Ancient moon priestesses were called virgins. ‘Virgin’ meant not married, not belonging to a man - a woman who was ‘one-in-herself’. The very word derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to men: virle. Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, Isis were all all called virgin, which did not refer to sexual chastity, but sexual independence. And all great culture heroes of the past, mythic or historic, were said to be born of virgin mothers: Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Osiris, Dionysus, Genghis Khan, Jesus - they were all affirmed as sons of the Great Mother, of the Original One, their worldly power deriving from her. When the Hebrews used the word, and in the original Aramaic, it meant ‘maiden’ or ‘young woman’, with no connotations to sexual chastity. But later Christian translators could not conceive of the ‘Virgin Mary’ as a woman of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched. —Monica Sjoo
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Casual reminder that “virgin” in the modern/Christian sense of the word is literally a complete bullshit, made-up social construct, arbitrarily given a negative connotation.
me: *forgets friends birthdays*
me: *confuses memories*
me: *forgets own middle name*
me, also: hey did you know that all pennies minted prior to 1982 are pure copper pennies and not copper plated and are technically actually worth 2 cents
I walk this broken road
on the boulevard of broken roads
Don’t know where it broke
but it’s only me and I broke the road
