Philosophically[i] and practically, it makes sense that “the Earth is female, reflecting the consonance between nature’s fecundity and the fertility of women.”[ii] Millennia ago, the earth as divine Mother was acknowledged and honored as truth. This was a time when a human’s consciousness was one of partnership with nature, not one of domination. This predominator mind recognized “our oneness with all of nature”[iii] and “was far advanced beyond today’s environmentally destructive ideology.”[iv] Both men and women worked together in equality and partnership for the well-being of society and the community.
As the wheel of time turned, things changed, and not for the better—for humanity or for the earth. The goddess traditions were gradually replaced with a paradigm of male domination in all areas of life. The serpent honored by the earth-based religions as a symbol of wisdom, prophecy, and death and rebirth was slowly transformed into an image of evilness by the Jewish scribes’ editing of Moses’s oral teachings and traditions and by the liars of Pauline Christianity. According to Riane Eisler’s The Chalice & the Blade, “the vilification of the serpent and the association of women with evil were a means of discrediting the Goddess.”[v]
It is a fact of history that the earth and women have lived under male domination for thousands of years and have suffered, emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually, the consequences of this domination. If you dominate women, you feel entitled to dominate the earth, as the earth, or nature, symbolizes the feminine. If the religious dualistic paradigms of the day put forth and endorse the belief that men are superior to woman and rule the earth and all its creatures, the gate of hell on earth flies open to social, economic, and ecological servitude, abuse, death, and destruction by justifying any patterns of behavior toward the dominated. One of the primary means of domination is control of wealth, bodies, reproductive health, and sexual activity.
The church, the mosque, and the temple have all relegated females and the earth to a lesser status in regard to the rules and authority of males— the mandate that is supposedly God-given. Under this mandate, the rape of the earth, overseen by the patriarchal, capitalist religious or industrial czars, is acceptable—all approved by their god of power and greed.[vi] What subconscious message does this mandate give to males?
There are multitudes of examples of the male-dominated religions controlling, or is it dominating, women’s bodies, reproductive health, and sexual activity. These range from the covering of the head or female body in Islam[vii] to the condemnation of birth control as a sin by the Catholic Church. These examples even extend to the founding and subsequent history of Iceland.
The Land of Fire and Ice was founded by the Norse in the ninth century after the courageous Norse pagan purists left Norway to escape from the Christian tide that was overwhelming other pagan cultures and religions. In their new homeland, their freedom of body, mind, and spirit only survived about two hundred years until their Althing, the oldest surviving parliamentary institution in the world, declared Christianity the religion of Iceland. As a concession to the Norse pagans, their beliefs and practices were allowed to go underground. The point of this is that before the church took over Iceland, men and women were equals in society. The primary crime was blood feud. After the church established its dysfunctional beliefs, women were regarded as inferior to men, and the most frequent crime—incest! Men now owned all women’s bodies.
[i] This is excerpted from Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church?
[ii] Brian Leigh Molyneaux, The Sacred Earth, 10.
[iii] Riane Eisler, The Chalice & the Blade, 75.
[iv] Ibid., 75.
[v] Ibid., 89.
[vi] “According to a new report by Rainforest Action Network the banking sector is a major source of climate disruption, perpetuating the reliance on dirty energy sources and enabling polluters. The report states that despite
the fact that the insurance industry has identified climate change as a significant risk of loss, banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase continue to invest in polluting energy industries like coal at the expense of renewables like wind and solar.
“The big banks will do whatever the big banks need to do to turn a profit. And that usually comes at the greatest cost to middle class lives and livelihoods. In that respect Hurricane Sandy is a little like the foreclosure crisis: both were created by Wall Street and in both Wall Street has somehow managed to escape accountability” (Jessica Pieklo, “How the Big Banks Helped Cause Hurricane Sandy,” November 1, 2012, http://www.care2.com/causes/how-the-big-banks-helped-cause-hurricane-sandy.html).
[vii] “Australia’s most prominent Islamic cleric vowed Thursday to stand strong against widespread outrage over his description of women who don’t wear head scarves as ‘uncovered meat’ who invite rape” (Rohan Sullivan, “Rape Comment by Islamic Cleric Stirs Up a Storm,” Seattle Times, October 27, 2006, A15).