by R.A. Coombes

from TheAlphaOmegaReport Website
 

Ishtar Enlightening the World with her torch uplifted


We've been saying for years that it was just a matter of time before the Babylonian chief goddess Ishtar (a.k.a. Inanna in Babylon, Isis in Eygypt, Astarte or Aphrodite in Greece and Libertas/Venus in Rome to name just a few) would once again rise to prominence in world affairs not merely in a mystical manner but in a bold, in-your-face resurgence of Ishtar’s many "mystical" doctrines. Now we see more instances of her return in human society as her doctrines take a subtle hold within both Protestant and Catholic churches in the USA. Such developments further fuel the cosmic rebellion against the Creator-Ruler of the Universe.


Pagan Mysticism

Remember that Ishtar has already made extensive inroads into Western Civilization in the form of the goddess Libertas (her early Roman name) which in English is the Goddess of Liberty or Goddess of Freedom. In that guise she can be found as the Statue of Liberty guarding the New York City harbor as well as atop the US Capitol Building in Washington D.C. where America's lawmakers meet to write new laws. She also can be found on the grounds or atop the domes of many statehouses around the USA. She is also found on coinage of America too.

We've also seen Ishtar worship itself come at least somewhat into the open thanks to the advent of the Internet. Run a search on google.com or any other search engine and punch in the term Ishtar and the term goddess (or vice-versa) and see what you come up with. Keep in mind that there is an actual Ishtar Temple group that had been meeting once a year at the pagan festival of "The Burning Man" in the Nevada desert in the southwestern USA during America's Labor Day celebrations.

 

We understand that for 2003 the group has chosen a more mainstream location in San Francisco to operate its temple.

We have a hunch that at some point, Ishtarism will begin to openly operate in big cities. When this occurs it will feature a form of religious prostitution in which sexual activities will occur with money changing hands directly to the “temple” itself with the “priestesses” then being paid a salary perhaps, just like ministers in a Christian church would be paid a salary? We’re guessing here but we think such an approach would be a logical extension to skirt the current local prostitution laws around the country. Such a development would have to skirt local, state and any federal laws regarding prostitution because of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against religious worship.

 

The idea of “holy prostitution” activities would be argued by attorneys that such rituals are a religious rite dating back to the beginning of recorded history and therefore a valid religion and thus local ordinances and laws could not apply to such activities because such activities are indeed religious in nature and thereby protected by the Constitutional mandate that prohibits the government and the courts from interfering with religion. But now, that is not all we suspect will develop with Ishtarism.

Here are more links to information on Ishtar-Inanna goddess worship and training.

More … Complaints by Ishtar / Isis priestess in L.A. about Christian history of persecuting Ishtar worshippers. We mention this only for the reader to note that:

Such worshippers and priests/priestesses DO EXIST today. Incidentally, the author at that link is a high priestess – the 537th in direct line of service to Isis, which is the Egyptian name for Ishtar of Babylon.


Mainline Protestant Denominations & New Age-isms
Not only do we see Ishtar coming to the forefront in the new rise of paganism in the USA but we also see Ishtar in a more veiled aspect sweeping through the churches of America and other western nations. It comes in a more subtle approach. We have noticed the recent usage of the term “goddess” in such mainline Protestant denominations as the Methodist Church, Episcopalians and even the Presbyterian Church USA.

 

We began to see such beginning forays as early as the late 1970s and more so in the late 1980’s and early 1990s and slowly gaining ground ever since. Here is an example of an Episcopalian woman turning to the goddess worship of Ishtar. Check out this link to the webpage of Elizabeth Cunningham writing for the New Seminary about “Sacred Prostitution.”

One artistic rendition of Ishtar, agricultural fertility goddess, among other things.
 

 

Sacred Prostitution: The Whore and the Holy One
 from MagdalenTrilogy Website

“Once upon a time, so long ago that we only have fragments of Sumerian and Babylonian tablets, myths and our own dreams to tell us this story, the assertion "I am the whore and the holy one" would not have been a paradox at all. In ancient Sumer and Babylon, temple priestess/prostitutes of the goddess received the god-bearing stranger. Their sexual union was, for both participants, communion with the divine.”

“Over time the enactment of the king’s symbolic marriage with the goddess probably became mere form and finally obsolete as Babylon and other societies became more stratified and war-like. Then military might, instead of mystical union with the goddess, conferred legitimacy on a ruler. In Babylon there was also a hierarchy of prostitutes from the high-ranking temple priestesses, the entu and naditu, to the tavern or street whore called harimtu. It’s worth noting that in Babylonian religious texts, the goddess Ishtar identifies herself with the lower ranks of the street prostitutes, saying "When I sit in the entrance of a tavern, I, Ishtar, am a loving harimtu." In another Babylonian text Ishtar proclaims, "A prostitute compassionate am I."

“There are many theories about what might have caused the near total-eclipse of goddess worship(at least in the Western world) and I don’t want to address them today. I just want to observe that she (whoever, whatever she is) seems to be re-emerging…”

So there you have it, a devotee of Ishtar if not a priestess of Ishtar notes that Ishtar worship seems to be “re-emerging.”

Below is perhaps one of the earliest pieces of money ever found. Ishtar's religion invented the concept of money, as a coin-related economy that centered around Ishtar temple worship. The origin of money was developed in order to support the worship of Ishtar by providing a way for assets to be garnered to cover the expenses of maintaining the temple and its priestesses and priests.


Third-Wave/Latter-Rain Charismatic Movement
We've also run across Ishtar doctrines now developing in such Charismatic organizations as The Toronto Blessing, the Brownsville Revival and similar movements in Great Britain. We’ve seen it beginning to develop in those groups while using their term “cross-pollination.” The term seems to have blossomed under the guidance of Carol Arnott (Toronto) and Brenda Kilpatrick (Brownsville).

They have been among those leading the charge for a “New Apostolic Reformation” within the Charismatic and Liberal Mainline Denominations as well as within (they’re hoping) the Catholic Church to a certain extent. These two women are “alleged” apostolic sisters cut of the same doctrinal cloth and have had significant impacts within the “KEYS TO FREEDOM” and special Women’s conferences in the last few years. A dilemma supposedly developed with these women at the beginning of their “ministry” involving the need for a transferable anointing or so it was advised by male counterparts. It was felt that for them to have such a special ministry in the movement, such obligation required that the two women needed to take a transferable anointing back to their own churches and "cross-pollinate."

 

The idea of “cross-pollinating” would allegedly bring unity to the churches and end denominationalism. In their way of thinking, denominationalism is evil. The idea itself carries sexual overtones very similar to instances by Toronto blessing churches in Great Britain where women have had their genitals “anointed” with oil by ministers. There have even been allegations of at least one minister engaging in sexual intercourse with women to give them an “internal anointing.” There have been reports of “holy orgasms,” nudity and other allegations of lewd, sexual misconduct within what is called “Third Wave” churches where women are urged to “cross-pollinate” for the sake of revival, renewal and the gospel. For confirmation on this concept of “cross-pollination” visit the link given below:

In these movements we have read of sexual promiscuity being part of a worship service or even worse, the inclusion of sexual relations as part of an anointing process or processes along with the "laying on of hands" in order to gain special spiritual blessings or spiritual "power" or healing or forgiveness of sins.

C. Peter Wagner, a leader in the Third Wave Movement has reportedly promoted occultic, shamanistic native dances including of all things, “belly dancing.”

This last element, the forgiveness of sins is the most key element of all, and yet until now the most hidden part of the Ishtar agenda was her salvation doctrines which involve the notion of sexual relations with a temple priestess in which the goddess possesses the body of the priestess (or priest) and the worshipper then engages in sexual relations with the priestess in order to "become one with the goddess." That "becoming one" supposedly enables the worshipper to have their sins "washed away" (“purified”) because they become "one" with the goddess and her divine nature can not only wash away the sins but also "enlighten" the worshipper to new insights of life.

This Ishtar doctrine of salvation, we believe will eventually be pushed to the forefront. We suspect Ishtarism will be adopted like a wildfire (in a drought-stricken prairie and forest) and will spread rapidly throughout the USA especially in supposedly "Christian churches." Combine this with a future government “admission” that there are UFOs and aliens and that the aliens gave us our religions to help civilize our species. In other words, Jesus, the Christ is no different than Ishtar of Babylon or Baal or Allah, or Krishna or Buddha and any other pagan deity you care to think of. Such a revelation by the government with key government scientists providing detailed data-points will (I hypothesize) tend to destabilize much of the population’s views regarding established religious beliefs.

By virtue of Ishtar’s various doctrines including that of “Liberty/Freedom” and by reality of her other “sensual” doctrinal appeals and the seeming irrelevance of Judeo-Christian values, I think we can see the distinct possibility that a complete collapse of traditional Judeo-Christian values would soon ensue? We think so. Among many mainline liberal, Protestant denominations the trend is already moving towards the concepts of Ishtarism. It wouldn’t take much to push those denominations over the edge and into outright apostasy.

There is a group that has formed recently that is setting up an ultra-liberal Christian church group in which non-monagamous Christianity will be practiced. Now you may wonder what is meant by “non-monagamous Christianity.” It is essentially the notion that married couples or singles can and should engage in sexual activities without regard to the concept of marriage.

 

Some would refer to this notion as “swinging” while most would regard it as just plain old adultery and fornication. I believe this group will be growing in numbers sooner rather than later and will be ripe for conversion to Ishtaristic–Christianity in which someday there will be sexual acts performed in a church at an altar in front of the Preacher’s podium. Don’t be surprised if it isn’t performed much like the ritual of communion or a baptism. All in all, I suspect these developments will make the Church of Corinth look like extremely mature believers. Remember they also had their share of sexual problems within their membership, including cases of incest and homosexuality just to name a couple of issues there.

Now this new group that I mentioned is called “Liberated for Christ” (also known as “libchrist.com”) and their website is so potentially offensive, outlandish and outrageous that for this rare instance I cannot in good conscience give out the URL for this group to prove my points. You’ll either have to accept my word for it, or use a search engine to figure it out. Not only is their website rather offensive but it links to another related site that promotes Church nudity and especially church nudity of women parishioners.

 

A link to that sight would be a link to a pornographic website and we just can’t in good conscience post such a site’s URL. We can only state that we were shocked at such developments and yet we shouldn’t have been. We’ve been expecting it, but I figured we’d first hear about it in the media and not stumble onto it ourselves by a forum link posting. If some reader just absolutely has to have a link to this site they can email us at lettertoeditor at aoreport.com and ask for the link and we’ll give it out privately but only if the reader specifically asks for it.


 Roman Catholic Ishtarism

To many Evangelical, Fundamental Protestant believers, the Roman Catholic Church has always practiced Ishtarism in its full-blown form in a blatant and public manner. To that conclusion we would respectfully disagree. No, we don’t condone RCC doctrines that are in error. Instead, we merely disagree that much of the paganistic similarities within the RCC are exactly that, similarities for the most part although there may be some remote linkage to late Roman Empire paganism, nonetheless, we reject the claims made by Alexander Hislop who falsely identified much of the RCC symbolism with Babylonian paganism, especially Ishtarism. In fact, he referred to Ishtar as “Semiramis” for which we now know was total error. There never was such a divine goddess known as “Semiramis.” It is not the purpose of this article to investigate the false claims of Hislop so we shall drop the subject, but we categorically maintain that Ishtar worship and doctrines are nothing like those of the RCC once you fully investigate the issue of Ishtar and her mystery doctrines.

We have read of the “Beautiful Creature” provisions for the priesthood within the RCC having tacit Papal approval for illicit sexual relations with “mystery wives” of the priests, some of whom may have been nuns. This supposedly began in the middle of the 19th Century. In some respects this revelation does bear some resemblance to Ishtar worship but it is not universal and it is not public like that of Ishtar worship. Indeed, the RCC does not have a woman-figure carrying the title of “MOTHER OF HARLOTS” as does Ishtar herself proudly carry that title. So in this regard, the RCC issue of “Beautiful Creature” priesthood program just is not the same thing as Ishtar worship.

However, we do note a recent article indicating that true Ishtar-like ideas and doctrines are beginning to find a home within some of the RCC laity. Here’s some choice quotes from the following linked page:

In a recent article titled, "Shouldn't We Sing to Her?" Sister Mary Irving, SSND, quoted Collins to support her plea that God be addressed as female in order to honor,

  • "woman's dignity as the full image of God." …

  • “In other words, the way Catholics have worshiped for two millennia is idolatry — to be corrected by transforming God into a goddess?”

  • “Another prominent feminist academic is Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, Professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California. Typically, her 1997 address to the LCWR exemplified post-Christian thought.”


Conclusion:

We have presented evidence here that Ishtar worship is bubbling beneath the surface not only in American society but also around the world. We suspect that within the next ten years or sooner, we should see Ishtarism flower out into public view and within the next 20 years, who knows, it could become the dominant religion even in America. We would expect that once the rapture occurs, or Christianity becomes outlawed by the NOW, Ishtarism will quickly gain ground as a new religion of choice.