Despite all efforts by patriarchal institutions to obliterate it from our memory, woman’s creative power and sacred sexual energy was acclaimed and celebrated for at least forty-thousand years.
All over the world, God was originally Female.
According to legends worldwide, life first arose from the primordial wombs of Great Goddesses such as Anu of the Dravidian Indus culture, Gaia of the ancient Greeks, Spider Woman of the Pueblo and Navaho peoples in North America, and African goddesses Oshun and Oya. Thousands of sculptures, figurines, cave paintings, rock carvings of female figures, dating from the Paleolithic periods and earlier Stone Age, have been found throughout the European and Asian continents, depicted in poses of dancing, giving birth, making love, and fighting. As well having pregnant bellies or the features of wild animals, these figures give ample evidence of Woman’s myriad skills and roles in pre-patriarchal times.
Temple priestesses of archaic Mediterranean cultures taught and practiced sacred rituals that included sex, in order to honor the Goddess. In India, Hindu temple dancers, called devadasis, sang and danced daily to honor feminine spirit power, until they were outlawed by the colonizing British in the 1950’s AD. In Tibet, the dakini, a female spirit, still represents untamed spiritual-sexual energy believed to awaken the spontaneous powers of chaos and play. The hetaeras of ancient Greece, the courtesans of Renaissance Europe, the geishas of Japan, and the demi-mondes and demi-reps of nineteenth century Paris and London, were all women who held great prestige, enjoyed uncommon economic freedom in their respective societies, due largely to their skills in the arts of sex, seduction, and sophisticated entertainment.
Even later patriarchal religions continued to honor a female aspect, despite the avowed primacy of their male gods. Jewish Kabbalistic mysteries taught that Shekinah was the feminine soul of God, without whom he could not exist. Sophia was the name given the highest idea of Wisdom by early Gnostic teaching. Said to be God’s mother, Sophia was symbolized by a dove and was eventually re-cast in the Christian iconography as their non-sexual Holy Ghost. Some Gnostic Christian cults worshipped the so-called “harlot” whom they knew to be High Priestess of the venerable Semitic goddess, Mariamne. Even more astonishing, some scholars site evidence that this same woman, Mary Magdalene, was the lover and wife (feminine soul) of Jesus, giving full meaning to that holy man’s life.
In another venue, women were credited with powers of defense and protection in many tribes and cultures. In the first century AD, Celtic Warrior Queens in the British Isles, Germany and France, were said to wield a fierce strength equal to that of their male comrades-at-arms, and were reputedly more lusty than any man. In ancient Anatolia (Turkey) and northern Africa, tales of Amazon Warriors told of vicious fighting women who rode magnificent horses bareback, carried magical shields, hunted with bow and arrow, wielded the double-headed ax in battle, and loved each other.
Finally, the healing power of women has been both honored and defiled down to our own day. In Native American cultures, north and south, women originated the magic healing arts later conscripted by male shamans, while Medicine Women, themselves, were accused of evil sorcery for their dream prophecies and use of herbal remedies. The great body of knowledge regarding mysteries of sex, birth, death, and rebirth, once held sacred by the Old Religion of Europe, became demonized by a church-inspired pogrom against midwives and old women herbalists in the Middle Ages. The witch-hunts of Europe and the New World Colonies implanted a fear of women’s sexual and healing wisdom that haunts us still.
In the late Neolithic and early Bronze ages, from the fifth millennium through the third millennium BCE, Proto-Indo-European tribes migrated from the steppes of southern Russia. They traveled down into Asia and Europe in waves over many centuries: southeast to the Indus in northern India and into Persia (Iran), southwest to Anatolia (Turkey) and Europe, northwest to Latvia and Lithuania. These tribes of nomadic pastoralists infiltrated the lands of indigenous goddess-worshipping tribes, bringing with them horses, wheeled vehicles, weapons of war, and a variety of male-dominated religions.
The Indo-European were a patriarchal “tripartite society” with classes divided hierarchically into priest-lawgivers, warriors, and nurturers. Local goddesses were assimilated into the male-god pantheons to sanction and give energy to men’s activities. Some goddesses were to bestow energy for rulership, others to bestow energy for war. All were to bestow energy of fertility and nurturance for men’s welfare. Mortal women were valued according to the degree they bestowed energy by bearing and raising children to fill the ranks of priests and warriors. Older women were divested of any useful role, for once past the age of childbearing, their energy was considered to be of no value to men. The wisdom of aged women was labeled anathema and older women became outcasts.
Ancient shamanic traditions teach that within every person is an animal essence needing expression, yearning for its freedom. Animals and birds of all kinds have ever been our guides between the spirit world and nature, between the naked body and the questing wild soul.
Artifacts from ancient cultures show the Goddess in the forms of bird, lion, wolf and dog, turtle, frog, butterfly, ewe and ram, doe and buck and fawn, fish, pig, cow and bull, spider, scorpion, bear, and most anciently-- the snake. Her animals embody the Goddess herself, describing aspects of her personality; demonstrating her power. These animals are sacred, but they remain untamed; they are potentially dangerous to any who would deny their freedom or threaten their sanctity.
In cave art from Paleolithic times, are found hundreds of images of women with animals. They are depicted dancing. Some are pregnant. Some women are depicted with heads or bodies of birds or animals. Animal fetishes-- figurines of birds, snakes, and bears-- have been found with notched markings that suggest a system of counting lunar cycles.
All evidence points to very ancient connections between women’s blood cycles, animal powers, and the moon’s cycle. These, in turn, are linked to the starry constellations. The veneration of animals in female shamanism was not about hunting or sacrifice, but about the spirit powers the women saw immanent within the beasts of earth, the creatures of air and sea. Women then ascribed these qualities to the wondrous cyclic patterns of the heavens, relating them to the changing seasons, and making the association to their own changing bodies and female blood mysteries.
The menstrual blood of women has always been sacred in earth-based societies. Woman’s blood-power is linked to earth’s magnetic energy (blood contains iron) which is at the root of all life. The primitives knew that through the magnetic forces that flow around and within all on earth are interwoven invisible communication lines-- silent song-lines-- that guide our lives without our cognizance or control. Many indigenous peoples through out the world still maintain these connections. Their spiritual beliefs hold as highest truth that we humans are made of star stuff, that we are part and parcel of the sacred ground on which we walk; that our bodies are microcosms of the whole world; and that our minds are attuned inextricably to the rhythms of the Universe.
From the earliest times, woman’s menstrual blood was the most potent form of “sacrifice” that could be offered the gods, for it bestowed fertilizing power without taking life. This “claret ambrosia” was said to redeem souls, sanctify kings and immortalize men. The Fountain of Eternal Youth bubbled with the Fairy Queen’s magic menstrual blood in the pagan’s Paradise.
Today we may speculate about what it would be like to be so in tune with the earth, its creatures, and the very stars above. How might the world be different had we remained in touch with the currents of life coursing through our bodies instead of shutting it all out, closing ourselves off as somehow separate and superior to all of Nature?
Women everywhere were once respected as the experts in love and sex. Men came to women for instruction in the arts of romance, coaching in the graces of social etiquette. Some women, at every period in history, have achieved prestige in the male world through their ability to entertain, to bring tranquility, to nourish intellectual appetites, as well as feed physical senses by their graceful artistry, quick wit, and good humor. Such women are indeed powerful, for they are essentially at ease within their own intelligence, relaxed in their beauty; they serve others without becoming servile, they relate not with artifice, but with artfulness.
Women of many cultures have carried the Muse archetype by taking a highly specialized role in their society-- the role of a hostess, a catalyst for social discourse, a model for refined intellect and gracious manners. These women often become powerful civilizing forces in their societies. They are exemplified by the Hetairai of ancient Greece, the Concubines of ancient China, the Courtesans of Renaissance Europe, by the Geishas of the Orient, by the Devadasis of India, and perhaps even by talk show hostesses on TV today, such as Oprah Winfrey.
Although history paints them as prostitutes, the Hetairai, Geishas and Courtesans, while charming and evocative, were seldom predatory in the blatantly seductive manner of our Wildwoman Whore. They could, however, perform sexual ministrations with practiced grace when it suited their purposes. A Sexual encounter with these Muse-ruled women was never just a roll in the hay for fun and games. Sex with the cultured courtesan was no racey chase about town, nor a wanton dance of lust. It was an art, a performance, an entertainment that included the refined graces of polished manners, civilized conversation, genteel amenities, courtly charms, polite relaxation, and elegant ease of body and soul. Having wit enough to capture the hearts of powerful men, these women often influenced world affairs.
Not surprisingly, such entertaining, socially adept, powerfully charismatic women of intellect, wit, talent and charm are often of middle age, or even in their elder hood. We find that it is not typically the youthful maiden, but the mature woman who carries this influential archetype into her relationships or her lifework, for it requires a modicum of life experience. An older woman who has a dose of deep wisdom acquired over time, has an ability to see, with hindsight, the connections between diverse people and ideas. She thus creates a bridge to span differences, a magnet to link creative minds, drawing them together with her own brilliance, infusing them with co-creative energy.
The term ‘Hetaira’ means companion, and was the title of a courtesan in ancient Athens. These were the only women who retained full equality with men during the male-supremacist Hellenic period of classic Greece. Aspasia was a renowned hetaera who became mistress of a great statesman of Athens-- Pericles. Reputed to be a brilliant philosopher she was so highly regarded for public speaking that Socrates, himself, often attended her lectures with his students. She strongly influenced Pericles democratic policies, and her home was a center for philosophical debate during the Golden Age of Athens. This great woman, besides being companion to great men, created a school for aspiring hetaerae. There, Greek maidens came to study the fine arts, music, literature, philosophy, and also to perfect their skills at love-making.