Fertility cult revisited

[blazeofglory]

I have read some articles on Fertility cult.I felt that there is something that can interest us and I hope many here come up with a lot of stuff on the subject. As far I knew that the arrival of Judaism and Christianity have totally annihilated Paganism. Paganism never had a discriminatory opinion against the female the way. Female and male were equally important and in fact in pre-patriarchal society the role of mother was definably higher than father.

I will go into it in more detail but now I want how others view Fertility cult

[Niamh]

Neo-pagan religions mainly grew in the victorian period of the 19th and have become popular alternative religions to Abrahamic religions. I wouldnt necessarily call them cults.

[stlukesguild]

I have read some articles on Fertility cult.I felt that there is something that can interest us and I hope many here come up with a lot of stuff on the subject. As far I knew that the arrival of Judaism and Christianity have totally annihilated Paganism. Paganism never had a discriminatory opinion against the female the way. Female and male were equally important and in fact in pre-patriarchal society the role of mother was definably higher than father.

I remember reading a book on pre-historic art a good many years ago which explored the position of the male and female in the society as mirrored in the art work. The author suggested with strong historical arguments that the shift was owed largely to the two main events associated with "civilization": the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. In a society without agriculture and the domestication of animals a large majority of the efforts of each member of society are expended upon sustenance. Hunting was largely relegated to the stronger and faster males, while the females were involved more with gathering of fruits, nuts, roots, and vegetables and their preparation. As a result survival was owed equally to men an women... and considering the success rate of primitive hunters... women were responsible for more of the caloric intake than the men. When one adds to this what must have seemed the miraculous ability of women to give birth to children, it is little surprising that many hunter-gatherer cultures were matriarchal.

With the development of agriculture and then the domestication of animals, the balance shifted greatly... to the point where men were responsible for virtually the whole production of sustenance. It is at this point that patriarchal religions arise. The author of the book in question further suggested that a notion of a patriarchal God may have been something of a response to the fact that the ability of women to bear children still made them venerated. A male God offered the suggestion that while earthly existence is owed to women, heavenly or spiritual birth/rebirth is owed to a male God.

[MarkBastable]

Female and male were equally important and in fact in pre-patriarchal society the role of mother was definably higher than father.


Wait, wait. Were they equally important, or was one higher than the other?

Or are you saying that childless men and childless women were equal, but women with children had higher status than men with children? And if that's so, how did parents of either sex stand in relation to all childless people, regardless of sex?

And how did this importantness manifest itself, practically? And how do we know?

And given that pre-Christian paganism was not really an organised or formalised religion - or even recognisable at the time as a cohesive idea that would have been recognised by those whom we now identify in that way - how can we say that anything we believe we know about some of them can be applied to all of them?

And what was the question again?

[OrphanPip]

An acquaintance of mine doing her PhD. in evolutionary psychology has offered me a similar explanation of early human society as that presented by Stlukes.

It seems that patrilineality (inheritance through the male line, and thus male patriarchy) is largely a result of the agricultural revolution. You have to have a concept of property ownership and inheritance before you can start oppressing people in an organized fashion. This is supported anthropologically by the fact that the few matrilineal societies we have encountered, like Quebec Algonquin natives, are usually semi-nomadic. The Algonquins are an interesting rare example of a female dominated society. Interestingly, child rearing was done communally by all the women in the village. A father had little interaction with his own child, and the women's relationships were polyamorous. French explorers were obviously mortified.

[blazeofglory]

Fertility culture had great importance primitively. For in those days even acts of conjugacy were performed to please their deities. And of course some tribal communities far from this modern civilization exist even today wherein fertility cult is in practice.

[JuniperWoolf]

Not too far away. Shamanism is pretty big where I live (there are a lot of natives), and of course modern witchcraft is really everywhere in modern society if you look for it (there are at least two witches on this forum, and there are quite a few people with pantheistic beliefs). Pantheism's really making a comeback. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it, to worship nature and the sun; you can clearly see that the sun and earth are providing you with food, light, water, life, etc.