Before you begin: I implore you to look at the relationship you have with God/Source/Light/Goddess as different from the relationship you have with the Religious Institutions that use God/Source/Light/Goddess as a means to cause and perpetuate harm on others.  

Mother’s Tongue Says

You must unveil the lie and break free to realize humanity’s image expands past the image of the God that the patriarchal religions have conjured. This God promotes domination and conquest. It doesn’t mean the Divine Light you find within these patriarchal religions are something to shy away from. 

Yet, you humans are so deeply entangled in the religious institutions indoctrinations that keep you from achieving a sense of embodiment with me, Mother Earth.  

Conquering over another is a pattern the patriarchal religions have played out successfully, and it’s a theme that has led to detrimental, off-balanced relationships not only between the sexes, but between the Feminine and Masculine energies, and most importantly, between child and me, Mother Earth. 

“We do not need to learn something new, we only need to remember what we have forgotten.” Marija Gimbutus

From me …

I have always been a seeker. A seeker of connection, of understanding the inner workings of the Universe. Where did it come from? Who was the Divine I so intimately knew without every being taught? Who were they?

I sought out religion as that was what was accessible to me. My parents were pretty secular - my father comes from German Baptists and my mother comes from Orthodox Russian Jews and English Protestants. But they had not sought to carry the religion very heavily with me or my sister. I knew the Church more than I did a Synagogue as I grew up in the South and it’s called the Bible Belt for a reason … here is a poem I wrote about my experience beginning to deconstruct the patriarchal lie that God was a man and than women were subservient to men:

My land pulled me to Christ

My MotherLine pulled me to Israel

My heart pulled me to Her

But who Her was, I did not know

Her was a not an answer, they told me.

They told me it was a Him

And his name was God

I did not know God

He was not real to me

I could not feel God

But I could feel Her

Anger boiled within me

But I was a sweet girl that believed it was me who was wrong.

At Christian summer camp, I would refuse to say the word “God” or “Him”

And muttered under my breath “Her” and “She”

It was perplexing -

Being loyal to a woman I did not even know.

Years of seeking

Years of wandering

Years of feeling alone 

Until one day in July 2018 

I finally found what I knew in my heart on paper. 

She was hiding in plain sight in a bookshelf in Atlanta

The green, thick paperback, “The Great Cosmic Mother” beckoned me Home

And Home I have been ever since.

Did you know, earth-based and Goddess-based religions roamed freely and prevalently before the Old Testament? There was a time when Mother Earth was revered, worshiped, harnessed, danced to, embraced. “Human society was matriarchal—or at least ‘woman-centered’ and goddess-worshiping—from the Paleolithic era, 1.5 to 2 million years ago until sometime around 3000 BCE,” (before common era) says Cynthia Eller. 

We have archaeological evidence of sculptures depicting female icons and sacred figurines of females or of the Great Cosmic Mother. 

“The most ancient religion of our time was of Goddess religion. We do not find Father mentioned in early history,” Marija Gimbutas

It’s important to resurrect this knowledge for so many reasons. Namely, to shatter the illusion that life has always operated the way it does now. Our human history tells us we are capable of operating in a way that is different from the path of the 9-5, make money to spend money, produce only to consume, separate our spiritual lives from our work lives, suppress the authentic self to fit in with the society self … 

I felt all of these trappings and misalignments in my Soul, but I didn’t fully realize them until much later. I didn’t have a word for it all or a concept to understand the turmoil I was feeling deep within. But learning about the Goddess and earth-based religions and partnership societies of our past made me remember, deep down, that I was capable of operating in a different way than how society had designed life to be.

Discovering authors like Riane Eisler, Marija Gimbutas, Monica Sjoo, Barbara Moore, Merlin Stone, Carol Chirst were and continue to be revolutionary to me. How deep the patriarchal conditioning has gone goes back 6,000 years. And now I’m discovering that my European Indigenous roots are that of earth-based religions! European Indigenous are referred to as Pagans, but this is a derogatory term coined by the Christains to denote anyone who was not Christain. I am so excited to be on this journey of decolonizing my mind and removing the layers of patriarchal religion conditioning that kept me from being my most Authentic and True Self. Connecting with my heritage that existed before patriarchal religions feels deeply  empowering and allows my ancestors to come through to help me remember. 

Before Christianity, there was Judaism (still around). It was here that the Neolithic people who worshiped Mother Earth were conquered by the nomadic Hebrews who worshiped the Sky God of Yahweh. I am still researching this time period and how the conquest came to be, but  the mere fact that we are learning history demonstrates how our herstory was lost. 

Diving Further ...

“Our culture is so historically saturated with biblical imagery and worldview, [we] still tend to be ruled by archetypal models of a male pastoral god whose power comes not from giving birth, or enhancing life, but from dominating … as a sign of Egoistic individual wealth,” (Sjöö and Mor 271). 

The Old Testament is ultimately a war on Mother Earth. Yes. I mean it. I know, that may be a hard sentence to read if the Old Testament is something you treasure. And I’m not discounting your spiritual connection to the Divine, but this book has been used as a tool to instill (or perhaps it was already the way the culture was operating) a system of Domination. 

“The problem I have … is the ways in which organized religion, guised as spirituality, has been and continues to be utilized as a tool to dominate, exploit, and oppress BI&PoC, women+, LGBTTQIA+, and all those who do not adherently abide by whatever particular scripture they happen to spew.” (Rachel Rickets in Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy, Do Better 146)

And subsequently, Institutionalized Religion has led to the war on women and the Feminine Energy. It is this war that has led us to our boxed-in suffocating experience and separateness from Mother Earth. It is a war that we must heal from, so we can continue the Spiral of the Divine’s evolution.

A war is created in order to dominate and control the opposing view in efforts to eventually extinguish the ‘enemy’ entirely. 

Whatever the cause of the Hebrew writers’ fear and hostility towards the female sex and Goddess religion, the Goddess religion was conquered by “eliminating the female sex entirely from the creation or purpose of the world,” (Sjöö and Mor 270).

The war begins in Genesis 3.18-22 when Yahweh God said:

“It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him … So, the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon to man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the Lord God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man,” (Publication Society). 

Oh yes, this definitely makes sense. Not only will women know their ‘rightful place’ as “permanent helpers,” and “decorative and convenient assistants to men,” but their very innate ability for women to create life is no longer fact (Stone xxvi)! No, no, no, please excuse everything we know about reproduction and scientific fact. Be gone reality. You have no place here. And with a flick of their pen, the men now hold the ability to create life from a rib no less. Who needs women anyways?

I’ll let Merlin Stone summarize the audacious lie that we have continued to perpetuate in our society:

“As a child, I was told that Eve had been made from Adam’s rib, brought into being to be his companion and helpmate, to keep him from being lonely. As if this assignment of permanent second mate, never to be captain, was not oppressive enough, I next learned that Eve was considered to be foolishly gullible … why Adam himself was never thought to be equally as foolish was apparently never worth discussing. But identifying with Eve, who was presented as the symbol of all women, the blame was in some mysterious way mine—and God, viewing the whole affair as my fault, chose to punish me by decreeing:” (5) “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you,” (Gen. 3.16). 

Notice how the Goddess’s sacred symbol the serpents was inverted into an icon of evil; notice the war against those who practice witchcraft; notice how “Moses was commanded by “the Lord”' to go forth and destroy those “idols” – who all had breasts …” (Sjöö and Mor 265). Have fun finding the rest on your own <3

Embodiment Exercise 

How do you feel reading this perspective of Judeo-Christain religion?

How have you felt towards religion?

How have you felt towards the erasure and role women have played in the Bible and Torah?

Can you maintain connection with your Source while reading this perspective?