Why “Godde”?

I try to consistently use the spelling “Godde” when referring to the Creator, the Sustainer, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier, the Counselor, the Advocate, the Deity, the Supreme Being, Ultimate Reality, the Cosmic Stream. The word is pronounced “God.”

Why the unaccustomed spelling? Because, according to Genesis 1:27, Godde created both men AND WOMEN in Godde’s image. Which means that although virtually all mainstream religions refer to Godde as “Father” “Son,” “King,” and “Lord,” Godde is ALSO “Mother,” “Daughter,” “Queen,” and “Lady.”

The problem is that for native speakers of English, the spelling “God” carries many lifetimes’ worth of baggage, an enormous weight of cultural assumptions. Even for congregations that acknowledge (or say they acknowledge) that Godde created women in Godde’s image, there is the weight of millennia of androcentric language to overcome.

For example, the Hebrew language (in which at least two-thirds of most worshipers’ scriptures were written) is unusual in that there is no neutral pronoun (“it”), and all Hebrew words are of the masculine gender unless they refer to a specifically feminine being or concept (woman, midwife, wetnurse, she-bear, wisdom, understanding, compassion). The Hebrew word for “person,” adam (pronounced ah-DAHM), is of Hebrew’s “default” masculine gender. (The Hebrew word for “man” is ish; for woman, ish-shah.)

Thus, while it would be both proper and much more equitable to translate Genesis 2:7 as “Yahweh God formed an earth creature (adam) from the [blood-red (dam)] dust of the ground (adamah) and breathed into its nostrils the Lady Spirit (Ruach, rhymes with you-Bach) Who sustains life,” that is not the translation that most of us first began hearing at a very early age. Most people “just know” that in Genesis 2 a male God created a male Adam in “his” image, and created the woman as an afterthought and second-class citizen — because that is how their Bibles have read for more than 400 years now.

(And I hope that we do not need to discuss whether the men of the Yahweh cult who adapted older scriptures from several cultures during the Iron Age were right in assuming that the warrior god Yahweh/El was the same Being as the Godde who thought up and caused the Big Bang 12 to 15 billion years ago. Only Godde is perfect, which means that the holy scriptures were inscribed onto animal skins and papyrus by men [and probably three or four women] who were human — and therefore capable of making mistakes. For example, the mustard seed is not, botanically speaking, anywhere close to the smallest seed there is, nor is mustard a tree [Matt. 13:31-32], and hares do not chew their cuds [Lev. 11:6].)

Similarly, the Hebrew ben’adam and the Aramaic bar’nasha and their Greek equivalent huios anthrwpwn all ought properly to be translated into English as “Heir (or Scion) of Humanity.” No one but the most scrupulously fair translates them as anything other than “Son of Man.” And the (feminine) Greek word basileia translates into English as empire, domain, realm, kingdom, or queen. When is the last time your denomination looked forward to the coming of “the Queen of God”?

The average English-language worship service refers to Godde in exclusively masculine terms more than 200 times per hour — and to Godde in exclusively feminine terms zero times per hour. Most congregations would be lucky to get one feminine metaphor or poetic allusion in a decade.

Even for the fairest, most progressive, most inclusive worshipers, it is virtually impossible to use the word “God” with its traditional spelling and not take for granted that it refers to the Lord (most religions), Father (Zeus), King of Kings (Dionysus [originally the feminine Danu-Isis!]), King of Glory (Sarapis), Son of God (Apollo), Bridegroom (Adonis), Son of Man (Vishnu, Mithra), Good Shepherd (Osiris, Tammuz), an old white man with a long white beard or “his” Son, who looks just like Jeffrey Hunter in “King of Kings.” If you are a devoted churchgoer who is 40 years old and hasn’t missed a Sunday since you lost your first baby tooth, you have heard “God” referred to by your religion as if “he” were a male human being a rock-bottom minimum of half a million times — and as if “she” were a female human being perhaps two or three times at best.

The spelling “Godde” is intended to be a visual “speed bump” — a constant reminder that Godde is no more a male human being than Godde is a female human being, or for that matter a third-gender glimbitz from Alpha Centauri. Godde is transcendent, immanent, and above all both limitless and illimitable. The men of the Establishment, whether of the Magisterium, the Taliban, or any other subset of worshipers, cannot decree Godde’s gender any more than they can compel Godde to do anything at all.

Intelligent, reasonable men have been known to say, “C’mon, ‘everyone knows’ that the masculine includes the feminine. ‘Mankind’ refers to all human beings.” But it doesn’t, and it hasn’t for more than a thousand years. When English first branched off from German, the word for a male human being was wer (as in werewolf, literally “man-wolf”). The word for a female human being was wif (yes, as in “wife”). The word for “person” was man. When we go back to referring to men and women as wers and wifs, that’s when we can go back to using man to refer to people in general.

(I have been told by several churchmen that it would be improper to refer to Godde using feminine language because invariably hearers would imagine Godde in the act of giving birth [as in Isaiah 42:14 or John 16:20-22], and how blasphemous would that be? My usual retort is to ask whether it is less blasphemous to imagine Godde in the act of having a great cosmic ejaculation, as women have been forced to do for thousands of years.)

Do not be disheartened by all this emphasis on Godde’s eternal boundlessness. There is nothing blasphemous or sacrilegious about recognizing that Godde created women in Godde’s image. There IS something blasphemous about claiming that although Godde created women in Godde’s image, women are still not supposed to represent Godde at the altar, because they do not have a penis just like those of the “Father” and the “Son.” If you believe that blasphemy, you’re going to have a big surprise in store for you IF you ever get to heaven.

If your religion teaches that Godde created women in Godde’s image but that women may not represent Godde at the altar because they aren’t created AS MUCH in Godde’s image as men are — for example, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Latter Day Saints — march up to your nearest celebrant and shout, “SHOW ME GODDE’S PENIS!”

 
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