HOW the gods TOOK OVER

Below are excerpts from an excellent review of a world-shaking book, Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade (I'll present the second half the review tomorrow). The "Chalice" symbolizes the ancient pre-god Goddess, and the "Blade" the war-peoples that conquered Her. The review is in outline form. I'm giving you snippets from it, which I hope will entice you into reading the entire outline, if not the actual book:

The Feminine Chalice
• The feminine Chalice symbolized the source of life
• The highest values were for the generative, nurturing, and creative powers of nature, not the powers to destroy
• The function of priestesses and priests was to benefit all the people in the community
o NOT to serve and give religious sanction to a brutal male elite

The Great Change
"But then came the great change--a change so great, indeed that nothing else in all we know of human cultural evolution is comparable in magnitude (the arrival of the Kurgans,Indo-Europeans).”

Old Europeans
• "The Old European (Goddess peoples) and Kurgan cultures were the antithesis of one another. …

Contrasting Ideologies
• One economy based on farming, the other on stock breeding and grazing, produced two contrasting ideologies....
• Peace and morality are now associated [in the 21st century] with both Judaism and Christianity
• But it is historical fact that these early Semites were a warring people ruled by a caste of warrior-priests --the Levite tribe of Moses, Aaron, and Joshua.

Jehovah was a war God
• Like the Indo-Europeans, [the Hebrews] too brought with them a fierce and angry god of war and mountains (Jehovah or Yahweh)....

Social system: Domination Indo-Europeans and Hebrews imposed a social system in which male dominance, male violence, and a generally hierarchic and authoritarian social structure was the norm....

The Masculine Blade
• "At the core of the invaders' system was the placing of higher value on the power that takes, rather than gives, life.
• This was the power symbolized by the "masculine" Blade, which early Kurgan cave engravings show these Indo-European invaders literally worshiped.

Women Reduced to Concubines • The Goddess and women were reduced to male consorts or concubines

The New Norm: Male dominance
“Gradually male dominance, warfare, and the enslavement of women and of gentler, more "effeminate" men became the norm"

MORE TOMORROW

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Thnx for the fotos to Neadeau (chalice) and
Naraosqa (blade)