File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-10-07.165, message 48


From: ssliwinski-AT-accel.net (Sharon Sliwinski)
Subject: goats and goddesses
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 15:08:03 -0500


>I'm a Jan. 6 Capricorn and would love to hear the myths and stars behind 
>this symbol.  

Jan. 6 - right smack in the middle of Capricorn too, so your very
Capricornian. Actually its more properly called Capricornius I think.
Details details. This is a pretty inconspicuous constellation in the
Southern Hemisphere "lying" between Sagittaurius and Aquarius. (Mary meet
Laurel, an Aquarius, now all you need is a nice even, deep Sagittaurius!)
The 11th sign of the Zodiac, Capricorn is latin for goat. Actually, if I
remember right, you either take the form of a goat or a creature with the
forepart a goat and the hind part the tail of a fish, thus the connection to
Aquarius - as well as Cancer and Pisces. The tropic of Capricorn takes its
name from this constellation; so do you like warm weather? Actually that
would mark the southernmost part of this ecliptic - the winter solstice in
the northern hemisphere. Goats do have wool coats after all. Goats are
pretty cool animals actually - I don't know too many symbolic aspects too
them, but they have hollow horns, or sometimes no horns at all (hmm, what is
_the_ metaphorical value of a horn? heh heh heh). Goats milk has a really
high mineral content as I understand, with small fat globules that make it
easy to digest. 

Yeek, talk about tangents! 

I appologize for the editing -

>It is the specificity of your responses to the zodiac symbols that I find 
>intriguing, and the generalizations about godesses that I shy away from 
>in terms of conversations about spirituality or godesses.  

>So, that's a long winded and in typical e-mail fashion slap-dash effort 
>to say that between the specificities of each symbol, tradition, culture, 
>and construction of subjectevity on the one hand and the french feminists 
>on the other, there's some exciting ground to think about religiosity 
>that radically alters our relationship to language, concepts of selfhood 
>and or no-selfhood (I am more compelled by Buddhism at this point, so the 
>french feminists offer me more alterity than does anglo spirituality 
>based on the model of a child of god or an autonomous self that gets 
>closer to god, or a subject of god's will, etc.), and breaks the 
>boundaries between many of the dichotomies that stifle thinking.  


This a tremendously powerful intersection that you have described. Exactly
that volitile point of "inbetweenness" of subjectivity and objectiity
(thinking of those two not as opposites rather related) Sounds slightly
schizophrenic... however, you are totally right, it's completely radical,
"braking boundaries", etc. and I'm all for that. And Buddhism, cool. I
particularly enjoy those Zen guys. 

Ciao,
Sharon.  




   

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