Returning to Our Great Mother
Regaining a Matriarchal Life
For the last ten thousand years our society has rapidly become patriarchal, a patriarchy that has placed women in a secondary status, caused them to be abused, discredited by and subservient to men. For the last hundred years women have been rising up to this oppression and inequality. With the now #metoo movement, the current Kavanaugh nomination, and MoveOn.org’s support of a 100 candidates in the November election of which 70% are women, this oppression and inequality seems to be rapidly coming to a head, hopefully bringing an end to white male supremacy. Some women I have talk with thing the answer is for better balance between the two genders. I think this is insufficient and that it will take a serious swing back to matriarchal society if there is any hope.
There is considerable evidence that contemporary and ancient hunter-gatherer societies are/were matriarchal with the worship of the Great Mother, and that these societies lived in greater harmony with all that is of the Earth. From Jean Auel’s last book of the Earths Children Series, Land of Painted Caves, this veneration of the Great Mother ended when men discovered that they had a role in procreation of the species. From Felicitas Goodman’s book, Ecstasy, Ritual, and Alternate Reality, the earlier matriarchal era was paradise: “In a very real way, the hunter and gatherers open the first chapter of our human history. And fittingly, this dawning was as close to paradise as humans have ever been able to achieve. The men did the hunting and scavenging, working for about three hours a week, and the women took care of daily sustenance by gathering vegetal food and small animals. It was such a harmonious existence, such a successful adaptation, that it did not materially alter for many thousands of years. This view is not romanticizing matters. Those hunter-gatherers that have survived into the present still pursue the same lifestyle, and we are quite familiar with it from contemporary anthropological observation. Despite the unavoidable privation of human existence, despite occasional hunger, illness, and other trials, what makes their life-way so enviable is the fact that knowing every nook and cranny of their home territory and all that grows and lives in it, the bands make their regular rounds and take only what they need. By modern calculations, that amounts to only about 10 percent of the yield, easily recoverable under undisturbed conditions. They live a life of total balance, because they do not aspire to controlling their habitat, they are a part of it.” (pg. 17-18)
Though apparently most of the daily chores were carried out by the women, their role was respected, and they had control of these daily activities, not the men. Though living in this way would be impossible today -- for one the limited animals to hunt -- but we can turn to and venerate our Great Mother Earth. We can again listen to the Spirits with ecstatic trance. We can grow and raise what we need to live, again becoming one with all that is of the Earth. We can live more comfortably off the grid with our knowledge of how to use the heat and energy from the sun and wind, avoiding the privation of this earlier life. There is much we need to learn, but this learning can be exciting as we again become one with the process of evolution and our matriarchal heritage rather than putting men superior to it.
For the last ten thousand years our society has rapidly become patriarchal, a patriarchy that has placed women in a secondary status, caused them to be abused, discredited by and subservient to men. For the last hundred years women have been rising up to this oppression and inequality. With the now #metoo movement, the current Kavanaugh nomination, and MoveOn.org’s support of a 100 candidates in the November election of which 70% are women, this oppression and inequality seems to be rapidly coming to a head, hopefully bringing an end to white male supremacy. Some women I have talk with thing the answer is for better balance between the two genders. I think this is insufficient and that it will take a serious swing back to matriarchal society if there is any hope.
There is considerable evidence that contemporary and ancient hunter-gatherer societies are/were matriarchal with the worship of the Great Mother, and that these societies lived in greater harmony with all that is of the Earth. From Jean Auel’s last book of the Earths Children Series, Land of Painted Caves, this veneration of the Great Mother ended when men discovered that they had a role in procreation of the species. From Felicitas Goodman’s book, Ecstasy, Ritual, and Alternate Reality, the earlier matriarchal era was paradise: “In a very real way, the hunter and gatherers open the first chapter of our human history. And fittingly, this dawning was as close to paradise as humans have ever been able to achieve. The men did the hunting and scavenging, working for about three hours a week, and the women took care of daily sustenance by gathering vegetal food and small animals. It was such a harmonious existence, such a successful adaptation, that it did not materially alter for many thousands of years. This view is not romanticizing matters. Those hunter-gatherers that have survived into the present still pursue the same lifestyle, and we are quite familiar with it from contemporary anthropological observation. Despite the unavoidable privation of human existence, despite occasional hunger, illness, and other trials, what makes their life-way so enviable is the fact that knowing every nook and cranny of their home territory and all that grows and lives in it, the bands make their regular rounds and take only what they need. By modern calculations, that amounts to only about 10 percent of the yield, easily recoverable under undisturbed conditions. They live a life of total balance, because they do not aspire to controlling their habitat, they are a part of it.” (pg. 17-18)
Though apparently most of the daily chores were carried out by the women, their role was respected, and they had control of these daily activities, not the men. Though living in this way would be impossible today -- for one the limited animals to hunt -- but we can turn to and venerate our Great Mother Earth. We can again listen to the Spirits with ecstatic trance. We can grow and raise what we need to live, again becoming one with all that is of the Earth. We can live more comfortably off the grid with our knowledge of how to use the heat and energy from the sun and wind, avoiding the privation of this earlier life. There is much we need to learn, but this learning can be exciting as we again become one with the process of evolution and our matriarchal heritage rather than putting men superior to it.
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