Here’s an idea I’ve been meaning to post on for some time but couldn’t get my thoughts organized just so around it. The other day someone posted on one of the lists to which I belong a query about Wicca and other Goddess-worshiping religions. The poster was interested in finding any black participants since Goddess worship, as she understood it, was a European thing.
NOT, NOT, NOT!!! Goddess worship is the oldest form of piety on the planet. Earliest cave drawings depict female forms heavy with pregnancy (the Mother aspect of the Goddess) or with exaggerated breasts and genetalia (which some folks speculate may be the first erotica). However she was depicted, the Goddess was THE creative force in the universe. The Goddess was also depicted in such symbols as the sun, the moon, the serpent, the circle and other guises. Only later did men seem to get into the God business and eventually erase almost any reference to the female role in creation.
If Judaism was the death knell for Goddess worship, then Christianity was not only the nails in the coffin but the gallows by which it was hung, particularly during the Burning Times throughout Europe.
Makes me wonder how scared primitive (and not so primitive) man must have been of the opposite sex to warrant obliterating the female image from any sort of power position that they didn’t actually control (as in you are childbearers, so we must protect you and conversely you are our whores so we must protect ourselves from you.)
The truth is that the worst discrimination in the world is not black against white or any color against another, but the subjugation man has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate against women around the world.
End of sermon for today. Check back later for more cheerful commentary.
Excellent, excellent thread Diedre. I think one of the most godawful things that has ever happened to humankind was the loss of our goddesses. Even worse, most women have even lost the knowledge that WE are goddesses. Its so incredibly sad.