The Roots of Patriarchy (an excerpt from the Gospel of Lies) (c) Bogos Kalemkiar 2020
Everywhere on the face of the planet, it is out of a female's body that a new entity is born in this world without any exception. By definition, the female gives birth. It was only much later in historical times that the role of the male was ascertained in the procreative function, let alone in the role of paternity. The female was to all obvious intents and purposes, the personification of the Goddess as Creator and was thus regarded by all peoples everywhere on the planet from pre-historic times. She was after all the one whose womb and vagina gave birth to offspring in all species.
The switch to patriarchy commenced when men discovered their role in the act of procreation, and later when the notion of paternity dawned on them. Till then it was thought that things like the wind, the eating of beans, locusts, bees and such were the inseminating agents or that women reproduced through parthenogenesis - a state in which the female reproduces by herself without any outside agency. The myth of the Virgin Mary hearkens to this view, and it still is a main tenet of the Roman Catholic Church. The fact that we have millions of people adhering to this belief - an article of faith to this very day is somewhat staggering. Until the shift to Patriarchy from Matriarchy, all that was apparent was a woman's (the female as the designated sex for childbearing) obvious pregnancy and the issuing of new life through her womb and genitalia. Thus her Apotheosis (God becoming) as Goddess and Creator. The female in her benign aspect became associated with the Fruitful Womb, Nurturing Mother, and the Source of Life. Through the Womb's association with the Unknown, and the Mysterious, the Goddess also had a fearsome aspect.
As soon as men discovered their role in the act of procreation, especially after the dawning of paternity, control of the woman's body and her offspring as the sole possession and property of the male became an obsession; the long sought prize after millennia of being peripheral appendages to the body politic of matriarchal societies. Thus began the long saga of the usurpation and revenge for what had been the ascendant position and power of women in the social order for millennia, and by extension the assault on Nature as the embodiment of woman.
In the Garden of Eden myth, we are subjected to the euphemism of Eve created out of Adam's rib, or as in the Greek Pantheon where Athena issues forth from the brow of Zeus. The newly coined and neutered creation myths give us a de facto male god and progenitor sin sex. The debased Serpent, the archetype of evil is none other than that most ancient male phallic prototype since Neolithic cultures who the Goddess copulated with, with his head pinned under her foot lest he bite her. Also in prehistoric imagery, two snakes were depicted held in her hands, approximately the size of the average phallus; two snakes, symbols of the twining double helix, the Caduceus, that most ancient symbol of transcendence debased into fetishes gracing bank facades and ubiquitous medical symbols to this day. Snakes copulate by entwining themselves into a coiling and uncoiling spiral around each other. This depiction of the Snake as phallus would have heralded the dawning role of men in the procreative process, but not patrimony, as in that epoch, the male was shown as still a subservient adjunct to the woman.
In another revisionist twisting and debasement of the Myth, the newly minted Jealous God banishes the innocent copulating couple from the Garden for an act without which Life would not be possible. The Tree of Knowledge becomes an agent of temptation and further debasement, whereas the Tree of Life becomes a source of unattainable value, property, and power conferring immortality fit only for the gods. Prometheus chained and tortured for bringing fire to humanity.
When Patriarchy took over and the male God usurped that coveted throne, why and who was he jealous of, this Jealous God, if he indeed was the one, and only God? He was jealous of the Goddess, the Great Mother - his own mother. The male supplanted the female because he was jealous of her primal godlike power. Her all too obvious ability to give birth, to sustain and propagate life and the species.
The Serpent (the phallus) who had been the subservient consort of the Neolithic Goddess was now portrayed as tempting Eve (sex), thus bringing the Curse upon her to be banished from the Garden Paradise which the jealous God usurped for his own pleasure and domain. She and Adam were banished from Paradise and she was cursed to child bearing, the very thing she had been worshipped for, for thousands of years.
This Jealous God was especially jealous of the sex act itself. Nothing other than He himself was responsible for Creation. This is the cockcrow of Monotheism. Was it not for 'their eyes being opened to their nakedness and their desire for each other' that the jealous God invoked his injunction: 'You shall not partake of the fruit?' He forbade them, because the female was part of the equation. She had to be obliterated. She ceased to exist as a person as of that moment, and became a virtual slave for the next three thousand years, to this day, despite modernity and feminism.
The poor apple, the forbidden fruit? The 'forbidden fruit' is fucking. It is sex. He didn't want them to fuck. Fucking was bad. Fucking was sinful. Why? Because it involved the female. The Female Goddess that this patriarchy was usurping had to be cast down, cast out, and obliterated. The female, that fornicating Eve became the primal cause of Original Sin itself. The very roots of the pathology of the sex act. All because this male god had to be the all-encompassing Cock, all by himself up in the sky, tyrant, and archenemy of Nature. The monotheistic, anthropomorphic patriarch. The neutered sexless God. We know that was a great Lie, because this god was obviously male and the prototype Patriarch. The inseminating all-powerful male Seed that later came to fructify the empty vessel, the womb and rationalize male dominance in the sex act itself.
One of the very ancient names of the Goddess was Eyahu (meaning exclamation, shock, and wonder), the pre Sumerian Neolithic Goddess, and precursor to Astarte, Ishtar and Innana. The name Eyahu was co-opted by men and by the time of the Hebrew invasion of the land of Canaan, turned into Yahweh, the jealous god of the Old Testament.
When Patriarchy took over and the male God usurped that coveted throne, the Goddess became the Evil Eve, the temptress who bewitched innocent Adam, cavorted with the Serpent. She, who was originally named Lillith, was turned into a demon and temptress, the fount of all demons and goblins, corruptor and succubus of man's virility. The usurper of his precious bodily fluids, the origin and cause of our Collective Original Sin for which she was cursed to childbearing and cast out in the wilderness. The very same childbearing which had been the very reason for her precedence as goddess previously and hence the rationale of 3000 and plus years of misogyny, degradation and subjugation of women to male authority; by the very same jealous male god's injunction.
The Goddess dethroned, was supplanted by the present de facto male God responsible for the institutions of marriage, monogamy, and polygamy where the male is the dominant player - all of what we call Patriarchy, today. Before marriage and the nuclear family, clans, not individuals, would marry each other, mating taking place between consenting partners. All children born were the ward and responsibility of the clans involved. From Goddess worship and polyandry where women could have multiple partners, women turned into chattel and breeder vessels servicing the almighty male seed of patriarchy and polygamy where the man could now have multiple female partners.
As the cast off, the banished, the evil, the worthless vessel, the female (Lillith, Eve and her daughters) became the prey, property personified. Objects to be acted upon, possessed, and exploited. Woman as Goddess had been associated with Nature. When the Goddess was supplanted by the God, Nature was maligned as well. This malignancy towards Nature gave birth to the subsequent institutions of slavery, racism, misogyny, class and sectarian divisions, exploitation, and objectification of persons and their labour. This occurred because of the fragmentation and debasement of Nature into resources to be exploited. Things that had been valued as integral parts of Nature became denatured. All this ensued from this debacle called Patriarchy in human evolution. Hence all the brouhaha since then about the foetus and abortion. Loose, lascivious, hysterical and evil women, witchcraft, Devil worship, subservience of the wife to husband, the negation of her personhood, the immolation of her body, and evil Nature existing only to be exploited.
Fucking, sex, women, Nature - all of it, taboo, evil, original sin.
Sex, the sacred and penultimate act of pleasure, ecstasy, and eroticism, perverted into pornography to be exploited and abused. The Sacred Temple prostitutes who provided sex as a sacrament, turned into whores, trafficked, drugged and preyed upon by merciless priests, pimps and the State.
If God in his munificence created all things all by himself, without a female counterpart, was it not incumbent upon his new priesthood to emulate His Worship? The newly appointed male priests did this first by castration, then by the imposition and requirement of celibacy and abstinence when castration presented problems. Circumcisions of infant males and female genital mutilation also have their roots in this ethos. Now we have vows of chastity. Celibacy is equated with purity, holiness, godliness. The male ascendancy has created a culture and hierarchy of dominance and exploitation through a repressive sexuality. If you can't have sex officially, you want to interfere in how others are having it or doing it, and as a bonus, you can become a pedophile furtively.
In the relations between the sexes, sex has degenerated into an exercise in power. We like to think of the female as the weaker sex because she doesn't have a penis. We even have a name for it: we call it 'penis envy.' It is patriarchy exercising its violent and brutal domination. That is the sex of the matter. It is for the same reason adult males still prey on women and children when they feel inadequate and need to exert their dominance in any way they can.
The litany of horror has become the common lot of women across the planet on account of the Holy Books. The Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, the Sutras and all the other Holy books with their primary purpose being the indoctrination and forced imposition of patriarchy, subservience of the female to the male, the rationalization of violence towards women and Nature, and the notion of private property. The cherry on top, exclusive property of the male.
Except for a very few exceptions, no woman is allowed to become a priest by any of the major religions worldwide. Oppressive political institutions, such as slavery were however quickly embraced by Christianity, but clearly, the sexual practices of 'pagans' were not, at least not openly. The virulent demonization of paganism and animism (worshipping Nature) increased over time, eventually culminating in the witch-hunts of a thousand years later and carried forth virulently to this day in the destruction and death of Nature.
The Believers in all these lies, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, fundamentalists of all stripes, call this obscenity: Sacred Tradition. The Hindu Pantheon consisting of millions of gods and goddesses, nevertheless has its supreme triumvirate with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, all males with Brahma the supreme posited as an abstraction, denatured just as the supreme State in Buddhism, the Void is an abstraction devoid of Nature. In fact denigrating Nature as Samsara or suffering.
The counterpart in Modernity and culmination to this edifice of corruption is called Capitalism. At the apex of the pyramid, we find a bunch of men, with or without beards, in very expensive pin striped suites. Not to forget all the ridiculous clownishly robed, and turbaned pimps of God, the so-called holy and venerable priests, sheikhs, imams, rabbis and monks, all men, of all colours, God Bless them, who bless the proceedings. These are our models of manly men, of patriarchy worldwide.
Most of the early human sacrifices and castration involved children. It is sadly ironic that celibate priesthoods to this day are embroiled in scandals involving paedophilic abuse by their clergy, threatening to tear their churches apart. Abuse hidden and denied for centuries, and finally somewhat exposed today.
Power-hungry impotent men now rule and exploit a worldwide culture of rape as sex. To add to the obscenity, many nations are now forcing children who are raped to marry their rapists. It is only in recent years that the sexual abuse of children has been sanctioned as deviant in jurisprudence. Circumcision and female genital mutilation show how far we still have to go. Sexual abuse of children and racism are on par as an entrenched mindset among vast swaths of people across the planet.
Denying the existence of the Goddess and persecution of her priestesses during the last three thousand years of patriarchy has led directly to our present predicament of the obscene degradation and rapine of women, misogyny, racism, pedophilia, rampant violent pornography, and worst of all, the contempt and destruction of the Natural world. Not to mention all the wars and culture of addiction to violence. We need to ask ourselves where our proclivity to murder and mayhem started. Is it hard wired in our genetic makeup or did it commence with Patriarchy?
∞
End
