Divine Women

[poliphilo]

Bettany Hughes is careful not to tread on any toes, but it's difficult not to tell the story of the development of religion without making the Abrahamic gods- with their tantrums and lace-curtain twitching- seem a little provincial, tribal and Johnny-come-lately. Once upon a time there was a Goddess with huge breasts and buttocks who sat between two lions and presided over the settlement of the land.  According to the latest thought, which is based on the latest archaeology, her shrines predate the earliest cities. Later her uppity children- like the deeply unattractive Zeus-  pushed her back into the shadows, from which she was wont to emerge when their flashier powers proved insufficient. Thunderbolts are one thing, the gifts of birth and death quite another. When Rome was up against it in the form of Carthage her people- in response to a Sibylline oracle- preserved the city by fetching the image of Kybele from its home in Asia Minor and installing it on the site of what is now (harumph) St. Peter's in Rome. In India, of course, she has never been relegated. Hughes dedicated her last quarter of an hour or so to the Durga Puja in Kolkata- all drumming and face-painting and the throwing of statues in the river. It looked a lot more fun than Easter or Eid.

Comments

Verdi.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Thealogy. Oh dear.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

How did I miss that? Will be scootling over to i-player later today!

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Which shrines might those be, the ones that predate the earliest cities?

I don't really believe in the Goddess thing, anymore. Marija Gimbutas spent her life trying to prove the Kurgan hypothesis and failed. Her acolytes have similarly failed in the years since. I don't think matriarchy was ever widespread, if it existed at all. We were probably more-or-less egalitarian, in the Old Stone Age, and by the pre-pottery Neolithic men had risen to dominance for purely practical reasons. The claim that there was once a time of peace and happiness, when women dominated society, is just so much misanthropy in ahistoric, pseudo-scientific garb -- and, in the case of Gimbutas, politically-motivated, ahistoric, pseudo-scientific garb at that.

The oldest religion was doubtless some form of animism and probably ancestor worship. I think that in some cultures we see feminine imagery holding primacy of rank but what exactly that means is unclear. Female figurines may represent fecundity, for instance, and this power may have been held above all others, but that does not necessarily mean that these people saw a Goddess of fecundity ruling over existence in the way that Judeo-Christianity sees a God ruling theirs. Before the rise of the state, there could have been no sense of rulership at all, for instance, and the very idea smacks of anachronism.

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

Dammit! I am too American to watch this series -- or my computer is, at least. You have piqued my interest, sir, and left me swinging on the gate.

I shall have to go through less honourable paths to get hold of this now...

[sovay]

When Rome was up against it in the form of Carthage her people- in response to a Sibylline oracle- preserved the city by fetching the image of Kybele from its home in Asia Minor and installing it on the site of what is now (harumph) St. Peter's in Rome.

Requesting either a Carthage or a Cybele poem, please.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Missed that one, dammit. That's what happens when you go on holiday. Should catch it up on demand I suppose...