Re: [pf] The Chalice and the Blade

by Betsy Barnum

21 December 2000 15:11 UTC

Jill Taylor Bussiere wrote:

> She describes the petroglyphs in a different way:  that they were most
> likely painted by women, that the "weapons" depicted are perhaps not spears,
> but rather plants.  The cave sanctuaries, figurines, burials, and rites,
> seem to relate to a "belief that the same source from which human life
> springs is also the source of all vegetable and animal life - the great
> Mother Goddess or Giver of All.

Jill, I hope I'm not "spoiling" it for you, but the most memorable thing I got
from the book relates to this. It's about the figurines and drawings of the
goddess, with huge breasts, huge hips, sometimes the vulva area highlighted.
When archaeologists were all men, they saw these figurines and classified them
as "sex fetishes" used by men--basically, pornographic dolls. It wasn't until
women like Marija Gimbutas began to explore these artifacts that this view was
questioned, and a more accurate interpretation was given to them. Gimbutas
theorizes, and backs it up with lots of evidence, that they were sacred objects
representing the Goddess in her fecund, creative glory, the sexual parts
emphasized not in a pornographic way, but because these are the parts that are
most inolved in the creation of life. So far from fetishes and sex toys, these
figurines and drawings were the equivalent of the cross for today's
Christians--symbolic of the deepest meaning of the people's spiritual identity,
a material, historical representation of what life is all about.

Needless to say, I liked the book a lot. And I highly recommend Eisler's
follow-up, Sacred Pleasure, which is about sexuality and esp. women's sexuality,
and how it has been distorted through the ages under a system of domination, a
"power-over" system as she calls it.

Betsy

--
Betsy Barnum
bbarnum@wavetech.net
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1624

**************************************
I can think of no greater task for activists today than to study
the reasons why so many common people, surely a majority,
objected to the ratification of the Constitution.

--Jerry Fresia, Toward An American Revolution