Wise words of  Riane Eisler

            THE LEADING-EDGE social movements of our time--the peace, feminist, and ecology movements, and ecofeminism, which integrates all three-are in some respects very new. But they also draw from very ancient traditions only now being reclaimed due to what British archaeologist James Mellaart calls a veritable revolution in archaeology. These traditions go back thousands of years. Scientific archaeological methods are now making it possible to document the way people lived and thought in prehistoric times. One fascinating discovery about our past is that for millennia a span of time many times longer than the 5,000 years conventionally counted as history --prehistoric societies worshipped the Goddess of nature and spirituality, our great Mother, the giver of life and creator of all. But even more fascinating is that these ancient societies were structured very much like the more peaceful and just society we are now trying to construct. This is not to say that these were ideal societies or utopias. But, unlike our societies, they were not warlike. They were not societies where women were subordinate to men. And they did not see our Earth as an object for exploitation and domination. In short, they were societies that had what we today call an ecological consciousness: the awareness that the Earth must be treated with reverence and respect. And this reverence for the life-giving and life-sustained powers of the Earth was rooted in a social structure where women and "feminine" values such as caring, compassion, and nonviolence were not subordinate to men and the so-called masculine values of conquest and domination. Rather, the life-giving powers incarnated in women's bodies were given the highest social value. In the words of Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, who for 50 years excavated the civilization of Minoan Crete where this type of social organization survived until approximately 3,300 years ago, it was a social organization where "the whole of life was pervaded by an ardent faith in the goddess Nature, the source of all creation and harmony."

            Most accounts of Western civilization start with Sumer or with the Indo-European Greeks. These accounts generally describe anything prior to Judeo-Christian religion as "pagan." And they usually leave us with the impression that prior societies were both technologically and morally primitive." But the new knowledge now accumulating from archaeology shows that this is a highly misleading view.

            The Paleolithic period, about 25,000 years ago, is generally considered to mark the beginning of Western culture. It is thus the logical place to begin the re-examination of our past. And it is also a good place to begin to reassess our present-and potential future--from a new perspective. Under the conventional view of Paleolithic art as the story of "man the hunter and warrior," the hundreds of highly stylized carvings of large-hipped, often pregnant women found in Paleolithic caves were dubbed "Venus figurines"--objects in some ancient, and presumably obscene, "fertility cult." They were often viewed as obese, distorted erotic symbols; in other words, as prehistoric counterparts of Playboy centerfolds.

            But if we really look at these strangely stylized oval figures, it becomes evident that they are representations of the life-giving powers of the world. As UCLA archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and other archaeologists now point out, they are precursors of the Great Goddess still revered in historic times as Isis in Egypt, Ishtar in Canaan, Demeter in Greece, and later, as the Magna Mater of Rome and the Catholic Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

            Similarly, earlier scholars kept finding in Paleolithic drawings and stone and bone engravings what they interpreted as barbed weapons. But then they could not figure out why in these pictures the arrowheads or barbs were always going the wrong way. Or why these "wrongway weapons" regularly seemed to miss their mark. Only when these pictures were re-examined by an outsider to the archaeological establishment (someone not conditioned to see them as "failed hunting magic") did it become clear that these were not pictures of weapons. They were images of vegetation: trees and plants with their branches going exactly the right way.

            This same view of human nature-or "man's nature" --as a self-centered, greedy, brutal, "born killer" has long shaped what we have been taught about the next phase of human culture: the Neolithic or agrarian age (approximately 8000-1500 B.C.). The conventional view, still perpetuated by most college survey courses, is that the most important human invention --the development of the technology to domesticate plants --was also the beginning of male dominance, warfare, and slavery. That is, with "man's" invention of agriculture --and thus the possibility of sustaining civilization through a regular and even surplus food supply--came not only male dominance but also warfare and a generally hierarchic social structure.

            But once again, the evidence does not bear out the conventional view of civilization as the story of "man's" ever more efficient domination over both nature and other human beings. To begin with, anthropologists today generally believe that the domestication of plants was probably invented by women. Indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects of the current reclamation of our lost heritage is the enormous contribution women have made to civilization. If we look closely at the new data we now have about the first agrarian or Neolithic societies, we actually see that all the basic technologies on which civilization is based were developed in societies that were not male dominated and warlike.

            As James Mellaart writes, we now know that there was not one cradle of civilization in Sumer about 3,500 years ago. Rather, there were many cradles of civilization, all of them thousands of years older. And thanks to far more scientific and extensive archaeological excavations, we also know that in these highly creative societies women held important social positions as priestesses, craftspeople, and elders of matrilineal clans. Contrary to what we have been taught of the Neolithic or first agrarian civilizations as male dominated and highly violent, these were generally peaceful societies in which both women and men lived in harmony with one another and nature. Moreover, in all these peaceful cradles of civilization, to borrow Merlin Stone's arresting phrase from the book of the same title, "God was a woman" (New York: Dial Press, 1976).

            There is today much talk about the Gaia hypothesis (so called because Gaia is the Greek name for the Earth). This is a new scientific theory proposed by biologists Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock that our planet is a living system designed to maintain and to nurture life. But what is most striking about the Gaia hypothesis is that in essence it is a scientific update of the belief system of Goddess-worshipping prehistoric societies. In these societies the world was viewed as the great Mother, a living entity who in both her temporal and spiritual manifestations creates and nurtures all forms of life.

            This consciousness of the essential unity of all life has in modern times been preserved in a number of tribal cultures that revere the Earth as our Mother. It is revealing that these cultures have often been described as "primitive" by anthropologists. Equally revealing is that frequently in these cultures women traditionally hold key public positions, as shamans or wise women and often as heads of matrilineal clans. This leads to an important point that once articulated may seem obvious. The way a society structures the most fundamental human relations -the relations between the female and male halves of humanity without which our species could not survive-has major implications for the totality of a social system. It clearly affects the individual roles and life choices of both women and men. Equally important, though until now rarely noted, is that it also profoundly affects all our values and social institutions-whether a society will be peaceful or warlike, generally egalitarian or authoritarian, and living in harmony with or bent on the conquest of our environment.

MYTH AND REALITY

            Previously unknown pre-patriarchal societies have been coming to light since World War II. Rich evidence has been yielded by the excavation of important sites such as Catal Huyuk in Turkey (the largest neolithic site ever excavated) and what Marija Gimbutas calls the civilizations of Old Europe in the Balkans and Greece (which even had a written language thousands of years before Sumer, which she is now deciphering). But perhaps most fascinating is that, in fact, we actually have known about these societies all along. That is, almost all societies have legends about an earlier, more harmonious time. For example, one of the most ancient Chinese legends comes to us from the Tao Te Ching, which tells of a time when the yin or feminine principle was not yet subservient to the male principle or yang, a time when the wisdom of the mother was still honored above all. Hesiod, the Greek poet (ca. 800 B.C.), also writes of an age when the Earth was inhabited by a golden race who "tilled their fields in peaceful ease" (in other words, the Neolithic) before a lesser race brought with them Ares, the Greek god of war.

            Not so long ago people rejected the scientific finding that the Earth is round rather than flat even though, according to ancient records, Greek scholars had come to this conclusion centuries earlier. Similarly, the new archaeological findings of a more harmonious and peaceful past are today viewed by some people as impossible, even though they, too, are verified by ancient records.

            In fact, we all know of this earlier time from no less a source than the best known story of Western civilization: the story of the Garden of Eden. This biblical story explicitly tells us there was an earlier time when woman and man (Adam and Eve) lived in harmony with one another and with nature. The Garden is probably a symbolic reference to the Neolithic period, since the invention of agriculture made possible the first gardens on Earth. Even the question of what ended this peaceful era is explicitly answered in the biblical story. This lost paradise was a time when society was not male dominated: as the Bible has it, it was a time before a male god decreed woman to be subservient to man.

            We have been taught that our fall from paradise is an allegory of God's punishment of man and particularly woman for the sin of disobeying the command not to eat from the tree of knowledge. But what the archaeological evidence reveals is that this story (like the Babylonian myths from which it derives) is based on folk memories of a time before (as the Bible also tells us) brother turned against brother and man trod woman down under his heel.

            If we look at both the archaeological and mythic record from this new perspective, we begin to understand many otherwise incomprehensible aspects of the Garden of Eden. Why, for example, would Eve take advice from a serpent? The answer is that the serpent was in ancient times a symbol of oracular prophecy (as in the Greek temple of Delphi, where a woman, the high priestess or Pythoness, was still in historical times inspired by a serpent, the Python, to prophesy the future). Moreover, because the serpent was for millennia associated with the worship of the Goddess (as a symbol of cyclic regeneration, since it sheds and regrows its skin), Eve's continued association with the serpent also represents a refusal to give up the old Goddess-centered religion. The punishment of Eve for her refusal to acknowledge Jehovah's monopoly of the tree of knowledge is a mythical device to justify male dominance and authoritarian rule. But the underlying story-with critical significance for our time-is that it records a major social shift. This shift, now being extensively verified by the archaeological evidence, is the dramatic change that occurred in our prehistory from an egalitarian and peaceful way of living to the violent imposition of male dominance.

THE LOST CIVILIZATION

            Even in the nineteenth century, when archaeology was still in its infancy, scholars found evidence of societies where women were not subordinate to men. But their interpretation of this evidence was that if these societies were not partriarchies, they must have been matriarchies. In other words, if men did not dominate women, then women must have dominated men. However, this conclusion is not borne out by the evidence. Rather, it is a function of what I have called a dominator society worldview. The real alternative to patriarchy is not matriarchy, which is only the other side of the dominator coin. The alternative, now revealed to be the original direction of our cultural evolution, is what I call a partnership society: a way of organizing human relations in which beginning with the most fundamental difference in our species the difference between female and male diversity is not equated with inferiority or superiority.

            What we have until now been taught as history is only the history of dominator species-the record of the male dominant, authoritarian, and highly violent civilizations that began about 5,000 years ago. For example, the conventional view is that the beginning of European civilization is marked by the emergence in ancient Greece of the Indo-Europeans. But the new archaeological evidence demonstrates that the arrival of the Indo-Europeans actually marks the truncation of European civilization. That is, as Marija Gimbutas extensively documents, there was in Greece and the Balkans an earlier civilization, which she calls the civilization of Old Europe. The first Indo-European invasions (by pastoralists from the and steppes of the northeast) foreshadow the end of a matrifocal, matrilineal, peaceful agrarian era. Like fingerprints in the archaeological record, we see evidence of how wave after wave of barbarian invaders from the barren fringes of the globe leave in their wake destruction and what archaeologists call cultural impoverishment. And what characterizes these invaders is that they bring with them male dominance along with their angry gods of thunder and war.

            The archaeological record shows a dramatic shift after these invasions. We see the disappearance of millennial traditions of art and pottery, a sharp decrease in the size of settlements, the appearance of suttee, chieftain tombs (so called because with the male skeleton are sacrificed women, children, and animals to serve him even after death). Warfare now becomes endemic, along with "strongman" rule, since these invaders, as Gimbutas writes, "worshipped the power of the lethal blade."

            One of the most striking manifestations of this change is found in the art. Now begins something dramatically absent before: the idealization of male violence and male dominance in an art that glorifies killing (scenes of "heroic" battles) and rapes (as in Zeus's fabled rapes of both mortal women and goddesses). And equally striking is the transformation of myth. Here, too, "strongman" rule is idealized and even presented as divinely ordained, as the bards, scribes, and priests of the ruling men systematically distort and gradually expunge the myths and images of the civilization of Old Europe from their sacred and secular tales. But although these, too, become distorted, memories of an earlier and better time still linger in folk stories and legends.

            In the nineteenth century, the archaeological excavations of Sophia and Heinrich Schliemann established that the Homeric story of the Greek sacking of Troy was historically based. Similarly, the probable historical basis for the legend of Atlantis is now being revealed by twentieth century archaeological excavations. The fabled civilization of Atlantis was said to have ended when large land masses sank into the sea. What geologists and archaeologists now reveal is that approximately 3,500 years ago massive earthquakes and tidal waves in the Mediterranean caused large land masses to sink into the sea. For example, as in the legend of Atlantis, most of the island of Thera, or Santorini, was swallowed by the sea.

            These cataclysmic events seem to have marked the end of what scholars call Minoan civilization, a highly technologically developed Bronze Age civilization centered in the Mediterranean island of Crete. Minoan Crete had the first paved roads in Europe, and even indoor plumbing. In sharp contrast to other "high civilizations" of antiquity (such as Sumer and dynastic Egypt), Crete had a generally high standard of living, with houses built for both beauty and comfort. Its art, too, is very different from that of Sumer and Egypt: it is so natural, so free, so full of the celebration of life in all its forms, that sober scholars have described it as unique in the annals of civilization for its grace and exuberant joy.

            But what really makes Minoan Crete unique is that it was neither a male-dominant nor warlike culture. Archaeologist Nicolas Platon, the former head of the Acropolis Museum and director of antiquities in Crete, notes that this was a "remarkable peaceful society." He also notes that here descent was still traced through the mother and that "the influence of women is visible in every sphere. For example, the only Minoan fresco of tribute is not the conventional picture of an aggrandized king with a sword in his hand and kneeling figures at his feet characteristic of male-dominant ancient civilizations. It is rather the picture of a woman. And instead of sitting on an elevated throne, she is standing with her arms raised in a gesture of benediction as men approach with offerings of fruits, wine, and grains.

            In other words, in this highly creative and peaceful society, masculinity was not equated with domination and conquest. Accordingly, women and the "soft" or "feminine" values of caring, compassion, and nonviolence did not have to be devalued. Power was seen as actualizing power --as the capacity to create and nurture life. It was power to, rather than power over: the power to illuminate and transform human consciousness (and with it reality) that is still in our time symbolized by the "feminine vessel," the chalice or Holy Grail.

NATURE, CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY

            We have been taught that in "Western tradition," religion is the spiritual realm and that spirituality is separate from, and superior to, nature. But for our Goddess-worshipping ancestors, spirituality and nature were one. In the religion of Western partnership societies, there was no need for the artificial distinction between spirituality and nature or for the exclusion of half of humanity from spiritual power.

            In sharp contrast to "traditional" patriarchal religions (where only men can be priests, rabbis, bishops, lamas, Zen masters, and popes), we know from Minoan, Egyptian, Sumerian, and other ancient records that women were once priestesses. Indeed, the highest religious office appears to have been that of high priestess in service of the Goddess. And the Goddess herself was not only the source of all life and nature; she was also the font of spirituality, mercy, wisdom, and justice. For example, as the Sumerian Goddess Nanshe, she sought justice for the poor and shelter for the weak. The Egyptian Goddess Meat was also the goddess of justice. The Greek Goddess Demeter was known as the lawgiver, the bringer of civilization, dispensing mercy and justice. As the Celtic Goddess Cerridwen, she was the goddess of intelligence and knowledge. And it is Gaia, the primeval prophetess of the shrine of Delphi, who in Greek mythology is said to have given the golden apple tree (the tree of knowledge) to her daughter, the Goddess Hera. Moreover, the Greek Fates, the enforcers of laws, are female. And so also are the Greek Muses, who inspire all creative endeavor.

            In fact, this association of woman with the highest spirituality with both wisdom and mercy survived well into historical times. Even though women were by then already barred from positions of spiritual power, Sophia (the Greek word for wisdom) is still female. So also is the Hebrew word for wisdom, hochmah. And even though we have not been taught to think of her this way, the Catholic Virgin Mary (now the only mortal figure in the Christian holy family of divine Father and Son) still perpetuates the image of the Goddess as the Merciful Mother.

            We also know from a number of contemporary tribal societies that the separation between nature and spirituality is not universal. Tribal peoples generally think of nature in spiritual terms. Nature spirits must be respected, indeed, revered. And we also know that in many of these tribal societies women as well as men can be shamans or spiritual healers and that descent in these tribes is frequently traced through the m er. In sum, both nature and woman can partake of spirituality in societies oriented to a partnership model. In such societies there is no need for a false dichotomy between a "masculine" spirituality and a "feminine" nature. Moreover, since in ancient partnership societies woman and the Goddess were identified with both nature and spirituality, neither woman nor nature were devalued and exploited.

            It is often said that the answer to our mounting environmental crises is a "return to nature." According to this view, the roots of our ecological problems lie in the shift from a religious to a secular or scientific/technological worldview. We are told that with the Renaissance, and later the Enlightenment, "modern man" became alienated from both himself and nature.

            But if we carefully examine both our past and present, we see that many peoples past and present living close to nature have all too often been blindly destructive of their environment. While many indigenous societies have a great reverence for nature, there are also both non-Western and Western peasant and nomadic cultures that have over-grazed and over-cultivated land, decimated forests, and, where population pressures have been severe, killed off animals needlessly and indifferently. And while there is much we can learn today from tribal cultures, it is important not to indiscriminately idealize all non-Western cultures and/or blame all our troubles on our secular-scientific age. For clearly such tribal practices as cannibalism, torture, and female genital mutilation (which continue into our time under the guise of ethnic or religious tradition) antedate modern times. And some indigenous and/or highly religious societies (whether in reaction to an extremely harsh environment or to conquest by a foreign culture) have been as barbarous as the most "civilized" Roman emperors or the most "spiritual" Christian inquisitors.

            Another widely held notion is that technology is causing our global problems. But technology is integral to the human condition. Indeed, the story of human culture is to a large extent the story of human technology. It is the story not only of the fashioning of material tools but also of the fashioning of our most important and unique non-material tools: the mental tools of language and imagery, of human-made words, symbols, and pictures. Advanced technologies are the extension of human functions, of our hands' and brains' capacity to alter our environment, and ourselves. Indeed, technology is itself part of the evolutionary impulse, the striving for the expansion of our potential as human beings within both culture and nature.

            Once we look at technology from the new perspective provided by the gender-holistic analysis of our past and present, it is clear that the problem is not now nor has it ever been simply that of technology. The same technological base can produce very different types of tools: tools to kill and oppress other humans or tools to free our hands and minds from dehumanizing drudgery. The problem is that in dominator societies, where "masculinity" is identified with conquest and domination, every new technological breakthrough is basically seen as a tool for more effective oppression and domination. That is, what led to the nineteenth century's exploitation of women, children, and men in sweat shops and mines and the twentieth century factories of dehumanizing assembly lines where workers became cogs in industrial machines was not the invention of machines. Rather, it was the use to which that mechanization was put in a dominator system. Similarly, the use of modern technologies to devise ever more effective and costly weapons is not a requirement of modern technology. It is, however, a requirement of dominator systems, where throughout recorded history the highest priority has been given to technologies fashioned not to sustain and enhance life, but technologies to dominate and destroy.

            In sum, the basic issue is not one of technology versus spirituality or nature versus culture. The fundamental issue is how we define nature, culture, technology, and spirituality --which in turn hinges on whether we orient to a dominator or a partnership model of society.

            It is not science and technology, but the numbing of our innate human sensibilities that makes it possible for men to dominate, oppress, exploit, and kill. What passes for "scientific objectivity" in a dominator society is the substitution of detached measuring for an inquiry designed to enhance and advance human evolution. Even beyond this, what often passes for "higher" spirituality in a dominator society is equally stunted and distorted. For what this system requires is that spirituality be equated with a detachment that often condones and encourages indifference to avoidable human suffering -as in most Eastern religions. Or it leads to the Western dualism that justifies the domination of culture over nature, of man over woman, of technology over life, and of high priests and other so-called spiritual leaders over "common" women and men.

RECLAIMING OUR PARTNERSHIP TRADITIONS

            In ancient times the world itself was one. The beating of drums was the heartbeat of the Earth-in all its mystery, enchantment, wonder, and terror. Our feet danced in sacred groves, honoring the spirits of nature. What was later broken asunder into prayer and music, ritual and dance, play and work, was originally one.

            For many thousands of years, millennia longer than the 5,000 years we count as recorded history, everything was done in a sacred manner. Planting and harvesting fields were rites of spring and autumn celebrated in a ritual way. Baking bread from grains, molding pots out of clay, weaving cloth out of fibers, carving tools out of metals --all these ways of technologically melding culture and nature were sacred ceremonies. There was then no splintering of culture and nature, spirituality, science, and technology. Both our intuition and our reason were applied to the building of civilization, to devising better ways for us to live and work cooperatively.

            The rediscovery of these traditions signals a way out of our alienation from one another and from nature. In our time, when the nuclear bomb and advanced technology threaten all life on this planet, the reclamation of these traditions can be the basis for the restructuring of society: the completion of the modern transformation from a dominator to a partnership world.

            Poised on the brink of eco-catastrophe, let us gain the courage to look at the world anew, to reverse custom, to transcend our limitations, to break free from the conventional constraints, the conventional views of what are knowledge and truth. Let us understand that we cannot graft peace and ecological balance on a dominator system; that a just and egalitarian society is impossible without the full and equal partnership of women and men.

            Let us reaffirm our ancient covenant, our sacred bond with our Mother, the Goddess of nature and spirituality. Let us renounce the worship of angry gods wielding thunderbolts or swords. Let us once again honor the chalice, the ancient symbol of the power to create and enhance life-and let us understand that this power is not woman's alone but also man's.

            For ourselves, and for the sake of our children and their children, let us use our human thrust for creation rather than destruction. Let us teach our sons and daughters that men's conquest of nature, of women, and of other men is not a heroic virtue; that we have the knowledge and the capacity to survive; that we need not blindly follow our bloodstained path to planetary death; that we can reawaken from our 5,000 year dominator nightmare and allow our evolution to resume its interrupted course.

            While there is still time, let us fulfill our promise. Let us reclaim the trees of knowledge and of life. Let us regain our lost sense of wonder and reverence for the miracles of life and love, let us learn again to live in partnership so we may fulfill our responsibility to ourselves and to our Great Mother, this wondrous planet Earth.