Dea Nutrix

sunfell wrote: “I wasn’t sure if the Dea Nutrix was considered a force or a personage,”

Neither are we, really. Both, most likely. We see it as the generative force that created all we perceive and conceive. We don’t know for sure that it’s sentient, or at least sentient in a manner we understand. We’re not even sure it’s a single force, or a multiple of forces or beings.

It’s layered, “like an onion”, or those nesting boxes I just bought, or the Russian Matruschka dolls, or the submolecules in the molecules in the planets in the solar systems in the galaxies in the universe…

Sometimes we describe it as being like gas or water, taking n the forms around it, and yet also shaping the forms it fills. Other times we liken it to the way a story iswritten – from the point of inspiration to completed story. Other times, we see it as Indra’s Web, where every point touches every other point, yet each point is distinct.

It’s one of the Mysteries we continuously probe and explore.

Because we exist, we believe the Dea Nutrix created us. Now, that doesn’t mean Dea Nutrix is necessarily aware of us in the same way we are of it – in much the same way we know about but are not particularly involved in the existence of intestinal bacteria.

We believe we were created as individuated corporeal beings for some reason or other, even if that reason is as trivial as breathing in the right place at the right time. It’s possible that when we were more integrated into Dea Nutrix, we were the ones to choose to become individuated corporeal beings, but that inhabiting flesh, we forgot our prior resolutions, forgot we are the physical tools of Dea Nutrix in this realm. We have free choice because we can choose to remember our reason for being flesh and serve the needs of Dea Nutrix or we can go about living as if Dea Nutrix means no more to us than a snowflake on a mountain peak.

Becoming Numenist means we are aware of the existence of the force/being we call Dea Nutrix, and of the choice that awareness brings with it. We are aware of the patterns that flow around us, and those who can see and understand them well can use that knowledge to alter the flow of the patterns, to make changes. We can start patterns, like that silly rumor about soy making people gay that I mentioned in June of 2005 and saw re-appear recently in the media (not that that’s a good example, mind, it’s just one I can point to that’s accessible to people so they can see it for themselves). We can stop patterns, by stopping smoking or moving to a new city, for example. We can change patterns by simple things like words or votes. We can re-enforce patterns and make them stronger, or weaken patterns – the way sunfell‘s community dark_christian works to weaken the patterns of those groups of Christians who seem to be focused on destroying the world as we know it.

some people can read the patterns of Dea Nutrix well, and their efforts often succeed. Others read the patterns, but the methods they use are less effective – Cindy Sheehan is a good example of this. She sees a pattern she wants weakened – that actually a rgeat many people want weakened – and she’s set out to do something about it. Unfortunately, her methods aren’t working in the manner she’d hoped.

As individuated corporeal beings, we can manipulate the patterns of Dea Nutrix. It’s part and parcel of being a part of the force that composes Dea Nutrix. At the same time, Dea Nutrix exerts influences on us that we can heed or ignore in the same way that Dea Nutrix can heed or ignore us – or manipulate us into doing what it needs us to do for it.

Working for Dea Nutrix is a lot like roses – thorny, painful, particular, but sweet and beautiful. Opening ourselves to the influences, needs, and patterns of Dea Nutrix is challenging. Most of the challenge is in the fact that we can see some part of the need for what we are doing, but, limited by our physical presence, we can’t keep the whole picture in our mind for more than fleeting nanoseconds. We can only have the memory of what we perceived. We live according to that perception, and yes, it is lot like the blind people examining different parts of an elephant.

Sometimes, when we’ve done what we need to do for Dea Nutrix, when we’ve surrendered ourselves to the task and accomplished it, afterwards, we can’t always be sure we did was enough or even the right thing. All we can know for sure is that we were called and we answered. There is – an inner peace in knowing we did what we could, all that we could. As physical beings, we are not tasked with doing all of what needs doing, but, like a team, doing that part of it that we can do best, or perhaps that only we can do at that point. Other people will do their part of the overall task (or maybe, it’s a series of tasks).

We use the concept of layers to help us understand our relationship in Dea Nutrix. We are physical beings – individuated corporeal beings with choice. Then there are the non-physical forces that are individuated – what we call “numena”. Numena can be ancestral or personal or they can be more group-oriented. Group numena are called “gods”. And then there’s Dea Nutrix, neither corporeal nor individuated as we understand it, but a force of which we are part.

We use the symbol of the cornucopia for Numenism, but for Dea Nutrix itself, the Moebius strip twisted into the symbol for infinity (or eternity) is the better symbol.