Sacred Balance
Restoring the Mother in Our Divine Spiritual Heritage
Over thousands of years, the divine woman was systematically removed from religious traditions that once honored the sacred balance of mother, father, and child: love creating life. From Africa to India, the Middle East and Far East to Europe, evidence of this erasure persists in our language, customs, and religious practices.
This article reveals how goddess worship was NOT just the focus of primitive "fertility cults" as modern scholars explain them, but sophisticated religions that recognized women's wisdom, power, and creative force. By examining linguistic evidence, archaeological findings, and historical records, we uncover how male-dominated systems deliberately obscured feminine divine traditions to wrench away inherited power.
The implications of this cultural erasure reach beyond religion into our relationship with nature, our treatment of women and children and families, and our modern crises of disconnection. By reclaiming this lost knowledge, we restore balance in our understanding of divinity, in our communities, families, and relationship with Earth itself.
This is meant to be a narrative of understanding, not blame, and is meant to inspire an exploration of his story without assigning guilt. This took thousands of years and countless minds to reshape the past, but there would have, for a time, been some individuals with this full concept in mind. The shift can be explained by a new source of weaponry, and an era where the new toys were being played with, and the bigger humans meant more power. But this was not always so, and is not so any longer. It is well past time to disassociate intelligence with aggression and physical strength.
Men and women can be part of the healing together, rather than perpetuating old wounds. Children —the literal future of humanity— are placed at the center of our story, in hoping to create a world worthy of THEM. It pushes us past immediate short term pleasures to real progress. Modern parents today unite in the feeling of lack of support on infinite levels as caretaking and working requires too much of both parents, if a child is lucky even to have two parents. We also see a possible understanding of why certain races may have worse off rates of family support than others. And this story is not only for parents and women, or africans and jews, (which will take up much of the narrative), but all humans who plan to live to old age and need to be taken care of by this next generation we are raising. ALL of us need to care how the current children are being raised.
Bringing the mother into the divine story is more than a feminist issue. We all have a mother, and could understand the pain at losing her, or scar of never having known her, or losing her too early. In this investigation we learn how modern holiday traditions still survive with the child at the center. If only we could remember the full story.
When we ask fundamental questions—Why can't women be Pope? Who would you give more credit of your birth to, your mother or father?—we begin unraveling artificial divisions between religions, cultures, and genders, revealing our shared human heritage of stardust.
A Journey Through Sacred Memory for All of Humanity
There was a time when the divine family was complete.
Before texts were edited and mistranslated, before languages shifted and meanings were lost, there existed a sacred understanding. The divine was not a solitary male figure or two men and a ghost, (father, son and holy spirit/ghost), but a family: mother, father, and child. This trinity reflected the most fundamental truth of human existence—that life emerges from balance, from the union of complementary forces.
This is not a story that vilifies men or holds today's boys responsible for ancient power shifts. Rather, it's a narrative that liberates all humans from the confines of incomplete history. Our sons, brothers, and fathers have as much to gain from this reclamation as our daughters, sisters, and mothers. For too long, boys have carried the unconscious burden of systems they didn't create, while simultaneously being expected to embody a narrowed definition of masculinity that deprives them of their full humanity.
We see this ancient truth preserved like a fossil in the very name "Israel." This name, chosen to represent the modern Jewish state rather than Judea, carries within it a secret code from thousands of years ago: Isis (the Egyptian divine mother), Ray (the Egyptian divine son and sun), and El (the Canaanite divine father). A complete family, hidden in plain sight for millennia, accidentally preserved in the name of one of the most contested lands on Earth.
I have found another similar name in Africa: TAMANRASSET, Algeria, that preserves Amun, Ra, and Aset: the 3 Egyptian gods of father, SUN child, and mother. Aset is the Egyptian name before the Greeks changed it to Isis. Aset was spelled by Egyptians as Ist, and pronounced “Eest”. One of her surnames was “she of the rising sun”, just like her inspiration for the cardinal direction. More than just interesting in name, this place in the African desert is an oasis, and, preserves a matrilineal system of inheritance. In this they differ sharply from their Berber kinsmen, the Arabs, and most other sub-Saharan peoples. A name preserved, that has evidence of deeper meaning, that was able to save its name, AND its identity. It seems the older we get, the more matrilineal we get. They have a rich oral tradition, and were most likely able to survive due to their deep knowledge of trade routes across the Sahara Desert. While today’s Tuareg are nominally Muslim, their ancestors fled to the Sahara Desert to avoid submitting to Arab conquerors and converting to Islam. No one knows the true origin of the Tuareg, where they came from or when they arrived in the Sahara. The Tuareg were recorded by the Greek historian Herodotus around 460 BC. One of the traditional dances of the nomadic Tuareg is the 'Tam Tam' where the men on camel circle the women while they play drums and chant. Descent and inheritance are both through the maternal line.
The male-centered shift began during what we now call the Bronze and Iron Ages, around 2,000 to 1,000 BC, right in that timeframe when Judaism, as we know it, was forming. But the story contains a profound irony: the first chariot, later weaponized to transform power structures, was originally created to carry a life-sized statue of Inanna, the mother goddess, in sacred parades, known around 2,400 BC. This invention born of reverence was later adopted by the Hyksos to conquer Egypt in 1,650 BC—a perfect metaphor for how tools of devotion became instruments of domination.
The Hyksos were a warrior sect of pre-Jewish people who lived in the crossroads between the Middle East and Egypt, who thrived on trade, and may be that link to understanding the Jewish hatred of the Egyptians. But nobody teaches his story this way. At the same time, Canaanites, other pre-Jewish people, had been living and trading and co-existing with each other since 7,000 BC.
As weapons technology advanced, as these transformed chariots and new swords became the currency of power, societal structures changed. The divine mother—once honored equally or even predominantly in cultures across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe—began to recede from official narratives. The goddess who gave birth to life, who represented the Earth itself, was gradually ushered into the shadows. Evidence of this transition appears in archaeological records of book burnings, temple conversions, and linguistic shifts that subtly altered the meaning of sacred concepts.
By the time Christianity formalized its doctrine (which itself is still changing, and has since splintered into 40,000+ official versions), the transformation was complete. The divine trinity became "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"—seemingly two masculine figures and an ambiguous force. Yet even here, traces of the feminine remain: the original translation of "Spirit" (ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek) was of female gender. This feminine aspect was obscured through centuries of translation and interpretation, yet another example of how the divine mother was not eliminated but disguised. The mother as a distinct figure was relegated to a supporting role, revered yet separate from the core divinity, despite giving birth to the divine child. This wasn't a natural evolution but a deliberate rewriting, leaving humanity with an incomplete understanding of our own spiritual heritage.
We can see how many cultures depict Mary in robes and jewels are remnants of her past glory. Compare this to the rags Christianity dressed her in, who also had to find ways to reconcile those who want to make her appear divine, with constant warnings not to worship her.
This systematic erasure wasn't limited to one tradition. Across cultures that once honored divine feminine figures—Isis in Egypt, Inanna in Mesopotamia, Astarte and Astorath in Jewish lands, Cybele in Turkey (Anatolia), multiple goddess figures across Africa—similar patterns emerged. As empires expanded, as texts were translated and retranslated, the feminine divine was diminished, obscured, or eliminated entirely.
Yet archaeological evidence continues to reveal how widespread goddess worship truly was. Recent discoveries in Germany have unearthed henae (goddess figurines) in large quantities, indicating the likely presence of temples and strong reverence for the divine feminine throughout Northern Europe.
In 1958, over 150 Romano-Germanic inscriptions dedicated to the "matronae Austriahenae" (a group of female deities) were discovered near Morken-Harff, north Germany, dating from around 150 to 250 AD.
A 3,000-year-old statuette molded in the image of a goddess has surfaced at Italy’s underwater Gran Carro Archaeological Park, about 50 miles north of Rom in 2024. The submerged settlement of Aiola was likely built around 900 BC. Experts are starting to believe that Aiola was a shrine built by the Villanovan people around one of the area’s hot springs. The revelation that a hot spring in Tuscany served as a temple for both powerful Romans and the mysterious Etruscan people they eventually conquered substantiates this theory. Furthermore, coins found at Aiola dating to the rule of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (272 to 337 AD) suggest that the site may have been used through late Roman times.
Another hot spring was found in 2024 of an Etruscan and Roman sanctuary of Bagno Grande, with a woman with braided hair, portraits of many people praying, and a statue of a child holding a rotating ball. The pentagonal ball being held in that statue’s hand can still rotate. The child was dated to about 100 BC. They also found a series of bronze snakes, which have often been associated with protective goddesses.
Even Rome in its heyday, despite its official patriarchal structure, embraced the religion of Isis, the Egyptian goddess, for hundreds of years. This wasn't a marginal sect, but a major state-sanctioned religion with elaborate temples, priesthoods, and festivals that attracted followers from all social classes. During the time when Jesus supposedly walked the earth, major temples to Isis stood throughout the Roman Empire, including prominent ones in Rome itself. Mary chose her final resting place to be in a city known for its goddess worship, Ephesus, known for its sun goddess Temple of Artemis, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the World around 500 BC.
Roman emperors participated in Isis ceremonies, and her imagery influenced early depictions of Mary holding the infant Jesus. In fact, for 200 years, even the best art scholars have been unable to definitively distinguish between images of Mary and Isis on funeral art—their iconography, poses, and attributes were so similar that they remain virtually indistinguishable. This visual symmetry traces the transition between religious systems while maintaining continuity of feminine divine imagery. The visual language of devotion to the divine mother persisted even as the theological framing changed. Maybe only the most ambiguous ones survived because they could be used and seen as Mary. For centuries, even undisguised, Isis worship thrived alongside emerging Christianity—existing not as a primitive "fertility cult" but as a sophisticated religious system with its own popular rituals, and moral precepts.
The influence of Egyptian traditions permeates our most cherished customs in ways few recognize. Consider the wedding ring—this symbol of eternal commitment originated in Egyptian and Roman worship of Isis and the sun god Ra. The circular gold ring represented the sun itself, the eternal cycle of the year, divine kingship, and sacred union. Ra's very name lives on through the Latin root "rex" and its derivatives: "rey" and "reyes" (king in Spanish), "reign," "ring," and "royal"—all connecting to the gold, grain, and glory of Egypt. When modern couples exchange gold rings symbolizing eternal love, they unknowingly participate in a ritual with direct lineage to Egyptian goddess worship. These connections aren't mere coincidences but evidence of cultural continuity that persisted despite official narratives claiming clean breaks between traditions.
Our modern language reveals this ongoing diminishment. Today, we casually dismiss these ancient goddess traditions as "fertility cults"—a term that reduces the comprehensive wisdom traditions centered on the divine feminine to something primitive and sexual. This linguistic reframing degrades what were once sophisticated spiritual and philosophical systems into something akin to pornographic cults. The word "cult" itself carries negative connotations that would never be applied to patriarchal religions, while "fertility" narrowly focuses on reproduction, ignoring the goddess traditions' broader concerns with wisdom, justice, healing, writing, mathematics, and cosmic order. This isn't merely semantic—it's another form of erasure that continues today, making it even harder to reclaim the true depth and breadth of feminine divine traditions.
This widespread devotion to the goddess existed simultaneously with the emerging Christian narrative that would eventually supplant it—not because one was more "true" than the other, but because political forces favored the version that consolidated male power.
The implications have reverberated through centuries, with women's power in all Abrahamic traditions diminishing from significant to nonexistent. Women's equality has fluctuated wildly—even in regions now known for severe restrictions on women's rights, such as parts of the Middle East, women in the 1970s often had more freedom and educational opportunities than their American counterparts. The Earth itself, long associated with the divine feminine as "Mother Earth," has been treated as an object to be exploited rather than a living system to be cherished.
These transitions are preserved in our very language. The word "venerate," meaning to respect deeply, transformed into "venereal," associating women with disease. "Crown" became connected to "crone," diminishing elder women's status. Even in sacred imagery, we find evidence of this rewriting—statues of Mary holding books in Roman times, when female literacy was exceedingly rare, echo earlier depictions of Isis, the goddess of wisdom and writing. The original epic heroines and writers, the goddesses themselves, were gradually supplanted by male protagonists as oral traditions were committed to writing by men who reshaped the narratives to reflect their perspective. Yet history preserves some contradictions to this trend. Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad and high priestess of the moon god Nanna in ancient Sumer (around 2300 BCE), stands as the earliest known author in world history. Her poetry and hymns to the goddess Inanna reveal a time when women's wisdom was not only acknowledged but celebrated—when women were seen as inherently wise for their subconscious ability to create and nurture life.
This connection runs deeper than most realize: Abraham himself came from Ur, Enheduanna's city. The patriarch of Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—would have been influenced by the literary and spiritual traditions she established. The oldest writing we have from a named author is by a woman celebrating the divine feminine, and this writing would have shaped the cultural environment from which the three major world religions eventually emerged. This crucial context is rarely acknowledged in religious history.
These women weren't just nurturers but also warriors when needed, recognized for their understanding that creation sometimes requires destruction—a principle later distorted when female power became threatening. Women embodied the full spectrum of human potential, from gentleness to fierceness, from life-giving to boundary-setting. This holistic understanding contrasts sharply with later polarized gender roles that restricted women to passive nurturing while assigning all agency and authority to men.
Even as we move forward to Greek civilization, we find this tension between emerging patriarchal narratives and persistent feminine wisdom. Greek mythology became dominated by stories of male gods' violence against women—Zeus alone was depicted as raping more than 36 women in various myths. Yet simultaneously, we find that philosophical traditions still acknowledged women's wisdom: Aristotle and Socrates were taught by women, preserving some recognition of female intellectual authority even as the broader cultural narrative increasingly portrayed women as objects rather than agents.
What's often overlooked is that virtually every ancient historian—Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and others—explicitly documented how Greeks borrowed heavily from Egyptian and African traditions. They openly acknowledged that Greek philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and religious concepts were largely adapted from these older African civilizations. This inconvenient truth has been systematically downplayed in modern academia, creating a false impression of Greek thought emerging in isolation, when in reality it represented a continuation and reinterpretation of African wisdom traditions—many of which centered the divine feminine. This erasure of African origins served the dual purpose of diminishing both women and Black civilizations in the historical narrative.
Yet the story doesn't end with loss. This narrative isn't about assigning blame but about reclaiming wholeness. The divine mother wasn't erased from human consciousness entirely—she persisted in folk traditions, in art, in the intuitive understanding that life emerges from balance. Our instincts always bring us back to these truths, even when our conscious minds have forgotten them.
We can trace this persistent memory through surprising connections across time and space. Consider the Statue of Liberty—this iconic symbol of American freedom was inspired by an Egyptian lighthouse design featuring a woman holding light. The French, with their fascination with Egyptian culture following Napoleon's campaigns and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, gifted this statue to America, the same France that helped America win its independence from Britain. These connections aren't coincidental but reflect the underground stream of ancient wisdom that continues to influence our world.
Even something as simple as a marshmallow tells this story of preservation through transformation. This now-sugary treat (more drug than food, considering sugar's addictive properties) began as the "marsh mallow," an Egyptian throat medicine made with honey. The French adopted it, transformed it, and it traveled with their culture—just one small example of how ancient knowledge persists even when its original form is barely recognizable.
Recognizing this shared heritage offers a profound opportunity for unity. Christians, Muslims, and Jews—who together comprise nearly 60% of the world's population—all trace their roots to this same ancient landscape where the divine family was once honored. The remaining 40%, including the 1% who identify as Jewish, likewise descend from cultures that once recognized the sacred balance of masculine and feminine energies.
Our religious traditions are far more interconnected than most realize. To truly understand Christianity, one must understand Judaism and the prayers Jesus himself would have known. To comprehend Judaism, one must recognize how deeply it was influenced by Egyptian traditions during its formative periods. Egyptian hieroglyphs remained in use until 396 CE—well into the Christian era—with literacy restricted to approximately 5% of the population, making this knowledge easy to control and eventually erase. Even the Greek Ptolemaic overloads and their famed universities were not invited to learn the true Egyptian religion of the gods, leaving our understanding profoundly incomplete.
The French discovery of how to read hieroglyphs via the Rosetta Stone should inspire renewed excitement about understanding African religious traditions, as this knowledge can deepen our understanding of ourselves, even for those who identify as Christian. Our very alphabet—the system of "spelling" that brings words to life on the page—draws its power from Egyptian magical concepts of how written symbols could manifest reality, transmitted through Jewish scribal traditions. The word "spell" itself reflects this ancient understanding that writing was a form of magic that could bring thoughts to life—a power once associated with the feminine divine as goddess of wisdom and writing.
Alexandria, Egypt stood as the undisputed intellectual center of the ancient world, home to the greatest library ever assembled and drawing scholars from across continents. This African city was the crucible where knowledge traditions merged and developed—and crucially, where both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible took their canonical forms. The Septuagint (Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures) was created in Alexandria, while many New Testament texts were either composed or compiled there. Biblical scholarship itself emerged primarily in this African context, yet this fundamental fact is rarely acknowledged in religious education. Instead, we're presented with a narrative that positions biblical development as primarily a Middle Eastern and European phenomenon, obscuring its deep African roots and intellectual context.
Even modern science unknowingly carries these ancient African connections. The word "chemistry" derives from "Khemet," what Egyptians called themselves and their land (meaning "the black land" for the fertile soil of the Nile). Medicine and early chemistry were firmly in the realm of Egyptian expertise, with knowledge so valuable that Greeks and Romans traveled to Egypt specifically to study these arts. Yet this African origin of scientific disciplines has been systematically obscured, creating the false impression that science emerged primarily from European thought rather than building upon thousands of years of African knowledge traditions.
These connections ripple through history in fascinating ways. When Constantinople fell in the 1450s, Christian Europe lost its primary trade route to the East, sparking the voyages that led to the "discovery" of America. Those same scholars fleeing Constantinople brought ancient texts and wisdom that helped ignite the Renaissance. Constantine had chosen this city as his capital a thousand years earlier partly because Egypt, though considered as a potential Roman center, was deemed too powerful and independent—emperors rarely visited for fear of spawning contention for power. These decisions, made by men jockeying for control, shaped our modern world in ways we rarely consider.
Jesus himself, a Jewish person executed by Romans for allegedly causing uprising, became a focal point in this complex history. His death was just one manifestation of Roman antipathy toward Jews—a hatred that culminated dramatically about 70 years after his crucifixion, when Romans violently removed Jews from their homeland and deliberately renamed it "Palestine" after the ancient Philistines (meaning "outsider invaders"). This act of historical erasure made Hebrew a dead language for nearly 2,000 years.
The profound irony cannot be overlooked: Jesus—a Jewish man born of a Jewish mother, who practiced Jewish traditions and preached primarily to Jewish audiences—became the central figure and mascot of a religious tradition that would develop strong anti-Jewish sentiments. This transformation required deliberate obscuring of Jesus's Jewish identity and the Jewish origins of Christian practices. It represents perhaps the most striking example of how history can be rewritten to serve political purposes, with a member of a persecuted group reimagined as the symbol of the very tradition that would later persecute his own people.
Even the labeling of Hebrew scriptures as the "Old Testament" served this agenda of historical revision. This terminology deliberately framed ancient Jewish wisdom as primitive and outdated—something to be superseded rather than revered. Meanwhile, African wisdom traditions, which influenced both Jewish and later Christian thought, were even more thoroughly marginalized. Rome needed to position itself and its new religious framework as more developed and sophisticated than what came before, despite drawing heavily from these ancient traditions. This pattern of labeling predecessors as primitive while appropriating their wisdom appears consistently throughout Western history—a strategy that allowed powerful groups to claim innovation while obscuring their intellectual debts to older cultures, particularly those from Africa and the Middle East.
This chain of appropriation and reframing continued with Islam, which emerged about 600 years after Christianity and likewise built upon Jewish scriptures and traditions. All three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—share this common textual heritage, each claiming to properly interpret or complete what came before. Yet despite these shared roots, these traditions have often defined themselves in opposition to one another, with later traditions positioning themselves as corrections or improvements upon earlier ones. This obscures their fundamental interconnectedness and their common debt to even older African and Middle Eastern wisdom traditions. Understanding this shared heritage offers a powerful antidote to religious conflict, revealing how artificial many of our divisions truly are. Jews lost their homeland but maintained their identity through emphasis on family cohesion, parental involvement with children, and marriage stability—remaining less than 1% of the global population yet powerful in cultural influence. By contrast, Africans largely kept their lands (until modern colonialism) but suffered systematic erasure of their cultural identity and contributions to civilization. Women, meanwhile, experienced a different kind of dispossession—a form of collective amnesia regarding their once-dominant social position, with history rewritten to suggest they had always been subordinate.
The invention of a shared alphabet around 1800 BCE, with significant contributions from African writing systems, allowed for unprecedented spread of ideas. Yet Rome needed to distance itself from these origins, claiming "we, the new, are important"—not the past, not the mother who literally gives life. This shift coincided with changes in how kinship was tracked. In early societies, matrilineal systems prevailed because a child's mother was always certain, while paternity remained uncertain. As men sought to control reproduction and ensure their heirs, women who had once moved freely became increasingly confined to the domestic sphere.
Traces of this earlier matrilineal system persist even today. In Judaism, religious identity follows the mother—a child is considered Jewish only if born to a Jewish mother, regardless of the father's identity. This practice preserves an ancient recognition of the power women hold as the certain parent, the one whose connection to the child is visibly undeniable. Colonial governments understood this power well: when France sent men overseas to colonize new territories, they explicitly forbade them from marrying native women, fearing that children would naturally follow their mothers' cultures and loyalties rather than embracing French identity. Children follow the mother naturally, as all power lines and inheritance systems once did, before patrilineal systems were deliberately constructed to override this biological reality.
What might change if we reclaimed this understanding? If the 8 billion people on Earth recognized that our most fundamental commonality is not our differences but our shared spiritual DNA? What if we saw that beneath the layers of translation and interpretation, we've been telling variations of the same story all along? That we are all—whether following Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or other paths—essentially worshipping the sun and the cycles of life that sustain us?
We don't need to become "nature hippies" to recognize these connections. Our modern holidays already align with the ancient seasonal calendar—we simply need to understand their origins. The winter solstice celebrations marking the birth of light became Christmas. The spring equinox with its perfect balance of day and night (masculine and feminine energies in perfect harmony) became Easter—a word that itself preserves "Ist" (pronounced "east"), the Greek name for the goddess Isis. The "t" in Easter is also a feminine marker, while "aus" relates to dawn and the rising sun, precisely the domain of Isis.
The venerable Bede, writing around 700 CE during Christianity's expansion in Britain, explicitly tells us that while most Christian traditions used some variation of "Pascha" (connecting the holiday to Jewish Passover), the Anglo-Saxons named it after Eostre/Ostara, a goddess of spring and dawn. This unique naming wasn't a mere linguistic curiosity but a deliberate attempt to both separate from Judaism while simultaneously preserving goddess worship through acceptable Christian channels. Charlemagne later preserved these traditions, showing how even as official doctrine became increasingly patriarchal, cultural reverence for the feminine divine persisted in folk practices and naming conventions.
These connections extend to other goddess names like Astarte and Ashtoreth—female deities historically blamed in Jewish texts for the destruction of Israel's Temple and Jerusalem. While the actual destruction came at the hands of Assyrian armies, the religious narrative shifted blame to those who honored the goddess, creating a cautionary tale against goddess worship. Yet despite this official condemnation, reverence for the divine feminine obviously continued, much to the dismay of those attempting to establish an exclusively male divinity. Even our language preserves these ancient connections when we look closely enough. These aren't coincidences but conscious adaptations of much older traditions that spoke to fundamental human experiences.
Most importantly, what would shift if we restored balance to our understanding of the divine—and by extension, to our treatment of one another and the Earth? If women were no longer excluded from spiritual authority based on mistranslations and deliberate omissions? If the Earth was once again recognized as sacred rather than merely a resource? If our boys were freed from the burden of representing a distorted masculinity that demands dominance rather than partnership?
This isn't about replacing one dominant narrative with another. It's about completion. About recognizing that the story we've inherited is missing crucial elements—elements that explain why Santa comes down a chimney (an ancient symbol of birth), why women have been excluded from religious leadership despite evidence that they once served as priestesses and leaders, why we celebrate the birth of light at the darkest time of year, and why we cannot answer the simple question: why can't a woman be Pope?
This restoration benefits everyone. Our boys, raised in a culture that simultaneously holds them responsible for historical patriarchy while offering them narrowed expressions of masculinity, have much to gain from this reclamation. They deserve to know that the burden of history is not theirs to bear personally—that they can be part of healing rather than perpetuating old wounds. They deserve a model of manhood that includes tenderness, nurturing, and cooperation alongside strength and protection.
These forgotten elements connect us to cycles of life that our ancestors understood intimately: the spring equinox with its perfect balance of day and night symbolizing the harmony of masculine and feminine energies; the winter solstice marking the birth of new light; the rhythms of the human body that echo these cosmic patterns.
Even our most personal celebrations carry these ancient echoes. Birthday cakes adorned with candles—a tradition we practice without questioning its origins—began in Egypt as offerings to the moon goddess. The smoke rising from the candles was believed to carry prayers to the heavens, creating a direct connection between the celebrant and divine forces. The very concept of celebrating birthdays was specifically Egyptian, as Romans traditionally marked only death days of important figures and saints. The first writing of Jesus's birthdate stands out strangely in Roman records precisely because it deviated from their custom of commemorating only death anniversaries. The 365-day calendar itself is Egyptian, adopted by Romans during Julius Caesar's time but preserving inaccuracies in its adaptation of Greek astronomical wisdom. When Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar in 1582 CE, it placed Christianity at the beginning of time (with our year counting from Christ's supposed birth) and separated Christmas from the winter solstice by a few days—subtly disconnecting Christian celebration from its obvious astronomical origins.
At its heart, this reclamation places children—the literal future of humanity—at the center of our story. Not as possessions or accessories, but as the living embodiment of divine creation, the reason we honor both the feminine and masculine principles that bring life into being. The ancient calendar follows this understanding: spring equinox representing conception in balance, the pregnancy journey through the year, culminating in birth at winter solstice when the sun/son conquers darkness. When we recognize that the creation of new life—whether literal children or the birth of new ideas, art, or possibilities—requires balance, we transform our relationship with each other and our world.
This isn't just abstract philosophy—it has concrete implications for how we organize society. When we place children truly at the center, we must reconsider everything from education and healthcare to urban planning and environmental protection. We must ask: are our policies and practices nurturing the full potential of future generations? Are we creating a world worthy of the children we bring into it?
This is a story that asks us to see with new eyes. To recognize that beneath the artificial divisions of religion, race, and nation lies a shared heritage of stardust—the elements of our bodies forged in distant suns, the energy that animates us neither created nor destroyed but continuously transformed, just as our ancient ancestors intuited.
The divine mother has been waiting patiently to be remembered. Not to displace but to complete. To remind us that we are all—every one of us—born of the same cosmic heritage, nurtured by the same living Earth, connected by bonds deeper than any human-made boundary.
In reclaiming this story, we reclaim something essential about ourselves. We remember that we belong to each other. That the Earth is not separate from us but an extension of us. That the starlight that burns in distant galaxies is the same light that shines within each human heart. That modern science affirms ancient wisdom: energy cannot be created or destroyed, we are all made of stardust, and everything is connected in ways our ancestors intuited long before quantum physics confirmed these relationships.
At its core, this reclamation asks us to confront a fundamental question: Can we really continue to give all credit of creation to men? When we look at the most direct experience of creation we witness—human birth—who do we truly see as responsible? The woman who carries the child for nine months, whose body transforms completely to nurture another being, who experiences the pain and danger of childbirth? Or the man who simply engaged in an act of pleasure? This stark reality reveals the most glaring contradiction in patriarchal religious frameworks—they have systematically inverted the creative principle we observe in nature, attributing cosmic creation exclusively to male figures while erasing the feminine divine who embodies the very essence of bringing forth life.
Science need not stand in opposition to spirituality—indeed, the two can enrich each other. Neuroscience and psychology now reveal what ancient wisdom traditions always knew: that repression—whether of love, interest, or passion—creates harm, while embracing awe, wonder, and connection brings measurable benefits to our mental and physical health. There is inherent value in music, seasonal foods, cultural celebrations, and communal rituals that modern research continues to validate. The benefits aren't merely subjective but quantifiable: reduced stress hormones, improved immune function, enhanced well-being, and stronger community bonds.
Even Einstein recognized this unity, finding in the elegant mathematical patterns of the universe what he called a "cosmic religious feeling"—a profound sense of awe and wonder at the order underlying existence. This spirituality of science acknowledges a plan or pattern that somehow includes and connects us all, not as separate from nature but as integral expressions of it. When we reclaim these connections, we heal the artificial division between rationality and reverence that has fragmented our understanding of ourselves and our world.
The marshmallow—once medicine, now candy—reminds us that transformation doesn't equal erasure. The essence persists, waiting to be rediscovered. So too with our understanding of the divine, of gender, of our relationship with the Earth and each other. The story has been altered, but never fully erased.
And in that remembering, perhaps we find our way home—to balance, to wholeness, to the kind of world we would want every child to inherit. A world where boys and girls alike can grow into their full humanity, where ancient wisdom informs modern decisions, where we recognize our shared origins and destiny. A world worthy of the stardust from which we came and to which, eventually, we will all return.
An Outline:
INTRODUCTION: The Questions That Unravel Everything
The central questions: Why does Santa come down the chimney? Why can't women be Pope?
How these seemingly simple questions unravel deeper patterns of erasure
Personal journey of discovery as both an engineer and a mother
The systematic removal of the feminine from divinity across millennia
Overview of the book's approach: historical investigation, linguistic analysis, and practical implications
The marshmallow metaphor: how transformation doesn't equal erasure
PART I: THE HIDDEN HISTORY
Chapter 1: Before the Erasure
Evidence of goddess worship across ancient civilizations
Enheduanna: the world's first known author celebrating the divine feminine
The significance of the divine feminine in pre-Bronze Age cultures
Archaeological findings: henae figurines across Britain, Germany, and Austria
The blue beads: tracing ancient trade routes and cultural connections
Place names derived from goddesses across Europe and beyond
Chapter 2: From Reverence to Weaponization
The transition period (2000-1000 BCE): rise of metallurgy and weapons
The irony of the first chariot: created for Inanna's processions, later weaponized
How technological changes influenced power structures
The Hyksos conquests and their impact on Egyptian and Canaanite cultures
The development of the modern alphabet around 1800 BCE
The gradual shift from feminine to masculine divine imagery
Chapter 3: Codes Hidden in Plain Sight
Linguistic analysis of sacred names and terms
"Israel" as possible code for Isis-Ra-El (Mother-Son-Father)
Easter preserving "Ist" (Isis) and feminine markers in its etymology
Bede's account of Easter's goddess origins and Charlemagne's preservation
The connection between Amen (Egyptian creator) and "Amen" in prayers
The Rosetta Stone: what other voices are waiting to be deciphered?
Undeciphered scripts like Linear A: what secrets might they hold?
Chapter 4: Alexandria: Africa's Forgotten Center of Wisdom
Alexandria as the intellectual center of the ancient world
How both the Old and New Testaments took canonical form in Egypt
The Great Library and its role in preserving ancient wisdom
"Chemistry" from "Khemet": Egyptian origins of scientific disciplines
Greek appropriation of Egyptian knowledge by their own admission
How the fall of Constantinople triggered both the Renaissance and "discovery" of America
Scholarly acknowledgments: what Herodotus, Plutarch, and others admitted about Greek debt to Africa
PART II: THE MECHANISMS OF ERASURE
Chapter 5: The Language of Dismissal
How "fertility cults" terminology diminishes sophisticated wisdom traditions
The "Old Testament" label positioning Jewish wisdom as primitive and superseded
How "venerate" became "venereal," linguistically connecting women with disease
"Crown" to "crone": linguistic degradation of elder women's status
The devil's transformation: from growth-promoting angel to absolute evil
How polarized language reflected increasingly polarized gender constructs
Chapter 6: Appropriation and Reframing
Rome's embrace of Isis worship for centuries before Christianity
The indistinguishable imagery: Mary and Isis in art for 200 years
The wedding ring: from Egyptian sun worship to modern marriage symbol
Birthday cakes and candles: Egyptian moon goddess rituals we still practice
The calendar: Egyptian origin, Julian adoption, and Gregorian separation of Christmas from solstice
The irony of Jesus: a Jewish man becoming the mascot for traditions that developed anti-Jewish sentiment
Chapter 7: The Global Impact
Women's rights across cultures: the surprising regression in the Middle East since the 1970s
The erasure of African origins in religious narratives
The connection between feminine suppression and environmental degradation
War and conflict rooted in manufactured religious differences
The shared roots of Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
How translations altered original meanings in sacred texts
The artificial divisions created between related traditions
PART III: RECLAIMING WHOLENESS
Chapter 8: The Divine Family Restored
The original translation of Spirit as feminine in Hebrew and Greek
Reclaiming the complete trinity: Mother, Father, Child
The fundamental question: Who really creates life?
Women as warriors and wisdom-keepers, not just nurturers
Matrilineal wisdom: why Judaism still follows the mother's line
How colonial powers recognized and feared maternal influence
Children follow the mother naturally: biological reality vs. constructed systems
Chapter 9: Science Meets Spirituality
Einstein's "cosmic religious feeling" in mathematical patterns
Energy cannot be created or destroyed: scientific affirmation of ancient wisdom
Neuroscience confirming the benefits of awe, wonder, and connection
The starlight within: how we are literally made of cosmic material
The measurable benefits of cultural rituals and seasonal celebrations
How reclaiming these connections heals the divide between rationality and reverence
Chapter 10: Rebuilding Community
Redesigning neighborhoods for connection and play
Educational approaches that foster wholeness
Food systems that support health and sustainability
Creating rituals that honor the full human experience
Putting children at the center of societal priorities
Finding common ground through understanding shared origins
CONCLUSION: What If We Put Children First?
Imagining a society built around the wellbeing of future generations
The transformative power of balanced masculine and feminine energies
How reclaiming lost wisdom can heal modern divisions
Personal and collective actions toward a more harmonious world
The courage to question inherited narratives
The divine within each of us: a shared heritage of stardust
KEY SITES IN THE HISTORY OF THE DIVINE FEMININE
Organized chronologically for mapping purposes
PREHISTORIC PERIOD (40,000-5000 BCE)
Willendorf, Austria - Venus of Willendorf figurine (c. 28,000-25,000 BCE)
Dolnà Věstonice, Czech Republic - Oldest known ceramic figurine (29,000-25,000 BCE)
Çatalhöyük, Turkey - Neolithic settlement with numerous goddess figurines (7500-5700 BCE)
Malta - Megalithic temples and "fat lady" figurines (4100-2500 BCE)
Newgrange, Ireland - Passage tomb aligned with winter solstice (c. 3200 BCE)
Orkney Islands, Scotland - Skara Brae settlement with female figurines (3180-2500 BCE)
EARLY BRONZE AGE (5000-2000 BCE)
Uruk, Mesopotamia (Iraq) - Early Inanna temple complex (4000-3100 BCE)
Abydos, Egypt - Early Isis worship site (c. 3100 BCE)
Hierakonpolis, Egypt - Pre-dynastic worship center with goddess imagery (3500-3100 BCE)
Knossos, Crete - Early Minoan goddess worship (3000-1450 BCE)
Ur, Mesopotamia (Iraq) - Birthplace of Enheduanna, first known author (c. 2285 BCE)
Mohenjo-daro, Indus Valley (Pakistan) - Female figurines suggesting goddess worship (2600-1900 BCE)
Stonehenge, England - Megalithic monument with possible goddess connections (2500-2000 BCE)
MIDDLE TO LATE BRONZE AGE (2000-1200 BCE)
Mari, Syria - Ishtar temple with extensive archives (1800-1750 BCE)
Avaris, Egypt - Hyksos capital where weaponized chariots were introduced (1650-1550 BCE)
Mycenae, Greece - Evidence of early Greek goddess worship (1600-1100 BCE)
Ugarit, Syria - Texts mentioning Asherah and El (1450-1200 BCE)
Tell el-Amarna, Egypt - Akhenaten's short-lived religious revolution (1353-1336 BCE)
Hattusha, Anatolia (Turkey) - Hittite capital with evidence of goddess worship (1650-1200 BCE)
Mount Sinai region - Traditional location of Moses' encounters with God (c. 1400-1300 BCE if historical)
IRON AGE & CLASSICAL PERIOD (1200-300 BCE)
Jerusalem/Judea - Solomon's Temple where Asherah may have been worshipped alongside Yahweh (c. 960-586 BCE)
Delos, Greece - Birthplace of Apollo and Artemis where birth and death later became prohibited (900 BCE-sanctification, prohibition from c. 426 BCE)
Ephesus, Anatolia (Turkey) - Site of Temple of Artemis, one of Seven Wonders (c. 800 BCE-262 CE)
Samaria, Israel - Capital where Asherah worship persisted (9th-8th century BCE)
Athens, Greece - Laws prohibiting birth and death within city limits (6th century BCE)
Babylon, Mesopotamia (Iraq) - Ishtar Gate and processional way (c. 575 BCE)
Elephantine, Egypt - Jewish temple where goddess Anat was worshipped alongside Yahweh (6th-4th century BCE)
Eleusis, Greece - Mystery cult center honoring Demeter and Persephone (15th century BCE-4th century CE)
HELLENISTIC PERIOD (300 BCE-31 BCE)
Alexandria, Egypt - Great Library and intellectual center; Septuagint translation (founded 331 BCE)
Pergamon, Anatolia (Turkey) - Major Hellenistic center with goddess shrines (3rd-2nd century BCE)
Philae, Egypt - Major Isis temple that remained active into Christian era (4th century BCE-6th century CE)
Petra, Jordan - Nabataean city with temples to Al-Uzza (feminine deity) (312 BCE-106 CE)
Samothrace, Greece - Mystery cult of the Great Gods including female deities (founded c. 700 BCE, major center by 200 BCE)
Delphi, Greece - Oracle site where Pythia (female priestess) spoke for Apollo (8th century BCE-4th century CE)
ROMAN PERIOD (31 BCE-476 CE)
Rome, Italy - Major Isis temples throughout the city (1st century BCE-4th century CE)
Pompeii, Italy - Preserved Isis temple (2nd century BCE-79 CE)
Baalbek, Lebanon - Temple complex including Venus shrine (1st-3rd century CE)
Palmyra, Syria - Temple of Al-Lat (Arabian goddess) (1st century CE)
Ostia, Italy - Port city with multiple Isis shrines (1st-4th century CE)
wow, ost and ISTanubl as associated with isis, ist, is unmistakeable, with the feminine -t preserved. we know turkey had the earliest peace treaty of all time with egypt. and much intermarriage and exchange of ideas, relevant in time and geography. this easily could have swept north into germany where we saw the blue beads of trade go between crete, egypt, the middle east and germany. and scota, an egyptian princess, in scottland as one of the founders. egypt had an early expansion period. the german celts have graves in asia with red hair and clothes and burial customs. this east, ist, tradition left strong footprints. we also have ischia, italy as part of the etruscans, wiped out by romans, but crucial to bringing the alphabet to rome. also had female elements and an undeciphered language. it was from here to rome where many traders would have been found, exchange of ideas and gods.
"Ostern" (German for Easter), is linked to the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, whose month, "Eosturmonath" (April), was named after her.
Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) - Founded 330 CE, became Christian center
Caesarea, Israel - Major port where Ptolemaic and Roman influences merged (22 BCE-Byzantine period)
Antinopolis, Egypt - Last known hieroglyphic inscription (394 CE)
EARLY MEDIEVAL PERIOD (476-1000 CE)
Monte Cassino, Italy - Benedictine monastery built on site of Apollo and Venus temple (529 CE)
Jarrow, England - Where Bede wrote about Easter/Eostre connections (early 8th century)
Aachen, Germany - Charlemagne's capital, preserved many pre-Christian elements (790s-814 CE)
Kiev, Ukraine - Pre-Christian goddess worship later absorbed into Mary veneration (c. 900 CE)
Toledo, Spain - Center of translation that preserved ancient texts (8th century onwards)
CĂłrdoba, Spain - Islamic cultural center preserving ancient knowledge (8th-11th centuries)
HIGH MEDIEVAL TO RENAISSANCE (1000-1600 CE)
Chartres, France - Cathedral built on ancient goddess site with Black Madonna (12th-13th century)
Cologne, Germany - Cathedral housing relics of "Three Kings" built on Roman temple site (begun 1248)
Prague, Czech Republic - Astronomical clock incorporating zodiac elements (1410)
Florence, Italy - Renaissance center where Neoplatonic texts revived interest in feminine divine (15th century)
Wittenberg, Germany - Where Luther posted 95 Theses, challenging Catholic doctrine (1517)
Mexico City, Mexico - Where Virgin of Guadalupe appeared at former goddess site (1531)
Trent, Italy - Council of Trent codified Catholic doctrine against Protestant reforms (1545-1563)
MODERN ERA (1600-Present)
Rome, Italy - Vatican declaration of Papal Infallibility cementing male authority (1870)
Paris, France - Rosetta Stone deciphered by Champollion (1822)
New York, USA - Installation of Statue of Liberty, inspired by Egyptian designs (1886)
Cairo, Egypt - Egyptian Museum founding (1902)
Çatalhöyük, Turkey - Major excavations revealing extensive goddess imagery (1958-present)
Jerusalem, Israel - Establishment of modern state of Israel (1948)
Vatican City - Discussions of women's ordination officially prohibited (1994)
THEMATIC MAPPING CATEGORIES
Sacred Birth/Death Sites
Delos (birth of Apollo and Artemis, later prohibition of birth/death)
Athens (prohibition of birth/death within city)
Eleusis (death and rebirth mysteries)
Jerusalem (crucifixion and resurrection site)
Abydos (Osiris death/rebirth myth location)
Astronomical Alignment Sites
Newgrange (winter solstice)
Stonehenge (summer solstice)
Karnak, Egypt (solar alignments)
Chichen Itza, Mexico (equinox serpent effect)
Externsteine, Germany (solstice alignments)
Transition/Appropriation Sites
Ephesus (Artemis temple → Church of Mary, site of council declaring Mary "Theotokos")
Rome (Pantheon → Christian church)
Monte Cassino (Apollo/Venus temple → Christian monastery)
Mexico City (Tonantzin shrine → Virgin of Guadalupe)
Istanbul/Constantinople (Pagan temples → Christian churches → Mosques)
Knowledge Preservation Centers
Alexandria (Library, Septuagint translation)
Toledo (Translation center)
CĂłrdoba (Islamic learning center)
Constantinople (Greek texts preserved, scholars fled to Italy after 1453)
Mont Saint-Michel, France (Manuscript preservation)
Timbuktu, Mali (Manuscript preservation of North African knowledge)
