Beloveds,

Someone wrote to me, sharing a quote from a book that discusses the shift from Goddess consciousness to the biblical lineage. She ask for my thoughts on the quote.

I thought both were worth sharing for you here, as they provide a good overview summary of the historical foundation for our work. This context also offers me a chance to share a nuanced perspective that will guide our exploration.

Here is the original quote:

"The Old Testament is the record of the conquest and massacre of these Neolithic people by the nomadic Hebrews, followers of a Sky God, who then set up their biblical God in the place of the ancient Goddess.

The biblical Hebrews were a nomadic pastoral and patriarchal people, tribes of sheepherders and warriors who invaded land belonging to the matriarchal Canaanites. Both Hebrews and Canaanites were Semitic people. The Canaanites lived in agricultural communities and worshiped the orgiastic-ecstatic Moon Mother Astarte.

As Old Testament stories relate, the Hebrews sacked, burned, and destroyed village after village belonging to the Canaanites, massacring or enslaving the people—a series of brutal invasions and slaughters described typically by theologians and preachers as “a spiritual victory.”

In this way the Hebrews established themselves on the land, along with the worship of their Sky-and-Thunder God Yahweh (Jehovah), calling themselves his “chosen people.” Yahweh’s male prophets and priests, however, despite their political victory over the Canaanites, had to carry on a continuous struggle and fulmination against their own people, who kept “backsliding” into worship of the Great Mother, the Goddess of all their Near Eastern neighbors. For she had originally been the Goddess of the Hebrews themselves.

This constant fight against matriarchal religion and custom is the primary theme of the Old Testament. It begins in Genesis, with the takeover of the Goddess’s Garden of Immortality by a male God, and the inversion of all her sacred symbols—tree, serpent, moon-fruit, woman—into icons of evil. Of the two sons of Eve and Adam, Cain was made the “evil brother” because he chose settled agriculture (matriarchal)—the “good brother” Abel was a nomadic pastoralist (patriarchal).

The war against the Goddess is carried on by the prophets’ rantings against the “golden calf,” the “brazen serpents,” the “great harlot” and “Whore of Babylon” (the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar), against enchantresses, pythonic diviners, and those who practice witchcraft. It is in the prophets’ war against the Canaanite worship of “stone idols”—the Triple Moon Goddess worshiped as three horned pillars, or menhirs. One of her shrines was on Mount Sinai, which means “Mountain of the Moon.” Moses was commanded by “the Lord” to go forth and destroy these “idols”—who all had breasts.

We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great “spiritual invention” of the religious leader Moses. This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess."

-Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother

Here was my response to the quote:

In reading over this, I would say it’s a pretty accurate and succinct (if brutally direct) assessment of what happened in our spiritual past. 

I’ve come to most of these same conclusions — though I wasn’t familiar with this particular author. It sounds like we think in the same vein. I’d like to read this book! 

There are of course some areas where I’d differ. 

For example, plenty of nomads had a matriarchal consciousness also. That is not the exclusive domain of pastoral or agriculturalist cultures (vis a vis) the section on Cain and Abel. 

But overall … yes. Pretty accurate. 

It took me more than seven years of being “around” narratives like this to come to the point where I could even “hold” them in my body, without trying to reject them, qualify them or push them away. 

It’s incredibly confronting to consider that our entire spiritual heritage is engineered to “excise” something that was intrinsic to us at the very beginning: Goddess. 

That being said … Where I might differ from these authors is in three areas: 

1) I recognize that if people hated Goddess that much, there might have been a reason. 

(One of my priestess friends talks a lot about the decline in morality and standards in the goddess temples toward the end of the matriarchal era. If these prophets and preachers were seeing serious abuses … it might explain why they swung the other way. Though, I do not suggest that is an excuse — merely a possibly cause-and-effect scenario.) 

2) I still love and honor the Hebrew Bible and the traditions that birthed it (as well as the ones it birthed) because it gave me Goddess

While the prophets and preachers of the Y-H-W-H cult were busy crafting a narrative that excised their hated Mother … they simultaneously left me a record that She exists and that my forebearers loved her. That in itself is a priceless gift. 

3) I embrace paradox because Goddess can contain it, as I shared in the workshop. 

The reality as I see it is — we live in a time where monotheistic, masculine-centric Abrahamic traditions have ruled the spiritual world as we know it. 

Our lives are oriented toward churches, synagogues or mosques. We have family who value such communities. Perhaps we ourselves (to varying degrees) still wish to be involved with those communities. And that is a form of “personal capital” not easily abandoned. 

I’m not suggesting that needs to change, unless you as an individual want it to.

Everyone will land in a different place on that issue. 

Some leave organized religion entirely. Others drop in and out as needed to maintain cherished relationships. Still others genuinely feel connected to spiritualities that come out of Abrahamic religion, and so have a hybrid practice that is both traditional and goddess oriented. 

For myself personally, it’s not shocking anymore to consider holding both, because in the Jewish world there are lots of people who do. 

Plenty of rabbis who are earth-based and Goddess-centric cringe every year when the certain Shabbat comes round, where the Golden Calf passage is read, and the more traditional rabbis preach a (tired) sermon on the evils of idolatry. 

(Meanwhile the goddess-centric rabbis are murmuring “Jaya Hathor!” under their breath. LOL!!!) 

Seeing this gave me both a rubric for and permission to develop a path that navigates both worlds, and it’s a model I hope will flow to other Abrahamic traditions (Christianity and Islam) where “belief” is central issue (versus “behavior” in Judaism) and therefore more hardline stances are often taken that don't allow for nuance or yes, paradox. 

 Since you asked for my perspective — here it is: 

My experience has been that the more a woman inhabits Goddess consciousness, the more able she is to contain these paradoxes without running away from them or even trying to resolve them. 

Goddess doesn’t need to resolve them.

She has existed inside the paradox (and outside of it) for 3000 years. So why should’t I? 

BUT that does not mean there is often not a period of significant grief and/or anger (or cycles of it) as the knowledge of what was done to our Mother by the “paragons” of our traditions, sinks into her psyche. 

For my part — my Jewish practice is evolving more and more to embrace Goddess-centric readings of the traditional holiday cycle and Mosaic narratives like the Golden Calf. 

There is also a sense in which much Jewish tradition evolved from Sumerian / Babylonian roots, so I’m exploring that more and integrating it into Jewish understandings — along with my shamanic work. 

Ultimately — I hope my personal path lands beyond any one Abrahamic religious tradition, since I serve women from all three. 

Being here in Harran (in southeastern Türkiye) is a good reminder of that. Every day, tourists pour in from all over the world, from all three traditions. Watching them reminds me that we share a heritage: both the heritage of intertwined tradition(s), and the Goddess heritage that was taken away from us. 

And anyway — shamanic work gets us out of rigid box thinking because shamanism is about direct Divine connection through land, nature, animals, etc. The created world becomes a conduit to the Creator. 

The trappings of any one tradition (while they can be respected for what they have given us) kind of fall away or lose their power to harm, as the land and the whole created world rise up to offer a conduit for our devotion.

I believe this is how the first people worshipped the Great Mother anyway ~ long before the Sumerians began building the reed huts that became the first temples.