Nathan BinfordAs we sit here amidst the slow decline of the empire of the West, and with it the ruling order of patriarchy, I’m convinced we should take the opportunity to look back, to remember our ancient roots in the sacred feminine, in the worship of Nature herself.
What did the Goddess mean to our prehistoric culture? How did our worship of Nature shape our relationship to the world around us? And, most importantly, what happened? Where did it all go wrong?
In the debut episode of my new weekly show, I introduce you to a fascinating book by Anne Baring called “The Myth Of The Goddess”, which uses historical evidence to demonstrate a continuity of religious practices around the idea of a Mother Goddess that stretches back into the earliest depths of prehistory.
And I discuss how, as the patriarchy collapses in on itself, it’s taking down a lot of our culture and understanding of the universe with it. And how the human need to dominate, to expand, to consume everything, runs thousands of years deep and emerges in human culture at the very beginning of recorded history. Yet this represents only a fraction of human existence. Since the introduction of this “dominator culture” during the Bronze Age, humanity has perpetuated the ascent of humanity through aggression, domination, and extraction of finite resources. And our obsession with domination has created many of the seemingly intractable problems we face today: ecological, social, political, etc.
The male archetype has projected itself onto every surface of the human experience until we can barely distinguish ourselves from it. But there are other ways to live -other life ways– which prioritize harmony, observe the cycles of time, and prefer to collaborate rather than dominate.
Reawakening the feminine aspect within our nature is like “returning home to Mother” -to remember who we really are and to use this more mature understanding of ourselves to see where we want to go from here.
Anne Baring’s excellent work in “The Myth Of The Goddess” laid a solid foundation for my understanding of these energies in our history and culture; and provided fuel for much of my own work as a magician, Hekatean, and shamanic practitioner. As such, I’m excited to launch my new show with this topic and to share my vision of the history (and future) of the myth of the Goddess.
Mentioned In This Episode:
- The Myth Of The Goddess: The Evolution Of An Image by Anne Baring
- The Food Of The Gods by Terrence McKenna
- The Regenerative Life: Transform Any Organization, Our Society, and Your Destiny by Carol Sanford
Nathan Binford
