Sir Richard Arcos and the Sacred Feminine

I'm mostly a preacher, so I ought to say (for the fans at least) something about the Sacred Feminine in the Bible. It may surprise those who swallow Dr. Langdon's books whole (a most uncomfortable experience, take it from me) that there are references to the Sacred Feminine in the Bible. There are, especially in the Old Testament, but they are not positive, nor do they teach it as doctrine. Here are two of them, one from the Old Testament, the other from the New Testament: 'And Samuel spake unto all the House of Israel, saying, If ye do return to the LORD with all your hearts, put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you...' (1 Sam 7:3) Some commentators have rendered this 'put away Baal and Ashtaroth.' Whichever it is, this is one of many negative references to female deities in the Old Testament. Further, it has been suggested that the reason why Ashtaroth is singled out here is because of a special attatchment to Ashtaroth on the Part of the Israelites. Maybe the Israelites looked at the nations around them, saw the worship of the sacred feminine and decided to import it into Israel. Whatever the case, God clearly didn't approve. Just so, when Tamar 'played the harlot' in 'an open place' (Gen 38:13-30) this action is condemned, as is Judah for straying. Since Kendall and others are of the opinion here that the 'place' mentioned in this passage from Genesis was a shrine of some sort, this may be where the 'ritual sex in the Temple' balderdash comes from (I can't think of anywhere else, unless one takes the Prophetic condemnations of this sort of thing). Yet here, too, it is condemned. Equally, this happened while the descendants of Abraham were wanderers in the promised Land, where all sorts of others dwelt, the shrine (if so it was) would then have belonged to one of the idol cults that would so displease the Lord as to cause him to smite the Caananites through Israel.

The New Testament reference is from the Acts of the Apostles, after the Apostle Paul's sermon on Mars Hill in Athens: 'Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, what will this babbler say? Other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Christ and the Resurrection.' (Acts 17:18) Our hellenic mugs seem to have gleefully seized the wrong end of the stick, and thought that Paul was taking about a god called Christ and 'his powerful female equal' Anastasia (Gr. for 'resurrection', feminine noun).