Soul Invictus

I was wondering if anyone had any background on ancient cultures with a prevailing matriarchal societies, which would be reflected within their spritual system as well. I know these would differ from the patriarchal aspect of Christianity (with it's focus on a "Father/male" god image.

My discussion is based to align the borrowing from cultures (Babylonian,Sumerian,etc) that is prevalent within the Christian theology. We're aware that the borrowing from cultures aided to the legitimacy of Christianity. Established values were borrowed, and modified in hopes to devalue these current ideas at that time. The "new" ideas would become the dominant theme and the old values were to be the "pagan" ideas. This was done with hopes to create a new and distinct theology/God. My hypothesis is that the sex/energy of many cultures' deities was changed from a traditionally female energy to a male image, to appear distinct and legitmate unlike the traditional matriarchal societies. (To the best of my knowledge, patriarchal societies/deity identities were the latter of the two, but correct me if I'm wrong.)
Any opinions on my assertions?

lpetrich

I don't think that there has ever been a true matriarchy. Perhaps one in which neither sex had authority over the other, and some societies have apparently come close to that.

I think that this patriarchy/matriarchy bit suggests some expectation that one of the sexes has to rule the other one.

As to female deities, that is an interesting and important question, but one must be careful there. The Catholic church has long venerated Jesus Christ's mother, turning her into a sort of mother-goddess, but that has not stopped that church from being shamelessly sexist. (I don't know much about the Eastern Orthodox church, but I doubt that it's much better)

Rhea

There's a good book by - um "Ridgely" I think (maybe Rudgely), called "Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age" Which outlines through artifacts that the oldest gods were female. Also I think there are many societies which are equal-footing ruled in history. Some German ones are mentioned by Tacitus (I think it was Tacitus? The Germania?) although I believe there is debate over how accurate he is.

philechat

The earliest Chinese were believed to be matriarchal. Not only was the creator of humanity female ("Nu-wa" is a goddess with a snake body) many earliest Chinese last name had a female root. Even in modern China there still exists some tribes that are essentially matriarchal (the "Bai" tribe for example).

Many Polynesian tribes are matrilineal if not matriarchal. The Maories, the Polaus, two Native Taiwanese tribes existing (Ami and Beinan) and several other assimilated tribes, and most notably the Islamic tribe Menangkapao (sp?) in Sumatra, Indonesia.