by Not Sure
23 August 2026
She sat down at the polished wood desk. Regency? Expensive. It was, after all, in the Governor’s mansion. On the desk was a glass dish filled with ornate blue and gold pens. We’ll break for moment, after all we must be tired, five sentences in. Why are the pens blue and gold? Because the state flag is blue, gold, and white. There is a law that defines what the coat of arms of this commonwealth must contain:
“...a blue shield with an Indian thereon, dressed in a shirt, leggings, and moccasins, holding in his right hand a bow, and in his left hand an arrow, point downward, all of gold; and, in the upper right-hand corner of the field a silver star of five points. The crest shall be, on a wreath of gold and blue, a right arm, bent at the elbow, clothed and ruffled, and grasping a broad-sword, all of gold. The motto Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem shall appear in gold on a blue ribbon.”
The Governor took her chair, surrounded by adoring women dressed in hot pink. Each row of hot pink women was flanked with women in white lab coats. The doctors were so excited to be part of this event, they fled their hospitals, un-scrubbed, still suited up from their important work. ‘I’m a doctor. Trust me.’ Behind this phalanx of dominatrices, I could spot the balding heads of a couple of men. Madam Governor took one of the blue and gold pens from the jar and opened the leather embossed folder. A hush fell over the room (except for the news producer and cameraman who coaxed smiles, and ‘best sides’ of faces) as M. Governor signed this historic bill. Cheers erupted.
From this cool and richly appointed room, the Praetorian Guard accompanied Madam Governor to the press room, where they were joined by other women, breathless, excited, aroused. She stepped to the microphone and said, “I stand with women. My opponents do not.” She did not stand with a woman when first sworn into office. I don’t know her relationship status when she was Massachusetts’ first openly lesbian Attorney General in 2014, but when elected governor, she was single. “In 2022, she became one of the first two openly lesbian women and the joint-third openly LGBT person elected governor of a U.S. state, as well as the first woman elected governor of Massachusetts.” In 2023, Governor Maura Healey, a practicing Catholic, entered a relationship with her former chief deputy, Joanna Lydgate. Healey stated that they did not begin their relationship until Chief Deputy Lydgate resigned her position. Lydgate has taken on the role of “First Partner of Massachusetts.”
There are lots of firsts for Madam Governor but her law to remove all restrictions on abortion is not exactly one of them since late-term or third trimester termination of pregnancy exists in a few states. Most states that allow late-term abortions place restrictions such as ‘to save the mother’s life/health.’ The language of Massachusetts’ law is clear: “up to birth.” Upon the historic signature, women across Massachusetts stopped what they were doing to celebrate.
The motto of Massachusetts: Ense Petit Placidam, Sub Libertate Quietem (“By the Sword We Seek Peace, But Peace Only Under Liberty”). There was not enough liberty for the women of this commonwealth. Therefore, there was no peace. Madame Governor is doing her best to supply a sword, the necessary tool for ‘peace-seeking.’ What is the sword? First trimester (first three months) abortions are usually achieved with cervical dilation, a hose (cannula), and a suction device. Second trimester (months four through six) termination calls for large, crushing forceps for ‘crushing and dismembering,’ a spoon-shaped blade (curette) to scrape the uterine wall, and more suction. Third trimester (months seven, eight and nine) abortions have many steps involved. ‘Fetal demise’ is achieved by needle or syringe with something like potassium chloride which stops the heart. Then the cervix must be dilated, and the extraction procedure described in the second trimester is used. Sometimes, labor must be induced.
‘Live-births following abortion attempts’ are not common, but they happen. This will become more common as more states relax restrictions. Those states that have used the overturning of Roe v. Wade to enact restrictions are well-countered in their efforts by states like Massachusetts.
Globally, 73 million abortions take place annually. Let that sink in.
Years ago, the founder and CEO of Creative Artists Agency, Michael Ovitz, famously told his agents to concentrate on actors whose careers had a longer shelf life. “Actresses have three to five years of high earning capacity. Ten, if they’re exceptional. Actresses are disposable.” Just like babies.
I was disgusted by an article I read in the lifestyle section of a newspaper about an actress named Michelle Williams who discussed the abortion she had at the beginning of her career. Never heard of Michelle Williams? That’s okay. Actresses are disposable, just like babies. At the 77th Golden Globe Awards in January 2020, Williams delivered an acceptance speech advocating for abortion rights and a woman’s ‘right to choose.’ Pregnant at the time of the awards ceremony, Williams stated she could not have achieved her career success ‘without employing a woman’s right to choose... to choose when to have my children, and with whom,’ implying that controlling her reproductive timeline was essential to her life’s work.
In many eras of history and especially since the 18th century concept of romantic marriage emerged, women have been able to decide when to have children, and with whom; cultural traditions like arranged marriages and terrible circumstances such as rape presenting exceptions. Michelle Williams now has four children, but I wondered when I read that article, “Will her children be thankful their mom’s career was already established when they were conceived? What will the four living children think about her public statement? ‘There, but for the grace of a Golden Globe Award, go I, sucked out through a hose.’”
A 2025 article in W Magazine is entitled “Michelle Williams is a Goddess of ‘Sex’ in a Stunning Grecian Dress.” A headline from 2023 in the Daily Mail reads, “Michelle Williams looks like a goddess, with white gown and sparkling sheer cape at 2023 Oscars.”
Goddesses have appeared in mythology since ancient times, with goddess worship accompanying. Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt, animals, nature, childbirth, and children. She was depicted surrounded by an entourage of nymphs. The etymology of her name has always been debated. ‘Bear?’ ‘Pure?’ ‘Butcher?’ She loved children but demanded the human sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of King Agamemnon, who had offended her by killing a sacred stag and boasting he was the superior hunter. The Romans had the huntress Diana, whose protection of childbirth was never stained by human sacrifice.
In Greek mythology, the Amazons were female warriors and hunters who lived in a closed society. They interacted with men long enough to breed and raised only females, so one wonders, what happened to the boys?
Moloch was a Canaanite god, portrayed as a bull-headed idol, hands stretched over the fire. He was associated with accounts of Carthaginian child sacrifice. Goddesses are not alone in their bloodthirstiness.
In modern times, all things New Age and much that is neopagan springs from Madame Helena Blavatsky who titillated and scandalized (depending on their sensibilities) her contemporaries with her lesbian affairs. Her writings, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, introduced Western audiences to Eastern concepts like karma and reincarnation. Marija Gimbutas, in her archaeological work between the 1970s and the 1990s, popularized the “Goddess Theory.” According to Gimbutas, (‘she who stands alone,’ because her ideas were not broadly accepted by mainstream archeologists and prehistorians), Neolithic “Old Europe” was a peaceful, matricentric society worshipping a singular Great Goddess before being displaced by patriarchal Indo-European cultures. See? You just need the right expert to re-write history. Others who contributed to the goddess rage include mythologists Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell, Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca in the 1940s and 1950s, and feminist Carol P. Christ (you cannot make this up) who articulated the feminist theological need for the goddess in her seminal 1978 essay Why Women Need the Goddess.
Speaking of P. Christ, the artist who submerged a crucifix in urine and called it “Piss Christ” was a man, but working in the same era was performance artist Karen Finley who inserted a yam in her vagina onstage and called it art. Yankee Doodle ‘stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.’ Anything’s possible in art. In some of her performances, Finley allows herself to be ‘possessed’ with other voices including the goddess Kali (Hindu goddess of time, death, and destruction). In her piece, We Keep Our Victims Ready: Something of Kali’s nurturing face, Finley explores the dual aspects of the goddess, including birth and the “cornucopian vagina.” That’s where the yam gets in.
Girls just wanna have fun. They enjoy the goddess aesthetic: crystals, candles, incense, flowing dresses, and pleasant stuff like that. A few take it seriously and dabble in white magic and spell work if they go the Wicca direction or embrace variations of the Goddess Movement which sprung up in the 1960s. The ‘divine feminine’ is venerated. The Goddess can be interchangeable with Mother Earth. Nature is loved, deeply, to the point of worship. There are ethical discussions, feminist debates, theological debates (Is the goddess one or many? Monotheism versus polytheism?). It is perfect for our time of sustainability; we’re ‘green,’ environmentally friendly, plant-based, ethically sourced, and ready to be ruled by a Green Goddess.
Let us proceed to the art and aesthetics of the goddess. We must make an arbitrary line somewhere, and I choose the time between 1983 and 1984 when Madonna burst on the scene Like a Virgin. The first thing that Madonna achieved was to separate mother and child. Madonna was no longer ‘ma donna’ or ‘my lady.’ She was not ‘mother with child,’ or ‘mother of God,’ pure, chaste. She was a global phenomenon who wore Catholic iconography while railing against patriarchy and societal conventions (Papa Don’t Preach) or criticizing the hypocrisy of the Church (Like a Prayer). She danced on stage with backup singers dressed like nuns, and half-naked men, half-dressed like priests. Album after album, hit single after hit single, she burned tradition like a deacon burns incense. Madonna has appeared as the goddesses Inanna-Ishtar and Aphrodite. Ray of Light in the 1990s introduced her fans to Kabbalah and Hinduism, with costumes to match. Her stage aesthetic, created nearly 45 years ago, is still THE aesthetic. Leotard becomes lingerie. Spectacle! Mimed sex. Madonna is the best-selling female artist of all time. A 2012 documentary about her was entitled Madonna: Goddess of Pop.
I now rub out the chalk on my arbitrary line, and we will take a quick visit to the late 1960s into the mid-1970s and discover Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. Madonna stripped the goddess to nearly naked, but Stevie Nicks dressed the goddess like a witchy hippie. Bohemian, layering lace, fringe, flowing skirts, scarves, capes, and oversized hats. Nicks is adored by musicians from Harry Styles to Taylor Swift (Stevie sang at Taylor’s recent wedding), to Adele, Miley Cyrus and Sheryl Crow.
In 1979, Stevie Nicks was dating Don Henley of the Eagles. Her IUD failed and she became pregnant. She talks openly about her abortion. She did not want to take a child on tour, or have it raised by a nanny. She said, ‘My life was my life, and my plan was my plan and had been since I was in the fourth grade… If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac.’ Do you remember Fleetwood Mac? Your children won’t. Nicks said that had she married Henley and the baby been a girl, she would have named her Sara. Sara became a hit single for her in 1979. But she has no regrets. Her plan was her plan.
***
The Baby Hitler thought experiment posits “If every fetus must be born because they could be great, does that mean we must also accept the risk of them being Hitler?” The Global Life Campaign cites one billion total abortions worldwide since the practice was first legalized in the former Soviet Union in 1920. That’s a lot of Saras for the risk of a few Hitlers.
Bernard Nathanson presided over more than 61,000 abortions. Nathanson was born in New York City, Manhattan to a Jewish family. According to Wiki, his father was an obstetrician/gynecologist, who exposed him early to the medical profession. He attended Hebrew school but lived as an atheist much of his life. Working as an OB/GYN, he was one of the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League to help make abortion legal. He worked with feminist Betty Friedan and others whose efforts succeeded with the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, legalizing abortion in the U.S, and usurping States’ rights. The development of ultrasound in the 1970s allowed him to observe a real-time abortion. This is where his story raises a few questions for me. Did it take an imaging technology for him to see the cessation of life? Did he not put it together with all the forceps crushing and suctioning? In any event, he wrote a book in the early 1980s entitled Aborting America, and often said that ‘abortion is the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States.’
Nathanson’s 1984 documentary which he wrote and directed was The Silent Scream, featuring an ultrasound video of a mid-term (12 weeks) abortion. His next documentary was Eclipse of Reason, and it dealt with late-term abortion. In his 1996 autobiography, he wrote, ‘I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age.’ He developed what he called the ‘vector theory of life,’ which states that from the moment of conception there exists ‘a self-directed force of life that, if not interrupted, will lead to the birth of a human baby.’ Also in 1996, Nathanson converted to Catholicism through the efforts of Fr. C. John McClosky and psychiatrist Karl Stern, who was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. He said, ‘No religion matches the special role for forgiveness that is afforded by the Catholic Church.’
***
Loreena McKennitt is one of the artists who sparked a renewed interest in Celtic folk music in the 1990s. Her background included both Protestant and Catholic influences. McKennitt states that she neither attends any church nor belongs to any religion and is ‘broadly spiritual.’ She rocked the goddess aesthetic with neopagan and witchy imagery, flowing black gowns, wild red hair. Her Celtic and world music connects us to pre-modern spirituality and nature. Her themes are divine communion and the interconnectedness of all life. Themes that followed neatly on the heels of the 1992 Rio Summit, or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or Earth Summit as it was also called. To my knowledge, McKennitt has not spoken about women’s reproductive rights, but has encouraged her listeners to vote, so that their votes can help fight climate change.
In this Alan Watt Redux from August 23, 2026, Alan talks at great length about conology and how we must participate in the con. People who live for pleasure and sensuality are the easiest to con. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Culture creation. My generation. We are more than fifty years since Roe v. Wade, when what was once a shocking exception became the rule. Your right. My body, my choice. Or as Billie Eilish screamed at her Texas audience at an Austin City Lights concert in October of 2021, ‘My body, my f**king choice.’ She said that she was so disgusted by Texas’ new, restrictive abortion laws she almost cancelled her performance in protest but then decided that would be a punishment to the fans. On stage, she loudly criticized ‘old men’ legislating women’s bodies and urged the audience to tell politicians to ‘shut the f*** up.’
In September of 2024, I made a Real History episode entitled “Mashup.” I started it with a Billie Eilish song entitled When The Party’s Over, where she sang about a toxic relationship, drank some black goo that was supposed to look like blood; tears of goo-blood ran down her cheeks. The story I was highlighting in that talk was the fact that a life-ending contraption called a Sarco Pod had been used in Switzerland. I simply read the stories, spliced in a bit of Alan talking about euthanasia, and then I included the clip of Eilish at Austin City Lights encouraging her fans to scream along with her, ‘My body, my f**king choice.’ I uploaded the video to the CTTM channels. After uploading the videos, I began checking all the sites to ensure it had gone smoothly. I saw that a handful of people had viewed “Mashup” on YouTube. I circled through once more, to make sure I’d done the playlists, disabled the comments (there’s just one of me and I can’t be a moderator too), and gotten it up on all six video platforms (this was before Substack). By the time I got back to YouTube, ten minutes after the initial upload, my video had been pulled. The offense was ‘promotion and/or glorification of suicide.’ I used every one of my 500 words in the rebuttal to state that the Sarco Pod articles that I read from were sourced from YouTube (note that those Sarco Pod videos are still up, two years later), and my commentary and that of Alan Watt were clearly against suicide in any form, state-sponsored or otherwise. My rebuttal was denied less than 20 minutes after I sent it. Further, I received a message from Google/YouTube inquiring about my mental health. ‘Are you okay? Please seek help for suicidal thoughts. Here are some resources you might find helpful.’
That motivated me to back that video up on one of the main CTTM websites. Here is a link where “Mashup” can be found at cuttingthroughthematrix.net and later I will upload it to Substack. My takeaway was that some people may talk about euthanasia and abortion, but evidently not me or Alan.
Here is Billie Eilish rocking the Oscar’s red carpet with a goth goddess look.
Trade secret alert: I start writing with a vague idea, a name, or a title, and I research as I write. Never the other way ‘round. It makes the process more interesting since I have no idea where I’m going. It is not destination writing, it’s a spontaneous road trip, a Sunday drive. The goddess Diana first came to mind, but I couldn’t pin a sacrifice on her, so I moved on to Artemis. Just now, typing in ‘Billie Eilish goddess’ I was returned this result from the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Even the academics have made a connection. Billie Eilish and the Transforming Artemis Archetype.
“She continues to embody the murky complexity and the unabashed certainty of the goddess archetype in a manner that somehow seemed reminiscent of Actaeon’s fateful encounter with the bathing Artemis. Campbell describes Acteon’s gaze on Artemis as lustful instead of honoring, a completely improper reaction to such a deity. “Seeing that look in his eye, Artemis simply splashed him with some water and he was turned into a stag, and his own dogs then consumed him.” (Campbell 113) Campbell goes on to say that the dogs represented Actaeon’s lower appetites, which are what actually caused his demise. Billie Eilish continues to create and radiate goddess energy, firing creative arrows into the world, and instead of fighting every potential attack that arises, allowing those that would attempt to tarnish the golden properties of the goddess to be consumed by their own lesser selves.
“…he was turned into a stag, and his own dogs then consumed him.” #metoo
That was written in September of 2021, after the release of Happier Than Ever, and a month before her Austin City Lights concert. I suspect the Joseph Campbell Foundation would have written approvingly about that performance; the goddess slaying it.
Today, after rendering and uploading the Redux to the video channels, I sent a message to GundG. “I’m going to start writing now. A title came to mind on my morning walk. If the goddess is bloodthirsty, is she still worthy of worship?’ GundG had no idea what was on my mind or what my talk was about, but Graeme had illustrated Alan’s talk for the Redux. He sent me back a link to Florence + the Machine and a message, “Here is a song to perhaps provide some inspiration on demon goddesses. If you haven’t heard of her, then I’ll fill you in later. Raised a Catholic, and a big player in creating a chaotic modern matriarch. Her lyrics are DARK! Sung with the voice of an angel.”
I had heard of Florence Welch, possibly sampled a song way back when. I looked her up on Wikipedia. Perfect. Absolutely perfect for the ideas swimming in my head. Welch had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage in August 2023 that required emergency surgery to remove a ruptured fallopian tube. She claims that it was this experience which moved her to become a vocal advocate for abortion rights, teaming up with Planned Parenthood in April of 2026 on her Everybody Scream tour to provide fans with reproductive health resources and information at concert venues. But was that miscarriage in 2023 the beginning of this phase of her ‘activism?’ The video of her 2012 song Spectrum (Say My Name) begins with light flowing from her crotch, as she celebrates sexual diversity and tolerance of people’s choices. In 2018, she tweeted in favor of the removal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. The removal passed and legalized abortion access within the country. Ireland. Predominantly Catholic. One of the last pillars bites the dust.
Scrolling through the comments of the first song Graeme sent me, Shake It Out, the word ‘goddess’ kept appearing. ‘She’s a goddess.’ ‘She has the voice of a goddess.’ ‘This audience is so dull. Do they not understand they are in the presence of a goddess?’
I sent Everybody Scream to Graeme. ‘Watch it.’ He and Gabriella did. ‘Pure evil! She is definitely possessed.’ Then later, ‘We think the flowers she has in her mouth are Pansies, Stiefmütterchen in German, and in Latin, Viola Tricolour-three colours, eh? Stiefmütterchen translates into ‘Stepmother’ most likely the evil one, and pansy is an effeminate male.’
The effeminate male is a caricature, but the neutered and silenced male is a reality that we have collectively created. For many years, we have participated in the con. ‘Toxic masculinity,’ ‘male privilege,’ ‘white male privilege.’ #metoo. Now, Billie Eilish screams that ‘old men’ should ‘shut the f**k up’ and her fans SCREAM adoringly.
Graeme wrote again. Maybe the flower was a violet. ‘In Greek, the violet is known as ‘ion.’ ‘The Ionians were known for wanton dances and songs, and wanton gestures were called Ionic motions.’
In most of ancient Greece, abortion was generally legal and considered a household matter. Plato and Aristotle considered population control important for managing household size and civic stability. Ancient Vedic laws of India were concerned with preserving the seed of the three upper castes, and various punishments were given to women who aborted, and priests who aided them. Ancient Assyrian law mandated death as the penalty for abortion. In World War II Vichy France, there were strict pronatalist laws to help build up the population from its war losses. Marie-Louise Giraud was the last person executed by guillotine in France specifically for performing abortions. She was beheaded on July 30, 1943, under the Vichy regime. Throughout history, different people have had widely varying ideas about life, what a fetus was, when abortion was acceptable, which herbs were abortifacient, et cetera. The early Christian treatise called the Didache which was written sometime before 100 AD states, ‘Do not murder a child by abortion or kill a new-born infant.’ It’s a cultural thing.
In this Redux, Alan Watt said, “People don’t know. You think you’re growing up in your own little bubble (again in your generation), you look around to the left and the right and there’s all the bubbles of your generation going along with you, like a straight line, you see. Just ahead of you you’ve got the older bubbles living in their generations, and everything that was normal to them is drifting off, and you are replacing it with your new normals. Which you think you all do yourself. Somehow, somehow you think that you designed the clothing you’re wearing. No, you didn’t. Somehow you think you designed the hairstyles you’re wearing. No, you didn’t. Somehow you think that you designed the music that was promoted. But you know you didn’t. Because you see, there are institutions above all these things, this is all part of the culture industry, and they decide what’s going to be pushed and what isn’t, you see.”
Florence Welch’s Planned Parenthood-sponsored tour was entitled Everybody Scream. Watch this video and ask yourself, ‘Who gave me my culture?’ If you were raised in a culture you thought of or think of as Christian, ask yourself, ‘Who has decided to destroy that? Why?’
Everybody Scream is where it goes when there is no longer a union of the god and the goddess, when only the goddess matters, when men and women are turned against each other, when marriages fail at the rate of one in two, when generations have grown up watching their favorite singers gyrate on a stage (the alter), nearly naked for fifty years, when people allow the ‘termination’ of 73 million unborn babies every year. It ends with a celebration of demonic possession and sexualized rage.
© Not Sure
Excellent essay! Thank you Melissa.
Maybe its me, but that "Florence" looks like a bloke in drag