By Maureen Murdock
Published in Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, 2012
The work of Marija Gimbutas has been crucial to the growth of feminist spirituality, feminist religious scholarship, feminist psychology, and the liberating implications that the existence of a goddess tradition can bring to women everywhere. Whatever the reactions to Gimbutas’ theories, it is important to acknowledge the larger implications of the idea of an embodied sacred feminine that preceded patriarchy. As Charlene Spretnak writes:
“Gimbutas’ work, which was illuminated by her sensitivity to spiritual matters and to sculptures of all eras, has radical implications for the history of both Western religion and Western philosophy. In each of those fields, the early belief systems and schools are not seen to be bridge traditions. That is, the attention in both the Greek “mystery cults” (demeaned as pre-Christian pagan irrationalism) and the pre-Socratic philosophers to unitive dimensions of being and a cosmological wholeness was an attempt to preserve the remnants of Old European wisdom (Spretnak, 1997, pp. 403-404).”
Gimbutas’ work helps us entertain the hope that the oppression of patriarchy did not always exist. If a culture did exist in peace approximately 8,000 years ago, prior to the Indo-Europeans, that would certainly be a model of a mythos and psychology for the 21st century.