• Divine Mother in The Lord's Prayer
    By The Contemplative Bard
    July 24, 2024

    I heard that there are proposals from different Christian traditions to revise the "Lord's Prayer" (Matthew 6:9-13) to make it more inclusive. Apparently, the Opening invocation to the Heavenly "Our Father" is "patristic", so it is being suggested that an invocation to the Heavenly "Our Mother" should be included as well to make it inclusive.

    My position is that the Lord's Prayer is inherently inclusive, hence, there is no need to include an address to Our heavenly Mother. To revise it shows very little knowledge on the Hebrew mystical tradition existing during those times on the part of those proponents. Here are my arguments:

    1. If we believe that that Lord's Prayer is the prayer that The Christ taught to his apostles himself, then how can it be incomplete or inaccurate? Does it mean that the Master J forgot or intentionally omitted to adddress a heavenly mother in his prayer? Is he a misogynist who despised women and the Divine Feminine?

    If we consider Christ as part of the Trinitarian Deity, how can he be wrong? It maybe arrogance on the part of the proponents of the revision to think that they are better than Christ himself. However, this arrogance has 3 implications, imho:

    (a) the proponents want to secularize the scriptures because they believe in the empirical notion of modern bible scholars that G-d does not have an objective existence but, only a socio-cultural construct (or even a literary creation) created by humans (or the bible books writers) that evolves over time. In short, if in the future, the culture thinks that G-d is a dog, then the notion of G-d should also evolve into that of a dog to align with the cultural belief of a time or era.

    (b) alternatively, it can also be deduced that the proponents might think that the bible writers or even the magisterium may have changed what The Christ has taught to reflect the culture of the time. This might be true since the Hebrew culture during that time was patriarchal by nature. However, that will open a can of worms. Then it can be assumed that everything written in the Bible were subjected to interpretation bias of the writers or translators. Gone is the notion of Divine inspiration by the Holy Spirit. This will give credence to claims by lots of heretics anathematized by the Church that the Bible was purged of some important teachings during the compilation process at the Council of Rome around 300 A.D. for political reasons when Christianity was made into a state religion.

    and third (c) when a prayer was directly uttered by a Divine Being (just like in Eastern spiritual traditions), it becomes a mantra imbued with that Being's power that is stored in the prayer over centuries. When a devotee prays it, he is blessed by the same power imbued by it by the Divine Being. By altering the "Lord's prayer mantra", the original power imbued by Christ in it is diminished, even if it can be argued that the original was in Aramaic Hebrew. If the idea behind the invocation is changed, then the the entire quality of the mantra or invocation is changed too.





    2. It is plain ignorance on the nature of the Divine Feminine or heavenly "Our Mother". The wordings of the prayer is inherently inclusive from an esoteric point of view.

    Contemporary interpretation of the bible or exegesis (and that of most scriptures in different spiritual traditions) is based on empiricism, that is only what are true are those that are perceived by the senses in the natural world. Since G-d is Spirit and can't be perceived by the physical senses, it is categorized as a mere belief or myth with no objective reality. It is a mere sociological phenomemon - a socio-cultural construct of people of an era to denote their belief and experience of the ultimate good, which they refer to as "G-d". Bible stories and the books are treated like personal journals, that were written by ordinary persons -like you and me- that tells their story of their experience of G-d. Therefore, the beliefs and experiences and conception of G-d will change over time as culture changes. There are is no such thing as immutable universal divine laws. The center of the universe is human and how he sees and interprets the natural world around him.

    Personally, I don't subscribe to this contemporary notion. I'm on the team that believes that some of the scripture writers (not all) were Divinely inspired and in possession of Divine revelation or Gnosis. They wrote some of the stories in parables or allegories to denote the working of immutable universal Divine laws that is understandable to the common people. Remember that Master J taught his apostels the Mysteries of the Kingdom (esoteric), while he publicly taught the masses in parables (exoteric) (Matthew 13:11). So the symbology used in the allegories can be culture-based, but there is an objective reality behind what is being described, that are not merely a socio-cultural construct.

    Even for the sake of argument that we will be using contemporary exegesis on the Lord's prayer, we have to remember that Master J is a Hebrew person and was in fact, a pariah during his time. He was hated by mainstream Hebrew clergy, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He taught rebellious and sacrilegious concepts that enraged the mainline clergy. Some scholars believe that John the baptist could be an Essene, a mystical sect of Hebrews during their time. There were also the Hebrew Kabbalists and for sure, Master J knew all about their teachings. So it is not far-fetched that in composing the Lord's prayer, he could have used content and wordings that were culturally familiar to the people of his time.

    Assuming this is true, then one of the tools used by Hebrew Kabbalist to describe Divinity, in relation to the physical world is the "Tree of Life". It is pictogram of G-d's creation: the decent of Divinity to the material universe. Call it pantheism, but it was their belief. To the Kabbalist, the physical universe is also a manifestation of Divinity. There is an unmanifested G-d, but when he created light and the physical universe, his essence manifested in matter too through the "Sephiroths" (there are 10 spheres in the tree of life). And one day, everything - including matter - will return back to its pure and unmanifested state (like the expansion and contraction of the universe in the Big bang theory). "Kether" (divine will) is the purest manifestation of Divinity, and is comparable to the Divine Father. The densest manifestation of Divinity is "Malkuth" or matter or mother. It is the creative aspect of Divinity. It is not inferior to Kether for without Malkuth, the manifestation of Divinity is incomplete. It is through Malkuth that humans evolve and can return to the Father one day (parable of the prodigal son). The central sephiroth that is the mediator between "Kether" and "Malkuth" is "Tiphareth" (Divinity of Love and Beauty). The allegory of the Trinity is obvious here.

    There are esoteric teachers who interpreted the Lord's prayer as a systematic prayer depicting the decent of Divinity into matter using the Tree of life as the model. If this is true, then it makes a lot of sense that "Our Father" could be attributed to Kether, and voila, the last part of the prayer, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever" maybe referring to the last sephiroth of matter- "Malkuth", Our Mother! Therefore, it will be childish to begin the Lord's Prayer as "Our Father and Mother, who art in heaven...." because the Divine Mother or Feminine is not in heaven but is immanent in matter, which is mentioned gloriously at the last part of the prayer.

    ------------------ credits for art work (without the annotations):

    Qabalistic Tree of life poster, https://patriciawaldygo.com/the-kabbalistic-tree-of-life/ (You can buy the beautiful poster from their online store)