Chelsea Swan

The Women’s History of the World

Book by Rosalind Miles

In search of answers to my earlier questions about women and nature and where this almost innate connection originates.

Miles argues that in the beginning “God was a woman”, that 5000 years ago this was a fact that every schoolgirl knew and understood. Although in many forms the original God was female. She was nature, the universal mother, spiritual queen, the primordial. “from its emergence in the cradle land of the steppes of southern russia her worship ranged geographically throughout the mediterranean, the Indus valley and asia as far as China, to Africa and Australia.” and also “the sacred status of womanhood lasted for at least 25,000 years …..In fact there was never a time at this stage of history when woman was not special and magical”

She was linked to the mood through the menstrual cycle, she had non fatal emissions of blood, was seen as the principle food producer (women had always gathered more food than men ever hunted and men often died hunting, not very magical of them) and women also were seen as the sole creator of life. The link between her birthing new life and the earth birthing new crops was also common. “All power of nature and over nature was theirs”

She also argues women’s primary aspect as a godess was not motherhood but sexuallity “in sex she demanded man’s essence, his self, even his death” but also that “The fruitfulness of crops and animals was only ever a by product of the goddesses own personal sexual activity. Her sex was hers, the enjoyment of it hers, and as all these early accounts emphasise, when she had sex, like any other sensible female, she had it for herself”