Apple

The first time I came out to my parents, I came out to them as a pagan, I was thirteen. Being from a catholic background, outing myself as a pagan was just as bad as outing myself as Queer.

There was always something in spirituality that attracted me but during our religious studies at school, nothing made sense. I had questions and so many and instead of having them answered I would just get kicked out of class under the pretext that I was causing discomfort and opposing the teacher.

It never made sense to me, the sudden birth of an Adam and Eve, it didn't make sense to me that all the prophets were men and wisdom and spirituality was accessible through their words only, it didn't make sense to me, that I, who was supposed to be the image of God, as taught in my religion, found him white bearded and old in our religious study books.

I came across Gaia, mother earth, I came across all her elements and bit by bit, in my teenage head the world around me made sense. I was the image of a god, but this god was not defined by gender, this god was a one and this "One" combined all genders. This "One" combined all my facets, all the elements. Fire was in the energy of rubbing your hands against each other, air was in every breath, water made up most of my mortal flesh and this flesh was to return to dust, to earth… and all this sheltered a spirit. It made sense to be part of the One, a small particle of something big. With this I understood that we are all similar particles, that there was no hierarchy in defining human existence, that there shouldn't be.

I don't understand why my questions caused such a riot in my catholic school, had they looked deep enough beyond dogma they would have realized that these are the basic founding teachings that they were supposed to transmit.

As I dwelled deeper into my pagan readings, I came across feminism and matriarchal societies, I came across woman deities and strong female mythology figures. None of this was taught at our school. No one had told me the role Ishtar played, no one had explained to me the evolution of Adonis into a certain prophet centuries later, no one had given me the option to make up my own path. No one had told me that women could be warriors instead of just child baring beings, they had not explained the sanctity of a yoni (the vagina). A woman belonged to the "Father" and from the father, passed to the husband and Lillit was nowhere to be found, she had rebelled, copulated with the devil, unworthy to go down in history. So they created Eve, but Eve could not possibly be an example for mankind, let us not make her so, let us burden her with the original sin which we shall burry between her legs and breasts. And so it was decided, what an evolution!

I grew up hiding my breasts, I grew up crossing my legs, I grew up choking my words, my thoughts, swallowing the apple over and over and over again as whole, having it stuck in my throat blocking every potential thought that dared to try to escape. They fed me that apple and St. Paul asked me to shut up and "not speak, for the Man is speaking" and I hid my breasts and cursed my period and got disgusted by my own blood and choked all of me…

The apple has rotted, it has fallen to pieces swallowed and released. I have found the One within and this is what they fear, for you to find that your hand can move energies that your breath can do miracles and that , as it was once, your body is indeed a holly pathway.

Pomegranate

On Idols and Islam

As an Islamic/Arab child, I was raised on Islamic beliefs and how Mohammad came and told people about God, saving humanity through the Koran. We heard all the stories about how he marched to the Ka3be, and destroyed all the stone idols, throwing them away and ending the adoration of idols in his time.

Personally, I was always fascinated by the way people told these stories. And I used to agree: we "should" only worship a one and only God.

After hanging out with way too many radical feminists, I started hearing about goddesses. And these immortal figures where each god and goddess represented something different. All of my life I've heard about how islam fought against idols. And now I was shocked to hear about goddesses and deities. And there was this contradiction in my head…

Now I realize that the stone idols were representations of these goddesses… people didn't worship stone! They worshiped the gods! And they created a symbol to represent them… just as we have the sword of Ali, or the Cross in Christianity.

And then I started researching these goddesses online. And I couldn't find anything written positively about lilith. Although from what I heard and understood: she represented the women who refused to obey the first man Adam. She rebelled.

During my research, I found out that she is said to be evil. She disobeyed god. She ran away from heaven, and then god sent her two guys to tell her that she had to submit and come back to heaven. She refused. They told her that as a punishment, she was no longer able to give birth! To revenge against her cruel sterilization, she said that from now on she was going to kill other mothers' babies. At the same time feminist describe her as a woman who wanted to be on top.

And then in the islamic world, lilith is said to have slept with devil and that was how jinn were born

I was intrigued because…in islam, jinn came before adam! Wtf?!

And then there is a resemblance between the devil and lilith because they both refused to submit to adam and they were both kicked out of heaven. And they made a promise to god that they would have a way to come back at god.

And so, after what I just learned through my research, and what I have learned all my life , I know that I wanna be a believer of the one and only God and his prophet, but also of the goddesses that represent something that I did not find in religion.

Zainab