Marija Gimbutas: A Matrifocal Society
Throughout our everyday life we live in a patrifocal society. That is a world where our corporate jobs, our politics, and our mainstream religions are mainly based on masculine values: domination, hierarchy and control.
It is a world where people are alienated from the earth and from each other, where spirituality is often linked with suffering and with escape from this world, where warfare and ecological destruction is a constant and where violence, aggression and the oppression of women and minorities is a norm.
Our patrifocal society is between 4-6,000 years old, but there is evidence that, before this, it was actually a matrifocal society. That is, instead of the deity being male as in patrifocal mythology, the deity was female known …show more content…
On the island of Crete the religion of the Great Goddess seemed to be the most prominent and important feature in their lives. There was no separation between the sacred and the secular. The snake, the dove, the tree, and the moon were the Goddesses sacred symbols. The Great Goddess was considered to be immortal, changeless and omnipotent. Her male equal was seen in the symbol of the bull and was her husband, lover and friend.
Marija Gimbutas believed that the invaders of Europe came in three waves between 4300-2800 BC The Aryans or Kurgans swept south and west from their homelands between the Dneiper and Volga rivers.
In 2000 BC the Aryan invaders swooped down on Crete. They viewed themselves as superior people because of their power and might, their weapons and their warfare. They were superior in the fact that they were able to conquer the peaceful nation who worshipped the Goddess. The invaders imposed their patrifocal culture and their warrior religion on the conquered people. They brought with them their love of conquest, weapons and male gods.
One thing that the Aryan invaders had over the matrifocal society they conquered was the horse, which allowed them to cover territory at great
It is a world where people are alienated from the earth and from each other, where spirituality is often linked with suffering and with escape from this world, where warfare and ecological destruction is a constant and where violence, aggression and the oppression of women and minorities is a norm.
Our patrifocal society is between 4-6,000 years old, but there is evidence that, before this, it was actually a matrifocal society. That is, instead of the deity being male as in patrifocal mythology, the deity was female known …show more content…
On the island of Crete the religion of the Great Goddess seemed to be the most prominent and important feature in their lives. There was no separation between the sacred and the secular. The snake, the dove, the tree, and the moon were the Goddesses sacred symbols. The Great Goddess was considered to be immortal, changeless and omnipotent. Her male equal was seen in the symbol of the bull and was her husband, lover and friend.
Marija Gimbutas believed that the invaders of Europe came in three waves between 4300-2800 BC The Aryans or Kurgans swept south and west from their homelands between the Dneiper and Volga rivers.
In 2000 BC the Aryan invaders swooped down on Crete. They viewed themselves as superior people because of their power and might, their weapons and their warfare. They were superior in the fact that they were able to conquer the peaceful nation who worshipped the Goddess. The invaders imposed their patrifocal culture and their warrior religion on the conquered people. They brought with them their love of conquest, weapons and male gods.
One thing that the Aryan invaders had over the matrifocal society they conquered was the horse, which allowed them to cover territory at great