More Roads Not Taken
Apr. 13th, 2006 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosA few weeks ago, I wrote about being on the jury and seeing, in the two young female lawyers trying the case, one of my own might-have-beens.
Last night, I read a post by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queenofhalves about her experience at an academic conference on religion, literature and sexuality. One of the presenters spoke about her conclusion that although the sacred prositute is a widely-discussed figure, and a highly positive one for many people in certain religious communities, such practices are almost certainly mythical. In support she discussed her study of the ancient words used to describe the women so labeled by Western scholars, and some of the ancient texts used to support such a belief.
I just about started screaming. For those of you relatively new to my journal, in 1998 I received high marks on my Masters thesis, in which I made the very same assertions, rejecting the conclusions of everyone else in the academic and popular study of the topic. The ancient texts, while evocative, simply do not provide any evidence of sacred sexual ritual other than the hieros gamos of ancient Sumer, which involved on the the king and (probably) the high priestess (there is nothing which says who the woman was). Everything else is speculation, projection, or being too willing to overlook bias and/or the poetic conventions of the ancient literature.
Don't get me started on Herodotus.
The woman at this conference is evidently about to publish a book on this topic.
I had been wanting to turn my thesis into such a book more than a decade ago, discussing not only the ancient texts, but looking at why the sacred prostitute has become a potent symbolic figure in some spiritual communities today. I even interviewed several self-identified sacred prositutes, a fascinating experience.
Practically knocking my head against my desk, I cried silently last night Why didn't I do it??
This morning, I remembered: because as I was finishing my Masters degree, my marriage was falling apart, and I had a daughter who was not yet three years old. I didn't pursue my Ph.D. fortwo three reasons. One was that no one had ever talked to me about it, never asked me what I was going to do with my MA, or offered to help me plan, and strategize. I'm not denying that it was my responsibility to start those conversations, but why didn't any of my advisors ever ask me? Isn't that part of their job?
The second reason was that I simply could not face the idea of more years of graduate school, and more debt, as a single mother with a young child.
And, to be honest, the third reason was probably that I considered myself not good enough. I didn't have the confidence in myself or my abilities to take it to the next level.
So instead I ended up separated from my husband and lacking any income except occasional temp jobs until my friend B and his wife offered me a charity job organizing and filing three years' worth of paperwork for their home-based rocket company. And then the company got seed funding for going full-time, and I suddenly found myself working as a marketing director for a direct-to-customer model rocket company, and I was having a wondeful, stimulating, growing time, and academia was a long way away.
And my book never got written.
Until I readqueenofhalves's report last night, I was not aware of anyone in the scholarly community who had come to the same conclusions I had. And it's now a decade a later. QoH's comment that I was "ahead of time" is small comfort when I never did anything with it.
That's what my life has been like: I almost never have had any plans. I've been reactive, always moving with the currents, never planning and creating my own path.
Until the last year or so I had no direction. There was nothing I wanted badly enough to actually exert the energy to make it happen. Nothing so important to me that I was willing to take the risks to make it real. Nothing except pursue and marry my now-Ex-husband. Yoiks.
And the plumbers are coming today to do more work in my area of the house, fixing the water pipes in my kitchen and cutting into the ceiling over my bed to put in new pipes, which will remove the accumulated sediment in the old plumbing and restore water pressure.
And if that isn't symbolic -- restoring/releasing the waters around my bed -- I don't know what is.
Last night, I read a post by
queenofhalves about her experience at an academic conference on religion, literature and sexuality. One of the presenters spoke about her conclusion that although the sacred prositute is a widely-discussed figure, and a highly positive one for many people in certain religious communities, such practices are almost certainly mythical. In support she discussed her study of the ancient words used to describe the women so labeled by Western scholars, and some of the ancient texts used to support such a belief.I just about started screaming. For those of you relatively new to my journal, in 1998 I received high marks on my Masters thesis, in which I made the very same assertions, rejecting the conclusions of everyone else in the academic and popular study of the topic. The ancient texts, while evocative, simply do not provide any evidence of sacred sexual ritual other than the hieros gamos of ancient Sumer, which involved on the the king and (probably) the high priestess (there is nothing which says who the woman was). Everything else is speculation, projection, or being too willing to overlook bias and/or the poetic conventions of the ancient literature.
Don't get me started on Herodotus.
The woman at this conference is evidently about to publish a book on this topic.
I had been wanting to turn my thesis into such a book more than a decade ago, discussing not only the ancient texts, but looking at why the sacred prostitute has become a potent symbolic figure in some spiritual communities today. I even interviewed several self-identified sacred prositutes, a fascinating experience.
Practically knocking my head against my desk, I cried silently last night Why didn't I do it??
This morning, I remembered: because as I was finishing my Masters degree, my marriage was falling apart, and I had a daughter who was not yet three years old. I didn't pursue my Ph.D. for
The second reason was that I simply could not face the idea of more years of graduate school, and more debt, as a single mother with a young child.
And, to be honest, the third reason was probably that I considered myself not good enough. I didn't have the confidence in myself or my abilities to take it to the next level.
So instead I ended up separated from my husband and lacking any income except occasional temp jobs until my friend B and his wife offered me a charity job organizing and filing three years' worth of paperwork for their home-based rocket company. And then the company got seed funding for going full-time, and I suddenly found myself working as a marketing director for a direct-to-customer model rocket company, and I was having a wondeful, stimulating, growing time, and academia was a long way away.
And my book never got written.
Until I read
queenofhalves's report last night, I was not aware of anyone in the scholarly community who had come to the same conclusions I had. And it's now a decade a later. QoH's comment that I was "ahead of time" is small comfort when I never did anything with it.That's what my life has been like: I almost never have had any plans. I've been reactive, always moving with the currents, never planning and creating my own path.
Until the last year or so I had no direction. There was nothing I wanted badly enough to actually exert the energy to make it happen. Nothing so important to me that I was willing to take the risks to make it real. Nothing except pursue and marry my now-Ex-husband. Yoiks.
And the plumbers are coming today to do more work in my area of the house, fixing the water pipes in my kitchen and cutting into the ceiling over my bed to put in new pipes, which will remove the accumulated sediment in the old plumbing and restore water pressure.
And if that isn't symbolic -- restoring/releasing the waters around my bed -- I don't know what is.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-13 04:08 pm (UTC)Peace be with you on this holy Thursday.