Matriarchal religion
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A matriarchal religion is a religion that emphasizes a goddess or multiple goddesses as central figures of worship and spiritual authority. The term is most often used to refer to theories of prehistoric matriarchal religions that were proposed by scholars such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, and later popularized by second-wave feminism. These scholars speculated that early human societies may have been organized around female deities and matrilineal social structures. In the 20th century, a movement to revive these practices resulted in the Goddess movement.
History
The concept of a
The British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, the main rediscoverer and promoter of Minoan civilization, believed that Minoan religion more or less exclusively worshiped a mother goddess, and his view held sway for the first part of the 20th century, with a wide-ranging influence on thinking in various fields. Modern scholars agree that a mother or nature goddess was probably a dominant deity, but that there were also male deities.
The extent of matriarchal influence, particularly from the Minoan civilization, remains a topic of debate among scholars due to limited archeological evidence. Nevertheless, Greek art and literature reflect a nuanced interplay between patriarchal and matriarchal themes, suggesting a multifaceted cultural landscape. This dynamic balance between different societal paradigms underscores the richness and complexity of ancient Greek civilization.
In the early 1900s, historian Jane Ellen Harrison put forward the theory that the Olympian pantheon replaced an earlier worship of earth goddesses.[1]
Robert Graves postulated a prehistoric matriarchal religion in the 1950s, in his The Greek Myths and The White Goddess, and gave a detailed depiction of a future society with a matriarchal religion in his novel Seven Days in New Crete.[2]
Inspired by Graves and other sources was the Austrian Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen who, in his painting Pays interdit ("Forbidden Land"), draws an apocalyptic landscape dominated by a female goddess and, as symbols of the male gods, fallen, meteorite-like planets.
Second-wave feminism and the Goddess movement
The ideas of Bachofen and Graves were taken up in the 1970s by second-wave feminists, such as author
Additionally, anthropologist
Most modern anthropologists reject the idea of a prehistoric matriarchy but recognize
Anthropologist Eleanor Leacock's research among Canada's Montagnais-Naskapi Indigenous peoples is one example of a study that calls into question the idea of exclusive matrilocality or patrilocality. Leacock discovered that, while these communities were frequently classified as patrilineal and patrilocal, family relationships were more complicated and flexible than previously imagined, including evidence of matrilineal and bilateral kinship practices. This study emphasizes the need to reconsider assumptions regarding the rigidity of family networks and the variety of social structures in hunter-gatherer groups.
In contemporary spirituality, the Goddess movement has been used [by whom?] as a way for women to separate themselves from the powerlessness they were put under and to accept and come to terms with the fact that they are powerful.
Goddess Spirituality was not used early on in the feminist movement when it came to women expressing their spirituality because they[who?] did not see the correlation and saw it fit as a way to express different situations and events women faced. Also feminine spirituality and gerontology are closely derived or related to one another because feminine spirituality focuses very closely on newer generations and how they need to be in touch with themselves and the world around them.[citation needed] But it is also something that should be pushed onto older women[citation needed] because feminine spirituality, as spirituality is found in people of all ages.[6]
The Goddess Movement and Women's Movement have sometimes been closely associated. One example is the idea of
Triple goddess and other deities
There is a deity known within the movement and other spiritual groups as the Triple Goddess, who represents a woman's stages of life. Members say it's not strictly for women but for a general guide through childhood, maturity, and old age, but it strongly correlates with women. The Triple Goddess is a deity worshiped by many neopagan groups: women, children, and men. In these movements, she is seen as a deity that helps people understand what is happening in their lives at all ages. Many [who?] believe the stages within women that the Triple Goddess guides them through their maiden/youth, mother and lover, and finally, wise woman. This is rooted in Pagan people and their beliefs but has changed throughout time, yet her central representation has remained the same.[7]
- Aphrodite - goddess of love
- Aditi - mother of the gods
- Calypso - goddess of silence
- Durga - warrior goddess
- Inanna - queen of heaven, goddess of rain and moonlight
- Harmonia - goddess of harmony
- Tripura Sundari - supreme almighty goddess
Cultural impact
The
Criticism
Debate continues whether ancient matriarchal religion historically existed.[7] American scholar
Kavita Maya cites scholars pointing out a perceived lack of an ethnic mix in Goddess feminism, arguing that the Goddess movement incorporates "unequal relational dynamics between white Goddess feminists and women of color" and states that it is influenced by colonial narratives, resulting in both "silencing and the romanticization of racial difference."[7]
See also
- Emma Curtis Hopkins
- Erich Neumann (psychologist)
- Eternal feminine
- Feminist theology
- Gender and religion
- Goddess movement
- Great Goddess hypothesis
- Mother goddess#Christianity
- Mariolatry
- Thealogy
- Witch-cult hypothesis
References
- ISBN 9780813930107.
[I]t was her interest in matriarchal religion and her insistence on its importance that most distinctly set her apart from other British scholars.... As early as 1900, she made note of the evidence of an older stratum of religion--the worship of earth goddesses--lying beneath Olympianism and supplanted it.
- ^ Smeds, John (Winter 1990–1991). "Graves, Bachofen and the Matriarchy Debate" (PDF). Focus on Robert Graves and His Contemporaries. 1 (10): 1–17. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
- ISBN 9780156961585.
- ISBN 9780472089345. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
Marija Gimbutas is indivisibly linked with the study of the prehistoric Goddess.
- ISBN 9780521663809.
Marija Gimbutas unwittingly supplied the fledgling movement with a history, through her analysis of the symbolism of the Goddess in the religion of palaeolithic and neolithic Old Europe.
- S2CID 144409754.