The Last Judgement

Male Domination Religions.

Three of the most successful religions in recent times, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have male domination aspects to them. It is clear Jesus wasn’t like this but his later followers certainly were, as they insisted on a male priesthood and claimed God is male.

As Paul is suppose to have said, “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.” 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. And of course there is similar stuff in the Old Testament when God tells Adam the following.

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise the head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he (God) said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Genesis 3 : 15-16

Interestingly in the Koran, Eve is not blamed for eating the forbidden fruit like in the Hebrew Bible but even so Islam is very extreme male-dom with genital mutilation, women covering their faces and a honour system where a man has a right to kill his wife if she “dishonours him” by disobeying him. We see this from Islamic scriptures.

“Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them. Virtuous women are obedient, careful, during the husband’s absence, because God has of them been careful. But chide those for whose refractoriness you have cause to fear; remove them into beds apart, and scourge them: but if they are obedient to you, then seek not occasion against them:” Quran verse 4:34.

Even in a more mild religion like Buddhism, women are not allowed any positions of authority or power. Buddhism worship the male Buddha like a God, (even though he claimed he wasn’t a god) while women are only allowed the role of nuns.

So it is of interest that we have male domination religions with male gods but no female dominated religions with female Goddesses. This is of course a refection of the political reality where throughout history we always had male dominated governments. Today things are different where we now have more female leaders of countries than ever before, so in these times perhaps a female dominated religion may be possible.

So what would a female domination religion be like? It would simply be the opposite to a male dominated religion and worship a female deity and have a female priesthood.

Now some feminist will claim it would be better to sexually equality religion and worship both a male and female deity and have both priests and priestesses. This would only be a source of conflict where competitive priest will be competing against the priestesses for power.

We have had this situation in the past where we had pagan religions that worshipped both gods and goddesses and had both priests and priestesses. As we see in the ancient religions of Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Old Norse religion.

But over time the power of the priestesses was undermined and we end up with only priests who worshipped a male god. We even have this situation today in Hinduism where they still worship gods and goddesses but it is male priests who dominate most Hindu sects.

There are few powerful Goddesses in Hinduism like Kali. She is the Goddess of the Tantra sect where they practice sex with the woman on top. The man is also not allowed to orgasm but women can do this as many times she likes so it is sex about the pleasure of women and not the man. They practice the same form of sex in Taoism. This show the matriarchal roots of both religions.

So history shows us that a sexual equality religion will, in time, only lead to male dominated religion. This is why a female dominant religion can only work if men are kept out of any position of authority. What people do not know today that in the distant past there were matriarchal religions that worshipped only female deities and had a female priesthood.

In Greek Legend there is a story of an ancient Golden Age where people lived in peace and prosperity. To quote: “The first age was an age of innocence and happiness. Truth and right prevailed, though not enforced by law, nor was there any magistrate to threaten or punish. The forest had not yet been robbed of its trees to furnish timbers for vessels, nor had men built fortifications around their towns. There were no such thing as swords, spears, or helmets. The earth brought forth all things necessary for man, without his labour in ploughing or sowing. Perpetual spring reigned, flower sprang up without seed, the rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey distilled from the oaks.”

After that came the Silver age, where everything wasn’t so good then the Brazen age and finally the Iron age, which is really our present age of warfare and violence. The whole concept of this myth is that everything has become slowly worse and worse for human kind since the Golden Age.

Yet the myth of the Golden age doesn’t only come from Ancient Greece. Probably the most ancient religion that survives today is Taoism in China. Again this religion talks about a Golden age in the past. As explained often in the Tao-Te-Ching written by Lao Tzu.

Eve and Serpent

 The concept of the Golden Age is also in the story of the Garden of Eden which again is a paradise. Then Adam and Eve sinned and they were banished into the waste land and Adam had to work “by the sweat of his brow”. The story of the Garden of Eden comes from a Golden age story from ancient Mesopotamia. Also in the few Aztec and Maya writing that have survived again there is a myth of a very ancient Golden Age ruled by a compassionate Mother Goddess. Which is shown in contrast to the later age of warfare and human sacrifice. In fact most ancient cultures of the world have some myth of a golden age of the ancient past.

One Greek scholar Hesiod told the story of Pandora’s Jar. Zeus gave a jar to Pandora to keep safe but she opened it and out poured sickness, death and evil. This story is an attack on the ancient Goddess Pandora who “the all-endowed” or “all-giving” Goddess. So Hesiod twisted this to blame sickness, death and evil onto her. So like Eve in the Bible story she was blamed for man’s downfall whereas the demise of humans came when men dominated religion and politics.

When patriarchal rulers took control the people found they were worse off and naturally complained about this. The patriarchy of course were not going to blame themselves to made up stories like Eve eating the forbidden fruit or Pandora opening the Jar, to blame it all on women.

Though there is an element of truth in both stories. We did once have a Golden age of peace and harmony when women allowed men their natural desires to serve and worship women. But it all went wrong when some women interfered with this and thought that men and women should be equal.

Surprisingly, even in the Hebrew Bible it is mentioned that people once worshipped Goddess and were better off when they did this. as we can see in the following passage.

“We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm.” Jeremiah 44:17.

Somehow this paragraph escaped the patriarchal censors. The Queen of Heaven was a goddess and scholars tell us that the Jews did once worship Goddesses like Shekinah, Asherah, Anath, Astarte, Ashima, Lilith and Sophia.

We find the same in Islam where their holy book is called the Koran. What they don’t tell you is that this book was named after the Goddess Kore, (not the same as the Greek goddess also called Kore). She was then worshipped by Mohammed’s tribe the Koreshites, (Children of Kore) and her shrine was in Mecca. Mohammed at first preached from the Koran of the Goddess Kore but then completely rewrote it after he was banished from Mecca.

This is why some Mullahs can claim Islam is a religion of peace, because it seems some of the original teachings from the Goddess Kore survive in the present day Koran. It even talks about the Oneness of God.

At one time modern academics have rejected these Golden Age legends as pure myth. Not only do they sound too good to be true. Recorded history seem to show a different story. They claim that the further you go back in history the more brutal and violent men seem to behave. After all we do not have human sacrifice any more. Though it has to be admitted we still have genocide and wars as we have seen with the Nazi and Po-Pot regimes in the last century. In spite of that it has been assumed by archaeologists that people in pre-historic times were even more brutal than people in historic times. But in the last century archaeology discoveries have challenged this assumption.

In the 1960s a archaeologists called Mellaart lead a team to excavate a site in Anatolia in Turkey. This site turn out to be the oldest city ever discovered. Called Catal Huyuk it goes back over 9,000 years. What was discovered goes against all assumptions archaeologist have about people living in Neolithic times. They couldn’t find any fortifications to defend the city or any weapons of war. Neither could they find signs of violence committed on people buried in graves. It was also a city full of feminine imagery to the degree that Mellaart was force to say that the people worshipped the Ancient Great Mother.

So unsettling was these discoveries that the site was closed down for thirty years and the academic world ignored the implications of this find. But there was one archaeologist who was brave enough to challenge the accepted wisdom of the academic world.

The late Marija Gimbutas went digging in other Neolithic sites and found similar findings. She also highlight the Neolithic findings that Soviet scientists had made in Transylvania. As well as Goddess civilizations found in Crete and Malta. All showing peaceful societies that worshipped the Great Mother. Gimbutas became a very controversial figure and her books and work were rejected by the academic world. But other archaeologist were also making similar finds.

The Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan was again an Ancient society that archaeologists could find no signs violence or weapons of war. Even more recently in Caral in Peru the oldest city ever discovered in South America, going back to 5,000 years, the same thing was discovered. Given the violent history of later South American civilizations with mass human sacrifice archaeologists expected to find the same thing. But no matter how hard they looked they couldn’t find any evidence of human sacrifice, warfare or any other indication of violence. And they had to conclude that this civilization existed in peace for thousands of years.

The overwhelming evidence of these finding have made more modern academic wonder if Marija Gimbutas might be right after all. Some are coming out of the woodwork and supporting her like Richard Rudgley in his book “Lost Civilizations Of The Stone Age”.

So what is the implication of these findings?

No longer can it be claimed that we lived in the stone age as savage brutes. As it seems that violence started thousands of years after the first civilizations got started. It also brings into question if men are naturally violent.

After the second world war the American military did a study on how well their troops did in the war. They interviewed a large number of ex-servicemen and found that only a small minority admitted to killing the enemy. Most claimed that they only shot above the heads of the opposing side and didn’t want the deaths of the enemy on their conscience.

In contrast in the same war the Japanese troops had a reputation of brutality and ruthlessness. But the Japanese military training was very harsh. The new recruits were beaten up by older soldiers at the beginning of their training and then after their first year they were encouraged to do the same to the newer recruits. Later on in their training they were taught to kill by killing prisoners of war. So it seems that the Japanese military knew that to turn an ordinary Japanese male into a effective killing machine, they had to completely brutalize him.

The same is true of the German soldiers under the Nazis, where again the ordinary soldier was  brutalized. Yet in spite of this, when the Nazis started their genocide against the Jews they at first just took groups of Jews into the forest and had them shot by ordinary soldiers. But the effect of shooting defenseless civilians had a devastating effect on many of the soldiers ordered to do this and some committed suicide afterwards. This became such a problem for the Nazis that other methods like gas chambers, had to be used to conduct mass murder that didn’t involve using ordinary servicemen.

During the Falklands war 250 British servicemen lost their lives. 20 years after the war 265 men who saw action during the war have since committed suicide. Even worse figure are shown for the American troops that fought in the Vietnam war. Though this is a controversial subject in USA and it is hard to get exact figures.

If the Japanese military had to brutalize their troops to make them kill. While soldiers in Britain and America as so upset by the experience of war that many have since committed suicide. It calls into question whether men are naturally violent. Yet recorded history is a history of war, genocide and cruelty. So if it is not natural for men to be violent, why is it still going on?

In all the Golden age legends they do not explain why things started to go wrong. But Gimbutas claims that the downfall of many of the peaceful Goddess civilizations as caused by violent patriarchal tribes invading them from the north. So it suggests that it was the invention of war that ended the last Golden Age. Where the early patriarchal rulers behaved like Mafia bosses in imposing a reign of terror on the people, then started a protection racket that was in effect the first taxation.

So the good news is that a Golden age did exist in the past, and we are not naturally violent. Most men have to be brainwashed into being like this through brutalization. The bad news is that the Pandora’s Box has been opened in that violent men have found they can rule countries and even empires through fear and violence.

But this is not what the majority of us want. Most of us do not want to live in a world of war and violence and it is up to us to not allow a minority of violent men spoilt it for us all. We have to learn how to stop our young people being brutalized by school bullies, street gangs, prisons, poverty, unemployment, violent films and video games, violent parents and the military. Then we can perhaps get back to living once again in a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity.