The myth of the Goddess runs deep in the history of Western thought and practice. Goddess worship was prevalent in Paleolithic Old Europe, and well into the Iron Age. What happened? How is it that Goddess worship and polytheism came to be replaced by a monotheistic, masculine God?

Despite official doctrine, she keeps cropping up though, doesn’t she? Through Mother Mary, Sophia, the Shekhinah, the irrepressible Mary Magdalene: even within in a Judeo-Christian context, while official texts would write her out of existence, she can’t be suppressed.

Esoteric practice, folk mythology, non-doctrinal spiritual forms have always been places where the Goddess by her many names can be found. It would appear that suppression of the Goddess is intimately tied to power and Empire, a theme we will continue to explore in future episodes.

This episode draws largely from The Myth of the Goddess, Evolution of an Image, by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, as well as (to a lesser extent) Did God Have a Wife, Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel by William G. Dever.

(If you're concerned about the association of the Feminine with matter, so am I. Try n hold your horses, as we'll complicate this in the next episode).

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