The Great Goddess: Reverence of the Divine Feminine from the Paleolithic to the Present

•A noted historian on pre-Christian societies provides an extensive worldwide listing of sites and sanctuaries associated with goddess worship.

•Explores goddess worship in cultures around the world, including Native American, Egyptian, Indian, and Oriental civilizations.

•Demonstrates that although her worship has sometimes been forced underground it has never disappeared.

In ancient Babylon she was Anat, in Egypt, Isis and Hathor, Dana in Celtic Ireland, Rhea and Demeter in Greece, and in India, Anapurna the Provider. She is the Great Goddess, the Goddess of Beginnings, the symbol of Earth and the giver of life, the Vast Mother, who represents all the powers and mysteries of creation for early humanity."

Shifting her solar association onto masculine deities and blackening those of her symbols that, like the serpent, could not be assimilated, patriarchal societies forced the preeminent power of the feminine into an obscure and subservient position. Yet, as shown by noted scholar Jean Markale, the Goddess did not simply disappear when her position was usurped, and the power she represents has been the source of continuous religious devotion from ancient times through the Middle Ages up to the present day."

In looking at the plethora of myths, sites, and sanctuaries devoted to this powerful figure, The Great Goddessprovides abundant evidence of the extraordinary permanence of her worship--even at the heart of those religions that tried to destroy her."

Reverence of the Divine Feminine from the Paleolithic to the Present 

Introduction: The Vast Mother

Part 1: Images and Sanctuaries of the Goddess

1. Our Lady of the Beginnings: The Paleolithic Period

2. Our Lady Under Ground: The Megalithic Epoch

3. The Eclipsed Virgin: The Bronze Age, the Celts, and the Gallo-Romans

4. The Triumph of the Mother: The Christian Middle Ages

5. The Eternal Return of the Divine Woman: The Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries

6. The Sacred Placed of Our Lady

Part 2: Our Lady in All Things

Introduction

7. The Indian Subcontinent, the Far East, and the Americas

8. Ancient Egypt and the Near East

9. Greece and the Aegean Sea

10. Continental Europe

11. Far Western Europe

Notes

Index of Sites, Museums, Sanctuaries, and Pilgrimages

Index