“Goddess Remembered,” Element of the Series, “Ladies in Spirituality” © 1989,
Nationwide Film Board of Canada
Produced by: Margaret Pettigrew
Directed by:Donna Browse
Distributed by: Wellspring Media, Inc.
Wow, those hairstyles and puffy sleeves! The 80’s – gotta love ’em. Appear at the change 20 a long time makes in social customs. Now, imagine what 2,000 several years can signify, and 20,000 decades, and back even even more. This documentary pays homage to the goddess-worshipping religions of the historical previous. With its meal-get together structure, I was expecting Judy Chicago to make an physical appearance. It would have been wonderful to see every girl – Starhawk, Merlin Stone, Jean Bolen and many others – sitting at the put placing of a goddess. Back in 1979, Chicago experienced depicted location settings for 39 mythical and historic well-known girls in the course of historical past. By 1989, “The Meal Occasion” experienced been up and jogging for a decade. It looks like a really serious omission to me, despite the fact that I did enjoy the goddess statue as a focal point on the table.
The evening meal get together topic of “Goddess Remembered” appeared fitting as it really is been girls who have historically grown, collected, well prepared and shared food, specifically in a social placing. (I will not see why it could not have been both men and gals who domesticated animals.) The viewer could see that these certain gals are all highly clever “major-weights” in the goddess stratosphere. And they have not been lounging all-around for the previous 20 several years.
Jean Shinoda Bolen is the lady who mentioned how when she was giving birth she felt joined in time horizontally to every girl who ever was, and that “almost nothing experienced prepared me for this. It harm!” Bolen is an creator, a Jungian analyst and an activist. She has composed lots of textbooks with which feminists would be common, including Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Quest for the Sacred Feminine, Goddesses in Everywoman: Impressive Archetypes for Women of all ages and The Millionth Circle: How to Improve Ourselves and the Globe. Her Millionth Circle, she points out, is a device she takes advantage of as “an advocate for women’s circles with a sacred center as the indicates to reach a significant mass-tipping issue to deliver women’s knowledge into the entire world.”
Starhawk is also an creator of numerous functions that rejoice the Goddess movement together with her hottest, The Earth Path, which speaks about the root of our environmental destructiveness, and tells visitors how to reconnect with the Earth. She describes herself as “a peace, environmental and world justice activist and trainer, a permaculture designer and trainer, a Pagan and Witch.” Apparently more than enough, she and Donna Study, the director of “Goddess Remembered,” have co-manufactured a documentary on the everyday living of archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, named “Signs Out of Time.”
Merlin Stone, a sculptor and artwork history professor, grew interested in archaeology although finding out ancient art. In 1976 she wrote a e-book identified as When God Was A Female which delves into matriarchal and matrilineal societal constructions that were suppressed by Judaism and Christianity. Her other e-book, Historic Mirrors of Womanhood, (1990) is a selection of tales, myths and prayers about the goddess.
Oh to be a fly on the wall at a accumulating of such potent gals. I would have liked to see the title and title of each lady, each and every time she appeared on the display this would have been a good way for viewers to familiarize by themselves with who these gals are, but credits were being not forthcoming right up until the end of the film, which struck me as odd.
The females and Olympia Dukakis, the film’s narrator, talked about quite a few assorted and interesting factors. They spoke of how the serpent was a symbol of healing and prophecy. They spoke of Malta, the Greek island that is the oldest known repository of the goddess lifestyle. The persons of Malta are now predominantly Catholic.
The women all seemed to share the viewpoint of Luisa Teish who mentioned she experienced rejected the idea of the “Good Bearded White Gentleman in the Sky.” She laughed, “I hung with Mary!” Later on she also reported some thing meaningful for all girls: “I am an ancestress of tomorrow.”
Crete was talked about as a place wherever the people today had studied astronomy, mapping the stars and holding records. Gals there could be sea captains and chariot motorists, if they so sought after. The development of artwork was very esteemed, and in this tranquil culture, no evidence had been uncovered of male/female inequality. No personalized mark was ever found on a piece of art. Minoan Crete is the position in which the worship of the goddess was intact for the longest time period of time.
The Golden Age of Greece marked the commencing of men’s ability and the finish of women’s. The warrior cults came into the forefront then and thereafter, rampaging the Earth and exploiting her treasures. Greece after had stunning stands of trees and vegetation. These have been chopped down to deliver warships, and when the trees go down the sand normally takes around. The place as soon as acknowledged as Eden is now a dry and desolate land.
The declare that Outdated Europe was female-centered, cooperative and non-violent appears to be a bone of competition (the self-proclaimed feminist Cynthia Eller, between lots of other individuals, tends to make a scenario towards it).
Pursuing is a current critique of “Goddess Remembered” that I uncovered on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com):
Unsubstantiated claims abound…, 10 May 2007
Writer: thorn101 from United States – (Charles Sheaffer)
This movie is filled with blatant nonsense and pseudo-scientific drivel. Many claims are built in the movie which have no scientific or archaeological basis, and are merely assumptions or the end result of defective logic (and wishful wondering).Promises like (allegedly) Goddess-worshiping Aged Europe was an egalitarian, girl-centered society. It was cooperative, non-hierarchical, and non-violent. This is not legitimate, quite a few fortified prehistoric settlements have been located in Europe indicating the presence of warfare.
David Anthony, an assistant professor of anthropology at Hartwick Higher education in Oneonta, N.Y., stated that there is also proof of weapons, which include some utilized as symbols of standing, and of human sacrifice, hierarchy, and social inequality. There is also no proof that girls played the central role, in both the social construction or the religion of Outdated Europe.
Lengyel and Tiszapolgar cemeteries point out that fighting, hunting, and trading have been male routines, due to the fact males have been buried with flint applications, weapons, animal bones, and copper applications. Pottery was in all probability built by women and made use of largely by them in domestic pursuits. This is reflected by finds of pottery with female continues to be. Also no domesticated or wild animals are associated with female burials.
Promises that satellite pictures have demonstrated that the Neolithic monoliths of the Goddess “all stand on electrical power strains, which criss-cross the earth” is pure pseudo-science. There are no these types of items as “strength lines” that cross the earth. Also students are now disputing the identification of neolithic megaliths with any so-called “Goddess” worship.
The movie contains many more these kinds of unsubstantiated promises.
In general this is a wonderful flick to enjoy on an all girls evening sleepover bash whilst honoring your internal goddess with huge amounts of chocolate. The truth is that this mockumentary has no location in women of all ages research, anthropology or archaeology, and I am appalled to continue to see it being taken so severely.
Attention-grabbing, eh? It delivers to brain an old Shakespearian quote, “The male protests as well a great deal.” I know that neither he nor I were being close to 20,000 several years or so back, so I believe his argument is moot.
I would say that the most important theme of “Goddess Remembered” is how ladies and character are a person. “As a species, we will not stand aside from character,” is something that Charlene Spretnak explained, and I believe that she is suitable. It seriously arrives down to this equation:
Ladies = Character (illustrated by caves, snakes, drinking water, etcetera.)
Person vs. Nature (which pits Gentleman towards Lady)
Right until Gentleman honors and respects Mother nature and as a result, Lady, our downward spiral toward oblivion by means of war and the destruction of the Earth, will carry us all down that swift and vengeful river collectively. And that would certainly by the finish of His- and Her-tale.