In the Name of the Mother

“In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” This invocation to the Holy Trinity is so familiar in Christian prayer that it probably hardly registers that two of these terms are decidedly gender-specific, with the third term implied as being so by the first two. This can be a troubling point to maneuver around for those liberal souls who might insist that ‘God’ is neither male nor female, when the phrase ‘God the father’ has become so entrenched in our consciousness.

To help us to a greater understanding, let me here offer a thought of the Sikh sage and spiritual teacher Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, known as Yogi Bhajan: “Why do we call God the Father? Father does not have a creative nature... father can only seed. We are a soul and part of that whole great soul which is the seed in you. Creativity of sustenance and deliverance is from the mother, and that is why the Earth is called mother.”

Why indeed is God ‘the father’? It perhaps needs a mental effort to realize that things were not always this way, for in the beliefs of Ancient Babylonia the First Cause was female: the primordial Cosmic Ocean from whose waters all arose. It was the mingling of two waters, the salt waters of the seas and the fresh waters of the rivers and lakes of the land, which allowed all creation to begin, and it was the primordial Feminine which provided the impetus to initiate that momentous act. In this creative scheme of things no ‘father’ was necessary.

In nature as well ‘no father is necessary’, for in nature we encounter ‘parthenogenesis’, meaning ‘virgin birth’, and it is by no means uncommon in many species of reptiles, in bees, and in plants. No male is needed for these life forms to procreate: they simply do what they do! Nature might be showing us the way forward by example, although we in our Western mindset might still be a long way from ‘God the mother’.

To go back even further in time from these very first Babylonian beliefs of the primordial Mother Ocean, but staying in the Middle East, we arrive at the ancient civilization of Sumer, and the temple of Sumer’s High Priestess Enheduanna. Who did Enheduanna worship as the Supreme Creative force? The goddess Inanna, to whom the High Priestess composed several heartfelt and moving prayers – now among the oldest surviving writings in existence.

This ancient religious landscape already looks fundamentally different from our Holy Trinity of today, for God is only 'God the Father' in those patriarchal traditions which had - and still have - a vested interest in preserving their own power. But as Yogi Bhajan points out, the Creative Force is both initiating and sustaining: it is the Mother of all, the Divine Ground of all being.

Artwork: The Healing Women by Michael Malm

Easter Palms, Easter Eggs

Today it is Palm Sunday, and in countries where the tradition is observed children will walk with crosses made of palm leaves. This tradition commemorates the triumphal ride of Jesus into Jerusalem, when palm leaves were strewn in his path to carpet the way. Here in the Netherlands we have a charming children's rhyme, and this deceptively simple rhyme seems to be in the form of a riddle:

Pallem-pallem-Pasen
Ei koerei
Over ene zondag krijgen wij een ei. 
Eén ei is geen ei, 
twee ei is een hal-lef ei 
Drie ei is een Paas-ei!

"One egg is no egg - 
Two eggs are half an egg - 
Three eggs are an Easter egg!" 

It occurred to me that what at first seems a charmingly simple children's rhyme could be pointing us towards something much deeper, something which could offer us no less than a profound understanding of that most fundamental of ideas: the Holy Trinity.

In Christian tradition the Trinity existed from the beginning, so it is to the beginning of all things that we need to return to unravel this mystery of the Three-in-One:

One - the first state - is also none, for it is an existence without form. When this original state of the One becomes aware of itself – when it contemplates its own being – it becomes two, just as when we regard ourselves in a mirror there are ‘two’ of us, the one being aware of its reflected self. But still this is not yet the complete Self, not yet the complete story.

With this ‘Two’ growing aware of itself, ‘being’ turns into ‘becoming’. What these two manifest together is Form. So in this curious world of the Trinity, one plus one equals, not two, but three. Being, Awareness, Becoming: the three states of the Trinity which are the Three-in-One. As the rhyme tells us: the first egg is no-egg – it has no form. The second egg is half an egg – the process is still only half complete. But three eggs together are a whole egg: the egg has materialised into existence! 

So our humble Easter eggs form a wonderful connection with the 'Cosmic Egg'. And what at first seems like a simple children’s rhyme can contain a profound truth of what happened ‘in the beginning’. 

"Our Lady Częstochowa"

There is also a story (if I remember it correctly) that Peter challenged Mary Magdalene to prove her divine worth by changing the chicken's egg she happened to be holding. Before his eyes the egg turned red - which is how the tradition of painting Easter eggs began!

Painting of "Our Lady Częstochowaby" by Ulla Karttunen