The Beginning Of The Patriarchy
Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor in their book ‘The Great Cosmic Mother – Rediscovering the Religions of the Earth’ are coming to the conclusion that the span of our race’s existence on the Earth plane stretches over approximately 500,000 years. Of particular interest in connection with the patriarchy are the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 6000 BC and 2000 BC with the advent of metalworking.
Stone Age artefacts include tools used by modern humans and by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, and possibly by the earlier partly contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in archaeological records. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use. The Stone Age is the first of the three-age system of archaeology that divides human technological prehistory into the periods of Stone, Bronze and Iron Age. On page 217 of ‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ the authors have this to say about these ages:
‘The Bronze Age marks a revolution in social organisation. There was a break with the religion of the megalith builders. The Great Goddess still ruled, but no longer supreme. Her son/lover became a more and more dominating Father God who was the God of war. He took over some of her functions and powers as his busy priests remade the old mythologies into this new image. In this they had the help of alphabets and scriptwriting invented by the women of the Goddess cultures. The beginning of the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal organisation seems to have come about in Mesopotamia, as elsewhere, through the political-social revolt of the Queen’s consort.
‘She traditionally conferred executive powers on him by allowing him to adopt her names, robes and sacred instruments and regalia. For example, the widespread custom of the king wearing artificial breasts and long robes, acting as sacred agent of the Goddess. The ‘crown’ on his head was the ‘crown of birth’ from the Goddess – as babies were still said to ‘crown’ a woman at the birth of her children. When the king revolts against this sacred role, in order to exploit the secular power of the matriarchal domain, the Mother Goddess religion starts to become distorted. With the rewriting of the old mythologies we see the rise of the Father God as secular male usurpation of social, political and economic power.
‘With the decay of the matriarchal cultures, the women’s mystery rites lost their significance as the pristine female participation in a feminine Universe. The relation of women worshippers changes to that of a young male God, who has grown from the Goddess’s infant son into an adolescent and then into a God of war. The relationship of the Mother and Her son first becomes distorted into one of a lover to his bride and then into a dominating Lord and His humble servant. And the wild women dance companions of the androgynous Dionysus are ‘legalised’ into submission, becoming weak and fawning followers of a macho-warrior Godhead, and later of a crucified Christ who denies the Mother.’
End of the extract from ‘The Great Mother’
Edited by Aquariu
Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of ‘The Colour Purple’, said: ‘It is one of the most important books I ever read.’ A view I share entirely. The book is an education and highly recommended. Its five hundred pages are well worth taking the time for reading it.
Recommended Reading:
• ‘The Great Cosmic Mother’
• ‘The Wisdom Of The Great Mother’
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This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’
