Radical Goddess Thealogy: ARE THERE ANY GOOD gods?

Radical Goddess Thealogy

Athana's post and the resulting discussion raised some important questions, so rather than hide them in her comments, I wanted to address them here. They are central to the problems addressed by feminist thealogians as we try to reconstruct our Goddess heritage.

First, any science starts with a question or a theory. The primacist feminist thealogian- like me - postulates that all socieities begin as matrifocal, matrilineal, and ultimately matriarchal in social order. The first order of business for one who wishes to refute that theory is to find a culture which doesn't have a Mother-centric past. It hasn't happened yet. We have yet to find any indication that every known culture has had anything other than a matrifocal beginning.

What we do find is a familiar pattern repeated in all archeaological records and evidence, and a standard and deeply ingrained emotional response to the facts. First, human societies seem to universally practice a religion. Second, that religion begins with a focus on a primary, if not exclusive, Mother Goddess. These societies have been shown to have achieved great techological and cultural advancements, developed arts such as writing, agriculture, and architecture, and to have lived for some time in relative peace. Next comes the Flood - not necessarily a literal flood, though it might be a flood, as well as a drought, volcanic disturbance, atmospheric change, etc. which leaves agrarian people vulnerable to hoardes who are willing to steal, kill and enslave others. Whatever the cause, the result is violence and oppression.

With the invasion, whether the invaders are Viking Vandals or Spanish Conquistadores comes an angry father deity who justifies the right of the invaders to steal, enslave and murder people "for their own good." Matriarchal images are defaced, ancient texts destroyed, sacred sites appropriated for the new order, and the Panthean replaced with a new Pantheon, complete with it's own rape of the Goddess, who is then subordinated to the new Big Daddy, if not killed outright. In a few cases, Mommy becomes "Daddy" (as the Njord Ursa mentioned in comments - they often disguise this by claiming original forms were hermaphroditic rather than admitting they were female), but in most cases, she's the demon of the new religion that must be destroyed and suppressed at all costs.

That's the general pattern. Naturally, because we are talking about humans, many of whom were sea-faring or nomadic, the pattern varies slightly from site to site, but the result is the same - the Goddess is deposed and women reduced to chattel to be sold, controlled and exploited by dominant males. The Big Lie of monotheism is that this constitutes "progress" rather than oppression. It is regressive and it is working against us.

Our greatest asset in restoring the Mother Goddess to Her former glory is the fact that She was so ubiquitous in the ancient world that it was impossible to erase all traces of Her. Not that the patriarchs didn't try. They burned, pillaged, tortured, murdered and when all that failed, even adapted some of Her images and Holy Days to their own purposes. Still She remains and can be uncovered if we dig deeply.

How do we do that? We have to combine our studies. Specialization serves kings and priests by keeping knowledge restricted to the ruling classes. Notice that every time Republicans get control of our government, the first thing they do is cut student loans. Poor, uneducated people are easier to control. To find the Goddess, we have to study genetics and sociology, archaeology and anthropology, religion and as many sciences as we can. We have to be willing to endure the ridicule of our peers in patriarchal institutions like academia and the sciences; we have to insist that publishers keep our books in print, or spread them about when they don't; we have to stand up with one, profound question, asked unapologetically, unflincing, and demand to know "Why the hell NOT?!"

Why is it SO inconceivable that women once held a higher place in society? Logic would make this possibility as likely as the idea of male rule - in fact, statistically, we would expect equivalent numbers of matriarchal and patriarchal societies to spring up independently if we went just by probability. But we don't, do we? No, we've been indoctrinated from our earliest memories to believe that woman is inferior and it must always have been so, as ordained by "God." That underlying assumption is found in literally every scienctific and academic circle, including those that claim to champion feminist causes. There's always some weakling who will sell out her sisters for acceptance in her field - so "of course" Davis is wrong about the genetic inferiority of males or "obviously" cultures might have been matrifocal or matrilineal, but certainly women "could never have" ruled!

The Cynthia Ellers of the world can kiss my ass. There is at least as much evidence that my thealogy and my science is as accurate as theirs Eventually, I hope, we'll have an honest and impartial analysis of data. That will never be possible until we have investigators on both sides of the question. Athana recently documented the contortions being performed at Catal Hoyouk to obscure the matriarchal evidence. And even though we are talking about ancient cultures, the results ARE important to modern women. We need to know that we are capable of ruling. As long as we silently consent to being considered genetically and spiritually inferior to men, we will continue to endure the obnoxious unfairness of patriarchy.

This is no small issue - mothers offer up their daughters for genital mutilation to gain favor, or just survival, among the patriarchs. Girls are systematically shunted away from math and science in our schools, in spite of an apparent advantage in those fields based on early performance. That great white straw-woman -- that women have the option of staying home or working -- was used against my mother to pay her less for comparable work and to deny (or try to, until she threatened to sue) her promotions based on her gender. We were poor. She didn't work to be "fulfilled" in some upper-middle-class white woman's reality. She worked because we needed money, like most women who work. "Choice" is an illusion to all but the privileged and it's a distraction to hear feminists waste time on such trivial issues. I don't give a shit about some rich woman tottling around Manhattan on 4-inch stillettos having a shot at the corner office. That's not feminism. It's stupidity. But I digress (as I often do...)

Right now, people are being murdered in the name of "God the Father."
That concept is being used to control women, to justify rape and torture, to murder and steal, just as it has since "He" made his appearance in human history and just as they will until we realize that it just ain't true. There's no old man with a long white beard making people out of clay. There' a living, breathing Universe, of which we are a part, and She's whole, conscious and interactive.

We have to learn to honor our intuitive knowing. I knew for years that there was an energetic connection between Dionysus and Aphrodite - there simply had to be. Finally, years later, I found some obscure myth connecting them. As sure as I was that they were connected, I am equally sure a larger - much larger - connection has been obscured in the extant texts. Will I ever be able to prove that? Probably not, since I'm not working on archaeological digs in Greece. But in my heart, I know this to be true. Call it intuition. Call it the Collective Unconscious. Call it a deep understanding of human nature and the energetic interaction of different behaviorial archetypes. It's a knowing that passes understanding, real and unshakeable.

Edward C. Whitmont details some instances where people have dreamed myths before their texts were discovered in The Return of the Goddess. . Mary Daly champions the idea of honoring our intuition in what she calls "Re-membering our Goddess," which means piecing together our birthright from the bits that remain so that we can reconstruct Her culture.





See what I mean about keeping our books in print? The Whitmont book is only available used - two of the three Daly books have no graphic, and most of her stuff is out of print. Don't get me started on The First Sex - our most important book, not nearly as flawed as they claim that it is, and only available used. I buy up copies of it to save for students and friends because I want everyone to read it.

Anyway, that's what we have to do:

• Do our own research


• Stay alert to the patriarchal filter everywhere


• Question the "Official Story" and dig deeper for the truth


• State our Truth


• Refuse to back down to ridicule or scorn if we feel we are right


• Insist on being counted, included, considered and ask "Why Not?" when they refuse to do what is logical.


• Trust our intuition


• Educate each other, and everyone else that we can

While we're on the subject, if there's anybody reading who's willing to make a committment to getting the Goddess her props in modern media, get in touch with me at morgaine -at - the-goddess.org.