Why did Martin love this book?
World
myths have intrigued me since my teenage years and in various forms have
underscored much of my fiction. The exclusion of the goddess from modern
religion and culture and its many ramifications is something I have explored
in my novels, albeit set in an imagined world.
Returning to the topic recently, certainly one of the most comprehensive books on the topic I’ve read is The Myth of the Goddess. It’s a painstakingly researched, scholarly but highly accessible exploration and deep investigation into the many (yet essentially one) goddess figures of ancient cultures. It carries us from the Paleolithic age through the emerging cultures of Crete, Sumeria, Egypt, Babylon, Greece and more, to the advent of Judaeo-Christian monotheism, the assembling of the patriarchal superstructure, the Gnostic Sophia, the Catholic cult of Mary and western civilization’s consequent disconnection from the natural world.
It’s a hefty tome but is engagingly and…
1 author picked The Myth of the Goddess as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A comprehensive, scholarly accessible study, in which the authors draw upon poetry and mythology, art and literature, archaeology and psychology to show how the myth of the goddess has been lost from our formal Judeo-Christian images of the divine. They explain what happened to the goddess, when, and how she was excluded from western culture, and the implications of this loss.