“Goddess Remembered”, Part of the Series, “Women in Spirituality” © 1989,

National Film Board of Canada

Produced By: Margaret Pettigrew

Directed by: Donna Read

Distributed by: Wellspring Media, Inc.

Wow, those puff sleeves and hairstyles! The 80s, I have to love them. Look at the difference 20 years make in social mores. Now think about what 2,000 years may mean, and 20,000 years, and even further back. This documentary pays tribute to the goddess-worshiping religions of the ancient past. With its dinner-party format, I expected Judy Chicago to make an appearance. It would have been great to see every woman – Starhawk, Merlin Stone, Jean Bolen and others – sitting in the place of a goddess. By 1979, Chicago had represented places for 39 famous mythical and historical women throughout history. By 1989, “The Dinner Party” had been running for a decade. It strikes me as a serious omission, although I did appreciate the goddess statue as a focal point on the table.

The “Goddess Remembered” dinner theme seemed appropriate as women have historically grown, collected, prepared and shared food, particularly in a social setting. (I don’t see why it couldn’t have been men and women who domesticated the animals.) The viewer could see that these particular women are all highly intelligent “heavyweights” in the goddess stratosphere. And they haven’t been loafing around for the last 20 years.

Jean Shinoda Bolen is the woman who said that when she was giving birth she felt horizontally united in time to all the women who had been, and that “nothing had prepared me for this. It hurt!” Bolen is an author, Jungian analyst, and activist. She has written many books that feminists would be familiar with, including Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Quest for the Sacred Feminine, Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes for Women, and The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World. Her Millionth Circle, she explains, is a tool she uses as “an advocate for women’s circles with a sacred center as a means to reach a critical mass tipping point to bring women’s wisdom to the world.”

Starhawk is also the author of many works celebrating the Goddess movement, including her latest, The Earth Path, which talks about the root of our environmental destructiveness and tells readers how to reconnect with Earth. She describes herself as “an activist and trainer for peace, the environment and global justice, a designer and teacher of permaculture, a pagan and a witch.” Interestingly, she and Donna Read, director of “Goddess Rememented”, have co-produced a documentary on the life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, titled “Signs Out of Time.”

Merlin Stone, a sculptor and professor of art history, became interested in archeology while studying ancient art. In 1976 he wrote a book called When God Was a Woman, which delves into the matriarchal and matrilineal social structures that were suppressed by Judaism and Christianity. Her other book, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, (1990) is a collection of stories, myths, and prayers about the goddess.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at a gathering of such powerful women. I would have liked to see the name and title of each woman, each time she appeared on the screen; this would have been a nice way for viewers to get acquainted with who these women are, but the credits weren’t released until the end of the movie, which I found strange.

The women and Olympia Dukakis, the film’s narrator, discussed many diverse and interesting points. They talked about how the serpent was a symbol of healing and prophecy. They spoke of Malta, the Greek island that is the oldest known repository of the goddess culture. The people of Malta are now predominantly Catholic.

All the women seemed to share the point of view of Luisa Teish, who said that she had rejected the notion of the “Great Bearded White Man in Heaven”. She laughed, “I hung up with Mary!” Later she also said something meaningful to all women: “I am the ancestor of tomorrow.”

Crete was mentioned as a place where people had studied astronomy, mapping the stars, and keeping records. Women could have sea captains and chariot drivers, if they so wished. The creation of art was highly esteemed and in this peaceful society no evidence of inequality between men and women had been found. No personal mark was ever found on a work of art. Minoan Crete is the place where the worship of the goddess was intact for the longest period of time.

The Golden Age of Greece marked the beginning of the power of men and the end of that of women. Warrior cults came to the fore at that time and later, rampaging across the Earth and exploiting its treasures. Greece once had beautiful trees and vegetation. These were cut down to produce warships, and when the trees fell; the sand takes over. The place formerly known as Eden is now a dry and desolate land.

The claim that old Europe was woman-centered, cooperative, and non-violent seems to be a bone of contention (self-proclaimed feminist Cynthia Eller, among many others, makes a case against it).

Below is a recent review of “Goddess Rememented” that I found on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com):

Unfounded Claims Abound …, May 10, 2007

Author: United States thorn101 – (Charles Sheaffer)

This movie is full of blatant nonsense and pseudoscientific nonsense. Various claims are made in the film that have no scientific or archaeological basis, and are mere assumptions or the result of faulty logic (and illusion).

Claims like (supposedly) Old European Goddess worship was an egalitarian and woman-centered society. It was cooperative, non-hierarchical, and non-violent. This is not true, many fortified prehistoric settlements have been found in Europe indicating the presence of wars.

David Anthony, assistant professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, said there is also evidence of weapons, including some used as symbols of status and human sacrifice, hierarchy and social inequality. There is also no evidence that women played a central role, either in the social structure or in the religion of old Europe.

The Lengyel and Tiszapolgar cemeteries indicate that fighting, hunting, and trading were male activities, because men were buried with flint tools, weapons, animal bones, and copper tools. The pottery was probably made by women and used mainly by them in domestic activities. This is reflected in ceramic finds with female remains. Also, no domestic or wild animals are associated with female burials.

Claims that satellite photographs have shown that the Neolithic Goddess monoliths “are all on power lines, criss-crossing the earth” is pure pseudoscience. There are no such things as “power lines” that cross the earth. Also scholars are now disputing the identification of Neolithic megaliths with any cult called “Goddess”.

The movie contains many more unsubstantiated claims.

Overall, this is a good movie to watch at a girls’ night out sleepover as you honor your inner goddess with copious amounts of chocolate. The reality is that this mockumentary has no place in women’s studies, anthropology or archeology, and I am horrified to see that it is still taken so seriously.

Interesting, huh? It reminds me of an old Shakespeare quote, “The man protests too much.” I know that neither he nor I were about 20,000 years old, so I think his argument is moot.

I would say that the main theme of “Goddess Remembered” is how women and nature are one. “As a species, we do not separate ourselves from nature,” is something Charlene Spretnak said, and I think she is right. It really comes down to this equation:

Women = Nature (illustrated by caves, snakes, water, etc.)

Man vs. Nature (which pits man against woman)

Until Man honors and respects Nature and therefore Woman, our downward spiral into oblivion through war and the destruction of the Earth, will carry us all together down that swift and vengeful river. And that would, in fact, be the end of his and hers story.