Angelina Jolie In Venice | As Cleopatra | And Lilith Perhaps?

Few actresses have done more to elucidate the complexities of woman than Angelina. One moment she’s photographed as the elegant woman on firm footing, leaving her “The Tourist” gondola in Venice, and the next we read that Jolie will play Cleopatra in a movie based on the release of Fall 2010 “Cleopatra: A Life”, authored by Stacy Schiff.

Whatever her venue, Angelina Jolie reminds us of the duality and more of women’s natures. This subject of the Lilith in every woman is deeply embedded in our current AOC mindset, and reader’s, too, based on your responses to recent posts.

Posting now this sizzling set of photos of Cameron Russell by Greg Kadel photos over in Sensuality News, we’re reminded that snake charmers are making inroads around the globe. We’re not certain, however, if the female-centric journey is actually forward, when we add up the total woman score.

Remember, Cleopatra clutched a snake at her breast in her act of suicide on August 12, 30 BC. And in the interests of historical accuracy, suicide via asp bite wasn’t a death sentence reserved for women.

It’s been decades since I launched a small jewel of a publication, not sustainable and the Internet wasn’t even invented yet. Called “The Gospel According to Lilith”, it probed the historical exclusion of Lilith from Genesis and New Testament.

Author Greg Wright and I are digging deeply into Lilith, as both a mythological figure and also as a ‘real woman’ living before the rise of Aristotle and monotheism. See dolphins and women together in the same boat in Returning Ancient Greek ‘Person’ Status to Dolphins.

Another big question that the Miami Alternative Religions Examiner writer is exploring is the connection between Lilith and Mary Magdalene. If you ask pro-women Catholics who are totally disgusted with the Vatican patriarchy why they are still going to church, they will reveal a passionate belief in Mary Magdalene and all that she stands for historically.

Angelina Jolie | Cleopatra | Lilith | Mary Magdalene are all bad girls in the eyes of a monotheistic patriarchy. We will be holding our arms tight around this continuum in the coming months, flushing out all the dirt on ancient goddesses and their present day transformation as Anne of Carversville Smart Sensuality women.

We reject the third wave (?) of feminisms insistence of calling themselves slut girls. But Lilith and Mary Magdalene — God, we can go there. And you? Please join us in our gondola. Anne

Comments

[Mary-not-Martha]

The time is definitely overdue for women (no, make that humanity) to remind ourselves of the potency and inspiration available to us in these key figures in mythos. By mythos, I'm not just meaning traditional myths or fairy stories, or even legends or history. I am referring to sources of wisdom and truths that lie beyond, but are complementary to, the linear version of truth prioritised in logos (science/ a certain construct of what counts as rationality). The pernicious distraction of the current obsession with vacuous 'celebrity' seems to have addled the collective brain of the West to the point where we are in danger of severing ourselves from roots that have nourished us for centuries. We're free-floating in a kind of post-modern Pot-Noodle of 'irony', where we are - at one and the same time- taking our selfish wants way too seriously, and not taking our deepest needs seriously enough. Lilith and the Magdalene are figures in Judaeo-Christianity (there is an affinity with Kali to an extent in Hinduism, and in pagan beliefs: the tri-partite Feminine energy of the Maid-Mother-Crone) that remind us of the vital roles of both sex and death/creation and destruction.

The story of the Magdalene is one of both sensuality (yes her role as whore, but also the nourishing and tender act of annointing the feet of Jesus with oil and wiping them with her hair), capacity for vision (she is the one who knows the 'gardener' to be the risen Jesus) but also a capacity to turn away from earthly things and to identify the necessary place of death in life (check out some of the paintings of her later life where she is shown naked and contemplating a skull as a memento mori).

Only if we can re-establish the equilibrium inherent in the Life-Death-Life cycle can we truly come to value what needs to be valued, and find ways to resist/reject/recycle the unnecessary or the outmooded. Magdalene and Lilith can offer us ways to do this that still remain life-affirming rather than life-denying.