Chapter Four - Ancient Goddess Religions

 Apparently, at the beginning of recorded history, people in the ancient past believed God was a woman whom they called the Great Mother. But this belief has been erased from mainstream knowledge. So in our modern world, most of us think of God as a man, although there are some variations to this. Back in the 19th century Mary Baker Eddy the founder of Christian Science, claimed that God was both Father and Mother. The women’s right advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton also said the same in her book; The Woman’s Bible. Then in the 20^th century a Korean Christian sect called; World Mission Society Church of God, which was started in 1964 and also believes in a Father and Mother God. But these are small sects and are not mainstream Churches. But there has been big changes in the Church of England which is a more mainstream Christian sect.

The first woman ordained as a priest in the Church of England was Angela Berners-Wilson in 1994. Then in 2026 Sarah Mullally became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. This means it just took over 30 years for women to obtain the highest position in the Church of England. Allowing in female priests has also changed the Church of England view about the sex of God. The official position now; is that God is neither male nor female and transcends human distinctions of sex. So some priests now use gender-neutral language like "Parent" instead of "Father". So one mainstream Christian sect has moved away from the concept of a Father God, but not gone as far as accepting a Mother God.

There are still Goddesses in Hinduism like; Durga, Kali, Sita, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Parvati and many others. But the single Supreme deity in Hinduism, is Brahman a male God. While in some Buddha sects there are still Goddesses like Tara, Prajnaparamita and Guanyin. But not all Buddha sects recognise goddesses, the Theravada branch of Buddhism reject them completely. There are also Goddesses in Shintoism, the native religion of Japan. Interestingly the supreme deity of Shintoism is Amaterasu the Sun Goddess. There are other Shinto Goddesses like Benzaiten, Izanami, Himiko, Uzume and a few more. Although the belief is Shintoism and Amaterasu as the supreme deity, hasn’t stopped Japan becoming a patriarchal male dominated society.

It seems that the further we go back in history, to pre-Christian times, the more Goddesses we find. Male scholars tend to dismiss any ancient Goddess religions as “fertility cults” demonstrating their bias against any religion that worships Goddesses. Yet we know that the first deities were Goddesses. In spite of later patriarchal religions attempt to destroy any knowledge of Goddess religions of the past. Fragments of this belief have been found by archaeologists. For instance, in a Babylonian fragment of pottery was found an incarnation which starts off:

...they kissed her feet

saying; The Creatress of mankind we call thee;

The mistress of all the gods be they name!

This was an incarnation to the Goddess Ishtar whom the author of this incarnation believed was the creator of our world. In Ancient Egyptian scriptures it was written:

In the beginning there was Isis. Oldest of the Old. She was the Goddess from whom all becoming arose.

Isis is venerated in other writings. For instance archaeologists found writing carved on the Temple walls of a Isis temple in Cyrene. (Modern day Libya):

I, Isis, am sole ruler of time...l name me supreme Goddess, the greatest of all the gods in the heaven… Without me nothing has come into existence, and the stars do not hold their courses with out first receiving my instructions.

In other words Isis is saying she is the creator of the world. We also find her saying similar things in an ancient book called, Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass, by Apuleius. This book is a fictional story of a man who when playing around with magic, accidentally turns himself into an Ass. But he is finally saved by the Goddess Isis, when he becomes a devote follower of her religion. In his book he says this about the Goddess Isis:

The Mother of the Universe,

the mistress of all the elements.

The highest of the powers above,

and the queen of the shades below

The manifestation of all the gods and goddesses

Met 11,5

We see similar hints in the Goddess Aphrodite the Greek Goddess of Love. But she is older than the Greek civilization and originally she was called the Goddess Moira, who was called, “Older than time”. If we think about it, if she is older than time she has to be the Creator Goddess. The same is also said of the Hindu goddess Kali, who was called the Goddess of time and is claimed to be the oldest Hindu deity. Which again means if she is the oldest deity this also points to her being the creator Goddess. It is also of interest that Isis was also called the Goddess of time and the “oldest of the old”.

It seems Goddess worship is very ancient, going back to pre-historic times. Archaeologists have discovered hundreds of small stone female figurines in stone-age excavations. Male archaeologists have tried to dismiss them as stone-age pornography. But female archaeologist Marija Gimbutas claimed it is evidence that stone age people worshipped goddesses. But how believable is Marija Gimbutas’s idea that stone age people had Goddess religions?

It might be true if our distant ancestors were like the bonobo ape. The reason why we might think this; is that the skeleton of the bonobo ape is very similar to the humanoid australopithecines. The oldest skeleton was discovered is 3 million year old. And this species had both human and ape like features. (This also includes the famous "Lucy” who was australopithecus afarensis.) To quote from the internet:

Research indicates that Australopithecus body proportions closely resemble those of bonobos, with some evolutionary biologists suggesting bonobos may be phenotypically similar to Australopithecus or even represent living-fossil Australopithecines.

The bonobo ape along with the chimpanzee is the nearest animal related to us, as we share 98% - 99% of our DNA with both apes. But the skeletons of the chimpanzee, is unlike that of the bonobo, australopithecines or humans. Bonobos and australopithecines both had arms and legs of similar length which is totally different to chimpanzees and most other modern apes, which have arms longer than their legs. While the human that have legs longer than their arms. Also, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans have strong robust skeletons while the skeletons of bonobos, australopithecines and humans are a lot slender and lighter. While, both the bonobo and australopithecines are/were more adapted to bipedal walking than other apes. Another point is, the sexual behaviour in most animals is seasonal, with mating restricted to a specific period of the year. So that the female is well fed during her pregnancy and when nursing her young. But the exception to this, is humans and bonobos, where both species are able to have sex at any time, throughout the year.

The main difference between the chimpanzee and bonobo is that the chimpanzees live in strict patriarchal societies, while bonobos are matriarchal. Chimpanzee culture is very easy to understand, because it has a hierarchical system. Where the biggest and strongest males are the boss and dominate other males who are not so physically powerful. Although, all the males dominate the females, who are smaller than the males.

Bonobo societies are more complex, as the female dominate the males through a powerful sisterhood and sex. Bonobo males like other apes and humans, are larger than bonobo females but the bonobo females stick together, in a powerful sisterhood. The way this works; is that if a bonobo male attacks a bonobo female, she will make a distress call. Then all the bonobo females in hearing distance will come to her defence and attack the lone bonobo male. Because of this, it is the sisterhood that dominate bonobo communities and not powerful alpha males, like with chimpanzees.

This approach has been suggested by feminists who created the slogan, “the sisterhood is powerful”. But unfortunately sisterhood among human females, is not strong enough to overcome male aggression and dominance in human society. Another big difference between the chimpanzee and bonobo, is that the bonobo seem to be sex mad. As previously mentioned, most animals only have sex for a short period of time every year. The chimpanzee like most other animals is exactly the same, only having sex when the female is in season.

But this is not true, for bonobos and humans, who can have sex any time of the year and so are not restricted to seasonal sex. As the result, we find that in bonobo society, sex is not only used to fertilize females, it is used for pleasure and as a powerful method of social bonding. Bonobo customs dictate that when two bonobos are in any form of dispute; they make it up by having sex together. (Some human couple also do this, after they had a heated argument). It doesn’t matter if the two bonobos are a male and female or two males or two females. It seems that in bonobo society there is no demarcation line between heterosexuality and homosexuality, everyone is bisexual. This is why the bonobo is also called the; “make love not war” ape.

This suggests that the strong social bonding through sex, greatly enhances feminine power and undermines masculine power, because sex will soften male aggression. While, the sisterhood in bonobo society is helped when females bond, by having sex with each other. Although this doesn’t seem to work for bonobo males, who likewise have sex together, but it doesn’t seem to result in the males forming a strong brotherhood. This is how male aggression and competitiveness, seems to work against bonobo males. Whereas love and sisterhood gives bonobo females, power over the males.

So it is interesting that homosexuality is discouraged or even outlawed in many human patriarchal societies. Is this because they want to break up any form of sisterhood among women? So were humans in the past like bonobos and women form a powerful sisterhood through lesbian sex? One piece of evidence for this is the clitoris. Both patriarchal science and religions tell us that sex in only about reproduction, yet the female clitoris is only used for sexual pleasure. The clitoris is not needed for reproduction because a woman can get pregnant without it.

This may be one of the reasons why some patriarchal religions like Islam, cut off women’s clitorises. The clitoris may not be needed for sex between a dominant male and a submissive female, because this form of sex would be only about the man’s pleasure. But it’s essential for sex between two females. So cutting off women’s clitoris may be a way to discourage lesbian sex and so undermine sisterhood between women. This suggests that perhaps back in the stone-age, human society was similar to that of bonobo apes, because like bonobos. Humans can have sex any time of the year, so did humans once behaved like the bonobo ape? If this is true then women would have dominated human society back in the Stone Age.

Another indication of this is the Greek myths of the Golden Age where everyone lived in peace and warfare was unknown. Surprisingly there is archaeological evidence for this, in many neolithic sites like Çatalhöyük in Turkey, Ancient Malta, the Minoan civilization of Crete, the Indus Valley Civilization and Caral in Peru. These are some of the oldest civilizations archaeologists have discovered and they couldn’t find any evidence of warfare in any of them. This fact strongly suggests female rule, because women would be far less interested in warfare, in the same way men are.

So if people back in the stone-age thought about religion, they would assume that God was a women, because women back then were in charge. Religions have always been strongly influenced by politics. For instance; England changed from being a Roman Catholic country to becoming Protestant on the orders of King Henry VIII. This happened because the Pope wouldn’t allow him to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon, when he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. So he cut his ties with the Roman Catholic Church to do this, and as a bonus he was free to loot the extremely wealthy Roman Catholic monasteries. Because of this, England has largely been a protestant country ever since. The same is true of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire became Christian on the orders of the Emperor Constantine and all the previous religions in Roman at the time, were destroyed. This demonstrates the power of politician leaders compared with religious leaders. So that if male dominated governments say that God is a man, then religions are forced to agree. As Joseph Stalin the ruler of the USSR, in the 1930s and 40s once famously asked; “How many divisions does the Pope have?” To belittle the power of the Pope.

Although there are people who will willingly die for their religious beliefs like Sir Thomas More who was the, Lord High Chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII. Who opposed his King’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and was executed for doing this. Or the Boston martyrs, the Quakers who refused to change their religious beliefs and were all hung. But most people are not like this and are willing to change their religious beliefs to fit in with whoever is the ruler. As shown in satirical song; The Vicar of Bray. Where in the song the vicar changed his sermons to fit in with the divergent religious beliefs, of different monarchs like; Charles II, James II, William III, Queen Ann and finally George I, to keep his job. Although, since the being of the 20th century many governments have kept out of religious affairs. The only exception has been communist and Moslem countries.

So if women were in charge back in the stone-age, that would be the reason we find carvings of Goddesses in those times. Which is totally different to the popular belief of what stone-age people were like. Where it is assumed that stone-age men were very brutish and dominated stone-age women through violence. But this belief might be more to do with male bias within archaeology and anthropology than actual facts.

It has been suggested that warfare was the main reason why the last matriarchal age ended. Because matriarchal societies didn’t fight each other, they had no reason to have weapons of war and train men how to use them. So a small band of men from a patriarchal tribe with weapons, could easy conquer peaceful matriarchal communities. It has been suggested that the reason why the patriarchal age started with the beginning of the Bronze age was because it was a lot easier to make effective weapons out of bronze, rather than stone. The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas claims that the matriarchal towns and cities were conquered by violent patriarchal tribes from the North. This is called the Kurgan theory, and although when she first proposed this, it wasn’t accepted by many other archaeologists. But DNA evidence is now strongly support it although they don’t call these tribes Kurgan but the Yamnaya. In New Scientist magazine in 2019 there was an article called; Story of most murderous people of all time revealed in ancient DNA, it went on to say:

Starting 5000 years ago, the Yamnaya embarked on a violent conquest of Europe. Now genetic analysis tells their tale for the first time.

This story was then taken up by newspapers like the Daily Express and Daily Mail because it was a sensational story as it suggested that these Yamnaya people conquered the whole of Europe, killing all the men and bred with the women. Many people questioned this story, and as more DNA evidence has appeared, the story is now getting more and more complicated.

Yet women were not completely helpless, they obviously couldn’t physically fight back as men are bigger and stronger than women. It’s true there were Amazons, because archaeologists have found the graves of female warriors in Eastern and Northern Europe. And there is also historic references of Amazons in North Africa. But when fighting using swords, spears and axes; size and strength does make a difference and the Amazons were finally defeated.

But women had other ways of fighting back. If we assume that in the Stone-age and Neolithic age, humans had a society similar to the bonobo ape. Women would still have a strong sisterhood and supported each other and also could have mellowed men’s aggression with sex. It seems that women use sex in ancient Goddess temples. Patriarchal priests called Goddess priestesses; temple prostitutes, whores and harlots. But originally harlots and whores were the names of sacred priestesses in Ancient Goddess temples. The ancient writer Hesiod said of sacred whores, “they mellowed the behaviour of men”. While the “Great Whore of Babylon”, in Revelations 17, was the Goddess Ishtar, who was the Babylon Goddess of Love. The priestesses of Ishtar were also known as Holy Virgins, the original meaning of virgin was a unmarried woman, so a prostitute could be a virgin. While the original meaning of virgin-birth, was that no-one knew whom the father was. Although demi-gods were also called virgin-born, because a God had sex with the mortal mother. Which suggests Jesus Christ could be seen as a demi-god.

The beliefs and theology of Goddess religion has been destroyed by later patriarchal religions but Barbara G. Walker has dug up interesting knowledge in her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Where she writes:

Temple prostitutes were revered as healers of the sick. Their very secretions were supposed to have medical virtue. A Sufi proverb still suggests this opinion: "There is healing in a woman's vagina." Even their spittle could perform cures. Jesus's cure of blindness by spittle (Mark 8:23) was copied from a matriarchal tradition. A clay tablet from Nineveh says eye diseases can be cured by a harlot's spittle. Harlots were also sorceresses, prophets, and seers. The Hebrew word zonah means both a prostitute and a prophetess.

We also get some knowledge about Ancient Goddess Temples from Hinduism which is the only surviving pagan religion that has continued into modern times. The Khajuraho temple complex in central India, is famous throughout the world because it has numerous erotic carvings on the inside and outside of the Temple. Although only about 10 percent of the temples artwork is sexual in nature, it is these carvings that attract the most attention. To most people brought up in the Christian or Muslim religions, the idea of having erotic carving in a religious temple seems blasphemous. Because we are told that sex is a sin and therefore unholy. But a Goddess religion might see it completely different, as women would be interested in childbirth and anything associated with this. So menstruation, sex, pregnancy, childbirth and breast feeding, would all be celebrated in Goddess religions.

This is in total contrast to patriarchal religions and society, who have tried to make all these things a sin. Up until quite recently, women were told by patriarchal customs that menstruation was shameful and unclean. They also told people that sex is a sin and dirty. Even pregnancy was considered to be shameful and in the past, pregnant women were kept out of sight and not seen in public. While breast feeding was also once discouraged, back in the 20th century women were encouraged to feed their babies with cow’s milk, instead of their own human milk. Even today, women are encouraged to use formula milk made in factories, for their babies. Probably the reason why so many patriarchal societies tried to control people’s sex lives, is because women were using sex to influence men.

The Khajuraho temple complex was taken over by Muslim rulers in the 13th century and many temples like this were destroyed. But somehow Khajuraho temple complex survived, as was lost in the jungle. Then the British explorer T.S. Burt, rediscovered it in the 19th century. Since then it has become a popular tourist attraction. This Temple is linked to Tantra, a Hindu sect that worships the Goddess Kali. The sexual practises of Tantra strongly favours the sexual pleasure of women. The men are taught to withhold their sperm, so the couple can have sex without the man ejaculating. Which generally means the sexual act can continue until women orgasm, but not men.

In Tantra they also have sex with the women on top. Which is something patriarchal religions don’t agree with. We know this from the “missionary position”, where missionaries when preaching the Christian gospel to native people in the South Pacific. Insisted that the natives had sex with the man on top. In Western religions, because we are told sex is sinful and dirty, we don’t know that sex can be a spiritual experience. This is possible with the women on top, because both partners can go into a meditative state of mind while in this position. They also don’t move while having sex. The reason is that Tantra women have trained themselves, so they can stimulate the man’s penis using only their vagina muscles.

They call this kabzah or pompoir or the Singapore grip, but in the West it’s known as Kegel exercises. Women who do these exercises regularly, can shoot ping pong balls out of their vaginas. Or can pick up coins with their vaginas, placed near the corner of a table. Women can even lift weights using their vagina muscles. A yoni egg, is put in into a woman’s vagina with a string attached to it and held in place with her vaginal muscles. Then she can lift up weights on the end of the string. Tatyana Kozhevnikova a Russian gymnast has the unofficially world record of 31 pounds. (It’s an unofficial record, because the Guinness Book of Records refuse to cover this event).

There was a big controversy about clitoris and vagina orgasms in women, in the mid-20th century. Male sex experts once claimed that a vaginal orgasm was better for women. But Feminists in the 1960s said these male sex experts didn’t know what they were talking about, because they weren’t women. One of the more well-known books saying this was; I Accuse by Mette Ejlersen. Feminists like her pointed out that the vagina has few nerve endings in it, because it’s through the vaginal canal the mother gives birth. So a vagina full of nerve endings would make child-birth even more painful than it already is. Some feminists even go as far as saying, many women cannot receive a orgasm through penetrative sex with men. Because they can hardly feel a penis in their vagina and claim there is no such things as a G-spot.

As the result, many women have to fake orgasms, so not dent the man’s ego, or be accused by the man, of being frigid. These women also claim they can only have a orgasm through direct stimulation with the clitoris. So a man is better able to give a woman a orgasm with his tongue, by going down on her, than with his penis. But women who practise Kegel exercises or the Eastern equivalent of it. Report that by developing her vagina muscles a woman can develop feelings in that area. So she can have a vaginal orgasm after all, if she grips the penis tightly with her vagina muscles. Taoism in China is similar to Tantra in India where again the man has to train himself to withhold his orgasm and women do Kegel exercises.

These things probably happened in many ancient Goddess temples in the past, but knowledge of this was destroyed. But if true, it’s no wonder the patriarchal priests condemned practises like this. Because men would far prefer to go to a temple, where sex was available, than any patriarchal temple. The patriarchal priests must have seen this as a unfair advantage and couldn’t compete against these attractions. It also means, that when men came to Goddess temples for sex, the priestesses would have time to indoctrinate them into their beliefs. Also, some of the men going to these Goddess temples will be wealthy, powerful men. So these men would defend them, against any effort to close them down. This is why Goddess temples continued right up to the time Rome made Christianity a state religion. Then the Goddess Temples, were finally destroyed.

Although according to Barbara G. Walker, some of these Goddess Temples continued as convents. Many wealthy women of the time didn’t want to marry, because her husband had the right to take possession of her wealth. So they joined convents and these convents operated in the same way as previous Goddess Temples. To quote from her Book; The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets:

Chief protectress of whores was the virgin Mary. In Antwerp up to the present century, prostitutes spent certain annual feast days marching in procession to the churches, to dedicate candles to the Holy Virgin whom they called their own special deity.

An oft-told tale of the Middle Ages said when a nun decided to run away from her convent, to live as a prostitute for a few days, Mary assumed the errant nun's appearance and took her place in the convent, so she wouldn't be missed and pursued. A German variant of the story said the nun, Beatrix, left the convent to live with her heathen lover for 15 years. When she returned, she found that Mary had served as her stand-in all the while.

Medieval brothels were not always clearly distinguished from convents. A trace of the pagan collegia of priestesses still clung to both institutions. Early "double convents," with men and women united in one community, sometimes housed consecrated prostitutes. Several popes maintained "holy brothels" in Rome; Queen Joanna of Naples founded a religious house of prostitutes called The Abbey in Prostitution in the papal city of Avignon.

But before Christianity became a state religion, Goddess temples still remained and priestesses and temple prostitutes kept their high status with people coming to them for healing and wisdom. The Empress Theodora, the wife of the Emperor Justinian began her career as a temple prostitute. While St Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine was also a temple prostitute. Before she became a empress-saint when Christianity became the state religion. Before and after Christianity became a state religion, patriarchal priests smeared the reputation of Goddess priestesses by turning the words “whore” and “harlot” into terms of abuse. Since then we have what is called “slut shaming” and men are encouraged to insult and belittle prostitutes, or any women that frequently has sex with many men. Which is ironic, as these women are giving men what they want and yet are insulted and degrade by men, for doing this! Which discourages many women from wanting to have sex with men, so the losers in this, are men.

The reason why patriarchal religions and governments became anti-sexual by claiming that sex was sinful and dirty was demonstrated in the 10^th century. In 905 the Count of Tusculum took control of the papacy through force of arms and made himself Theophylact I. His family then controlled the papacy for the next hundred years. But he had a very dominant wife called Theodora who openly had sex with other men and gave her lovers important posts in the Church. She even chose who would be Pope. The female dominance continued with her daughter Marozia. Later historians called this period the "pornocracy" or the "Rule of the Harlots". This gives us an insight for why prostitutes and sexually active women were condemned by the Church. Because they feared women using sex to gain power over men.

Islam also had a fear of female sexuality. We see this is in the Islamic customs of women wearing loose clothing that won’t show the outline of their bodies and wearing face-masks. It is understandable why Islam made women wear loose clothing to prevent men becoming sexually interested in women, but why go as far as covering their faces? It might be to do with oral sex where if man cannot see women’s bodies, he may fantasize about having fellatio with women. In some strict Muslim countries they even have morality police that make sure women are well covered up and women can be arrested for any slight infringements, in the way they dress.

Christianity was never as bad as Islam in covering up women’s bodies, but at times it was fairly extreme. We see this in the late 19th century when sea-bathing become fashionable. Women had to go swimming in swimming costumes that covered their whole bodies. They even had bathing machines, little huts on wheels that were pushed into the sea, so a woman could go swimming without a man seeing her do this. Yet strangely, when later women were allowed to show their bodies more in the 20th century, like with the bikini. It was also the time of the Women’s liberation Movement and Feminism. So it suggests that female nudity, sexual freedom and female empowerment all go together. While covering women’s bodies, sexual suppression and the oppression of women are also linked consecutively.

Many courtesans did very well in patriarchal times and became very rich and influential by having sex with powerful, wealthy men. Well known examples of this are Madame du Barry who was the mistress to Louis XV of France and Nell Gwyn, the mistress to King Charles II of England. This might be why in most countries of the world, prostitution is illegal. Because women can use sex to influence powerful men. But by making it illegal puts prostitutes in the difficult situation, because unlike any other professions they no longer have the protection of the law. Then without this protection, prostitutes are at the mercy of pimps and criminals who will exploit prostitutes. So even though prostitutes are able to earn a lot of money from prostitution, most prostitutes don’t benefit from it. As pimps, organized crime and even corrupt policemen rob them of their money. This was a lot different in Goddess Temples as the priestesses were organized and so the money they earned through prostitution, went to them, or the Temple, instead of male criminals.

In the first religious communities of Goddess worshippers, female mediums were able to communicate with the Great Mother. The most well-known example of this is; the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece. It does show how good these priestesses where because they operated in a temple of male god and so the priests of these temple saw them as being very useful in making their temple famous. These mediums probably created the first religions where people would seek guidance and wisdom from the Great Mother through these mediums.

Then as men learned how to love more, some of them wanted to become women themselves. According to Robert Graves, male priests where allowed in the priesthood, if they were feminine in their behaviour. So these priests wore women’s clothing and had false breasts. (Even today, Christian and Moslem priests still wear dresses. In the past if a Christian priest was dismissed from the Church they went through a ceremony called “defrocking”.) Women at first would probably see nothing wrong with men dressing up as women and so encouraged them to do this. This may have worked alright for a while, because at first, these men were genuine in their desire to be women. The problem became when some of these men were so successful in acting like women. That they were given all the benefits of female power in the community. This encourage other men to want to be women, but these men had different motives, they only wanted personal power. As the result, some men showed a desire to be women, not because they wanted to learn how to love, but to gain the same power women had in the community.

So these men acted out the role of being a woman but then became competitive with women and through deception ended up in positions of power. The priestesses got wise to this and made it a rule, that if a man wanted to be a woman, he had to be castrated. But even this didn’t deter ambitious men, who were willing to sacrifice their penises in the quest for personal power. So these men became the first priests and they set about changing the religion of the Great Mother. For instance, in the past all Goddesses were Goddesses of Love, which makes sense. Then this changed when Goddesses like Inanna, Ishtar and Aphrodite became Goddess of both love and war, which off course makes no sense. This could have only have happened through the influence of patriarchal rulers and male priests.

The religion of the Great Mother under the influence of men, changed in other ways, because the Great Mother had a son. This was to prove to be, the thin end of the wedge. In time the son was changed to being the Great Mother’s lover or brother and they had equal status. Then a male god became the dominant deity and the creator god. Finally Goddesses were pushed to one side and we had a monolithic religion, where there was only a male god, like we see in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. It does seem that most of the patriarchal religions we know today, started as matriarchal religions, and example of this is Islam. It’s matriarchal roots was brought into people’s awareness by Salman Rushdie and his book: The Satanic Verses, published in 1988.

In the Koran the satanic verses are verses where the prophet Muhammad praises pre-Islamic goddess, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Al-Manat. These verses were later taken out of the Koran as it was claimed that Muhammad was deceived by Satan when he did this. So Salman Rushdie wrote a fictional story about this. This resulted in a fatwa ordering Rushdie's execution on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme leader of Iran in 1989. So Rushdie had to go into hiding as attempts were made on his life and people have been killed who have translated this book. In 2022 Rushdie was repetitively stabbed with a knife, he managed to survive but lost the sigh of one eye and use of one hand. All this has given the satanic verses world-wide publicity, so people who are not Muslim know about them.

Barbara G. Walker wrote more about ths in her book; The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. On the origins of the Koran:

...the Koran was an enlarged, revised version of the ancient Word of the Goddess Kore, revered by Mohammed's tribe, the Koreshited (Children of Kore), who guarded her shrine at Mecca.

She even says something similar about the Bible:

This word for a holy book came from Bybolos, the City of the Great Mother, the oldest continuously occupied temple in the world. The Goddess – called Astarte, Baalat, Hathor, etc, patronized learning and the priestesses collected a library of papyrus scrolls. Therefore, Greeks called any papyrus byblos, which came to mean any holy book. Hence the "Bible."

Walker also goes on to point out that many of the Bible stories come from older stories from Goddess religions:

Some of the miracles attributed to biblical heroes were copied from older myths of the Goddess. Joshua's arrest of the sun was formerly credited to priestesses of Isis. Hecate, and the Thessalian Great Mother, who were said to stop the heavenly bodies in their courses, and lengthen the night and day at will. Moses's flowering rod, river of blood, and tablets of the law were all symbols of the ancient Goddess. His miracle of drawing water from a rock was first performed by Mother Rhea after she gave birth to Zeus, and by Atlanta with the help of Artemis. His miracle of drying up waters to travel dry-shod was earlier performed by Isis, or Hathor, on her way to Byblos.

Walker also points out that Eve was a tribal name for the Creator Goddess:

The original Eve had no spouse except the serpent, a living phallus she created for her own sexual pleasure. Some ancient peoples regard the Goddess and her serpent as their first parents. Sacred icons showed the Goddess giving life to a man, while her serpent coiled around the apple tree behind her. Deliberate misinterpretation of such icons produced ideas for revised creation myths like the one in Genesis.

So as patriarchal religions took over, knowledge of the ancient Goddess religions was suppressed and we now only know about it, because of the scholarship of women like Barbara G. Walker and the archaeology of Marija Gimbutas.