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“…so it has been: women’s power has declined as woman’s belly has been violated and shamed…5,000 years of patriarchal culture has degraded belly, body, woman, the sacred feminine, the soul, the feminine sensibility in both women and men, native peoples, and nature–all in a single process of devaluation. Because our belly is the bodily site of feminine sensibility, our patriarchal culture marks the belly as a target of assault, through rape, unnecessary hysterectomies and Cesarians [sic], reproductive technology, legal restrictions on women’s authority in pregnancy and childbirth, and belly-belittling fashions, exercise regimens, and diet schemes…a culture that literally hates women’s guts…” –Lisa Sarasohn, The Goddess Ungirdled
“Our bodies are vessels of the sacred, not the homes of sinful urges. Our bodies create and sustain the sacred. And that sacredness does not equate with any artificial notion of bodily perfection. All of us are fit habitations for the divine, no matter what the diet doctors, fitness gurus, health good fanatics, New Age healers, and the fashion police try to force on us. If we don’t take our bodies into account in our expression of [our religion], then it becomes a mere shadow of itself. When we are fully present in our bodies… becomes a three-dimensional, vibrant, fully fleshed-out expression of the divine…” –DeAnna Alba in How to Flesh Our Your Magick
Love Yourself as a sacred vessel, an expression of the divine. The giver of life. Rejoice in all the incredible gift of YOU. Love yourself wholly and completely. Remember who you truly are as a divine creation. You are beauty and love itself. Celebrate you, celebrate life.
Women's Awareness Blog 
Just out of morbid curiosity what do you think human culture looked like beyond 5000 years ago? Was it a utopia devoid of the evil patriarchy? If so what do you base that on?
5000 years ago is when patriarchy replaced matriarchy, which preexisted during the paleolithic and neolithic periods.
Why a Goddess and not a God? We glean from Anthropological analogy, and anyone who has been involved with the birth of a child or a puppy or anything else will know, that Motherhood of humans and animals is considered a great mystery, a holy event. This was no doubt true in the Paleolithic. The growth of the baby in the womb was a marvelous magical event. Woman’s monthly bleeding, unconnected with violence or death, but instead keeping time with the waxing and waning of the moon gave woman a cosmic connection – made her appear beyond time and space. The overwhelming representations from the Paleolithic suggest Her importance and point to a female numinous power. From the great number of female figurines and the cave paintings of animals connecting women with them in a transformative manner, we can assume that the first deity that was worshipped by our Paleolithic forebears was female.
The Goddess was the personification of the reproductive energies of nature – birth, death, fertility and motherhood. She was also a cosmic sky goddess having created everything from Herself and containing all the generative possibilities of transformation within herself. She was gynandrous – She contained both feminine and masculine attributes – a vagina and a penis. Her appellations in various societies include Divine Ancestress, Mistress of Animals, Fire Mother, Sky Goddess etc. Since Her worship existed before written records, the evidence of Her religion can be found only from an examination of the artifacts, from the mythology of the cultures in question.
he connecting link between the Paleolithic cultures and those of the Neolithic are the female figures. The sculptures of the Paleolithic cultures and those of the Neolithic ones are remarkably similar in material, size and style. Many of these images of the Goddess and her religion have been found in Neolithic sites from the 7th millennium onward.http://www.goddess-pages.com/Issue1/Articles/GreatGoddess.html
The idea of a goddess centered matriarchy in europe has been debunked as not being based on an objective analysis of the figurines discovered but rather as a selective sampling to support a preconceived theory.
Thank you for sharing, your interest is important. Most of the information and artifacts concerning the vast female religion, which flourished for thousands of years before the advent of the classical age of Greece, Judaism, Christianity, was dug out of the ground after the Second World War. Prior to this artifacts existed in cave paintings and myth. But, …it is these more recent excavations which have changed our view of our most ancient history. Archaeological evidence proves that the Goddess religion existed and flourished in the Near and Middle East for thousands of years before the arrival of the patriarchal Abraham, first prophet of the male deity Yahweh.
Again archaeological evidence of female figurines does not “prove anything”. There are many articles out there that debunk the myth of a peaceful matriarchal society that was ruined by the introduction to patriarchal societies.
Well, thank you, that’s an interesting perspective.
Its not so much a perspective as a statement of the actual archaeological record/interpretation. Its dangerous to push the idea that there was a mythological society that flourished in peace based upon a matriarchal hierarchy that was destroyed by a male dominated patriarchy. Its cherry picking evidence to promote a preconceived ideology and damages the ability to understand problems in our culture. Its not so different from what “creation scientists” try to do with evolution.
We are not only talking about archaeological artifacts but also evidence in art, religion, mythology, social science, history and other fields of inquiry support the existence of matriarchal goddess Cultures and the female principle in all of life. There are numerous references in the Old Testament as well as other studies and reports. http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/gods-and-goddesses-pagan.html(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/archeology-hebrew-bible.html) http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Hadley_Asherah.shtml Women were revered as Goddesses, Givers’ of Life from a period around 30,000 years ago ({Paleolithic) until Zionist Monotheism destroyed matriarchal societies and the tradition of title and land passing from the women/mother. The last Goddess temples were destroyed around 450AD.
But the destruction of the Goddess Culture is not the issue; the issue is we presently live in a society where women are objectified, abducted, poisoned, assaulted, rape, mutilated and murdered every day every so many minutes worldwide. In this context, looking back merely provides a window into a time when the female principle pervaded all of society. Inquiry is never dangerous; ignorance is. History is not static but ever evolving. We are making history now. My purpose is to raise awareness about real fundamental cultural issues of our time, like date rape, date rape drugs, crimes and violence against women. My intent is to revere the female principle at work in the entire universe.
I can agree 100 percent with your assessment of women in our present society. Inquiry isnt dangerous its the presentation of certain theoretical views of archaeological evidence as fact is what I view as dangerous.