September 3, 2002
All the evils that have resulted from dignifying one sex and degrading the other may be traced to this central error: a belief in a trinity of masculine Gods in One, from which the feminine element is wholly eliminated
The Great Goddess in Matilda Joslyn Gage's
"Woman, Church and State"
(Matilda Joslyn Gage was co-editor with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony of the "History of Woman Suffrage," Vol. 1, 1848-1861. These women based their model of feminist struggle on knowledge of the native Iriquois culture's matrilineal society)
[The first Matilda Joslyn Gage Conference, officially titled " 'That Word is Liberty,' Matilda Joslyn Gage Centennial Conference," was held on October 22-24, 1998, at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This conference was held 100 years after Gage's death. The title referred to Matilda Joslyn Gage's motto: "There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven, that word is Liberty."
The following is a speech Ann gave at the Conference on the Great Goddess in Matilda Joslyn Gage's work.]
My name is Ann Forfreedom. I have published two anthologies: "Women Out Of History: A Herstory Anthology," which I edited in 1972, and "Book of the Goddess," which I co-edited in 1980. I have edited and published "The Wise Woman," a national Feminist quarterly journal, since 1980. I am now writing "Great Goddess! A World Encyclopedia of Powerful Goddesses." I am speaking today about "The Great Goddess in Gage's 'Woman, Church and State.' "
I am happy to be here in Kalamazoo today, at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Centennial Conference. I am sure that Gage's spirit is here among us, enjoying the sight of Feminists gathered together to learn and share and talk about her work and life.
I want to begin by bringing attention to Matilda Joslyn Gage's condensed version of this book in the "History of Woman Suffrage," Vol. 1, 1848-1861, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. In addition, I want to add some comments about the Goddess-oriented aspects of Gage's motto about Liberty. And I will discuss the Great Goddess in Gage's influential 1893 book, "Woman, Church and State," especially in the first chapter.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, a brilliant scholar and Feminist theorist, examined her research about women's history and ancient societies and discovered that women have not always been oppressed by men or by human culture. She found that the basis of the centuries of oppression of womankind by certain groups of men and their political, economic and social institutions was rooted in religious views of the female, and in church doctrines and practices denying women's religious and civil rights. She contrasted the wise array of rights and liberties available to women in what she termed "Pagandom" and the "Matriarchate." Her words have been so clear and so revolutionary that few Americans today can match their passion, insight, and accuracy, which may be why so few Americans have actually read her words.
I want you to try an experiment with me. As you listen to Gage's words and to my experiences in researching and writing "Great Goddess! A World Encyclopedia of Powerful Goddesses," imagine that you live in a world that embraces this knowledge, that you have been raised with these views, and that you know, from the deepest layers of yourself, that these truths are all around you, in every place and nation. [Editor's Note: Take me there, Ann!!]
In 1881, in the first volume tracing the struggles of women in the United States to obtain full citizenship and voting rights, Gage says: "Woman is told that her present position in society is entirely due to Christianity, and this assertion is then made the basis of opposition to her demands for exact equality with man in all the relations of life."
In 1881, Feminists had already faced many decades of antagonistic Christian preachers and bishops, and many other men of patriarchal religions and beliefs. In 1998, Feminists have seen similar antagonists attacking women's rights to priestly ordination, to political equality and the Equal Rights Amendment, to anti-discrimination legislation, and to equal pay in every wage-earning job, as well as payments for housework and other kinds of non-wage work performed mainly by women.
Gage goes beyond this aspect of society, to show what she calls "man's unwarranted usurpation over woman's religious and civil rights, and the very great difference between true religion and theology." She mentions that Christian churches have emphasized female obedience to males. She says, "The duty of woman to obey, not only her husband, but all men by virtue of their sex, was sedulously inculcated."
Today, leaders of the Southern Baptists in the United States are insisting that a wife must "graciously submit" to the husband's leadership; the Catholic pope insists that women cannot serve as priests or bishops because Jesus was male; the Taliban in Afghanistan are insisting that a woman cannot work outside the home, cannot receive medical aid and assistance from a male doctor, cannot go to school and learn to read and write, and must be covered in cloth from head to toe or be beaten by a man all to conform to a male definition of the laws of Islam: Orthodox Jewish men in Israel continue to harass women trying to pray at the Wailing Wall, even throwing chairs at them; and in the United States, Orthodox Jewish men continue to segregate women and refuse to allow women to pray together with men.
By the way, while there are many men today who respect women's rights, few religions acknowledge women leaders. Even the Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, who acknowledges that there is no reason why there should not now be a female Dalai Lama, has himself continued the male-centered tradition of choosing a male child to become the next Dalai Lama.
Yet, there have been women in priestly roles throughout the ages. Gage acknowledges this in her 1881 writing. She says, "Woman had acquired great liberty under the old civilizations....All Pagandom recognized a female priesthood, some making their national safety to depend upon them, like Rome..." Gage mentions the Vestal Virgins, the Eleusinian mysteries, the "Sacred Songs" of Isis, the Great Goddess Bona Dea, and the Great Goddess Ceres, and the women who founded religions and devoted their lives to being sacred priestesses. Gage says, "The women of Scandinavia were regarded with respect...These old Berserkers reverenced their Alruna, or Holy Woman, on earth, and worshipped goddesses in heaven."
Gage looks at the political state and the patriarchal religions, and concludes:
"...our government and religion are alike essentially masculine in their origin and development. All the evils that have resulted from dignifying one sex and degrading the other may be traced to this central error: a belief in a trinity of masculine Gods in One, from which the feminine element is wholly eliminated....This doctrine of her original sin lies at the base of the religious and political disqualifications of woman. Christianity, through this doctrine, has been interpreted as sustaining man's rights alone...we may well believe that the portions of the "Bible" quoted against woman's equality are but interpolations of an unscrupulous priesthood, for the purpose of holding her in subjection to man."
As I began gathering information for my book, "Great Goddess!," I remembered various experiences that connect with Gage's research. I have seen the great Temple of Vesta in Rome; though it is now in ruins, the attraction of this great sisterhood, which lasted 1,100 years, is obvious. There is a row of statues, on high pedestals, of leaders of the Vestal Virgins; one tall pedestal was empty, until a young blonde woman, a tourist, spontaneously climbed up and proudly took her place among the women leaders.
When I visited the city of Copenhagen, on the island of Zealand in Denmark, I saw the magnificent statue of the Great Goddess Gefion, which stands atop the Gefion Fountain, in a beautiful park in Copenhagen. Gefion, I learned later, is not the minor deity presented in a few resources that deign to mention Her. Gefion, to whom the people of the city of Copenhagen dedicated this impressive and ornate monument, is the Scandinavian Goddess of Sovereignty whose bold action created the entire island of Zealand. Her statue shows a larger-than-life woman who is strong, active and powerful. It isn't just the ancient Vikings who honor Goddesses in Heaven.
Goddess culture is part of our human heritage, and surrounds us today. Those of us who eat cereals for breakfast honor Ceres, the Roman agricultural Goddess of the Earth. Those of us who rejoice on Fridays honor Freya, the Scandinavian Goddess of Love. In California, every time we look at a state document, we see the Great Goddess Minerva, who appears in dignity and wisdom on our state seal.
Those of us who love our liberty honor Goddess Liberty, the United States Great Goddess whose presence has graced U.S. coins, paper money and postage stamps, and who has appeared in paintings, folk art and statues since Revolutionary War times. In my research for "Great Goddess!," I found that a Revolutionary War-era Liberty coin from Massachusetts bears the name "Goddess Liberty" and is dated 1776, generally considered the beginning of the United States.
I have adapted a Liberty coin to serve as my logo. For me, Liberty is a Great Goddess who offers a new vision and a better future.
The Walking Liberty coin that serves as my logo was designed by Adolph A. Weinman. I redesigned the coin motto to read, "In Goddess We Trust."
The Liberty coin shows Goddess Liberty walking across the land, as She holds the olive branches of peace, and gestures in greeting to the rising sun and a new day. She wears a flowing gown and star-filled mantle, sandals, and a Phrygian cap that connects Her to ancient Goddesses such as Cybele of Phrygia and Rome, to ancient Amazons, to freed slaves in the Roman Empire, and to revolutionaries in the 18th-century American and French Revolutions.
The redesigned coin motto, "In Goddess We Trust," honors the Great Goddess depicted on this U.S. silver Liberty [bullion] dollar coin, and acknowledges the active presence of the Great Goddess in the United States and throughout the world.
Gage mentions liberty quite often. Her motto says: "There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven -- that word is Liberty." She knew that the imposing Statue of Liberty, unveiled in New York Harbor in 1886, was called a Goddess almost from the start. She also was critical of Goddess images that were honored in the abstract, while mortal women were denied political liberty and civil rights.
Yet, Gage's book begins with a chapter detailing many Goddesses, and drawing a direct connection in society between honoring divinity in the female and acknowledging the rights of women on Earth. How does the Great Goddess, in Her various aspects, under many names, appear in Gage's "Woman, Church and State?"
Gage's first chapter, which she titles "The Matriarchate," mentions a variety of global areas and eras in which womankind enjoyed more liberty than has been true under Christianity. She mentions the discovery of information from ancient India, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Chaldea, Africa, Easter Island, and the languages of the Zunis and the Aztecs. She finds what she considers "convincing proof of woman's early superiority in religion, in the state and in the family" among the ancient Lycians, the Slavs, the Basques of Spain, the Veddas of Ceylon and the inhabitants of Malabar.
I, too, have encountered information about Great Goddesses from virtually every area of land inhabited by human beings. The book I am working on features Great Goddesses from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia (including Polynesia), Europe and the Mideast. I haven't found any Goddess culture in Antarctica yet, but I'm still looking.
Some of these Great Goddesses are ancient, such as the Paleolithic and Neolithic Goddesses and the Mesopotamian Great Goddess Bau, chief Goddess of the city-state of Lagash, whose famous King Gudea honored Bau as his divine Mother and Father. Other Great Goddesses are worshipped today, including Amaterasu of Japan; the Sun Goddess Tcho of the Native American Yuchi people; and Diana, the Roman deity whose colorful image has appeared in 1998 on a United States postage stamp aimed at helping women by raising funds to research and cure breast cancer. [See "Goddessing" #10 for Ann's article "Goddess Diana on U.S. Breast Cancer Research Postage Stamp" which first appeared in Vol. 15, No. 1 of "The Wise Woman"].
When Gage looks at the records of ancient societies, she finds hope for women. Although male preachers and rabbis and bishops that she knew of during the late 19th century might declare woman to be forever inferior to man, the ancient societies that she learned about were quite different. Gage tells us:
"These records prove that woman had acquired great liberty under the old civilizations. A form of society existed at an early age known as the Matriarchate or Mother-rule. Under the Matriarchate, except as son and inferior, man was not recognized in either of these great institutions, family, state or church. A father and husband as such, had no place either in the social, political or religious scheme; woman was ruler in each. The primal priest on earth, she was also supreme as goddess in heaven. The earliest semblance of the family is traceable to the relationship of mother and child alone..."
Gage's view is still controversial. There are modern Goddess researchers who refuse to use the word "Matriarchy," or who insist that in ancient cultures, women did not rule supreme but instead, functioned in partnership with men. There is still a bias against female leadership in our society today, and the general public still does not have all the available information. I think Gage was right, for the most part.
As an example, in my book, "Great Goddess!," I include an entry in Africa about Anatha Baetyl, the lion Goddess worshipped by Jews living in 5th-century BCE southern Egypt. These Jews, living on the Egyptian island of Elephantine, honored Anatha Baetyl in Her own right, and also presented offerings to her as She reigned beside the God Yaweh [or Jehovah] as His consort and equal.
This information has been available for three decades, but it has not been well-publicized by biblical scholars. In addition, when Goddess worshippers in the United States are attacked for anti-Semitism (because there has been publicity about the destruction of Goddess groups and temples by ancient Hebrew or Jewish kings and priests), this information about Jews who have been Goddess worshippers has not been brought forward.
How can we define for ourselves how the worship of Goddesses interconnects with the status of women when important information is kept from us? Gage has brought into public view various images of women that were kept hidden from women in patriarchal cultures. Her words need to ring through our lives again. She tells us: "...we find that woman's liberty did not begin to-day nor under modern religions or forms of government, but that she was in reality the founder of civilization, and that in the most remote times woman enjoyed superiority of rights in all the institutions of life."
Gage mentions a variety of Great Goddesses in her book, including Isis and Nephthys, whom she calls "the Beginning and the End… the Alpha and Omega of the most ancient Egyptian religion." By the way, Isis was so important to Her worshipers that She reigned in the Roman Empire and Egypt, and She still is honored in many countries, including England, whose River Thames was originally named for Her.
Gage also mentions Hathor and Neith of Egypt, and also Queen Hatshepsut (or Hatasu) of the 18th Dynasty in Egypt. In my research, I found, as did Gage, that even when a brilliant woman leader such as Hatshepsut is noticed in our male-centered society, she is trivialized.
I discovered that Hatshepsut, who was a pharaoh of Egypt, as well as earlier being a Queen, worshipped Goddesses, including Hathor, the cow-headed Goddess of love and music and the sistrum and the nourishment of the dead. Pharaoh-Queen Hatshepsut, who probably was deified in her own time, is still part of our time. If you are on the coast of central California, you can go to Hearst Castle at San Simeon. There, you can see the magnificent lioness-headed statues of the Great Goddess Sekhmet, four statues in all, which are 3,200-3,500 years old and go back to the 18th Dynasty, Pharaoh-Queen Hatshepsut's era.
Gage also mentions Roman Goddesses, including Roma, Flora, Valentia, Vesta, Minerva and Juno, and the Celtic-Germanic Goddess Hertha. Does it seem to you that some of these goddesses have little to do with our lives today? I found that a Goddess linked to Juno is as close to us today as our purses and wallets. The Roman temple of the Goddess Moneta, usually honored as Juno Moneta, was the center for the minting of coins for the Roman Empire; it is from Her that we get the word "money."
Gage believed that priestesses of Goddesses are important. She describes priestesses in ancient Egypt, and mentions that the term " 'Daughter of the Deity' signified a priestess." She says the Scandinavians revered "their Alruna, or Holy Women," that the Sibyls and Vestal Virgins and other prophetesses governed the destinies of nations and the outcome of military battles, and that individual priestesses, such as Chryseis, priestess of Juno in Argo, held civil and religious powers.
Gage opens her last chapter, titled "Past, Present, Future," by clarifying the most important religious issue in modern Christianity. She said, "The most important struggle in the history of the church is that of woman for liberty of thought and the right to give that thought to the world."
Though this analysis can also apply to other male-centered religions, it is particularly vital to United States Christian groups today. Right now in California the conservative Attorney General Dan Lungren, who is running for governor, says in his TV ads that he is a dedicated Catholic and therefore opposes women's abortion rights*: in reality, when dedicated Catholic women have the liberty to speak out, many of them do support a woman's right to choose abortion, despite what the Pope and this attorney general say.
Gage is correct when she declares:
"Freedom for woman underlies all the great questions of the age...man as man is still as obtuse as of yore. He is yet under the darkness of the Patriarchate, failing to recognize woman as a component part of humanity... He does not yet discern her equal right within himself to impress her own opinions upon the world. He still interprets governments and religions as requiring from her an unquestioning obedience to laws she has no share in making, and that place her as an inferior in every relation of life....while church and state have thought for man, man has assumed the right to think for woman....The whole theory regarding woman, under christianity, has been based upon the conception that she had no right to live for herself alone. Her duty to others has continuously been placed before her and her training has ever been that of self-sacrifice...
"...That she was first created for herself, as an independent being to whom all the opportunities of the world should be open because of herself, has not entered the thought of the church; has not yet become one of the conceptions of law; is not yet the foundation of the family.
"But woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self-development is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself..."
I can envision Goddess Liberty, winged Isis and wise Minerva applauding and praising this inspiring Feminist leader, Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Thank you all for being here.
© 2000 by Ann Forfreedom email: forfreedom3@earthlink.net
For back issues of "The Wise Woman," contact: Ann Forfreedom, "The Wise Woman," 2441 Cordova St., Oakland, CA 94602.
The text of this article (with one slight correction) is as published in "Goddessing Regenerated," Issue #15, "Earth She Calling Us/Hearing Her Need, 2002," edited and published by Willow LaMonte, P.O. Box 269, Valrico, FL 33595, USA.