The Goddess of America's Founding Fathers (?)

[+OverSword]

Quote

 

It is well documented that many of the men involved in writing and signing the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U. S. Constitution were Deists and Freemasons, and the philosophy of both can be associated with the Divine Feminine as a co-participant in the process of Creation.

Deism as understood by our Founding Fathers is best defined by one of the most important participants in the American Revolution, Thomas Paine. He compared Deism to Christianity in his masterpiece, The Age of Reason:

 

Link

 

Also Woman Thou Art God: Goddess Symbolism Within Freemasonry by William Bond

 

[tcgram]

Interesting.   

[+and-then]

Dan Brown wrote a book along those lines but placed the action in Europe, IIRC    

[eight bits]

5 hours ago, and-then said:

Dan Brown wrote a book along those lines but placed the action in Europe, IIRC    

He also wrote a novel centered on Freemasonry set in the United States, The Lost Symbol. Apparently, Brown is an admirer of the Freemasons in real life, as evidenced by this letter:

http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/phpnews/show_news.php?uid=149

I did read the William Bond article in the OP (nostlagically, since a long-ago web post about the masonic symbolism on the reverse of the US $1 bill was the origin of my user name). From a psychological perspective, I don't think it could be much of a mystery why an all-boy's club would adopt many arguably feminine symbols. A bigger mystery might be why flesh-and-blood women fare so poorly in some cultures whose worship includes prominent goddesses.

 

[eight bits]

ETA (which ended up as a double post - OK, I'm still working on today's first cup of coffee): Whatever their attitude toward goddesses might have been, and whatever they thought "We the People" might have meant, the American Founders did not include women among their voters.

Edited March 28, 2023 by eight bits

[+OverSword]

6 hours ago, eight bits said:

ETA (which ended up as a double post - OK, I'm still working on today's first cup of coffee): Whatever their attitude toward goddesses might have been, and whatever they thought "We the People" might have meant, the American Founders did not include women among their voters.

They also did not want a government influenced by religion, not even their own.  Also most of them were not free masons.

Edited March 28, 2023 by OverSword

[029b10]

3 hours ago, eight bits said:

ETA (which ended up as a double post - OK, I'm still working on today's first cup of coffee): Whatever their attitude toward goddesses might have been, and whatever they thought "We the People" might have meant, the American Founders did not include women among their voters.

Could you elaborate on the reason you conclude that they were not included amongst the voters by the Constitution?   Hopefully your reason is not because it is not specifically listed in the Constitution

If you hold the truth that all Men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights then they certainly were included in the Constitution of the United States.  The States were responsible for denying its own citizens their Constitutional right to vote. 

[cormac mac airt]

2 hours ago, 029b10 said:

Could you elaborate on the reason you conclude that they were not included amongst the voters by the Constitution?   Hopefully your reason is not because it is not specifically listed in the Constitution

If you hold the truth that all Men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights then they certainly were included in the Constitution of the United States.  The States were responsible for denying its own citizens their Constitutional right to vote. 

There’s no evidence the Founding Fathers gave a damn one way or the other, they did however effectively leave the question up to the individual states which continued doing as they’d done prior to the Constitution. Voting rights were predominantly limited to property ownership and women for the most part weren’t allowed to own property in their own right. 
 

cormac

[+OverSword]

3 hours ago, 029b10 said:

Could you elaborate on the reason you conclude that they were not included amongst the voters by the Constitution?   Hopefully your reason is not because it is not specifically listed in the Constitution

If you hold the truth that all Men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights then they certainly were included in the Constitution of the United States.  The States were responsible for denying its own citizens their Constitutional right to vote. 

That is true but if you go look at which society gave women such rights in the 1700's you will probably find none.  The new American government was a very radical thing even while keeping in line with their contemporary values.  They did, as you point out, lay the foundation for everyone regardless of race, gender, religion etc. to participate fully and as time goes on that comes to pass more and more fully.

[029b10]

1 hour ago, cormac mac airt said:

There’s no evidence the Founding Fathers gave a damn one way or the other, they did however effectively leave the question up to the individual states which continued doing as they’d done prior to the Constitution. Voting rights were predominantly limited to property ownership and women for the most part weren’t allowed to own property in their own right. 
 

cormac

Yeah, why should they care, they only placed their lives in peril to obtain the opportunity to establish the Principles of the United States.

Edited March 28, 2023 by 029b10

[cormac mac airt]

2 minutes ago, 029b10 said:

Yeah, why should they care, they only placed their lives in peril to obtain the opportunity establish the Principles of the United States.

They gave this country a start which was more than the British Crown gave them and their constituents. It’s ignorant to expect all the perks from the start. 
 

cormac

[029b10]

40 minutes ago, OverSword said:

That is true but if you go look at which society gave women such rights in the 1700's you will probably find none. 

It appears the women were at the pinnacle of religious oppression in 1700's resulting from the false doctrines of the Christian Church.  I vaguely recall things taught about the  pre-Roman Empire that the female population in the Roman Republic held a somewhat equal status with the male population, even after marriage the Woman shared an certain equality, but whether that was fact or embellishment by historians, I don't know.

Edited March 28, 2023 by 029b10

[eight bits]

5 hours ago, OverSword said:

They also did not want a government influenced by religion, not even their own.  Also most of them were not free masons.

No, actually the states were free to establish religion, etc. as they pleased, the American Founders only prohibited the new federal government from interfering with people's religions, or from interfering with the states interfering with  people'sreligions. E.g., John Adams drafted the Massachusetts Constitution which required every town to support a Protestant minister from tax money. The town got to choose which Protestant  denomination, though.

Let freedom ring, eh?

[+OverSword]

45 minutes ago, 029b10 said:

It appears the women were at the pinnacle of religious oppression in 1700's resulting from the false doctrines of the Christian Church.  I vaguely recall things taught about the  pre-Roman Empire that the female population in the Roman Republic held a somewhat equal status with the male population, even after marriage the Woman shared an certain equality, but whether that was fact or embellishment by historians, I don't know.

Yeah, no.  There was a treatise about the northern barbarians written by a Roman general who pointed out that he could tell the Germanic tribes were a civilization on the decline because they allowed their women to speak in council.  I just read it a few weeks ago and it may even be linked to somewhere on UM.

[029b10]

16 hours ago, eight bits said:

No, actually the states were free to establish religion, etc. as they pleased, the American Founders only prohibited the new federal government from interfering with people's religions, or from interfering with the states interfering with  people'sreligions.

The federal government is free to do whatever it wants as long as the people won't hold them accountable.  As noted in the Declaration that "...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed to." Which is to  another way to say that people will stand by and watch others get screwed instead of doing anything about it before it happens to them.  

Not sure how you conclude that those who drafted the Constitution only prohibited the United States from passing any laws respecting the establishment of religion when the 10th Amendment only grants the powers that are not delegated in the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively.  The principle being that the States cannot invoke the powers that it prohibits to the United States, or federal government if you will.

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by 029b10

[eight bits]

1 hour ago, 029b10 said:

Not sure how you conclude that those who drafted the Constitution only prohibited the United States from passing any laws respecting the establishment of religion when the 10th Amendment only grants the powers that are not delegated in the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively.  The principle being that the States cannot invoke the powers that it prohibits to the United States, or federal government if you will.

I don't think that that is a fair reading of the 10th Amendment

Quote

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The states at the time of their adoption of the federal Constitution were each sovreigns in full, bound only by their own Constituions (or other "fundamental law") and the very light yoke of the Articles of Confederation. The federal Constitution delegated some powers inherent in sovreignity to the new federal government, and the Constitution also provided a new "yoke" (e.g. the states, unlike other sovreigns, could not issue money except gold and silver coins, or make treaties). Otherwise, the 10th Amendment provides, the states (or "the people" of the states) were still sovreigns as regards to powers.

The situation you describe is more like post-Civil War US, especially post-14th Amendment. In a slow process ( @cormac mac airt alluded to this, I think), the Bill of Rights came more or more to be a model for restraints on state powers, especially as regards personal liberty and political rights. That process is still not complete, and there are other constraints on federal powers besides those in the BoR (e.g. no religious test for public office) that have also come to restrain state power, also because of the 14th Amendment and more recent Amendments as well (voting for women and for 18 year-olds, for example).

The American Founders knew no 14th Amendment, and hoped against hope that the Civil War which spawned it would never happen.

Edited March 29, 2023 by eight bits

[029b10]

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

I don't think that that is a fair reading of the 10th Amendment

I wouldn't either if I held that the States could do the things it prohibits the United States from doing to its citizens.  

[Piney]

On 3/28/2023 at 4:31 PM, 029b10 said:

It appears the women were at the pinnacle of religious oppression in 1700's resulting from the false doctrines of the Christian Church.  I vaguely recall things taught about the  pre-Roman Empire that the female population in the Roman Republic held a somewhat equal status with the male population, even after marriage the Woman shared an certain equality, but whether that was fact or embellishment by historians, I don't know.

Not really. The Romans were a chauvinistic bunch in their own way. There might of been a few strong wives and mothers. But women didn't hold office. 

[SHaYap]

As far back as can be verified... Sparta, Ptolemaic Egypt just for a start... Early pre schism Christian / Islamic too for some eye openers 

~

Edited March 30, 2023 by SHaYap
Logic blind spot