Chapter Seven – The Roots of Christianity

The end of the Neolithic age was about 5,000 years ago and it was about this time when people stopped worshipping the Great Mother and began to worship both gods and goddesses. Then around about 2,000 years ago we began to worship a single male god. Judaism led the way in this, then came Christianity and finally Mohammedanism. So we had a period of about 3,000 years where patriarchy and matriarchy religions were fighting for supremacy. Throughout Europe there was an invasion of violent patriarchal tribes but goddess worship still continued afterwards. So the holy women in these Goddess temples still retained some power. And sometimes the Goddess religions managed to turn back the tide of patriarchy for awhile but patriarchy finally won. 

When the Goddess religions realised they were losing, they compromised and promoted male gods whom they considered to be more acceptable to them, than warlike male gods like Jehovah or Zeus. One of the first was Buddhism, (although Buddha myself claimed he wasn’t a god but he is still worshipped as if he was one). The Buddhist religion although is male dominated is still one of the most tolerant religions in the world and it retains many teachings from previous Goddess religions. 

The same is true of Taoism in China although it was originally a Goddess religion it then downplayed this and stopped worshipping a Goddess and called her the Tao, which means in Chinese “the way”. So the nature of the Great Mother was deliberately kept vague, although in the Tao-Te-Ching the Tao is called, ‘the mother’ and ‘the mysterious female’. For awhile Taoism was the state religion of China but was then overtaken by Confucianism which is a male domination philosophy. 

We can see this in four books from the  Confucian school for women with titles like, “Humble Yielding”, “Bending in Submission”, “Serving the Husband” and “Filial Actions”. Confucianism was also blamed for the cruel practise of food binding that cripples women and was practised in China up until the 20th century. Chinese feminists argued that the reason for this traditional custom was to imprisoned women in their homes. 

In the West there were many sacrificial/savour religions where the god sacrifices himself to save humankind. The meaning of these sacrifice wasn’t made clear but it seems originally they were a sort of femdom god whom sacrificed himself to allow women to dominate our world once again. It didn’t work out like that because although the whole concept of a sacrificial god did catch on and was popular with the people. The ruling elites didn’t like them as the result the only  sacrificial/savour religion that has survived is Christianity. 

The teaching of Jesus was about tolerance, peace and love. Yet Christianity itself has a reputation of bigotry, intolerance, force, violence and even hatred. His teachings like; 'Turn the other cheek', 'love your enemies' and 'resist not evil' as well as his behaviour in allowing himself to be betrayed, whipped and crucified doesn't fit in with the behaviour of the Christian church. His teachings seemed to be masochistic as we see in the following verses. 

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Matthew 5:38-48 English Standard Version

Retaliation

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic,[a] let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

Love Your Enemies

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,[b] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

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The same was said in Luke 6:27-38 New International Version

Love for Enemies

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Judging Others

37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

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These are teachings about unconditional love, the same maternal love that mothers give to their children. But because it is a man saying these things, they seemed to be wimpish and unmanly to many people. 

This is why many Christians do not like these teaching and prefer to ignore them but Jesus not only taught this, he also practised it. Jesus allowed himself to betrayed by his disciple Judas, even though he was aware of what Judas was doing. He didn’t try to defend himself from accusations made by the Pharisees, and didn’t even cooperate with Pilate’s attempts to get him released. 

In the end, he voluntary allowed himself to be mocked and beaten and then whipped, tortured and crucified by the Roman soldiers. So why was Jesus behaving in this way? Why didn’t he attempt to stand up for himself? For this reason a lot of Christians do not like the extreme 'meek and mild' image that Jesus presents to the world.

Scholars, points out that the story of Jesus is not original or unique because many other pagan gods like - Enki, Krishna, Shiva, Osiris, Orpheus, Dionysus, Bacchus, Mithras, Odin, Bader, Loki, Pan and many more also had similar histories. The story of a god-man who performed miracles like healing the sick, then was condemned to death and crucified, but returned from the dead, was commonplace in many pre-Christian religions. These gods died on trees or stakes or were simply murdered. So Jesus is the last of the sacrifice/savour gods. Although in Hinduism there is still Shiva and Krishna although their sacrifice is not as prominent as it is with Jesus. 

Some of these stories come from Mystery Plays but unfortunately much of the knowledge of these plays were destroyed by Christians and Muslims. So today we don't know a lot about what the Mysteries were, but if we look at the behaviour Jesus and other sacrificial Gods we can get an idea of what they might be about.

In all Mystery religions there is an outer and inner mystery, where all knowledge of the inner mysteries is unknown except of an initiated few. Pre-Christian Goddess temples were been attacked and persecuted by patriarchal religions. An example of this we can read in the Bible of Queen Jezebel who ruled Israel. She stubbornly preferred to worship the Goddess Astarte and not Yahweh. This result in a civil war which the Yahweh supporters won and she and her husband King Ahab were murdered. Then seven years later her daughter Athaliah became Queen and also attempted to revive the worship of Astare, but she too was murdered because of this.

So because of this violence many Goddess religions went underground and brought in Gods whom were kind and gentle. Probably the type of men that were commonplace in matriarchal societies. But these gods were just a front and behind closed door the worship of Goddesses continued. Some of the more gentle gods the Goddess temples used, became sacrificial gods. 

In the earlier mystery plays the saviour god sacrificed themselves to The Great Mother. For instance, in the Nordic mythology, Loki, one of their oldest Gods, was sacrificed to the Goddess Skadi. While even in the Jesus story, his crucifixion is witnessed by the three Marys. Who probably represented in earlier times the Triple Goddesses, of Maid, Mother and Crone. And one Gnostic gospel is called, “The Gospel of Sophia”. She was once the Jewish Goddess of wisdom, so Jesus in the original story may of sacrificed himself to her, rather than a father god.

Jesus is also called a king even though he was suppose to be just a carpenter. This might be snobbishness, we see this in the claimed that William Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. The problem is that Shakespeare’s father was only a glove maker and class conscious scholars look for other possible authors with a aristocratic background. It could be the same with Jesus, many people don’t like the idea that the central figure in Christianity is only a humble carpenter and so they claim he was a king. 

Robert Graves writes about a very ancient tradition where the king is sacrificed in some parts of the world. In the matriarchal past only queens could rule but she had consort kings. These were mostly young men, and if the queen grew tired of him then he was sacrificed for the fertility of the land. Why this happened might be because a deposed king may be angry at his lost of power and status and stir up trouble for the Queen. Or he might be executed because he began to abuse his power, and tried to undermine or disobey the Queen. So the sacrifice of kings had a long tradition until with the rise of patriarchy, kings became too powerful to allow themselves to be sacrificed.

For this reason, the tradition of the sacrificing the king may have happened as matriarchy was declining. In a true matriarchal society men would not expect to have any power, and so a Queen could have many lovers with no fear that these men will want to take away her powers. As it would have been unthinkable in those days, that a male could, depose a queen and rule in her place. 

But with the rise of patriarchy, then queens may find themselves with lovers with strong political ambitions. So the only way to deal with them, was to have them executed and claim it was a sacrifice. This type of sacrifice probably wasn't voluntary, but in the savoir god tradition it was. It was made very clear in the Bible that Jesus made no attempt to resist  being crucified. So from this we have to ask the question how can the voluntary sacrifice of the god-man to the Great Mother, save us all? 

This was clearly seen two to three thousand years ago at the time of the saviour gods when there was still knowledge of the ancient matriarchal past. At that time there must have been a large number of people who wanted the world to return to matriarchy and the worship of the Great Mother. But what was preventing this, were violent and aggressive men. This means that people who attempted to set up a matriarchal society of love and harmony, would be quickly conquered by violent men, who were only interested in loot and enslaving the population. So it would be clear that the cause of all the wars, violence, poverty and suffering was these brutal men. 

We know from history that the Amazons did for a while attempt to fight fire with fire and fight back. But this clearly wasn't the answer because by becoming violent yourself you become exactly like the people you are fighting against. In other words the only way Amazons could be free was to become as aggressive, ruthless and violence as the men they fought. The Amazons failed to stop the rising tide of patriarchy, probably because women were unable to become as brutal and ruthless as what men are. 

For this reason some women decided on a different strategy and attempted to reform these violent men. To do this they gave them a vision of what a caring and loving world would be like and explaining to them this is only possible if you are willing to sacrifice yourself to the Great Mother. So a story was created about a drama of heroic sacrifice, of a God-man sacrificing himself for the good of the world. To some degree this seems to of been successful because all over Europe and the Middle East there were saviour god religions. There was even one in South America. So many men were willing to sacrifice themselves to the Goddess in these mystery religions. 

The reason might be that if men are the natural submissive sex, then men would flock to a religion like this as it would allow them to express their deeper urges to worship women. Unfortunately, these religions became victims of their own success, because the violent men who had no interested in sacrificing themselves, saw these religions as a threat to their power and set about either destroying them or subverting them into something acceptable to them. 

It is of interest that early Christianity was very popular among the slaves of the Roman empire. This is reflected in modern times when socialists have claimed that he preached socialism. This is because the stories in the New Testament are about ordinary working men rather than princes and priests like in the other religions and the Old Testament. 

Attempts by the Roman ruling elite to stamp out these saviour god religions, was at first unsuccessful. As the Egyptian religion of the Goddess Isis and her saviour god Osiris was for awhile the most popular religion in the Roman Empire, even among the Roman soldiers. The ruling elite meanwhile attempted to promote a religion based on the sun god, although he was another saviour god called Mithras, but this didn't receive enough support from the people. 

 The Roman elite didn’t want a Goddess religion to become their state religion so they went for the second most popular religion and that was Christianity. The Roman rulers simply hijacked the Christian religion and changed it to make it acceptable to them. They then set about destroying the religion of Isis and Christian sects like the Egyptian Gnostics that refused follow the type of Christianity put forward by the Roman elite. The actual teachings of Jesus like, 'loving your neighbour', 'turning the other cheek' was quickly ignored as the Roman rulers and became more interested in the religion of Judaism and promoted this, rather than what was taught by the early Christian Church. 

The approval of Judaism was the opposite to what many early Gnostic Christians taught, as they referred to the Jewish Jehovah god as the Demiurge and claimed he was a evil god whom Jesus came to save humankind from him. So the original Christian teachings was suppose to be an attack on the patriarchal religion of Judaism, but the Roman state soon changed the religion to endorsing it by putting in the Old Testament. Also in early Christianity there were female Christian priests but once the state took over the religion that was stopped and only men could become priests. 

Then Christianity as a state religion the Roman Empire set about destroying all knowledge of the ancient religion of the Great Mother. Many libraries were destroyed, the most famous being the Library of Alexandria, which was then the largest and most important library in the world. Later on the Muslims did something similar and again tried to destroy all knowledge of ancient Goddess worship. 

With this knowledge finally forgotten by the common people, they were then able to put forward the idea that Jesus sacrificed himself to an angry god to appease him. Rather then the idea that all men need to sacrifice themselves to the Great Mother, and to women, before we can have a peaceful matriarchal world once again.

The mystery religions of the past may of delayed but didn’t stop patriarchal taking over completely. They were trying to promote a vision of a peaceful and loving world in a very violent age. Today in the 21st century we see in the West at least a different attitude to violent men. It is far less acceptable for rulers to go out and conquer other countries, (though it still goes on, as we saw in the fairly recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars). And it is far less acceptable for them to rule through fear and intimation. Western rulers today are forced to listen to the needs and desires of the common people and even respect the views and opinions of minorities. 

So perhaps the sacrificial/saviour god image within Christianity acted as a Trojan Horse for the patriarchal age. On the collective unconscious level it created an archetype that has influenced all men in Christian countries for the last two thousand years. So that the idea of voluntary sacrifice has become acceptable to men which is starting to bear fruit in the last hundred years. It is interesting that feminism has progressed in Christian countries where men allow women to demand equal rights. This is in stark contrast in Islam countries where feminist women are beaten up, put into jail, and murdered by being stoned and beheaded.

In contrast, we have seen in Christian countries Jesus like men, in Hippies of the 1960s where men have tried to practise peace and love. Or ideas of the 'new man' where men stay at home to look after the house and family while his wife goes out to work. In its more extreme form, we have the concept of Femdom where women totally dominate men. So are these men very much in tune with the archetypal sacrificial/saviour god?  Clearly if all men are strongly influenced by this powerful archetypal it will save the world from violence, wars and suffering.

Although Christianity has mostly ignored the teachings of Jesus and have concentrated more on the Old Testament god of judgement and fear, the symbols of a sacrificial Jesus are seen in all Churches. Also, the Great Mother is represented in Roman Catholic Churches in the disguise of the Virgin Mary. So even though many Christian priests have only paid lip-service to the teachings of Jesus and the drama of his betrayal and crucifixion, this is still taught. These symbols, dramas and teachings have been unconsciously influencing men in Christian Counties ever since Christianity became a state religion.

So although in the short term the attempt by matriarchal women to create a submissive saviour god in the past, seems like a failure. The popularity of the sacrificial drama of Jesus Christ has brought about an archetypal change in men, which will allow men to surrender themselves to women and bring about a new matriarchal age. After all, it is in Christian countries where we see the rise in feminism during the 20th century and more recently the beginnings of Female Domination. The concept of the sacrificial god, does seem to be working on minds of men to allow themselves to tune into this powerful archetype. As it reminds men of their true submissive nature. 

Bibliography

The Bible

Tao-Te-Ching

The Gnostic Gospels

King Jesus - Robert Graves

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

The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold – Acharya S.

When God was a Woman - Merlin Stone

Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation – Mary Daly

The Golden Bough - Sir James Frazer