Secret Garden of the Feminine

              The Legacy of the Goddess

What were these societies like that revered the feminine–both the earth, which was seen as the ultimate life-giver, and woman, who stood at the doorway between this world and the spirit world? We have sought out and thrilled to stories of Atlantis and other legends of an earlier time, when people lived in harmony, beauty, and peace. Are these just stories, or are they memories in our collective unconscious? Eisler, in speaking of this time "when the wisdom of the mother was still honored and followed above all" cites the ancient Greek Poet Hesiod who "wrote of a `golden race' who tilled the soil in `peaceful ease' before a `lesser race' brought in their god of war."[1]  She is quick to point out, however, that while scholars agree that these works are likely rooted in prehistoric events, allusions to an age when men and women lived together in peace and harmony are usually seen as mere fantasy.

Archaeological excavations during the past four or five decades, as well as reinterpretations of older digs using more advanced scientific dating procedures, have revised the way we view our past. Now we know that the European late Paleolithic and Neolithic were "a long period of peace and prosperity when our social, technological, and cultural evolution moved upward: many thousands of years when all the basic technologies on which civilization is built were developed in societies that were not male dominant, violent, and hierarchic."[2]

Citing the lack of archaeological findings of heavy-duty weapons, warfare, fortifications, or defensive structures in the recent Old European sites, such as those of Neolithic southeastern Europe, Gimbutas asserts that these Goddess worshipers lived in peaceful societies; villages were located for their beautiful settings rather than defensive purposes. These early people “lived in an egalitarian society, very probably in a matrilinear system, had virtually no weapons except in the last (Copper Age) stage, and indulged in arts and crafts, stimulated by their ideology and mythical imagery.”[3]

Instead of fortresses, they built splendid homes and temples decorated with exquisitely beautiful art. One ancient city has been partially uncovered at  Catal Hhyhk in Turkey. While only one acre of the thirty-two-acre site has been excavated, it appears that one-third of the buildings were temples or shrines[4]. Gimbutas' findings, along with those of others, have changed forever the portrait previously held of early humans. Her investigations and research have destroyed once and for all the clichJd image of our ancestors as uncivilized, primitive cavemen dragging women off by their hair.

Eisler characterizes these peaceful, prosperous societies–which developed language, writing and advanced methods of agriculture, medicine, art, and architecture–as "partnership societies."  This model of society is in stark contrast to the “dominator” model we now find ourselves entrenched in.

Study of humanity’s past and present can help point us to a promising new direction for the future. In reexamining human society from a gender-holistic perspective, Eisler has created a new theory of cultural evolution called cultural transformation. This theory suggests that there are two main paradigms for society. The dominator model, based on ranking, is commonly referred to as either patriarchal or matriarchal. The partnership model, by contrast, is based on the principle of linking of social relations.

In the partnership paradigm of linking, diversity (being different, whether it be male/female or black/white), does not equate to good/bad or superior/inferior. In contrast, the modality of ranking–one people over another, one quality better than another–has trapped us in a mythology (and society) of polarities and dualities.

The cultural transformation theory goes on to suggest that the original cultural evolution was toward a partnership paradigm, and that these partnership societies arose in a linear manner “unbroken by destructions or disruptions . . . and without major cataclysms”[5] for almost three millennia. The implications of this information are staggering. What would our society be like today if the last four thousand years had been like the three that came before, if there had been no crusades, no battles, no wars–of any scale–waged for millennia? We are so enculturated to accept confrontation as the norm that the mind struggles to grasp the possibility of what our lives could be like without the history of conflicts we have endured and participated in since 2000 B.C.E.