{"id":9735,"date":"2015-02-05T11:41:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T03:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/?p=9735"},"modified":"2026-03-07T06:13:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:13:24","slug":"divine-female-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/divine-female-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Divine Female: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a Man<\/em>\u2019s World<\/em> belted out James Brown in 1966. And maybe it was. But today, for all of our inconsistencies and discrepancies, increasingly, mutual respect, equal opportunities and frankly, common sense, prevails. From the boardroom to the sports field, more and more, women are laying claim to their inborn privilege.<\/p>\n

And yet, there\u2019s one arena that\u2019s almost exclusively overseen by males: religion.<\/p>\n

Now, we\u2019re not ones to query personal beliefs, but certain narratives inspire the question: what if<\/em>? For the biggest world faiths of today, the respective deity is portrayed as male, meaning that for many, our spiritual sphere is – quite literally – a man\u2019s world. So, what\u2019s that all about?<\/p>\n

The Hebrew God, the Torah tells us, is a He. Likewise for Christians, the single deity and<\/em> said being\u2019s only child are both male. Scriptures describe how Siddhartha Gautama – or Buddha as he\u2019s more commonly known – was a male sage. Flick through the Quran for any number of suras<\/em> describing God with masculine pronouns. Sure, semantics play a part – the transcribing and translating of ancient texts over thousands of years skews stories – and yet, divinities tend to be depicted as male. Huh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Women on Top<\/h2>\n
\"Venus
Venus of Willendorf
28 – 25th century BC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>But it wasn\u2019t always a man\u2019s world. Archeologists the world over have unearthed ancient artifacts pointing to the widespread worship of goddesses\u2015 or one single Goddess\u2015dating back some 25,000 years. Of course, that vastly predates writing, generally thought to have slowly started in Mesopotamia some five thousand years ago. Only through surviving icons and objects can historians speculate as to the beliefs and communities of one of the earliest societies whose curious trawl of trinkets and tools still survive the Paleolithic people.<\/p>\n

In particular, so-called Venus figures\u2015small-scale models of exaggerated female forms cast in clay, stone, ivory or bone\u2015may point to a prehistoric, woman-centric religion and by extension, society, with a Mother Goddess as its figurehead. Take the Woman of Willendorf, discovered in the eponymous Austrian village in 1908 and thought to have been made some time between 28,000 and 25,000 BC.<\/p>\n

All full breasts, curved belly and ample bottom, she\u2019s glorious, and tinted with red. It\u2019s easy to imagine her contours and curves celebrating fertility and fecundity; perhaps that slick of color symbolizing the then-enigma of menstruation, mysteriously tied to the moon. And put like that, what\u2019s not to exalt?<\/p>\n

\"Seated
Seated Woman of \u00c7atalh\u00f6y\u00fck
6000 BC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This adoration of female physiology continued. Case in point, the implausibly serene Seated Woman of \u00c7atalh\u00f6y\u00fck: a nude figure of baked clay, depicted giving birth. This Great Mother Goddess, scholars posit, was all fruitfulness, life force and vitality – without any of that \u2018good versus evil\u2019 dualism that so dominates Western religions of today.<\/p>\n

So what happened? If<\/em> women were once so venerated, their rhythms and reproductiveness so hallowed, and if <\/em>today\u2019s religions were born from one single narrative, how did Christianity wind up with a virgin mother? And what of Jewish Niddah,deeming menstruating women \u2018impure\u2019?<\/p>\n

Read The Divine Female: Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Enjoy 15% off LELO.com<\/a> with code VOLONTE15<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a Man\u2019s World belted out James Brown in 1966. And maybe it was. But today, for all of our inconsistencies and discrepancies, increasingly, mutual respect, equal opportunities and frankly, common sense, prevails. From the boardroom to the sports field, more and more, women are laying claim to their inborn privilege. And yet, there\u2019s one arena that\u2019s almost exclusively overseen by males: religion. Now, we\u2019re not ones to query personal beliefs, but certain narratives inspire the question: what if? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[313],"coauthors":[947],"class_list":["post-9735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sex-tips-advice","tag-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe History of Goddess Worship (Part 1)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Female deity worship is one of the most intriguing aspects of history, but it is not without controversy as it challenges the way we think of the divine.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/divine-female-part-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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