Like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam evolved in the Middle East and Europe, the worship of a new, exclusively male order: God, King, Priest, and Father.
These new theologies placed the goddess in a subordinate status, with a man as her dominant husband or even as her murderer. In her book, Stone writes at length about the erasure of the female deities, who became the victim of "centuries of continual persecution and suppression by the advocates of the newer religions which help male deities as supreme, "Worse yet, this major about-turn in religion meant the status of women around the world declined too.
Today, instead of a history of the ancient female religions that were celebrated for thousands of years, we are most familiar with the creation story of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Eden courtesy of Eve making her, you know, responsible for the downfall of humanity from Paradise. As for the supreme female deity?" The Old Testament does not even have a word for Goddess, "writes Stone.”In the Bible, the goddess is called Elohim, which is the masculine gender, to be translated as God. But the Koran of the Mohammedans was quite clear. In it, we read:' Allah will not tolerate idolatry…. The pagans pray to females.
Not all religions that followed in the wake of Goddess worship obscured the female deity, though. In the Path of the MOTHER, Savitri I.. Bess points out that Hindus have never stopped worshipping the Mother, "THE MOTHER, who has been obscured in the shadow of Western religions for thousands of years, "she writes" is considered to be the total of the energy in the universe"
From DURGA, the fearless goddess who vanquished her foes atop a tiger, to SARASWATI, the vast spectrum of venerated Hindu goddesses highlight the power of the feminine principle, none more so that SHAKTI, Bess notes, though her cosmic energy is entirely responsible for the creation of the Universe; she is known to be the activity in all things. Buddhism too celebrates the feminine principle by the way of the Bodhisattva Guan Yin, whose name means “the one who hears and sees the cries of the world." With beauty, grace, and boundless compassion for the suffering of humanity, it has been said that YIN'S greatest significance is as the outpouring of the embodiment of the divine feminine.
God is A WOMAN." The single on Ariana Grande's new album is a reminder that archeologists believe GOD was considered female for the first 200,000 years of human life on Earth. On July 13, 2018, Arianna Grande declared, in a four-octave vocal range, "When all is said and done / you’ll believe God is a woman,"
So Grande's single is not only a sexy pop anthem, it's also a subtly-a reminder that there lies before us a rich history of Goddess worship altogether separate from the patriarchal religions, customs, and laws most of us were raised on.
Archaeological evidence suggests that God was considered female for the first 200,000 years of human life on earth, even if male-dominated religions sought to displace the matriarchal order. Ultimately, by making ourselves independent of our heritage, and, as Stone writes, cultivate "a contemporary consciousness of the once-widespread veneration of the female deity as the WISE CREATRESS OF THE UNIVERSE and all life civilization...