In China, the female deities Ma Tsu and Kuan Yin are still widely worshipped as beneficent and compassionate goddesses. Indeed, the idea of the universe as an all-giving Mother has survived (albeit in modified form) into our time. “Further verifying that there were ancient societies organized very differently from ours are the many otherwise inexplicable images of the Deity as female in ancient art, myth, and even historical writings. Today new archaeological excavations, coupled with reinterpretations of older digs using more scientific methods, reveal that stories such as our expulsion from the Garden of Eden also derive from earlier realities… “When archaeology was still in its infancy, the excavations of Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann helped establish the reality of Homer’s Troy. But though scholars agree that in many respects these works are based on prehistoric events, references to a time when women and men lived in partnership have traditionally been viewed as no more than fantasy. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod wrote of a ‘golden race’ who tilled the soil in ‘peaceful ease’ before a ‘lesser race’ brought in their god of war. The Chinese Tao Te Ching describes a time when the yin, or feminine principle, was not yet ruled by the male principle, or yang, a time when the wisdom of the mother was still honored and followed above all. The Bible tells of a garden where woman and man lived in harmony with each other and nature – before a male god decreed that woman henceforth be subservient to man. “…We are all familiar with legends about an earlier, more harmonious and peaceful age. “Since going backward is not the answer, how do we move forward?” And if we look at our past – at the routine massacres by Huns, Romans, Vikings, and Assyrians or the cruel slaughters of the Christian Crusades and Inquisition – we see there was even more violence and injustice in the smaller, prescientific, preindustrial societies that came before us. “Yet, if we look at ourselves – as we are forced to by television or the grim daily ritual of the newspaper at breakfast- we see how capitalist, socialist, and communist nations alike are enmeshed in the arms race and all the other irrationalities that threaten both us and our environment. Still others blame humanism, feminism, and even secularism, pressing for a return to the ‘good old days’ of a smaller, simpler, more religious age. Some argue our troubles are due to our ‘industrial paradigm,’ that our ‘scientific worldview’ is to blame. “…Socialists and communists assert that the root of our problems is capitalism capitalists insist socialism and communism are leading us to ruin. And yet, this same wondrous species of ours now seems bent on putting an end not only to its own evolution, but to that of most life on our globe, threatening our planet with ecological catastrophe or nuclear annihilation. Because of our unique ability to imagine new realities and realize these through ever more advanced technologies, we are quite literally partners in our own evolution.
“Of all life-forms on this planet, only we can plant and harvest fields, compose poetry and music, seek truth and justice, teach a child to read and write – or even laugh and cry.
#Chalice and the blade symbolism of god full#
“Why do we hunt and persecute each other? Why is our world so full of man’s infamous inhumanity to man – and to woman? How can human beings be so brutal to their own kind? What is it that chronically tilts us toward cruelty rather than kindness, toward war rather than peace, toward destruction rather than actualization? Riane Eisler writes in her revelatory work, The Chalice and The Blade: The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man: Part V: The Chalice and the Blade
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