To be a girl today is awesome. For the first time in recorded history, you, as a teenage girl, have the difficult task—and the glorious opportunity—of defining for yourself the woman you will one day become.
For thousands of years women in our culture have been defined according to their roles in relationship to men—not by who they themselves were as individuals. For example, here’s a popular little poem from the 1950s:
Mother, daughter, sister, wife;
You’ll always be known
By the men in your life.
The name for this system of basing a woman’s identity on the men in her life is patriarchy. In a patriarchal system the balance of power between men and women is skewed; men—and in our dominant religions, a single male deity—hold virtually all the power. As a teen girl you’ve no doubt already experienced many aspects of our male-dominated, patriarchal culture—in school, on the sports field, even at home. Since the feminist movement began in the 1970s, women have gained some ground—some have become senators and corporate heads, and more careers have opened up to women. But the underlying assumption that men have a right to more of the power hasn’t really gone away. If a woman ran for president right now, she’d only stand an outside chance of winning, simply because she wasn’t a man. See what I mean?
The world hasn’t always been this way, though. Some thirty thousand years ago the Goddess reigned supreme over all of Earth’s peoples. In that “once-upon-a-time” era, people who were genetically similar to those of us living today celebrated the Great Goddess as their all-encompassing deity. There was nothing supernatural about Her. She was simply Nature and All There Is—giver of life, protector, wisdom teacher, and renewer of life through death.
The Goddess-worshiping cultures had a female-centered way of life—women held prominent positions in these societies, owned property in their own right, and were in charge of social relationships. Because of their power to give birth, women were associated with the Goddess—giver of all life—and were accorded the utmost respect. At the same time, there was a good balance of power between men and women. Though these early societies were mother-centered, they were not mother- ruled. Men were considered equally important and given their due. Unlike the patriarchal cultures that have dominated recent history, the Goddess cultures were egalitarian.
Now, as teen girls, you stand on the brink of an uncertain tomorrow. Even though we are making mind-boggling technological progress, our world is in trouble. A lack of respect for the balance of nature, and for an equal balance of power between men and women, has brought us to the brink of disaster. The good news is that you have the power to make changes in this unbalanced system that cheats women and hurts our Earth.
Today’s girls are approaching a new Golden Age, which they alone can create. And how is this to be achieved? By a return to the Goddess in every girl. One by one, as each of you understands and acknowledges your uniquely feminine Self as your rightful heritage, a great power shift will occur all over the world.
The Great Goddess: This term is used to indicate the One Goddess who, at the dawn of civilization, was the supreme deity in an essentially feminine Universe that She created. Essentially nameless, She was the single progenitor of “All There Is.” She bestowed gifts such as agriculture, knowledge of herbs for healing, the arts and architecture, fire and its use and preservation, the making of pottery, tools, and jewelry, among many other blessings to humankind.
The Goddess: This is a short form of The Great Goddess.
The Great Mother: This is the Goddess in her aspect as Mother of all things, as bringer of life and receiver of the dead. She is the maternal aspect of the Great Goddess and is especially known as Mother Earth, or the Earth Mother, and as such She has been given many different names by different cultures.
The Goddess is ready to return. She is waiting for you to open the door that was locked against her centuries ago. The time is now. It is your time. And it won’t come again. You must act as if your life depended on it—for in truth, all our lives depend on each and every girl recognizing the Goddess in herself.
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, what you look like, how much you weigh, what your parents do, whether you are rich or poor, popular or not—you have the power of the Goddess within you. You only have to let it free!
We learn to live consciously through becoming aware of inner and outer events as they are happening. Building a conscious self means becoming increasingly aware of inner events, bodily events, and interpersonal events. A conscious self is able to experience in full awareness all the distinctly different components of the self, including feelings, needs, drives, and values. A conscious self lives consciously.
Gershen Kaufman
and Lev Raphael,
The Dynamics of Power