Goddesses and Gods.wps - Welcome to Our Temple

women had all the power, but women's status in society would certainly have been
higher with matrilineal descent. Women would not have been totally dependent on
men or considered their property. The importance of virginity and punishments for
adultery would not have existed to the extent that they do in patriarchal religions,
where fatherhood, more than motherhood, is valued.
From From Priestesses to Inventors
The appeal of ancient Goddess worship includes the revelation that women played a
major role in religious services and celebrations. Many women were priestesses,
diviners, midwives, poets and healers (Starhawk). Women presided at temples erected
solely to specific goddesses; Ishtar, Isis and Diana being among the most popular.
From women's involvement in religion came many advances, including harnessing
the power of herbs which cured the sick and eased the pain of childbirth. The first
calendars included lunar calendars, which may have began as women kept track of
their menstrual cycles and compared them to moon cycles. Besides astronomy,
women are also though to have developed language, agriculture, cooking, ceramics
and more. Women's contributions to human culture are innumerable, and never
given enough credit.
Patriarchal Patriarchal Rise/Goddess Rise/Goddess Fall
Fall
The Goddess experienced great popularity and prominence until patriarchal religions
like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their precursors silenced her. The switch to
patriarchy was gradual and preceded by a change in kinship systems, going from
matrilineal to patrilineal descent. The emphasis on fatherhood is clearly evident in
the major religions practiced now. The father/son relationship of God and Jesus is key
to Christianity, although the Mother figure managed to persist and appear in
Catholicism as Mary. In some places, though, patriarchy may have caused the switch
to patrilineal descent, especially in Goddess worshipping cultures which were
conquered by savage invaders from the North.
Other factors relating to the rise in patriarchal religions included emphasis on
property ownership, the rise of military dictatorships, and increase in war cults.
Esther Harding writes in Women's Mysteries, "The rise in masculine power and of
patriarchal society probably started when man began to accumulate personal, as over
against communal, property and found that his personal strength and prowess could
increase his personal possessions. This change in secular power coincided with the
rise of sun worship under a male priesthood, which began to supersede the much
earlier moon cults," (page 31).So, as men gained power over women and the
masculine became divine, female divinity became less and less acknowledged. Along
with the fall in Goddess worship came more wars, crimes and tyrannous rulers. The
rape of women and the Earth was underway.