The Once and Future Goddess Quotes

“While the Goddess indeed had many names, many manifestations throughout human history, she is ultimately one supreme reality. Only after the patriarchal Indo-Europeans overthrew the cultures where the Goddess had flourished from earliest times and imposed the worship of their sky gods was her identity fractured into myriad goddesses, each with an all-too-human personality. We know these goddesses best from Greek and Roman mythology.”
― Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess

“The truth of the Goddess is the mystery of our being. She is the dynamic life force within. Her form is embedded in our collective psyche, part of what it is to be human. She is Gaia, the dance of life and Her song is Eros, the energy of creation.”
― Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess

“Why was the Goddess so threatening that all traces of her very existence had to be eradicated? Why was she so much more feared than the male gods? There are no simple answers to these questions. The Bible is full of incredible violence and cruelty perpetrated in the name of Yahweh, probably descriptive of the social reality of that day. Yahweh’s behavior is often that of a tribal chieftain toward his enemy.
The relation between gender and creation may be the critical one We saw how in patriarchal Sumer the creative powers of the Goddess became an instrument of the state and were used to legitimize the king’s rule. The god who ruled alone took unto himself all powers of generativity, cosmic and earthly, denying even the metaphoric role of the female to establish his control over creation; stamping out all cultic sexual practices was thus essential.
Elizabeth Dodson Gray calls the religion of the ancient Hebrews a ‘male fertility cult.’ The ritual of circumcision, the sacrifice of the male genital organ, is the mark of the covenant that every Hebrew male makes with his God. By this act, creation was taken away from the Goddess and women were excluded from participation in the covenant.”
― Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess

“Our psychological being has been severed from our biological selves for so long that we are completely cut off from our true natures.”
― Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess