Chapter Eight – The Sacrificial/Savour gods

Many of the stories of sacrificial/savour gods were about putting forward matriarchal ideas in a patriarchal world. For this reason the story tellers couldn’t directly say what they thought or they could persecuted or even killed. So they wrote mystery plays about sacrificial/savour gods who saves us all through a heroic sacrifice. Or had inner mysteries in these sacrificial/savour religions whom they only revealed to those they could trust. 

The priestesses of Goddess religions were aware that men had strong submissive desires but patriarchy was denying this. So the priestesses did set up gods with masochistic tenancies to try and publicly demonstrate this. And it seems to work, as these types of gods were popular with the people and causing problems for patriarchal priests and rulers. So to counter this, they retold the popular stories of the sacrificial gods to make them more macho. 

An example of this is Heracles who was once a sacrificial god, which sounds unlikely, but he was in his original form before he was changed into a macho hero. The same is also true of Siegfried, the Teutonic hero who again was originally a sacrificial/savour god but later became a macho hero who fought and killed dragons.

So who were these sacrificial/savour Gods? We will start off with probably the oldest ones.

Enki

Probably the oldest story of a saviour/sacrificial god was in the story of Inanna's descent into the netherworld, (underworld). This is an ancient Sumerian legend going back over 5,000 years, that seems to predict the rise of the patriarchal age and its later downfall.

In this story, Inanna is the Queen of Heaven, who wishes to visit her sister Ereshkigal the Goddess of the netherworld. But Ereshkigal betrays her sister and strips her of all her jewellery and clothing and imprisons her. In some of the versions of this story she is hung from a meat hook. Then without Inanna, the upper world turns into a wasteland. 

So to save the world, Enki, the god of water and wisdom descends into the netherworld to try and rescue Inanna. He pleads with Ereshkigal for her release but Ereshkigal tells him she will only release Inanna providing he takes her place in the netherworld. He agrees to do this and Inanna returns to take her place as the Queen of Heaven while Enki is condemned to stay and be imprisoned in the netherworld. So he is a sacrificial god who sacrifices himself to save the world. 

The symbology of this story is fairly straight forward and is another Golden age story. Where people live in a paradise while we worship the Great Mother who would be Inanna in the Sumerian world. Then everything goes wrong when people no longer worship the Great Mother and Inanna loses her position as Queen of Heaven and as the result we live in a wasteland a world of  conflict and chaos. But the world will be saved through the sacrifice of men like Enki, who will restore women to their rightful place as rulers of our world and worship the Great Mother once again. 

It is interesting that the person who imprisons Inanna is Ereshkigal her sister. Telling us that many women did aid and abet the patriarchal takeover of our world. It could be that men were so submissive that many women didn’t think they were a threat. And so allowed men positions of power but not realising the dangers of doing this. Although there are also some women who are very pro-men and strongly support male dominance. 

In later versions of this story the status of Inanna is downgraded and she becomes a minor deity while the status of Enki is upgraded. So in the retelling of this story his sacrifice is obscured. This happens to many of these sacrificial gods the original story is later changed to mean something else. Later on in Babylonian times Inanna is renamed Ishter and she is rescued from the underworld by her lover Tammuz. So it becomes more of a love story. 

Enki and Tammuz are also associated with the Greek God Adonis who is another sacrificial/savour God. But by this time the story had changed so much it becomes similar to Jesus’s story. 

Adonis was born in a cave in Bethlehem. (Though this Bethlehem probably wasn’t in Israel). His mother was the virgin Myrrha. Although what is different is that Adonis was castrated after mating with the Goddess Aphrodite. Which suggests he was a castrated priest. He died and rose again many times in periodic cycles and was buried and reborn in same cave. 

Osiris

The Osiris cult was part of the Isis religion that at one time was a rival to Christianity in becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire. Like the later Jesus his coming was announced by three wise men but also the three stars of Orion. Osiris was the husband, lover or son of the Goddess Isis but he killed by his brother Set, who then cut him up into many different pieces and scattered them over the land. Isis then finds all the different pieces of Osiris and put them all back together and restored him back to life. So again it is a death and rebirth story. 

The story probably symbolises what happens in a patriarchal society, where men kill other men. Also, Osiris being cut up into many pieces shows how society fragments when men rule the world. So it is the Goddess Isis who brings everything back together and restores harmony and Oneness once more to our world.

In the myth, Isis and Osiris then have sex together after she raised him from the dead and then she gives birth to the God Horus. Historians have pointed out the similarity between Osiris and Jesus, both were called the Good Shepard and born on the 25th of December. Psalm 23 although is in the Old Testament was a copy of an ancient Egyptian text about Osiris the Good Shephard. A lot of Osiris teachings that survived are very similar to what Jesus taught. As scholars are able to show the similarities in the Four Christian Gospels to the ancient teachings of Osiris. 

Shiva

Shiva is probably the oldest Hindu god and some say the most important. He is known as “the Lord of the dance”. Though he is a controversial god is some parts of India, because in some of his temples they worship of the lingam, which is a phallic symbol. For that reason, he seemed to be similar to Pan and Dionysus.

He is also a sacrificial/savour god when he played a part in the Kali story. Kali is an unusual Goddess. She is jet black and naked and has a fierce expression on her face, with her tongue poking out. She has a blooded sword in one of her hands and a necklace made of the severed heads of men or skulls. In some images she also has the severed head of a man in another of her hands. While in others she has a type of grass skirt but instead of lengths of grass she has severed arms or the skulls of men. She is also called the Great Mother and seen as a very ancient Goddess. 

The only other Goddesses like her are Coatlicue, the ancient Aztec Goddess and Sekhmet, the ancient Egyptian Lioness Goddess. Though black Goddesses were commonplace in ancient times and even after Christianity became the state Roman religion, there are still churches with black Virgin Marys in them. Suggesting they were originally once Temples of a black Goddess. 

In some of the Hindu stories the world is taken over by demons and the gods are worried by this. Who are the demons is not mentioned but perhaps they might be patriarchal men. So Devi comes down to Earth to mediate with them but they treat her with disrespect and she gets angry. Then mounted on her pet tiger she rides into battle and fights the demons. Finally she defeats them and kills the demon king and peace is restored to the world. But this is a sanitised version of this story. There is an older tale about this. 

In this version it starts off the same, the demons take over the world and again Devi tries to mediate with them but they disrespect her and she gets angry, but this time she unleashes Kali. Who in a uncontrollable rage goes berserk and destroys the demon armies. But after defeating the demons her rage is undimmed and she then starts to kill ordinary men on the earth. The god then fear that Kali will destroy the whole of mankind through her violent uncontrollable anger. 

So to appease her, the God Shiva comes down from heaven and throws himself at her feet. She then tramples over him and kills him, but seeing his sacrifice her anger evaporates and mankind is saved. Sekhmet has a similar story to Kali, she also goes on a rampage to destroy the whole of mankind but the gods stop her by getting her drunk by turning the river Nile into beer. Which she drinks as she was thirsty killing so many men. There is no mention in the Egyptian story of a god sacrificing himself to Sekhmet but that might have happened in a unknown older version of the story. 

In some versions of the Kali story Shiva survives and there are many images of Kali having sex with Shiva with her on top but still with her blooded sword and necklace of severed male heads. It is of interest that Kali is the Goddess of Hindu Tantra sex which also advocates sex with the woman on top. She is seen as a very ancient Goddess. It is said in ancient Hindu text that - “The worship of Kali is characterized by a fervent self-surrender to the Mother”. 

This story could be a future prophecy, but would women get so fed up with patriarchal men that they act like Kali and organize a bloody revolution? It’s very unlikely that women will get together to form a great amazon army and conquer the planet, but it might be possible. Most women are not killers, but some are. This was shown to be true of Afghan women in the 19th century in the war against the British. Because any British soldier found wounded on the battlefield would be tortured to death by the women. This was mentioned in a poem by Rudyard Kipling called “The Young British Soldier”.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

So clearly women can become psychopaths if they have to live in a brutal patriarchal society. Women are able to be soldiers like in the recent Syrian war, Kurdish woman soldiers fought to save their communities. So if the world was taken over by extreme patriarchal governments the result could be they turn women into psychopaths and if they organize themselves, we might have a amazon army conquering the world. 

It also seems that followers of Kali were fighting a guerilla war against patriarchy, up until the 19th century. They were a murderous cult called the Thuggee that worshipped the Goddess Kali. The men in this cult would secretly murder other men, and the ones they prefer to murder were the Brahmans whom were the leaders of the Hindu religion. They would only murder men and never women which suggests they were at war with patriarchy. They were able to get away with this because most people in India feared Kali and dared not oppose her followers. But in the 19th century the British ruled India and being Christians had no fear of Kali and managed to put a stop to the Thuggee cult. 

Violence is not going to be successful against patriarchy because that is the foundation of patriarchy. But what women can do is exploit men like Shiva who will willing surrender themselves to women. Most women don’t take the femdom scene seriously and fail to realise its potential in using it to dominate and control men. But perhaps they will one day. 

In the Hindu in India festival of Gajan where men pierce themselves with hooks and skewers or run hot coals to act out the sacrifice of Shiva and women dress up to look like the Goddess Kali. Devotees even carry human skulls in this festival which is interesting as the Goddess Kali has a necklace of human heads or human skulls. Hindu priests even walk on children to ‘bless them’ but is this a reference to of Kali walking on Shiva? 

There is a mystery about where the archetypal Dominatrix image comes from. As they are dressed up in a black cat-suit with also a fierce expression on their faces and has a cane or whip in their hands. But she does look a bit like Kali though obviously not as dangerous. 

There must have been men in matriarchal societies who commit crimes and so needed to be punished. They would unlikely to have a prison system in those days so punishment would have to be instant. So were men tied up and whipped? The person doing it would have to be a strong woman perhaps used to working outside. In warm countries the longer a person spends outside in the sun, the blacker their skin becomes. Is that why Kali has black skin?  So do men who go to a dominatrix, are trying to recreated a memory they have from a previous life? 

She may of even been an executioner, because without prisons that would be the only way to deal with a man who committed murder. Which might make sense of the necklace of men’s severed heads. So obviously men would be frightened of a woman like this as she would be the chief disciplinarian in the community. She might also have been a warrior,

When patriarchy first appeared they would take advantage of peaceful and defenceless matriarchal communities. So the only women who would have the ability to fight back would be type of women who disciplines men. And if some also executed murderers, then they would have no problems about killing men they fight. So the story of Kali fighting the demons might have been a recreation of battles these women won against patriarchal men. But in the end they lost, probably because there weren’t enough women like this, to defend matriarchal communities. 

Krishna

Krishna is another Hindu god far older than Jesus. Some scholars claim that the stories about him are a thousand years older than the story of Jesus Christ. Like Jesus his coming birth was announced by a new star and his birth was witnessed by shepherds and wise men. While still a child he survived a Slaughter of the Innocent. In the same way both Jesus and Moses did. 

He is the god of protection, compassion, tenderness, and love. But unlike Jesus he is a very erotic god and had sex with many different women. So he was more like Pan, Dionysus and Bacchus. In one story of him she saw some cowgirls bathing, so he stole their clothes and then made them come to receive them naked with their hand above their heads. This is a popular story about him. 

In the Hindu classic the “Bhagavad Gita” which is a dialogue between the God Krishna and Arjuna. In this dialogue Arjuna is a prince about to fight a battle with Krishna as his charioteer. Arjuna realises that many of this friends and family are on the other side and decides he would rather lose his kingdom than be forced to kill them. But surprisingly Krishna talks him out of this. He explains that this battle will bring with it so many different emotions. Probably emotions like bravery, fear, anger, loyalty, comradeship, cowardice, betrayal and pain. So the men who have come to fight this battle will want to experience all these emotions, as well as the drama of it all. 

So Arjuna goes ahead and fights the battle but Krishna doesn’t come out unscathed from this. A woman called Gandhari those sons die in the battle, curses Krishna for not putting a stop to the battle, as she knows he had the power to do this. Then later on he is killed by a hunter who had mistaken him for a deer and fatally wounds him with an arrow, even though he is only wounded in the foot. But it is claimed that his death was caused by Gandhari’s curse. 

Dying by an arrow wounding the foot is very similar to the story of Achilles the invulnerable Greek warrior at the siege of Troy. Likewise he was killed by an arrow hitting his heel. A hunter mistaking Krishna for a deer is also similar to the story of Actaeon in Greek and Roman legends. He was a hunter who happened to see Goddess Diana bathing nude with her nymphs. For that Diana turned him into a stag and he was then killed by his own hunting dogs. 

It is also of interest that Krishna forgives Gandhari for cursing him and the hunter for shooting him with an arrow. Very much like Jesus dying on the cross who forgives everyone involved in his death. We can see how the story evolved from Shiva to Krishna and Jesus. In the Kali story Shiva’s sacrifice was obvious but was obscured in the Krishna story and it was more about Krishna being a caring and loving person like in the later Jesus’s story. Though the idea of sacrifice was restored in the Jesus story. 

There is stories that Jesus went to India, either as a young man or that he survived the crucifixion and travelled there.

Loki

He is one of the oldest Norse Gods and was a death spirit where he was periodically sacrificed to the Crone Goddess Skadi. So clearly Loki was totally submissive to the Goddess Skadi whom was able to do whatever she like with him, including sacrificing him. Telling us that he originated in matriarchal times.

Later on he fell out of favour with the Nordic story tellers in the patriarchal age and became the God of mischief, a cunning trickster and shapeshifter. Tricksters were the men who talked the holy women into allowing men to become priests. He was also able to shape shift into a woman so he might of being one of the original priests who pretended to be women. So in his changing stories he seemed to be about the evolution of men from being totally dominated by women to then trying to act and behave like them. Odin and then Bader later took over his role as the sacrificial/savour god. 

Odin

Odin was called God of the Hanged, as he seemed to have been a voluntary human sacrifice in the sacred grove of Uppsala on the world tree and hung there for nine nights. Like Jesus he was wounded in the side with a spear as he was dying on the Cross. This is a symbol of what is called the ‘wise-wound”. Which is a woman’s vagina when she is menstruating. 

It is claimed that by his sacrifice Odin won for men the female secrets of saga, Which means becoming a medium, prophetess or priestess. So it suggests he was one of the original priests in the Great Mother religion who dress up like a woman and tried to be a medium. So his sacrifice doesn't suggest he was doing it to save the world, but doing it for personal gain.

Bader

He was the son of Odin and was seen as the perfect God of Love, peace, justice and light. But then he predicted his own death. His mother the Goddess Frigg, to protect him, made him invincible so nothing could harm him. When the other Gods found out about this, they use to pass the time by throwing spears and other weapons at him knowing they couldn’t harm him.

Then Loki discovered he wasn’t protected against the mistletoe as Frigg didn’t think anyone would make a weapon out of that. So he made a dart out of mistletoe and gave it to Bader’s blind brother, Hodr who then threw the mistletoe dart at Bader which hit and killed him. 

Bader descends into the underworld and the Gods wanted Hel the goddess of the underworld to return him. She said she would providing everyone mourned him. Everyone did except for one women who wouldn’t shed any tears for him and so Hel kept him in the underworld. It seemed that the women who wouldn’t cry was Loki in disguise and so both Loki and Hodr were brutally punished.

But it was predicted on doomsday Bader will return to earth in a second coming. Then he will establish a new heaven and earth after the passing of all the old destructive gods. This sounds very similar to the promises in the New Testament of Jesus’s second coming. 

Mithra

Mithraism is a very old religion from Persia and had travelled east as far as India. What many people find shocking about this religion is that so much of it is similar to Christianity. Like Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th and his birth was witnessed by shepherds and a Magi who brought gifts. He had 12 disciples. He performed miracles like Jesus, raising the dead, healing the sick, casting out devils, making the blind see and the lame walk. Sunday was also its holy day.

Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace. Like Jesus he was called “The Good  Shephard”, “the way, the truth and the light” as well as the “redeemer”, “Messiah” and “Saviour”. He even had a last supper like Jesus and also spoke about eating his body and drinking his blood. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again and then ascended to heaven. 

The ruling elite of the Roman wanted to make Mithraism the state religion of the Roman empire but  it wasn’t popular with the people. The reason was because it became a very puritan religion and anti-women, where women were not allowed in their temples and it only had celibate male priests. But although it lost out to Christianity in becoming the state religion of Rome, many of the Mithraism customs were adopted in Christianity. For instance early Christianity had female priests but they were banned to fit in with Mithraism customs of only male celibate priests.

 Pan

Pan was probably one of the oldest Gods in Greece. He was a woodland horned and hoofed God, He was featured in some of the oldest Greek tragedies in death and resurrection dramas. The word tragedy comes from the Greek word tragoidoes which means “Goat Song”. So we can see how the meanings of words change over time. 

Like many sacrificial/saviour gods his festivals were about drunkenness and sexual orgies. He was associated with the Goddess Artemis, (Goddess Diana in Roman mythology). Then later Dionysus seemed to have taken over his role. In later Christian times the Devil was drawn the same as Pan, with horns and hoofs. 

There is no story of Pan dying that has survived. The only one is a story by Plutarch in the first century AD. An Egyptian sailor named Thamus was sailing to Italy. When he heard a divine voice say, “The Great God Pan is dead”. Some commentators have claimed it was because of the birth of Jesus Christ. 

Dionysus

Dionysus is one of the more popular sacrificial/saviour gods. There were Dionysus festivals which it was claimed where drunken orgies. He was called the wine-god as well as a horned god and was associated with the God Pan. In the stories about him he was killed by his own priestesses the Maenads whom torn him apart and eaten him. Which is a refection of what Jesus said in the Last Supper about eating his body and drinking his blood. 

Though in other stories of Dionysus he hung from a cross like Jesus and was called, “King of Kings” and also “god-begotten”, “virgin-born” and “anointed One”. He was also born of a virgin on December 25th. He was a travelling teacher who perform miracles like turning water into wine. And he was called like Jesus, “the true vine”. 

Orpheus 

This was a popular mystery religion, and some commentators equate its teachings with Buddhism claiming they were very similar. It is also related to the Dionysus religion, as the priestesses of the religion were known as the Maenads in both religions. It seems that the god Orpheus was only a front because secretly within their temples they continued to worship the ancient Great Mother. 

Orpheus was killed by the Maenads for advocating homosexual love and then he descended into hell where he meets Persephone the Queen of the Underworld, whom liked him so much she make him a god. So the religion seems to have a death and rebirth aspect to it. 

The Orpheus religion was one of the rivals to early Christianity and was then merged with it when it became the state religion of Rome. 

Bacchus

This Roman god is seen as the same as the Greek god Dionysus. He was known in Roman as the god of wine and debauchery and consort of the Goddess Liberia. Although he was also known as a sacrificial/saviour God. He was killed but was then brought back to life by Jupiter his father. Like Jesus his father was a god but his mother a mortal woman. 

What is clear is that the Roman elite didn’t like Bacchus because his priestesses encouraged licentious orgies. But they tolerated him as we was popular with the people. The same is true of Pan and Dionysus in Greece. We know from history that Roman were famous for their orgies so what would be the problem with gods who encourage this? 

It could be because of the Bonobo effect. Unrestrained sexual freedom seems to give the advantage to women. It is known that sex does make men less aggressive. This is why sporting coaches encourage their players not to have sex before a important game. Perhaps without all the sexual taboos of patriarchal society women can come together and form a powerful lesbian sisterhood. 

The word orgy come from the Greek word, orgia, which means, “secret worship”. It seems that Goddess temples did have sexual rituals which seems strange to people brought up in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But we must remember that sex is also called, love making, so what wrong with sex that expresses love? 

What is interesting is that wine is associated with these orgies but if we look at the bonobo they didn’t need any form of intoxication to have group sex. It was natural thing for them and perhaps it might have been true for humans at one time. But we see the effect of the indoctrination we all experience that tells us that sex is dirty, shameful and degrading, or that women who like sex are sluts and whores. The result is that people get uptight about having sex and need to get intoxicated to have sex in public with other people. 

This suggests that the anti-sexual propaganda was around long before we had Christianity. Although Christianity drove Roman orgies underground, so that only the rich and powerful could still get away with having them. Like we see much later on with the infamous Borgia family which produced two Popes and were famous for their orgies. So in the end all the Church did was to just ban orgies for the common people. 

In more modern times, after the sexual revolution of the 1960s the hippies, still had to get intoxicated with drugs to have a “love-in”. Even today people who are ‘swingers’ still tend to keep what they do secret, in-case the neighbours might find out. So people are still uptight about sex, because of patriarchal propaganda. 

Another reason why the Roman elite didn’t like the saviour god religions that promoted sexual freedom was because it benefited wealthy women. This was because if women had a sexual licence to have sex with whoever they liked, then no one could say for sure whom were the fathers of their children. This meant that inheritance of wealth and power could only come down the female line. Meaning that a one time, a large amount of wealth and power stayed in the hands of women. 

This is why later there was strict marriage laws where a women had to remain faithful to her husband and never have sex with another man. By this means a husband then knew he had fathered his children so he could pass his wealth onto his sons and inheritance could pass down the male line. Preventing it getting into the hands of women.

But what worked against this, was that Rome was a rape culture where men were free to rape women without penality. It was even promoted, like in the story of the rape of the Sabine women. So men’s wives were frequently raped. To try and prevent this, laws came in which penalised the wife who was raped, but not the man who did it! There are still extremely unfair laws like this in many Muslin countries like Pakistan. Where a women would be arrested if she reported that a man raped her. 

Other sacrificial/ savour gods

There are many other sacrificial/savour gods like Quetzalcoatl the Aztec god, the problem with him is that he was associated with their human sacrifice, where they sacrificed people on an industrial scale. That may not have been the intention of the original story of this God but later generations can change these stories to suit themselves. 

Many of these sacrificial/savour gods are also sun-gods and their birthdays are on the 25th of December which is one of the shortest days of the year. So it makes sense of why they would be called sun-gods because it was end of the year where the old sun dies and the new sun is reborn. 

Now this wouldn’t be a big issue in warm Mediterranean countries but would matter a lot in northern European countries. Where the shortest day of the year might be only a few hours. It is also the coldest time of the year where it is impossible to grow crops and people in ancient times would die of cold and starvation in the winter months. So they would have a good reason to celibate festivals like Christmas and New Year as they know after this, the days will start getting longer and spring is coming.

This then suggests that these Gods might of originated in Northern countries. This makes sense of Marija Gimbutas claim the patriarchy started in northern countries who then converted southern countries to patriarchy through violent conquest. 

But these is another aspect of these sacrificial/savour gods and that is they are very similar to what is called nowadays Near Death Experiences. Because of modern medicine they are more commonplace because doctors with modern technology are better able to revive patients at the point of death. But some people have also experienced NDEs without medical help like when drowning or nearly dying of cold while mountain climbing. 

For this reason NDEs would be experienced in the past. An example of this would be Julian of Norwich. She was born is 1343 and was a anchoress, and at the age of 30 nearly died of an illness and had a NDE. When she recovered she secretly wrote about her experiences. In these writings she reiterated that God is a god of love whom she called “Mother God”. She goes on to talk about, “The loving motherhood of God”. She also said she met Jesus and claimed he loved her like a mother. Even today, the part of her writing that says, God is a mother, is not talked about too much.

So her writings were controversial but she had the sense to keep them secret and gave them to sympathetic nuns who preserved them. Then they were found hundreds of years later in a French nunnery and were published at the beginning of the 20th century. It is more than likely many more people in the past experienced NDEs but either they didn’t have the education to write down their experiences. Or if they did, the Church successfully destroyed their writings. The reason for this is that what people experience when going into the spirit world, is not the same as what religions tell you about life after death. 

From modern NDEs we know the experience can change a person completely. For a start they completely get over their fear of death. If they are atheists then they discover that there is life after death so their beliefs change. But also in their time in the spirit world they can experience profound teachings. 

Back in the past someone going through a NDE may come back with teachings they receive from the spirit world and find themselves regarded as a seer or prophetess. Given them both power and status in the community. Though the downside to this is that this would encourage con-men to claim they also died and returned and make up stories about life in the spirit world. They might have been able to do this in pagan times but once the country had a state religion like Christianity or Islam then they could be charged with blasphemy or witchcraft by talking about the spirit world. 

But it might be where many of the sacrificial/savour gods originated. Men cannot compete again women as mediums in a NDE men are just as good as women in reporting what happened to them in the spirit world. So if they come back with profound teachings they may end up being seen as a prophet or a god. 

Bibliography

The Jesus Mysteries - Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy

Jesus and the Goddess - Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy

The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets - Barbara G. Walker

Kali: The Feminine Force – Ajit Mookerjee

Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar – Elizabeth U. Harding

The Christ Conspiracy: The greatest story ever sold - Acharya S.

Sex in the World Religions – Geoffrey Parinder

Bhagavad Gita 

Revelations of Divine Love – Julian of Norwich