The blog series on the Divine / Sacred Feminine started two weeks ago; this week’s blog post will continue the discussion with a history of the Divine Feminine. Next week’s blog post will explore how the Divine / Sacred Feminine has been suppressed, the results of her suppression, and ways to bring back her energy to work with the Divine Masculine as an equal partner for the best for everyone.
How do we know about the Divine / Sacred Feminine? Some in the patriarchy, some religions, and some cultures have tried to wipe out the rich history of the Divine / Sacred Feminine; still, we have remnants of her as “…historical fact, as demonstrated by a significant amount of art, archeological finds and myths reaching back nearly 30,000 years. The first evidence of Her appears during the Upper Paleolithic Era, a period of time ranging from 50,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE [This was during the Stone Age.], in the form of more than 250 figurines of women that have been discovered in sites scattered across Europe, Siberia, and Eastern Russia. Despite being found across a vast geographic span of more than 4,000 miles, and in some cases being dated to periods of time thousands of years apart, these figurines nonetheless share remarkably similar characteristics. They are small, most standing only several inches tall. The most famous of them depict women who are anything but small – instead, they are large and round, with pendulous breasts, round bellies, seriously big butts, and in some cases, emphasized genitalia. They also lack both feet and facial features of any kind.
Archeologist Christine Desdemaines-Hugon has suggested that these similarities are no accident – instead, they represent not only a ‘shared understanding of the symbolic significance of the figurines,’ but also some kind of shared agreement that the statuettes needed to be crafted in a particular way. We will likely never fully know the purpose or intent of these beautiful little figurines, but after studying many photos of them and even seeing a few in person, I’m inclined to agree with scholar Sharon Paice MacLeod’s perspective on them: ‘Whether they represented religious ideas, marked the dwelling place of spirits or ancestors, or represented deities or female spirits, they are sacred’” (https://braidedway.org/when-god-was-a-woman-an-introduction-to-the-wisdom-of-the-sacred-feminine/ ).
Continuing in the timeline of the Divine / Sacred Feminine, by the Neolithic Era [This is at the end of the Stone Age and into the Bronze Age.], 10,000 BC to 2,000 BC, farming appeared and the Sacred Feminine flourished; “… evidence of Her explodes, with 30,000 Goddess sculptures found from this time period in Southern Europe alone. Many sculptures from this time period depict the Sacred Feminine as part woman and part animal. In many, many others, snakes, waves, eggs and spirals are seen twisting themselves around the body of what appears to be a Goddess and other items associated with Her. Interestingly, many of these images also seem to connect with creation myths and stories that appear in later eras. For example, there are several creation myths that envision a female creator born of water; others describe a snake Goddess who created the world.
By the time writing appears during the Bronze Era (which began roughly 3,000 BCE), we finally begin to know the names of some of these powerful Goddesses: Isis, Inanna, Astarte, Asherah, Tiamat, Nammu, Demeter. And speaking of writing, here’s a fun fact: the first evidence of writing appeared at a temple dedicated to the Queen of Heaven in Erech (or Uruk), an ancient Mesopotamian city in what is now Southeastern Iraq.
While the Goddess still holds a place of prominence in some corners of the world, such as India, the creation of writing also tracks a slow and steady decline in Her power in most other places, as kings began to consolidate power and more warlike, male deities rose in stature. [And, the holy trinity of the Christian church around 50 A.D.as well as the writing of the Qur’an and establishment of Islam a few hundred years later in 610 A.D. had not yet been established. As the male warmongers became more prominent, so did the male-centric deities.] But for a documented 25,000 years, the Sacred Feminine appears to have been a dominant spiritual concept for many ancient peoples.(https://braidedway.org/when-god-was-a-woman-an-introduction-to-the-wisdom-of-the-sacred-feminine/ ).
As the violent patriarchy grew in the form of the male ego, the Divine / Sacred Feminine was suppressed. Just because a woman was interested in nature, animals, herbs, flowers, and medicinal plants or she was a seer or a healer, she may, have been labeled a ‘witch’ and may have been killed. Women, then, became important in the patriarchy for their beauty, their sexual uses, their ability to bring forth children (preferably male children), to cook and clean, and care for / serve others. Their role shrunk under patriarchy and under the religions that promoted masculine deities. Their gifts from the Divine were squelched, not honored under the growing patriarchy.
The Divine / Sacred Feminine “is a power[ful] spiritual idea in her own right, with distinctive characteristics that distinguish Her from some of the more dominant religious traditions we might be most familiar with. In other words, it isn’t as simple as calling God a ‘She’ versus a ‘He.’ For example, the Sacred Feminine has long been connected with the natural world, not as a separate entity that created life and then removed Herself from the picture, but as inseparable and indistinguishable with Her creation. This is remarkably different from the picture that most of our dominant monotheistic traditions paint for us today. While we might imagine a Christian God creating the heavens and the Earth, the Sacred Feminine simply is the Earth and the plant and animal life here. This brings an inherently sacred nature to all of life. From the tiniest blade of grass to the most prominent spiritual and political leaders, we’re all equal in Her eyes, deeply interwoven with each other, and a living extension of Her body” (https://braidedway.org/when-god-was-a-woman-an-introduction-to-the-wisdom-of-the-sacred-feminine/ ).
If this topic has intrigued you and you want to learn more, I recommend these books: The Divine Feminine in Ancient Europe: Goddesses, Sacred Women and the Origins of Western Culture by Sharon Paice MacLeod and Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History by Rosemary Ruether.
Please share your thoughts, insights, and resources you have encountered by either commenting below this post if you are reading this on social media, or, if you are reading this through your email subscription, please share, by emailing me, at reimaginelife22@gmail.com. Next week’s blog post will explore how the Divine / Sacred Feminine has been suppressed, the results of her suppression, and ways to bring back her energy to work with the Divine Masculine as an equal partner for the best for everyone.
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