Guest Author - Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman

From the time of the Upper Paleolithic period (25,000 BCE) evidence has shown the worship of a goddess figure. Beginning in the Neolithic period (7,000 BCE), strong evidence of well-established goddess worshiping peoples is in the archeological evidence. A great goddess was worshiped in all areas of the world at some time. For early man, in hunter-gatherer societies, the female contribution to both food and religion was equal to her male counterpart. There is considerable archeological evidence that a great mother goddess was the major deity in these ancient societies. These female deities held prominent positions in worldwide worship. Not only did female goddesses hold prominent positions but so did all women. As a more patriarchal culture evolved, women steadily lost any dominating roles they held in society. Decreasingly, women were allowed to perform monetary or other legal transactions without a husband or father overseeing their actions. Once all major religions reached their maturity, they all strongly resembled each other in their treatment of women. The degree and type of religious involvement granted to women was often a subordinate role. The Sacred Feminine was disowned. An ancient and beloved Wiccan chant encapsulates all that is meant by the words "Sacred Feminine".

Powerful Sun of the Radiant Sky
Weave us the Web we spin tonite
Web of Sunshine, Web of Light
Weave us the Earth we fill tonite.
Strand by Strand, Hand over Hand
Thread by Thread, We weave the Web
We all come from the Goddess
and to Her we shall return,
like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean.


Women have the power to rule the world. Progressive women had to fight for years for elementary rights, and are still struggling for equal pay and status. Why was there no such struggle in nearly 2000 years of Christian redemption? Why is it only in the modern age of atheism and Paganism that the struggle began and the first hesitant steps made? Why is it that Christians, even female Christians, refuse to examine baleful Christian history?
Has the memory that lies dormant within our collective unconscious been eradicated? Is she buried under the patriarchal culture? Is the innate truth of our value in the world cowering? According to Starhawk, a feminist and a practicing NeoPagan, the symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world; She is the world. We used to see ourselves as such. Why don't we do it now?
It has been normalized to internalize the repression of the patriarchy. Submit, defect, bow, shrink back and subjugate to the side of patriarchy, where this enslavement of the feminine was forged over eons in the hot fires of war and bloodshed. Men have turned on us, and we in turn have turned on one another. Women are in need of spiritual cohesion. With our souls and psyches incessantly violated by the patriarchy and violent oppression of popular culture, now more than ever, women need one another. And whether the patriarchy will admit it or not, they need us too. This division in our ranks, competition for available men, or striving for an impossible standard of beauty has worn our sisterhood thin.

His-tory is notoriously androcentrically (male) biased. Recorded his-tory was born with the very misogynistic Greeks, who viewed Women merely as breeders, and who elevated homosexuality above the union of male and female. The Greeks construct of mythology exemplifies this attitude. For example, Zeus bore his daughter Athena through his head, consequently defying the laws of nature by denying that the Goddess even had a Mother and emphasizing the patriarchal control of deity. American Indians, like Adelphiasophists and most NeoPagans reject the cross in favour of the ring, the circle or the disc. They believe that everything the Great spirit does is done in a circle. The canopy of the sky is round and the earth is round like a ball. The wind in its greatest power, whirls. The seasons form a great circle in their changing and return. The sun comes forth and goes down. The moon does the same. Both the sun and the moon are round. Birds make round nests. Teepees are round like the nests of the birds and they are always set in a circle. The world's nations form a nest of many nests. A person's life is a circle from childhood to childhood. And so it is in everything where power moves. Power came to the Indians from the sacred hoop of the nations and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.



We were once revered as Goddesses. Fertiltiy in crops, animals, and in the tribe itself were of paramount importance. Our ability to give and sustain life was considered a divine mystery. These socities were matrilineal, the children taking their Mothers' names. Life was based on a lunar calendar, rather than a solar based one. With the advent of writing, and other trappings of Indo-European moderdization, Goddess worship was eroded. These Indo-European invaders considered themselves to be superior to the peaceful and art-loving Goddess worshippers because of their superior military ability. The matriarchal religion of these early settlers was eventually assimilated into the patriarchal religion of the invaders. As these invaders imposed their patriarchal culture on the conquered peoples, rapes and myths about male warriors killing serpents, symbols of the Goddess worshippers, and saving beautiful princesses from fearful dragons appeared for the first time. As the assimilation of cultures continued, the Great Goddess fragmented into many lesser goddesses.


As Judaism, Islam, and Christianity evolved the sacred female principle was slowly driven out of religion. Women weilding their power were demonized and relegated to the realm of evil. Jesus Christ rejected millennia of religious tradition by treating Women as equals, though epistle writers who wrote in the name of Paul reinstated the institutionalized repression of Women again. The council of Ephesus granted Christianity a glimpse of a feminine presence. The Virgin Mary was named Mother of God. However, her role was heavily restricted and included none of the fertility components present in the Goddess religion.
Over a three century period, during the late middle ages, when the church was responsible for the extermination of thousands of Women accused of being "witches". The Goddess is a direct affront to the male-dominated religion of the Hebrew God. Most of these tens of thousands of Women were midwives and native healers.


Jean Shinoda Bolen, a Jungian analyst and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, answered the question, "What ails our society?" by saying, "we suffer from the absence of one half of our spiritual potential—the Goddess." The male-dominated religion of this present age has done an injustice to humanity and the ecosystem.


But the Goddess is reasserting Herself. She is telling us it is time to clean up our acts. The survival of life as we know it, depends upon our willingness to listen to Her and honor Her. To worship the Goddess is to honor the Earth and all the creatures with whom we share this divine place. New Age religion has given women the chance to revisualize the divine, in the feminine. It also encourages the empowerment of women. Giving women the self-esteem and religious regard too more easily become leaders. Regardless of the ultimate future of Paganism and the New Age movement, woman have begun to experience the sacred on their terms. It is likely that many women have and will develop a taste for their own personal brand of spirituality, and society will continue to see these spiritual movement.


The importance of the Goddess symbol for women cannot be overstressed. The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, and our anger as purifying. Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions.

Starhawk