“Goddess Remembered”, part of the series, “Women in Spirituality” © 1989,
National Film Board of Canada
Produced by: Margaret Pettigrew
Directed by: Donna Read
Distributed by: Wellspring Media, Inc.
Wow, those hairstyles and those puffed sleeves! The 80s: I love them. Look at the difference 20 years makes in social mores. Now, think about what 2,000 years can mean, and 20,000 years, and go back even further. This documentary pays homage to the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. With its dinner format, I expected Judy Chicago to show up. It would have been great to see each woman (Starhawk, Merlin Stone, Jean Bolen and others) sitting in the place of a goddess. By 1979, Chicago had represented place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women throughout history. By 1989, “The Dinner Party” had been running for a decade. It seems like a serious omission to me, although I appreciated the statue of the goddess as a focal point on the table.
The “Goddess Remembered” dinner theme seemed apt, as it has historically been women who have grown, gathered, prepared and shared food, especially in a social setting. (I don’t see why it couldn’t have been both men and women who domesticated animals.) The viewer was able to see that these particular women are all very intelligent “heavyweights” in the goddess stratosphere. And they haven’t been slacking off for the last 20 years.
Jean Shinoda Bolen is the woman who said that when she was giving birth she felt horizontally linked in time to all women who have ever been, and that “nothing prepared me for this. It hurts!” Bolen is an author, Jungian analyst, and activist. She has written many books that feminists would be familiar with, including Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Quest for the Sacred Feminine, Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes for Women, and The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World. Her Millionth Circle, she explains, is a tool she uses as an “advocate for women’s circles with a sacred center as a means to reach a critical mass tipping point in bringing the wisdom of women to the world.”
Starhawk is also the author of many works celebrating the Goddess movement, including her latest, The Earth Path, which talks about the root of our environmental destructiveness and tells readers how to reconnect with the Earth. She describes herself as “an activist and trainer for peace, the environment and global justice, a permaculture designer and teacher, a pagan and a witch.” Interestingly, she and Donna Read, the director of “Goddess Remembered,” have co-produced a documentary about the life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, called “Signs Out of Time.”
Merlin Stone, a sculptor and professor of art history, became interested in archeology while studying ancient art. In 1976 he wrote a book called When God was a Woman, which delves into the matriarchal and matrilineal social structures that were repressed by Judaism and Christianity. His other book, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, (1990) is a collection of stories, myths, and prayers about the goddess.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in a gathering of such powerful women. I would have liked to see the name and title of each woman, every time she appeared on the screen; this would have been a nice way for viewers to get acquainted with who these women are, but the credits didn’t roll until the very end of the movie, which I found odd.
The women and Olympia Dukakis, the film’s narrator, discussed many diverse and interesting points. They talked about how the snake was a symbol of healing and prophecy. They spoke of Malta, the Greek island that is the oldest known repository of goddess culture. The people of Malta are now predominantly Catholic.
All the women seemed to share the point of view of Luisa Teish, who said that she had rejected the notion of the “Great Bearded White Man in the Sky”. She laughed, “I stayed with Mary!” She later also said something significant to all women: “I am an ancestor of tomorrow.”
Crete was mentioned as a place where people had studied astronomy, charting the stars, and keeping records. The women there could be sea captains and cart drivers, if they wanted. The creation of art was highly appreciated, and in this peaceful society, no evidence of male/female inequality had been found. Never found a personal mark on a work of art. Minoan Crete is the place where the cult of the goddess was intact for the longest time.
The Golden Age of Greece marked the beginning of the power of men and the end of women. Warrior cults came to the fore then and then, rampaging across the Earth and exploiting its treasures. Greece once had beautiful stands of trees and vegetation. These were cut down to produce warships, and when the trees fall down; the sand takes over. The place once known as Eden is now a dry and desolate land.
The claim that Old Europe was female-centered, cooperative, and nonviolent seems to be a bone of contention (self-proclaimed feminist Cynthia Eller, among many others, makes a case against it).
The following is a recent review of “Goddess Remembered” that I found on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com):
Unsubstantiated Claims Abound…, May 10, 2007
Author: thorn101 from United States – (Charles Sheaffer)
This movie is full of outright nonsense and pseudoscientific nonsense. Several claims are made in the film that have no scientific or archaeological basis, and are either mere assumptions or the result of faulty logic (and wishful thinking).Claims like (supposedly) that they worshiped the goddess Old Europe was an egalitarian society centered on women. It was cooperative, nonhierarchical, and nonviolent. This is not true, many fortified prehistoric settlements have been found in Europe indicating the presence of warfare.
David Anthony, an assistant professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, said there is also evidence of weapons, including some used as status symbols and of human sacrifice, hierarchy and social inequality. There is also no evidence that women played a central role, either in the social structure or in the religion of old Europe.
The Lengyel and Tiszapolgar burial grounds indicate that fighting, hunting, and trading were male activities, because men were buried with flint tools, weapons, animal bones, and copper tools. The pottery was probably made by women and used mainly by them in domestic activities. This is reflected in the ceramic findings with female remains. Nor are domestic or wild animals associated with female burials.
Claims that satellite photographs have shown that the Neolithic Goddess monoliths “all stand on power lines running through the earth” is pure pseudoscience. There are no such things as “power lines” that cross the earth. Furthermore, scholars are now discussing the identification of Neolithic megaliths with any so-called “Goddess” worship.
The film contains many more unsubstantiated claims.
Overall, this is a good movie to watch at a girls sleepover while you honor your inner goddess with copious amounts of chocolate. The reality is that this mockumentary has no place in women’s studies, anthropology or archaeology, and it appalls me to see it still taken so seriously.
Interesting huh? It reminds me of an old Shakespearean quote: “Man protests too much.” I know neither he nor I were around 20,000 years ago, so I think his argument is moot.
I would say that the main theme of “Goddess Remembered” is how women and nature are one. “As a species, we don’t separate from nature,” is something Charlene Spretnak said, and I think she’s right. It really boils down to this equation:
Women = Nature (illustrated by caves, snakes, water, etc.)
man against Nature (which pits man against woman)
Until Man honors and respects Nature and so Woman, our downward spiral into oblivion through war and the destruction of Earth, will carry us all together down that swift and vengeful river. And that would be, in fact, the end of his and her story.
