Virgin Offerings

In ancient Pagan Russia, a Virgin girl was sacrificed to the gods.  Folks, probably men, killed her.  If they could convince her that the next life was a better one, she might do some dancing first, kind of flirting with the gods, male gods, of course.  Why the Virgin?  Well, gods had no earthly bodies but being guy gods, and a bit primitive, think teenagers, they want sex with etherial virgins.  No used good for the male god ego.  So it went.  Now along comes Adonai, The Lord, The God of the Hebrew tribes.  No virgins need be sacrificed.  What needed to be offered up was the ego, the selfish, self-centered kind of ego.  You hold on to your selfishness.  You get exiled into slavery, or dominated by a foreign power.   Anyhow, along the way comes a girl named Mary.  This Hebrew God does not want her dead.  He wants her yes, so that Go can take on a human body.  This event takes the old motif of Virgin, and shifts it.  The girl need not die, but rather cooperate, using her free will.  God will come into the world, not take us out of it in bloody sacrifice.  The only one who will die is God!  God will do this to emphasize humility, service, love, the goodness of creation, and the Way to transformation.  Unfortunately, we decided to focus on "who is Jesus" and not on "how am I to change my life."  Virgin then took on a different emphasis, to prove connection with Hebrew scripture and the Divinity/Humanity of Jesus.  So today, we have lots of us who can recite our creed, but are not much better than the ancient pagan Russians.