The Iconic Woman ...in archaeology

[Dover]

Reaching into archaic times for the long view of human culture, we are presented with deep continuities across space and time. Striking commonalities recur in the symbols and ritual artifacts of diverse neolithic cultures. These international patterns are not limited to the 6th millennium BCE, but also appear in more recent indigenous societies in the Americas, Africa, and certain parts of Asia. Once we break out of a fixation on “the West” and its claimed antecedents, a much more varied chronological picture appears.

In-depth regional studies are important. There is no substitute for the rich detail they offer, and an understanding of historical continuity over long periods of time is indispensable. But a broad comparative perspective also has the potential to enrich the regional studies, highlighting similarities that transcend known patterns of historical relationship or cultural diffusion. What is most significant about these resemblances is not stylistic but thematic.

Several key themes of the iconic woman repeat on a global scale: vulva signs, female figurines, ancestor megaliths, and ceremonial vessels in the form of women or female breasts. These recurring signs reflect the spiritual concerns and ritual life of the people who created them. They belong to animist consciousness and philosophies, rich in complex meanings underlain with myth and mystery, pulse and flow. Sign is especially important to cultures based on oral tradition, conveying meaning on multiple levels. Where the transmission of orature has been interrupted or severed, signs remain as primary testimony to the cultural life of ancient cultures.

The concept of Matrix exemplifies the multivalent capacity of the sacred sign. By Icons of the Matrix I mean several things. One is the matrix of time and space, which various cultures call Mother Nature, Priroda, Prakriti, Aluna, or Tao. The Tao Te Ching describes it as “the creating Mother of everything that exists under heaven, upon which myriads of beings depend for their birth and existence.”

The Latin word matrix originally meant “womb,” from the same Indo-European root that gives mother, mater, meter, matr, mat’ and other equivalents. Matrix also encompasses a sense of kinship systems based on “mother-right,” that are matrilineal, matrilocal, and egalitarian. I call them “matrix cultures” because for many people “matriarchy” implies a mirror image of patriarchy’s relations of domination and subordination.(1) The social sense of “matrix” connotes other meanings: a life-support network within the maternal kindreds, which are cooperative and communal, and circles of exchange that reach beyond it. These are core values in the matrix cultures.

Any discussion of the nearly omnipresent female figurines must address the vexed problem of interpretation, the storm center of much controversy. Much current analysis still subscribes to doctrines that relations of domination and subordination are unavoidable and that human society has always functioned on patriarchal principles. These beliefs entail assumptions about who women are, what they must be and do, and perhaps more crucially, what they have or have not done. (And even though men get credited with creating civilization, they are also cast as natural bullies.) To contradict these assumptions by asserting that patriarchy was a historical development is to risk accusations of “golden age” utopianism. Nor is it considered realistic -- or acceptable -- to speak of the ancient female iconography as sacred....>

http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/icons.html


Breastpot

[The Traveler]

1. What went wrong? (This was a fascinating post.)

The details are so obscure. But there are tantalizing hints that there were large urban centers (e.g. Catal Hyak in Turkey) which were supported almost exclusively by agriculture, and that these centers were dominated by matriarchy. The Goddess ruled, and indeed may have subjugated, the God.

Something happened. The God struggles for acendancy. Egyptian mythology in particular is replete with stories of this struggle.

And in the early stories, the significant "older male/mentor" is the Mother's brother. Later, almost suddenly, it changes and the father becomes the significant older male.

All this is fascinating, and terribly unclear. Academics seem determined to resist the idea of early matriarchal civilizations, as if the very idea were somehow abomination.

This, too, is obviously an out of balance condition. The results are evident all around us. Our politics, our economics, our technologies are all affected. The result resembles nothing so much as a family whose members are in a burning house, yet insist on fighting each other for dominance.

[omega minimo]

3. The One God happened and the Bible records the eradication

of the heathens. The tradition was established, the history was re/written and today "academics seem determined to resist the idea of early matriarchal civilizations, as if the very idea were somehow abomination."

5,000 year old propaganda?

[The Traveler]

4. Worse

The idea of the Divine as personality happened. The Divine is transcendent. The instant we transform it to man or woman, Jew or gentile, black or white, we lose it and havoc is wreaked.

As evidenced by propaganda that is, as you say, about 5000 years old.

[omega minimo]

6. So who put god in a jar?

:hide:

[Dover]

7. Yes, matrilinear and matriarchal societies offer us moderns a whole new

(or rather 'ancient') paradigm, but it is very threatening (as though it might castrate or weaken) to the masculine dominance paradigm we are playing out to the bitter end. We are indeed, out of balance....but can men embrace rather than suppress or distort the feminine that resides within themselves and within us all? It seems to me that this needs to be the first step...to form that relationship within themselves.

How would such a paradigm shift, as with the acknowledgement of these matriarchal societies, effect our Western culture? Is the 'sustainability' movement part of a shift?


Here's an excerpt from a book titled, Ancient Future:

In the region of the globe called the southern cradle by Cheikh Anta Diop, matriarchy was in full flower from the most ancient period. Dre. Charles S. Finch, III, reported that "the southern cradle was distinguished by agrarian societies in which the female/maternal role was dominant because...of intra-group harmony, an intimate relationship with nature, and the central place of the mother in family and social affairs (which) promoted a co-operative, non-competitive social ethic...allowing the elaboration of ever-more complex social systems." Finch drew attention to several elements that were not only exclusive to matriarchal culture but literally intrinsic to its survival. Finch continued,

...farming was almost certainly a female invention; it strengthened and amplified the matriarchy while materially and symbolically enriching it...If the figure of the Egyptian goddess Sesheta is any indication, women may have even presided over the beginnings of writing. the attributes of this patron deity of writing powerfully suggest a female provenance for this profoundly important skill...though other forms of writing developed in Egypt...hieroglyphs were reserved for all ceremonial and sacred inscriptions. They are the surest keys to Egypt's psycho-mytho=historical ethos and we may presume that they were legacies of the matriarchate.

Though Finch treads somewhat cautiously in his assessments of the cultrual pervasiveness of women's contributions to civilization, history clearly substantiates his claims. In the Babylonian tradition of West Asia, the noble art of tablet writing belonged to a select group identified as mari-anu. In ancient Egypt, a similar word, mari-en, was the title given to the scribes of old. Both words translate as "great one" or "mother". This title would later become the name of the Semitic Goddess Mari-Anna, whose other appellation was Ishtar, "the great goddess and mother who has borne the men with the black heads." The Egyptian goddess Sesheta or Seshat, whose name means "lady of the builder's measure", is also heralded as the founder of the science of architecture.

In his voluminous, The Mothers, Robert Briffault reported, "Woman was the creator of the primordial elements of civilization...the richer perceptions and interpretations that color the actualities of life, all art, all poetic sentiment, are irradiations of those extra-individualistic, racial interests of the female."

..snip..

When the oldest traditions are examined for the earliest mention of a creation myth, there is discussion of a Goddess' Mother-heart, shaping life, creating order, and bringing about cosmic organization. The ancient Egyptians called this Mother-heart principle, which unified all things, the "ab". This Egyptian concept of the "ab" included not only the soul given each individual by her/his own mother's heart, but also the hidden heart of the universe.

Frobenius (1873-1938), while in Kush (Ethiopia), was perplexed by the system and custom of women being the dominant class. Though he admired the social tranquility and the extremely organized communities he encountered on his sojourn, he was compelled to inquire about what to him was a bewildering cultural phenomenon: the matriarchate. he implored an Ethiopian woman to explain this concept to him and she responded:

How can a man know what a woman's life is? His life and body are always the same. The woman conceives. As a mother she is another person from the woman without child. She carries the fruit of the night nine months long in her body. Something grows. She is a mother. Something grows into her life that never again departs from it. She is and remains a mother even if her child dies. For at one time she carried the child under her heart. And it does not go out of her heart ever again. All this the man does not know. he knows nothing. He does not know the difference before love and after love, before motherhood and after motherhood. He can know nothing. Only a woman can know that and speak of that. That is why we won't be told what to do by our husbands.

[omega minimo]

8. Clue

"...an intimate relationship with nature...."

[Dover]

9. Yes, but what would that look like? Be like?

It would require a radical change at every level of our society...no small task...though there are some signs of such a change. Just not happening fast enough for this weary planet.

[omega minimo]

10. It is intrinsic to the cultures in the article

and all aboriginal cultures.

The Traveler said "The idea of the Divine as personality happened. The Divine is transcendent." (Still not sure who put god in a jar).

These are the clues. The false separations must be healed.

"It would require a radical change at every level of our society...no small task." So there are lots of areas/opportunities to heal the phony splits that permeate "civilization."

Since this is the Science forum, we can look to the New Physics. And in nature, when do people start seeing ourselves as part of the earth and the Universe, instead of Watts-ish "bags of skin" that just happen to be here?

It will be a transformation of consciousness and it is happening. As for "fast enough," scientists probably know a lot about cumulative or exponential effects and tipping points.

Are we there yet?

:bounce:

[omega minimo]

2. Interesting that it is so controversial

"Much current analysis still subscribes to doctrines that relations of domination and subordination are unavoidable and that human society has always functioned on patriarchal principles. These beliefs entail assumptions about who women are, what they must be and do, and perhaps more crucially, what they have or have not done. (And even though men get credited with creating civilization, they are also cast as natural bullies.) To contradict these assumptions by asserting that patriarchy was a historical development is to risk accusations of “golden age” utopianism. Nor is it considered realistic -- or acceptable -- to speak of the ancient female iconography as sacred...."

since the archeological record supports the existence of these cultures and the Bible describes their systematic annihilation.

Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

[newswolf56]

5. Thank you for posting this. To those of us familiar with...

...Gimbutas, Farias et al, this work is a vital update, all the more so because the sources of such genuinely useful material -- scholarly rather than faddist or merely vacuous -- seem increasingly difficult to find. I especially appreciate Dasau's thought-provoking deconstruction of the artificial division of this breathtakingly ancient and universally human culture into meaningless geopolitical segments. Though I will still argue that "Western Civilization" begins not with the Cross but with the Standing Stone -- my argument made legitimate not only by the inclusion of so much "pagan" wisdom and symbolism within Christianity, but by the fact that it is Christendom (or more specifically the Counterculture therein) that resurrected the female aspects of divinity for the modern world.

That said, I am as bewildered as anyone by how this life-celebrating ethos could ever have been overthrown (and what cultural artifact is more assertively life-celebrating than vulva-inscribed stones erected to clock the sun, moon, stars and seasons?). Especially since the overthrow was accomplished by an ethos so murderous -- the Yehvehistic mandate to conquer and subdue -- its ultimate symbol is indeed not its alleged Cross of redemption but rather the thermonuclear doomsday machine: the consummate image of a vengeful and destructive god. It is from this perspective I argue that the resurrection of the Goddess is the most radical (and most optimistic) portent in human history -- the postmodernists be twice damned, since it is their semiotic closed-mindedness that renders them not only unable to comprehend the "revolution in consciousness" itself, but also unable to see that this turn of events is precisely why Jihadist Islam so despises America, where that matrix-resurrection, however maddeningly slow, has nevertheless has progressed the furthest.

[trotsky]

11. It's not that Xianity overthrew female worship,

more that it absorbed it in order to convert the pagans. Once absorbed, it was neatly tucked into its proper place. Mary, while respected and prayed to, is clearly subservient to God the Father as well as her own Son. Not to mention her perpetual virginity, further cementing the point that a woman only has value while she remains sexually "pure."

Regarding your theory that jihad is a result of our culture turning back to a form of female worship - I'm having a tough time following that one. Radical islamists hate us for a number of reasons, most notably how SECULAR our society has become, but also how we support some of the most murderous and anti-women regimes in the world. (Saudi Arabia being the primary example.) Modern American culture, while certainly fascinated with the artificial exaggeration of the female form (boob jobs, thin waists, red lips, etc.), is far from worshipping women.

[newswolf56]

16. Your notion of "absorbed" ignores the Inquisition...

...the purpose of which was as much the extermination of Paganism as it was the enforcement of doctrinal conformity within Christendom. It also ignores the many instances in history in which Pagan populations were converted "by the sword," as in the activities of the (Christian) Teutonic Knights in (Pagan) Russia. Note for example the Russian national epic, Alexandr Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein's film of that name is still a worthwhile viewing). But the war on European Paganism predates Christianity; it was begun by the Romans -- who, politically sophisticated as anyone today -- recognized that the destruction of native culture was essential to the permanence of conquest.

As to modern American culture, please don't misquote me or put words in my mouth. I never said American culture worships women -- nor did I say anything remotely approaching that. I said instead that America is the place where the resurrection of the Goddess "however maddeningly slow, has nevertheless has progressed the furthest." The truth of this statement will be immediately apparent to anyone who visits a bookstore or library: the plethora of books published during the past 30 years on Goddess-centered spirituality and the Pagan renaissance. (The process was begin by a British poet, Robert Graves, in the late 1930s, but the torch has since then been taken up by Americans, both on the pop/fad level and on several levels of literature and serious scholarship. By its citations of Gimbutas, the article that began this thread is clearly an example of the latter type work.)

Note too that Paganism may also be the fastest growing spirituality in America -- there is controversy over this -- but that in any case the U.S. armed forces have been forced to accommodate Pagans by instituting Pagan chaplaincies. Because today's Paganism is Goddess-centered, it is the spiritual expression of the same "revolution in consciousness" impulse that led politically to the Women's Liberation Movement (late 1960s/early 1970s) and the general renaissance of American feminism that continues to this day. The selfsame impulse led also to environmentalism and eco-feminism, the latter closely connected with the resurrection of the Goddess at least symbolically and often as a matter of vision and practice. Whatever else divinities may be, the Jungians are right: all deities are symbiotic -- reflections of their societies, even as these societies are reflections of the prevalent form of that ultimate abstraction labeled "the divine."

As to Islam, I wonder from what propaganda-pamphlet you get the notion "radical Islamists hate us...for how we support some of the most...anti-woman regimes in the world." Fundamentalist Islam with its honor killings, stonings and female circumcision is the most violently misogynistic, murderously sexist religion on the planet -- worse even than Fundamentalist Christianity. No religion on Earth so fears and despises women. Thus the Jihadist hatred of America, though undeniably also fueled by other (less esoteric) motives, is bound to be an expression of the extent to which it is threatened by the resurrection of the Goddess. And don't make the ethnocentric error of assuming the Islamic authorities do not carefully study Western culture. In fact they study us in depth. The resurrection of the Goddess is thus a development of which they are fully aware -- and by which they are thoroughly enraged. Here is a revealing link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1398055,00.html

Ah ha, you might exclaim; the target here is ultimately secularism after all. But the Yehvehistic distinction between secular and non-secular, between sacred and profane, is so limiting it is often meaningless (and thus useless) distinction. What Yehvehistic Fundamentalists whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim damn as the "secular agenda" includes precisely the religious liberties -- and the ultimate potential of those liberties -- that are allowing Paganism its resurrection and renaissance. The fact that Fundamentalist resistance to those liberties has intensified to an unprecedented level of hatred and violence just as the resurrection/renaissance process intensifies its creation of a new spirituality -- again the "revolution in consciousness" -- is surely no coincidence. We are indeed facing a clash of civilizations. But as the Muse-poet Tim Buckley once noted, it is also true that "no man can find the war." This is because the clash is NOT Christendom versus Islam. It is instead Yehvehistic patriarchy versus that which is being born to replace it: a genuine spiritual renaissance fueled not just by the resurgent Goddess and the rediscovery of Paganism but by the fertile inputs of Zen and Taoism and American Aboriginal visions and other threads as yet impossible to name or foresee. We cannot say what the end result will be. But we can surely speculate. As is foretold in one of the Ghost Dance chants:

The white man's god has forsaken him
-- let us go and look for our Mother.

[Dover]

18. A wonderful post!

Interesting food for thought. A question about this statement:

This is because the clash is NOT Christendom versus Islam. It is instead Yehvehistic patriarchy versus that which is being born to replace it: a genuine spiritual renaissance fueled not just by the resurgent Goddess and the rediscovery of Paganism but by the fertile inputs of Zen and Taoism and American Aboriginal visions and other threads as yet impossible to name or foresee. We cannot say what the end result will be. But we can surely speculate.

How do you feel the fundamentalist element in the current American leadership plays into this? On the one hand, their own jihad against fundamentalist Islam seems to take issue with, among many other things, the very issues you have already expressed regarding secularism and the abuse of women. And yet, this same group is at war with women's empowerment in our own culture. These two fundamentalist regimes seem to at once be at war with one another, while simultaneously holding many of the same values and dogmatic beliefs.

Perhaps the answer is that they have simply co-opted the women's cause regarding abuses within fundamentalist Islam for political expediency. That's assuming a certain level of conscious awareness
and intent which may or may not be present.

Certainly the new Pope is concerning as well, seeming to be one who might have felt quite at home with the core issues driving the Inquisition.

[newswolf56]

19. I think you are correct that at least two forces are at work...

...in the U.S. resurgence of Fundamentalism. One is its natural xenophobic hostility to anything (including womanhood) that is not of itself -- ultimately its Yehvehistic instinct to enslave or exterminate anything defined as "the other." This is surely threatening enough, especially grafted (as it obviously is) onto the ever-present American impulse toward fascism and bonded as well to the neofeudal (or, more technically correct, neomanorial) economy that is global capitalism. But there is another trend that is potentially many times more dangerous: Bush adviser Grover Norquist's scheme to build an alliance of Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims on the basis of their shared and mutual hatreds: of women's rights, of gays and lesbians, of civil rights in general, ultimately hatred of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself. Here are two significant links, one Rightist (expressing the Right's growing concern with Norquist's connections to radical Islam), one Leftist exploring the near omnipotence of Norquist within the Bush Regime:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11209

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010514&s=dreyfuss

What clarifies my analysis is that unlike many Leftists I do not deny the reality of Islamic aggression. If Christian Fundamentalists continue fighting Jihadist Islam, eventually the Christians will realize that fate has placed them in the ironic role of serving the destruction of patriarchy -- the very revolution they most despise -- and I think when that occurs, there is little doubt they will attempt to impose theocracy by force. Indeed their doctrines already point toward such an effort: taking power by the ballot and then overthrowing Constitutional governance. If on the other hand Christian Fundamentalists form a united front with Islam, I believe it virtually guarantees America the double horror of (first) the forcible imposition of theocracy and (next) reduction to mere satrapy and thus dhimmitude under the Jihadists' intended global caliphate. Either alternative is unspeakably grim: by itself, an attempt to forcibly impose theocracy could not but precipitate religious warfare of the sort that wracked Europe from the Albigensian Crusade onward. An attempt to impose theocracy with Islamic assistance would be even worse: it would of necessity include the invitation of troops from Islamic nations onto U.S. soil. And the precedent for such a united front exists: the Nazi alliance with Islamic leaders in the Middle East, which included the formation of Islamic regiments within the Waffen SS.

One development could save us. The non-Fundamentalist population could awaken to the magnitude of the Fundamentalist threat, rise against theocratic tyranny and repudiate the Fundamentalists at the ballot box, uprooting their conspiracies before they bear their strange and bloody fruit. Something similar happened with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which preserved Constitutional governance from two threatened revolutions: one Communist, one Fascist. At the same time, it is entirely possible the Fundamentalists may have a great awakening of their own, spontaneously encountering the divine female much as a generation of people in analysis did during the 1960s and 1970s (for which see Edward C. Whitmont's The Return of the Goddess) -- even as the Counterculture was at its innermost wellspring the expression of the same vision on an altogether more earthy level. Ultimately I think it depends on which force is stronger: the urge toward life, symbolized by the resurrected Goddess, or the urge toward extinction, symbolized by Yehveh.

The unknown factor in this dismal equation is the plutocracy: which side will the lords of the global economy support? If one reasons from the (again relevant) Marxist premise that the ultimate struggle of the past 88 years has been monopoly capitalism's effort to protect itself by imposing global fascism, first German/Italian/Japanese, now American -- that the real turning points in this struggle were the defeat of the New Deal at home and the collapse of the Soviet Union abroad -- then the probability is the plutocracy will intervene on the side of tyranny, facilitating the creation of Concentration-Camp Earth and creating the ultimate irony of Communist China -- now the most savage despotcy on the planet -- becoming by default the last remaining defender of liberty. Indeed, if this scenario is accurate, it may be that outsourcing is -- whether consciously or not -- the plutocracy's evacuation of production facilities in advance of pending warfare, either civil (as in theocrats versus libertarians) or international (as in the People's Republic of China versus the neo-manorial economy of global capitalism). But other scenarios are probably equally possible, including the fragmenting of the global economy into rival camps along functional lines: exploitative industries (which could profit from slavery) on one side, high-tech industries (which require at least some degree of intellectual freedom) on another. In this context note that some of the high-tech industries have been leaders in underwriting the environmental movement and even eco-feminism. History, though spun of cause and effect, is seldom truly linear.

Thus, perhaps foolishly, I believe U.S. liberty will survive -- though just barely -- if only because of the vital role it is playing in the erosion of patriarchy and the associated spiritual revolution: this even as the U.S. economy dwindles to nationwide poverty of the sort once characteristic only of Appalachia; the present-day oil crisis is merely the beginning. Globally what is probably most likely is some yet-unclear combination of all of the above economic possibilities including eventual oil-war with China. In any case, patriarchy is coming undone, and the scope of action allowed The Man narrows inexorably. As Graves noted in the closing chapter of The White Goddess, "The Goddess smiles grimly at his predicament." Old as I am, I will probably not be alive to see the resolution of these trends or the final outcome -- at least not with these eyes. And for that I am profoundly thankful; I firmly believe that -- just as Dylan foretold -- "a hard rain is gonna fall" before human society is reconstituted in a genuinely just framework on a sustainable scale.

But I am even more thankful for your question, which drew my thinking in a new direction, expanding it toward the more specifically political implications of the "revolution in consciousness." If you want to discuss any of these matters further, please feel free to PM me; the resurrection of the Goddess has been a nearly lifelong study of mine.

Edit: two minor corrections.

[trotsky]

21. I think you're projecting your absolutism onto me.

Xianity didn't use the sole tactic of absorption to vanquish the female-centered religions, but I'm saying it was one very important tool. Yes, conquest and extermination were others. But you'll get a lot farther wooing converts (witness the traditional Xian holidays that have no relevance to bible data but a CLOSE correlation with Roman pagan holidays) than killing them all and waiting for your loyal followers to breed in their place.

Regarding my other point, I was evidently not clear. The radical Islamists hate us for our support of specifically the Saudi Royal Family, which ALSO is very anti-woman, as are the Islamists. They don't hate us for supporting something that is anti-woman per se, they just hate us for supporting that government, which also happens to be anti-woman. I didn't get that from any propaganda pamphlet :eyes:, it came from common knowledge.

And finally, paganism could indeed be "the fastest growing spirituality in America" - it all depends on how you (mis)use the statistics. If I started a cult with myself as its sole member, and next year I converted 5 followers, well I'd have a 500% growth rate, wouldn't I? Xianity, starting with, say, 200,000,000 followers, growing by 1,000,000, would grow by only 5%. Statistically, my cult's growth rate SMASHED Xianity's, and would probably easily qualify as the "fastest growing spirituality in America." But my religion only has 6 members now, while the Xians outnumber me by over 200 million.

[newswolf56]

22. My 'absolutism,' as you term it, is simply a knowledge...

...of history. Your pagan-friendly brand of Christianity pretty much ceased to exist after the Edict of Milan, 313 AD, by which the Emperor Constantine officially imposed Christianity on the Roman Empire -- just as today's Fundamentalists want to do to the United States (and undoubtedly with the same result). In any case, from 313 on, Christianity didn't need to persuade or absorb. It had the hobnailed might of officialdom behind it, and the preferred method of winning converts became the swiftest one: by proclamation and/or the sword. (Indeed the U.S. Constitutional mandate for separation of church and state may be said to have been necessitated by precisely this episode -- especially its uncountably bloody aftermath.)

As to radical Islam, the so-called "common knowledge" in this instance is often indistinguishable from propaganda -- and is also dead wrong. In the first place, the Saudi Royal Family (with its bottomless funding of the Wahabi cult) is the financial mainstay of Jihadist Islam -- a connection the Bush Regime does everything in its power to cover up. In the second, history makes it clear the Jihadists despise us not because of our policies but because of who we are. The atrocity of 9/11 was not a policy-protest; it was an act of genocide.

Lastly, please don't try to discredit me by implying, however awkwardly, that I deliberately "(mis)use" statistics. I stated very clearly that I was reporting a controversial claim and thought it an unnecessary distraction to elaborate further. Attack my arguments, and I will respond, as I have above. Attack my credibility and I will point out your tactic and then simply ignore you.

[trotsky]

23. And your knowledge of history...

appears to be simply a projection of arrogance that YOUR interpretation is the only correct one. Since you are not open to any new ideas, I can see why you would prefer to ignore me.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. History shows that the Standing Stone cultures were conquered by

other polytheistic cultures, such as the Romans and Greeks. And you can't deny that they were murderous, and thought they had a mandate to conquer and subdue.

[newswolf56]

14. Sorry but there is a vast psychological difference...

...between conquest openly undertaken for territorial, economic or political gain (for example the Roman conquest of Gaul and Britain) and conquest undertaken "because Yehveh commands it" (the conquests and massacres perpetuated by the Yehvehistic religions: Old-Testament Judaism, Christianity, Islam). The former is merely yet another expression of the dark side of human existence -- crimes of covetousness perpetrated not by robbers and thieves but by politicians and oligarchs. The latter -- human sacrifice on a genocidal scale -- is identical to the serial murder committed by sociopaths.

Though I doubt it makes much difference to the dead.

All cultures and civilizations practice savagery, especially the making of war -- an ugly fact of humanity that is the major Christian argument for "original sin." But only Yehvehistic cultures build, worship (and use) doomsday machines: the mirror image of the god who once destroyed the world by flood and threatens to do it again by fire and/or apocalypse.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. But few conquests have been because of a monotheistic command

They are nearly all for economic gain, when it comes down to it (territorial and political gain are normally economic at the base). The Crusades were partly, maybe mainly, religious - but they were two Abrahamic religions against each other. The Taiping rebellion had a strong component of a weird combination of Christianity and a personality cult. The initial conquests that spread Islam through Arabia and North Africa seem, at first glance, to be religious too, but I don't know them well enough to know if there wasn't a strong economic component too. I don't think Judaism has ever undertaken a religious conquest. In general, religion is just used as a convenient excuse for why ones side has the right to kill the other. And the polytheistic Romans thought they had a destiny to conquer their known world too.

The only 'doomsday machine' that has been built is the nuclear bomb; although only the USA has used it, the Soviet Union and China have built plenty too, while being atheist; and India is predominantly Hindu, and has now built some.

[newswolf56]

17. The dominant global culture even in places like India...

...or the former U.S.S.R. is Yehvehistic; the Soviet Union merely replaced Yehveh/Czar with the state -- the underlying reason for the failure of Marxism in Russia. Sometimes division into categories hides the forest within the trees -- ironically one of the very points made by the essay that began this thread.

As to the religious conquests of Judaism, read the Old Testament, which celebrates the extermination of entire peoples.

Feminists -- with whom I have a great many tactical differences but few if any metaphysical differences -- argue compellingly the macrocosm that is genocide and the microcosm that is domestic violence are each intrinsic to patriarchy. This is because patriarchy -- ultimately a system headed by a male god -- demands (first) the creation of an artificial hierarchy ("god made the world in six days" as opposed to "in the beginning was the mother and she gave birth"), and (second) a regime of murder to maintain the hierarchy (the Yehvehistic mandate to conquer and exploit versus the eco-feminist and Pagan mandate to live as part of what Gary Snyder calls "the earth household," as if one were a tiny twig growing from an infinitely huge tree). Even allowing for the excesses of idealism and utopianism, it should be patently obvious that it would be much easier to sell the public on the necessity for, say, effective social services, if everybody believed that we are all children of the same mother or twigs on the same tree. Instead, thanks to not only patriarchy but Yehvehistic patriarchy, we have an ethos in which suffering is not a byproduct of economic conditions but rather of "sin" -- yet another reinforcement of murderous hierarchy. Indeed one of the connections most terrifying to Yehvehistic Fundamentalists is the probability what REALLY killed Marxism was patriarchy: the implications both political and spiritual are obvious -- and profoundly troublesome to the entire global plutocracy (which may explain its tolerance and even encouragement of militant misogynism).

While Christendom is often credited with giving birth to the notion of individual dignity, this is a misreading of history. That pivotal concept came from the Greeks, who merely formalized the wisdom they had gleaned from the ancient tribal regimes they supplanted. In Roman and post-Roman history, a northern variant of that notion was kept alive by the violent resistance of British and a few Germanic tribes. Finally, boosted by the Renaissance and various revolutions, it eventually flourished. Indeed, today's tension between authoritarianism and libertarianism was evident even in classical times. Yehvehistic religion, by contrast, is always authoritarian, at least in the ultimate sense: god as the divine judge and executioner -- the Inquisition writ large as infinity. And Yehveh kills only to destroy, while the Goddess kills to facilitate rebirth -- to fuel the Cosmic Wheel -- an entirely different mindset.

I am too much a skeptic to believe that ANY "ism" can "save the world," but I cannot doubt the archaeological evidence suggestive of a very long age of global cultural homogeneity (and therefore relative peace). As best we can tell, these societies were all goddess-centered. Thus -- especially given the above example of intrinsic attitudes toward social services -- I also believe the feminist claim that the (now developing) alternative to patriarchy might eventually result in the evolution of a far better human society. It is radical almost beyond conception -- and therefore almost unspeakably threatening. Nor is this as far afield as it may seem: I feel what I am addressing here is the real issue behind your objections.

If I am mistaken, I apologize. In any case my intent is not to proselytize but to explain: I am far too old to believe it is possible to teach anyone anything they are not prepared to learn.


Edit: replacement of monotonously duplicated adverb with a synonym.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. My objections are that you are laying too much at the feet

of Abrahamic religions, and ignoring the violence of other religions, and your characterisation of history is not very good. The Old Testament has the Jewish people doing a lot of killing, but most of it is not supported by any archaeological evidence - the evidence is that Jews were a pastoral people who took over the settled towns (ie for economic gain), and were never a conquering state because of their religion. It's notable they didn't try to convert people to their religion - they just took land and cities they wanted.

The Persian, Greek and Roman Empires were violent and expansionist before they came into contact with the Jews. The Egyptians, and Mesopotamians, were fighting large wars thousands of years earlier. So were the Chinese. A lot of early Hindu myths involve war. The Incas conquered many of their neighbours. Genghis Khan and Attila are bywords for conquest and war, and they didn't have a belief in Yahweh. Ask the Christians whom the Vikings attacked which was the more murderous culture. I'm not saying that Christian and Muslim cultures aren't violent - they are - but they are by no means alone.

While I'd agree that the Greeks are responsible for our notion of individual dignity (I'd actually say that most westerners would say that too), I think that to say they 'merely formalized the wisdom' from older tribes is a leap in the dark. What's your evidence for that? I've never heard that Greek philosophers said their ideas came from an earlier time.

[newswolf56]

24. Apparently I didn't make myself clear. As a...

...lifelong student of history, I am well aware of the violence of ancient peoples and empires, Roman, Persian, Greek, Hittite, Chinese, Mayan, Aztec etc., an awareness I thought was evident in my choice of words. Though I seriously question whether, in toto, any society has ever been as universally violent as our own -- particularly after the yearly human sacrifice of motoring deaths (an annual toll nearly as great as that of the Vietnam War) is reckoned into the endlessly gory equation. But I am also aware that we know of only one (probably) goddess-centered empire in human history, the Minoan, to which I will return in a moment.

The feminists (whose political psychology and metaphysics I am admittedly here defending) would argue, correctly I think, that all of these empires save the Minoan were clearly already patriarchal: still polytheistic, yes, but with male gods dominant in every case. Even so, I would point out that under polytheism there are by definition goddesses and gods for various human functions -- birth, learning, poetry and art, agriculture, war, commerce etc. But Yehvehistic (or as many call it, "Abrahamic") religions eventually eliminated all of those divine functions except war. Yehveh is not the god of birth (note that Yehveh is reckoned as absent from an infant until ritually invoked, as with baptism or circumcision). Yehveh is not the god of learning, poetry and art (note the Inquisition, various Fatwas etc.). Yehveh most assuredly is not the god of agriculture (note both his rejection of Cain's sacrifice and all Yehveh's followers' endless and quite possibly planet-killing war on the environment). But what Yehveh clearly is -- note the Biblical mandate to conquer and subdue -- is the god of war: doomsday war, better-dead-then-Red war, if-I-can't-have-Gaea-then-by-God-no-one-will-have-her war, domestic-violence-against-all-humanity war, total war-of-extermination war. Such war is the ultimate expression of Yehveh's "obey-me-or-I-will-destroy-you-all" ethos. It is also the defining difference between the variously named goddess, who purposefully takes life so that life may be reborn, and Yehveh, who vengefully kills only to destroy -- and from which the only escape is being proclaimed "reborn" by one of his priests. It is no coincidence the German Army (and not some corps of farmers or delivery-room nurses) had inscribed on its belt-buckles Gott Mit Uns -- "God is with us." Nor is it any conicidence modern-day politicians could contemplate destroying the entire world merely to prevent the other side from winning: the ultimate expression of "we had to destroy the village to save it." Thus too the connection the feminists so aptly make between the microcosm of domestic violence, the macrocosm of terracide, and the psycho-spiritual model of Yehveh himself.

The breadth and duration of the culture that produced the artifacts described in the essay that began this thread -- a culture virtually planet-wide and lasting perhaps 35,000 years -- makes a very compelling physical-evidence argument for both the ancients' claim of a "golden age" and the modern feminist conviction that a goddess-centered culture is innately more peaceful and cooperative than a patriarchy headed by a war god. (The works of Marja Gimbutas are a very good primer on this subject. So is The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, by Riane Eisler.) And the Minoan example provides further evidence: here was humanity's first known maritime power, technologically advanced enough to have running water and flush toilets. Indeed there is some (suggestive) evidence Minoan ships literally traded with the whole world -- and yet (unlike all the maritime powers of patriarchy) there is not a single fortification around any Minoan city nor any other evidence of militarism, rampant or otherwise. The Minoans' chief deity? Rhea, the Triple Goddess, the original trinity, she whose faces are mirrored by the moon: maiden, mother and hag; birth, life, death -- and resurrection. Not death as under Yehveh, the forever end of all being (and therefore the source of infinite dread), but merely as another beginning: think of the difference that change alone might make in the public psyche. Ideas DO have consequences!

Is the feminist hypothesis that the end of patriarchy will cure many of humanity's ills the correct hypothesis? Or is it merely more idealism, the ultimately pointless optimism of a doomed species? I don't know. I don't think anyone can know the answer to such a question. Do I believe the feminist hypothesis is the correct hypothesis? Ultimately agnostic, I nevertheless lean strongly in that direction. This is admittedly because of my own decidedly negative experience with Yehvehistic patriarchy: childhood in a violently dysfunctional albeit secular but nevertheless harshly patriarchal family; a boyhood spent largely among viciously intolerant Christian Fundamentalists in the South; and a young adulthood lived under threats from a death squad -- that most American, most Christian Fundamentalist, most Yehvehistic of all death squads: the Ku Klux Klan.

Moreover, yours is a revision of Biblical history I had not hitherto encountered -- but it is true I have long been alienated from any church. The Bible history I learned -- the Rightist version in parochial school and the Leftist version via Unitarianism -- uniformly portrayed the ancient Hebrews as not only violent but genocidally so. (Indeed, from the Unitarian perspective, an ultimate theological dilemma has always been how to find a suitable spiritual antidote for this one most dreadful characteristic of Yehveh -- the desperate need for such a quest demonstrated not only by the savagery of the Old Testament Hebrews but even more emphatically by the epic murderousness of Christians and Muslims.) And while I would claim no particular expertise on the ancient Middle East, I remember very well a Unitarian slide-show of the (then-new) archaeological evidence disclosing Joshua's depredations at Jericho, the walls of which were toppled not by his trumpets but by an earthquake. As to the lack of bodies, note that we are still uncovering mass graves from World War II; if the Hebrews burned the bodies of their victims -- and it seems to me there is Biblical testimony to that fact -- the evidence of their murderousness is lost forever. Beyond all that, there is no conceivable reason -- other than its absolute truth -- for the Hebrews to have boasted so often and with such relish about the bloodthirstiness of the god they, the Christians and the Muslims all adore.

As to the Greeks, it has been more than 40 years since I studied them in detail (and that only in English translations), but it took me only a few moments to find a passage from Michael Grant that very specifically addresses your objection:

"...Long ago, there had been a revolution increasing human rights far beyond any precedents. For from about 650 BC onward, the Greeks had begun to be given laws which could be written down, seen by all, and criticized if they seemed unsatisfactory. Such legislation was not, of course, new in itself, since an impressive system, protecting the poor against extortion had already appeared in Sumeria during the third millennium BC, and similar measures were incorporated in a Babylonian code..." (The Ancient Mediterranean, p. 192-193)

Greek democracy no more exploded on the world fully formed than did the principles of American governance -- the latter are the fruition of ideals some of which are at least 2500 years old. And to assume the ancient Greeks were unaware of what had happened in Sumeria or Babylon is to fall prey to the most limiting sort of ethnocentrism: the records and artifacts of trade show the ancient world was far more cosmopolitan than we are wont to imagine. The influences of African and Asian sources are clearly evident both in Greek myth and in Greek thinking.

In addition -- as any anthropologist knows -- "primitive" tribes typically govern themselves not by tyranny but rather by consensus: what I (for want of a better term) labeled "tribal democracy" -- and such tribes typically hold vital resources in common. It is a Marxist notion -- one with which I fully agree -- that the gradual consolidation of various forms of capital (grain, livestock, land etc.) eventually gave birth to the tyrannies associated with exclusive ownership of resources. Feminism further argues that the concepts of dominance sanctioning such ownership could not have evolved without the emergence of male gods and the subsequent triumph of patriarchy. Regardless of the details, violent public reaction to the concentration of wealth combined with the need for political and economic stability then precipitated the emergence of various codes that sought to re-establish something of the original socioeconomic equilibrium. The underlying tensions were as evident in Classical Greek or Roman times as they are today. From this perspective, Marx is not a revolutionary at all, but rather an ultimate reactionary: his effort was to restore precisely that same ancient equilibrium to the modern era.

That said, I will admit I am indeed prejudiced against Yehvehistic religion. Very much so -- and for many of the same reasons the feminists are so prejudiced. I was a battered child; I was also part of the Civil Rights Movement. Mention Yehveh, and many feminist minds immediately portray the ultimate rapist -- the unspeakably violent, infinitely savage abuser, equally lethal to children, mothers and Mother Earth. Mention Yehveh to me and I see first his embodiment as my father: ever hateful and malicious. Next I see Yehveh's classical American persona: the sheeted, hooded Ku Klux Klansman. Then I see his international aspect: the thermonuclear doomsday machine, whether phallic-shaped or not. Lastly I see only the desolation of a hopelessly poisoned field, so bleakly toxic not even insects dare approach -- that or a burned-out cinder of a planet. But like the feminists, I am not utterly without hope: I believe the end of patriarchy might save us from such a fate, and I believe the evidence presented in "The Iconic Woman" strongly bolsters that argument.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I remember hearing the theory years ago that

male dominance came into being when people figured out that male participation is necessary to create babies, because the men were physically stronger anyway and realized that women didn't have any unique magic for creating life. That seems unlikely, though. You'd think that at least one person in every society would have eventually noticed, "Hey, women who don't have sex don't have babies."

I can't think of any historical examples of purely matriarchal societies, although some cultures have traces of it. There are matrilineal societies, where descent is traced through the mother, and the child's father figures are the mother's brothers. There are matrilocal societies, in which the husband goes and lives with the wife's parents. There are societies where women had a lot of say in governance, such as the Iriquois Nations, although the Iriquois were not particularly peaceful in their relations with tribes outside their federation.