God the Mother or Paleolithic Porn?

If you Google "Venus of Hohle Fels" today, you will find articles regarding this major archaeological find. It is one of the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world and is at least 35,000 to 40,000 years old. She was found by an archaeologist in Germany, Nicholas J. Conrad.

Big news, but at the same time, take note of the articles you find. They have titles like: "Busty Figurine Likened to 'Paleolithic Playboy'" and "Buxom Babe." Right Here on the Huffington Post you'll find, "Venus of Hohle Fels: PREHISTORIC PORN." A New York Times article describes the figurine's blatant sexuality as "bordering on pornographic" and she is described as being associated with fertility beliefs.

You've got to be kidding me, and if you weren't, I had a good chuckle anyway. I have been working with the modern implications of the Goddess archetype for years now and it relates to the emergence of right brain "feminine" strengths in men and women. My presentation "In Our Right Minds" is a real eye-opener for audiences. We are all using our right hemispheres more and this is changing everything! Funny thing is, back in those Paleolithic days, humanity used to be in balance in terms of utilizing right brain skills, and they venerated the Goddess -- yep, I said it, the Goddess. Maybe there is something we can learn from the past and our Venus of Hohle Fels.

Today's articles fail to mention that Paleolithic cultures, the era from which the Venus of Hohle Fels hails, were Goddess cultures. In Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures, the driving force behind all things was considered female. Dr. Elinor Gadon, Cultural Historian writes about these Goddess cultures: "...Goddess religion was earth-centered, not heaven-centered, of this world not otherworldly, body affirming not body-denying, holistic not dualistic. The Goddess was immanent, within every human being, not transcendent, and humanity was viewed as part of nature, death as part of life. Her worship was sensual, celebrating the erotic, embracing all that was alive."

It is nearly impossible for us to see the Venus of Hohle Fels as sacred, even as -- dare I say it -- God the Mother. She is a messenger coming to us from a culture that honored all things female. Goddess cultures are our history, and in fact they persist, with characteristics worthy of our attention.

In a survey of 150 cultures today, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday compared cultures structured around male dominance with those that embrace female power. She found a clear correlation between female power in society and Goddess veneration. Where the divine has a feminine face, there is a correlation with the society's honoring of nature, women's role as officiators of sacred sacraments, connection to the land, and female power. In these societies, there is egalitarianism, rather than women holding power over men. These cultures value community, birthing, nurturing, empathy, intuitive intelligence, earth, nature, connection and interdependence. Also, the orientation of time is not linear, but is cyclical and aligned with the eternal cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal. The divine is understood to be embodied in every person and in nature, not somewhere else, abstract and disembodied. Sensuality and sexuality are honored as sacred.

What we have come to describe as "feminine" values are actually attributes that belong to women and men; they are a valued part of society when the feminine is not subjugated. They are not women's tenets, they are societies'.

It is certainly out of alignment to describe an artifact from this ancient era as "pornographic." This is quite at odds with the sacred sexuality of egalitarian Goddess cultures.

Pioneering archaeologist Marija Gimbutas published The Language of the Goddess in 1989. Before she died in 1994, Gimbutas studied thousands of Paleolithic and Neolithic artifacts and uncovered a language of prehistoric peoples -- the language of the Goddess. As a scholar, Gimbutas had to rise above the prevailing intellectual perspective that could not get past seeing through the lens of modern culture. Judging by today's headlines, things haven't changed much.

Before we so quickly dismiss the Venus of Hohle Fels as pornographic we should consider our loss in doing so. As Eric Neumann wrote: "Comparative religion ... teaches us that there is in man (beyond the psychological need for a father symbol) an equally great, or possibly even greater need: that of the divine woman who appears in many different forms throughout the world, yet remains basically the same everywhere."

Maybe we can learn from our foremothers and forefathers. What other goodies come with feminine-venerating cultures? Dr. Elinor Gadon writes, "Perhaps the most provocative discovery of recent archaeological research is that nowhere in Neolithic Goddess cultures is there any sign of warfare. There is no evidence of fortifications, of violent death, invasion or conquest. We can only conclude that there was some direct relation between Goddess religion and peaceful coexistence. Neolithic Goddess culture was woman-centered, peaceful, prosperous, and nonhierarchical."

Vicki Noble writes, "Archaeologists ardently seek to find evidence of war in earlier societies, but there is actually no proof whatsoever of violence or war before the middle of the fifth millennium B.C.E. Although people built houses close together and lived in fairly high population density in the early urban centers, they apparently developed ways of resolving conflict and living in harmony with their environments that allowed them to share food and resources, irrigate fields, and participate in large ritual and artistic endeavors...Goddess scholars believe that content and form cannot be separated and that the reason for the lack of violence and conflict in early societies is the presence of the active worship of the Great Mother."

Hmmm...No warfare, no gender hierarchy, honoring of earth, sacred sexuality -- quite a history our Venus of Hohle Fels connects us to. If we were to travel back in time, our ancestors would simply not comprehend what we have done with sacred sexuality, the greatest force on the planet. Imagine if at the dawn of adolescence, our daughters could embrace their sexuality as sacred as opposed to slutty? Wouldn't it be great if our sons could see the female form as holy rather than pornographic? Something to ponder on this May day in 2009, as we look at an artifact that we have called "pornographic" and our ancestors called "holy." The Kagaba Indians of Columbia sing, "The Mother has left a memory in us all." I think we would do well to remember.

Comments

[moflard]

"..back in those Paleolithic days, humanity used to be in balance in terms of utilizing right brain skills, and they venerated the Goddess.."

May I enquire how you know all this? There's no written record from that period, any passed by word of mouth would be completely unrecognisable, so on what /evidence/ is this assumption based? The delusional work of Gimbutas, where every squiggle became an "ideogram", every figurine "a divinity"? Please! Have you LOOKEDat any goddess myths? They're not generally full of goodness and light, more often than not they're right blood thirsty cows (Morrigan, Kali,

I'm sorry but much of the work that supports this "golden age" idea are sorely simplistic, so enamoured of feminist archaeology they forget that gender is a social construct, not a physiological one, where "woman" and "female" can have multilple meanings. We don't even know much about the language - and that we do know is based on extrapolation and guesswork. They also fall into the dichotomy trap of assuming since male society isn't particularly nice, that female society must therefore, by some strange alchemy, be nicer. As if women aren't human beings too.

[moflard]

As far as warfare is concerned, Catal Huyuk (one of the origin points for this gynocentric myth) is the source of some of the worlds earliest weaponry, dating to the 8th Millennium B.C.E. A dagger, not a weapon used in hunting except in desperation (it's too short), a sling (famed thanks to Goliath) and most tellingly, a mace. Now a mace is an interesting weapon as they're virtually useless in the hunt because they cause blunt impact trauma, but only if you hit something right. Again, a close quarters weapon, they're not too wise to use against a wild animal, but they are very good against human beings. And have people not heard of Boudica, Cleopatra and Maggie Thatcher? Women can be quite bloodthirsty themselves.

Sorry, its a nice fairy tale, but as far as reality concerned, it's just a feel good story and nothing more. And btw, the Venus figurines were, over 15 years ago now, studied quite closely and found to mimic fat deposition in obese women quite well. Now, if you're living a hunter gatherer life style, would you want a skinny woman who burns all their fuel immediately, or a woman who can store energy for those lean periods?

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

35.000 to 40,000 is considerably further back in history thne the 8th millennium B.C. Therefore I don't see how your comparison comes into play.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

What you say about gender, social constructs and a certain dichotomy trap must refer to another post. The post you are commenting on contains the following paragraph:

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What we have come to describe as "feminine" values are actually attributes that belong to women and men; they are a valued part of society when the feminine is not subjugated. They are not women's tenets, they are societies'.
---

[zaxtervid]

I think it's also interesting how all the scientists and journalists seem to dance around the very obvious fact that the woman depicted in this carving is quite simply: fat. They dance around it with words like "sensual" "buxom" etc, but this woman is also just really large and well-fed.

Which goes perfectly in line with this author's take on the goddess culture which may have produced the carving. Here in the modern world, which is male dominated, we have vilified fat and fat women especially. We suppress women by seeking to starve them and make them conform to a more sexless standard of beauty. By suppressing women's body shape, we suppress their femininity and their power.

Some men are discovering what the ancients already knew. Large women are sexy and worthy of worship, they can take you to a sensual place that no other woman can. Take it from me, in time we have lost a lot of knowledge about what it means to be happy on earth. This figurine is proof of that loss.

[moflard]

You need to read some actual archaeology. They were fat and that's been one of the main thrusts of their study for over a decade.

[zaxtervid]

OK, Indiana Jones, what "archaeology" would you suggest I read then? Prove some of this.

[Vickster]

It seems to me that the gaunt look didn't become fashionable in western societies until women achieved a certain equality. In other words, the more power women have in a society, the more the feminine ideal in that culture resembles an underfed, prepubescent child.

[Grafdom]

i thinks the basic idea of this whole artile is good. but the way goddess and venus of hohle relates is bit questionable. anyhow, the whole article generates knowledge i think.

[Catothemuchyounger]

Jeesh, you have got to be kidding me! I thought all this PaleoGoddess stuff had played itself out. Fact is, nobody around today can do more than speculate on what the meaning of these figures was, or on what the religious beliefs were of people who lived so long before writing, or what their social organization was like.

It is always amazing to me how people can pretend to confidently describe details of life in a past that is so distant. Nobody knows! There are lots of more or less educated guesses, which conflict with each other, all based on fragmentary evidence. The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory is a decent counter argument to this kind of thing, but plain old commonsense would do as well.

As a conservative, I believe human nature is essentially unchanging. Even so, it takes amazing degree of hubris, to believe one can intuit the beliefs of people who lived so long ago, based on the evidence available.

[elmerfude]

Well gee Cato you don't seem to have any problem intuiting the beliefs of people who lived several thousands of years ago by reading your Old Testament now do you? With all the contradictory evidence in the Bible including four inconsistent creation stories, it takes an amazing degree of hubris to detect any consistent truth from the evidence available.

[Catothemuchyounger]

Really? And how do you know that? I am an agnostic, and never thought of it as "my" Old Testament. But now that you mention it, you are right in one thing: if you want to learn about how people thought, it is very useful to have writings in which those people discuss their society at length. Do you disagree with that, Elmer? If so, on what basis?

[Vickster]

It's my opinion that sexuality only becomes pornographic in those cultures where there is no "family bed". For most of humanity's existence, children didn't have their own bedrooms. They lived in yurts, teepees, wigwams, longhouses, hogans or one-room cabins (shanties), where it wasn't unusual to wake up in the middle of the night and see one's parents (or grandparents) having sex. In other words, children grew up learning sex was a part of life, just like eating, defecating, birthing, dying or simply enjoying the time spent with loved ones.

That said, I disagree with your assertion that there were no hierarchies back in the alleged epoch of Goddess worship. All social animals, be they wolves, goats, whales, meerkats or humans, have hierarchies. They will also defend their territories from roaming packs, herds, pods or tribes.

[kapalabhati]

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I hope DCFS isn't monitoring posts.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

Looks like we could use some Anima this May Day instead of Manna.

With your insistence on the absurdity of the pornographic implications of the archeological finding you are almost obscuring the main tenet. But since you probably did this on purpose, I am not going to object.

God may be dead, and we may have killed him, as Nietzsche famously figured out. But how about Goddess? Could it be that we need to dig deeper to find out about her destiny?

Somehow, what seems really odd is that we seem to need archeological evidence before we can make up our minds as to what makes any sense in terms of having to share this planet.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Probably most of the complacency and the hubris we witness results from a terrible loss of memory. And in many cases, this may even be a shortage of archeological means.

[elmerfude]

I would certainly like to find a goddess and nature based religion but I haven't. (Pantheism comes close but it is not a formal religion.) All of the religions of the book are male and hierarchical. Christianity is based on the Trinity (two men and a ghost) and manages to leave out half the human race and all of nature from the realm of the sacred. Despite some negative examples like Ann Colter and Michelle Bachmann, we would probably be better off with women running things. During my career I worked for male bosses and women bosses. I generally found the women to be more open to suggestions, less dogmatic and more pragmatic in their approach and more interested in team development but there were a few exceptions. Anyway I liked this posting. It should give everyone something to think about.

[carrieanna]

I always felt that Roman Catholicism propped Mary up as a goddess to worship. Growing up as a Protestant, there was not much emphasis on Mary so I've always been amazed at how many "Virgin Mary" and "Mother Mary" statues there are in Catholic churches...as well as how many modern day "miracles" seem to be centered around her statues.

[elmerfude]

There is a certain reverence for Mary and for various saints in the Catholic church. However it is a very male dominated church as you know.