The Lost Feminine

In the emerging modern era, today to many of us religion appears to be that divine archaic relic as depicted to us by our parents, grandparents, maybe great grandparents; but actually religion is not that ancient as it is portrayed to be on the forefront; it  is not so far away as we imagine or prefer to believe. We still do not know since when did men gain the image of always being able to handle the most momentous of tasks while women are always the shadow, the patient bearer to pain and his constant aide; and today what we see is what we take to be the natural male female relationship. Where have we lost the ancient female deities worshipped during the era of human existence????Where is The Lost Feminine???

In this connection, as written by Alex Pattakos, we can again refer to a culture that arose and flourished on the island of Crete from approximately 3650 to 1450 BC. This Bronze Age civilization was later destroyed by natural and man-made forces that are still under debate, and its remains, for better or worse, were replaced or dominated by Mycenaean Greek culture. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th Century, and researched by Craig Barnes in her famous and controversial book-" In Search of the Lost Feminine: Decoding the Myths that Radically Reshaped Civilization”. Indeed, over the last one hundred years a great deal of new information about the Minoans and their way of life has been unearthed (both literally and figuratively). As a result, we now know that the status of women was vastly different before the emergence of patriarchy. Women in the Minoan era were portrayed as benign rather than dangerous, the latter being a presumed characteristic that has plagued humankind to the present day. Moreover, in what has been called a women-centered, egalitarian, and peaceful society, the "ancient" Minoans, as further proof of their matriarchal mindset, were also conscious of a need to worship the goddess within (or feminine mystique), along with the goddesses who symbolized a very different cultural orientation than, rightly or wrongly, we hold in the contemporary era.

Most of the artifacts concerning the feminine even before the birth of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam or classical Greece have been excavated and then yet again reburied or stowed away in the restricted sections of the church or the universities where you require affiliated degrees to study them. Why have they been ignored today in modern religion and education? These questions and yes the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was an inspiration to urge me further to just take a peek into these mystic and lost legends. Though I have studied only a bit, what amazed me was that, all the myths of each religion explaining their origin are never the oldest; new beliefs supersede the old ones and replace them with the caption:”The beginning of time”…This is how we have lost the past, the ever hidden secrets of the feminine. Most of the information have been deliberately destroyed; still accounts of the bloody massacres, demolition of the Pagan Idols cannot be considered an action which could wipe out everything in totality, because these relics were irretrievable and much were overlooked too. But these destructions which were carried out in the name of destroying paganism were actually done to wipe out the feminine, because the deities recovered in the Neolithic age reflected the female attributes; most of the Pagan gods had breasts; But the Old Testament gives no reference that the Hebrews had worshipped Goddesses; under the cover of demolishing Paganism the writers of the Bible have completely concealed the actual fact.

Moreover most of the scholars and archeologists in the 18^th and 19^th century were male or the rare females were then governed by the male favoring Judo-Christianism thus resulting in the aftermath that the feminine was considered to be hardly worth mentioning; since most of the religious history was compiled by these erudite theologists ,the modern religion grew upon this and the feminine was almost compressed to the bottom. In majority of archaeological texts, the female is referred to as the “fertility cult”, overshadowing the mythological veneration of the feminine as the creator of the universe, the prophetess, the healer and provider of human destiny. We may also notice the gradual deterioration of the female deity when we see “God” in upper case but “goddess” or the “queen of heaven” frequently in lower case; minor but significant implications these are! Another discrimination seen clearly is that in the descriptions of long buried temples academics defined the sexually active Goddesses as “embarrassingly void of morals” but the male Gods who seduced or sexually abused as “playful” or “virile”. Even the holy word “Qadesh” was translated into “prostitute” or “harlot” as so evidently seen in the case of Mary Magdalene. To add further is not it ironical that the age of paganism when the female deity was considered the createss of the universe was referred to as dark and mystic without any light of hope and order????

These questions are till date mysterious…what I want through this write up is that- I hope that more people will explore this unknown field; unearth what has so long been carelessly or intentionally discarded ;lay out the truth in the forefront and challenge the many unfounded assumptions that have been so long passed on as the truth.

PS: I am very new to this field, most of the information have been based on facts I study in books and research over the net; some facts may be found inappropriate by others; I don’t mean any ill will to anyone…These are my beliefs…views of others may differ.

Reviews

[Metal Orchid]

The force beyond infinity :)

[Coyote Poetry]

The world leader since WW2 have been trying to change the dream and the desire of the world. They screw it up. I traveled the world. Each place is different. Each culture and belief is different. Can't make the world uniform. People in Honduras don't want the greed of the USA and Europe. Your view is a good one. I wish the powerful nations would stick to their problems. My joke which I expressed often in my writing. How does a country that is 240 years old tell a ancient and wise place like India, Middle East and Africa how to live? I tell people. "Clean up your own messes before trying to fix the world." Thank you for a excellent chapter.
Coyote