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Nature And Feminine Mind
‘Matriarchies are not just a reversal of patriarchies, with women ruling over men — as the usual misinterpretation would have it. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies. They are based on maternal values: care-taking, nurturing, mothering. This holds for everybody: for mothers and those who are not mothers, for women and men alike…
But such a societal system as matriarchy could not function as a whole without a deep, supporting and all-permeating spiritual attitude. At the spiritual and cultural level, matriarchal societies do not have hierarchical religions based on an omnipotent male God. In matriarchies, divinity is immanent, for the whole world is regarded as divine: as feminine divine. This is evident in the widely held concept of the universe as the Great Goddess who brought forth everything by birth, and of the earth as the Great Mother who created everything living. And everyone, and everything, is endowed with divinity by virtue of being a child of the Great Mother Nature.
In such a culture, everything is spiritual. In festivals, which follow the cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life, everything is celebrated. There is no separation between sacred and secular, so the everyday tasks also have ritual significance. In this sense matriarchal societies are sacred ones.
