HER STORY 
In the intervening years since the world began, the Goddess (archetype) has been pushed aside for a male dominated society

Barbie, Cinderella, boxy business women and pre-fab Marilyns led me to search for women's real nature before organized religions, entertainment, governments and corporations set us up to fit the parts. 

I had heard of matriarchal ways preceding patriarchal ruling, when women owned land and lived in harmony with Nature. Fertility cycles, medicinal plants and foods and animal wisdom were all important then in maintaining a sound self-sustaining eco-system for the tribe.

SEARCHING FOR GODDESS

The word Goddess appeared for the first time through the course of my Greco-Latin studies. Hera, Venus, Diana and Artemis were all mentioned, but only in relation to men's needs. Their importance regarding a healthy psychological balance for women and the world eluded me then,  because I didn't know who I was and what I was doing myself. 

It was later, in Marija Gimbutas' book "The language of the Goddess" that I discovered even more ancient evidence of Goddess as Creatora and Cosmic Mother. 

The feminine spiritual heritage, Goddess temples, statuettes and rituals, were eliminated by ambitious conquerors who didn't have any dream but to rule the world and reign over it. That is why they promoted a God above us. 

In what were called Holy Wars and Crusades, Goddess culture (women, freedom and nature) were systematically rejected to be replaced by organized religions to better shape and tame the conquered. 

To insure the implementation of the new order, Goddess celebrations, gatherings, initiations and educations into women and nature mysteries became the holidays, masses and sacraments we know today.

CHANGING THE WORLD

Known around the world as Gaea, Amaterasu, Kuan Yin or a thousand of other names, Goddess reflected the multi-dimensional facets of life. 

With the beginning of modern civilization, She became He, a supreme God who reigned by fear, demanded total adoration and manifested an obvious displeasure of women, nature and the animals. 

As intimacy with the body was forbidden, so were the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge prohibited to "fallen creatures born in sin". 

That was the beginning of the New Roman world order. Through world evangelization, new subjects became blind devotees separated from their inner power and their Self. 

Manipulated into letting the first religious and political institutions dictate their lives, people lost their individual grasp, destiny, freedom and independence.

GODDESS RETURNS

Before the past 6,000 years of domination, there was only symbiosis with the great Mother, the Eternal Feminine, from Sumeria to the Americas, passing by Mesopotamia, India, China, Tibet, Japan and the South Pacific. 

"We all come from the Goddess,

And to her we shall return,

Like a drop of rain,

Flowing to the ocean..."

       "On Wings of Song." 

The triune Goddess of the Paleolithic and the Neolithic ages, whose images, statues and sacred objects have recently been rediscovered, reflects the cycles of life, death and rebirth (resurrection), in the same terms that Jesus talked about. Yes, we are eternal beings. 

What was initially a Mother, Spirit and Son trinity was turned into a Father, Spirit and Son trinity. Where the two sexes were honored and represented, only one was left to be obeyed. 

The calendar, which had always been composed of 13 months, according to women's moons or cycles of fertility (menses), was squared off into 12 months, which had the disastrous effect to dis-aligned earth and its inhabitants with the wheel of time, consequently making us fall from our natural axis. 

This severed connection with the "original clock" has made us dysfunctional, unwise and sick. Consequences are felt through ecological breakdown, chaos, overpopulation, violence, rape, mental illness, emotional disarray and spiritual dryness.  

Loosing touch with the Mother matrix, we have lost touch with our natural instinct for preservation. Living in harmony with Nature is the secret of Peace and Abundance. 

No wonder, Goddess rituals were celebrated in tune with the seasons. 

They had the natural power to attune people's soul to Nature's spirit. 

No more seed were sown than needed. The same for human reproduction; no more children were conceived than the community could handle - no more, no less, no waste. 

The Pithy of Delphi once said to Pythagoras, the first recognized mathematician of our civilization that "reason leaves out the organic, the intuitive and the natural". Indeed! Reason has led us to ignore our Primal Source of Life. 

Plants, animals, sex and dreams are essential to Health, Harmony, Magic, Transcendence, Higher Intelligence, Ecstasy, Meditation, Mediation for two, Union with All and Spiritual Revelation. 

In their book "Amor and Psyche" Erich Newman and Ralph Manheim say that with the development of the Western civilization "feminine existence is almost entirely determined by the masculine world of consciousness and its values". 

It is all changing now!

Bibliography:
Gimbutas, Marija, "The Language of the Goddess", Harper & Row, 
Publishers, San Francisco, 1989;
Newman, Erich and Manheim, Ralph, "Amor and psyche: The Psychic 
Development of the Feminine", Princeton University Press, New 
Jersey, 1990;
Gass, Robert, "From the Goddess, On Wings of Song," Spring Hill 
Music,  Boulder, Colorado, 1989.
                                                  

Desert Weekly, July 6, 2000