A must-see website: Max Dashu's The Suppressed History Archives.
See all these goddesses? They were left out when history was written. They and thousands like them, from all across the world, and all across time.
We have been duped, people. All of us, all across the world, used to worship healthy, life-preserving Goddesses -- until the 'psychotic' gods (Richard Dawkins' term, not mine*) came and trampled them into the dust.
When are we going to wake up and ditch the gods for the Goddesses?
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Thnx to Max Dashu for the picture
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*Richard Dawkins is the author of the new runaway best-seller, The God Delusion, 2006, Houghton Mifflin.
The evidence is there written in the land so clearly, especially in liminal places. For me the beginning of the transition to the Goddesses came from the neolithic sites on the Orkney Islands. It is immediately striking that those communities were special and lived in peace without defensive walls or weapons. What there is, about from homes is an abundance of 'womb spaces'. The bronze age record there is so different with heavily defended brochs and a tangible sense of fear.
ReplyDeleteHey Athana -
ReplyDeleteI ask myself the same question all the time. I know this much - the first step is to untrain the knee-jerk response to the idea of female primacy. It's intense, and violent, and we have to get past it before people will seriously consider Goddess reality. I don't see any other way than create a visible presence in media and never back down. I can't remember who said it - maybe Marion Weinstein - that not being taken seriously is oppression. A person who dismisses your views, laughs at them, rails at them, does anything but consider them because they have respect for you as a rational human being is oppressing you. Many of us have been quick to shrink from that, or to ostracize members of our own community as being "too far out" but that has to stop. We have to have the courage of our convictions and we have to demand respect for our beliefs.
I'm beginning to see signs of it. I hope they become more frequent, very quickly. I think the fight over Sgt. Stewarts grave marker did a lot for us because Selena made them pay attention and was so persistent. No one thought they could get that pentacle approved while Bush was in office - including myself. We were all wrong. They did it. They might not have been happy about it, but they don't have to like it. They just have to do it. Score one for the Witches.
Paul, thanks for your feelings on the Orkney Islands. They seem to kind of sum it all up: abundance and safety on the one hand, and defensiveness and fear on the other. I hope I get there some day.
ReplyDeleteHey Morgaine,
ReplyDeleteI think when you publish your book on female primacy it will push the world a step closer to accepting the equality of the sexes.
I like your phrase “create a visible presence in the media and never back down.”
You talk about the goddess community shrinking from the world out of fear of being dismissed. I hadn’t thought about it that way before. I think you’re right. It’s fear of being laughed at, isn’t it? I guess I was thinking it was prudence, or something like that.