Dear W & R women --
I finally recorded "Baking Cakes for the Queen of Heaven." You may remember that I wrote it to honor the 20th anniversary of the curriculum and Shirley Ranck (and sang it at GA). You can see that I've been blogging about "Cakes" as well. Please take a listen. Love and light, Nancy Vedder-Shults (author of The World Is Your Oracle)
October 7, 2009
Teaching the “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” curriculum (and blogging about it) lit a fire under me. The title of the course refers to a story told in the book of Jeremiah. This week I finally recorded the song I wrote about this tale on YouTube. Now others can learn the tune and sing it in their “Cakes” classes.
If you don’t know the story, here’s a synopsis: Jeremiah rants and rails against the Queen of Heaven, telling the people that worshipping Her is a betrayal of YHWH. (This actually proves to be historically incorrect, since YHWH had a consort for most of the years until the Babylonian exile — even in the temple in Jerusalem. But Jeremiah doesn’t know his archaeology, since he’s living during these turbulent times.) He threatens the people that if they revere any God or Goddess other than YHWH, God will punish them. Here’s how Jeremiah expresses God’s anger at the people:
Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, and they pour out libations to other gods, in order to anger me! (Jeremiah 7: 17 -18)
The people continue their worship of the Queen of Heaven and sure enough, the Babylonians invade Israel and take many Jews into captivity. Jeremiah comes to gloat, telling the people that he told them so. But the people answer him:
As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of Yahweh — we shall not listen to you. But we shall without fail do everything as we said: we shall burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and shall pour her libations as we used to do…in the cities of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and we were all well and saw no evil. But since we ceased burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and to pour her libations, we have wanted everything and have been consumed by sword and famine. (Jeremiah 44: 16 – 18)
I hope you enjoy my song.
