In the Judeo-Christian
tradition, there is a particular tendency to see the aniconic aspect of
Yahweh as intrinsically superior to the idolised deities of polytheism,
and to infer that this "true" God of His people has appeared paradoxically
as a revealed "God of History", first to Abraham in the starlight and later
to Moses out of a cloudy pillar. Despite clearly manifesting in "Yahweh"
as a tribal patron God, rather than a cosmic God of all and only later
being vested by pre-exilic Jewish culture with strict monotheistic attributes,
this Deity finally appears as a cosmic Deity in the Christian and Islamic
form with the full dimensions of an aniconic, monotheistic, cosmic, paternal
Creator Deity - the "one true God of all", who has revealed his nature
in ever deeper stages to his followers.
This is calculated to
reinforce the unquestioned acceptance of the patriarchal Creator Deity
and mask the evolutionary nature of all deities as projections of conscious
awareness and human culture. Long before "Yahweh" made His entry onto the
stage of history as a jealous patron deity, ancient astral deities had
already encompassed the
major advances later
seen in the Christian idea of the Supreme Creator God, who is both the
God of reality and the God of the mind.
In rediscovering the
underlying nature of this "God behind God" and His complementary relationship
with the Goddess, with whom He is inextricably fused in deep union, we
will not only discover our true origins of deity in the joyful marriage
of complements - male and female, mind and body - but also our much more
ancient roots in the links between the conscious mind and the immortal
unfolding of fertility which were already discovered 20,000 years ago with
the first developments
of human culture. In a real sense these ancient traditions, far from being
more primitive, capture in archetypal form realities towards which our
modern scientific society is only now converging after a long period of
imbalance and confusion.
In finding our true cultural roots of deity, we can finally come to a position in which we can discover in a vastly older tradition the continuity of vision that will sustain us in a closed but living ecosystem in which we have unparalleled powers of stewardship of nature.
"El" [singular form
of 'elohiym] - archetype of the fatherly aspect of the Christian trinity
- is the kind old fatherly God of Canaan.