We live in a culture based on the notion of God the Father. Not only Yahweh, but also Marduk and scores of other gods, have given order to our universe out of the primal chaos. Very few religions describe a cosmogony in which the universe comes about as an act of Divine Birth from a mother goddess, either on her own or as half a Divine Couple.
The Church of Satan does not have a cosmogony, unless it is hidden somewhere in the terse language of the Enochian Keys. It is never stated how the universe, and all things in it, came into being. This lack of cosmogony is understandable, perhaps even laudable, given the fact that we can only guess, and never know what the formation of the universe was like.
But
this essay isn’t about the genesis of the universe; it is about the genesis of people. How do people come to be? If you don’t know the answer, you’re too
young to be reading this page. Ask your
parents and, if they can’t explain, ask Jeeves. The Temple applied the divine power of females to bring life into
this world to the universe itself, making Lylyth the mother of all things:
“Mother Nature,” if you will. Although
in English “Maker” and “Mother” may sound similar, any etymological connection
is an illusion. While a maker is
someone who makes, a mother is not someone who “moths.” Merlin Stone argues convincingly in her book
“When God was a Woman,” that the ancient people of the Middle East knew the
divine force who generated the universe as a feminine archetype. Gerda Lerner shows what happened socially,
and how this change reflected itself in the interaction of the Mesopotamian
Pantheons, as Patriarchy came to dominate this region.
If you haven’t noticed by now, let me point out the above three paragraphs take great pains not to talk of the origin of humanity or humanity’s world in terms of “creation” or “making,” using instead terms such as “genesis” and “formation.” This is because these terms define a very special sort of coming-into-being, which while gender-neutral in the abstract, tends to be associated with the masculine due to inability of men to create human life the way women can.
This, of course, is a touchy issue. Scientifically, we know that the female parent, though her gamete, adds much more biological material to the human being. This is before the newly formed monocelular human obtains any more matter from the uterine environment. Even the distribution of DNA is not 50/50. The male sperm adds only nuclear DNA. The mother adds both an equal amount of nuclear DNA, plus the DNA contained in the mitochondria. If one accepts the fundamental arguments of the Temple of Lylyth, that a human being is a process and not a substance, then the biological process of growing and living inside of the mother’s womb makes the father’s contribution almost trivial. Some of the more avant-garde feminists would even go so far as to argue for the technological obsolescence of males, saying that we could replace sperm with the DNA of some female cell, artificially dividing it and adding it to the ovum. While any plans to phase out men are unrealistic, and probably undesirable, it does raise questions as to their necessity.
Consider the legends of old: Pygmalion sculpting Galatea (coincidentally, the middle name of his second child), Geppetto carving Pinnocchio, and in recent years Noonian Soong creating the popular Star Trek character, “Data.” There is a valid reason why there are so very few tales of women creating a simulacrum of human life. That reason is, of course, women can produce the real thing: babies. With the possible exception of Athena, there is no virgin birth coming from a man (although there are many Virgin Mothers that predate Mary). Even Athena can be considered to have a mother: Zeus swallowed Metis whole.
The essential difference between the Temple of Lylyth and Church of Satan, on this point, is that the Temple sees the construction of mannequin “companions” for what it is – a strange and completely abiological fetish at best, and a desire for of a man to take woman’s power for himself at worst. That the Church would decide to make mannequin construction one of it’s five essential political desires is indicative of this being far more than a fetish.
Again, we see the Church of Satan not wanting to replace the Patriarchy of Christianity, but to place itself as the object of Patriarchal power, this time enhanced through simulacra. In the biographical documentary, “Speak of the Devil: the Canon of Anton LaVey,” the Church of Satan’s High Priest does not just see this as a hobby, but rather professes to believe that his artificial people are superior to those that are gestated in a woman’s womb.
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