Clivedurdle

From Robert Graves The Greek Myths. Introduction (2011 but intro probably 1955).

Has there not been a clear move from matriarchy to patriarchy and actually Judaism, Christianity and Islam are clear male defined interpretations of life the universe and everything?

I thought these ideas were feminist ideologies, not the basis of classical understandings.

Christianity was not only destroying the older "pagan" gods but the underlying female orientation. It seems Judaism had already trodden this path, and Islam reinforced it later.

Huon

There are around 250 paleolithic "Venuses". Most of them look like pregnant women, big belly, big buttocks, big breast.
In SW France : Vénus de Lespugue, Vénus de Laussel, Vénus de Sireuil, Vénus de Monpazier.
La Dame de Brassempouy is only a head, but a charming head, IMO.

What enforces the theory of a Mother Goddess is that nobody has found a paleolithic statue of a man, either a young hunter, or an old tribe chieftain.

Added :
It is well known that the planets bear the names of the greek gods. The sun is Jupiter/Zeus.

But in german, die Sonne is feminine, and der Mond is masculine.

La terre, die Erde, Russian Zemlia are feminine.

Second addition :
We should not believe that the paleolithic "gods" are, more or less, entities similar to the historical "gods".

Perhaps, a bear, a bull, a mammoth had some powers of a god. They are painted in prehistoric caverns.

Chili

. . . and then there is Catholicism where Mary is the essence of Christ and the water for Jesus to walk on to get to the other side of life, which is easy, but possible only if Jesus keeps his eyes on Christ as seen from the shores of the very water to walk on, and so himself (in essence) is outsider to her or he would not be walking on it.

It is also wrong to say that woman (the great Goddess here) IS water that would limit her to 'being' existence while expansive without limits available to all lovers of life in their love for life as it is. In this sense is her presence made known by angelic encounter while not engaged in the pleasure of life, such as the contemplative life, or just tithing maybe.

IOW she is no stranger to us as the source of wisdom for us while as stranger in exhile entrusted to hunt, fish and gather some more of the same for her to retain, while she herself is and remains without an identity of her own until we become her son in person for which a re-emergence is needed (and until then we keep pounding away on the female we see while the real woman we do not know).

It is only fair for Judaism to take this position while waiting for the messiah to be born, but for Christians to run away with the water-walker who must keep his own eyes on Christ 'to see' while walking on knowledge retained is to miss the boat every time and will drown forever and ever again.

The Muslims denied Jesus and also the Christ and still keep the woman covered as hid from our sight, while Catholics carry her high as the source of their victory in life.

And let me add here that Jesus did not know his mother until the final victory where John took her under his care. She so is the most enigmatic of all and never part of the action itself (like Lady Macbeth) but did her work in good faith from Jerusalem here (that for Coriolanus became Rome "where Virgilia did her work in good faith" to say the same thing in opposite to Macbeth for C of E there, where lady Macbeth always was on the forefront where she did not belong and hath no name but Lady Macbeth to show her that she did not belong).

And the reason for that is because she has no confined 'being' with limits to come to the fore.

Let me do one more addition wherein 'she is the inside of us' (the stuff we are made of beyond limits) and therefore the perfect image of mortal beauty always, and here now Joyce has the last word.

. . . except maybe to say that Muslims and Christians are like man-made bricks for whom mass makes might instead of a stone each with a character of his own.

Huon

At Lourdes and Fatima, who appeared to young girls ? Mary.

By promulgating the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared infallibly that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a dogma of the Catholic Faith.

Likewise, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) taught in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium that "the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things.