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When God Was A Woman
''When God Was a Woman'' is the U.S. title of a 1976 book by sculptor and art historian Merlin Stone. It was published earlier in the United Kingdom as ''The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women's Rites''. It has been translated into French as (SCE-Services Complets d'Edition, Québec, Canada) in 1978, into Dutch as ' in 1979, into German as in 1989 and into Italian as in 2011. Stone spent approximately ten years engaged in research of the lesser-known, sometimes hidden depictions of the Sacred Feminine, from European and Middle Eastern societies, in preparation to complete this work. In the book, she describes these archetypal reflections of women as leaders, sacred entities and benevolent matriarchs, and also weaves them into a larger picture of how our modern societies grew to the present imbalanced state. Possibly the most controversial/debated claim in the book is Stone's interpretation of how peaceful, benevolent matriarchal society and Goddess-reverent traditions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merlin Stone
Merlin Stone (born Marilyn Jacobson; September 27, 1931 – February 23, 2011) was an American author, artist and academic. She was an important thinker of the feminist theology and Goddess movements and is known for her book '' When God Was a Woman''. Biography Merlin Stone was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. She attended P.S. 217 and Erasmus Hall High School, where she graduated in 1949 with a Metallic Art Medal Award. After enrolling at the University of Buffalo later that year and marrying in 1950, she continued her studies while raising her children, ultimately earning a B.S. and teaching certificate in art (with a minor in journalism) from the institution in 1958. She became interested in archaeology and ancient religions from her study of ancient art. From 1958 to 1967, she worked as a teacher and sculptor, exhibiting widely and executing numerous commissions. During this period, she was divorced from her first husband in 1963 and taught at Buffalo State ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feminist Theology
Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Jainism, Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting patriarchy, patriarchal (male-dominated) imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, studying images of women in the religions' sacred texts, and matriarchal religion. Methodology Development of feminist theology While there is no specific date to pinpoint the beginning of this movement, its origins can be traced back to the 1960s article, "The Human Situation: A Feminine View", written by Valerie Saiving (Goldstein). Her piece of work questioned theologies written by men for men in a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feminist Books
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women. Originating in late 18th-century Europe, feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to Women's suffrage, vote, Nomination rules, run for public office, Right to work, work, earn gender pay gap, equal pay, Right to property, own property, Right to education, receive education, enter into contracts, have equal rights within marriage, and maternity leave. Feminists have also worked to ensure access to contr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matriarchy
Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of Power (social and political), power and Social privilege, privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineality, matrilineal, matrilocal residence, matrilocal, and matrifocal family, matrifocal societies. While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined. Many societies have had matriarchal elements, but unlike the Patriarchy, patriarchal, a complete exclusion of men in authority has not been recorded in history. Definitions, connotations, and etymology According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or olde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venus Figurines
A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statue portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", beliefs '' The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740–741 Most have been unearthed in Europe, but others have been found as far away as Siberia and distributed across much of Eurasia. Most date from the Gravettian period (26,000–21,000 years ago). However, findings are not limited to this period; for example, the Venus of Hohle Fels dates back at least 35,000 years to the Aurignacian era, and the Venus of Monruz dates back about 11,000 years to the Magdalenian. Such figurines were carved from soft stone (such as steatite, calcite or limestone), bone or ivory, or formed of clay and fired. The latter are among the oldest ceramics known to historians. In total, over 200 such figurines are known; virtually all of modest size, between about in height.Fagan, 740 These figurines are recognise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Myth Of Matriarchal Prehistory
''The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future'' is a 2000 book by Cynthia Eller that seeks to deconstruct the theory of a prehistoric matriarchy. This hypothesis, she says, developed in 19th century scholarship and was taken up by 1970s second-wave feminism following Marija Gimbutas. Eller, a retired professor of religious studies at Claremont Graduate University, argues in the book that this theory is mistaken and its continued defence is harmful to the feminist agenda. Thesis Eller sets out to refute what she describes as feminist matriarchalism as an "ennobling lie".Quoting Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The real political question ... as old as political philosophy ... swhen we should endorse the ennobling lie." She argues that the feminist archaeology of Marija Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a late twentieth-century feminist ''myth of matriarchal prehistory.'' She questions whether Gimbutas's archaeological findings adequately s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second-wave Feminism
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Second-wave feminism built on first-wave feminism and broadened the scope of debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace, reproductive rights, ''de facto'' inequalities, and official legal inequalities. First-wave feminism typically advocated for formal equality and second-wave feminism advocated for substantive equality. It was a movement focused on critiquing patriarchal or male-dominated institutions and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave feminism also brought attention to issues of domestic violence and marital rape, created ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potnia Theron
The ''Potnia Theron'' (, ) or Mistress of Animals is a widespread motif in ancient art from the Mediterranean world and the ancient Near East, showing a central human, or human-like, female figure who grasps two animals, one to each side. Although the connections between images and concepts in the various ancient cultures concerned remain very unclear, such images are often referred to by the Greek term ''Potnia Theron'' regardless of culture of origin. The term is first used once by Homer as a descriptor of Artemis and often used to describe female divinities associated with animals. The word '' Potnia'', meaning mistress or lady, was a Mycenaean Greek word inherited by Classical Greek, with the same meaning, cognate to Sanskrit ''.'' The oldest such depiction, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük, is a clay sculpture from Çatalhöyük in modern Turkey, made c 6,000 BC. This motif is more common in later Near Eastern and Mesopotamian art with a male figure, called the Maste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mother Goddess
A mother goddess is a major goddess characterized as a mother or progenitor, either as an embodiment of motherhood and fertility or fulfilling the cosmological role of a creator- and/or destroyer-figure, typically associated the Earth, sky, and/or the life-giving bounties thereof in a maternal relation with humanity or other gods. When equated in this lattermost function with the earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as the Mother Earth or Earth Mother, deity in various animistic or pantheistic religions. The earth goddess is archetypally the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky Father or ''Father Heaven'', particularly in theologies derived from the Proto-Indo-European sphere (i.e. from Dheghom and Dyeus). In some polytheistic cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptian religion which narrates the cosmic egg myth, the sky is instead seen as the Heavenly Mother or Sky Mother as in Nut and Hathor, and the earth god is regarded as the mal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minoan Civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age culture which was centered on the island of Crete. Known for its monumental architecture and energetic art, it is often regarded as the first civilization in Europe. The ruins of the Minoan palaces at Knossos and Phaistos are popular tourist attractions. The Minoan civilization developed from the local Neolithic culture around 3100BC, with complex urban settlements beginning around 2000BC. After 1450BC, they came under the cultural and perhaps political domination of the mainland Mycenaean Greeks, forming a hybrid culture which lasted until around 1100BC. Minoan art included elaborately decorated pottery, seals, figurines, and colorful frescoes. Typical subjects include nature and ritual. Minoan art is often described as having a fantastical or ecstatic quality, with figures rendered in a manner suggesting motion. Little is known about the structure of Minoan society. Minoan art contains no unambiguous depiction of a monarch, and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matriarchal Studies
Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies. While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined. Many societies have had matriarchal elements, but unlike the patriarchal, a complete exclusion of men in authority has not been recorded in history. Definitions, connotations, and etymology According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matriarchal Religion
A matriarchal religion is a religion that emphasizes a goddess or multiple goddesses as central figures of worship and spiritual authority. The term is most often used to refer to theories of prehistoric matriarchal religions that were proposed by scholars such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, and later popularized by second-wave feminism. These scholars speculated that early human societies may have been organized around female deities and matrilineal social structures. In the 20th century, a movement to revive these practices resulted in the Goddess movement. History The concept of a prehistoric matriarchy was introduced in 1861 when Johann Jakob Bachofen published ''Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World''. He postulated that the historical patriarchates were a comparatively recent development, having replaced an earlier state of primeval matriarchy, and postulated a "chth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
