The Male Divine

THE PREHISTORY OF GOD

We began the last chapter with a discussion of the arguments for and against the ex- istence of a prehistoric Great Goddess of Life, Death, and Regeneration. Proponents of the Goddess Movement not only assume the existence of such a goddess, but fur- ther claim that all subsequent goddesses attested by historical records (e.g., Aphro- dite, Ma Emma, Nerthus) indicate a gradual devolution of the Goddess’s wor- ship into a scattering of less powerful, more localized cults who revered female deities embodying only certain aspects of the Great Goddess’s vastly more complex character.

The archaeological record, however, shows that goddess worship, whether of the Great Goddess or of more local goddesses, was not the only game in town. Of the hundreds of figurines, engravings, and drawings that have survived from the Pa- leolithic and Neolithic………………………………..