Sacred Sinner

Long ago, the true meaning of Sin and its origins in the feminine menstrual arts became victim to the sad case of mistaken transmissions and translations down the ages and has been inverted, or deliberately demonized to suggest an unforgivable crime against god and humanity.

However, we have arrived at the contracted moment in time to reiterate the true meaning of Sin.

The etymology of this word is boundless even though the widely accepted notion bears images of burning in hell (and as we wrote about in our last archive post, the Holy Whore), “going to hell’ describes the ancient path of shamanic descent into the darkness of the primordial creatrix womb for gestation to be birthed into a world full of wonder, ecstasy and delight.

This paints a mighty different picture to burning on the hot coals of hell for eternity.. hmmm.. weird.

Sin brings up memories of original wrongdoing. Eve, Lilith, serpent seduction and loose women effectively becoming the gestalt for humanities fall from grace which couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The Truth

Sin is the left-hand path of the feminine Moon Mysteries and was the ancient Akkadian name for the moon and the moon God/dess.

In the days of old, the moon Goddess was the center of the feminine mysteries of menstruation, renewal, and rebirth. She had many honorary names, and the name Sin specifically refers to her aspect as the new moon: the time of menstruation for many women. Through Sin (the Goddess) and her lunar cycles, the process of death, rebirth, and purification through menstruation clears away the old while renewing our creativity and fertility.

A “sinner” held the womb wisdom of the ancient prehistoric shamankas - the female womb shamans and moon magicians and was a moon priestess who practiced the menstrual mysteries of rebirth. Such concepts as “cleansing sin,” originally come from the ancient feminine womb religion and menstrual rites and it was believed that every moon cycle a woman’s womb had the ability to cleanse any sins/burdens/negative energetic imprints, not only from her own body and soul but also from her beloved, her family and community. This monthly cycle of renewal and revival was considered a great gift of the feminine. To be a sinner was to hold the holy title of healer, sage and wise woman as sin was the goddess’s gift of healing and forgiveness.

The concept of Shabbat, a holy rest day, comes from the menstrual rites of the goddess Ishtar. The word derives from the Sumerian Sha-bat, “womb rest,” where the entire community rested every full moon, to honor the menstrual lunar rhythms. In the old lore, when God(dess) rested after birthing creation, it was for her menstruation.

For thousands of years, sin was celebrated as a mystical, feminine shamanic journey.

In the Akkadian language Sin-ishtu, not only meant “woman,” but was an epithet of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Venusian queen of pleasure, fertility and fire, the Lady of the Left.

Sin-ishtu, as “Sin Woman,” “Moon Woman,” or “Moon Mother,” gives reverence to the moon’s cycles which conceive, birth, and rebirth life. Sin-ishtu is the probable origin of the Latin word sinister which meant the left hand path until the 15th century when it came to be associated with nefarious or evil doings.

Sin Eater

A “Sin Woman” - a sinner - was once holy and the idea of sin as a sacred cleansing extended far across the globe into the Aztec traditions and ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Sumerian rituals that magically take on and cleanse the sins of another person; a form of spiritual community service, rooted in the Old Magic.

These women were often called Sin Eaters as they took on the role of collectively clearing and purifying the masses through their abilities to transmute, alchemize and re-amalgamate the quotients of our actions, thoughts and memories through menses.

Jesus is an archetype of a collective sin-eater, offering his body to atone for the sins of the collective - in the form of a shamanic soul menstruation of all sin. Yet the original sin-eaters were menstruating women in their Red Temples sheddings the sins of their community like wise serpents shed their skin.

“Be wise as serpents, yet harmless as doves”

-Jesus

Cow of Sin

In ancient Sumeria and Akkad, midwives would sing an incantation called “The Cow of Sin” to pregnant women to ease their childbirth. Throughout Asia and Africa, the Moon Goddess Sin wore the cow’s horns - the same horns that appear later on in Europe on the helmets of Teutonic heroines. Sin was the cosmic cow, who produced galactic milk and who ruled over the sacred herds. Her gifts were seen to pour from the sky, from the dark abyss of the Milky Way. In Egypt, the Cow of Sin was known as the Egyptian mother goddess Hathor who is often depicted with the zoomorphic facade of a holy cow. Hathor was known as the mother goddess who created and maintained all life on earth. Ancient midwifery lore relays that all pregnant women are also Sin Women or Moon Women, passing through the initiatory journey of birth also undertaken by the goddess herself, the Cow of Sin.

Local names still reflect the influence of the sinner priestesses. In Hebrew, Jericho and Lebanon both mean “moon” and the book of Exodus explains that Moses received lunar horns when he ascended the sacred moon mountain - Mt. Sinai, the Mount of Sin!

When Moses fled from Egypt, after crossing the Red Sea he led the Israelites to the “Wilderness of Sin,” meaning the wilderness of the moon goddess, where they eventually set up an encampment at Qadesh, which comes from the Semitic root word for sacred. Qadesh was named named for the priestesses and priests of Asherah and Ba’al, who worshipped the moon.

There’s also a famous sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo in the Basilica of San Pietro in Rome with suspiciously pagan looking horns that relate to the Mount of Sin and the Sin God(dess).

Lunar horns (associated with the deities of Sin and Sinner priestesses) also appeared on many deities leading up to medieval times, including Ba’al, Pan, Diana, Astarte, Artemis, Selene, Isis, Green Man, Hekate, Lilith and more.

Sacred Sinners

We, Sin Eaters, have been shamed and defamed in the many eras that have led us to the now but this is our contracted moment to re-language “Sin” and to bring about the luminosity and legacy of its truth. Shame of sin does not belong to us any longer nor does it belong to those who oppressed, judged, and harmed our ancestral sinner lineages..

As sacred daughters of the Goddess, we restore the glory and the sacred power of the left hand path of feminine divinity. To be “born in sin” is to be created in the light of the moon, born from the might of the womb, to be of the origin of Goddess.