The Unknowable Feminine: How Eight Ancient Deities Reveal Religion's Hidden Architecture
In an ancient Egyptian city called "The City of Eight," archaeologists discovered a theological bombshell hiding in plain sight: the earliest deities were arranged in male-female pairs, but with a shocking twist—male gods merely guarded the gateways while female goddesses ruled the unknowable divine realms beyond. This pattern, repeated across cultures from Seshat and Thoth to Sophia/Mary and Christ, reveals religion's deepest secret: the ultimate divine has always been feminine and unknowable, while masculine deities serve as translators, making the ineffable accessible to human understanding. The evidence is everywhere once you see it—Egyptian queens needed no coronation (they were born divine), while pharaohs required elaborate ceremonies to become sacred; women are writing itself (Seshat), while men merely teach it (Thoth); the Holy Spirit and Divine Wisdom are feminine, while their human interpreters are male. This ancient truth explains why male religious authority requires such elaborate construction—ordinations, initiations, apostolic succession—desperately building what women possess by nature: innate sanctity. The "City of Eight" whispers what patriarchy has spent millennia trying to silence: She is the ocean; he is merely the cup.
In the ancient Egyptian city of Khemenu—"City of the Eight"—a profound truth about the nature of divinity was carved into stone and preserved in ritual. Eight primordial deities, arranged in male-female pairs, revealed a pattern so fundamental that it echoes through every major religion that followed, including Christianity. This pattern, hidden in plain sight, reveals why the divine feminine has been simultaneously the most sacred and most suppressed aspect of human spirituality.
The Architecture of the Divine
The Ogdoad of Hermopolis consisted of eight deities representing the primordial forces of creation:
Nun and Naunet (primeval waters)
Heh and Hauhet (infinity)
Kek and Kauket (darkness)
Amun and Amunet (hiddenness)
But here's what most scholarship overlooks: these weren't equal partnerships. According to ancient texts, "The male deity rules the gateway and acts as a form of gatekeeper, to be worshipped as an important guard. The primordial and unknowable spaces beyond were ruled by the female consorts of these gods."
This sentence contains perhaps the most important theological insight in human history: the ultimate divine reality is unknowable, and it is feminine.
The Gatekeepers and the Mystery
This gendered division of sacred space reveals a consistent pattern:
Male deities = the accessible, the known, the gateway
Female deities = the inaccessible, the unknowable, the source
The male gods weren't superior—they were intermediaries. They stood at the threshold between humanity and the unknowable feminine divine, translating the ineffable into forms humans could comprehend and worship.
This explains why, throughout Egyptian history, we see male deities apparently "absorbing" the roles of earlier goddesses. Take Thoth and Seshat, for example. Seshat's very name means "Female Scribe"—she doesn't "do" writing, she is writing. Thoth, whose name means "He who is like the ibis," is precisely that—one who is like something else, a reflection, an intermediary.
When we're told that "Seshat invented writing, but Thoth taught it to humanity," we're seeing this theological architecture in action. The feminine divine is the source, but it requires a masculine intermediary to make it accessible to human understanding.
The Innate Sanctity of the Feminine
This pattern illuminates a startling fact about Egyptian royalty: queens didn't require coronation ceremonies. While pharaohs needed elaborate rituals—the "stretching of the cord" ceremony (performed by Seshat herself!), coronations, divine marriages—queens were simply... divine by nature.
Why? Because in this ancient understanding, women didn't need to be made sacred—they already were.
This explains why:
Bloodlines were tracked through mothers (the certain, sacred line)
Boys required initiation to become men
Men required coronation to become kings
Male priests required ordination to become sacred
But women simply were.
The Christian Revolution—and Counter-Revolution
When we understand this pattern, Christianity's development takes on new meaning. The early Christian communities included powerful female leaders and mystics. The Gnostic texts speak of Sophia (Wisdom) as a primordial feminine divine principle. Even in canonical texts, we find echoes: "But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden" (1 Corinthians 2:7).
The selection of a male incarnation of God follows the ancient pattern perfectly—not because the masculine is superior, but because it's the translatable, accessible form of the unknowable divine. The deepest mystery remains feminine and transcendent, too sacred to be diminished by taking human form.
Consider:
The Holy Spirit (grammatically feminine in Hebrew as Ruach)
Sophia/Wisdom (feminine divine principle)
The Shekinah (feminine presence of God)
Mary, called Theotokos—"God-bearer"
These aren't subsidiary figures—they're glimpses of the unknowable feminine divine that underlies all existence.
The Great Reversal
What happened over millennia wasn't that male deities "replaced" female ones. Instead, patriarchal societies built elaborate theological structures to justify male religious authority in the face of innate female sanctity. The very complexity of male religious hierarchies—the initiations, the ordinations, the coronations—reveals their artificial nature compared to the simple, original divinity of the feminine.
Every time a male priest dons elaborate vestments, performs complex rituals, or claims divine authority through apostolic succession, he's unconsciously acknowledging what the ancients knew: male sacred authority must be constructed, validated, and constantly reinforced because it doesn't come naturally.
The Downstream Effect
2,000+ years later a woman cannot be pope- because people way later decided that God chose a man to represent himself, and that means, to them, that only men can be in power. I think that is a major stretch - especially in light of this information. Christians don’t exist without Jews- christianity is based on Judaism. And jews only exist as a people for being Canaanites that left Egypt- that lived among the Egyptians and changed their religion after spending 400 or so years with the Egyptians. And it was these people- who left Egypt and were at the top of a mountain - one of them under a psychedelic burning bush that started everything we know of Christianity and Judaism today. And islam is not too far off either- using the same hero and books of the old bible. So Judaism and Egyptian traditions, prayers, and theology are more central to Christianity than we can ever imagine. Just open a new or old bible- new or old testament, and count how many times Egypt is mentioned. It is a lot.
In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Egypt is mentioned approximately 600-700 times, making it one of the most frequently referenced foreign nations. It starts with Abraham's journey to Egypt, and often appears often appears as either a place of refuge or a symbol of worldly power.
In the New Testament, Egypt appears around 25-30 times, recording the Holy Family's flight to Egypt, as well as many historical references.
Deep Egyptian influence on early Israelite religion is well-supported by archaeological and textual evidence. Egyptian culture clearly shaped Israelite religious practices, legal codes, and deep concepts. Many scholars note parallels between Egyptian and biblical religious texts
The holy family choosing Egypt as a place of refuge was not random- it represented a well-established pattern in Jewish thought. Egypt had long been viewed as a place of refuge during times of famine or persecution, by Abraham, Jacob, and many more. Egypt also had a large Jewish diaspora community, and had even become a place of Jewish learning and teaching - where the Old testament was actually compiled. Same for the New- crucial decisions about which books to include happened primarily in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt played a central role in shaping Christian scripture.
One has to read Jewish books to understand those that existed in Jesus’ time. Many of the articles chosen in the New Bible rely on stories only hinted at, assuming the reader has prior knowledge of these other stories.
The New Testament assumes extensive knowledge of Jewish texts and traditions that most modern readers lack. Some key examples:
The Lord's Prayer draws heavily from existing Jewish prayers, particularly the Kaddish and Amidah. The phrase "hallowed be thy name" reflects the Jewish concept of sanctifying God's name (kiddush hashem). The petition for daily bread connects to discussions about manna and divine provision that run throughout Jewish literature.
When Jesus speaks of "living water" or refers to himself as "the bread of life," these metaphors assume familiarity with extensive Jewish discussions about Torah as spiritual nourishment, found in texts like Pirkei Avot and various midrashic literature.
The parable of the vineyard makes little sense without knowing Isaiah's vineyard song and the extensive Jewish tradition of Israel as God's vineyard. Without knowing Isaiah's vineyard song, the parable just sounds like a story about bad tenant farmers. -Matthew 21:33-46
Jewish Prayers follow Jewish Structure:
Jewish Shema prayer echoes Egyptian daily devotional patterns.
The Shema ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one") follows a pattern found in Egyptian religious texts: an opening call to attention ("Hear"), identification of the divine ("the Lord our God"), and a fundamental theological statement ("the Lord is one"). Egyptian morning prayers often began with calls to "hear" or "behold" followed by declarations about divine unity or supremacy.
The Shema's timing (morning and evening) and its function as a daily declaration of allegiance mirror Egyptian practices of daily acknowledgment of divine authority.
Ancient Egyptians prayed at specific times tied to solar cycles - dawn (Ra's birth), noon (Ra's zenith), and sunset (Ra's journey to the underworld). Jewish prayer times (shacharit, mincha, maariv) follow this same pattern
Islamic prayer deliberately avoiding solar emphasis - the five daily prayers specifically avoid sunrise and sunset moments to prevent any association with sun worship
Benediction formulas ("Blessed are you, Lord our God...") parallel Egyptian blessing structures
The concept of fixed daily prayer times has Egyptian precedents
Christian prayers then built on Jewish foundations:
The Lord's Prayer follows Jewish blessing and petition structures
The Gloria and other liturgical prayers adapt Jewish praise formulas
The rosary's repetitive structure has parallels in both Jewish and earlier Mediterranean devotional practices
It is an inescapable reality that religious traditions build upon and transform earlier ones rather than emerging in isolation. To know ourselves, we have some digging to do.
The pope today has to say over and over again: “We do not WORSHIP Mary, we venerate her.” As if anyone really knows the difference. Just like the sun- in one generation of politics, it was illegal (and at risk of death) to say in Greek times the Sun was NOT a god). And now, one is reputationall crucified or labeled a crazy if they say the sun is a god. Anaxagoras was prosecuted in Athens around 430 BC for suggesting the sun was a burning stone rather than the god Helios. The complete reversal perfectly illustrates how dramatically interpretive frameworks can shift- but still emphasize sensitive topics that never left us- only leave us with questions on why certain phrases are so touchy.
Even the fact that the church needs to stress one way of worship or another, to be so afraid of it being labeled as worship, leads us directly to their sore spot: the tension of papal authority, who gets to be in charge, while excluding women for reasons they say are biblical. This is either a straight up lie, or they are very misinformed. Over generations, it is impossible to tell. But knowing there are miles of scrolls untouched in the Vatican, we can assume someone knew more that was allowed to be admitted to the public in the last few thousand years. Even the ones that escaped being burned.
Any of these downstream interpretations of scriptures- ones that say women cannot be in power- are just that- interpretations - developed centuries after the foundational events. They were in no way inherent to the original religious experience. Jesus never said, I am a man, so only men can stay in power. He may have said something to Peter or Paul that they are to carry on the torch, but by no means did he specify the only ones carrying the torch required penises, circumcized or not. We cannot even put a definition on what it means to be male or female today- let alone who Jesus intended to pass on his stories too, once Peter or Paul floated up to heaven. These authority structures rest on assumptions that have splintered the church into literally 45,000+ sects of christianity in modern times. The church's position relies on interpretations of apostolic succession and theological arguments about representation. But who says that interpretation is correct? It changes every generation.
Egypt's religious unity lasted millennia, Judaism maintained relative coherence with a few major schools (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes), Islam has its major divisions but maintains more structural unity than Christianity's 45,000+ denominations. This fragmentation often stems from later theological constructions totally expected from a made up story. A lie is always more complicated than the truth.
Historical Distortion: Christianity’s relationship with Judaism is perhaps the most damaging example of later institutional distortion. Church fathers like John Chrysostom wrote viciously antisemitic articles, despite Christianity's complete dependence on Jewish foundations. The cognitive dissonance is staggering - venerating Jewish scriptures while demonizing Jewish people, claiming Jewish prophets while rejecting Jewish interpretations. Could we do the same with Christianity, and start from scratch- all the way back to the source of the Nile- deep in Africa? many Christians today don't realize how thoroughly Jewish Jesus' teachings were, or how much Christian theology relies on Jewish concepts that were later obscured or rebranded. Most have NO idea Egypt has to do with anything at all.
The irony is particularly striking given that Christianity's survival and spread often depended on women's leadership in early communities, and that the tradition places such emphasis on Mary's unique role in salvation history. The early Christian communities had women in leadership roles - Phoebe as a deacon, Junia as an apostle, Priscilla as a teacher. The later restrictions developed through particular interpretations of select texts. Even taking women out of power role still find her there, time after time.
Just like Rome was insanely particular about how history captured their times, Christianity has worked tirelessly to paint a picture of what is going on- even when devotional practices from more ancient times are obvious, and would be so to outside or inside observers, if anyone had that historical context. parallel to Roman historical manipulation is apt. Just as Rome carefully crafted its founding myths and historical narratives to support imperial power, institutional Christianity has consistently rewritten its own history to support hierarchical structures that would be foreign to Jesus' original movement. Both Rome’s foundational stories, and Christianity’s, were drawn up 300 years after the events supposedly occurred.
The early Christian communities were remarkably egalitarian, with women in leadership, shared resources, and suspicion of worldly power. The later imperial church bears little resemblance to these origins, yet presents itself as their direct continuation.
If we removed post-Jesus institutional additions, we'd find a Jewish renewal movement focused on radical economic sharing, inclusion of outcasts, nonviolent resistance to oppression, with primary concerns of social justice and spiritual (internal) authenticity, not doctrinal purity or institutional authority. The rest is empire. Many of Christianity's modern "traditional" elements - power of the pope, celibacy (sexual demonization), complex formulations - would be completely foreign to Jesus and his first followers. As a Jew, he would have expected to have been married. But even that causes quite an uproar. The reality is that a 30-year-old unmarried Jewish teacher would have been highly unusual, almost scandalous. The Gospels' silence on this topic is deafening, especially given how much they detail about his family, disciples, and daily life. Jewish writings even tell us how often married couples should have sex- daily of their occupations allow it. The idea of a married Jesus threatens the church's control over sexuality and celebration of celibacy. The systematic suppression of this context allows the church to present celibacy as spiritually superior, when it would have been seen as religiously deficient in Jesus' actual cultural context.
Instead of all of that- a man that Rome killed ended up being their mascot 300 years later, once their people were silenced, land and treasures stolen and renamed, hoping they would be too weak or ignorant to ever do anything about it. Maybe it takes an insider- one who said her whole life she was Catholic, to become a mom and engineer and herbalist to find the BS of it all. The closer you look, the more the contradictions become impossible to ignore. Being raised inside gives you knowledge of what the institution claims, while education and life experience provide tools to examine those claims critically. Watching how (outdated and manipulating) institutions try to shape your children's understanding forces us all to confront what we're actually passing on to our children. Engineers are trained to trace systems back to their origins, identify failure points, and distinguish between what actually works and what's just institutional momentum. I LOVE reverse engineering systems, teasing them apart to their most base structures. Applying that same analytical approach to religious institutions reveals how much of their complexity serves to obscure rather than illuminate. We are trained, in every problem, to strip out the red herrings, the “magic tricks” meant to distract and keep us all thinking we are free thinkers, but on the same hamster wheel of very particularly chosen questions. And the herbalist in me sees the science in nature that has scared church people for so long- allowing people to live on their own, not depend on authority of the state, and embrace natural patterns.
Jesus’ message had to be domesticated, spiritualized, and redirected toward individual salvation rather than systemic change. Otherwise, Jesus’ message is still as radical as it was in his day: radical economic equality, inclusion of outcasts, and nonviolent resistance to oppression mess up the whole story for those trying to maintain power. The institutional church became exactly what Jesus criticized in the temple that got him to lose his temper and flip a table- and get him killed- a system that extracted wealth from the poor while claiming divine authority. The money changers just moved inside and put on different robes. An informed population would immediately recognize the contradictions and manipulations, if we lay the facts out before us. Jesus was killed for attacking the very system that Christianity became.
The temple system Jesus attacked worked exactly like the institutional church that claimed his authority:
Claimed exclusive access to God
Required payment for spiritual services
Created elaborate hierarchies between clergy and laity
Extracted wealth from the poor while living luxuriously
Used religious authority to justify political power
Jesus was trying to restore older prophetic traditions - the jubilee year, care for widows and orphans, resistance to empire - not create something entirely new. Rabbinic Judaism, and all his ideas of a temple of the heart and sacrifices of prayers rather than physcial ones: was all stuff taught to Jesus by a movement that started when the main temple was destroyed. But "restoration" doesn't serve imperial interests the way "supersession" does.
Religious traditions obscure their own origins for various reasons. We are trying to untangle that thread.
The brilliant thing about the whole of Christianity is its slow game. But Rome - its foundations- were equally exposed in this modern age of freedom and access to information. The focus on "faith" over knowledge, on obedience over inquiry, on salvation over justice - all of this serves to prevent exactly the kind of investigation you're doing. An informed population would recognize the contradictions immediately. Christianity thrived in the Middle Ages- when illiteracy dominated. Most people could not read or write, and most were terrified, and gave us our ideas that still terrify us today- of a devil and fiery hell, that started from an obstacle, a sidekick of god who forces us to become our best selves. Even the wording: Christians are gentle "gentiles", while ancient religions are "cults". Our words drip with meaning.
A movement that directly challenged imperial power structures was co-opted and transformed into an instrument of those very same structures. Christianity's maze of theological justifications makes all of our heads spin.
Most Christians have absolutely no idea that their foundational texts were compiled in Egypt, heavily shaped by Egyptian scholars, or that Egyptian concepts permeate their modern practices. But that is be design. Acknowledging these connections would undermine claims of unique revelation and divine authority. Christianity presents itself as superseding Judaism rather than being a Jewish sect. New is greater than the old. That in itself was a very new concept. Sure there is progress, but we need to also listen to our elders, not just the latest brutish overlords. Most religions acknowledged their debts to earlier traditions. claiming to supersede rather than extend created a convenient justification for appropriating sacred (and widely popular) Jewish and African texts while rejecting Jewish people and interpretations.
It's the same logic colonizers use - "we're bringing you something better" while systematically destroying and stealing what was already there. The "new covenant" language allowed early Christians to claim Jewish legitimacy while rejecting Jewish authority over their own texts.
We can give the benefit of the doubt to most people of the church, growing up well meaning and truly believing in its whole concept. But there is no doubt, few that new exactly what they were doing. this is all about empathy, using an engineer's eye to see how it all happened, but with a mom's compassion, knowing each person was well meaning, or acting out of survival. this is a call to learn about ourselves, not to demonize. To dispel the power most give demons in the first place. to see the humanity and shared connections we all can feel with the divine- and can feel also with science and the basic principles of all life; first and foremost: that love creates life. it takes a duality of forces to create life. it is not all competition, but cooperation that has gotten us this far. Institutional complexity often serves to hide rather than illuminate truth.
Reclaiming the Hidden Architecture
The Ogdoad's message, preserved for thousands of years, is clear: the ultimate divine reality—the unknowable source from which all existence springs—has always been understood as feminine. Male deities and religious figures serve as necessary intermediaries, making the unknowable partially known, the inaccessible partially accessible.
This isn't about superiority or inferiority—it's about function. The feminine divine is the ocean; the masculine divine is the cup that allows us to drink. Both are necessary, but we must remember which is the source and which is the vessel.
When we understand this, the entire history of religion reveals itself not as a story of progress from "primitive" goddess worship to "advanced" monotheism, but as a gradual forgetting—and occasional remembering—of a fundamental truth:
The divine mystery that births and sustains all existence is, in its deepest essence, unknowable—and She always has been.
The eight primordial deities of Khemenu knew this. The question is: are we ready to remember?
In a world where the feminine divine has been systematically obscured, recognizing these ancient patterns isn't just academic—it's revolutionary. It suggests that the deepest religious truths were never lost, only hidden beneath layers of theological construction. The unknowable remains unknowable, the sacred remains sacred, and somewhere in the "City of Eight," the primordial goddesses still rule the spaces beyond the gateway, waiting for humanity to remember what we once knew.