[This is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V3 N1, 2023) Its Ebook edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.]
When I heard about the opportunity to review a new book by Max Dashu, the creator of the online Suppressed Histories Archives, I jumped and danced widdershins with excitement! Dashu is not only a font of information—with her Suppressed Women’s History online, her online classes, her lectures at various women’s events, as well as her books—but also an encyclopedic touchstone to reclaim women’s herstory and empowerment. Dashu communicates that her purpose in writing this book is to expose the truth of our past:
The Hellenic cultural record illustrates how dominant narratives not only reflect but encode and enact social relations, behavior, attitudes. They are enforced by magnetizing them into the spoken, written, visual fabric of life, through legend, rite, and custom. The myths of gods who rape, and men who carry off maidens, shape men’s values and actions as well as the expectations and fears of women. Through repetition in language, story and rite, a worldview is activated and maintained, one that defines the chattel status of women, and demands female obedience, submission, sacrifice, and suicide. (xii)
Dashu points out that the most ancient and powerful divinities were female and that many were associated with the needs of life such as fresh, clean water sources. Dashu does not mince words in the preface and goes right for the source of distortions and propaganda created by the misogynist “Classical” systems that have subjugated women and others for millennia. This book is brilliant and contains the information academia ignores.
In Chapter 2, Dashu discusses Marija Gimbutas’s Kurgan theory, which was ridiculed and vilified by various—mostly male—scholars but is now being confirmed by work in linguistics and DNA studies (63). Jealous male competitors tried to cut out Gimbutas’s tongue, like in the Greek myth of Philomel, but the physical evidence for her theory is now undeniable. Gimbutas committed the sin of demonstrating the importance of worshipping goddesses as not just handmaidens and sacred consorts for men but as female deities who empowered women’s fertility and the fertility of the Earth. A particular male scholar who vehemently tried to discredit her quietly apologized and scuttled away, his tail between his legs, but he had already defamed her and her work. Female scholarship is always in danger of suppression, and that is why it is important to have to have scholars such as Dashu expose the androcentric viewpoint of history and Epic poetry, which are inherently male biased and promote rapist ideologies and warfare as male glory and fame.
Although to some it might seem as though I am beating the Indo-European horse to death by emphasizing the importance of female scholars, but many people to this day still believe that women contributed nothing to civilization, are unimportant, easily replaceable, and even that they have no souls. Such revisionist histories, propaganda, and male bias place the female as “Other” and outside male civilization, when in fact female ingenuity and inventions have always been at the center of the creation of civilization. Dashu describes how women have been denied access to education and opportunities:
Athena is thought to be a goddess of civilization, the arts, the sciences, and crafts—especially weaving as well as wisdom. It is ironic that a goddess represents many of the things denied to women throughout much of history, such as the same education as men, and that women are then accused of not contributing anything to Western civilization. (14)
Even indisputable facts and reality are flagrantly tossed away or suppressed by male scholars’ biases and religious viewpoints and replaced with a miasma of male assumptions and misinformation. Even the rapes of women as a literary tool are euphemized, and Dashu points out how such practices are downplayed in epic poetry:
The poets refrain from describing the rapes. They all happen offstage —which is the origin of the word “obscene,” something too shocking to be performed onstage. These stories loom large in ancient Greek culture, already glorified from the historical distance of half a millennium, and they are saturated with an intensely patriarchal sexual politics. (75)
I believe that this is how rape has been normalized in patriarchal culture and why rape kits sit untested in police evidence rooms and how the very worst abusers of women can still hold the highest offices in the land.
As a weaver and spinner and mythologist, I love Dashu’s use of the textile metaphors. Like other scholars have, Dashu makes the connection between textile work and women’s suppressed voices. Woman’s textile work became demonized in patriarchy as fate goddesses became associated with weaving and spinning male destiny, something that needs to be defeated rather than being associated with wisdom and creating life. In chapter 2 Dashu discusses the idea of story cloths and female communication, but the interpretation that stood out different was in the myth of Arachne and Athena on page 110. While most accounts of this myth describe Athena’s weaving as depicting the gods defeating the hubris of humans and Arachne’s weaving as depicting the hubris of the gods, Dashu calls out the euphemizing of male violence against women for what it really is and suggests that Arachne is showing her contempt for all the serial rapist gods. Athena is the patriarchal daughter; Zeus, her father swallowed her mother, Metis, who represented wisdom, and Zeus gave birth to Athena from his forehead using an axe. Therefore, Athena will always be on the side of men over women, just as some female supreme court justices in the United States will be.
In Chapter 3, “Goddesses Revised,”Dashu engages what many other female scholars propose about Hellenic goddesses, that they are far more ancient than the patriarchal characterizations of them, and how epic male poets reenvisioned those goddesses, reducing their stature in patriarchy, yet were unable to eliminate them. Dashu points out the work of various scholars who suggest not only that Hera is a far older Indigenous goddess than Zeus but also that temples to Zeus came later, after the matrilineal cultures were overthrown by invading patriarchal cultures. Dashu outlines the patriarchal revisionism of Hera, who is seized and raped by Zeus and forced to marry her rapist. Zeus “tricks” Hera by shapeshifting into a wounded cuckoo to rape her. From then on, Hera becomes the butt of the patriarchal joke and is ridiculed for jealously attacking the victims of her serial rapist husband rather than seen as an all-powerful goddess. Hera becomes the metaphor of the ultimate competitive woman in patriarchy. Hera’s internalized misogyny makes her hostile to herself and other women, never blaming or attacking Zeus, but revictimizing Zeus’s rape victims. According to Dashu, Hera becomes synonymous with sacred marriage. The shadow of marriage is a mirror image of male trickery, kidnapping, and rape. Dashu lays out exactly how wrathful powerful goddesses could be before they were tamed and suppressed and why women are now still expected to never show their anger the way the old ancient goddesses did:
The Olympian lineage embodies the sociopolitical order of patriarchy, domination, and hierarchy. They are the violators, conquerors, takers. They overthrow their ancestors, and fight among themselves as well as against others. As for the goddesses, we are shown the disrespected, jealous, and subjugated wife (Hera); the dutiful daddy’s girl who backs up her father (Athena); or her brother (Artemis); and the man-crazy sexpot (Aphrodite). The Loyal mother and daughter (Demeter and Persephone) are buffeted by male violence of male gods; they resist, but cannot escape. Athena and Artemis act as enforcers: the helmeted warrior upholding structural male domination, war, and the state; and the huntress of the wilds, a chaste maiden who refuses marriage for herself, but eventually gets worked into the rites of ushering maidens into marriage. (121)
Dashu points out that the more ancient version of the myth of Persephone and Demeter was an agricultural myth, similar to the myth of Isis and Osiris, rather than the kidnapping and rape story found in Greek myth. Dashu suggests that the name Persephone has a pre-Indo-European root and that a patriarchal rape myth was laid on the top of this myth (142). The agricultural myth probably more paralleled the Babylonian myth of Inanna, in which Inanna chooses to visit her sister and dies and is reborn. Incidentally, Inanna is also raped by a gardener while she is sleeping, but that gardener fears Inanna’s power and hides from her wrath until she eventually finds and kills him. It is also telling and ironic that Hades lures Persephone with a narcissus flower, a symbol of the rampant narcissism of our current age, but in the myth of Inanna, she travels naked and alone to the underworld and back without being raped.
I believe that every student of Classical Greek mythology should be required to read Chapter 4, “Mythic Conquests,” in which Dashu emphasizes how Greek mythology is a series of rape narratives and how male scholars have euphemized them as being male “love.” According to Dashu, “Patriarchy is layered upon Patriarchy,” and mirroring the mythic rapes of Zeus divinely justifies rape and violence against women, as well as colonizing other lands and people (207). Dashu also lists the methods that serial rapists in the myths use to trick their victims, including sneaking up on them when they are sleeping, getting them drunk, leaving slippery things for them to trip over so that they can be caught, wearing the disguise of animals, or even wearing the disguise of their husbands. These ancient texts were written by and for men and depict violent kidnapping and rape, which sometimes are followed by forced marriage.
Dashu’s many revelations in this book are like having the ancient female oracles returned to women, before those oracles were appropriated by men, as well as having the curse of the veil over our eyes removed to see beneath the propaganda. If you delve deeply enough into the myths, the truth stares us right in the face, and the illusions in ancient misogynist texts that control women through fear, guilt, and shame must be shattered. Dashu suggests that the authoritarian patterns of Zeus became a model for human society and mirror the current increasing treacherous authoritarian figures at home and all over the world right now who threaten democracy and female autonomy. Dashu emphatically states, “The reigning formula of ‘Might makes Right’ would have a long trajectory in Greco-Roman history and, with new religious justifications, in Christian and Muslim imperialism (234).”
In Chapter 4, Dashu also examines how obsessed ancient Greek myths and literature were with punishing so-called unchaste women, even if they were raped, just as some current lawmakers and former presidents seem to want to do. This disrespect of female bodies is still informing the creation of laws that devalue and punish women even today. Dashu examines the mythology of this ancient patriarchal playbook that suggests we should bury unchaste women alive, put them in a chest with their rapist’s babies and throw them into the ocean, burn them alive in a temple, have them commit suicide by hanging themselves from trees, throw themselves off cliffs, or throw themselves into fires. Femicide is still rampant in modern times, and women are still being punished for crimes against patriarchy. Such women are seen as uncivilized monsters in patriarchy, and Dashu points out that the Othering of Amazons and other barbarians is the very root of supremacy narratives(xii).
Dashu drew the 270 images in this book, and although she admits to the beauty of Greek art and culture, she exposes the brutality, cruelty, and misogyny intertwined in the roots of such beauty. Dashu ends with a very powerful statement about her intentions for this work:
. . . this book undertakes to shed light on patterns of sexual politics and domination that are usually passed over. Since Hellenic civilization is a widely taught subject, these omissions and distortions matter, a lot. Women are invisible over large swaths of the written record; or are positioned as decorative objects—and as natural victims—in ways that have ramifications in our times. Cultural scripts are tenacious, especially those that serve the agenda of domination. We are still dealing with the influential legacies of Hellenic patriarchy, not least in in what women have finally named as “rape culture.” All types of patriarchal fundamentalism strive to reduce women and girls to sexual and reproductive chattel, without rights over our own bodies and lives—the right to self-determination. (325)
It has also bothered me that most school systems begin by studying the Greeks and Romans, thus suggesting that they are the only and first civilizations, and totally ignore tens of thousands of years of previous civilizations.
Although Dashu suggests this is a source book and does have an index-like content section, the work would be a more efficient resource with a true index, especially because she mentions some of the same topics in several different places. The end notes in the back of the book are labelled with the pages they come from, which makes it easier to find the notes. The formatting of the bibliography is very difficult to read because it is not indented under the first line. I do not understand what happened, since the bibliography in her first book, Witches and Pagans, does have the indented formatting that makes it easier to read. On Page 353, she gives a web address to Veleda Press that is supposed to have the commentaries, glossary, and index, but the link takes you to the Veleda website and says that the specific page cannot be found; however, if you then select the title of this book, you will be directed to the information.
This book really makes me angry about our suppressed histories as women, but it also inspires and gives me hope. All students studying ancient Greece should read this book, as Western civilizations seem to suffer from betrayal blindness when it comes to how women are treated. The patriarchal myths of Western civilization are propaganda used in the war against women that has been raging for thousands of years, and we need to expose the propaganda and inequalities for what they are, so that we can fight against this ancient misinformation. My copy of this book is already dog-eared, marked up, and littered with page-marker flags, since Dashu very thoroughly picks apart how the ancient myths of life and death cycles are overlaid with numerous myths of rape and punishment of women. Dashu exposes the ancient propaganda against women, while simultaneously resurrecting divine female power. Just one example of this for me is that on page 232, Dashu relates that Demeter had dragons pulling her chariot, which is perfect for this Year of the Dragon!
Lisa R. Skura
Dr. Lisa R. Skura is an artist and mythologist who earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Mythology with emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. She also has a Bachelor of Science in Design from Buffalo State University in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Skura is a spinner and weaver of both textile and text, a tarot scholar and creator, an empathic energy healer and soul guide with a deep connection to crystals, and a voracious reader and collector of books. Dr. Skura believes that bridges of love are essential to the healing of humanity and the world. She focuses on exposing the multitude of reversals in modern culture hidden in the myth propaganda of past ages. Such reversals are used to perpetuate, sexism, racism, colonialism, and extractive economies. She strives to create harm-reduction models to begin the healing of the Anima Mundi, aka the World Soul.
Thank you. I have reposted and shared on the divine feminine app.
Hi Caryn, thanks so much.