The Original Diabolical Conspiracy Theory
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Recently, Lawrence O’Donnell claimed that the antisemitic trope postulating that Jews are responsible for everything that’s wrong with and in the world is “the oldest conspiracy theory of Western civilization.” (https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-trump-s-lies-prey-on-his-supporters-vulnerability-to-misinformation-152238661906)
Lawrence is actually wrong. That distinction belongs to the claim that Woman is to blame for everything that’s wrong.
The pejorative gender/sex Hate trope dates back to the institutionalized Church libel against ‘The Daughters of Eve’ (‘witches’ and women generally) and Eve’s engineering of ‘The Fall of Man’ in league with Satan in the Garden of Eden, as well as in the patriarchal Greek myth of Pandora and her ‘box’ (actually a vessel or vase in the original tale, as a glyph for her womb), and their mutual demonized female scapegoat progenitor, Jahi the Whore (“Whose Name means Menstruation”), the Devil’s Handmaiden in the Zend Avesta and the Vedic scriptures.
These narratives go back to around 1,500 BCE or earlier in the oral Creation myths of the horse tribes of the Iranian Plateau, and are recorded as the foundation theology of Zoroastrianism, that first offered the ‘holy’ justification and rationale for the aggressive authoritarian/hierarchical male-dominant, polarized, monotheistic/dualistic Cattle Cult ranking system we call patriarchy at the root of the Abrahamic Stem.
Here too, “we find menstruation flooding the world with evil,” in an eschatological, cosmological drama. (Lederer, Fear of Women, 27) “For it is told that Angra Mainyu [the Devil], Lord of Evil and antagonist of the good Lord Ahura Mazda [God], having slept three thousand years was awakened by a female friend, Jahi (Menstruation), who shouted at him,” saying, ‘Arise, O father of us all! For I shall now cause in the world that contention from which the misery and injury of Ahura Mazda and his Archangels are to proceed. I shall empoison the righteous man, the labouring ox, the water, plants, fire, and all creation.’ Whereupon Angra Mainyu, starting up, kissed her on the forehead, and the pollution called menstruation appeared on the demoness….’” (Lederer, 27–28. For the full text see Müller 1880, 15–16)
