorla as the arcs of two circles, left for female matter, right for male spirit. Even God himself appeared sometimes incongruously enclosed in this female genital emblem. A well-known twelfth century panel in Chartres Cathedral shows "Christ of the Apocalypse" within a mandorla. With an unintentional double entendre, the mandorla was sometimes piously interpreted as a gateway to heaven.

      So there you have it, ladies! Instead of a male symbol for good luck like the cross or the Mogen David, you can wear your very own horseshoe or almond!

 

 

 

WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?

 

By Bernard Katz

 

The Catholic Church is on the offensive, sending its apologists into the fray against the movie The Da Vinci Code. One such apologist is Dr. Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder of Movieguide.org. Here's his summary of the Church's counter-attack:

 

      "It would be wonderful to believe Christians can argue the facts to Dan Brown's hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians, and history. The truth is, however, that many people have not read a Bible or understood their faith sufficiently to counter the story's intricacies.

      Does the average person know what Gnostic Gospels are? Are people familiar with the Catholic group Opus Dei? What is the answer when Christians are asked whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did they have children? Has the church hidden important facts from the faithful? These are just some of the complex issues discussed in The Da Vinci Code. Although it is fiction, it contains enough references to history to make Christians question their beliefs.

      The slanderous distortions and falsehoods are as dangerous as they are numerous. The movie threatens to strike another massive blow to people's understanding and knowledge of God, Christianity, and history.

      Although the movie waters down the novel's anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ and increase prejudice against Christians."

     

What an ignoramus he is! Doesn't he know that both The Da Vinci Code and the Christian Bible are both fictions? That the Church adopted many of the myths of the pagans? That the Christian Scriptures are doctored up with misquotations, have quotes that never were in the Jewish Bible, misinterpretations, and false prophecies?

      That the writers of the N.T. were as loose with the facts and cavalier with the truth as those who founded Christianity? That the most important founders of Christianity were hopelessly at odds with each other—with Jesus, Paul, and Peter disagreeing with each other?

      That the life of Jesus is not recoverable because it is full of contradictions and fables? In his book What Is the Bible? Professor Rolland Wolf gives us the truth, saying: "The final religion of the Bible is a tragic affair, a religion of radical anti-climax, as found in the latest books of the New Testament. The communion was made into a matter of transubstantiation. In the book of Hebrews, Jesus was transformed into a great high priest, with all the accompanying paraphernalia. In the book of Revelation, Jesus was made into a militarist hero, as the king and conqueror of the world, with his tongue elongated into a two-edged sword with which to cut off the heads of his enemies. This religion wallows in the sadism connected with its concepts of the judgment day and terrors of hell, with its lake of fire."

      That the whole Protestant Reformation and its resultant churches and sects were and are composed of people who think that Roman Catholicism is a fraud and a fiction?

      That many of the early Christians were Gnostics and that some of their theology is part of the N.T. as witnessed by, say, John 8:44?

      That primitive Christianity was unlike its current practitioners in that it rejected wealth and was therefore anti-capitalist—for it actually started out as a communist community?

      That its prophecy of the world soon coming to an end was one of the world's greatest con jobs?

      Was Thomas Jefferson wrong when, in 1823, he wrote in a letter to his friend John Adams: "And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter?"

      Is there a difference between The Da Vinci Code and the New Testament? Not at all—for both are fictions!