Goddess Religion, Patriarchy, and their Reconciliation in Hesiod's Theogony

Dr. Ess

We can see efforts to reconcile these two traditions in Hesiod's Theogony, and in later Greek literature, such as Aeschylus's Oresteian Trilogy

Chthonian gods/goddesses (Minoan; Crete)

Examples:

Earth (Gaia);

Fates;

Furies (or: the Eumenides, "the kindly ones");

Themis (goddess of justice, order; the mother of Prometheus);

Demeter (goddess of crops);

Persephone (Queen of the lower world - i.e., a goddess associated with death).

TIME as primary emphasis

IMAGE OF THE FEMININE: "Venus figures," emphasizing generative/sustaining powers of the goddess.

Religious style: the cult of the goddess religion

...takes certain forms, involving at least the more elementary kinds of mysticism, that is, the belief in the possibility of a union between the worshipper and the object of his worship. Thus the rites may take the form of adoption as her son or of sexual communion. Orgiastic elements appear, as in the passionate, clashing music and frenzied dancing employed by the followers of Rhea and Kybele." (W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (Boston: 1954), p. 31)

Politics/social order: "matrifocal" in a carefully defined sense: i.e., emphasis on

custom (instead of law);

religious authority (instead of military power);

tradition-bound cohesion of the group (instead of the power and cunning of the individual warrior).

Logic: emphasis on connection in the face of difference, as manifest in: religious style ("re-ligion," a re-binding withthe divine origin) and in the style of politics/social order - i.e., an order emphasizing connection between:

past/present (in regard for custom, tradition);

members of the group.

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Shifts in the face of "invading" Olympian-Homeric gods/goddesses (Dorian/Achaean; from N. Europe)

Examples: Zeus; Apollo; Athena

PRIMARY EMPHASIS: spatial organization

IMAGE OF THE FEMININE: Aphrodite as "beauty queen."

Religious style: in patriarchal religion,

"...the gods are simply more powerful persons who might fight for or against one, with whom one made bargains or contracts. The Achaean warrior [who worshipped the sky gods] did not seek to be born again from the bosom of Hera. He was indeed the reverse of a mystic by temperament." (Guthrie, p. 31)

Politics/social order: clearly patriarchal, meaning:

Hierarchical social organization

Males hold dominant positions - in terms of power, status and prestige.

Patriarchy establishes law instead of custom; emphasizes military power instead of religious authority; and encourages the cunning and power of individual warriors, rather than the health or well-being of the group.

Logic: emphasis on difference "interpreted" as opposition; connection in terms of identity, shared features.

Examples:

hierarchy emphasizes "us/them" of the elite vs. the many; likewise in military organization.

Most directly - males hold power, status and prestige in virtue of their shared identity as males -

whereas females, as different, are excluded from power.

Finally, the emphasis on the individual warrior who stands apart from others - who stands above others (Gilgamesh, Odysseus).

Reconciliation of these traditions in Homer, Hesiod.

Motif of the "holy marriage" (e.g. Earth/Sky; Cronus/Rhea; Zeus/Hera)

Subordination of the feminine in Hesiod.

Subordination of the Fates - originally chthonic goddess responsible for enforcing the chthonian notion of justice; represented originally in Hesiod's Theogony as children of Night (who in turn is the direct offspring of Void/Chaos). At the close of the Theogony, the Fates are represented as the offspring of Zeus and Themis (also a chthonian goddess).

Contrast between Mother Earth and Aphrodite

As Brown points out, Mother Earth (Gaia) at the beginning of the Theogony is self-sufficient and dominant. Mother Earth is the sole power which generates Sky; she is the cunning one who overcomes the oppression of Sky through trickery - and new technology, as she invents steel and makes the sickle.

By contrast, Aphrodite is described "as girlish and 'tender' - the Greek word aidoios applies to persons who are protected only by the sentiment of pity inspired by their helplessness - her only hold on men is her irresistible sex appeal (in Hesiod's vocabulary 'trickery') based on beauty and personal adornment. Aphrodite, who 'presides over the whispers and smiles and deceits which girls employ, and the sweet delight and tenderness of love' (lines 205-06), is the divine counterpart of the prototype of womankind manufactured by Zeus; hence she is given the same attribrutes of girlishness, tenderness and sex appeal (lines 191, 194, 201-06), and by the same token she is in sharp contrast with Earth, the self-sufficient, dominant female figure in the preceding episode. Aphrodite's affinity with the prototype of womankind and the contrast between her and Earth show that she is the divine symbol of the relation between the sexes in a cosmos dominated by males."(Norman O. Brown, "Introduction," pp. 18-19.)

Zeus' creation of Athena; "woman." In these stories, the primary power of Mother Earth and the feminine - the power to generate or create - is taken over by Zeus. This power is quite literally swallowed up as he swallows Metis - and then manifested as he creates Athena. Likewise, it is Zeus, the male, who creates woman out of clay as a curse to mankind, as punishment for Prometheus' trickery in stealing fire.