FROM GODDESS TO KING
A History of Ancient Europe from the
OERA LINDA BOOK
By Anthony Radford
CHAPTER 24
MESSAGE FOR OUR TIME
The past may be forgotten, but it never dies in our hearts; it continues to haunt us as though we lived it ourselves. At this time there is need for a true connection with the past, not to reactivate imaginary concepts or even introduce captivating memories but to use that strength, real or imaginary, in living our own age. This is a unique age, which has never happened before. Let us choose the best way to live it by heeding the wisdom and examples of the best of our global heritage rather than the commercial expediency of the moment.
We have learned how the Matriarchal Age was nothing to be feared by men, and we know today that a new matriarchal age is upon us in which both men and women are gaining in freedom and in expression. With cooperation comes a sense of true participation in the age without incurring the guilt of domination and privilege. The task is to implement it with both heart and brain. To react to two thousand years of injustice (much more in the East) with overcompensation will no longer work; we can instead make the choice for synthesis right now. Rage over the injustice, cry over the hurts, claim your power, but show the wisdom of Sophia in your choice of action. The "other cheek" is not the complimentary one but rather a new way of seeing things; a healing perspective, and only through such a choice can all of us move into a new age.
We now talk about the "year of the women" as we watch a thirty-minute sitcom. Are our attention span and expectations so instant? Why do we not have a planned economy? Our government changes tax laws every year, some that were designed to serve lifetime investments and other industrial investments that take many years to plan, permit and build. In our ignorance we credit a new administration for some economic trend reported just weeks into that "age". What attention is given to ethical standards in our schools? These ideas are often proposed but our system does not know how to use our better-qualified individuals. It gives momentary credits instead of consideration to what is really important.
If the Aquarian Age is the beginning of a new matriarchal age, then what are the signs, what are the differences? The first difference from the old Matriarchal Age is that it is a world wide phenomenon with beginnings mostly in California and elsewhere only in isolated places within thirty miles of the ocean; but with the communications of today it is possible to reach the world very quickly. It is not a racial issue but one of the brotherhood-sisterhood; of men-women. The English language may have to change to accommodate this but not all languages have this problem. In some Oriental languages they do not use a pronoun for the word God. To say "He" or "It" would be in bad taste so they simply repeat the noun.
The Oera Linda Book mentions the Asegaboek, which apparently meant a code of behavior or a personal belief system. We have our sacred texts and also many works on ethics and morality, few of which have had much universal appeal or have lasted into a second generation. Today, and perhaps always in our conscience, we make individual choices from the sum of our personal experience and social indoctrination. We cannot make better ones until we have lived longer and more wisely so the awesome importance of how we bring up and educate our children is obvious. We have moved from too much narrow instruction to too little fitting personal example. Narrow instruction has fostered separation among nations and races; and a competitive status called nationalism, a primitive emotion born of fear, or racism and the use of money as a measure of success. All this is learned behavior and while it may have served our grandparents who needed to break away from blind adherence to the bibles of the past, it also created a "lost" generation without standards beyond that of selfish interest. As neither generation satisfies us today, there is much searching throughout the world for a better way.
There is a crisis in our time that is reflected by the life in our inner cities. There is so much work to be done; but the system, the well meaning public agencies, have strangled themselves in distrust and inefficiency. Too often the help comes in the form of a check that costs ten to twenty times the face value to issue and involves months of paperwork. Where is the personal caring, the trust in our own officers? Some of us have the opportunity to be involved with fellow human beings at a personal level, but it will also require more intelligent legislation to make a difference.
Are there lessons from which we can learn in the Oera Linda Book? It is neither desirable nor practical to try to go back to a simpler time although many have attempted just that with brief episodes of community living. It doesn’t work today. We are much more complicated but this complication must be carefully examined or we could be vulnerable to natural forces beyond our control. One gets the impression of Puritanical attitudes when reading the moral obligations mentioned in the Book and surely that will remind us how futile it is to try to maintain such an attitude or to impose it on our children without incurring their resentment. But there was music and dance, as in the "Book of Songs" (one of the lost books) and it was mentioned that singing was prescribed as part of the education for girls. Perhaps this was the birth of the tradition that would be adopted by the Christian convents to come. It is highly probable that the seamen sang as they rowed through the calms; after all Homer tells us much about the enjoyment of music.
Another lesson concerns the enduring concept of "east is east and west is west." At no other time is this more important to overthrow than today. Our Frisian forefathers initially tried isolation or separation while educating foreign rowers in the ways of freedom, but intermarriage happened often out of necessity, rather than by choice; for disasters and wars uprooted peoples and cast them together. It was not just the races that mixed, it was the ideas they tried so hard to keep out. This kind of "protectionism" is something that cannot work, as only by experiencing the new and alien and then making a free choice, can we value any code and adapt it for ourselves. For example, how well does the average American understand the average Japanese despite fifty years of intense interaction? Do we try harder to have them learn our ways or do we make an effort to truly understand and appreciate their culture?
The teachings of Frya probably set the standard for what is now known as Western values, but for all the strength of its principles—the most valuable being the concepts of democracy and personal freedom—there is a price to pay. All the constructs of the mind limit us in some way, and for both the East and the West, this is strongest in the concepts of sexual dichotomy, but they manifest in different ways. In the West, small boys may be seen holding hands but rarely does this carry on into adulthood without incurring some social stigma. We can hold hands with the opposite sex as if we were children, but in the East this is limited by their protective attitude toward women. Look around any restaurant where lunch is being served. Women meet their women friends, but men meet their male friends less frequently and feel the need to carry a briefcase or notebook with them, however men meet women all the time. Things are changing; it is now all right for Western man to cry, to show emotions, without being considered weak. It has been acceptable in the past such as in the days of Alexander and also in the Elizabethan Age, which extended to Horatio Nelson. Wellington however, did not approve of this aspect of his contemporary. That passions can be felt and even expressed without becoming destructive is once again considered acceptable, even healthy behavior. At long last we are relinquishing the repressive legacy of our Puritanical forefathers.
These differences between eastern and western thought may have had their beginnings here, where since Francis Bacon’s day an ectoscopic view of the world has fostered studies with sensory and practical applications, such as botany, navigation, astronomy, physics etc. A looking-without, involving community service and social responsibility was developed in contrast to the Eastern endoscopic or inward view of discovering the universe within oneself. The East has developed a strong reliance on the family with little expectations from the state; not surprising for countries with little tradition of democratic principles. Eastern discoveries in psychology, health, and the relationship of man to the cosmos are now beginning to find acceptance in the West, even respect, as our understanding grows. We are learning how these humanistic sciences cannot be taken separately, how they must properly inter-relate for holistic well being; a fact long known in the East.
We are shown that there is a third force, a valuable contribution to our passion, art and prowess; the force of Lyda, of Africa. Without Africa, no one would have a curl in her hair or a freckle on his arm. Along with East and West we must integrate the South as well or there cannot be a new age. Ages have been defined by gender only in the West while in India, definitions follow a different time scale and pertain to earthly obstacles, to the progression of man’s soul, not to the evolution of worldly civilizations. At the present time, the Kali Yuga, or the most base of the ages, has been enjoyed for twice as long as an age in the West; since 3100 BC. It is due to end with the destruction of the Earth in the year 430,000 AD but another philosophy says it is now changing into the new Shakti Yuga, the female or mother aspect of God. But what ages are defined in the South? The South gave its blood to the Hamitic races, to the Dravidian and to the islands of the Pacific by mixing with the yellow and the white or so it can be speculated in a science so little studied until recently. There is now a program that is mapping man’s migrations by correlating the DNA of various regions. A previous study tried listing blood groups but failed to come to any definitive conclusions except for some dietary restrictions based on climate and region. All this in addition to endowments to Europe, and for two hundred or so years their blood has been mixing in free America. Perhaps it is time to recognize blending and celebrate this, not dwell on either origins or encomiums.
Well meaning idealists have founded orders, even controlled nations but inevitably someone gets hurt, or imposed upon, because their ideas are different. In fighting the devil too often they become the devil. It is hard to tell the difference between one’s conscience (the voice of a higher consciousness) and the ego constructs however noble we may think they are, and also keep our spontaneity. To do this requires checking the results of our actions before adversely affecting another, but maybe the only way to make a difference is by personal example as opposed to trying to fix others.
The Book describes few occult practices other than the tending of the sacred lamps but does suggest that they held several superstitious beliefs and studied the stars from the citadel towers. On the whole they were community minded, held high principles and believed in a monotheistic deity. Traditional religions currently in sway have some of these elements too; however they also have a lot more magic and ritual, so it can be assumed that they were derived from the practices of the magi and their counterparts in many cultures. Rituals have the power to re-create historic events by generating the corresponding feelings yet, too often, these events control through fear rather than provide inspiration. Many searchers of the present time feel a need to personalize their rituals, giving them a meaning not derived from ancient sources or from organized intermediaries.
The last contributors to the Book decried the loss of their traditional values much like today as we rapidly change, lose our standards and experiment with new possibilities. Crime and illiteracy rates rise, cults seek the security of their own kind and the young see no examples to trust from the establishment. Topping this we have doomsday predictions perhaps because disasters have happened before. A decline and fall of order over a period of hundreds of years followed the last one described in Europe until the feudal age imprisoned everyone. It needn’t happen again.
Western history is written with a traditional mind-set that can be seen by opening to the beginning chapters of any comprehensive history. The well known historian, Will Durant, in his exhaustive "The Story of Civilization" begins with a volume on "Our Oriental Heritage" that is followed by "The Life of Greece" which gives little recognition to the ancestors of the Europeans themselves in whose language he wrote. This predilection may be impossible to break.
Our society is derived from, and tries to emulate in imperceptible ways, a bi-level consciousness (master-servant, rich-poor, in-out, have-have not) no doubt derived from personal power struggles of the last two or three millennia. We even encourage it by the adulation of the rich and privileged. Whenever a society is stratified to the extent of cutting off a segment of the population from the privileges and benefits enjoyed by the mainstream then a disregard for the established rules and lawlessness will grow. Eventually, corruption will be exposed at the top of a society that will no longer be shocked. This process has never been rapid but it is now occurring much more quickly than ever before in history. It is theoretically possible to address the discrepancies but that is not what usually happens. Society is itself replaced, and after a dark age, a better society perhaps, but at what a price!
A final message on the gender wars of this time. When one comes in contact with the enormous power of the Creative Force of the universe it is definitely masculine. This means all of us are the feminine aspect of God, and such an aspect is recognized in Indian tantric-kundalini teachings, where the heat that rises up the spine is referred to as feminine energy for men and women. Perhaps some of the early Christian saints and scholars knew this when they edited the Bible but it is more likely that emphasis on the Father-God reflected the particular power structure of that early institution. Such information, however, is very subjective and cannot be proved by quoting examples; each of us has to have his own experience.
Europe has for too long borrowed its history from the Near East. There is a proud heritage from the West, of law, monotheism, and individual rights with social obligations, with moral codes and of democracy inclusive of women. We have enjoyed writing and number systems, iron, even steel, paper and shipping. In addition there has been an adventurous tradition of exploration and discovery from days long before the Old Testament was written. The wonders of Atlantis that we have been unable to dismiss, are parts of that heritage. Twenty thousand books have been written on that subject so let us recognize the truth behind these legends that cannot die.
The message the Oera Linda Book brings to us can be derived from the lessons it did not teach. That we are at a new beginning, where to go back to an imagined good time or overreact to the injustices of the past age, would be an error that could take another age to correct. The lesson is one of inclusion and cooperation, not separation; it is of forgiveness and understanding, not revenge. East must meet West, and male must meet female in true equality and sharing, not a false equality where differences are not celebrated. In this way we can elicit the god in woman and the goddess in man in appropriate manifestation and expression, as well as promote a peace, which includes all parts of our globe.
THE END
