When God Was A Woman

Some time early this year or late last year my husband bought me this book. He had come across the title in David Christian's Maps of Time, which he was reading, and thought I would be interested. You bet I was (am). Anything that roughly takes the shape of a feminist cultural history, I want to consume. Even more so when it's about patriarchy and religion.

Today I finished it. Maternity leave has given me the opportunity to sit and read, which I usually don't have time or energy to do. I've been enjoying that, and this was the first book I wanted to dive into. Sure, maybe it's because of the American far right's push towards theocracy that it was so interesting to me. My feed is constantly filled with Christian nationalists and their aims to control women in the same way women used to be subjugated. However, there's another part of me that is interested in this idea because I grew up attending Christian school and active in the church. That was the only religious foundation I had, and this conversation about goddesses spoke to me on some other level.

Starting out, this text is a bit much to chew on. There are a lot of authentic names and locations, which are a bit difficult to keep track of, especially since a lot of the content explains how those names are related, like Au Set and Ua Zit. But after a while, you get used to that, and you begin to grasp the interesting powers at play both between, betwixt, across, and throughout the Near East in the times leading up to and through the time period of the growth and spread of Yahwehism (Judaism) and the shift from polytheistic goddess religions to a monotheistic partriarch, God/Yahweh/Jehova.

Merlin Stone is, first and foremost, an artist, and it shows in her descriptions of artifacts, idols, plaques, etc., which make it quite easy to envision all the unifying types of imagery. Never before was I interested in serpent imagery (except maybe during Taylor Swift's Reputation tour), but now, I'm extremely fascinated. The idea that the original Creatress goddess was portrayed as a serpent or closely connected to snakes and dragons is fun. There's something wily and mischievous about it, and the power invoked by serpent images is also powerful.

Of course, as we're in October, there's also something witchy about it, and I found myself checking out snake jewelry online. Admittedly, I found some awesome ear cuffs that have the snakes kind of coiling down your ear. In the book, Stone discusses that often, serpents were said to have licked people's ears blessing them with oracular gifts. I want those earrings because it makes me feel like I, too, might be filled with that kind of wisdom and power.

Long story short, the Middle East, Near East, Mediterranean, and north/northeast Africa worshipped goddesses for centuries, if not millennia, before a monotheistic masculine God came to the region. Stone argues that it was Indo-European invaders that brought patrilineal inheritance and rule with them, along with an initiative to shift the power away from goddesses and into their consorts to rule as gods and priests. Previously, much of the region had practices matrilineal genealogy, passing power, money, property, and everything else from the mother to the daughters (and sons).

Then enter the Jewish tribes. Stone argues that the Indo-Europeans at least influenced their ideas or some of the Hebrews were indeed of Indo-European descent. Stone's discussion of the parallels between Biblical legend and others that predated it was hugely surprising to me. I grew up with the Bible in a cultural vacuum, but Stone added a context that I never knew existed, making me look at it in a different way. Stone argues that much of the Bible was written with the intent of deterring people from their ancestral goddess religion in favor of their new one, fundamentally altering the role of women and oppressing them as a result.

If you're interested, pick up a copy of this 1976 book for a fun exploration of art, architecture, archaeology, history, and religion to look at some origins of patriarchy.

Next stop: Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy and The Chalice & The Blade by Riane Eisler. Also, for fun, I'll probably dive into a few Dan Brown books that I've never read in order to catch up with the newest one, The Secret of Secrets. I've never read the books, but the movies are always on my easy comfort watchlist. *Do they pass the Bechdel test? Not usually. However, some of the other tests might argue that the female representation is strong given the subject matter. Perhaps that's a blog post journey of it's own for later.

As always, until next time! Keep stoking the flame of education.

If you want to pick up When God Was a Woman, check out these links:

• Amazon (I know, but sometimes we just can't afford an indie shop)

• Bookshop.org

• Thriftbooks

• Audible

• Check Your Local Library, mine had this title on Hoopla