Why We Need to Bring Back God as a Woman, part 1 by Caryn MacGrandle

26,000 years ago, life was precarious and dangerous.  And so the human race revered the Mother.  Mother Earth, who provided food amidst scarcity, protection from the dangers of the wild and healthy babies who grew to adulthood.

The Goddess.

In her many forms.

Some of these Goddesses.

Venus of Willendorf.  The artifact known as the Venus of Willendorf dates to between 24,000–22,000 B.C.E., making it one of the oldest and most famous surviving works of art.

Nammu.  Mother of the Universe.  A Sumerian Goddess from the Middle East said to have been worshipped as far back as 3,500 BCE.

Inanna Queen of Heaven. Enheduanna born in Mesopotamia during the Akkadian Empire around 2285 B.C.E. not only the first known female poet but also the first named literary author in history.  She composed 42 hymns; one of her most famous works The Exaltation of Inanna (Queen of Heaven).

All of this was not a history I was taught in school.  My good friend Liz Childs Kelly writes:

“I’ve learned that my lack of exposure to female voices and Goddesses in non-Western traditions didn’t necessarily mean that those voices don’t exist.  Instead, it has as much to do with the lingering forces of colonialism, in the form of algorithms and media companies that continue to prioritize Western white, male voices as our primary sources of authority information.”

–Home to Her: Walking the Transformative Path of the Sacred Feminine by Liz Childs Kelly

But isn’t it time we brought this ‘herstory’ back into our popular culture?

Three or four thousand years ago, the Goddess was a presence within the majority of cultures.  But then we ‘evolved’.  We made better tools and weapons.  We learned how to more successfully forage and cook and farm. 

And the Messiah Jesus Christ was born.

And he came bringing a message of paternal love and compassion.  Forgive and take care of my children.  Spread the message. To the ends of the Earth.

And this message was picked up and taken to the ends of the Earth.

Bigger towns were created, better irrigation and sewage.  Medicine and international routes of trade.  They did a lot of good, and a lot of progress was made.

But for something to be born, something must be cleared.  And this was the prevalence of the Goddess and Mother Earth.

In the 15^th century, European men saw what they believed was standing in the way of Christianity’s message and competing with their centralized power.  The majority were women (a few men, too) in small villages who were turned to in childbirth, in pain and in sickness.  They knew the plants and the herbs and how to live in collaboration with the Earth.  The villagers turned to them in times of need.

They were the Witches.

And they decided, that in order to spread the message and in order to break apart the cohesiveness of small villages, they had to go.

Malleus Maleficarum published in 1487 became the manual for finding and prosecuting Witches.  Leaning on their instructions from the Bible:  Exodus 22:18-20 KJV.  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.  Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death” they preached the necessity of eradicating Witches.

Accused Witches were prosecuted and burned and killed in large numbers.  We do not have an exact number but current scholarly estimates vary from around 35,000 to 50,000.

But elsewhere in this time of eradication, great strides were being made. The Renaissance began: scientific advancements, inventions and thinking such as we had never seen before. 

But what was suppressed in its advancement?

Not only was it the actual women killed in the European Witch hunts, but it was the fear that was left in its wake.

“Don’t be different.  Don’t speak up.  Don’t rely on your own instincts and knowing, but rather listen to what we say.” 

A blueprint for success was formed that demanded adherence.  The Malleus Maleficarum reprinted in the 1920’s, the late 1940’s and as recent as 2016 actually says it was necessary to suppress Witches because it was suppressing the feminine.

-from the Amazon description of Malleus Maleficarum

” . . . the book openly advocates discrimination against women, albeit while acknowledging that a minority of witchcraft practitioners are male. A theory on why the vast majority of witches are female is posited, rooted in the presence of woman in the Biblical canon; as with Eve, the wife of Adam, and Mary; the mother of Jesus Christ. By the end of the book, it is agreed that witches are created from a pact made with the Devil himself, with whom they engage in sexual liaisons. The witch is then summoned by flight to an evil assembly headed by the Devil, encouraged to practice illicit forms of sex, and then granted the powers of maleficent magic.”

More quotes from the Malleus Maleficarum:

“Witchcraft is not a harmless superstition, but a deadly threat to the Church and the community at large.”

“The malevolent harm caused by witches is as great as the power they possess to do good.”

“Witches are not individuals, but rather a collective force of evil that must be eradicated from society.”

And those in charge of the Witch hunts did their best to do that.

They helped to set up a culture where women learned to stay quiet and to pick and choose between their male providers and community: where the man was the ‘head of the household’ and a strong woman was the ‘neck’.

Part 2, tomorrow.