SatNaam SatGuru SatSangat Jeeo,
Dandauth bandhna ji
We watched a documentary called "Divine Women" on BBC TV a few weeks ago. It was very interesting to see how religious people have viewed women over the last 12,000 years and how it still effects people now.
They found stone statues of goddesses from 12,000 to 7,000 years ago in Europe. Some were beautiful and big from the front (representing life and prospertity), but like a skeleton from the back (representing death). They said that these are the earliest known human settlements. And these people seemed to believe in godessess. Why? Because the most important thing (desire) for these people was survival which depended on their crops succeeding and the women giving birth to healthy children. Crops would fail and one in two babies would die in childbirth. The Earth and Women were seen as similar - both had the power of life and death in their hands. Hence godesses were worshipped as they could give healthy children and good crops.
The Greeks then adopted these goddesses and renamed them, made more mythical stories and every single person at that time would be haevily influenced by worshipping of gods and godesses. The Greeks believed that Gaia was the goddess who created everything including all of the other gods. Her grandson was Zeus the great warrior and dispenser of firm justice. Overtime, the needs (desires) of the Greeks changed from survival to protecting their land, wealth, and civilisation. As humans had gone beyond just surviving in villages, they ahd become vast empires, and other empires were trying to take over them, the Greeks decided they needed a god of war - so Zeus became even more important to them than Gaia. And in their society as well women became second class citizens. The life bearing qualities they had, were not considered as divine qualities anymore.
The Romans also incorporated these gods and goddesses renaming them and worshipping whichever one would give them what they wanted. They also worshipped the male powerful gods and women in society did not have an important place. however, things changed when rome was under attack from Hannibal, the emperor was desperate and told the scholars to find out how they could win. The scholars studied the old texts and found there had been a female oracle (fortune teller) who had written that if rome was attacked in future then the Romans should call upon a particular female godesses. The scholars told the emperor and they had a hge ceremony and prayed to that godess and they won the battle. After that, the goddess was celebtrated every year in rome and she gained a high place. Even priestess were kept at her temple and they were the only highly revered women in Roman society - they had to keep the holy fire burning day and night for hundreds of years and remain as virgins.
However, things were not looking good for women in Europe. When the Roman Emperor Constantine was struggling to control his vast Roman Empire, he realised he needed one set of beliefs to unite the people in order to control them. his mother had converted to Christianity and he declared Christianity as the new religion. They got rid of the gods and godesses. However, the people were used to worshipping goddesses and then cult of the Virgin Mary appeared - "The mother of God" - they made her into a godess and made the stories to go along with it. Then the Bishop called Saint Augstine came up with the concept of the orginal sin, where he said that the story of adam and eve showed that women are the temptress. He himself had had a very lustful youth and then become celibate as a monk and must have seen women as the root of evil. Early christian history was re-written after that to block out references to women , who had actually been the first preachers of the new religion and had set up most of the early Christian churches. Even now, 1700 years later, the Catholic church is so against women becoming priests. We also see that in all other organised religion, including Sikhism (even though Baba Nanak broke out of it, still in practical life we that women are kept as second class citizens and men having the direct connection to God.)
So in Europe were women were once revered as being divine and even given godess status as life and death came from them and prosperity of the community depended on women, once men took over then war gods and Christianity stamped all that out, making women into being lesser then men.
The presenter then went to India and showed how godesses are still being revered, celebrated and a central part of many hindu communities. She also visited China were a prostitute, Wu Zetian, ended up marrying the Emperor and became Emperoress after him. She used Buddhism to increase her own status as being divine, and people worshipped her. But after that her name has also been almost wiped from history as male dominance came to rule.
The thing to realise is that gods and godesses are worshipped by people to fulfill their particular desires (survial, winning war etc). And also that organised religions have had the desire for men to be in charge and for men to have the connection to God, so they have used the fear of god to make women into second class citizens.
Naam bina jag kamalaa firay - without Naam the whole world goes around crazy - Gurbani.
We are all so fortunate that we have Satnaam, but we all have to make efforts to drive our prejudice that we have in our community and religions against women.
God bless all.
Preeto.
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