1. How it started

Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years”

Since the beginning, humans had intuition. That gut feeling that we all still experience every now and then but we are not able to give a logical explanation to it. Sometimes is not even for us, but for people around us or the ones we love. Some of us get it while awake, some through our dreams at night, and some even have telepathic or psychic abilities. Some call it the ability to pick up on frequency. I believe this was God’s way of communicating directly with us, until the Bible came and said we should communicate through prayer and that there must be a middle-man/mediator.
It was a time of freedom and free – will as we all had direct communication with our creator, call it God, Spirit or Energy. Science says we are stardust. No wonder, when people couldn’t understand their intuition, they looked for answers at the origins, in the stars and planets, their source of creation or their Creator if you like. The first evidence of astrology dates back to c. 5000 years ago, around 3rd millennium BCE. In time, they looked for answers everywhere: dreams, beans, palms, runes, tea leafs and later in coffee cups and tarot cards to name just a few.
As human population grew, they gathered into groups, eventually growing into societies. Society needed order and control, it didn’t like individual unlimited freedom, so the best way to hold power over people was to limit their knowledge, because knowledge is power. But how can you stop people looking for answers and guidance? Through fear!

2. The Bible

Written by men under alleged divine inspiration, the entire story is about societal control through fear, instilling the idea of a chosen one, from individuals like Abraham, Moses, Noah, Job, the apostles to entire populations like the Israelites, depending on the message they wanted to instil.
Genesis 6:8 – “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
Genesis 39:2
“The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master.”
Genesis 39:21
“But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.”
Exodus 11:3
“And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.”
Judges 6:16-17
“The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
Gideon replied, “If now I have found favour in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me.”
Acts 7:46-47
“David found favour before God and asked to find a dwelling for the God of Jacob. But Solomon built Him a house.”
Luke 1:30
“Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.’”

They came up with horrific stories about how people that did not obey to God’s word as transmitted by the chosen ones where punished. The Old Testament is full of examples.
When prayers were not answered they said that God works in mysterious ways.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Well, my interpretation of “mysterious ways” is intuition, astrology and divination. It is still a mystery to many and although scholars say there is no scientific proof they work, in my life experience I’ve witnessed it work many times. I am sure I am not the only one.

3. Lilith and Eve

The earliest surviving mention of Lilith’s name appears in Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree, a Sumerian epic poem found on a tablet at Ur and dating from approximately 2000 B.C.E. She is portrayed as a female demon killing mothers and children. Scholars believe the demon goddess was held responsible as an explanation for high rate infant and child-birth mortality. She is only once mentioned in the Bible, Isaiah 34:14 although translators sometimes lack confidence in their readers’ knowledge of Babylonian demonology. The King James Bible’s translates “the lilith” as “the screech owl,” recalling the bird-like qualities of the Babylonian she-demon. The Revised Standard Version picks up on her nocturnal habits and tags her “the night hag” instead of “the lilith”. She reappears in the Talmud, the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Alphabet of Ben Sira and the Zohar. However, the widely known and most popular portrayal of Lilith is from The Alphabet of Ben Sira, an anonymous text dating sometime in the Middle Ages. The author speaks about a woman with desire for emancipation, rebelling against her husband’s (Adam) need to control her. Lilith demands to be treated as equal by Adam as they were both created by God from earth, but Adam wants Lilith to be submissive and to please him.
The Bible has two Creation stories and there could be the explanation for Adam’s two wives.
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
In this version of human origins, man and woman (“humankind” in the New Revised Standard Version) are created together and appear to be equal.
Genesis 2:7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Genesis 2: 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
In the second version, woman is created after man, from his rib, to be a good fit for him. In other terms, to please the man.
“Lilith” by Janet Howe Gaines appeared in the October 2001 issue of Bible Review. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in September 2012. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/lilith/

The Alphabet story goes to explain why Lilith is killing babies. When she fled the Paradise, God sent three angels to search for her and said if she is not returning to Adam, He will kill 100 of her children daily. So Lilith killing babies was a retaliation to Adam’s mistreatment and to God’s punishment. She makes a promise to the three angels that she will not kill any baby that wears an amulet with her name.
The symbolism of this agreement with the Divine is very important. Lilith is not separating her from the Creator but from Adam, her unfair husband.
Whether you believe this story or not, what is most important is that there is a significant distinctive part in the stories of Lilith and Eve, the fruit of knowledge. In Lilith’s story, she already knows she is equal to Adam, no need to eat a fruit of knowledge. In fact, this is not even mentioned in her story. She already has the knowledge of retaliation and negotiation. So God created us with knowledge, same as the angels.
Another notable thing to take from The Alphabet of Ben Sira is that thousands of years apart, the battle between sexes, patriarchy and matriarchy, feminism in a male dominated world, still resurfaces, although this would make the subject of another book for another time.
Religion replaces Lilith with Eve, although she was no better, just maybe a little bit more disciplined. Her story is not about eating a forbidden fruit and convincing Adam to eat with her. Her story is about looking for answers, wanting knowledge and wisdom and sharing it with others. The symbolistic in Genesis 3 is surprisingly easy to interpret. The snake, throughout the world and many years before the Bible was written, was a symbol of healing, death and rebirth, protection and wisdom. The forbidden fruit, as the Bible confirms, is knowledge and wisdom. It is important to note that Eve didn’t want to keep it all to herself but she happily shared the new acquired knowledge and wisdom with her husband.
Genesis 3:5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Throughout the Bible, women are portrayed as servants to their husbands; they speak rarely and with few exceptions, hardly take an important role into society. They are blessed by God only when they bear children. Either like Sarah, wife of Abraham, when she was 90 years old, either giving birth to a future important male figure in religion like Jochebed – mother of Moses, Hannah – mother of Samuel, Elizabeth -mother of John the Baptist and Mary – mother of Jesus.
It doesn’t really matter if you believe Jesus is the true Son of God or just a historical figure of social revolution. One thing is certain though, that Jesus through his actions and teachings changed the way women were viewed and they started to gain a bit more influence in society.

4. Burning the witches

Daniel interpreted king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Aaron transformed his staff (stick) into a snake in front of the Pharaoh, Jesus resurrected Lazarus, gave sight to blind people and performed many other miracles during his life. Were these miracles or witchcrafts? I find it interesting that when God is given credit for these, they are miracles but when no credit is given to God or no apparent role in God’s plan is identified, these are witchcrafts. But let’s not forget that Jesus’s first performed miracle is transforming water into wine, approx. 600 litres of it. Now I don’t know how big of a wedding this was but it sounds like the best party!

It is estimated that between 40,000 to 60,000 people were killed, sometimes burned alive, during the almost 400 years of witch-hunt across Europe and America by catholic and protestant faiths. To be accused of witchcraft it was enough just to be a pagan/polytheist and to not obey the ruling church of the area. But they extended the list with natural healers, fortune tellers and other forms of divination, psychiatric illnesses or even someone’s sexuality or sexiness. As these were mostly local women and some people felt uncomfortable with the killing of mothers and wives, they went so far to say that women have no soul. I find it interesting that when someone claimed Virgin Mary came and spoke to them, or a certain painting of Jesus or Mary in a church started crying or whatever other occurrence that could increase the number of believers and with that, the number of donations, it was a miracle. When people recompensed a natural healer for example, it was witchcraft. Also, the church wanted to be seen as the protector of the poor, the orphans and the sick but at the same time, they were not making money for the church but taking money from it. While they “took care” of the orphans in the hope when they grow into adults they will pay this debt their entire life, for the sick and especially the ones with psychiatric illnesses, it was much easier to get rid of, by accusing them of witchcraft or being possessed by demons.

https://www.thecollector.com/early-modern-witch-hunts/

5. Back to stardust

Medicine has discovered that a mother may carry in her body her children’s cells her entire life, even of her lost pregnancies and stillborn. It appears that those cells can even help the mother’s body heal in case of ill health, many years after a pregnancy. While there are still tests to complete to fully understand the extent of this discovery, I find it fantastic.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633676/#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20suggested%20that%20fetomaternal%20traffic%20occurs%20in%20all%20pregancies.&text=Moreover%20fetal%20cells%20are%20reported,male%20child%2027%20years%20earlier.

This discovery comes to me as a confirmation that we are stardust. Same as a mother remains connected to her children her entire life, not only emotionally as we believed until recently but also biologically, at cellular level, we remain connected to our Creator, the Universe, the stars, at cellular level and I dare to say even emotionally, through our intuition and psychic abilities. Would it be too much to dare think that our Creator, God, is in fact a mother and not a father? Surely it would, for many. But what they don’t understand is that this is science proving the existence of God. Of course, not their God, not the Bible or other religion’s God, but the true one. And the true God never intended to have messengers as we are all connected, always.

https://www.space.com/35276-humans-made-of-stardust-galaxy-life-elements.html
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/education/alp/are-we-really-made-of-star-stuff/