“The goddess is a metaphor, a symbol of the veneration of the Universal Feminine Principle which has so long been neglected in our society under patriarchy. A whole psycho/spiritual imbalance, a profound disharmony between the masculine and feminine energy life forces has been occurring for the past 2000 years or more in Western Civilization.” p. 15, Woolger, Jennifer and Woolger, Roger, The Goddess Within.
The following is a brilliant overview synopsis of “What Happened to the Goddess”, taken from Judy Chicago’s book, The Dinner Party. For me it has become once again, a mind-blowing, socio-political history of the Feminine Principle through art….A must read! The book, in particular, is a sad reminder of all that has been lost to our feminine principle consciousness.
In the words of Judy Chicago: In the beginning, the feminine principle was seen as the fundamental cosmic force. All ancient peoples believed that the world was created by a female Deity. This Goddess was conceived as bringing the universe into being either alone or in conjunction with a male consort, usually Her son, whom the Goddess created parthenogenetically.
Procreation was not understood to be connected with coitus, and it was thought that Woman--like the Goddess—brought forth life alone and unaided. Awe of the universe was transformed into reverence for Woman, Herself, Whose body became the symbol of birth and rebirth. Woman’s creative power was embodied in a multitude of female figurines that emphasized Her breasts, belly, hips and vagina.
These Mother Goddesses were worshipped everywhere and have been discovered beneath the remains of civilizations all over the world. They attest to a time when women not only were venerated, but actually had social and political power. All archaeological evidence indicates that these matriarchal cultures were egalitarian, democratic, and peaceful. But female-oriented agricultural societies gradually gave way to a male-dominated political state in which occupational specialization, commerce, social stratification, and militarism developed. As men gained control of the social and political forces, the power of the Goddess was diminished or destroyed. For the first time, the idea arose of life originating entirely from a male rather than a female source.
It is possible to trace this changeover from matriarchy to patriarchy in the myths, legends, and images of the Goddess. First, Her original primacy gave way to gradual subordination to male gods; in some cases, the sex of the female Deity was simply altered and all Her rituals and temples transferred to the male figure. Then the originally benevolent power of the Goddess began to be viewed as negative, destructive, or evil. Finally, the Judeo-Christian tradition absorbed all deities into a single male godhead.
However, the Jews—like most early people—were matriarchal and worshipped a goddess. It required six centuries for Yahweh to replace Ashtoreth as the primary deity of the Jews; for a long time their temples were side by side. After the Jewish patriarchs succeeded in destroying goddess worship, women came to be treated like chattel. The same story is repeated in culture after culture; in Crete; the powerful goddesses and queens, as a result of successive Greek invasions, were incorporated into Greek myths. Although by this time the Greeks were patriarchal, the goddess tradition continued there, as it did in Rome.
But the Greco-Roman goddesses paled beside their historic antecedents. The position of Greek women had already deteriorated considerably and is clearly summed up by this famous remark by an Athenian philosopher: “That woman is best who is least spoken of among men, whether for good or evil.”
The destruction of the goddess represented the destruction of women’s political, social, and religious authority. However, women did not passively accept this loss of power, as is evidenced in myths, legends, and literature about the Amazons and various warrior queendoms. It is unknown whether women warred among themselves during the thousands of years of gynocracy, but history indicates their power was being challenged, in a vain effort to turn the tide.
Roman women were in a similar position legally to that of their Greek predecessors, but in actuality they were much freer. Although they were considered “perpetual minors” and were subject to their fathers’ and husbands’ jurisdiction, public sentiment was at odds with the laws. These laws improved for a while as a result of a protest organized by Roman women, but their gains were later eroded.
When Christianity first developed, there were a number of early religious communities where men and women enjoyed equal rights, partly as a result of their commitment to the idea that “in Christ there was neither male nor female.”
Throughout the Dark Ages, the Church offered women refuge from the invasions and violence that made them subject to capture, rape, and forcible marriage. Girls went to convents to be educated and either considered them their permanent homes or left to be married, frequently returning in later life. Those who wished to devote themselves to scholarship and the arts gathered there, with or without taking religious vows.
During the early Middle Ages women gradually lost more of their property rights. In an effort to retain their lands, countless noblewomen established and ruled religious houses. These abbesses had the rights and privileges of feudal barons. They usually were members of the royal family and acted as representatives of the kings during their absences. They often administered vast lands; managed convents, abbeys, and the double monasteries; provided their own troops in wartime; had the right of coinage; and were consulted in political and religious affairs.
In the later Middle Ages, the family emerged as the most stable social force of the secular world, and women who were central to the family achieved greater freedom. They could own and administer property and in their husbands’ absences, managed the estates, presided over the courts, signed treaties, made laws, and in some cases, commanded troops.
The improved status of women was manifested in the growing worship of the Virgin Mary. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, it absorbed indigenous religious practices, especially the continued worship of the Goddess. In an effort to obtain converts, the Church allowed thie worship to be transferred to the figure of Mary, whose image was derived from the ancient Goddess with Her son/lover on her lap. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Church was well-established and was no longer willing to tolerate a female Deity. Moreover, church fathers did not need women’s help in spreading Christian doctrine, as they had in earlier centuries. They began to attach the last vestiges of Mother Goddess worship and to restrict women’s power in the Church. In some cases, Mother Goddess worship was tied to the practice of witchcraft, which the Church had tolerated for centuries. But church fathers felt more and more threatened by the power of women in the covens. In addition, a number of heretical sects had developed where women were allowed to preach, which incensed the Church.
When the Church joined hands with the State to build the social and political institutions that are the foundation of modern society, they eliminated all who resisted their authority: witches; Christian heretics and non-Christians; of male physicians; political dissenters and peasant leaders, many of whom were women; and those who protested the destruction of what was left of female power. Witch hunts were prevalent from the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries. According to male scholars no more than three hundred thousand people were exterminated, but contemporary feminist scholars were beginning to suspect that there were probably between six and nine million killed. Eighty-five percent of those executed were women.
By the late Renaissance women had little independent power, for the economic and political base that had supported the medieval predecessors had disappeared. The decline of feudalism, the contraction of women’s position, and the advent of the witch hunts created a situation in which women were steadily forced into submission. By the time of the Reformation, when the convents were dissolved, women’s education—formerly available through the Church—had virtually come to an end. Women were barred from the universities, guilds, and professions; women’s property inheritance rights, slowly eroded over centuries, were ultimately totally eliminated. Marriage became the only acceptable option for women. To the Reformers, the intellectual aspirations of women were not only an absurdity, but a positive peril. They never tired of repeating that women’s learning should be restricted to reading and writing for the purpose of teaching the Bible to their children. Reformation leaders insisted that a woman’s sole duty was silent obedience to her husband.
Within the family, women did enjoy a certain respect. Their lives were busy and productive; work was centered in the home, and the activities of all the family members were crucial to its economic survival. The Industrial Revolution, however, took work out of the house, and the consequent separation between work and home had a profound effect on women’s condition. Their work ceased to have importance as far as the world’s values were concerned; women were expected to be the leisured helpmates of men. This, coupled with development of the Victorian ideal of a passive and dependent wife, made women’s lives so narrow, their opinions so few, there is little wonder that a women’s revolution began.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published a book which provided the foundation for feminist theory and the subsequent revolution. She argued that if women failed to become men’s equals, the progress of human knowledge and virtue would be halted, and , moreover, that the tyranny of men had to be broken both politically and socially if women were to become free.
In 1848, a group of American women met in Seneca Falls, New York, and addressed themselves to eighteen grievances. They demanded the right to vote, to be educated, to enter any occupation to have control over their bodies, to sign legal papers, to manage their earnings, and to own and administer property.
At first the outcry was enormous, and women were ordered back to their “place.” The women persisted, however, and in less than a century they changed many laws that had restricted their lives. Moreover, they built a movement that was international. All over the world, women were agitating for their rights. It seemed that no force could stop them and that equality was in sight. But the initial thrust of the women’s revolution was met by a counter force that began to push women back into the confines of the home.
This time, women were restricted not by the laws, but by guilt and ignorance. They were told that the fight for women’s rights had been won, and that their experience to the contrary was untrue. They were made to feel guilty for their aspirations and were convinced that, somehow, their desire to be free threatened men. Most of all, women were deprived of any knowledge of their foremothers’ efforts. The women’s revolution was obscured, as our entire heritage has been obscured.
I have been personally strengthened and transformed not only by discovering the efforts women have made in the last two centuries, but also by realizing that women have fought for their dignity and their rights from the moment they first lost their Goddess and their power.
The Dinner Party is a symbolic history of our past, pieced together—like the Heritage Floor—from small fragments which tell us something about our achievements and our condition throughout Western civilization. The women represented are either historical or mythological figures; I have brought them together—invited them to dinner, so to speak—that we might hear what they have to say and see the range and beauty of a heritage we have not yet had an opportunity to know. Sadly, most of the 1.038 women included in The Dinner Party are unfamiliar, their lives and achievements unknown to most of us.
To make people feel worthless, society robs them of their pride; this has happened to women. All the institutions of our culture tell us—through words, deeds, and, even worse, silence—that we are insignificant. But our heritage is our power; we can know ourselves and our capacities by seeing that other women have been strong. To reclaim our past and insist that it become a part of human history is the task that lies before us, for the future requires that women, as well as men, shape the world’s destiny.
Source: The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, Anchor press, Garden City, New York, 1979.
Note: The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. See photo below:
