—Carol F. Thomas
This book is lovingly dedicated to Merlin Stone—ardent feminist, artist, sculptor, art historian, persistent, tireless, and courageous traveler, researcher, writer, lecturer, and speaker. Merlin traveled the globe, alone, gathering material to explicate and illuminate what many scholars, psychologists, and historians have called “the biggest hoax” in the universe—the Adam and Eve creation story and the continuing biblical accounts of patriarchy, male dominance, and superiority and mastery as dictated by a father god. Although Stone’s observations were formulated in the context of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, she asks an enduring question in the preface to her first book, When God Was a Woman: “How did it actually happen? How did men initially gain the control that now allows them to regulate the world in matters as vastly diverse as deciding which wars will be fought … to what time dinner should be served?” (Stone, xi).
In contemporary American culture, a majority of the population continues to believe in a divine father god who protects them, rewards their behavior, and provides them with a heavenly and eternal life. It was Merlin Stone who, through her hands-on archeological evidence and anthropological findings, revealed that there was an extremely complex socio-religious structure in which women were seen to be the autonomous creators of new life.
Mary Daly published Beyond God the Father in 1973. She, along with other authors who called patriarchy into question, were part of a growing movement that encouraged Stone’s research to document just how much of our human history has been suppressed. Stone proved that the earliest civilizations considered the woman divine in her role as Goddess and mother of the world. The Goddess was understood to be the sacred, sole creator of human life; she was honored and revered. Later, when male-worshipping religions developed, they sought to erase from history the feminine leadership, perspective, and values that had existed for at least eight thousand years.
As Gloria F. Orenstein explains in her introductory essay for Merlin Stone Remembered, Merlin definitively established that there were earlier matrilineal communities. The patriarchs, with their need for male dominance, competition, and tribal warfare, reduced women in every respect, rendering them disenfranchised, unwanted “others.” Though much progress has been made since Merlin wrote her groundbreaking books, male “mastery” still continues to this day in corporate and religious institutions.
In her exhumation of women’s history, Stone illuminates the crucially important female contributions to the development of humanity that patriarchy has attempted to obliterate. Where is the desire to create nonviolent communities, countries, nations, and peoples? What happened to the wisdom, stateswomanship, intuition, understanding, nurturing, and love that were evidenced in matriarchal societies?
In 1976, Merlin Stone completed a thorough and extensive investigation to discern if the human condition was doomed to the ongoing delusions of divine male protection. Stone’s research suggests another way—a way to understand our relation to ourselves, one another, and the planet Earth. The planet—skies, water, soil, and all its inhabitants—is in jeopardy. We need a new origin story inclusive of innovative visions of science, spirituality, human community, and especially gender equality.
At a time when our planet is threatened by various destructive forces, Merlin Stone offers an invitation to discover the tragic transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. There is an alternative way to understand the human condition—cooperative, compassionate, mutually respectful, creative, and inclusive—rewriting the biblical script.
Merlin Stone, long before anyone else dared to suggest that our planet and our very lives were in danger, submitted the need for the gathered wisdom of women of the world to transform our cultures with true planetary and ecological consciousness. Her core values focused on wisdom, knowledge, the tools and paths to autonomy, freedom from oppression, and the courage and conviction to claim one’s own voice based on life experiences. May this book remind you of the Goddess in all her diverse manifestations and bring you to an even greater appreciation of the work of Merlin Stone.