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Oct. 8, 2015 - Project Camelot
01:46:27
PCTV: KERRY INTERVIEWS KAREN TATE RE GODDESS SPIRITUALITY
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Hi, everyone.
This is Carrie Cassidy from Project Camelot, and I'm here with Karen Tate, and we're going to be talking about goddess spirituality, and Karen, welcome.
Hi.
Thank you for having me, Carrie.
Well, I'm very happy to have you, and I'm going to read a short bio here, just very briefly, go over some of this, and then I'm going to ask you to pick up the rest of the slack, and Let me see if I can actually get all of this happening.
Hi, everyone.
At any rate, Karen is an independent scholar, speaker, radio show host, published author, and social justice activist.
She has a body of work that blends her experiences of women-centered multiculturalism, Evident in archaeology, anthropology, and mythology, and unique academic and literary talents, travel experience throughout the world.
She's got a book called Sacred Places of Goddess, 108 Destinations, and it has garnered prestigious endorsements around the world.
Let me see.
She has a second book called Walking an Ancient Path, Rebirthing Goddess on Planet Earth, and was a finalist in the National Best Books of 2008 Awards.
And her work has been highlighted in the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, and other major newspapers.
Her book, Goddess Calling, Inspirational Messages and Meditations of Sacred Feminine Liberation, Theology is due out.
And is that now out?
Thinking perhaps?
Yes, actually, God is Call came out at the end of 2014.
And Voices of the Sake of Feminine and Anthology that was based on my radio show came out at the very end of 2014.
Okay, and actually, I'm just looking through here.
It looks like you've been consulting on projects that bring ideals and awareness of the sacred feminine into the mainstream world through television and film.
You can be seen in the new documentary, Femme, Women healing the world produced by Wonderland Entertainment.
So that's actually most of your bio right there.
But what I'd like you to do is augment that with your own experiences.
Talk a little bit more about yourself.
How you kind of started to follow this path.
Okay, sure.
Well, no one's more surprised than me, quite frankly.
I ended up on this path because where I started was in the total opposite direction.
I was born in New Orleans, which is the Bible Belt of the southern portion of the United States, and it's very conservative.
And you don't really hear about the goddess in the Bible Belt.
But my husband and I moved to California in the early 90s and it was like a tsunami, quite frankly.
I discovered a feminine face of God and one thing led to another and I became ordained and started doing books, started a not-for-profit organization called the ISIS Ancient Culture Society.
It's like everything you do, one thing prepares you to do the next thing.
It wasn't long before I realized that mythology shapes our culture.
That sort of brought in the added dimension of politics.
The idea of losing a feminine face of God.
How that has What effect has that had on women?
That's why they're subjugated.
They're second-class citizens.
Maybe they're only making 70 or 80 cents on the dollar.
That we still have men who dare think it's their right to tell us if we can have contraception or abortion.
The whole list of it.
Female genital mutilation, domestic violence.
I could go on and on.
It's gone from Being a spirituality where I, you know, learned about goddess to teaching about the sacred feminine, not just as deity, but also an archetype or role model.
And even more important now, I think, sometimes is the ideals of the sacred feminine because it is liberation theology.
It does provide us a template for a new normal.
That's what I like to talk about a lot and explain to people how that all fits together.
Okay, well that's lovely.
In terms of the way you look at all of this, is this coming from a A personal place where you, not to get into stereotypes, but were you, I don't know, abused or did you have something happen, some crystallization event that then kind of propelled you on this road to want to deal with the oppression of women, etc.?
Well, to be honest, no.
I grew up, like I said, in the South, and to be frank, I wasn't even aware of institutionalized sexism or women being second-class citizens.
It really wasn't until I started studying feminism, sociology, anthropology, I started looking out beyond myself personally to see how mythology shapes our culture.
If we have a mythology that is primarily based on a war god or a male god, then we end up with male leadership.
And that's what we have today.
We have patriarchy, you know, rule of men.
And that automatically relegates women to second class status.
And it shows itself in a lot of the different ways I've already described.
And for me, I think it just became a matter of...
What's fair?
What's just?
Fortunately, I'm not a woman who's been violated unless you want to count maybe in the workforce, not getting equal pay for equal work.
Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband, so it's not like this There wasn't a catalyst for me to try to fix wounds, if you will.
This wasn't a journey of healing for me.
It was really just a matter of morality and ethics and social justice.
Okay.
In terms of your consulting work for film and television, can you talk a little bit about what you're doing right now in that area?
Well, there's some irons in the fire that I probably shouldn't go into, but Femme was one of the most recent things that's actually out there that people can see.
Emmanuelle Etierre of Wonderland Entertainment and Sharon Stone, the actress, they were two of the primary producers of Femme, Women Healing the World.
It's something I'm very proud of being a part of, not just because of the message it carries, but so many of my personal mentors were actually in the film.
It was a thrill for me to be in the film alongside women of this caliber.
It's a courageous film that I believe should be required viewing in schools, churches, It should be something we're teaching our children because it explains how things weren't always this way.
It starts at the beginning and has the courage to actually speak out.
Our culture was different 30,000 years ago.
People did worship a feminine face of God.
We know that because of the artifacts.
We know that because of all the remnants we have of their material culture and then things shifted.
The Abrahamic religions come onto the scene and we end up with What some feminist scholars call the first piece of patriarchal propaganda, which was the Garden of Eden story.
We believe that before the Garden of Eden story, that's when Goddess was revered and some of our societies were more of an egalitarian nature.
But when patriarchy enters the picture and the Garden of Eden comes along, suddenly, you know, woman is birthed from, you know, Adam's rib and, you know, it's because of woman, you know, we have all of the suffering and Adam and Eve were, you know, cast out of the garden because, oh, that wicked Eve, you know, she wanted to taste that apple from the tree of knowledge.
So it was just sort of downhill from there for women, you know.
Again, going back to that important premise that mythology shapes our culture, you can see with that one story how it has shaped our culture, our religions, how we deal with one another as genders for thousands of years.
Sure.
Actually, If you want to follow the mythology a little bit there, it also indicates that women are more intelligent than men.
You know, just having a little humor there.
You know, that's interesting.
Just to sort of find out a little bit more about the film itself that you were involved in, and not to belabor it too long, but...
I'm curious, you're saying that it should be required viewing, and what is the storyline, or why do you think that Femme, I haven't seen it, I don't know if it's out in theaters or where it is, or if it's an older film, but can you tell us why you think it's required viewing?
Sure.
I'll answer each of those questions.
I think it should be required viewing because, first of all, it takes people to the past.
It explains that there was a sacred feminine.
Having grown up in the Bible Belt, as I explained at the beginning of our interview, I didn't even know about that.
I know there's so many people who That's never something they even find out about.
I think that's part of my mission, this history that's been swept beneath the rug.
Not only that it's been kept from us and swept beneath the rug, but the ramifications of having swept it beneath the rug, if you know what I mean.
The film dares to talk about that because it's not a welcome notion in some quarters.
Some people who are part of the Abrahamic religions, they don't think anything happened before the Bible or some of their mythology, their stories.
So it starts with goddess.
It explains how patriarchal culture comes into being.
But I think what's most important about it is it doesn't just talk about the problems.
It offers solutions.
It talks about...
How the genders can come together in partnership and in love.
We don't have to continue to have this imbalance.
It gets into a lot of different areas of religion, economics.
I think it brings a new awareness to some people Who maybe have never even thought about what shapes our culture or that there was a herstory.
I mean people are amazed to find out that we have artifacts that date back 40,000 years that show humanity was worshipping the feminine face of God.
So on so many different levels, I think it's very eye-opening and these aren't the things they teach in school.
So, we have to sort of take responsibility for our own education, I believe.
And this is one example of that.
Viewing that...
Okay, now is that film a documentary?
Yes, yes, it is a documentary, and it's won awards all around the globe at dozens and dozens of film festivals.
And you can either stream it live or you can buy a DVD. There are many different ways to access it.
One of them is just going to, you know, you can Google Femme Women Healing the World.
It'll take you to a link that'll give you options on how you can see it.
Okay, what about, let's see, what about the occult?
Have you looked into the occult aspects of this story and delved into it from the point of view of say a white witch or any other investigations along those lines?
Well, I'm not sure how to answer that question.
I know people who are Wiccans are very much interested in goddess spirituality.
Myself, I don't identify that way.
I consider myself a goddess advocate.
I'm more into this from a feminist point of view rather than identify as a Wiccan.
Of course, some people who are Wiccans, their Earth-based spirituality, their deities or gods and goddesses, their polytheistic.
I hope that answers your question.
I'm not really sure Sure.
Well, just in terms of the areas of your investigations and what you're sort of delving into, because you've written a number of books now, do you want to talk about the different books and why you wrote them?
Sure.
The first book, I got the opportunity to write that, Sacred Places of Goddess, 108 Destinations.
I think that came around in about 2005, I believe.
The publisher for CCC Publishing discovered me, and he had a series of travel books out.
And he found out that my husband and I had actually traveled probably across five continents, tracking down sacred sites of goddess.
And for me, I think probably the most important mentors for me were Rhianne Eisler, who wrote The Chalice and the Blade, and Merlin Stone, who wrote When God Was a Woman.
I really discovered that the idea of a feminine face of God wasn't just a feminist fantasy.
Going to these sacred sites, I think, really validated all of that.
When you go to the Louvre or you go to the British Museum or you stand in these sacred sites, Where the sacred feminine was worshipped at one time or maybe still is.
It has quite an impact, especially for us in the West where we don't have these ancient archaeological sites or we don't have these grand museums like the British Museum or the Louvre that have so much history.
Probably the best we have in the United States or some of the museums in New York.
The opportunity for that book came along and it gave me the opportunity to put out into the mainstream world through the lens of sacred travel the idea that Goddess has been worshipped around the globe by so many different cultures and is still being worshipped around the globe.
Okay, so that's one of your books, I guess maybe the first one, and it sounds fascinating.
I do a lot of traveling myself, and I was wondering if you are familiar with Carmen Balter.
She is a professor in a Canadian university, and she I come meet her to Egypt, for example, and I've done an interview with her that might interest you, and she is always looking into the feminine side of the story in Egypt, for example.
Have you gone to Egypt, and was that one of the places you reported on?
Yeah, I've been to Egypt probably three different times, and two of my favorite places in Egypt are the island of Philae, where the Isis temple is, and a small, rather obscure little temple dedicated to the lion-headed Egyptian goddess, Sehmet.
But there's also other wonderful places like in Abydos or Bubastus and Carnap, Luxor, Oswan, all along the Nile.
In ancient Egypt, society was different than in other parts of the world.
Women had more power.
They could have their own assets.
They could even divorce their husbands.
But I think what's really interesting about the sacred travel is there's so many places that people aren't even aware that these sites are actually sacred to goddess as well.
Like, for instance, the Temple Mount.
It was one of them.
We think of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as sacred to only the Muslims and the Jews and the Christians, but we forget that right there on the Temple Mount, there was a temple to Aphrodite, that there were temples to the Roman goddesses.
Even in Mecca, you know, that was a site where, you know, the three goddesses, you know, before Islam came along.
You know, Allah, Aluza, and the third goddess's name escapes me at the moment.
But that was a site where a goddess was worshipped as a green meteorite that used to glow green, you know.
Or over in Ireland, we have Saint Bridget as well as the Goddess Bridget worshipped simultaneously, really.
I just find it very interesting that there are so many places around the world that Goddess sites are really sort of hidden in plain sight.
Japan's another one, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu.
Right on their Japanese flag is the sun.
So there's the symbol of Amaterasu right there on the national Japanese flag.
To say nothing of the Statue of Liberty, hey?
Yes, and I'm actually glad you reminded me of that.
We consider the Statue of Liberty the political goddess.
Yeah, okay, well, and some would say, actually, some would say Isis.
Is Isis a political goddess?
No, they would say that the Statue of Liberty is Isis.
Well, you know, I've heard that, that the Statue of Liberty, the position of the statue, you know, with her arm raised, that it might have been copied from an ISIS statue.
I don't know if that's actually true, but I've heard that story.
Have you looked into the Anunnaki stories, the investigations by Sitchin et al.
and Inanna stories?
And all of the, what Nin Harsag, I think her name was, that had to do with creating their interaction with humanity.
This is not the beginning of human history, contrary to what a lot of people think right now, at least in the alternative sector.
But it is an important sort of juncture, and I wondered if you looked into that.
Well, I've looked at it from the standpoint of maybe you could say the overlap.
That part of the world that you're talking about is the domain of Inanna and Ishtar.
I don't discount the Sitchkin theories.
I'm very open-minded.
I think we simply don't know.
I find a lot of that information very provocative.
I have people come up to me and say, well, do you think ISIS, for instance, do you think she ever actually walked the earth or if she's from the Pleiades or from the stores?
How can we really possibly know?
As I say, I keep an open mind about it because I don't think we can possibly know.
Okay, when you look at the history of sort of the masculine history and the feminine side, are you looking, for example, at Stonehenge and the Druids?
Well, that's just one people who were connected to nature.
The Celts, of course, they had their gods and they had their goddesses.
But they were just one of many groups of people all around the world who were polytheistic and had worshipped gods and goddesses.
Some people say that the city of Paris is named for ISIS worshipers.
The Parisi, P-A-R-I-S-I, has the name ISIS there in it.
Obviously, India, they've never forgotten the goddess for thousands of years.
I mentioned Amaterasu in Japan.
The Shinto still worship Amaterasu.
You have Kuan Yin in Japan.
In the East, where people are primarily Buddhist.
Also in the East, wherever you have countries that grow rice.
They go by many different names, but you have all the rice goddesses.
Because goddess, oftentimes, is about sustenance and fertility.
They still worship the rice goddesses in the East.
You can move all the way across Europe.
You've got the Nordic goddesses, the Egyptian goddesses, the goddesses of Malta, the Roman goddesses, the Hebrew goddesses.
Then you have all the goddesses of South America, the Hawaiian goddesses, the Inuit goddesses up in Newfoundland and Alaska.
You have Women's business in Australia.
There's so much that connects people to feminine deity or feminine archetype or feminine ideals around the globe, but it's unfortunate in our patriarchal culture.
We only end up, I think, Unless we go looking for this, I think we only end up seeing maybe the patriarchal myths where goddesses are just a shadow of their former selves.
Take Hera for instance.
What do we generally learn in school about Hera?
She's this petulant wife chasing after her philandering husband.
Or Aphrodite, she's the boudoir babe.
These goddesses are just, they're spousified or domesticated.
Or Mary, for instance.
You take Mary.
Patriarchy allows us to have Mary because she's so docile and benign.
She's wonderful and she's the intermediary between us and God.
I'm not sure patriarchy would be so comfortable if suddenly we were able to rebirth into the world the Kali's and the Durga's and the Sekhmet's and the Morrigan's.
You know, the archetypes that really inspire women to find their strength and their tenacity.
Absolutely, and women warriors as well.
So, throughout histories...
Okay, so...
I'm wondering if you can talk about your other two books a bit, why you wrote those books and what path you were going down in that regard.
As I look back in hindsight, the books really follow my own evolution as a priestess and as a woman.
So after the Sacred Places book, it wasn't long after that that I actually started a not-for-profit organization and was, you know, doing personal development salons and rituals and ISIS birthday salons and, you know, teas and things like doing personal development salons and rituals and ISIS birthday salons and, you know, teas and things like that in the So Walking Ancient Path, which is the one that won the award that you mentioned,
It's a book that I'd say is great for someone who's just beginning to think about incorporating this either into their personal life or into their community.
Because what I did with it was I divided it into five sections.
You know, earth, air, water, fire, and spirit.
And the spirit section is really a little bit that's autobiographical in a sense.
It tells how, you know, a woman from the Bible Belt could end up a, you know, a priestess of a goddess, you know, in doing, you know, in doing the goddess's work in the world.
The Earth section talks about all the different sacred pilgrimages we took, maybe seven or eight, and it talks about it from the esoteric perspective, maybe some of the magical experiences that we encountered along the way, or maybe the divine connections that we made in these sacred places.
The fire section talks about the goddess Sekhmet.
In this time, the lion-headed Egyptian goddess, she's really becoming an archetype for women's empowerment, for women to set healthy boundaries, to say no without guilt.
To learn strength and discernment and courage.
So we talk about her because she's a sun goddess.
She's in the fire section.
But also the ideas of personal transformation.
We get into the air section and it's about how goddess inspires us.
It's also too about making a connection with goddess.
In the water section, that's about doing ritual and how ritual affects our lives and our psyches and how it helps us transform and grow.
That's a great book if someone wants to refresh themselves or start from scratch.
To learn to incorporate the sacred feminine in their life.
It's got prayers and meditations and personal stories.
It talks about prophecy and divination.
Then a few years later, I wasn't doing the not-for-profit anymore because I was being called to teach and give talks.
I would appear here, there, everywhere and talking about the different subjects about the sacred feminine.
I actually started Sunday services called Sacred Sundays.
They were sort of modeled off of Unitarian Universalist services where the minister would maybe give a message every Sunday.
And part of God is Calling incorporates some of those messages that I would give as a guest speaker.
Part of the book, too, is meditations that help us tap into our personal transformation, healing, growth, coming into balance, loving ourselves.
In a way, self-help and healing and using the meditations also for growth.
It's in this book that I really start to connect Ideals of the Sacred Feminine with social justice.
How the Sacred Feminine can help us create a new normal and change the world.
Those are the kinds of talks that I would give at Sacred Sundays.
Finally, the fourth book is an anthology.
It's based on interviews that I've done on my own radio show, Voices of the Sacred Feminine.
I handpicked some of my best and most prestigious guests like Noam Chomsky for instance, Rian Eisler, or the Roy Bourgeois who was excommunicated from the Vatican because he wanted to stand by women because he believed they should be able to be ordained.
You know, people like that, we either have transcripts or essays from them.
That's a reflection of the interview that I did with them on my radio show, which has been going on for about 10 years.
Okay.
Well, thank you for that overview of your books.
I think that people that are listening to this would find that valuable and maybe decide what works for them to investigate further.
When you say that you had a message, and I'm assuming you have a radio show now, is that correct?
Yes, yes, the radio show still runs every week.
Okay, so in terms of your messages that you put into your book, can you talk a little bit about the kind of messages that you would give out?
And I'm also assuming, and you can, you know, elaborate on this, but The men listening, obviously we are androgynous beings.
We have a male and a female side.
Do you get into that and can you acknowledge that the men would also find these books valuable?
Oh, most definitely.
Because I think that's one of the misconceptions about all of this, that it's really just for women.
And it really isn't.
I mean, when the Dalai Lama said he thought it would be Western women that would save the world, I actually kind of think he's not right about Western women.
I think it's sacred feminine liberation theology.
And that's something that both men and women, I think, are in sync with.
Because, let's face it, there are women out there who don't embrace ideals that would do anything about the domination and exploitation and predator capitalism and all of that.
They're served by the status quo, so they're fined with things exactly as they are.
It's in our genitals.
It's not what we're packing in our pajamas.
It's what's in our heart.
It's what's in our mind.
This is all equally, I think, important for women and men because we have to come into wholeness is the bottom line.
I hope one day we get to the point where we no longer have to talk about is it a male thing or is it a female thing.
It's just an us thing.
It's a we thing.
We're not quite there yet as a species.
I think we have to recognize that some of the ideas that we label feminine We have been downplayed or considered weak in our patriarchal culture and we have to dust those off and bring them back out like caring, sharing, negotiation, partnership.
Those are things that we consider feminine ideals and wouldn't our world be a better place if we had more of those ideals at the center of society Rather than the domination, the exploitation, the predator capitalism, the greed.
So yes, I think women have to find more of the traits that we might label masculine to bring themselves into wholeness.
And men have to find and embrace some of the traits that we might label feminine to incorporate into themselves so that they too would be whole.
In fact, it's interesting.
My husband and I were taking some Kabbalah classes not that long ago and one of the teachings that I just loved was they actually told the men in the class that until they were able to embrace their sacred feminine, they could never expect to find joy and happiness in this life.
I didn't expect that, quite frankly, from the Kabbalah class, but I thought that was a great message.
Getting back to your question about the Sacred Sunday messages, they're about a lot of different things.
They're about finding your sacred roar.
Finding your backbone.
Finding the gift in situations that we find challenging.
About coming into wholeness.
There's one message I remember I gave that I was inspired by a statue in the Louvre.
It's hermaphroditus.
You see her from one angle.
It looks like she's A naked woman laying on a couch.
When you see her from the other side, she has male genitals.
For me, that was a story about all of us being able to come into wholeness.
Some of these stories are about taking the sacred feminine mythology and what does it teach us to create a more sustainable future.
One example is the myth of Demeter and Persephone.
The patriarchal myth of Demeter and Persephone is the one probably most of us have heard in school.
It's the one where Hermes comes along and scoops Persephone up and takes her down into the underworld, basically kidnaps her.
In some stories, she's raped.
When she's away in the underworld, Demeter is in mourning, so that's when we have winter.
Hades allows Persephone to come visit her mother in the spring.
That's when we have spring, and when Demeter is happy, everything flowers and we have food.
That's the patriarchal story of Demeter and Persephone.
There was an egalitarian version of Demeter and Persephone, and there was a pre-patriarchal version of Demeter and Persephone.
It's that pre-patriarchal one that I like to talk about because Hades isn't even in the story.
It's just Demeter and Persephone.
It's similar in the sense that the seasons change when Demeter and Persephone are either together or apart, but the difference is Persephone willingly goes down into the underworld because she knew that the people who were there needed her.
They needed an advocate.
She was going to be there They're champion and take care of them.
Really what the story is about, it's about relationship between mothers and daughters.
It's about mothers being able to let go and allowing daughters to live their life and follow their own calling.
It's about daughters respecting mothers.
Honestly, When I teach this story in Cakes for the Queen of Heaven or wherever it's appropriate, I like to extrapolate on that to be honest.
I say this isn't just about good relationships between mothers and daughters which sometimes can be complicated but it's also about good relationships between women.
Because most of us are either mothers or daughters and we could use that, I think, in the world.
Women who support one another instead of compete with one another.
Okay, absolutely.
Now, in terms of what's going on, do you look at this time as a shifting?
There's actually, I think even the Mayan calendar talks about this, that we are moving into a time when the feminine is actually coming back to the fore after being somewhat submerged because of the patriarchal society that we've lived in.
And that there is a rebalancing and that it's not that suddenly the feminine or women are going to start being dominant over males, that instead this is a balancing of the sexes and really a co-creative reality.
Yes, I definitely agree that that's what's happening.
As I talk about on my radio show sometimes, I believe we're living in the evolution.
We don't always see it because we have this sense of, oh, one step forward, two steps back.
Sometimes it's very frustrating because we haven't achieved That balance that we so desperately want.
I think we are definitely on our way because in the last few decades, we've made so much progress.
When I interview people on my show, just 20 or 30 years ago, things were so different.
In one lifetime, 20 or 30 years is maybe a quarter of a person's life, but on the big timeline of history, it's just a minute blip on the screen.
I have guests who come on my show who have been at this even longer than I and they say, Karen, 30 years ago, One gentleman in particular who's very prominent in the community says, my house was threatened to be firebombed because I dared talk about the sacred feminine in public because there's so much fear or intolerance around this idea.
But that's so shifted because we're finding ideas of the sacred feminine all across the globe.
In fact, I interviewed a woman who had done an anthology about the sacred feminine.
I think it was called The Unknown She.
I was amazed that she had found all of these people around the world who were talking about incorporating the sacred feminine in their lives and their communities.
It was none of the people that I knew At all in any of the areas of goddess that I've known for the last 20 years.
It's becoming, I think, very prevalent.
It wouldn't surprise me at least in the next 20 years we see a real shift.
There'll be no doubt that the shift has been happening and it'll look even better to us, I think.
Absolutely.
So in terms of what you see around you, and I kind of get the feeling that, like you say, your last book is leaning in the way of bringing into this world some of the concepts that you're talking about and involving activism of a kind and also changing the world.
So There's an aspect that you may be trying to encourage women or men and women to object to what's going on here in society right now.
In other words, the inequality in the workplace, to talk about that more, to Get young people, for example, to make sure they stand up for themselves and also get, you know, gender equality in all areas regardless of really what it is.
So is that something you're working on and are you doing other work in this area?
Well, you know, I'm still teaching about goddess in sort of a three-pronged approach.
I teach about goddess as deity for people who want to incorporate this into their spirituality.
I talk about it from the aspect of goddess as an archetype or, you know, if that's a word you're not too familiar with, you know, your listeners think of it as like a role model.
And the third is the ideals.
And I think, you know, to a certain extent, it's the ideals and the archetypes That could potentially have the most impact to change the world.
I think we are seeing a lot of progress.
For instance, maybe little things you might not even connect the dots with, but rape now is considered a weapon of war.
We didn't used to think about that.
We're talking about human trafficking.
We're talking about female genital mutilation.
Look at what's happened in the NFL with domestic violence.
You notice the NFL has these big pushes for breast cancer awareness month.
They're getting much more female friendly than they were just a year ago.
They're raising their awareness.
There's lots of little things that are happening like that in all different nooks and crannies around the world.
I'm getting ready to go give a talk at the Council for the Parliament of World Religions next week.
There was a time when one of my mentors said that she got a death threat for appearing at the Parliament and dared talk about goddess.
Well, things like that just don't happen anymore.
Those things are few and far between.
Goddess and goddess advocates like myself have a legitimate seat at the table now and there are very few people who Ask about the legitimacy of it.
I don't think it's that long before maybe even the Vatican will wake up and decide that women can be priests.
Even if it's only a pragmatic decision because they need more priests.
There are just so many different movements around the world, whether we're talking about people who are struggling to raise awareness of climate change and trying to A fight against GMOs and fracking.
It's taking care of the Earth, which is Gaia, which is Mother Earth.
Some people are doing it for political reasons.
Some people are doing it for spiritual reasons.
so there's a there's a lot happening I think you know in all different quarters what I what I'm doing right here and now is actually asking people to put their questions in all caps We do have an audience and we have a chat room, so it's just an opportunity for people to put their questions in at this time.
Okay.
As we progress towards the end of the interview, I like to give people a chance to ask you their questions if that's okay.
Sure, absolutely.
I was just texting them.
It just makes it easier for me and, in theory, my producer to see the questions in the chat because there's a lot of chat going on.
If they're in all caps, it differentiates it very quickly to the eye.
When you're doing some of this, did you, for example, have you been continuing to explore and to go around the world to sacred sites now or is this something that you have had less time for in the recent years?
How have you sort of dealt with that?
Well, to be honest with you, I've sort of gotten the sacred travel out of my system.
I still lead sacred tours now and again.
If someone comes to me and they have a group or it's a church, for instance, and they might be able to get 10 or 15 or 20 people together, I'll still lead them on a sacred pilgrimage.
In fact, we're probably going to be putting one together to Turkey next year because Turkey is such a wonderful melting pot of all different cultures.
I don't do it quite so much anymore.
To be honest with you, I've been to most of the places I care to go, some of the places I've been to two or three times.
The airlines have really taken a lot of the fun out of it, to be truthful.
The idea of sitting in economy class for 12 hours to travel from point A to point B, it takes a lot to motivate me to do that again.
One thing that people have been asking me about recently is the co-opting of the name Isis, the Egyptian goddess Isis by the media, by the terrorist groups.
That's really quite a shame.
A lot of people in the Pagan community have tried to write letters to their editors, to editors of newspapers, to media outlets and things like that.
Try to get people to stop using ISIS's name in vain, so to speak, and actually call the terrorist group by its right name of ISIL. That's just one of these things I think that goddess advocates are going to have to work on,
rehabilitating not just the name of ISIS, but I think they have to rehabilitate the idea of what a priestess is, Rehabilitate the idea of what a pagan is because that was always intended to be a disparaging label that Christians used for non-Christians or people who weren't of the Abrahamic faith.
There's a lot of education really to be done, but I think with the information age we're in, with the internet, it's a lot easier.
So have you decided to write another book?
I understand you've got several books out and that's great.
Are you going down a different track at this time that would lead you to write another book?
I'm thinking about it.
When you start a book, you have to realize it's really a five-year project.
From the time you first put pen to paper or you put your fingers to the keyboard to the time you're winding down on the marketing of the book after it's actually published and out there.
It's really a five-year commitment.
There is another book I'd like to write.
I'm just trying to make up my mind if I want to commit the next five years to the writing and the editing and the promotion of it, to be frank.
I would love to do a TED Talk.
I've been thinking more about trying to bring some goddess projects to internet television or maybe even like the Smithsonian Channel or the History Channel.
But still, these institutions were very patriarchal and they cater to the men 18 to 30.
Ideas like this, it's hard to convince them that the ratings would be there.
Good point.
As you may know, we're starting an internet alternative television network here and there may be a place for you, so we should talk after this.
But we're definitely...
We have already a number of women who are broadcasting with us and investigators in this sort of alternative sector that we're in.
So there's going to be a lot more openness to this sort of thing, at least in the sector that I'm part of, which involves the alternative world, conspiracies, and so on.
And along those lines, do you find yourself ever...
Investigating actual stories that are going on, maybe injustices in your immediate vicinity or larger news stories where you feel that perhaps you can bring a voice to talk about those stories.
I don't know if you'll consider this in the genre that you're inquiring about, but I really do consider God of spirituality alternative history because it's been so swept beneath the rug, because it's not known in a widespread manner.
There is still resistance to it out there.
There are fundamentalist Christians, people of Abrahamic faiths.
Think for instance, just one example, the goddess Lilith.
She's an example of a powerful woman who was demonized in Abrahamic religions because She was Adam's first wife.
The story goes that she wanted equality and she couldn't get it, so off she went and Adam ends up with benign Eve, who caused all the problems for women for the last few thousand years.
But it's this whole idea that there is so much more to the story.
As I was saying in the beginning, the 30, 40,000 years that's been swept beneath the rug, that's an alternative history.
There's so much that's been lost and there's so much to learn.
From that standpoint, I think I'm always trying to Find new archaeological discoveries that go to proving this point.
Maybe it's a new sacred site.
Maybe it's an artifact.
Maybe it's particular wording on an artifact that will shed new light or new understanding on what we thought.
But there is something interesting.
When I was doing the research for my Sacred Places book, I stumbled across the story of an old article that was put out by the Smithsonian about the Grand Canyon.
There are actually peaks in the Grand Canyon named for goddesses.
There's one name for Isis, another for Diana.
I forget the others.
I apologize for the sirens.
If you can hear them.
But anyway, this old Smithsonian article, it was dated I think around 1913, 1920, that suddenly no one can find anymore, but there's proof that it existed, that they actually found artifacts in a cave in the Grand Canyon, Egyptian artifacts.
So I find it interesting I don't think we really even know the true history of the United States.
We'll find these out-of-place artifacts that don't agree with the timeline of history that academics want us to believe.
Or even the Sphinx, for instance.
There are some scientists who believe The Sphinx is eroded by water, which would make that whole area so much older.
Those are the kinds of things I like to explore because once I think you discover a feminine face of God and you realize that history is written by the conquerors who have their own agenda, then you start to maybe open your mind to other alternative ideas that just isn't what's taught in school.
Yes, no doubt about it.
Well, along those lines, just briefly to get back to Egypt for a moment, what about Hathor, the goddess?
Hathor, have you looked into that?
And along those lines, have you looked into the E.T. side of that question?
In other words, that we're having E.T. interaction with humans here on planet Earth and that There are a lot of feminine ETs out there that are interacting with us and do you feel that you've had any contact yourself in that way?
Well, Hathor.
I've been to her temple.
I have to say I was an Isis and a Sekhmet girl.
Hathor wasn't one of the goddesses that I spent a lot of time on, quite frankly.
I know the general history, but as far as Hathor associated with ETs, you'd have to tell me about that.
However, that said, going back to what I said before, when some people ask me, do I think Isis was ever a mortal woman or if she's from the stars or whatever, I was doing an aspecting class in my early days training as a priestess.
Aspecting, I think, probably the best way to describe it, it's just another form of channeling.
In that class, I feel like I actually did channel ISIS. Another woman did channel Sekhmet, interestingly.
The woman who channeled Sekhmet didn't even know anything about Sekhmet before she did the channeling work.
Sekhmet said to her that she was from the stores.
I found that very interesting.
It would not surprise me in the least if we suddenly found out one day that our DNA had been manipulated by beings from another planet.
There's just too much Out of place artifacts and signs out there that I think point to the possibility.
I think it calls for us to have an open mind.
Yes, absolutely.
As you may know I delve into this area quite deeply and I did just return from Turkey for example where they do have down at Gobekli Tepe there is one mural of sort of on a rock face of a woman and supposedly there are very few others that are actual feminine sort of statues from that particular site which is rather interesting And I don't know if
that's really the case or whether in a sense that, you know, as we are in a male-dominated society, certain artifacts that might have been discovered were then put aside and that we may not know because, as you may know, we have many hidden...
Artifacts in the Vatican, for example, the underground in the Vatican, etc.
So what we're really talking about, I have a whistleblower who says that what they do with some sites is they actually uncover them and then they cover them again over because they don't want humanity to know what they are revealing about our true past.
So this is what we're up against.
It's quite an amazing saga.
Well, I agree.
A couple things about that.
I know women who have gone to Gobekli Tepe, and they did find what we would consider a shiel and a gig there, a woman with her knees spread.
That's an ancient symbol of the sacred feminine.
I think part of the reason, well, that particular relief was actually kept hidden in the caretaker's shed for a really long time.
I think part of it, it might not just be the idea to repress the feminine.
I think the fact that with the Sheila, because it's They might consider it lewd because here it is.
The knees are spread.
They're showing the genitals.
We're talking about a very conservative part of the world.
Women wear scarves and burkas.
To spread their legs and show their yoni, that's a little bit over the top for some of them.
I agree with you.
I've read numerous stories of women in particular, archaeologists down in South America.
They would discover artifacts that don't fit in with the accepted timeline and suddenly they can't get funding anymore.
They're ostracized from academia.
It's difficult, I think, whether you're a woman or a man to be in that set of circumstances because you have to play the game or lose credibility or lose funding because you need people who are going to support your dig.
You can't be this Someone who they might think is on the lunatic fringe or something because nobody's going to give you any money so you have to play the game.
I think that's unfortunate.
Academics find out things every day and sometimes it takes 15 or 20 years for these discoveries to actually hit the mainstream world.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, in terms of what's going on in the news right now and what you're coming across, is there a sense that you have that your mission is, in other words, more crucial now than ever before?
Or are you feeling that you're getting some help out there because...
There's a lot of people waking up in a sense.
I know in my particular mission that I get the sense that there is a lot of waking up going on around the planet and that I don't feel like I'm such a person out by myself kind of yelling from a hilltop or whatever you want to call that.
So do you have a sense of that?
Well, I'm laughing because sometimes myself and some of the women that I know who do this, we say, okay, we're going out again today.
We're blazing that trail with our pink-handled machete, hacking at the vines, trying to blaze the trail.
But the answer is yes and yes.
I feel like we're at a crucial time.
Some people have described it.
We're on the tip of a knife and things can go either way.
In that sense, I believe that there is a sense of urgency with climate change, with just everything that's going on out there in the world.
It feels like things are moving very fast.
It's important for us to not sit back and rest on our laurels, but to be out there in the fray and adding our ideas and our energy to try to create that new normal.
Let's face it.
If we do manage to shake up things and if we want to create a new normal, then people have to feel confident that we have an alternative to offer them.
They say conservatives will support the status quo and institution Even if the status quo and institutions are oppressive because they tend to be fear-based and they would rather support what's organized and known than maybe take a chance on the unknown.
I think that's all the more reason to try to reach people and give them new ideas and help them wake up and raise their awareness.
Help them shift their vibration to understand that it hasn't always been like this and it shouldn't stay the way it is.
To just encourage them to find their What's that expression?
I think the better angels of their nature.
Strive for a world that is going to serve the most of us, the 99%, if you will.
I think more and more people are doing that.
We're seeing that, I believe, in the people that are coming out supporting Bernie Sanders, for instance.
The media, I think, doesn't want to give Bernie Sanders the credit he deserves, but he's drawing incredible crowds because he's talking about things that would, I think, restore some balance in the world politically, socially, and try to protect our social safety net and help the middle class and the poor and the 99%.
Okay, what I want to do now is actually look at the chat and see if we have any questions that we can go to and see if there's anyone that has got anything to ask you.
So if you'll bear with me, I'll do that.
Okay.
Okay, so just looking again in the chat for statements or questions that people are making in all caps.
And I'm going to see if I can just grab a few.
It says, well, actually, there's a two-part question.
I think we sort of already dealt with one of the parts.
One talks about what does Karen think of ETs and why women are hated in I'm not sure what that means.
I think they meant ancient cultures.
Well, you know, I don't think women were hated in ancient cultures.
I think, first of all, it depends on how far back you go.
You know, there were cultures where we had egalitarian societies, so women were equals.
I don't think it was a matter of women being hated.
I think it was more the idea of men didn't want to share leadership.
Men wanted to be in control.
Men felt that they were entitled to be in control.
Look at the Bible, for instance.
Men serve God and women, the planet, and all the species on it serve men.
This is about power and control.
When there's only two genders on the planet and you want to be the one calling the shots, well, you make the other gender subservient.
I don't think it's a matter of hate.
I think it's just a matter of imbalance and a power struggle.
Okay, just looking to see if there are other questions.
Someone wants to know if, let's see, what do you think the goddess Sekhmet archetypally represents?
Well, you know, Sekhmet is one of those goddesses in her myths that really needs to be rehabilitated.
Because what we're left with is a patriarchal myth.
And if you read the myth, Sekhmet comes across as really no more than a mercenary for her father, the sun god, Ra.
Ra is upset with humanity because he thinks that they haven't been behaving very well, so he sends Sekhmet out to punish them, but she goes a little crazy and overboard, and she starts murdering humanity, and she has to be drugged to stop the killing spree.
What feminist scholars will tell you is that that is a patriarchal myth, that that myth is about perpetuating the idea that women are over-emotional, that women can't be trusted, men shouldn't trust women, women shouldn't trust their own power.
Who does that serve?
It certainly doesn't serve women.
It just sort of plays into that whole idea.
Women can't be trusted with power.
Women can't be trusted with leadership.
If you're telling women that they should be afraid of their own power, that's sending them the message that they should continue to be subservient and let men rule the day and tell them what to do.
Now, the idea of rehabilitating that story or retelling that myth, because mythology has shifted and changed over time.
You don't need permission from someone to retell a myth.
Because you look at what the men of the Bible have done.
When they chose the stories to go into the Bible, they chose the stories to perpetuate a particular agenda.
They wanted to control people and lead them down a certain path and have them perform in a certain way.
If we want to do the same thing, if we want to use mythology to create a more sustainable and just Nurturing and caring society, well, we have to change the mythology.
One of Sekhmet's stories is a great way to do that because you look at the archetype of the feline lioness.
She hunts in a pride with other lionesses.
You have this idea of teamwork, of partnership.
They hunt for what they need and no more.
It's a story about you don't need excess.
It's a story about not perpetuating greed.
A mother lioness is playful and strong.
She has strength and she's courageous.
And as a sun goddess, you know, the sun can either be something that gently warms your cheek or if you're out in the Sahara, it can kill you.
So I think she's also the story of discernment.
You know, she teaches us how important it is to have discernment and strength and courage and tenacity and leadership and partnership and all of those good things.
Yes, and well said.
Let's see.
I am also seeing that there is a side to her that has to do with healing as well and I think that's really important.
I also wanted to say that there is a trend that I have heard about coming from the Illuminati side of things that they are trying to incorporate or Basically recruit Sekhmet to be the god of war, which is really interesting.
This is what they would like her to be seen as, and there has been, at least in recent times, a real push in that direction.
Are you aware of that?
No I wasn't, but it doesn't surprise me because that's something that was typically done in ancient times.
They took goddesses who were not war goddesses and turned them into war goddesses.
In ancient Egypt Sekhmet was a god of war, but as you said she was also a god of healing.
She was a mother goddess.
In fact her son Mayhees was the patron of doctors.
Her consort, Ptah, was a builder god.
So there is this other side of Sekhmet.
An interesting story that you and your listeners might I'd like to hear, and this is a true story, this isn't a myth, but it goes to this idea of being a mother and a healer.
There was a woman by the name of Genevieve Vaughan.
She's a real woman.
We all know her.
She was a benefactress in the God of Spirituality community.
A long time ago, she visited Egypt and she came across one of these essential statues that That Robert Masters would talk about.
She learned about Sekhmet being a healer because she didn't know anything about her before she stumbled onto her in Egypt.
Now, Genevieve Vaughan had been having difficulty becoming pregnant for years.
She learned about Sekhmet's supposed power and she made Sekhmet a promise.
She prayed to her right there in Egypt and said, if you help me become pregnant, I'll build you a temple.
Well, it wasn't long after she left Egypt, she found she was pregnant.
In the short years that followed, she ended up becoming pregnant three times and she had three daughters.
She kept her promise to Sekhmet.
She did build Sekhmet a temple and it stands out In a little city called Indian Springs outside Las Vegas, Nevada.
It's on a Shoshone Indian Reservation and your listeners can Google it.
Sekhmet Temple, Indian Springs.
It has a lovely story and it's a beautiful little temple out there.
It just fits into the landscape.
You know, in a glorious fashion.
There's a statue of Sekhmet inside the temple, a life-size statue of Sekhmet, as well as, I should mention, the Goddess Temple of Orange County in Southern California.
In their sanctuary, they have a statue of Sekhmet.
She's seated, but if she were to stand up, she's probably nine foot tall, and she's seated on a four-foot tall pyramid-shaped throne.
That Sekhmet is the centerpiece of the Goddess Temple of Orange County.
You can Google that as well and see pictures.
Okay, well, that's great.
And let me say that in regard to the old article that had to do with going down into the Grand Canyon, the Egyptian things that they found down there, there is substantial investigation and evidence to that effect.
Richard Hoagland, who is a well-known author and investigator, has also sort of seconded that information and done his own investigation in that way.
And I know that one thing that he did say to us early on was that the mountains in Phoenix area are not They are the top of the mountains and that what it is filled with sand and that from basically being flooded and that underneath Phoenix is really an Egyptian city.
So the fact that this person would also build their temple in this location of Indian Springs Is not so far off base if you understand that under the layers there is evidence of that part of the United States being another Egypt in a sense.
Yeah, well you know maybe she chose that intuitively.
She says the reason that she chose The land on the Shoshone Indian Reservation was because there had been nuclear testing there under the ground.
They built the Sekhmet Temple there as an attempt to try to heal the land.
I like what you said.
That's interesting, too, because without realizing it, maybe she tapped into some inner knowing.
I think so.
Okay, someone is asking, could Karen comment on Black Mary Magdalene cults and sites?
Okay, yeah, the Black Madonnas.
Yeah, the Black Madonnas are really popular, and, you know, it depends on who you talk to, but the general feeling in the goddess community is the Black Madonnas are actually...
They're symbols of the sacred feminine hidden in plain sight.
It's the black skin of, for instance, Isis because the goddesses of ancient Egypt, they weren't blonde-haired and blue-eyed.
They had the brown skin, the dark hair.
In fact, some of the Black Madonnas that have been found when they scrape off the paint, they've actually found that they were ISIS underneath.
Aside from that, it's this idea of the Black Madonna.
When Christianity came around and they were...
Basically, you could be put to death if you were trying to continue to worship as a pagan, worship the goddess.
You know, women and men just sort of shifted their allegiance to Mary, much like they did with Artemis and Mary in Turkey.
You know, the Blessed Mother, you know, Jesus' mother really just sort of took on all the attributes of Artemis.
And, you know, people sort of just shift gears to a different female face.
But, you know, there are many who think that it was the Black Madonnas that actually kept the idea of the sacred feminine alive at a time when, you know, it could cost you your life if you were known, you know, in public to still be worshipping a goddess.
Yeah, very interesting.
Okay, I'm looking through the chat again to see if we've got more questions from the audience, and so if you'll bear with me just a moment.
Again, if your questions are in all caps, I can grab them quickly.
Have you ever seen the Step Forward Wives?
I sure have.
The Stepsward Wives are the antithesis of empowered women.
They're more your typical subservient woman, the type of woman that patriarchy loves.
Yeah, absolutely.
A very diabolical film, but in some ways not so far from the truth.
When you talk about programming of humans, whether they are male or female, quite an excellent depiction of that, and also of androids, how you might experience an android society.
Yeah.
At least from a man's point of view.
I think it's a story of conformity.
It's having to conform.
There are women who make conscious choices To live that sort of life because maybe somehow it benefits them.
They're happy taking a back seat.
They're happy having their husband dominate their life.
Maybe they choose to just have children and they don't want to work out in the world.
I mean, we all should have a right to make our choices.
It's just unfortunate whether it's religion or patriarchy wants to put a woman in a box that she doesn't want to be in, if you know what I mean.
Well, right.
Creating our own reality and also not labeling the sexes into sort of behaviors that they're forced into by society sort of in control structures.
And men are as much, you know, You might say victims of the same syndrome and so we're really talking about a unity between the male and female and a balance that's necessary in some occult Information saying to get into the Kingdom of Heaven you must have basically,
you know, go through both male and female and understand totally the balance between them and embody that in yourself to be a Christ, a real Christed being.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
And it goes to what we were talking about before, you know, trying to find the balance between our masculine and feminine and incorporate that for wholeness.
But, you know, I'm thinking about the Stafford Wives.
You know, I think it's also about patriarchy's idea of beauty as well.
You know, I mean, I think patriarchy gives women an impossible, you know, bar.
It's crazy what women will spend on Botox or breast implants.
There's even something now called anal bleaching.
Heaven forbid you don't want your nether regions, the skin there to be a little bit darker maybe than other parts of your skin.
It's just really crazy that I guess maybe men too.
You see men going through the tortures of hair implants.
It's all really so shallow and superficial.
I think that's some of the ideas that we have to teach as well in our wisdom.
That this outward stuff is really so insignificant.
I think that's what the Stepford Wives was about too.
These impossible ideals of beauty and the money men and women end up wasting trying to achieve these impossible ideas of beauty.
Why do we let Why do we let the media or patriarchy get away with dictating this to us?
We should be able to have the fortitude to say, no, I don't think so.
I'm not going to spend my money like that.
I'm sorry.
I'm happy with myself the way I am.
It's about self-love.
Absolutely.
Okay, there's someone here who wants to know what you think about the lion heart and seeing through the sun.
The lion heart and seeing through the sun.
Those are not phrases I'm particularly familiar with.
It makes me think of Sekhmet, you know, the lion heart and she's a sun goddess.
but maybe, you know, sounds like they may know about something I don't.
Alright, yeah, I'm not sure what they're referring to, Sounds perhaps poetically put, but I'm not sure what they're referring to.
Obviously, the Lionheart is often symbolizing courage.
I mean, anyone can extrapolate from these kinds of statements, but it's not clear what the intent of the question is.
So, there's a Tarot card of strength, and a person is asking if you think that that is about Sekhmet.
It's funny that you should ask me that.
I have a good friend who actually created a Sekhmet doll.
Well, she's actually a goddess, but it's actually stuffed like it's a doll.
She mirrored it after a strength card that actually did show a lion or a lioness.
Yeah, I think that's a perfect archetype.
They're interchangeable.
The lioness is a symbol of strength, and it's a great example, symbol of a strength card.
You know, and the goddess was also, it reminds me, the goddess was also considered mistress of the animals.
Some of the early depictions of goddess, you'll see a woman seated on the throne and on either side of the throne are two lions.
You know, Cabelli comes to mind.
And you know, later the church, you know, Christianity started to pick up that symbolism.
And you'll see that, you know, with Jesus or in, you know, thrones in different churches.
There's a Saint Sophia's here in Los Angeles.
They actually have a throne on the altar with lions on either side.
You find that Christianity co-opted a lot of the goddess and pagan symbols.
Isis is one of them.
They took the symbol of Isis and Horus and you see they turned it into Mary and Jesus.
I think it was because Isis was such a powerful mistress in a sense.
R.E. Witt was a scholar who wrote the book Isis in the Ancient World.
Between the religion of Mithras and the religion of Isis, fledgling Christianity really had a difficult time on its hands.
To dethrone those two pagan religions in the ancient world.
I often wonder if Cleopatra and Mark Antony hadn't lost the Battle of Actium, or if the first You know, widely published book hadn't been the Bible, and if instead it had been some, you know, pagan-oriented thing or goddess-oriented thing, what a different world we might have.
You know, these little tipping points of history.
You know, how might things have changed?
Yes, very interesting.
Well, along these lines, though, and on sort of a deeper level, Are you also aware of this sort of subterranean worship of the goddess within, for example, the Jewish religion?
And I don't know if you realize or know about that, but there is a great emphasis on serving the woman, of the man serving the woman, and even in sort of a relation to the sexual act and so on, in the Jewish religion.
It's very interesting, and There is a power of women in all of the very male-dominated sort of societies and religions that in the end end up worshipping the woman in a more Sort of subterranean way, but that's very passionate even so.
You know, are you aware of that?
Well, when you say subterranean, or do you mean sort of in an underground, quiet way that nobody...
Yeah, in the sense that we're talking about a subtle level.
So there's always the top level that is the one that kind of goes out in front of society.
But when you reverse it, this goes on also in...
In the Muslim faith, for example, in Egyptian women especially will be vocal about this and talk about it whereas perhaps other certain more repressive regimes will be less so.
But there is sort of a funny reversal that you can do in which women do maintain their power in even what appears to be a very male-dominated sort of paradigm.
Well, What you're making me think about is a couple things.
In Jewish mysticism in Kabbalah, first of all, I know there's a movement afoot to restore the Shekinah.
More and more Jewish women are looking to that idea of the Shekinah as You know, as equal to God and restoring her within that culture just as, you know, goddesses being restored in other cultures.
But I know in Jewish mysticism they actually taught, when you mentioned the sexuality part, they taught that it was a husband's obligation to sexually please his wife.
There were some selfish motives a little bit because it was thought that if a husband pleased his wife sexually, they were more likely to conceive a son.
Who knows?
That interestingly It was the teachings there.
You also reminded me of a Greek saying that the husband may be the head of the family, but the wife is the neck, meaning that the head doesn't turn.
It's actually the neck that turns the head.
He can think he's the head of the family, but what would he do without the neck?
Okay, now someone, I think that a person that wrote that earlier question about the Lionheart is also referring to the work of Michael Tusserian, of which I am somewhat familiar, and I certainly know who he is.
I guess they're asking if you're familiar with his work, and...
No, no.
Sounds like maybe something I should know more about, but no, unfortunately I don't.
Yes, and just for the record, I have asked him for interviews in the past and also asked him to speak at my conferences, etc.
So I've been sort of trying to get that to happen for a number of years.
It hasn't happened yet.
But if anyone knows him and wants to persuade him to come on my show, that would be wonderful.
He's written a number of books, and he does a great deal of investigations into mythology, mysticism, and the occult, as well as what we would call the Illuminati symbolism, etc.
So very, very excellent researcher, I would say.
Alright, I'm looking through the channel here to see if there's anything else.
Yeah, I don't see any new questions cropping up, but if there are any, please do ask.
Other than that, I think we're winding down here, and I'm wondering...
Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you would like to talk about that you cover either in your own radio shows or you want to talk about your radio shows a bit and why you got involved in doing that and also what you're sort of seeing that perhaps we haven't brought out that you would like to delve into a bit?
Well, as far as the radio show, I started the radio show a while back, and the synchronicity of it, I think, is kind of interesting.
I was out there promoting my books, and after a number of interviews like yours, and thank you for the opportunity, Carrie, The producer of the show would say, you know, you should be doing your own show.
Do you want to come on our network or whatever?
That must have happened four or five times until finally I realized I was being hit between the eyes with a clue by four that that's what I should probably be doing.
And I decided to actually do it because we would lament, within the goddess community, we would lament the fact that we didn't really have a platform to talk about these ideas.
You know, goddesses, deity, archetype, ideal, this paradigm shift, the hundredth monkey, the morphic field, this new normal, all of this stuff that, you know, these ideas we wanted to birth out in the world.
And so I decided, well, you know, let's just do it.
And so I started off on Passionate Internet Voices Radio with a half hour show every week.
And I quickly realized that a half hour was just not long enough to delve into most of these topics because they were too deep and too rich.
And listeners were saying, you need to expand your show.
So I moved to Blog Talk because at Blog Talk it was very inexpensive and you could do a two hour show.
That's basically how it started.
We felt like we, the sort of collective, many of us, certainly not just me alone, but it felt like this osmosis, if you will.
It was sort of the general thinking out there that we needed something besides the corporate media.
We needed to have a platform to teach from to get these ideas across.
Fortunately, the internet provided that opportunity and people like Blog Talk make it inexpensive to do so.
My show has been going on almost 10 years now.
Women and men on the show talking about all aspects of the sacred feminine, whether it be spiritual, political, cultural.
Sometimes we deviate a bit and have some fun with other things, but there's so much to talk about.
Patriarchy has really We've infiltrated every level of society, from the womb to the tomb, from the boardroom to the bedroom.
There's so much that patriarchy has shaped and formed that we really need to rethink.
You know, because we accept so much as normal that we really, you know, if we actually use some critical thinking, I think we would say, well, hey, wait a minute.
You know, why have we been going along with it like this?
You know, maybe we could do better, you know?
That's how the radio show came about and I'm still enjoying doing it.
It's kind of my guilty pleasure.
That's how you probably like yourself, Carrie.
I keep up with new ideas and new things.
I love to learn and I think it's important for us to continue our education.
I do it for myself as well as a service to the community.
I don't know.
I guess is there anything else?
We've covered an awful lot but I guess if your listeners would go away with anything, if they forget everything else we talked about, I think that one of the most important concepts is that we start thinking about partnership.
I'm talking about partnership on a lot of different levels.
I don't take credit for this.
Rhianne Eisler, my mentor, is the one who got me thinking about partnership.
In her book, The Chalice and the Blade, she talks about the dominator culture that we live in.
It's a pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid, at the point, is the people who pull all the strings.
Probably today's jargon, that would be the 1%.
And the rest of us are down at the bottom, you know, the 99%.
And the 1% are pulling the strings, you know, controlling the lives of everybody down at the bottom of the pyramid.
But what we need instead of this dominator model, you know, we need partnership, not domination.
We need partnership, I think, between the genders so that the genders come together in love and balance and in harmony.
We need partnership between countries so that we no longer have war.
We need partnership between corporations and employees.
So that there's more of a balance there and CEOs aren't making 500 times more than their employees while their employees are exploited and produce more and more but never benefit from the work they produce.
We need partnership between humanity and the planet.
You know, we have to strike a balance there.
So, you know, we need partnership within ourselves, as we said earlier, to balance the masculine and feminine.
So, you know, the key word, I think, you know, the key goal is partnership because if we can have partnership rather than power over, rather than domination, rather than exploitation, rather than greed, rather than predator capitalism, if we can find ways to have partnership, we will change the world.
And that's why I do this every day and have for the last 25 years, striving for partnership.
Okay, well absolutely fascinating and well said and I don't think anyone would disagree with you unless they're really holding on to a power paradigm.
One person here is asking a question that was sort of lost in the Back in the beginning, it says, what do you think about zodiacal zionomy?
I'm not sure whether they spelled that right.
Patterns, resemblance, does any of that trigger any ideas?
I'm not sure it's written, you know, the spelling is, I'm not sure.
Well, you know, I'm not an astrologer, you know, but I certainly believe that there's a cosmic story that's going on out there and it influences our lives.
I have a feeling they might mean something more specific than that, but I'm not really sure what they're referring to.
Okay, okay, fair enough.
So, just moving this along, they're talking about I guess there's six masculine and six feminine zodiacal signs.
Maybe someone wanted you to talk a bit about the zodiac and maybe how you thought about that.
Any other words about?
Honestly, I think on some level I'm aware of that, about the six masculine and feminine zodiac signs.
Astrology is never something that I've had a lot of time to delve into.
I think when you discover God of spirituality, it just opens up such a whole new world to you.
Spend a lifetime studying about the different pantheons, comparative religions, numerology, energetics, sociology, archaeology, pilgrimage.
There's so much to discover once this...
It's like layers of an onion, I think of sometimes, or facets to a diamond.
When you discover Goddess, it just opens up so many other areas.
I've had to be discerning about where I put my time.
I leave the astrology to people that are better at math than I am.
Okay, fair enough.
Alright, well thank you so much for coming on the show and I'd love to stay in touch with you and very happy to be able to hear more about your work and what you're doing lately.
Any parting words in terms of new events coming forward, giving your website address, that sort of thing?
Okay.
Well, my website is KarenTate.com, K-A-R-E-N-T-A-T-E, and I would invite listeners to go there.
There's actually a lot of free stuff there.
There's a lot of free meditations that you can download.
There are, you know, me giving talks at...
Places I've been invited, there's workshops, there's just an assortment of free things there that you can avail yourself of that are totally free of charge.
Very informative, very interesting.
As well as you can go there and find my books and all the usual stuff.
As far as parting words, I would just say follow your heart and follow your intuition.
Don't allow yourself to Fall prey to this idea that it's always been this way and it'll never change.
I think take responsibility for your own education.
Be a critical thinker and have the courage to speak out.
When you find these new ideas and if they resonate with you and you believe that these are true, You know, talk to your conservative Christian uncle at the Thanksgiving table, you know, because, you know, you may find that, you know, you'll open up some new dialogue or find some common ground and, you know, you may broaden his horizons too.
So, you know, be a spokesperson for the sacred feminine.
Find your sacred roar.
Okay, lovely.
Alright, well thank you so much, Karen, and it'd be great to have you back sometime, and thank you everyone for listening, for the good questions in the chat, and...
We'll be back next week with more very, very interesting guests.
Please do support Project Camelot and help make this work possible.
You can donate on our website.
I wanted to let everyone know that we are going to be doing a crowdfunding very shortly for Project Camelot TV network.
We have about 17 hosts doing shows on the network right now.
We're using, as you can see, the grassroots techniques, which are Google Hangouts and YouTube.
We have sound issues and picture issues on every end.
We are getting the truth out as often as we can.
I'd like to do this 24-7.
You will see there's a donate button on our new website which is projectcamelottvnetwork.com and if you go to I think there's a donate button there or something that you can click on and see what we're planning but this is where we're going With everything so that we're bringing together not only myself but people from all walks of life from all different countries to
broadcast on this network around the clock and have guests and just get the truth out on every subject in every way in the alternative sector and the alternative is in great need of some kind of channels in which we can Aggregate this information so that we can share it among ourselves.
So I hope that you'll consider joining us and supporting us.
Thank you again, Karen, for being my guest and thanks everyone for listening.
Thank you, Karen.
Thank you, Brian.
Alright, thank you.
Good night, everyone.
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