Early Goddesses

Hinduism

Greeks Romans

Christianity

Egypt&

Mesopotamia

Judaism

Islam

PREHISTORY

See Marianne Ferguson’s Women and Religion, Chapters 1,2,3

Pre-History • Before written language, our earliest records of religion are found in…..

• Statues & sculpture• Cave paintings• Burial grounds

Assyrian gate guardian

Egypt

Bulls in cave art – Spain and France

Part human, part animal

12,000 BC oldest grave flowers

20th century archeological discoveries showed surprising evidence of widespread female religious statues, that were possibly suppressed over time by new male centered religious practices.

• For a long time, it seemed that male images and deities dominated, so it was assumed religions (and societies) were almost always patriarchal.

Do religious images tend to be male or female?

Movie Clip Divine Women by Bettany Hughes

• You may be able to find the movie on You Tube

Goddess Worship in Ancient Societies(each explained in Ferguson Chapter 1)

Venus of Willendorf

Maha Devi

Ishtar Inanna Asherath

Goddess Worship in Ancient Societies(each explained in Ferguson Chapter 1)

Nut Isis

Aphrodite Cybele

Mater Magna

…oral traditions, stories told of the past.

• MYTHS

Definition: a system of interrelated stories that are meant to reveal the inner meaning of human life and the universe.

Myths truths are not historical or scientific.Their truth lies in the wisdom, meaning, values and guidance they provide for each society.These sacred stories are vehicles of passing on these truths from one generation to the next.

Are myths true or false?

Before written history there were…

5 Functions of Myth(Joseph Campbell)

1. Mystical2. Social

3. Pedagogical4. Cosmological

5. Personal/Psychological

See movie clip

Carl Jung’s Archetypes

• Archetypes are images we have in our minds, revealed in dreams, that often match the mythic images in religions.

• These symbols my be part of the human mind as part of a “collective unconscious” that surfaces in similar ways in different religions,