An introduction to a historical timeline that includes ancient matrilineal cultures.
Merlin Stone, born on September 27, 1931, spent over 12 years of her life from 1967 to 1979 researching and writing about Matriarchal Goddess worshiping cultures. Her two books, When God Was a Woman (1976) and Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood (1984), were the result.
Her work came at the beginning edge of the second wave feminist movement and was both the impetus for and foundation of the consequent growth of the women’s spirituality movement. Backed by research and facts, she created a more representative, documented historical timeline that included goddess worshiping cultures, giving women a legitimate place in the history of world religions, proving there was a time in history where, for women, there was A God who Looks like Me which became the title of a book written by Patricia Lynn Reilly published in 1995.
“In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?” When God Was a Woman. p. 1.
Merlin Stone was the first person to bring a full-bodied consciousness to the fact that there was a time when veneration of a female deity was central to an extraordinary number of cultures of the world. She spent many years researching this fact with greater accuracy and subtlety than anyone else. She gathered evidence by researching pre-patriarchal cultures in all these places: China, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Central and South America, Native Americans of Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Argentina and Brazil, the Semites of Cannan and Mesopotamia and Arabia, Africa, Oceana, Native Americans of North America, Japan, Scandinavia, Greece, Crete and the Aegean. All are illuminated in her second publication, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood.
Merlin’s basic premise may seem familiar, but bears repeating: “Why do so many people, educated in this century think of Classical Greece as the first major culture, when written language was in use and great cities were built at least twenty-five centuries before that time? And perhaps more important, why is it continually inferred that the age of the ‘pagan’ religions, the time of the worship of female deities (if mentioned at all) was dark, chaotic, mysterious and evil, without the light of order and reason that supposedly accompanied later male religions, when it has been archeologically confirmed that the earliest law, government, medicine, agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, wheeled vehicles, ceramics, textiles, and written language were initially developed in societies that worshiped the Goddess.” When God Was a Woman (1976)
I have often thought about how and why our historical calendar essentially began with the birth of Christ. In the end, Merlin felt the way to remedy this ethnocentric assumption was to create a calendar that included ancient cultures by adding 9,000 years onto the current date which would mean that we are currently living in the year 11,019. The history of matrilineal/matrifocal would allow for a more balanced understanding of world cultures as It would be inclusive rather than exclusive of the feminine principle.
“The Great Goddess--the Divine Ancestress--had been worshiped from the beginnings of the Neolithic periods of 7000 BC until the closing of the last Goddess temples, about AD 500. Some authorities would extend Goddess worship as far into the past as the Upper Paleolithic Age of about 25,000 BC. Yet events of the Bible, which we are taught to think of as taking place “in the beginning of time,” actually occurred in historic periods. Abraham, first prophet of the Hebrew-Christian god Yahweh, more familiarly known as Jehovah, is believed by most Bible scholars to have lived no earlier than 1800 BC and possibly as late as 1550 BC.
Most significant is the realization that for thousands of years both religions existed simultaneously--among closely neighboring peoples. Archeological, mythological and historical evidence reveal that female religion, far from naturally fading away was the victim of centuries of continual persecution and suppression by the advocated of the newer religions which held male deities as supreme.” When God was a Woman, p.xii-xiii.
Merlin studied legends, temple sites, statues and the ancient rituals of female deities and discovered that there was an age when the “Goddess was omnipotent and women acted as Her clergy, controlling the form and rites of religion.” p. 2. The next few blog posts will include some of her most interesting findings and conclusions, but first I would like to present a rough and incomplete representation of Merlin’s Goddess History Timeline. When I put up a larger representation of this on the wall of the classroom, it was pretty obvious how AD was a very small portion of the whole historical record of world culture.
Note: “Merlin’s Stone Goddess Timeline” is a document that we have sent to our readers separately and will be posted on our Resources page.
I hope you will be inspired to read her books. The feminine principle owes her a debt of gratitude. Thank you, Merlin!