The Chalice and the Blade

The Chalice and the Blade

The Chalice and the Blade

A Discussion of the Ideas of Riane Eisler

by Dr. Jan Garrett

Presented March 28, 2010
at the Unitarian Univeralist Church of Bowling Green KY

Since March is Women's History Month, it is fitting to devote a program to the ideas of Riane Eisler, one of the most important writers on women's oppression and human liberation. Eisler's best-known book is The Chalice and the Blade. She has written other important books I may mention as needed. Several of them have "partnership" in the title, such as The Power of Partnership. ¹

All her books since 1987 have been anchored in the distinction between Dominator relationships and Partnership relationships, which provides a lens for viewing and understanding societies, intimate relationships within families, religions (relations between humans and the divine), and the relationship between humanity and the earth.

Before turning to that idea, let me explain the title of Eisler's 1987 book, The Chalice and the Blade, which I borrowed as the title of this talk. Every Unitarian Universalist knows what a chalice is, and if you go to the Unitarian Universalist Association website you'll find an explanation of how this symbol became associated with our denomination.

However, in choosing the chalice as a key word in the title of her book, Eisler probably did not have UUism in mind. For Eisler the chalice is associated with the goddess religions that existed in many places in the millennia leading up to about 1500 BCE. Yet this is a nice coincidence from our perspective, because Unitarianism and Unitarian Universalism has nurtured feminists since the 19th century and has for several decades welcomed pagans, including those working to revive goddess-religion, into our broad tent.

1500 BCE is the approximate time when the last of the major goddess-worshipping culture, Minoan civilization centered on the Mediterranean island of Crete, ceased to exist. For Eisler, the chalice represents the peaceful gender-egalitarian societies, mostly horticultural, for whom the Goddess was the major object of religious devotion, although there were normally male and other female deities alongside her. Eisler's book relies on the research of archeologists who have distinguished this type of culture from the warlike, male-dominated cultures that seem to have supplanted them. Because these later societies were warlike, as proven by the prominence of weapons of war and fortifications in their archeological remains as compared with the absence of them in earlier, goddess-worshipping cultures, the appropriate symbol for them is the Blade. ^2, 3

Some of you have read Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code, or seen the movie of the same name starring Tom Hanks. In the novel some of Eisler's themes appear rearranged. The hero of the novel explains that V shape, which corresponds to the Cup part of the Chalice or Grail is an ancient symbol for the feminine. As you can see when you imagine a line drawing of a frontal view of a naked woman, and focus on the uniquely female part of human anatomy, this place is where new life would be carried in a pregnant woman (about where the flame is in the flaming chalice). In Brown's novel the thesis is that the Holy Grail really refers to Mary Magdalene, who was actually married to Jesus Christ and who escaped, pregnant, after the crucifixion of Christ and somehow got to France, where her child was born and went on to have descendants, the latest of whom turns out to be a main character in the novel (and the movie).

One difference between Eisler's book and Brown's novel is that for Eisler the chalice represents Goddess-worshipping egalitarian cultures that were overrun at least 1500 years earlier. On Eisler's account, it is not institutional Christianity that initiated the suppression of women. ⁴ That started much earlier, in Western Asia and India, probably with the invasion of Indo-European warrior-nomads. Goddess-worshipping cultures were defeated and their new rulers began subordinating goddesses to gods within the mythically portrayed society of deities. Homer's gods provide clear examples. So although Goddess worship did not at first disappear completely, it tended to take back seat to the worship of male war-gods. Pre-Christian Greek and Roman civilization is already patriarchal or male-dominated, although religiously it is still pagan. Even the earlier Mycenaean society, the society that produced the early Greeks who conquered Troy, was patriarchal. In other words, the end of gender-egalitarian, Goddess-worshipping civilization occurred more than 1500 years before Christianity appeared on the scene, although pockets of goddess-worship continued to exist here and there. By the time Christianity fused with the Roman Empire under Constantine, it had accepted the Dominator culture of classical pagan antiquity, and once fused with state power it helped to consolidate it.

The point of Eisler's study of prehistory and ancient history is to show that the domination of the male gender over the female gender is not an eternal and inevitable feature of human social organization, that another type of society, a Partnership society rooted in gender equality, is possible. This is something that almost completely escapes Dan Brown's novel.

It is useful to compare Eisler's perspective with two more familiar feminist perspectives. One is associated with Nel Noddings, whose care theory of ethics, has been called a feminine theory, to distinguish it from other feminist theories. According to Noddings, the key to moral thinking is the mother-child relationship. Caring is rooted in the feeling of compassion that comes natural to most mothers. Caring is about paying close attention to the needs of another person that one knows intimately. Noddings thinks this relationship can be extended to mutual care between siblings and between spouses, and perhaps between teachers and their pupils. Most feminists find her view lacking precisely because of [her] lack of concern for questions of social justice regarding broader social patterns.

Another feminist perspective, which has been around since the end of the 18th century, is liberal feminism. Liberal feminists work for equal opportunity for women alongside men in the economy, government, and public life. The problem with liberal feminists, from the perspective of care theory, is that they tend to adopt the abstract language of justice and rights that prevails in already existing legal discourse, which misses the importance of caring and compassion in human relations.

Eisler's approach has the best of these worlds and then some. She has a place for Noddings' appreciation of the importance of caring without being indifferent to the patterns of human interaction that prevail in the larger society. Both caring and equality play a role in Eisler's conception of partnership relations. Social justice relates to partnership organization at the level of communities larger than the family. Her analysis of economics, carried out in her most recent book, The Real Wealth of Nations, makes the case that women's work is crucial for early education, language learning, survival, healing, Hospice care, and thriving of the human species in general. Yet in the United States and elsewhere it is often unpaid or poorly paid and therefore not socially valued by economists focused on money as a measuring device. We have only to think of how the work of homemakers and caregivers for sick and dying family members, childcare providers, primary school teachers and nurses, is barely recognized.

Let us now touch on the basic differences between the Dominator and Partnership Patterns of Organization. In The Power of Partnership, Eisler has described the basic patterns in terms of four dimensions: social structure; gender relations; the emotional dimension; and value beliefs.

(1) In the domination model, social relations are typically characterized by hierarchies of domination, i.e., rankings that sharply distinguish between those who are controlled and those who control. In the partnership model, relationships tend to be egalitarian; hierarchies exist there but they are what Eisler calls hierarchies of actualization. A synonym for actualization here is empowerment. More experienced, wiser, and skilled persons try to enable the less experienced and skilled persons to acquire capacities they initially lack.

(2) In the domination model, the male half of humanity is typically ranked over the female half. Traits and activities such as control and conquest are highly valued and associated with masculinity. Gender inequality is taught at an early age and becomes the model for other inequalities, expressed in terms of, say, religious or racial rankings. In the partnership model, males and females are ranked equally. Traits such as empathy, nonviolent interaction, and care giving are valued in women and men and expressed in social policy.

(3) In the domination model the emotion of fear is prominent; violence is expected and to some extent encouraged, at least towards persons and groups considered to be inferior. In extreme forms, we see it in physical and emotional forms of spouse abuse and child abuse, and in abuse at work by superiors and even supposed peers. In the partnership model, trust is fostered. There is little emphasis on fear and little acceptance of violence against individuals or groups.

(4) In the domination model, relations of control/domination are presented as good. In the partnership model, relations of partnership, mutual respect, and processes of negotiation are presented as good.

As Eisler indicates, these four features of the partnership model—social structure; gender relations; the emotional dimension; and value beliefs—tend to reinforce each other. That makes the Partnership model a systematic reality. But there is also a contrary dynamic in which the corresponding four main features of the Domination model tend to reinforce each other. The real world of human relations over the last four millennia is one in which the Dominator model usually prevails, but it can rarely totally extinguish elements of the Partnership model. At certain times, the Partnership model makes significant inroads in society and the Dominator model must retreat, but then its devotees may regroup and beat back the progress made by the Partnership model. In certain places at certain times, whole societies may incline mostly toward Partnership relations, at least in contrast with other societies where Dominator relationships are more prominent. That is the case today with Scandinavian countries, characterized by advanced partnership patterns of social organization and gender relations, unlike, say, the U.S., not to mention Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

Eisler not only distinguishes these two models of relationships; she argues that they can be found at several levels:

1. Dominator and Partnership within the Family (or intimate relations): The relationship persons have with family members and potential spouses—intimate relations. She gives this a sort of primacy, because it is the basis for our understanding of all other relationships.

2. Dominator and Partnership Patterns within one's own life. Do you "beat yourself up" when you fall short of some ideal or do you work in a friendlier manner with your existing traits and try to improve them gradually?

3. Dominator and Partnership relationships within work settings and the local community.

4. Dominator and Partnership relations between citizens and government, at the city, state, or national levels.

5. Dominator and Partnership relations in the international community. The Bush Administration following September 2001 provides a model of Dominator thinking in the international community.

6. Dominator and Partnership visions of the proper relationship between human beings and nonhuman nature (the planet as a natural resource vs. a global ecological community including nonhuman species).

7. Even our relationship with the divine, with God, the Great Spirit, or the Goddess can be interpreted using this partnership vs. domination lens.

Her approach can help us recognize coherence and unity where otherwise a collection of items may appear to be randomly associated. As an illustration, let me use the seven Unitarian Universalist principles. These are, unless I am very mistaken, inspired by partnership principles, even if we don't always use explicit partnership vocabulary and don't often ask ourselves how they fit together. Let's consider the seven principles in order (on the cover of your Order of Service; [see also uua.org]):

1) The inherent worth and dignity of every person

Partnership relations require as much equality as possible and therefore respect for others with whom we are in relationship. Surely that implies that we seek to recognize the inherent dignity of other people whom we try to see as potential partners in one or another context.

2) Justice, equity and compassion in human relations

Compassion for our partners, whether they are intimate partners or partners in dialogue, or fellow citizens or fellow denizens of the planet, is necessary for the promotion of partnership, as distinct from dominator relationships.

Treating other people fairly, with justice, may seem a bit impartial, but it arguably depends upon seeing other human beings as members of the same family; we are all in the same boat or at least snared in the same network of relationships. There can be no real partnership if we do not first of all aim to treat others justly.

Equity refers to the moral sensitivity that accompanies and yet goes beyond formal justice. It takes into account, so far as possible, the unique situation of others and tries to empower them to be potential partners.

3) Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations

The Partnership way⁵ starts out from concrete partnership relations, say, between men and men, women and women, friends and friends, and spouses. It moves outward to a vision of partnership in larger communities. Our congregations provide a space for practicing partnership that still involves face-to-face relations, but also defines a mission relating to larger communities or partnerships, not to mention humanity's partnership with the rest of the biosphere.

4) A free and responsible search for truth and meaning

The Dominator model of religion has always tended toward imposition of Truth with a capital T from outside, handing down the tablets from Mt. Sinai. Partnership leans toward dialogue, towards mutual stimulation to deeper thought. So the search must remain uncoerced. At the same time our conclusions must be at least partly sharable. One person's theology based on her experience will remain outside all partnerships unless she is responsible enough to express the nature of her insights in a communicable form (poetry, prose, art, music, or touch).

5) The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large

Democracy is the method whereby larger partnership organizations reach collective decisions. The right of conscience corresponds to the requirement of respect for individual paths and recognizes that a minority view now may provide a needed perspective to enrich the collective wisdom of the congregational partnership later.

6) The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all

This principle describes in outline the necessary conditions for global human partnership.

7) Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part

This principle points to the need for right relations, including respect, for the life forms and ecosystems that make up a biologically diverse planet. Those who are on the Partnership way, which include most UUs, aim to live in partnership with Nature, not as tyrant or monarch over it.

Notes

Note 1. I provide a partial bibliography of Eisler's writings below.

Note 2. The primary scholarly source for Eisler's views on the Goddess-centered civilizations of Old Europe is archeologist Marija Gimbutas, author of several books that have "goddess" in the title.

Note 3. I am now in the process of reading an apparently competent study that implicitly challenges the Eisler-Gimbutas claim that there was a period in human prehistory that was essentially peaceful. It's Sex and War (probably should have been called Biology and War, but the current title is more attention-grabbing), by Potts and Hayden. It seems to be based on a more thorough study of the archeological and anthropological evidence, which has increased considerably since the 1980's, when Eisler wrote her book. Potts and Hayden also make use of the research of evolutionary psychologists and observers of our primate cousins in a way Eisler did not. There's a danger, of course, that the sometimes subtle "Dominationist" bias of Western civilization has distorted the thinking of these academic researchers. I think it has distorted my own super-reflective discipline, academic philosophy. But I am also aware that one can be a bit uncritical about one's own favorite hypotheses, as were certain Marxist feminists in the early 1970's. Potts and Hayden are not anti-feminist, but they think the male predisposition to violence, especially when the males are youthful and band together in groups, is hardwired as a result of biological evolution. It's also their view that cultural changes and institutional changes can go a long way toward keeping this predisposition from expressing itself, which is something Eisler would approve of.

Note 4. The novel paints the Catholic Church as villains, as suppressors of women down through the ages. There is some evidence for this claim. The novel mentions the role the Church played in the torture and execution of millions of independent women healers, who were vilified as witches. In fairness to the Catholics, however, the Puritans who held the Salem Witch Trials were Protestants. And it is no doubt true that there have been Catholics in the past, as there are today, who prefer Partnership practices to Dominator ones.

Note 5. The phrase "Partnership Way" comes from the title of another of Eisler's books and is also the internet name for the website of her Center for Partnership Studies.

Partial Bibliography of Writings by Riane Eisler

Riane Eisler

Eisler, Riane, 1987. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: Harper-SanFrancisco.

Eisler, Riane, 1996. Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Mystery, and the Politics of the Body. New York: HarperSanFrancisco.

Eisler, Riane, 2002. The Power of Partnership: Seven Relations that Will Change Your Life. New World Library: Novato CA, 2002

Eisler, Riane, 2007. The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

The Chalice and The Blade Wiki

The Chalice and The Blade From Wikipedia

The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane Eisler is an international bestseller first published in 1987 and now in 26 foreign editions, including most European languages as well as Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, and Turkish. The book introduces a new conceptual framework for studying social systems that pays particular attention to how a society constructs the roles and relations between the female and male halves of humanity, It proposes that underlying the long span of human cultural evolution is the tension between what Eisler calls the dominator or domination model and the partnership model. The book traces this tension in Western culture from prehistory to the present, and closes with two contrasting scenarios for the future. It challenges conventional views about cultural evolution.

A New Multidisciplinary Method of Social Analysis
The method of social analysis that led to The Chalice and the Blade is the study of relational dynamics. In contrast to earlier studies of society, this method addresses the question of what kinds of social systems support our human capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity, or alternately for insensitivity, cruelty, and destructiveness.^[1] The study of relational dynamics is an application of systems analysis: the study of how different components of living systems interact to maintain one another and the larger whole of which they are a part.^[2] Drawing from a transdisciplinary database, it applies this approach to a wide-ranging exploration of how humans think, feel, and behave individually and in groups. Its sources include cross-cultural anthropological and sociological surveys,^[3] and studies of individual societies^[4] as well as writings by historians, analyses of laws, moral codes, art, literature, scholarship from psychology, economics, education, political science, philosophy, religious studies, archeology, the study of myths and legends; and data from more recent fields such as primatology, neuroscience, chaos theory, systems self-organizing theory, non-linear dynamics, gender studies, women’s studies, and men’s studies.^[5]
A distinguishing feature of the study of relational dynamics is that it pays particular attention to matters that are marginalized or ignored in conventional studies. It highlights the importance of how a society constructs the relations between the male and female halves of humanity, as well as between them and their daughters and sons, taking into account findings from both the biological and social sciences showing the critical importance of the “private” sphere of family and other intimate relations in shaping beliefs and behaviors.
A New Perspective on Cultural Evolution
The Chalice and the Blade compares two underlying types of social organization in which the cultural construction of gender roles and relations plays a key role. Eisler places human societies on what she calls the partnership-domination continuum. On one end of the continuum are societies orienting to the partnership model. On the other end are societies orienting to the dominator or domination model. These categories transcend conventional categories such as ancient vs. modern, Eastern vs. Western, religious vs. secular, rightist vs. leftist, and so on.
The domination model ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and religion vs. religion, with difference equated with superiority or inferiority. This model consists of an authoritarian structure in both family and state or tribe, rigid male dominance, and a high degree of abuse and violence. The partnership model consists of a democratic and egalitarian structure in both the family and state or tribe, with hierarchies of actualization where power is empowering rather than disempowering (as in hierarchies of domination). There is also gender partnership and a low degree of abuse and violence, as it is not needed to maintain rigid top down rankings.
The Chalice and the Blade traces the tension between these two models, starting in prehistory. it draws from many sources, including the study of myth and linguistics as well as archeological findings by the Indo-Europeanists J. P. Mallory^[6] and Marija Gimbutas^[7] and archeologists such as James Mellaart,^[8]Alexander Marshack,^[9] Andre Leroi-Gourhan,^[10] and Nikolas Platon.^[11]
Based on these findings, The Chalice and the Blade presents evidence that for the longest span of our prehistory, cultures in the more fertile regions of our globe oriented primarily to the partnership model, which Eisler also calls a "gylany", a neologism for a society in which relationships between the sexes are an egalitarian partnership. This gender partnership was a core component of a more egalitarian, peaceful, and matrifocal culture with a focus on life-giving, centering on nurture. These societies once were widespread in Europe around the Mediterranean, and lasted well into the early Bronze Age in the Minoan civilization of Crete.
But then there was a cultural transformation during a chaotic time of disequilibrium related to climate change and incursions of warlike, nomadic tribes. These peoples brought with them a domination system and imposed rigid rankings of domination, including the rigid domination by men of women and the equation of “real masculinity” with domination and violence. This led to a radical cultural transformation.
Eisler’s book is not the only work describing this massive cultural shift from a perspective that pays special attention to a radical change in gender relations. Other scholars have also written about it; for example, historian Gerda Lerner details it in her Oxford University book "The Creation of Patriarchy"^[12]
However, Eisler does not use the term “patriarchy.” Nor does she use “matriarchy” to describe a more gender-balanced society, noting that rule by fathers (partriarchy) and rule by mothers (matriarchy) are two sides of a dominator coin, and proposing that the real alternative is a partnership system or gylany.
Nonetheless, some critics have accused Eisler of writing about a “matriarchy” in prehistoric times, and, according to them, of claiming that earlier societies where women were not subordinate were ideal. Eisler does point out that the more partnership-oriented societies described in The Chalice and the Blade were more peaceful and generally equitable, but she emphasizes that were not ideal. She further makes it clear that the point is not returning to any “utopia” but rather using what we learn from our past to move forward to a more equitable and sustainable future.There are also archaeologists who question that these earlier societies were more peaceful, especially critiques of Marija Gimbutas, one or Eisler’s sources.^[13]This critique fits the conventional narrative of cultural evolution as a linear progression from “barbarism” to “civilization” - a narrative Eisler challenges in light of the brutality of “civilizations” ranging from Chinese, Indian, Arab, and European empires to Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.
In addition, some archaeologists question whether the great profusion in these earlier cultures of female figurines, going back 30,000 years and perhaps even longer, indicates that they venerated a Goddess or Great Mother. Indeed, when these figurines were first excavated in the 19th century, the men who found them in millennia-old caves seemed to think they were an ancient kind of pornography, and called them Venus figures (a term still used today). But these sculptures are highly stylized, often pregnant, and sometimes with no facial features -- hardly the stuff of pornography. So today this notion has largely been discarded. Instead, some archaeologists contend that these stone sculptures are dolls. But the idea that prehistoric artists created these figurines for little girls flies in the face of the fact that these are nude figures with highly accentuated vulvas and breasts -- hardly what one would associate with children’s play. Moreover, some of these female sculptures could not be dolls since they are not portable. For instance, the famous Venus of LaSalle is carved on the rock facade of the entrance to a cave, which, as Eisler suggests in The Chalice and the Blade, was most probably the site of ancient religious rites celebrating the life-giving and sustaining powers inherent in woman’s body and in our Mother Earth.
Subsequent Findings Supporting The Chalice and the Blade
Since The Chalice and the Blade was published in 1987, new findings support its thesis of earlier gender equality as part of a more peaceful and equitable social system. For example, writing of the Minoan civilization that flourished on the Mediterranean island of Crete until c. 3500 years ago, the Greek archeologist Nanno Marinatos confirmed that his was a culture in which women played major roles in a religion where a Goddess was venerated. Marinatos also notes that this was a more peaceful culture that, unlike other “high-civilizations” of that time was not a slave society, on the contrary, exhibiting a generally high standard of living for all.^[14]
Also confirming the description of earlier Neolithic cultures in The Chalice and the Blade is Ian Hodder, the archeologist excavating Çatalhöyük, one of the largest Neolithic sites found to date. In his 2004 Scientific American article Hodder wrote: “Even analyses of isotopes in bones give no indication of divergence in lifestyle translating into differences in status and power between women and men.” He further noted that this points to “a society in which sex is relatively unimportant in assigning social roles, with neither burials nor space in houses suggesting gender inequality.” In short, Hodder explicitly confirms that gender equity was a key part of a more partnership-oriented social configuration in this more generally equitable early farming site where there are no signs of destruction through warfare for over 1,000 years.^[15]
Going back further, to the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, another body of research that supports Eisler’s proposal that this period also oriented more to the partnership side of the domination-partnership continuum is on contemporary foraging societies, especially the anthologies edited by anthropologist Douglas P. Fry. This work is directly relevant to prehistoric times because for most of the millennia of our earliest cultural evolution our species lived in foraging groups. Fry’s 2013 anthology of articles by scholars studying these types of societies documents that the vast majority of them are characterized by the more peaceful, gender balanced, and generally egalitarian configuration of the partnership model.^[16]
Data from other world regions also supports the thesis of an earlier partnership direction. For example, after The Chalice and the Blade was published in China by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a group of scholars at the Academy wrote a book showing that there was also in Chinese prehistory a massive cultural shift from more partnership-oriented cultures to a system of rigid domination in both the family and the state.^[17]
Also supporting the thesis in The Chalice and the Blade of a modern movement to reverse this cultural shift are contemporary Nordic societies such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland. These societies are more gender balanced (for instance, women are 40-50 percent of national legislatures) and this goes along with greater peacefulness and a generally more equitable social and economic structure.^[18]
In short, despite old narratives about an inherently flawed humanity, more and more evidence shows that we are not doomed to perpetuate patterns of violence and oppression. We have a partnership alternative with deep roots in the earlier direction of our cultural evolution -- not a utopia, but a way of structuring society in more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable ways.

References[edit]

1. ^ Eisler, R. Human Possibilities:The Interaction of Biology and Culture, Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies. (2014)
2. ^ Emery F. E. and Trist E. L. 1973. Toward a social ecology: Contextual appreciation of the future and the present. New York: Plenum Press.
3. ^ Textor, R. (1969). Cross cultural summary. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. Sanday, 1981; Coltrane, 1988 Coltrane, S. (March 1988). Father-child relationships and the status of women: A cross-cultural study. American Journal of Sociology, 93(5), 1060-1095.
4. ^ Benedict, R. (1946). The Chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments. Berkeley: University of California Press.
5. ^ For a sampling of sources for this ongoing research, see e.g. Eisler, R. 2000. Tomorrow’s Children: Partnership Education for the 21st Century; Eisler, R. & Levine, D. (2002) Nature, Nurture, and Caring: We are not Prisoners of Our Genes. Brain and Mind, Vol. 3, No 1, April; Eisler, R. (2007). The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler; Eisler, R. (2013) Protecting the Majority of Humanity: Toward an Integrated Approach to Crimes against Present and Future Generations.” In Sustainable Development, International Criminal Justice, and Treaty Implementation. Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger and Sébastien Jodoin, editors, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.305-326.
6. ^ Mallory, J. P.(1989) In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London: Thames and Hudson
7. ^ Gimbutas, M. (1982) The Goddesses and gods of old Europe, Berkeley: University of California Press.
8. ^ Mellaart, James. (1967) Çatal Hüyük. New York: McGraw-Hill.
9. ^ Marshack, A. (1991), The Roots of Civilization. Mount Kisco, New York: Moyer Bell Ltd.
10. ^ Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1971), Prehistoire de l'Art Occidental. Paris: Edition D'Art Lucien Mazenod
11. ^ Platon, N.. (1966) Crete. Geneva: Nagel Publishers
12. ^ Lerner, G. (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press.
13. ^ These articles are good source for understanding this controversy: Marler, J. (1999). A Response to Brian Hayden’s Article: ‘An Archaeological Evaluation of the Gimbutas Paradigm. The Pomegranate 10, Autumn, pp:37-47 and Marler, J. The Beginnings of Patriarchy in Europe: Reflections on the Kurgan Theory of Marija Gimbutas. In The Rule of Mars: The History and Impact of Patriarchy. Edited by Cristina Biaggi. Manchester, Conn.: Knowledge, Ideas, and Trends, Inc
14. ^ Marinatos, N. (1993). Minoan religion: Ritual, image, and symbol. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
15. ^ Hoddard, I. (2004). Women and men at Catalhoyuk. Scientific American. January, pp. 77-83.
16. ^ Fry, Douglas, editor. (2013). War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views. New York: Oxford University Press.
17. ^ Mn, J. Editor in Chief (1995). The Chalice and The Blade in Chinese Culture: Gender Relations and Social Models. The Chinese Partnership Research Group, Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House.
18. ^ Eisler, R. (2014). Roadmap to a New Economics: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism – Economics as if Children and their Future Actually Mattered. In From Capitalistic to Humanistic Business, Michael Pirson, Ulrich Steinvorth, Carlos Largacha-Martinez, Claus Dierksmeier, editors. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.

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Riane Eisler

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Riane Tennenhaus Eisler
Born	Vienna, Austria
Other names	Riane Eisler
Alma mater	University of California
Known for	The Chalice and the Blade(1988)
Notable awards	1992 Shaler Adams Foundation Award[1] 1996 ERA Education Award 2009 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award 2013 International Women's Leadership Pioneer Award[2]
Spouse	David Loye
Website www.rianeeisler.com

Riane Tennenhaus Eisler (born July 22, 1931) is a cultural historian, systems scientist, educator, attorney, speaker, and author whose work on cultural transformation has inspired scholars and social activists. Her research has impacted many fields, including history, literature, philosophy, art, economics, psychology, sociology, education, organizational development, political science, and healthcare. Eisler was born in Vienna, fled from the Nazis with her parents to Cuba as a small child, and later emigrated to the United States. She obtained degrees in sociology and law from UCLA; taught pioneering classes on women and the law at UCLA; and now teaches in the graduate Transformative Leadership Program at theCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies. She is Editor in Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies at the University of Minnesota and President of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education on the partnership model introduced by Eisler’s research.

Contents

• 1 Partnership and domination models
  • 1.1 Domination Culture
  • 1.2 Partnership Society
  • 1.3 Partnership/Domination Continuum
• 2 Books
• 3 Documentaries
• 4 Activities
• 5 Influence
• 6 Honors
• 7 Center for Partnership Studies
• 8 Caring Economy Campaign
• 9 SAIV: The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence
• 10 Bibliography
• 11 References
• 12 External links

Partnership and domination models[edit]

Eisler proposes that new social paradigms are needed that transcend the limitations of conventional social categories such as religious vs. secular, right vs. left, capitalist vs. communist, East vs. West, and pre-industrial vs. industrial or post-industrial. She notes that societies in all these categories have been repressive and violent, and that none answer the question of what kinds of institutions and beliefs support more equitable and peaceful relations. In addressing this question, Eisler’s multidisciplinary, cross-cultural research resulted in a new conceptual framework for understanding and improving social systems: the partnership-domination continuum. The identification of the partnership model and the domination modelas two underlying social configurations requires a new analytical approach that includes social features that are currently ignored or marginalized, such as the social construction of human/nature connections, parent/child relations, gender roles and relations, and the way we assess the value of the work of caring for people and nature.

Domination Culture[edit]

She introduced the term domination culture to describe a system of top-down rankings ultimately backed up by fear or force - man over man, man over woman, race over race, religion over religion, and man over nature. The configuration of the domination system has four mutually supporting core components: Top-down control in both families and states or tribes, and all institutions in between; Rigid male dominance—and with this, the devaluation by both men and women of anything stereotypically considered “feminine,” including care and caregiving; The acceptance, even idealization, of violence as a means of imposing one’s will on others; A system of beliefs that presents relations of dominating or being dominated as inevitable and desirable. Examples of societies that orient closely to the domination model include Nazi Germany,Khomeini's Iran, and earlier cultures where chronic violence and despotic rule were the norm.^[3]

Partnership Society[edit]

By contrast, the configuration of the partnership system consists of the following four mutually supporting core components: A more democratic and egalitarian structure in both the family and state or tribe; equal partnership between women and men, and with this, a high valuing in women and men, as well as in social and economic policy of traits and activities stereotypically considered feminine such as care and caregiving; a low degree of abuse and violence, because they are not needed to maintain rigid rankings of domination; A system of beliefs that presents relations of partnership and mutual respect as normal and desirable.
Examples of partnership-oriented societies include the Teduray, a tribal society studied by the University of California anthropologist Stuart Schlegel;^[4] agrarian societies such as the Minangkabau, studied by the University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday;^[5] and technologically advanced ones like Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where there is a more democratic and egalitarian structure in both the family and the state, more equal partnership between men and women (for example, women are 40-50 percent of national legislators), and more caring social policies such as universal health care, paid parental leave, and high quality early childhood education, as well as the rejection of violence in both intimate and international relations.^[6]

Partnership/Domination Continuum[edit]

In comparing partnership and domination systems, Eisler analyzes the androcracy (governance of social organization dominated by males) of Indo-European and other societies, versus greater orientation to the partnership model (as distinct from matriarchy) for the social organization of Neolithic Europe and the later Minoan civilization that flourished in prehistoric Bronze Age Crete.
To support the idea that neither men nor women dominated one another, Eisler cites archeological evidence from southeast Europe, especially Crete, drawing much from the research of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, James Mellaart, Nikolaos Platon, Vere Gordon Childe, and Nanno Marinatos. She also draws heavily from cross-cultural studies, such as Douglas P. Fry's work on foraging cultures that orient to the partnership model, noting that for most of our history humans lived in foraging groups.
Her work has allowed many other scholars to apply partnership/domination and cultural transformation conceptual frameworks to fields ranging from politics and economics to religion, business, and education.^[7]
No society orients completely to a domination system or a partnership system. It is always a matter of degree in what Eisler calls a partnership-domination continuum. But with these configurations in mind, much that otherwise seems random and disconnected begins to fall into place – including how economic systems have been developed, as Eisler documents in The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics , as well as in many articles and book chapters, including “Economics as If Caring Matters” in Challenge.

Books[edit]

Eisler's international bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future (Harper Collins San Francisco, 1987) was hailed by anthropologist Ashley Montagu as "the most important book since Darwin's Origin of Species (sic). The book has sold 500,000 copies. It has been translated into 26 languages, including most European languages and Chinese, Turkish, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, and Arabic.
Her 2007 book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the essential human work of caring for people and the planet. It has been hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” and by Gloria Steinem as “revolutionary.”
In 2014, Eisler co-authored Transforming Interprofessional Partnerships: A New Framework for Nursing and Partnership-Based Health Care with University of Minnesota professor Teddie Potter, which provides healthcare professionals with the tools to re-examine current healthcare systems and build a more caring, sustainable system. *The book was the winner of the 2015 Capstone International Book Award and a 2014 American Journal of Nursing Book Award.
Eisler's other books include the award-winning The Power of Partnership and Tomorrow’s Children, as well as Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body – New Paths to Power and Love, an exploration of the origins of human violence, and Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, which statistically documents the key role of the status of women in a nation’s general quality of life.

Documentaries[edit]

In 2011, Tiroir A Films (TAF) based their documentary, Mother, Caring for 7 Billion on the theories of Riane Eisler.

Activities[edit]

Riane Eisler keynotes conferences worldwide, and is a consultant to business and government on applications of the partnership model introduced in her work. International venues have included Germanyat the invitation of Prof. Rita Süssmuth, President of the Bundestag (the German Parliament) and Daniel Goeudevert (Chair of Volkswagen International); Colombia, invited by the Mayor of Bogota; and the Czech Republic, invited by Václav Havel (President of the Czech Republic). In 2013, Eisler was invited to speak during a Congressional Briefing on "The Economic Return from Investing in Care Work and Early Childhood Education"^[8] and to speak for the United States State Department.^[9]
Riane Eisler is a founding member of the General Evolution Research Group (GERG), a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and World Business Academy, a member of the Club of Rome,^[10] and a Councilor of the World Future Council in Europe (link) She is a member of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality^[11] along with the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other spiritual leaders. She is also co-founder of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV). She is the president of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education. In 2003 she was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, an initiative of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education.^[12]
She is the author of over 300 essays and articles in publications ranging from Behavioral Science, Futures, Political Psychology, and The UNESCO Courier to Brain and Mind, Yes!, the Human Rights Quarterly, The International Journal of Women's Studies, and the World Encyclopedia of Peace.
Eisler was one of the founders of the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first legal periodical to focus exclusively on women's rights. She is also an active Global Council Member at the International Museum of Women.^[13]

Influence[edit]

Riane Eisler inspired Professor Min Jiayin of the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to publish and edit The Chalice and the Blade in Chinese Culture (published in 1995 by China Social Sciences Publishing House).^[14] Min Jiayin's book tested Eisler's cultural transformation theory in Chinese culture, and found that there was also a shift from partnership to domination in Asian prehistory.
In her 2008 book, Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership, Mary Kirk uses Eisler's cultural transformation theory to offer an interdisciplinary, social systems perspective on issues of access to technology.^[15] Gender and Information Technology explores how shifting from dominator towards partnership systems—as reflected in four primary social institutions (communication, media, education, and business)--might help us move beyond the simplistic notion of access to co-create a real digital revolution worldwide.^[15]
Riane Eisler inspired Professor Antonella Riem and a group of scholars based at the University of Udine, to develop significant multi- and inter-disciplinary research, which investigates the presence and meaning of partnership/dominator configurations within World Literatures in English, Language, Education and Arts.

Honors[edit]

Eisler has received many honors, including the Humanist Pioneer Award and the first Alice Paul ERA award.^[16] She received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's Distinguished Peace Leadership Award for "demonstrating courageous leadership in the cause of peace".^[17] She was the only woman selected for inclusion in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians for her work as a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist.^[18] Eisler also serves on the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Center for Partnership Studies[edit]

The Center for Partnership Studies (CPS), located in Pacific Grove, CA., was established in 1987 for the purpose of researching, developing, and disseminating education on the partnership model as developed by Riane Eisler.

Caring Economy Campaign[edit]

The Caring Economy Campaign is a project of the Center for Partnership studies that is focused on building a partnership system with clear measures of the economic benefits of the work of caring for people and nature. To that end, the Caring Economy Campaign has developed Social Wealth Economic Indicators (SWEIs) to help guide policy-makers in developing an economic system that takes into account unpaid or underpaid labor, overall health and wellbeing, and the general welfare of the population.^[19]

SAIV: The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence[edit]

The mission of The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV) is to stop intimate violence — the training ground for the violence of war, terrorism, political repression, and crime. SAIV was founded by Riane Eisler with Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams and is a project of the Center for Partnership Studies, a not-for-profit 501(C)(3) organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization by the United Nations.

Bibliography[edit]

• Dissolution: NoFault Divorce, Marriage, and the Future of Women. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977.
• The Equal Rights Handbook: What ERA means for your life, your rights, and your future. New York: Avon, 1979.
• The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. ISBN 0-06-250289-1
• Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body. San Francisco: Harper, 1996. ISBN 0-06-250283-2
• The Partnership Way: New Tools for Living and Learning, with David Loye, Holistic Education, 1998ISBN 0-9627232-9-0
• Tomorrow's Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century (2000)
• The Power of Partnership: Seven Relationships that will Change Your Life (2002)
• Educating for a Culture of Peace (2004)
• The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007. ISBN 978-1-57675-388-0

References[edit]

1. ^ http://www.partnershipway.org/news-media-room/press-releases-and-press-kits/press-kit#awards-and-accolades
2. ^ http://events-womensleadership.com/award-winners/
3. ^ Eisler, Riane (1988-09-21). The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (First ed.). New York, NY: HarperOne. ISBN 9780062502896.
4. ^ Schlegel, S. (1988). Wisdom From A Rainforest. University of Georgia Press.
5. ^ Sanda, P.R. (2002). Women at the Center. Cornell University Press.
6. ^ Eisler, Riane (2007). Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. Berrett-Koehler.
7. ^ Eisler, Raine (June 4, 2015). "Human Possibilities: The Interaction of Biology and Culture".Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies. University of Minnesota.
8. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHPgcDBNTf4
9. ^ http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/ijps/
10. ^ http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=5916
11. ^ http://www.globalspirit.org/councils.html
12. ^ "Notable Signers". Humanism and Its Aspirations. American Humanist Association. RetrievedSeptember 15, 2012.
13. ^ International Museum of Women Global Council, http://imow.org/about/globalcouncil/index
14. ^ http://www.amazon.com/The-chalice-blade-Chinese-culture/dp/7500417411
15. ^ ^a b Kirk, Mary. (2008). Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. ISBN 978-1-59904-786-7
16. ^ http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2011-10-film-review-mother-caring-for-7-billion
17. ^ "Distinguished Peace Leadership Award". Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Retrieved 24 December2012.
18. ^ http://www.metafuture.org/Books/MacrohistoryandMacrohistorians.htm
19. ^ http://caringeconomy.org/about/

External links[edit]

• RianeEisler.com
• The Center for Partnership Studies
• Mother: Caring for 7 Billion Documentary
• Chalice or the Blade: A Quest for Healing
• SAIV
• Interview in MungBeing Magazine
• Participation in ONE:The Movie
• Re-Evaluating America's Value System, web-radio interview with Pat Lynch
• Councillor at World Future Council
• Creating a Caring Economy: Changing Gendered Values, by Riane Eisler, for Economica: Women and the Global Economy
• Partnership Studies Group (PSG), Udine University, Italy
• Mercanti, Stefano, Understanding the Language of Partnership: A Glossary (2011)
• Mercanti, Stefano, Partnership Glossary (2012)

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (9780062502896): Riane Eisler: Books

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars
Offering an Optimistic Alternative
By Missing in Action on November 20, 2001

Books like this, if read by a broad enough audience, could alter the course of history. Her insights are broad, her treatments are fair, and her paradigms apparently offer some degree of validity judging from the last section of her book (before the Epilogue) in which she describes 25 years ago much of the transformation we are witnessing today.

The general thesis of her book is essentially this. The"Dominator" model of the world in which men rule not only each other, but especially women, with an iron and violent fist, is in fact an inovation that was introduced to a previously more egalitarian, Goddess-oriented civilization. The original civilizations looked at creation and recognized that the creation of life is essentially a female process, symbolized by the Chalice. It was only later when "civilization" decided that the power to take life superceded the power to give life, and replaced the Goddess with the Hero/War God (symbolized by the blade). Over the course of several centuries, the broad social paradigms shifted, and we find our ancestors of recorded history so steeped in the dominator model (as opposed to the more female "partnership" model...) that we take it for granted as simply the way we are, or worse, the way God made us.

Eisler offers for the reader's consideration the possibility that we don't have to accept the violence-laden tendencies of the dominator model anymore. With the rise of feminism in the past century, men and women alike are beginning to question the basic premise of a male-dominated society, and looking for ways to re-weave the social fabric...with some success. Indeed, perhaps enough success that we might be on the cusp of a new social transformation, moving away from the dominator model that has really only been the source of so much suffering, and toward a partnership model which values aliance and relationships more than possession and power. Unfortunately, we will be required to experience a backlash of fundamentalism for a while, as the bastions of the dominator model (monotheistic religion, communism, and capitalism) fight for their very survival.

There are disturbing bits of awareness in this book for those readers (such as myself) who have not read much in the way of feminist material. It is shocking to learn of the basic, dogmatic, written tenets of religious and contemporary philosophy (including those of St. Augustine, Marx, and Nietzsche to name a few) who directly state that the subjugation of the female sex is essential for the survival of the human species! As we watch the burka-shrouded forms of Afghani women beg in the streets of Kabul at this time, we are reminded of how real, and how insidious this objective of the dominator model truly is.

I only give this book 4 stars because there is a quality about her argument that leaves me slightly undone. Maybe it's because I, too, am a product of the old system that struggles to make the transformation. But I think it has to do with her insistance on an "absolute," i.e. that the way women would run the world is inherintly better than the way men would run the world. Her argument is founded on experience, but is therefore also limited by paradigm. The partnership models she discusses at length in the early part of her book in Neolithic times and in Minoan Crete, were systems based on the cooperation of both men and women. She acknowledges this. Yet there is this nagging sense that she insists that the virtues of such a society are the exclusive realm of the female. I am inclined to think that this is possibly a paradigm-driven bias. Such virtues are now attributed to women more than men BECAUSE of the past 6000 years of the application of the dominator model, but successful transformation is wholly dependent on a mutual transformation of both women and men to a full partnership model that benefits from the inherent strengths of BOTH men and women, not just women. For while it is nearly impossible to disagree that virtually all of the tragic events of history can be pinned to boorish, often childish, frequently violent behavior of men, that behavior is not necessarily programmed by biology so much as by socialization (of course both play a role). So to suggest that "female virtues" are inherently superior to "male qualities" is missing a big part of the picture. Men were responsible for the subjugation of women. But what other developments do we presently benefit from that sprung from the strengths of men? The key lies in her description of a "partnership," rather than on the suggestion that "one is better than the other." Truthfully, I think that this is what she intends (she is not a "man-basher"), but since her emphasis is only on the negative contributions of men, the potential for real partnership is never fully explored in this book.

That said, this is a well written, thought provoking book that, as I said at the outset, could indeed facilitate the very transformation she discusses, if people would read it, talk about it, think about it, and reflect on whether or not we as a species really think that the course we've been on is in fact a healthy one.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Riane's words needed more than ever in these dark times . .
By Janie Rezner on May 21, 2005

I'd like respond to some recent reviews that suggest Riane Eisler's work is not based on fact and that it lacks plausibility. It is quite a sweeping dismissal of a scholarly and well researched ten year work, drawing from many disciplines, from a woman whose life has been dedicated to helping us understand the mess we are in: how we got here, how violence is perpetuated, and how we can get out of it. Riane Eisler presents us with a roadmap to peace; whether we have the wisdom to understand it and respond to it is something else. Until violence against children and women has been abated there will be no peace. Violence begets violence.

Quoting from Adele Gettys "Goddess, Mother of Living Nature." "Since time immemorial our ancestors have left sacred images of the female form. From the caves of Lascaux in France to the Balkans in Eastern Europe the art and artifacts of the Paleolithic and Neolithic, which represent human's earliest myth-making impulses, indicated a deep reverence for life, and, in particular, for the Great Mother."

30,000 year old Stone Age nude figures are the first Western Goddess Representations. Twenty thousand years later, in the agricultural societies of the Neolithic (8,000----3,000 BCE) female images still predominated, indicating a remarkable, millennia-long cultural continuity. And, none were depicted with weapons. This is very important material, for to understand it means to reclaim our heritage.

In the depths of my own profound spiritual journey twenty- five years ago, awakening to the loss of the Sacred Feminine, . . . living in isolation, creating constantly . . . Riane's book came into my hands. I was amazed and heartened to learn that humanity had such a history. Like many folks, I had never heard of the Goddess or our pre-history. Barbara Walker's "The Crone" also found it's way into my hands about that time. There is Merlin Stone's well researched book, "When God Was A Woman," which fleshes out even more this picture of a harmonious, egalitarian, spiritual and immensely creative life that spanned thousands of years, before patriarchy and "father god."

The most convincing thing of all is that the religion and the temples of the Goddess, in her many names, are referred to again and again in the Bible. And, somewhere in the Koran it states, clearly with disgust, that some peoples engaged in the abomination of "worshiping women."

The research of Riane Eisler, noted anthropologist Maria Gimbutus, and more recently James DeMeo, PhD (among many, many others) drawing upon global archaeological and anthropological evidence present substantial proof that our ancient ancestors were non-violent. In his book, "Saharasia: The 4,000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World" professor DeMeo writes, "These early peoples were peaceful, unarmored, and matrist (partnership model) in character. I have concluded that there does not exist any clear, compelling or unambiguous evidence for the existence of patrism (patriarchy--dominator model) anywhere on Earth significantly prior to c.4000 BCE . . . . . . and the earliest evidence appears in specific locations, from which it first arose, diffused outward over time to infect nearly every corner of the globe."

It has been now a bit more than 2,500 years since religious myths of the sacred marriage of the Goddess and her divine lover faded from Western Cultural consciousness. Today our sacred images and myths tend to focus more on death, punishment, and pain than on sex, birth, and pleasure.

Riane writes, "One of the challenges of our time is to create for ourselves and our children images and stories of the sacred more congruent with a partnership than dominator social organization. Images and stories in which giving and receiving pleasure and caring, rather than causing or submitting to pain, occupy center stage.

For in truth we are living in a dysfunctional and antihuman system that threatens to destroy us all. At the same time, there is a new partnership system that is struggling to emerge."

In this time of regression to a harsher, more violent dominator system, Riane's wise words are needed more than ever. May we pay attention to them.

Janie Rezner, Mendocino, CA
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3.0 out of 5 stars
History or Myth? Does it Matter?
By Thomas Fulton on August 22, 1998

The Chalice and the Blade describes idyllic, Goddess-worshipping societies that Eisler believes existed several thousand years ago in eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. She presents images of agrarian villages that had no defensive fortifications because there was no war. The communities were non-violent and egalitarian. There was no hierarchy and no sexism. There was no class system or great disparities of wealth. The people were deeply spiritual and practiced free love. They were profoundly connected to the natural world. Eventually, however, aggressive warrior nomads from the east (patriarchal peoples who worshipped male sky gods destroyed these peaceful, Goddess-worshipping communities. The warrior nomads killed the men, raped the women, and took the children as slaves. The Goddess was suppressed and the patriarchy has ruled ever since.

Reisler invites the reader to mourn the loss of ancient communities, and reconnect with their underlying values. I read the book as a life-affirming myth that challenges the abusive aspects of our patriarchal traditions. The Chalice and the Blade celebrates the value of partnership, equality, collaboration, non-violence, and connectedness to nature. Eisler gives us some sense of the enormous power to heal that resides in the repressed feminine and lunar realms. However, I would offer the following cautions:

1. It is possible that Eisler has extrapolated a few scraps of evidence into a highly idealized society that didn't really exist quite as she imagines it.

2 . It is possible that Eisler's vision is pyschologically naive in the sense that everything has a dark side. If the Goddess societies existed, they would, by necessity, have a dark side.

3. It is possible that the problem with western society is not that it has a male image of divinity but that it has a one-sided, gender-specific image of divinity. Substituting a Goddess-based image might not lead to Utopia, but might bring its own set of problems. Perhaps we need images of the divine that honor both genders.

4. Eisler is a nationally known advocate of partnership models as superior forms of human interaction in contrast to "dominator" approaches. Faced with the choice of partnership or domination, the former is clearly preferable. A more neutral way of distinguishing between these two approaches would be to substitute consensus for partnership and hierarchy for domination. It is possible that each approach - consensus and hierarchy - has its own merits and drawbacks. The negative shadow of consensus systems might be passive aggression, confusion, paralysis. It is possible that when grounded with love and respect, hierarchical systems can be generative and empowering.

I suspect that humanity would best be served by a society that reveres both male and female, earth and sky, soul and spirit, hierarchy and collaboration, passion and gentleness - a social order with a pluralistic approach that reflects mythopoetic diversity and celebrates consciousness. Yet, whatever the book's shortcomings I must confess that my heart is with Eisler.
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