As I wrote in my last blog post, there are female deities and goddesses sprinkled all throughout the bible. They just aren’t obviously in plain sight.
One example is the Goddess and Her association with birds. Many ancient creation myths have stories about life emerging from a cosmic egg and the Goddess who carries and/or lays that primordial egg-of-life. Like the bird, women carry the eggs of life’s creation within our bodies. This has given rise to numerous cultural symbolisms that have come down to us associating the Goddess with birds. The dove is Venus’ hallmark. Mother Goose is the keeper of our cultural stories. It is the stork who brings us babies. As I will show below, divinity, or the biblical LORD is sometimes depicted as a bird, making this biblical description of god a female.
Before heading to the bible though, let’s start in neighboring Egypt. There is a beautiful version of the Isis story where the Goddess goes to rescue her husband Osiris who had been trapped into a coffin by his jealous brother Set. After imprisoning Osiris into the coffin, Set threw it into the waters where it eventually became encased in wood. People who came across this wood marveled at how it had a particularly beautiful and wafting aroma. When the king of Byblos heard about this, he had the scented wood retrieved and carved into a pillar for his palace. When word reached Isis about this remarkable sweet-smelling pillar, she realized that this was the resting place of her husband. She journeyed to Byblos to free him. She split open the pillar/tree coffin and then, disguised as a hawk, She flapped Her wings to pump life-giving air into his lungs.[1]
With this story in mind, look how the biblical LORD is described as having eagle wings. In Exodus 19:4, the LORD is speaking to Moses from “the mountain,” telling him to remind the people of “Israel of what He has already done.”[2]
Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians,
and how I bare you on eagles’ wings,
and brought you unto myself.
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