Exploding Another Pagan Book

During all of this calendar century so far, hardcore feminists have been trying to have it both ways at once: women are omnipotent goddesses, AND women are poor helpless victims of male oppression. Most recently, being goddesses has been pulling ahead in popularity.

But back in 1987, the contemporary dogma that any randomly-selected twelve-year-old girl can crush a 300-pound man was not yet fully entrenched in the popular culture; so the big emphasis for feminism still was women's victimhood and women's martyr-like moral superiority. This was the year when Riane Eisler, a neo-pagan author, first released a Herstory book titled "The Chalice and the Blade." Eisler's premise, naturally, was that the worship of a male deity automatically promotes violence and cruelty, while goddess-worship guarantees love and peace and idyllic equality, because women are the exclusive keepers of both justice and mercy.    

It was necessary for Mizzzzzz Eisler to be selective with her source material, in order to be sure of arriving at her predetermined conclusion. By dwelling on European and Mediterranean antiquity, she was able to report truthfully, or should we say HALF-truthfully, that peaceful agrarian cultures which worshiped fertility goddesses were indeed invaded and conquered by warlike tribes which worshiped male deities. She devoted many pages to the ancient "Kurgan invasion," and I have no cause to think that she falsified any part of this information, since it already supported her agenda. But she avoided consideration of Japan, which had the female deity Amaterasu at the top of its pre-Buddhist pantheon, and nonetheless generated plenty of bloodshed. She also avoided consideration of the Thuggees of India, who were motivated to commit ritual murders by their worship of the female deity Kali. AND she avoided consideration of all the Native American nations in which, by THEIR OWN admission, many tribeswomen delighted in horribly torturing defenseless captives.

Above all, Mizzzzzz Eisler had to rule out, a priori, any possibility that the God of the Bible ACTUALLY EXISTS. Men who believed in such a God were obviously terribly warped to have MADE UP such a nasty Supreme Being, whereas women show their superiority by-- not exactly making up, Eisler would contend, but giving a name to the presupposed female principle which "really" runs the universe.

Following this divine female principle, according to the author, will move humanity forward on the path of evolution, which of course (although Eisler herself is heterosexual) will entail complete acceptance of homosexuality.

The presumed closeness to the Goddess that is allegedly enjoyed by women, just because they ARE women, surely explains why millions of latest-version feminists have built on Eisler's premise, claiming quite literally to BE goddesses for no reason other than being female. Never in my life, not even once, have I met or heard of any man or boy who claimed that MERELY BEING MALE gave him a literal status of godhood for which women could have no equivalent.

This last fact is one which I've mentioned online before. At least one feminist has tried to deflect my real point by angrily retorting, "You're saying men are never arrogant!" No, I wasn't saying that; I was only saying that ONE SPECIFIC STYLE of arrogance, an arrogance which claims ACTUAL deity rank for one's own sex BECAUSE OF being that sex, while denying it to the other sex, has in my own anecdotal experience only ever been practiced by females.

But in 1987, Mizzzzzz Eisler was not yet pushing for New-Agey boasts of mortal women literally being goddesses. She was settling for their presumed across-the-board moral and spiritual superiority. Thus, near the end of "The Chalice and the Blade," she very justifiably complains against such abuses of women by men as when husbands throw away the family savings on drinking binges. Behaviors like this ARE evil and inexcusable, and Hell probably will be full of lost male souls who for all eternity have to suffer the same terrible pangs of starvation that they knowingly inflicted on their own wives and children. But Eisler chooses to believe that the very idea of a male-headed household INEVITABLY MUST produce these evils.

Okay, if any fans of Mizzzzzz Eisler see my words, I invite you goddess-worshipers to identify for me exactly what Bible verses declare that it's okay for a husband to starve his family so he can get drunk. I'll wait.

Note to everybody else: they won't be able to find any such verse. Mizzzzzz Eisler wants Christianity to be thought of as discredited because men who DON'T follow Jesus behave in ways CONTRARY to the Bible.

Eisler's fans, unable to find a Bible verse approving of men who starve their children for the sake of booze, will resort to the usual ploy: pointing at the Mosaic Law which, MANY CENTURIES BEFORE Jesus came, imposed some admittedly harsh penalties on women. But whatever was the reason for this ancient approach, Jesus changed it forever on the day when He rescued the adulterous woman from death.

And Jesus did not need Mizzzzzz Eisler, or any other goddess-worshiper, to introduce Him to the idea of mercy.

For a reprinting which occurred after the Soviet Union collapsed, Eisler appended an epilogue in which, like numerous feminists, she tried to discredit free enterprise right along with discrediting the Bible. Referring to the oligarchs who grabbed control of the Russian economy in the Yeltsin era, she pretends that their crookedness was representative of capitalism. What it REALLY represented was men who had already been powerful IN THE SOVIET SYSTEM, simply retaining their advantages in a new format. Their piracy WASN'T free enterprise, but Eisler expects us to believe that it proves the wrongness of free enterprise. You know, just like the way drunken husbands who AREN'T obeying the Bible, somehow prove that Biblical ways are all wrong.

At the end of this epilogue, there's an irony: Eisler happily relates how her work has found acceptance in Germany. You know, Germany, the country where, three decades after "The Chalice and the Blade" was first released, Angela Merkel has been showing her divine female wisdom..... by pampering Islamist invaders, who treat women in the very way that Riane Eisler condemns.