SO DARK THE CON OF MAN - 性 宗教 (二)

Excerpts from Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code", Chapter 28 (pp124-126)

... "the Priory's tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a belief that powerful men in the early Christian church 'conned' the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of masculine." ...

"The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors sucessfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever."
...
So dark the con of man, he (Langdon) thought. So dark indeed.

No body could deny the enormous good the modern Church did in today's troubled world, and yet the Church had a deceitful and violent history. Their brutal crusade to "reeducate" the pagan and feminine-worshipping religions spanned three centuries, employing methods as inspired as they were horrific.

The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum - or The Witches' Hammer - indoctrinated the world to 'the danger of freethinking women' and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them. Those deemed 'witches' by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any women "suspiciously attuned to the natural world." Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth - a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God's rightful punishment for Eve's partaking of the Apple of Knowledge, thus giving birth to the idea of Original Sin. During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Chburch burned at the stake an astounding five million women.

The propaganda and bloodshed had worked.
Today's world was living proof.

Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, nor Islamic clerics. The once hallowed act of Hieros Gamos - the natural sexual union between man and woman through which each become spiritually whole - had been recast as a shameful act. Holy men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil, collaborating with his favorite accomplice . . . woman.

Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church's defamation. In France and Italy, the words for "left" - gauche and sinistra - came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity, and correctness. To this day, radical thought was considered left wing, and anything evil was sinister.

The days of goddess were over. The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth had become a man's world, and the gods of destruction and war were taking their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called koyanisquatsi - "life out of balance" - an unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of misogynistic societies, and a growing disrespect for Mother Earth.
...

微笑

筆友在訊息中附著幅近照, 埋怨拍得不好, 燈光、角度使角位和顴骨放大了... 細看那很有潛質的面型, 均勻修飾過的臉, 但比較印象中以前很深刻的容貌, 確似少了種光采... 唔, 是少了印象中甜甜的微笑, 是沒有笑容的臉, 顯示了繃緊的心神, 繃緊了整個圖像、訊息...

微笑, 能洩露心神的恬靜完美, 能感染周遭的心靈...

正在重温Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code, 看到描述 Louvre 中 Mona Lisa 那幾段, 不期然去細看 Mona Lisa 的微笑, 那眼神中透出的無止玄機...



The Da Vinci Code 中提及世人對 Da Vinci 這怪傑的許多端測; Mona Lisa 畫的成名主因是因為 Da Vinci 仲情這幅畫, 一直不離身地攜帶著, 更有猜測這是 da Vinci "in Drag" (cross-dressing) 的自畫印象, (用電腦可以分析da Vinci 與 Mona Lisa 的面型完全相稱...), 以及 da Vinci 的性取向. 書中重題提及到 Da Vinci 對女性的尊崇意念, divine feminism, goddess worshiping, 及畫中許多隱藏的玄機、雙關形像 (collage of double entendres and playful allusions), 與 da Vinci 對中性 androgyny 的一些論述很湊合

... "Actually, da Vinci was in tune with the balance between male and female. He believed that a human soul could not be enlightened unless it had both male and female elements." ...

連 Mona Lisa 的名字也可從字母拼排的演變端測到 da Vinci 對中性的意念:

A M O N / L ' I S A





Isis, 古時原名 L'isa, 是女性孕母之神 Goddess of Fertility...


Amon (amun ra) 是埃及的男性性徽像神
God of Masculine fertility...




Mona Lisa 是般神袐的微笑, 不輕易形容得貼切, 用中文衹有想及"拈花微笑"那種禪意...

扯遠了... 自小愛笑, 大概幼稚的笑頂可愛, 親人都說像女孩子, 大概雄糾糾的男孩子不單不能哭, 也不該微微笑, 祇可豪放狂笑, 自己野不來, 愈感覺自己太懦弱柔情不該是個雄壯的男性, 養成好內向怕羞的性格, 對自己性取向也愈迷罔, 見著人面紅靦覥不會說話祇會笑, 是傻笑... 留學回歸, 還習慣國外那般熱情, 見人終帶著親熱的微笑, 被人說黐線, 笑容也越來越收歛了...

發現自已變妝後自拍的照片, 正面拍的總是不漂亮不美豔, 不能 passable, 仔細看看, 都是沒有任何笑容, 繃緊的臉, 是那般繃緊的心情...

-- 寫給 文

不能說的秘密

Anonyme, Le Cabinet de Calzolari (ou Calceoloari) à Vérone


每個人都有個可大可小的櫃, 可收藏自己的秘密. 人, 總有點不想別人知道的事情, 是自己的空間、秘密...

櫃, 總是關得密密的, 盡可能地加把鎖, 明知櫃大力一拉就散了; 關上、鎖上, 祇是心理的安慰 ...

有時, 也會有意無意地開條罅, 抖抖氣, 不想彆壞了, 或者是想出櫃了.

人, 也總是好奇、八卦, 想開別人的櫃, 想拽別人的秘密... 小時侯, 就好喜歡去開關上的櫃、拉櫃樋, 把東西去攤出來... 大了(懂事了?), 才知道要收藏、有私隱.

有些秘密, 不能說. 愈親愈密的, 愈不能說... 坦白的結果是絕情...

衹當是 convenient liar, 或真是 Inconvenient truth? 不願去面對, 不能說的秘密...

朋友間, 有不能說的秘密嘛? 反而不熟識的人堆中, 反而沒甚麽不能說的秘密. 是少了負担、少了責任、抑是少了羞恥心? 這世間, 特別是網絡中, 有特多 Anonymous, 沒了自我, 就沒了秘密?

是否人死了, 秘密也就無所關係了. 變了"A tree fall in the forest"的無聲無息, 人生也無需計較那秘密與否了?

p.s. 近期 TIME 提及原作者死後私人blog、facebook等處理善後私隱問題, 有感.

(不好意思, 用了 Mabel姐blog的大題目作標題, 寫得不知所云, 但確是被Mabel姐的秘密給亂了心思...)

家庭的舊故事

[ 近來家庭論壇給一些搗事閒人搗得烏煙瘴氣, 煩擾之餘, 祇有去翻些舊貼, 不時還找到些精品. 這篇早期的"匿名"作品, 不知仍會有人去認領? ]


遊客 148.87.1.x

發表於 2002-12-14 04:57

My True Story My story is not a very exciting one. I am from Hong Kong originally, and now I live in the U.S.A. My parents always wanted a daughter but they got me instead. I cannot even remember when I started wishing to be a girl. When I were young (early Primary School years), my parent bought me colourful and soft panties to wear. I remembered being laughed at by my neighbors. Growing up, I have a lot more female friends than male friends. I don't like sports and my favourite hobbies are playing the piano and drawing pictures. Whenever my friends have new hair styles or wear new clothes, I recognize that immediately. Even though I wish I were female, I seldom cross dress. I keep my desire in the "wishing" state. In this world, there are a lot things you cannot change, and being male or female is one of them. I accept that I am a male and try my best to live as a male. Every male has some "female" inside and every female has some "male" inside. We may have more "female elements" than other males. Instead of being a CD, TG..., I use my "female elements" to become a better person. I got married 4 years ago. My wife's parents actually wanted a son badly. She probably has more "male elements" than ordinary female. So, our marriage works out pretty well. I do most of the housework and keep our home neat and clean. My wife works really hard and usually comes home pretty late. I believe you don't need to be a CD or TG to really "live out" your female side. Whether you look like a female or not is not that important. The most important thing is to understand yourself and accept yourself. I have some comments about those "science fiction" stories posted in this web site. I don't like most of them. There are too much sex in the stories. I wish I were a girl, but I don't want to be a sex machine with devil's body and angel's face. Most of those stories are completely male fantasies. I'd prefer something more from the female prospective. If I have time, I will try to write one and post it on this site.