Free The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code by Lynn Picknett

any upstart who became - in both senses - "too big for his breeches"."'
    Originally there was an Argive festival called Hubristika, or a `Festival of Lechery' in which ordinary men `broke a specific taboo' by dressing in women's clothes in order to assume their acknowledged magical powers. With the advent of Christianity, this festival was denounced as devil-worship, together with any other practice that implied a belief in the power of women 33 Tellingly, Goddess-worshippers in the area now called Switzerland were compelled with the dominance of Christianity to desecrate the Great Mother's statues while reciting `Once I was the Goddess and now I am nothing at all.'3a
    With the radical demotion of the goddesses, all things feminine were fair game. A version of the apocryphal Old Testament Book of Raziel tells how `witchcraft and sorcery were imparted to woman by the fallen angels of Uzza and Azail, and also the use of cosmetics, which were ranked as wicked enchantments.'35 Goddesses such as Isis-Hathor and Astarte were believed to impart all feminine secrets to their devotees, from using camel dung as contraceptives to casting spells to secure lovers.
    However, Yahweh and his prophets did not suffer alone: other testosterone-fuelled deities had trouble with the Feminine. We have seen how the Greek Prometheus, like Lucifer, brought fire - symbolizing both civilization and intellectual inquiry - to humankind, against the will of Zeus, the all-powerful Olympian god. Empathizing with the sad fate of mankind, Prometheus acted out of compassion, to be rewarded by the eternal torture of having his liver eaten by his own totemic eagle, only to have it restored every night so the horrendous cycle could begin again. In Aeschlus' Prometheus Bound Prometheus mutters: `Mankind I helped, but I could not help myself', and reflects bitterly on `The mind of Zeus [that] knows no turning, and ever harsh the hand that newly grasps the sway.' However, he foresees a karmic punishment for Zeus at the hands of `the Fates triform and the unforgetting Furies' - the children of lo, the Moon-cow goddess (like Isis-Hathor in Egypt), who had also suffered at the hands of Zeus.
    However, while Zeus the all-powerful will be brought low by the feminine he has oppressed, unfortunately - or so it seems - the converse is true where the almighty Biblical Yahweh is concerned. Although there remain strong undercurrents of the Feminine in modem Judaism, it is not usually recognized, certainly among the Orthodox.
    In this light, the Biblical description of Lucifer, the fallen one, as a `shielding cherub' is particularly interesting. From the Hebrew K'rubh, which in turn is thought to derive from the Akkadian karibu - the cherubim were intermediaries between God and humanity, and not the morbidly obese infants with implausibly tiny wings so favoured by sentimental Victorians. In fact, a `graven image' existed in the Jerusalem Temple that graphically depicted two Cherubim engaged in a sexual embrace, representing a sacred mystery. Interestingly, there is not a hint of condemnation of this image in Jewish literature, even though the people fornicated orgiastically after seeing these statues carried before them in religious processions. As Patai notes of this custom,
    `Since one of the two Cherubim was a female figure, we find that, in addition to the Canaanite goddess whose worship was condemned by the Hebrew prophets and Jewish sages [Asherah], the Temple of Jerusalem contained a replica of the feminine principle which was considered legitimate at all times .116
    When Asherah was banished, the female cherubim lived on, unmolested - although, eventually, only with their femininity obscured and forgotten.
    Much as the Israelites were loath to admit it, they carried a great deal of Egyptian thinking away with them when Moses led their flight from slavery in the land of the pyramids. Not only did Yahweh himself evince characteristics of the Egyptian destroyergod Set, but