Rise of Patriarchy in Riane Eisler's Classic, Term Paper

Rise of Patriarchy

In Riane Eisler's classic, the Chalice and the Blade, she writes,

It would seem only logical that the visible dimorphism, or difference in form, between the two halves of humanity had a profound effect on Paleolithic systems of belief. And it would seem equally logical that the fact that both human and animal life is generated from the female body and that, like the seasons and the moon, woman's body also goes through cycles led our ancestors to see the life-giving and sustaining powers of the world in the female, rather than the male form.

Even after much of the overt worship of goddesses had been changed and surpressed, the forms remain in the Shekhina of Hebrew tradition and of course, the Catholic Virgin Mary. The Mother remains, in disguise. For about 5000 years, society has been run on increasingly male-dominated and patriarchal lines with, it seems increasingly destructive results.

When societies honored the earth as the supplier of all that was needed, it would have been impossible -- even if the technology had been present -- for people to mindlessly destroy the very foundations of all life.

In patriarchy, it seems that somehow, males re-created reality to put themselves as the bringers or creators of life. By making all inheritance through the male line, everything worth having came as the results of males and of being male. It is mind-boggling to think that history and current reality could be so changed that people would come to accept and believe something that was simply not true. The question then becomes, how could such a re-vamping of reality take place?

If one looks at history for the last five thousand years, a pattern emerges that is pretty obvious and is also frightening for the future.It would seem that history was changed by brute force. In the earliest days of the new world, if you will, it is likely that peoples who worshipped war-like male gods took advantage of what natural catastrophes had done to matriarchal societies. It is believed that it was earthquakes that actually defeated many of these societies, although there are writers that have suggested that the defeat of the matriarchal societies came about because they were peaceful societies that couldn't defend themselves. This doesn't make much sense as it would seem that these people probably always had to protect themselves. Author Mary Mackey, in 1983, published a book titled, The Last Warrior Queen which was about just such a confrontation between extremely different cultures.

It would seem that a major difference between matriarchy and patriarchy would be the reasons for fighting. In matriarchy, fighting was to defend self and home. In patriarchy, fighting was to take territory and possessions, to increase that which was owned, and to prove dominance.

It is this dominance that is at the heart of the changes described in Eisler's book. She discusses how the matriarchal societies were arranged along what she describes as a partnership model of organization. In partnership, there is an idea of:

the production and distribution of the fruits of the earth, which were seen as belonging to….....