So what did Merlin Stone learn and conclude? She says, “It was quite apparent that the myths and legends that grew from and were propagated by a religion in which the deity was female and revered as wise, valiant, powerful and just, provided very different images of womanhood from those we are offered by male-oriented religions of today.” When God was a Woman, p. 3
She also had some personal revelations that are applicable to the culture as a whole. She shared them in a chapter that she called, “Tales from a point of view.”
“I recall somewhere along the pathway of my life I had been told --and accepted--the idea that the sun, great and powerful, was naturally worshiped, as male, while the moon, hazy, delicate symbol of sentiment and love, had always been revered as female in the lands of Canaan, Anatolia, Arabia, and Australia, While Sun Goddesses among Eskimos, the Japanese and the Kahsis of India were accompanied by subordinate brothers who were symbolized by the moon.” p. 2
“I had somewhere assimilated the idea that the earth was invariably identified as Female, Mother Earth, the one who passively accepts the seed, while heaven was naturally and inherently male, its intangibility symbolic of the supposedly exclusive ability to think in abstract concepts. This too I accepted without question--until I learned that nearly all female deities of the Near and Middle east were titled Queen of Heaven, and in Egypt not only was the ancient Goddess Nut known as the heavens but her brother-husband Geb was symbolized as the earth.” p. 2
“Most astonishing of all was the discovery of numerous accounts of the female Creators of all existence, divinities who were credited with bringing forth not only the first people but the entire earth and the heavens above. There were records of such Goddesses in Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Africa, Australia and China.” p. 2
“In most archaeology texts the female religion is referred to as a “fertility cult,” perhaps revealing the attitudes toward sexuality held by the various contemporary religions that may have influenced the writers. But archaeological and mythological evidence of the veneration of the female deity as creator and lawmaker of the universe, prophetess, provider of human destinies, inventor, healer, hunter, and valiant leader in battle suggests that the title, “fertility cult” may be an gross oversimplification of a complex theological structure.” p. xix.
One of the biggest difficulties Merlin found in her research was in the interpretation of archaeological artifacts and writings which all contained the bias of the observer. If you are a product of Western (and other) religious beliefs, that is the frame of reference when looking at artifacts, it is a male God that is assumed. When goddess figurines were discovered, they were pronounced “images of a fertility cult,” even if the number of finds was far greater than the male images. That one image was declared the ‘God’ image.
I had direct experience of this while in Crete where we visited matrifocal/matrilineal sites. On many of the doorsteps to homes were found red triangles. To the early male perceivers, these were an unexplained curiosity. Later, to the female archaeologists they were recognized as the symbol of a woman’s pubic triangle, indicating, most likely that when you stepped into your home, you were stepping into the place of the sacred feminine.
The following is just a tiny portion of the information that Merlin stone discovered and “another point of view” interpretation of it.
“In India, the Goddess Sarasvati was honored as the inventor of the original alphabet, while in Celtic Ireland the Goddess Brigit was esteemed as the patron deity of language. Texts revealed that it was the Goddess Nidabe in Sumer who was paid honor as the one who initially invented clay tablets and the art of writing. She appeared in that position earlier than any of the male deities who later replaced Her. The official scribe of the Sumerian heaven was a woman. But most significant was the archaeological examples of writing so far discovered; these were also located in Sumer, at the temple of the Queen of Heaven in Erech, written over five thousand years ago. Though writing is most often said to have been invented by man, however that may be defined, the combination of the above facts presents a most convincing argument that it may have actually been woman who pressed those first meaningful marks into wet clay.” p. 3
In support of Merlin Stone’s theories, Robert Graves, poet and mythologist states, “The whole of Neolithic Europe, to judge from surviving artifacts and myths, had a remarkably homogeneous system of religious ideas based on the many titled Mother goddess, who was also known in Syria and Lybia…..The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not yet been introduced into religious thought.” p. 23.
The more I immersed myself in Merlin’s writing and thoughts, I pondered the forming of our nation and wondered what did we eliminate when we left out the ideas, intellect and efforts of over 50% of our population? And that is just our nation—what about the rest of the world? I am heartened by what is happening in my time and my nation. Our survival on the planet may be dependent upon the up and coming generation emerging “out of the patriarchal box,” the traditional/historically bound thinking. No longer need our economic growth be tied to the military/industrial complex. It can be linked with a more constructive, generative vs destructive, consumption ethos that the feminine principle, hopefully, is poised to bring into being.
The Partnership model proposed by Riane Eisler is looking better and more balanced. (More to come in future blog posts.) The Partnership model is predicated on a balanced model of masculine and feminine energy contributions in order to work towards ‘wholeness’ and the survival of our planet. We have come back to the Yin/Yang model of wholeness!