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The Myth of the Goddess
There are almost as many versions of this story as there are storytellers, but these are its basic contours:
In a time before written records, society was centered around women. Women were revered for their mysterious life-giving powers, honored as incarnations and priestesses of the great goddess. They reared their children to carry on their line, created both art and technology, and made important decisions for their communities.
Then a great transformation occurred -- whether through a sudden cataclysm or a long, drawn-out sea change -- and
ociety was thereafter dominated by men. This is the culture and the mindset that we know as "patriarchy," and in which we live today.
What the future holds is not determined, and indeed dep
ends most heavily on the actions that we take now: particularly as we b
ecome aware of our true history. But the pervasive hope is that the future will bring a time of peace, ecological balance, and harmony between the sexes, with women either recovering their past ascendancy, or at last establishing a truly egalitarian society under the aegis of the goddess.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Indeed, the myth of matriarchal prehistory is not a feminist creation, in spite of the aggressively feminist spin it has carried over the past twenty-five years. Since the myth was revived from classical Greek sources in 1861 by Johann Jakob Bachofen, it has had -- at best -- a very mixed record where feminism is concerned. The majority of men who championed the myth of matriarchal prehistory during its first ce
ntury (and they have mostly been men) have regarded patriarchy as an evolutionary advance over prehistoric matriarchies, in spite of some lingering nostalgia for women's equality or beneficent rule.
Feminists of the latter half of the twentieth century are not the first to find
in the myth of matriarchal prehistory a manifesto for feminist social change, but this has not been the dominant meaning attached to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, only the most recent.
(more at link
There are almost as many versions of this story as there are storytellers, but these are its basic contours:
In a time before written records, society was centered around women. Women were revered for their mysterious life-giving powers, honored as incarnations and priestesses of the great goddess. They reared their children to carry on their line, created both art and technology, and made important decisions for their communities.
Then a great transformation occurred -- whether through a sudden cataclysm or a long, drawn-out sea change -- and
ociety was thereafter dominated by men. This is the culture and the mindset that we know as "patriarchy," and in which we live today.
What the future holds is not determined, and indeed dep
ends most heavily on the actions that we take now: particularly as we b
ecome aware of our true history. But the pervasive hope is that the future will bring a time of peace, ecological balance, and harmony between the sexes, with women either recovering their past ascendancy, or at last establishing a truly egalitarian society under the aegis of the goddess.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Indeed, the myth of matriarchal prehistory is not a feminist creation, in spite of the aggressively feminist spin it has carried over the past twenty-five years. Since the myth was revived from classical Greek sources in 1861 by Johann Jakob Bachofen, it has had -- at best -- a very mixed record where feminism is concerned. The majority of men who championed the myth of matriarchal prehistory during its first ce
ntury (and they have mostly been men) have regarded patriarchy as an evolutionary advance over prehistoric matriarchies, in spite of some lingering nostalgia for women's equality or beneficent rule.
Feminists of the latter half of the twentieth century are not the first to find
in the myth of matriarchal prehistory a manifesto for feminist social change, but this has not been the dominant meaning attached to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, only the most recent.
(more at link