If history is written by the victors, then who wrote our history? What events made it into the “official story”, and what is missing? If we are the result of our past, then what has brought humanity and the planet to their current crisis? Most agree there is a crisis - are the keys to it in our past? These are not merely academic questions, because upon a few primary “historical facts” each one of us has built our entire world view. Our cultural mythologies flesh out what becomes the sum total of our personal cosmographies. What does that look like for each one of us?

Clunking around the Western mind are a couple strange bedfellows about our ancestry. One view of history states that God, the Omnipotent Creator, fashioned our planet and everything on it, and then made us in His image. He lost His temper with us right away, however, and once Eve led Adam astray, the human race was doomed to the Herculean task of redeeming itself. Our futile attempts are recorded in the Bible, which brings us up to recognizable eras through a detailed chain of “begats”. What got dragged along through the ages was the need for a savior, a need most religions would meet.

Another view of history presents us with a time line that reaches back into a murky past when ape-men evolved into cavemen, who gnawed on roasted drumsticks and dragged their women around by the hair. Some time later, they learned to make pottery to entertain future archaeologists, and then came up with the idea of civilization in time for the Classical Age of Ancient Greece. From then on, our history books can give us the lists of wars, empires, kings, and discoveries right up to the present day. Even if we are not Jewish or Christian, and we reject the Adam and Eve story as a folk tale, we nevertheless deal with its implications in our daily lives. The macho, barbaric caveman image also lays the groundwork upon which we have constructed our world view. Justified by our historical perspective, we hold near and dear to us certain “givens” about our world and “human nature”. Examples include:

• The good guys wear white hats and must defeat the evil forces of darkness.
• Man has an innate inhumanity to man.
• Only the strong survive in this dog-eat-dog-world, because of the principle of survival of the fittest. Likewise, competition is the basis of a productive economy.
• It is God’s will for the strong/rich to rule over the weak/poor. According to the Doctrine of the Elect, if God had wanted to favor the poor, he would have, so we should not favor them, either.
• Men must use their God-given power to tame Nature.
• To unlock spiritual mysteries, the Hero embarks on a quest, slaying demons along the way.
• Women are the weaker/fairer/second sex.

Lucky for us our ancestors did leave those pottery shards for modern archaeologists to find! We have now assembled enough evidence, verified by carbon-dating and other techniques, to paint an entirely different picture of our history than the Adam and Eve and caveman scenarios. As it turns out, recorded history does not even tell us half the story, yet upon it we have woven our mythologies, economic and political systems, and dreams. The story we were taught is called, accurately, The History of MANKIND. What was left out was not only what women have been doing all this time, but what preceded mankind’s “Ancient World”.

Our History Before – Our “Pre” History

During the Upper Paleolithic Age (25,000 BCE), early humans were not just chipping away at arrowheads, they were sculpting "Venus figurines" in honor of woman, from whom life mysteriously was born. [Upon reading the previous sentence, did you envision the sculptors as cavemen or cavewomen? In all likelihood, the early sculptors were women.] In those prehistoric times, sex may not have been associated with childbirth due to the nine-month gestation period separating impregnation from birth. This would have made women seem miraculous in their ability to produce children. The Mother concept was also associated with the Earth. From archaeological evidence at burial sites, it seems that our ancestors likened death to returning to the womb. Many tomb complexes were fashioned in the large shape of a woman's body, with the grave sites situated at the uterus of the figure.	Venus of Willendorf, found in Austria (24,000-22,000 BCE) Photo: Matthias Kabel
"Burial in the womb is analogous to a seed being planted in the earth, and it was therefore natural to expect new life to emerge from the old." [The Language of the Goddess, p.151]. Hence, people believed Woman possessed the mysteries of life and death.
A continuous cultural evolution is noted in the Neolithic Age (6500-3500 BCE): villages thrived along rivers or other water sources, near pastures and fertile land. Sustainable communities cooperated in farming and developed specialized professions. They traveled the rivers and seas to trade. Even with the Great Goddess as the primary deity, and property, name, and status passing from mother to child, the early societies appear to have been egalitarian. Riane Eisler, in her book, The Chalice and the Blade, calls these partnership societies, with a gylanic ideology. Gylany refers to a system based not on ranking, but on linking women ( Greek root “gy-”) and men (Greek root “andro-”). Civilizations flourished in our prehistory, though our schoolbooks dismiss Goddess cultures as mere “fertility cults”.
	Mother goddess figure from Samarra (Mesopotamia) (6000 BCE) Photo: PHGCOM

People of the Sword

According to recent theories, the continual progress of Neolithic cultures was interrupted, and eventually torn asunder, by the invasion of semi-nomadic pastoralists from the steppes of eastern Europe and Asia, beginning in 4300 BCE. It is speculated they were forced to flee their homeland as the result of environmental degradation (perhaps due to overgrazing), population pressure, or an inhospitable change of weather. Generally named “Indo-Europeans”, the invaders were called Aryans in India, Hittites in Mesopotamia, Luwians in Anatolia, Kurgans in eastern Europe, and Achaeans (and later Dorians) in Greece. Perhaps related to them were the Semites, desert pastoralists from the south, who invaded Canaan. In India, the Aryan Invasion scenario is disputed with the claim that the native Indus Valley civilization, disrupted by environmental changes, evolved into a very different culture on it's own. The invaders were not farmers but stock breeders and hunters, who made hilltop fortresses or seasonal settlements following game, and organized themselves hierarchically along patrilineal lines. They brought with them warrior gods bearing lightning, for light from the sky was preferable to dark from the earth (or perhaps their whiter skin preferable to the darker peoples they conquered). Riane Eisler describes them as a dominator culture and their social structure as an androcracy in which men rule over those “below” them by force or the threat of force. Sound familiar?

Standard of Ur (2500 BCE), mosaic, Mesopotamia

The shift from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age (3500-2500 BCE) brought better hoes and axes to the gylanic agriculturists of Old Europe and sharper swords and spears to the androcratic pastoralists. By the time of the Iron Age (1500 BCE), the warrior peoples were famous for their sharp blades; perhaps the Aryans even derived their name from the word "iron". When they roared into wide-open farming communities with their domesticated horses, war chariots, greater physical size, and skill with weaponry, they won through sheer technological superiority. The authoritarian Indo-Europeans ruled their conquered lands with violence.

. Even so, it was to take millennia until the conquest was complete. During this time the cultures they subdued still honored the Great Goddess and followed the old partnership traditions. From daily customs to overarching philosophies, Goddess societies had to be overturned in order to establish the androcracy. The Levite warrior-priesthood promoted meat-eating and animal sacrifice through stories such as

Cain murders Abel in detail from "Ghent Altarpiece" (1432) by Jan van Eyck

that of the brothers Cain and Abel.The Hebrew God Yahweh favored Abel's offering of a slaughtered animal over Cain's offering of grain. Women's rights were slashed in order to gain control not only of the women themselves, but of their property and authority. Matrilineal inheritance was an obvious affront to the patriarchy and was systematically persecuted until it was completely wiped out.

Those of us raised on Bible stories knew about this, although we never heard the word "goddess" or "matrifocal culture". We do know, for example, that "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho . . . and the walls came a-tumbling down!" Not only Jericho - for town after town fell, as is recorded in the Book of Joshua. For example, Joshua 8:24: "When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them and all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And all who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000, all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched his javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoils of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the Lord which He commanded Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins. . ."

Disempowering the Goddess

Matrilineal succession presented a problem to the patriarchs of a newly-installed dominator society. According to tradition, the high priestess held the divine right to the throne. As the Goddess of Fertility's Earthly manifestation, the priestess chose a consort, and celebrated sacred sexual rites with him. This cyclical hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, was believed to insure the well-being of the agrarian community as well as the individuals in it. After the marriage, the young lover (or son) of the Goddess (or priestess) was ritually sacrificed in the autumn, but she resurrected him in the spring. The myths of Isis and Osiris, Inanna and Dumuzi, and Ishtar and Tammuz underscore the fact that the Goddess legitimized the reign of the king. Obviously the new androcratic leaders had to either subvert this system, or utterly destroy it.

Sacred marriage bed (of Dumuzi & Inanna?) (2000-1600 BCE), clay plaque, Mesopotamia

Eradicating the feminine component of society impoverished the culture in countless ways, for priests and priestesses of the Great Goddess kept not only the hieros gamos cycle, but myriad others. Perhaps due to women's internal clocks, they were acutely aware of the moon's cycles and seasonal rhythms. They upheld rituals and lifeways that were in resonance with the greater cycles of Nature, thereby keeping civilization grounded in a natural reality (as opposed to a mental, doctrinaire reality).

There is also a school of thought that holds that some pre-literate societies were actual matriarchies, and that the high priestess, doing the bidding of her goddess, selected men for a blood sacrifice. Greeks myths tell of warring Amazon women who did away with the need for men in their culture, seeking them for use in procreation only. Such fierce warriors were they, the ancient Greeks said, that they removed their right breast to better shoot their bow and arrow. While there are few accounts of belligerent matriarchies, they could have nonetheless been in power and misused it. Therefore with the swing of the historical pendulum, men rose up and put a stop to the female abuse of power and established the patriarchy.

Who Created the Creator?

To digress for a moment: much of the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim belief in a one-and-only Father God may have been based on a misunderstanding. In the very beginning scriptures of the Torah, Old Testament, and Qur'an, they describe Creation as the work of the Elohim, which is a plural word. "In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1). By Genesis 1:26-27, when they get around to creating humans, they make them in their likeness, "male and female they created them." The creator gods later intermarry with humans: "the sons of Elohim saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them for wives... ," (Genesis 6:2) In most Christian Bibles, the word Elohim (plural, male and female) has been replaced by the word God (singular, male). The original equal creation concept of the Elohim certainly is in alignment with the symbol of the Jewish faith, the Star of David, which illustrates the interpenetration

In addition, what current Christian Bibles now call the LORD (in capital letters) originated as the unutterable Hebrew name of God, YHWH, which for the sake of uttering, becomes Yahweh. Throughout the scriptures, however, references to YHWH talk about the "Four Faces of the Divine", depicted as a pyramid with its associated sacred letters/sounds/numbers.

In Greek, YHWH translates as Tetragrammaton ("four words"). The stories of Moses and the tribes of Israel's exploits from Egypt to the Promised Land (Canaan) describe the LORD/YHWH/Tetragrammaton as being associated with the Ark of the Covenant, and an alternate reading of scripture gives the impression that there is a sacred object - not a god nor tablets - in the Ark that they carry around. Replacing the word LORD, Exodus 13:21 reads thus: "And the Tetragrammaton went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light . . ." In 2 Samuel 6:7, a man named Uzzah is helping to transport the Ark: "The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he had put his hand on the Ark. So he died there. . ." Because several Hebrews got too close to it and were killed suddenly, as if by electric shock, Moses tells his people they must fear it. Oh what a difference one word makes! "Fear the Tetragrammaton!" (an energy-producing apparatus that could deliver a deadly shock) Or . . . "Fear the LORD!" (the divine being that created you). Seeing the Ark as a powerful device explains how the "LORD" stopped the waters of the River Jordan so the Israelites could cross (Joshua 3-4), and destroyed the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6). In Crossing the Event Horizon - Rise to the Equation DVD, scientist Nassim Haramein makes a compelling case that Moses surreptitiously left Egypt with a piece of technology that had anti-gravitational powers (able to build pyramids with 60-ton blocks, or part the waters of the Red Sea), and had to be kept in a gold-covered box, and later, in the greatest temple of Biblical times, the Temple of Solomon. It is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that is now hotly contested real estate among Jews (the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant rested), Muslims (where Kings David and Solomon reigned and Mohammed ascended to heaven, and now home to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque), and Christians (in addition to Kings David and Solomon, Jesus prayed there). Incidentally, with Yahweh being the supreme deity and represented by one up-pointing pyramid, we have an unbalanced view of a polarized Universe, since the "feminine", down-pointing pyramid is not part of the picture. Whether the god of the Torah, Old Testament, and Qur'an was originally sacred sounds, a group of more advanced beings, or an ancient Egyptian technology is surely debatable. What we know for certain is that the editors and translators of those holy books ultimately arrived at the same concept: a masculine deity known for violence, strict obedience, and swift anger . . . someone to be feared, or else! In other words, the LORD, Yahweh, and Allah were the perfect kingpins to preside over the entire dominator paradigm.

Temptation & Fall (detail from Sistine Chapel, Rome, 1509-1510) by Michelangelo

The territorial conquests begun over 5000 years ago by the dominator regime reached their psychological victory by the time of Pythagoras in Greece and the Buddha in India. Around 600 BCE, there occurred what Joseph Campbell called "The Great Reversal". Jamake Highwater, in Myth and Sexuality, describes it thus: "The prevailing world view shifted from an affirmation of life to a negation of life, from the expectation of reward, comfort, and innocence to the acceptance of punishment, discomfort, and guilt.

The Great Reversal was an epic moment in history, when a negative conception of destiny arose that would eventually be symbolized by that Original Sin which makes pain and punishment an implacable aspect of Western life." Joseph Campbell, in The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, says, "Life became known as a fiery vortex of delusion, desire, violence, and death, a burning waste." These concepts saturated our psyches so completely that today men and women alike accept them as normal or human nature. We value light over dark, pain over pleasure, ranking over linking, competition over cooperation, male over female. Nature must be conquered, tamed, and reformed.

Engraving (detail), after The Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques-Louis David

The Great Reversal, also known as the Axial Age, marked the downfall of women. The poster boys of the Axial Age have names we recognize. They developed philosophies that are still in use today. The chain of classical thought that passed from Socrates (469-399 BC) to Plato (428-348 BCE) to Aristotle (384-322 BCE) advanced logic, scientific investigation, ethics, and politics. It also culminated in Aristotle's view of the inherent inequality of humans: masters, by nature, rule over slaves, just as men, by nature, rule over women. He states, in Ethics: "Man is the master, as is right and proper, and manages everything that it falls to him to do as head of the house. But whatever can "(p.247).

The "Later Prophets" of the Old Testament railed at the early Hebrews to repent of their timeworn ways and conform to dominator law. Isaiah (700's BCE) told them to abandon the sacred groves of the Goddess: "But rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed. For you shall be ashamed of the oaks in which you delighted, and you shall blush for the gardens which you have chosen." (Isaiah 1:28-29). He threatened women not to wear "finery of the anklets . . . the crescents [a Goddess symbol], the pendants, the bracelets, the amulets . . . the festal robes" (Isaiah 3:18-23). "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet; the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts." (Isaiah 3:16-17). Jeremiah (650-570 BCE) warned people that if they did not stop honoring the goddess Ashtoreth that God's vengeance would come in the form of a Babylonian invasion. "Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger . . . Therefore . . . Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched." (Jeremiah 7:17-20). As it turned out, he was right about the Babylonian invasion part. Ezekial also harangued his listeners about the divine punishment their sins would elicit from Yahweh. "Now the end is upon you, and I will let loose my anger upon you, and I will judge you according to your ways; and I will punish you for all your abominations. And my eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity; but I will punish you for your ways, while your abominations are in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord." (Ezekiel 7:3-4). "Abominations" was a code word for traditional practices associated with the Goddess: her worship in temples and groves, sexual and fertility rites, women free to make their own decisions. Oh, those terrible pagans!

Zoroaster (Zarathustra, 628-551 BCE) founded a monotheistic religion in Persia that portrayed the conflict between Ahura Mazda (God, good, light) and Angra Mainyu (the Devil, evil, dark). After death there is judgment, and then either heaven or hell.

Symbol of Zoroastrianism by Kevin McCormick

Nature - which includes the body, sexual impulses, and seasonal cycles - is inherently corrupt. Only by following laws and purifying ourselves can we be redeemed. It must be emphasized here that these ideas flew in the face of the earlier partnership cultures that had trusted the wisdom of Nature and their own natural desires. Zoroastrianism's tenets would show up much later in the early Christian Church, as the Apostle Paul established the dichotomies his flock would have to wrestle with: the flesh vs. spirit, obedience vs. sin, good vs. evil.

Gautama Buddha's 1st sermon in Deer Park, painting at Wat Chedi Liem, Chiang Mai, Thailand Photo by Kay Ess

Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, 563-483 BCE), while emphasizing compassion, equality, love, and karmic justice, nonetheless based his whole quest for enlightenment on the premise of a dangerous, corrupt world. Life in this world is one of suffering, and birth is the cause of suffering. Although Buddhism provides the follower with a functional methodology to attain peace, it implies a fundamental distrust of Nature and motherhood.

Confucius (K'ung Fu-Tzu, 551-479 BCE) taught the importance of education, human-heartedness (ren), righteous character, and hierarchical order. The family is the model for the state; the father rules over the mother and children, who in turn defer to him. From The Sayings of Confucius: "Only women and Petty Man are hard to have around the house. If you become close to them, they turn non-compliant. If you keep them at a distance, they turn resentful."(5)

These great thinkers of the Axial Age surrounded themselves with male disciples and did not maintain stable relationships with women. Plato never married, calling women "petty and cowardly"; Jeremiah renounced women when, as a teenager, he answered the Lord's call; Buddha lost his mother at birth and abandoned his wife and son for his quest; and Confucius divorced his wife after four years and thereafter avoided women. Even if these monumental men propounded eternal truths and wisdom, the philosophical systems they established disparage Woman. This could be due to their own biases or to the prejudices of their male disciples and scribes. It is no secret that traditional science, Orthodox Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Theravada/Hinayana Buddhism, and Confucianism are sexist domains. At best they overemphasize "male" values (logic, the abstract, culture over Nature), and at worst they are misogynous, narrow, and damningly pessimistic about life and human nature. For 2,600 years, since the Great Reversal, we have been following their lead. We have been living in a "man's world". Our modern intellects may accept this fact, but what happens when we turn up secret emotions or visceral reactions to ourselves as sexual beings? Where do we place our domination/submission fantasies, or our turn-on with whips and chains? [I am not saying here that the use of leather or chains in consensual sexual play is inherently perverse, but that it has typically been used to inflict domination and pain on the unwilling - usually female - recipient]. We may not want to admit that we were "wired" by a perverse culture. This denial, as well as the denial of the grand panorama of our male/female/sexual natures, only deepens the perversity. Our refusal to acknowledge the past does not mean we have escaped it.

When we consider the origins of human civilization, we look back at recorded history for the story. The 20,000-or-so-year reign of the Great Goddess is news to most of us because it happened primarily in pre-literate cultures, before recorded history. Leonard Shlain, in his book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, proposes that it was not the invading northern hunters solely that toppled the Earth Mother. It was a development within early agrarian societies: literacy. A vascular surgeon by profession, Shlain explains that the left hemisphere of the brain processes abstract, linear, analytical information - such as the written word. Directing the right (spear-throwing) hand, it is concerned with doing, and is referred to as the “masculine” realm of the hunter-killer instinct. The right hemisphere, on the other side, processes the big picture, intuitive clues, imagery, and music. It is concerned with being, and is referred to as the “feminine” realm of the gatherer-nurturer instinct. We all have both sides of the brain, but with the onset of writing, the male, left brain took precedence, with its domineering, rigid, hunter-killer tendencies. Shlain writes, “Goddess worship, feminine values, and women’s power depend on the ubiquity of the image. God worship, masculine values, and men’s domination of women are bound to the written word. Word and

image, like masculine and feminine, are complementary opposites. Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image, patriarchy dominates. When the importance of the image supersedes the written word, feminine values and egalitarianism flourish." (p.7). So important was the ("masculine") Word that when Moses delivered the Ten Commandments, the Second Commandment prohibited making any likeness of anything. It says: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Moses Smashing the Tables of the Law (1866) by Gustave Doré

Breaking this law would result in "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation. . ." He was serious: NO ART! (This was later mercifully repealed by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century. Thanks, Greg, for arrogantly tampering with a commandment - without which Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Picasso, and even Bertrand would never have seen the light of day.) So Rule #2 was preceded only by the First Commandment, the prohibition of other gods. It says: "You shall have no other gods before me." In other words: Goodbye Goddess! Yahweh's penchant for control reveals his top priorities. He did not get around to outlawing murder until Commandment Six. According to Islam, Allah was less severe than Yahweh on this count but still prohibited art of living things. Such art trespassed on Allah's domain as sole Creator. The religions of the book (Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism) as well as the ideologies of the book (Marxism, Mao Zedong's Communism) took intolerance, misogyny, and brutality to extremes, as their blood-soaked histories attest.

Whatever the causal events that led up to the Great Reversal, the fact we must face is that we have not been told the whole human story. And such skullduggery has led us astray. Rarely do we give it a second thought, but each one of us carries within us a time line of our collective past. Figure 1 (following) illustrates the traditional view of recorded history but within the context of humanity as a whole (both halves).

Venus, the feminine force of love, descended from a long line of revered goddesses. The mythologies of early cultures all tell of the Primal Mother, whose concern for the survival of her children led her to endow upon humanity the gifts of civilization, among them: the wheel, agriculture, pottery, language, weaving, art, math, and writing. So much of our history happened before recorded history, or was destroyed in the Indo-European conquests. Yet we know that writing existed some 2500 years before the Classical Age of Greece, and that ancient Greeks referred to an earlier "Golden Age" of the civilization that went before them. Merlin Stone, in When God was a Woman, notes that certain Sumerian words - farmer, plow, smith, weaver, potter, basketmaker - were not originally Sumerian but came from another (earlier?) language.

Gaia and Birth of Erichtonius (470-460 BCE), Greek vase

Most creation myths refer to the time of the Great Goddess, but then tell how she was replaced or demoted by the new God figure. In ancient Egypt, the goddess Nut places the sun god Ra in the sky. Nut's daughter Isis, also called the Creatress and Queen Mother of Egypt, rules with her brother/ husband Osiris. Later, pharaohs would wear royal crowns that bore the serpent, symbol of the goddess. In India the goddess Diti (or Devi) is killed by the Aryan god Indra, who establishes a hierarchy for society known as the caste system. In Babylonia, the god Marduk murders the Creatress Tiamat. In ancient Greece, the goddess Gaia is mother to Uranus, Father of the Universe. Zeus (Roman Jupiter) becomes supreme ruler by castrating and killing his father Cronos (Saturn), Uranus´ son.

In these and many other mythological tales, the symbols of the goddess are either demonized or co-opted by the new gods. For example, the snake, a symbol of kundalini energy and the regenerative power of the goddess, becomes a dragon or python that must be slain by the warrior hero (who carries his hard, sharp, penetrating sword).

	Alternatively, the serpent is the purveyor of divine knowledge that will only bring punishment, as in the Garden of Eden. In Arabia, Al-Lat, one of the holy trinity of Divine Mothers, was simply converted into the male Allah of Islam, and her symbol, the crescent moon, still appears on Islamic flags.
Many old symbols from Goddess times - the snake, moon, apple, pomegranate, olive, rose, lily, raven, dove, cat, scallop shell, water, hexagram (Star of David), and other various geometric motifs - appear in the Venus and Her Lover paintings. We present them as life-affirming images once again.

Since the Great Reversal, there have been times of resurgence of partnership values. Classical Greece gave us basic concepts of justice; Jesus Christ taught love, equality, and cooperation; Lao Tzu advised us to find "the Way" (Tao) through Nature; the troubadours sang of honor and gentleness; the Renaissance promoted art and free thinking; and the Age of Enlightenment championed equality. These initiatives have elicited violent responses from the dominator system, which continues even to this day to oppose feminist, democratic, and environmentalist agendas. Although the androcracy defends its control to the death, it is a regime that we as a human race cannot survive. We are living in times when this has become more and more apparent. Overpopulation, destruction of the environment, and the threat of nuclear or chemical weapons - while the logical fulfillment of the directive to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over ... every living thing that moves upon the Earth." (Genesis 1:28) - all endanger our very existence as a species.

The enforcement of androcratic rule has constrained our spiritual as well as our cultural development. In the example of Jesus Christ, his equal treatment of women - even to the point of defying Jewish law that permitted the stoning to death of an adulterous women - certainly added "proof" that he was a dangerous nonconformist that should be arrested and killed. Early Christian groups not only included women, but were often led by women, much to the apostle Paul's dismay. In the books that did not make it into our current New Testament - among them, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene - we can read that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' "right-hand woman" and became a leader of the early Christian Church. With her at his side he preached the gylanic values of compassion and nonviolence. Gnostic Christians, who would have had access to the writings that were later exorcised from the Bible, believed that anyone could experience God directly and thereby had no need for the hierarchy (rabbi / pope / bishop) of the Church, who in the first half of the first millennium was consolidating its power, wealth, and political position.

As we take off our cultural blinders, our full history is revealed to us. Figure 2 (following) illustrates more accurately the main currents of our past.

The late Dr. Marija Gimbutas, Professor Emeritus of European Archaeology at University of California, talks about our lost history in her book, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe - Myths and Cult Images: "In Old Europe the world of myth was not polarized into female and male as it was among the Indo-European and many other nomadic and pastoral peoples of the steppes. Both principles were manifest side by side. The male divinity in the shape of a young man or a male animal appears to affirm and strengthen the forces of the creative and active female. Neither is subordinate to the other; by complementing one another, their power is doubled."(8)

Mars' ideological ancestors redefined the meaning of power. As Riane Eisler explains - in gylanic/partnership cultures, the power to give life was considered divine. Wealth was acquired through technologies of production. In androcratic/dominator cultures, the ability to take life rules. Wealth is acquired through technologies of destruction. Today when we speak of powerful countries, for example, we may site the size of their missile stockpiles. Instead of the word "power", a more accurate noun might be "control". So-called power brokers have mastered the ability to get others to do what they want them to do; they are controlmongers. Their talents are far different from those of a farmer who can coax plants to grow, a musician who rouses people to dance, or a medicine woman who administers healing teas.

In Venus and Her Lover, Man (through Mars) is waking up. He has realized the natural consequences of the dominator warrior. Not only can he no longer carry forward the violent destruction of his world, he will not bear the loneliness of denying and suppressing the other half of the human race. His unconditional love of Venus helps him find the courage to conquer his internal conflicts and denials, defy the established hierarchy, and reach out to his partner for a more balanced life. Woman (through Venus), feeling respected as an equal, is empowered to love freely without falling into a sado-masochistic relationship or having to live up to Man's expectations. She may now express herself fully as Goddess. By joining forces, Man and Woman boost their potential astronomically. Through their tantric practice, the very basis of which is equality, Venus and Mars create a peaceful relationship, the microcosm of a sane, sustainable society. When we take off the androcratic glasses through which we have been peering at the world, we realize that all of Earth's creatures have suffered without the influence of the Universal Feminine. As we refuse to be duped by the lopsided history we inherited, a new vision of humanity is revealed. Venus and Mars set the example through a love that forgives the injustices and suffering of the past and sets them free to live powerfully in the present.

(1) Gimbutas, Marija, The Language of the Goddess (New York:
HarperSanFrancisco 1989) p.151
(2) Highwater, Jamake, Myth and Sexuality (New York: Meridian/Penguin,
1991) p. 99
(3) Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (New York:
Viking Press, 1968) p.420
(4) Aristotle, Ethics (The Nichomachean Ethics, translated by J.A.K.
Thomson), (Middlesex, Baltimore: Penguin 1970), p. 247
(5) Confucius, The Sayings of Confucius, James R. Ware, translator (New York: Mentor Books, 1955) Chapter 17, “Yang Hu”, #23, p.114
(6) Shlain. Leonard, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, (New York:
Penguin/Arkana 1999), p. 7
(7) Exodus 20:5, The Bible
(8) Gimbutas, Marija, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1992), p.127

History books focus on an interpretation of history that tilts toward the LEFT. Our picture of history, therefore, is weighted on the lower left corner of the vertical time line (Figure 1). A more balanced view of human development includes the major advances achieved when people worked together or with life-affirming goals in mind (Figure 2).

* Cultural values toward the LEFT:

Left-brain
"Masculine"
Androcratic
Hunter/Killer
Domination/Conquest
Culture
Written word

* Cultural values toward the RIGHT:

Right-brain
"Feminine"
Gylanic (Partnership)
Homemaker/Nurturer
Egalitarianism
Nature
Imagery

Figures 1. and 2. inspired by "Our Real History" by Linda Grover, in The Partnership Way, by Riane Eisler and David Loye, p. 142-143.

25,000 BCE

3000 BCE Bronze Age in Palestine
2850 BCE Sumerian Classical Age
2615 BCE Egyptian Old Kingdom
2000 BCE Harappa culture in India
1600 BCE Minoan Civilization

1400 BCE Shang Dynasty in China
1000 BCE Israelites ruled by King David
550 BCE ..... ..Buddha > Buddhism
.................... ....Confucius > Confucianism
450 BCE Golden Age of Athens
146 BCE Rome defeats Carthage
0 Birth of Christ
476 Fall of Roman Empire
622 ...............Muhammad > Islam
1096 First Crusade
1206 Genghis Khan
1350-1650 Renaissance
1454 Gutenberg's printing press
1460-1782 Inquisition & Witch Hunts
1492 Columbus invades Americas
1700's Age of Enlightenment / Isaac Newton
1776/89 American/French Revolutions
1750-1950 Industrial Revolution
1914 World War I
1939-45 World War II - Atomic Bomb
1950-now Technological Revolution
1969 First Man on Moon
1990-now Global Warming, Ozone Hole,
African famine, AIDS, Terrorism

[Figure 2. Humanity Revealed More Accurately]

25,000 BCE ..............Development of:

Agriculture
Pottery
Weaving
Language
Religion
The Wheel
Architecture & City Planning
Stock Breeding
Trade
Mathematics
Art
Writing