新托福阅读材料汇总：Avatar and the sacred feminine

Tears flow as I watch the untold story of many people. Pain melts into ocean's blood running through my cheeks, liquid salt cleansing my soul. Sadness comes unannounced. Embracing me, it sits in my heart. Seeing this film rings a bell, a story repeating itself on another planet. Avatar is a film of mythical and epic proportions imbued with symbolism. It uncovers ancient truth shining through the mist of delusion. It is hard to digest for some, to see our own insanity mirrored, blocking our experience of life as a powerful current of interconnectedness flowing through every being.

This is not just the Na'vi story, this is every indigenous story on mother Earth, with their natural wisdom and connection to nature ridiculed, demonized, and oppressed. The Vatican has, in response to this film, warned everyone against seeing divinity in nature. We have heard this before and are still feeling the devastating effects of such narrow minded thinking. Those deeply rooted in the firm grip of logocentric discourse don't tire from mocking feelings of reverence, awe and magic found by communing with nature.

The Sacred Feminine is alive in Pandora. Interestingly, Pandora is the name of an ancient Goddess later disempowered and demonized by patriarchy, which considers Pandora the bestower of all evils by releasing them out into the world. However, the etymology of the word Pandora reveals a more ancient understanding of this Goddess, meaning "all-giving." And according to Janne Ellen Harrison, a British classical scholar, "Pandora rises from the earth; she is the Earth, giver of all gifts."

Pandora is a planet inhabited by The Na'vi, a Goddess based civilization. Their ultimate deity is female, Eywa, the Great Mother. Naturally, their spiritual leaders are female figures, Priestesses, empowered women in communion with this divine energy. Women are able to express their own power beyond the confines of what we consider feminine, this is full embodiment of fierce feminine expression. The scientist's ultimate confession of dwelling in the deity is revealing. She said "I am with her, SHE is real." She dies in this recognition and is only able to truly see and accept the sacred in her death as her veil is lifted when she returns to source. The Na'vi don't need to wait until death to feel this connection."