Any Friend of Thor is a Friend of Mine!

I got this letter today from my wife's cousin Paul after he read my book "The Plain Truth About God!"

Paul is really heavy into Celtic and Norse mythology as any good Scotsman should be.

As a matter of fact he even changed his name to Thormod after the Norse God Thor.

He wrote this note with his thoughts on the book....... and then the sneaky little bugger slipped in his passion about Norse mythology just like everything he talks about eventually does.! ;-)

Paul, excuse me, Thormod, is well read as can be seen from his letter, and I thought you might find a bit of it interesting.

Hi Allan.

A good work on what would have been described as heresy in the old days. I like the fact that you are prepared to challenge what the general masses have been forced to swallow over the years. There are those that follow unquestioningly. Others that tow the line without much conviction because it's what's expected. And the few who are sincerely drawn to a Way, whatever it might be.

I'm glad you have the courage to slaughter a few sacred cows and point out what to a lot of people must be unthinkable: for example, that Mary was Christ's wife, or that she herself wrote an important gospel.

I'm not homophobic, but the thoroughly patriarchal societies of Israel and Rome and Islam are a little too male-oriented.

The cult of Mithras was, if I can recall, male dominated. I don't believe women figured in it at all, and I think there was a suggestion of homosexuality in the cult. Nothing unusual here, as quite a few Roman emperors were gay.

Not that homosexuals in general hate women, but at the time when the Roman church was founded, I'm sure there were a lot of women haters around, especially those that were interested in promoting the Mithras cult under a new name.

The obsessive abuse directed against women by organised religion over the years is both astounding and bizarre. But then most organised religion stems from overly male oriented societies.

The Gauls, Germani and Scythian / Sarmatian tribes were also heavily male oriented, but they differed in a major way from the Roman and Semitic societies in that women were viewed in many northern tribes as equals with the men.

They could own land, lay down laws, conduct ceremonies, even don armour at times.

This must have been pretty disturbing to your average Roman or Arab.

Pair this with the fact that the northern tribes were for hundreds of years the implacable enemies of Rome and it doesn't make for your average Roman Senator being kindly disposed toward 'barbarians' or anything they stood for.

Quite an interesting guy and I think I might have a few more conversations with him in the future.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com