Ancient Greeks And Romans.

The ancient Greek philosophers did belief in monotheism. At least in theory. "The Unmoved Mover" they called it. And I seem to recall from GS history that Socrates was even put to death for it.

So why were the ancient Greeks and Romans polytheists. They both had a large pantheon of gods. Or was that just for the common folk to believe?

 

Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book described the Unmoved Mover as an eternal, substance which moves other things without itself being moved in any way by any other thing.

Monotheism actually began taking root in about 1350 BC, in Egypt, of all places, with the pharaoh Akhenaten. However, that particular form of monotheism quickly died out pretty quickly.

 

All around the Mediterranean the peoples shared a pantheon of Gods. In many of these early cultures---planter cultures--there were early goddess cults, where the Goddesses ruled supreme, and the gods played a secondary role, the goddess was eternal, the god, following the seasons would die and be reborn through the grace of the goddess. In particular was the Aher/Astarte/Astoreth/Aphrodite complex of goddesses that was worshipped in a wide area surrounding the mediterranean. (I actually have a small statue of Astarte that came from a dig in Israel and is dated at about 2500 BC). Fertility was the key concern of in these cultures as they survived by planting, animal husbandry and so forth.

As villages evolved into towns, and towns into city-states, the power of the male god rose and eventually according to myth, they rebelled against the goddess. I forget the specifics, but the giant serpent, Pythos, played a key role in subduing the Goddesses and the Male gods dominated. The status of women in Greek, Roman, and other societies fell with the Goddess as theses cultures shifted from a matriarchy to a patriarchy. The focus shifted from the womb to the phallus.

While Aristotle and others spoke of a nous or universal mind, and the unmoved mover, this did not necessarily mean a belief in something that denied the polytheistic beliefs of the people. We see the same thing in India. I recently joked in another thread that the idea of monotheism as a superior faith and exactly what it is, is dependent on who the dominating force in colonialism is. The West dominated, so monotheism is defined by Judeo-christian belief. But what if the tables were turned and India was the dominating force of Colonialism. The argument would go like this----We Hindus have the Atman which makes up and rules over all the beings, both in the heavens and here on earth, therefore we are monotheistic. Not like those polytheistic Christians that have a holy spirit, a god, Jesus, angels, Mary and Joseph and all those angels and a Lucifer, and who knows what else---a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses, and somehow Saints fit into all of that, and the apostles...

One of the main reasons for Rome to adopt Christianity is that each district in Rome, like Greece, had its own god and goddess that it would pay homage to. Christianity provided a single god with a surrogate mother goddess in the form of Mother Mary. They recognized that if they had the whole populace following the same religion then it would make it easier for them to rule over their subjects without conflicts, which would also legitimize their rule. This worked in Rome so well that they forced it upon all the people around them in order to create an empire that was divinely legitimized.

 

There may be some truth to this, but it doesn't explain why Christianity? Rome already had a unifying cult: that of Sol Invictus (The invincible Sun), a Sabine/Syrian deity established by Emperor Aurelian in 274 c.e. and promoted as the official chief god of the Roman Empire. To be sure, this wasn't monotheism. Sol was not the only god recognized or allowed, but he was the chief one. In the third century, the Emperor Elagabalus, raised in Syria, tried to elevate him over the other gods, but got himself assassinated, partly as a result. After that, the Empire split into three parts. But Emperor Aurelian managed to get it back together, and revived Sol Invictus as glue (his mother seems to have been a priestess in said cult). The early Christian writer Lactantius thought he would have outlawed all the other gods if he had enough time. Alas, he was assassinated by the Praetorian guard before he could get around to it. Later, Diocletain and his co-tetrarch Galerius continued the project, and began the most intense persecution of Christians in Roman history at the end of the third century.

After Diocletian retired and Constantine eventually fought his way to the throne, the tables turned, and Christianity became the favored religion. Why this happened is still a mystery. Cynics tend to dismiss the official explanation that Constantine saw the sign chi rho in the sky and took it as a sign from Jesus who gave him victory in battle. The notion that it was political, though, doesn't make sense. Christians at the time made up an estimated 5% to 10% of the Empire's population, and they seem to have been disproportionately lower class or women. One of the latter, however, significantly included Constantine's mother, Helena, who had became a Christian by around 306 c.e., before Constantine's famous conversion. A Mother’s Influence?

So why Christianity instead of Sol? Possibly because Constantine figured out a way to have them both, and monotheism, too. TBC

 

When was this? Astarte (aka, Inanna, Ishtar, Astoreh) was the Phoenician/Syrian version of the ancient Sumerian/Babylonian goddess of sex and war. Python, serpent son of the Earth Mother Gaia, was subdued by the god Apollo. Female deities were still very active in the early days of Christianity, e.g., the Magna Mater Cybelle, a castrating dominatrix whose poor consort castrated himself and, thanks to the goddess, spent the rest of his days as a tree or a zombie who could only move his finger. Astarte's consort, Tammuz (aka, Dummuzi) was a subordinate deity who was consigned by his loving wife to the underworld during the fall and winter, and allowed to return during the summer. Her priests, the galli, castrated themselves in the heat of religious frenzy during worship services. The Cybelle-Attis cult was active when Paul was preaching in Rome. The Astarte-Tammuz cult was still active until the 11th century c.e., and lingered on in parts of Mesopotamia later than that. Not to be overlooked is isis, still very much in play in Rome until the 4th century c.e.. Her poor husband, Osiris (later Serapis) was chopped into pieces by his brother Set, but Isis put him back together again. He went on to the netherworld, where he judged the dead wrapped up like a mummy. Male dominance, my ass! Beware of feminist propaganda masquerading as scholarship.

It's true that before the Axial Age there was a period when macho warrior gods were in vogue, coinciding with migrations and livestock raiding: Indra, Zeus, Marduk, Yahweh, etc. I don't see a clear pattern of displacement of goddess-oriented religions, except of course, in the case of Yahweh, whose devotees were fierce opponents of the goddesses Astoreth and Ashera.

 

It has probably been a good ten years since I talked about this stuff. I was speaking in that post in general terms. I wouldn't say that there was a specific time, for the whole region. And I would have to dig up my old notes, or my unfinished first book (as I refer to it) and so forth to come up with a general time for any given culture, assuming that I even pinned it down to a time period, or simply left it up to periods defined by myth. For one thing, religion doesn't fall hand in hand with cultural trends or the overall zeitgeist and weltanschaung of a culture. If that was the case we probably would have seen the end of Christianity and religion in general with the rise of materialism in the late 1800's, and we'd all be atheists today. Nor did the rise of the male god mean the end of the goddess. Yes, I am aware that Merlin Stone came along with her book and feminists ran with it.

There are still matriarchal societies today, and the goddess still has followers in numerous cultures. Kali is one example, and Kuan Yin is another that I can think of offhand, then there is the White Buffalo Calf Woman, or the Great Mother (whose name I'd have to look up because its on the tip of my tongue) of the Mountain tribes of Colombia and Venezuela, for example. But if I went back to my old work, I'm sure I could come up with more examples for you Besides Yahweh that replaced the Goddess. Yahweh was once the consort of Astoreth or Asherah---I'd have to go back and look up who it was. At the same time I acquired my little Astarte, a dig in Israel found further evidence of Yahweh as a consort to the Goddess. Allah replaced Allat, In fact the stone obelisk in Mecca was built for Allat, which is why the most important stone artifact on that is in the shape of a yoni.

Feminist propaganda aside, I am convinced that there was a period prior to, and at the dawn of, civilization when the Goddess reigned supreme and the largest focus was on the yoni. I also believe that many cultures were more matriarchal at this time. Language points this out, myth backs it up, as well as architecture and artifacts. Then later as the god rose to power over the goddess that there was a shift to patriarchal societies and so forth.

 

The notion of a peaceful matriarchy ruling early societies until the bad ol' patriarchs muscled in seems to go back to the amateur Swiss classicist J.J. Bachofen (1861) who got the idea from a reading of ancient mythology. The American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, and Marx's sidekick, Friedrich Engels, promoted the idea. The theory was revived in the '70s. But it has mainly been advanced by folks with thin academic credentials and little evidence: Paleolithic Venus figurines, the "goddess" Earth Mother statue at Catalhoyuk, etc.--all of which are interpretations of what the artifacts meant and their importance. Probably the most respected scholar to advance a limited form of the theory was UCLA archaeologist Marija Gimbutas , who thought that such a matriarchal society existed in Anatolia and southeastern Europe until the macho Kurgans moved in. Against this, Gerda Lerner (1986) finds no evidence of such a matriarchal golden age. Did a peaceful matriarchy once rule the earth? Most archaeologists and anthropologists find little convincing evidence that such societies were ever the norm.
http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/wp-content/uploads/class_text_052.pdf
Matriarchy - Wikipedia
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
The prevailing thinking is that paleolithic societies were mainly egalitarian, division of labor heightened in Neoltihic societies, especially with the need to man heavy lows and defend the land against raiders.

Take, for example, your statements about Yahweh displacing the goddess Asherah. There is evidence of Asherah being worshiped as Yahweh's (and formerly El's, then Baal's) consort. Dever (2005). Did God Have A wife? But the implication that she was once the dominant partner has no foundation in evidence. El, a patriarch, was the head of the Canaanite pantheon, and Baal, very male, became the most prominent figure until Yahweh displaced him. As often happens in life, Asherah, went with the most powerful, high status male at a given time. Most cultures had prominent male and female goddesses. Inanna (Ishtar) may have been the prominent deity in Sumerian and Akkadian societies, but Enlil and Enki were certainly major players. And there is no evidence that Sumer or Akkad were ever matriarchal.

As for Arabia and the Kabba, the Arabic word for god, ilah, is thought to derive from El, the high god of the Canaanite pantheon. Al-Ilah, the God, became Allah. Al-lāt, which Herodotus tells us was Arabic for Aphrodite, goddess of love, was one of several goddesses worshiped at Mecca--others being Al-Uzza and Manat, daugheters of Al-ilah. Al-Lat was a name used for Asherah, the Canaanite consort of El (not vice versa). Nothing I know of to suggest she was Allah's predecessor,or the dominant partner in the relationship. All three had sanctuaries near Mecca and were worshipped at the Kabba, along with male gods. Nothing I've seen suggests it was Karen Armstrong (2002) tells us that Hubal, a male deity, was considered to be the paramount of 360 deities worshiped at the Mecca shrine. (Islam: A Short History. p. 11.

As for the yoni, while it is true that yonis abound in ancient and prehistoric artifacts, as the saying goes it takes two to tango. The Hohle Fels phallus from Germany goes back 28 thousand years. Male genitals were also depicted in prehistoric cave art dating to the Upper Paleolithic. Paleolithic legacy: the prehistoric penis In ancient Egypt, obelisks were symbols of the sun god Ra. Have you taken a Rorschach? Perception of yonis and phalluses may lie in the eyes of the beholder. As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

 

It's been too many years for me to discuss this in depth without reviewing my notes, resources, research and writings.

One problem with the feminist myth is that it assumed that it blanketed all cultures and painted this past as a peaceful utopian existence. I have several books by Gimbutas and she made several assersions that I disagree with.

I think we can certainly look at myth and belief systems and identify what cultures placed dominance on the feminine or on the masculine, and even when there was a switch. It is very clear that cultures that have a strong masculine religion, such as the religions of Abraham, tend to be misogynistic. Now, we cannot say that such is absolutely the case because Western culture is a culture of judeo-christian values, whether we like it or not. (But, don't confuse me with evangelical arguments. America was establlished under the values of separation of church and state. When I say that culturally we are judeo-christian, I am speaking in general and cultural terms. It does not mean that we should all be Christian, but it does mean that even if we try be atheist or something else, culturally we are still judeo-christian in ways we may not even recognize). Yet we have feminism fighting the patriarchy and we are trying to dismantle the misogyny.

So you have the zeitgeist and the collective unconscious, and what this means for the psychology of the people. There are some significant unanswered questions that keep the idea of ancient goddess cults alive, and even Cynthia Eller, (The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory) points that out. And her real answer boils down to, there is not enough evidence to support the feminist matriarchal myth.

Language, as I show in my book shows that there was a definite period in mankind's history where there was a primary focus on the yoni. There are traditions of matriarchy, or of female leaders that could coincide with this period. For example, there is this tradition in linguistics that the oldest vocabulary of language migrations tend to be the furthest from the source. Obviously Africa would be the source of human language, and indeed you find old languages with older forms of the root for the vagina. (I refer to the primary root as 'kund,' a sanskrit and hindi word referring to both the yoni and the lotus---it is more polite than the English equivalent, which became a crude word in about the 1400 - 1500's (There was a street in London referred to as Gropecunt Lane which was where the prostitutes hung out). For the most part this kund root exists in most languages with the hard consonant at the end, which I believe it picked up in the Middle East, probably between Sumerian and one of the proto- or early Semitic languages. In Africa you find the root without the hard consonant and if we go across Asia, all the way to Japan, you find in proto-Japanese and archaic Japanese the same root without the hard consonant. At the time that this early Japanese word was used, the Japanese people were led by a shamaness. Now the story of this Shamaness or queen is according to legend, but she is described by Chinese travelers who first came to Japan and there are certain archeological finds that support the idea that she led early Japanese people. One of the finds, if I remember correctly was a seal from the Chinese emperor gifted to this queen.

That is just one example that I can think of off the top of my head. (We are currently riding out a snowstorm at some hot springs up in the mountains so I probably won't be home for a few days at least.)

I think the evolution and migration of language tells quite a bit about the evolution of spiritual and religious thought. This does not mean that every religion and group of people fit the mold of the narrative it presents. This is probably because what it shows more than the actual religious or spiritual practices of a people is the psychology and cultural programming of that people.

And for that matter, this does not mean that there would be no images of the phallus in ancient cave art and paleolithic and neolithic art. I also argue that in that earliest time there was a sense of equality between men and women, and this is because of parts of the kund root showing up in language of the phallus, and the fact that in many indigenous languages around the world, particualarly in Australia, the kund root is used for both male and female genitalia and related terms. There is one Aboriginal language i can think of offhand where the word for phallus is an obvious example of the Kund root----possibly without the hard consonant (I forget---its been a good 10 years). But then the root also appears in feminine words such as menses and parts of the yoni in that language.

Now there are many linguists who will claim that it is impossible to come up with the first language or even words used by humans. There is another group of linguists who are trying to identify the proto-language of all languages. The connections I have identified across world languages would be statistically impossible to occur by chance.

If I were to ever finish the book and get it published, it would probably restart the whole conversation. When I was working on that book, I hadn't planned on my main passion for philosophy to take over. Though, that was one problem with the original version of the book, I was trying to take it down the path of philosophy. So I had to break the books up and kept that one on the focus of this subject.

 

Did Christianity convert Constantine, or was it Constantine that converted Christianity? I think a little of both. Tetrarchs Diocletian and Galerius were determined to make the monotheism of Sol Invictus the official unifying religion, and persecuted Christians whom they thought were getting in the way. Why did Constantine abandon that project? I can think of several reasons.
(1) not only was Constantine's mother a Christian, but his father Constantius was a monolatrist, recognizing the existence of many gods but devoting himself to one, the sun god. So monotheism wasn't foreign to Constantine; (2) . Both Christianity and Roman paganism were influenced by Hellenistic thought which gave them a common frame of reference; (3) Christianity, though a minority religion, showed considerable dynamism in a rapid growth rate and impressive discipline, likely to attract an emperor's attention. In the face of persecution under Diocletian and Galerius, Christians maintained a growth rate of 40% per year,comparable to that of today's Mormons; (Stark,The Rise of Christainity (4) a taste for foreign religions was the craze in Rome at the time Constantine had his chi rho vision. Exotic foreign deities were a big draw, including Mithras, Isis, and the Great Mother Cybelle. The solar cult of Sol Invictus from Syria fits the pattern, as did the Jesus movement from Palestine; (5) Christians claimed to be heirs to the ancient religion of Judaism, whose age and holy book were both respected by the pagan Romans; (6) Christians, by the time of Constantine's conversion, had a hierarchical organization comparable to Rome's, which gave Christian bishops the ability to control and mobilize their congregations; (7) Constantine, in typical Roman pagan fashion, seems have difficulty with the exclusivism characteristic of Christianity. He continued to worship Sol Invictus, probably because he couldn't see much difference between that god and Jesus, and may have seen them as the same--a characteristic that seems to be shared by many pagans and Christians at the time. (8) Diocletian's and Galerius' persecution of Christians wasn't popular and was generating some sympathy for them.

Constantine's wasn't baptized until his death bed. What were Constantine's motives for favoring Christianity. God only knows. But after his death he became a Christian saint and a pagan god. Now that's a politician!