Right, here is my response. I have bolded your comments Gracie123 so as to keep my comments in context.
Out of interest, I'm not actually sure Lady street is correct. It's my understanding that Jehovah/YHWH was around before the pagan religions and worship of the moon goddess etc... which is why the Torah forbids it. There are loads of stories in the Tanakh regarding making war with the nations who worship the 'moon god'.
Jehovah and YHWH are two different concepts. Jehovah refers to the Hebrew "Solar" God, whereas YHWH refers to the four elements; Earth, Water, Fire and Air (or the four directions ? North, East, West, South. Or the four fixed Zodiac signs ? Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius, Taurus. All are equally valid correspondences, and it depends on who you ask). The reason I make an effort to make this distinction is because the former is exoteric in nature, while the latter is esoteric.
Since we are discussing the exoteric Jehovah (although technically, the accurate name is Yahweh), you are very mistaken in stating that He was around before the worship of the Great Mother. Regardless of their name, all moon goddesses are a form of the Great Mother, hence the use of this term.
In Atlantis, a civilisation which existed long before Sumeria (2500 BCE), their creation myth states that "the female god created the world out of her own body" (hence the reason for the ?Virgin? attachment to the Goddess).
?She is the dark night, the black soil that holds within itself the intense powers of light, the secrets and forces of all life. She is the mouth, the vagina, the passionate and wise source from which all comes and to which all returns.
The black winged night laid a silver egg (the Moon) in the womb of the darkness, in the dark waters. The divine one resided in that egg during a whole year. Then She (by herself alone) divided into two halves and out of these halves, She formed heaven and earth.
Interestingly, Devi Parvati the Hindu Great Mother states ?"I am alone among the hidden; nevertheless I rejoice in my heart, because I can live privily, and refresh myself in myself....under my blackness I have hidden the fairest green.?
?Dark? as used in the above paragraph should be taken to mean ?life, death, earth, sexuality, and the underworld i.e the hidden self.
Source: The Great Cosmic Mother
The Great Mother was and has always been represented by a serpent (hence the reason the serpent was demonised in the Bible) because this is the symbol of eternal life. In Sumeria, she was known as the Great Mother Serpent of Heaven. In present day, she is symbolised by Oroboros, the serpent which represents the circle of life; the cycle of all and of nothing. In Babylon, Marduk defeats the sea dragon Tiamat, in Egypt, the dragon Apophys/Apep is slayed by Set, Apollo slays Gaia?s python. In Greece Perseus slays Medusa and good ol? St George slayed the dragon in England.
In the Bible, the serpent Leviathan (Levi : Great Serpent?) is mentioned several times (Job 3:8 says, "May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse leviathan". Psalm 74:14 "Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness". Isaiah 27:1 says, "In that day of the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea")
One has to wonder why in ancient civilisations, the cosmic serpent was worshipped as the source of life; seen as healing, blessing and nurturing only to be vilified by emerging civilisations as a dangerous enemy that must be destroyed and defeated?
Moving on, how does Yahweh come into this? Well according to the marvellous book ?Great Cosmic Mother? by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor (much of this post is based on this book)
?The biblical King David was a sacred shepherd (in ancient Sumeria ?sheep folkd? also meant ?vulva?) and in their custom, the shepherd king was consecrated in a sacred marriage to the Queen of Heaven Inanna ?Ishtar. His sensual songs of earthly love, so untypical of the Bible derive from the ancient love rites of the shepherd king and the Moon Mother Goddess ? Her Canaanite names were Asherah, Astarte and Ashtoreth."
Fast forward and in come the Hebrews 600 BCE (the people you mention as making war against those who worship the Moon goddess) who were "pastoral and patriarchal people and they set about establishing themselves on the land by slaughtering and massacring the Canaanites in the name of their masculine gods, and especially those who kept backsliding into the worship of the Goddess. This constant fight against matriarchal religion is the primary theme in the Old Testament and begins in Genesis with the takeover of the Goddess?s garden of immortality by male Gods (plural not singular. Collectively, they are known as Elohim. The Hebrew god was called Yahweh hence His constant repetition that they would have no other Gods but Him) and the inversion of all her sacred symbols ? tree, serpent, moon fruit and woman into icons of evil."
Of the two sons Cain and Abel, Cain is made into the evil brother because he offered the fruits & grains of the earth which is symbolic of the ancient Serpent Great Mother unlike Abel who offered blood and meat that was found pleasing to the bloodthirsty solar god. The meaning behind Abel?s slaying is equally as interesting, but is beyond the scope of this post.
I was taught that Islam rose out of Mohammad choosing to incorporate monotheism into the Lunar worship from the Quraish tribe he grew up in, rejecting the idea of the 360 gods they worshipped and promoting Hubal or Allah to the one true deity and blending it with the christianity he had encountered. So then the roots of Islam go back waaaaaay further than Mohammod.
You are quite right in saying that Islam predates the Prophet Muhammad. Again this is another interesting religion which worshipped the Great Mother in various forms until the introduction of the male God. Around 1000 BC, the people of Yemen thought the sun was a female deity and the Arabs named themselves Abd Shams (slave or worshippers of the Sun). In Quraysh (where Muhammed is from and thousands of years before he was born) Al-Uzza (to mean The Most Mighty) was a Goddess that was identified with the planet Venus. To this effect, do I think 360 is a literal figure used to amalgamation of the number of female gods worshipped into one deity? It is possible. On the other hand, I think it also refers to 360 degrees which makes a perfect circle (Great Mother) thus symbolising perfection. This connection to ?degrees? is not unusual. The Islamic crescent moon represents 33 and 1/3 of a full moon?s light (which has a deeper meaning). A 32nd degree mason Shriner) uses the following emblem note the crescent moon and star (this also has a deeper meaning).
Let me know what you think. :)