Summary of this groundbreaking book on the alternative models of domination and cooperation throughout the past centuries. Enlightening.

1. The chalice and the blade

2. Imagine if, for once, we would
transcend conventional polarities of
men vs women supremacy…
• We could identify two basic models of
society:
– dominator model (patriarchy or matriarchy)
– partnership model (equalitarian and
collaborative)
• And throughout history, we have oscillated
in between the two models.

3. We would then debunk the
traditional myths…
• War has been here forever.
• Man is supposed to dominate.
• Look at prehistoric time, we have always
lived in a patriarchy.
• Male physical superiority explains their
superiority in society.
• All important early technological
discoveries have been made by man
hunting or man warrior for effective killing.

4. It was not always like this
• There have been societies in which
difference was not necessarily equated
with inferiority or superiority…

5. Equality between the sexes was
the general norm in the Neolithic
• Key point: discovery of sites of Catal Huyuk and Hacilar (Turkey)
• Evidence of gynocentric religion in Neolithic times
• Pre-patriarchal society was remarkably equalitarian.
• No mayor difference between the houses. No glaring social inequalities.
Priestesses and priests. Linking rather than ranking.
• Neither was subordinate to the other: by complementing one another, their
power was doubled.
• Genitals of both men and women showed by clothes: pleasure bond. More
natural attitudes towards sex. Use of contraceptives.
• Reduced aggressiveness through free and well-balanced sexual life
• Greater male physical strength was not the basis for social oppression.
• Technologies of destruction were not important social priorities for the
farmers of European Neolithic age.
• From Old European sedentary horticulturalists, no fortifications or
weapons, peaceful coexistence, egalitarian to herding units, stock breeding
and grazing.

6. In this world of peace and creativity,
women were self confident
• Religion supports and perpetuates the social
organization it reflects.
• In societies where supreme Goddess was
perceived as wise provider, women would
internalize a very different self image.
• They would see themselves as competent,
independent, creative, inventive.
• Predominator mind recognized its oneness
with nature, interconnected life system.

7. No sign of warfare in over 15
centuries
• In Neolithic art: no imagery idealizing armed
might, cruelty or violence-based power
• No military fortifications
• Everywhere in art: symbols of nature, serpents
and butterflies as symbols of metamorphosis,
• Primary purpose of life was not to conquer and
loot but to cultivate earth and provide material
and spiritual for a satisfying life.
• Prevailing paradigm: We assume (cf 2001) that
metals were first and foremost used as weapons.
• Not true: Neolithic people used weapons for
ornamental and religious purposes.

8. Crete: The Archaeological
Bombshell
• Technologically advanced and socially complex ancient culture of
Minoan Crete
• Starts in 6.000 BCE, colony of immigrants from Anatolia brought the
Goddess and settled down in Crete
• A unique civilization with no signs of war.
• Nicolas Platon: “The fear of death was almost obliterated by the
ubiquitous joy of living."
• Jacquetta Hawkes: Absence of idea of a warrior monarch
triumphing in humiliation and slaughter of the enemy
• No scenes of battles or hunting.
• Power was not equated with dominance, destruction and
oppression.
• Power was a responsibility and represented the interests of people.
• Proves that the city-state does not require warfare or hierarchism or
subjugation of women

9. Which legacy do we have now
from this former order?
• It is women with offspring who developed new gathering
technology, domestication of plants and animals: key
invention for civilization to evolve.
• Foundation of social organization.
• Invention of agriculture by goddess.
• Association of serpent with goddess as healing and
prophecy.
• Actually a best kept historical secret: material and social
technologies fundamental to civilization were developed
before the imposition of dominator society.
• So many influences today from Old Europe civilization.

10. Yet, our memory is very short
• We only remember the past 3.000 years of
dominator system.
• But the partnership system of the Paleolithic
dates back over 30.000 years!
• Neolithic age of agriculture revolution is over
10.000 years ago.
• Catal Huyuk was built 8.500 years ago.
• And Crete fell only 3.200 years ago…

11. And we have been influenced by the
biases of the archeological findings
• Archeology only dates from 1800.
• Mostly male scholars who imprinted their patriarchal vision to their findings.
• No written accounts from before 3.000BC.
• Traditional view of Paleolithic art as primarily primitive hunting magic can
be seen as a projection of stereotypes rather than logical interpretation of
what is seen.
• Interpreted the Goddess religion as a simplistic fertility cult .
• Thought that if it isn’t patriarchy, it must be matriarchy. Mistake.
• In spite of the archeological evidence of an alternative model, it was
massively ignored.
• Did not fit with the idea the scholars had and wanted to provide.
• You see what you want to see.
• Scholars denied this reality as much as Darwin denied the existence of
black or women pharaohs because it did not fit the idea of white male
supremacy.
• The invisibility of the obvious.

12. From the chalice to the blade
• Cataclysmic turnpoint in the prehistoric of Western
civilization.
• Pivotal branching from the chalice to the blade, from
the power to give life to the power to take life
• Blade: technologies designed to destroy and
dominate
• Story of how original partnership direction of Western
culture veered off into a bloody five-thousand-year
dominator detour
• Central religious image passed from a woman giving
birth to a man dying on a cross, from love of life to
fear of death.

13. And then came the chaos
• Dark order out of chaos: the massive shift
• Invasion from nomadic peripheral bands
• Chaos: 2.000 years of darkness
• Disruption starts in 5.000 years BCE from Kurgans
(Indo Europeans admired by Nietzsche and Hitler)
and Hebrews
• Caste of warrior priests
• The one thing they had in common: a dominator
model of social organization where male
dominance and violence were the norms.

14. Cataclysmic norm-changes
• Weapons, daggers, axes start to appear as
sacred
• Glorification of lethal power: this is the beginning
of slavery.
• Violent reduction of women as mere male
possessions
• Radical shift in social organization with a
strongman at the top
• Appropriation by men of important religious
symbols once associated with women in the
worship of the Goddess (Pig was sacred
companion of the Goddess of Regeneration)

15. Truncation of Civilization
• Gimbutas: “Millenial traditions were
truncated"
• Archeological landscape of Old Europe
traumatically altered
– Armed man on horse as living war machine
– Weapons increasingly appear in excavations
– Evidence of social stratification
– Physical devastation
– Cultural impoverishment
– Destruction of Crete

16. The fall of Crete 3.000 years ago
marks the end of an era
• Invasions started 4.300 BCE
• In Anatolia where was Catal Huyuk, Hittites (an Indo
European people) took over
• Not only was the Goddess no longer supreme, she was also
being transformed into a patroness of war.
• Chronic warfare became the norm
• Peak of chaos between 1500 and 100 BCE: extent of
barbarity, refugees
• Was it the tale of Atlantis? The forgotten civilization? The
golden race?
• Myth of garden of Eden: allegoric representation of Neolithic)
• And then Cain and Abel fight?

17. Metallurgy and male supremacy
• Friedrich Engels, “The origin of family, private
property and the state”
– First link between emergence of hierarchies and
private property with domination of men over
women
– That Copper and bronze metallurgy radically
redirected the course of evolution in Europe and
Asia Minor.
– “The historical defeat of female sex” linked to
domestication of animals by gathering-hunting
people
• Has to be relativized.

18. Clash between matriarchal and
patriarchal cultures
• Athena declaring for male supremacy
• Women’s old powers driven underground
• Children name related to father
• Socialized with the name of the father
• People of Israel perceived as children of
God the Father

19. Words of myths are designed to influence
and alter people’s view of the reality
• Centralized and homogeneous control
over sacred stories by priesthoods
• Thousands of years of relentless
indoctrination
• Burning and persecution of heretics,
spiritual education backed up by armies,
courts of law and executioners

20. Mother-murder is not a crime

21. The Metamorphosis of the myth
• Remaking of sacred stories with androcratic
invasions
• “Re-mything” up to 400 BCE when Hebrew
priests last rewrote the Hebrew Bible
• Blueprint for a Theocratic state: former gospels
became apocryphs, patching process,
contradictions
• A serpent, an ancient prophetic symbol of the
Goddess, advises Eve the prototypical woman to
disobey male god’s command: was a clear
warning to avoid the still persistent worship of the
Goddess.

22. To consolidate power of new ruling elites,
patriliny would replace matriliny
• History began to be written from androcentric perspective.
• Invasions of 12 Hebrew tribes: denial of the feminine,
goddess completely absent from Bible.
• Birthday of Jesus usurpation of festivals once associated
with worship of goddesses at winter solstice
• What you don’t see does not exist.
• Indo Europeans like Hebrews dominated by extremely violent
and war like men
• Priestly elite rewrote myth and history to solidify their
dominant position.
• Sacred literature maintains us imprisonedin dominator
system.

23. New religious laws only made by men
• Knowledge is bad, birth is dirty and death is holy.
• Don’t think. Do not use your own intelligence. For if you do, the punishment
will be horrible indeed.
• Daring to seek independent knowledge much worse than killing or raping.
• A woman who behaves as a sexually and economically free person is a
threat to the entire social and economic fabric of a rigidly male-dominated
society.
• Laws of women sexuality to protect economic transactions between men.
• When manservant was set free, wife and children remained master’s
property.
• Half of humanity could be legally handed over to be raped, beaten, tortured
or killed.
• cf offering of 2 virgin daughters of Lot to mob

24. Yet, the love of the Goddess was
still embedded in people
• Long after Hebrew invasions, people of
Canaan were still worshipping the
goddess
• Even after invasions, people were still
longing for peace and freedom and
goddess rites were a constant threat:
dream of a lost age.

25. Myth: European history begins with the
earliest records of Indo European or
Aryan culture from Homer or Hesiod
• No mention of Crete. as if nothing existed before.
• We need deprogrammation from our genetically
transmitted race memory (Freud and Jung).
• Chaos: Greek dark age and then emergence of
classical Greek greatly influenced by former
civilization (cyclic vision, political equality,
Pythagoras as a feminist, Plato advocacy of
education of women)

26. Ancient Greece: massive
deterioration of status of women
• Women lose right to vote, shift from matriliny to patriliny
• Imposition of androcracy marked the end of true democracy
• Before, women headed philosophical schools like Arete of
Cyrene, poet Sappho of Lesbos
• Misogynistic satires from Aristophanes: Lisystrata (women
withold sexual favors to stop wars)
• Use of ridicule or trivialization or simply not including data
about women is characteristic of most Greek histories
• Women WERE active but stories have been forgotten
• Greek women had a sense of female identity and
empowerment that many women lack in Western cultures.

27. Greece was built on a dominator
system
• Greek mythology: cruel and barbarian Zeus maintaining
supremacy and raping goddesses and mortal women
• Sentencing to death of Socrates for corrupting youth:
supports education of women, challenge to the system
• Human rankings are based on force, therefore natural.
• Aristotle in Politics:
– Some are meant to rule and others to be ruled
– Foundations of androcratic philosophy
– Slaves ruled by men, women by men, the rest violates natural
order

28. Jesus as the first challenge to
androcratic rule
• Proclaimed spiritual equality of all: you are all one in Christ Jesus
• Was Jesus a feminist?
• Vision of liberation of society through replacement of androcratic with gylanic values
• Elevate feminine virtues of compassion, gentleness and love, non violence
• Mary Magdalene key, first to see him after his death
• Women were Christian leaders, many meetings in women’s houses
• Masculine values of dominance and conquest shall be replaced by softer set of values
• Powerful challenge to the norms of a dominator society
• Mary Magdalene was one of the most important figures in the early Christian movement.
• Gospel of Mary: challenged Peter after the death
• Early Christians threatened the growing power of the fathers of the church and challenge male
dominated family
• Threat to Hebrew and Roman Authorities, question existing family traditions, disrespect
• Other challenges to androcratic system such as slave rebellion
• One of the major heresies of the apocryphal gospels is returning to preandrocentric conception
of powers that rule universe in feminine form

29. But the pendulum swinged back
• The gylanic challenge to bloody dominator society failed
• Despite previous activity of Christian women, by the year 200, the
majority of Christian communities endorsed the letter of Timothy
and anti feminist element of Paul’s views: silence, submissiveness
• No more women leadership admitted.
• Most of Sappho’s works burnt by Christian Zealots.
• Something went terribly wrong with Christianity’s original gospel of
love.
• Chaos of breakdown of Rome, New era took form and Christianity
became an androcratic religion.
• Roman Empire replaced by Holy Roman Empire
• By 200 CE, Christianity became the hierarchical and violence based
system Jesus has rebelled against.
• Christian bishops once victimized by police now commanded them.

30. Jesus revolution of non violence
converted into rule by force and terror.
• by 200, all feminine imagery for God had disappeared from orthodox
tradition: total purge of the gospels.
• Later on anything not blessed by Church was inexistent.
• First Christian emperor Constantine boiled his wife alive and murdered his
own son
• 391 CE: Theodosius burns Alexandria’s library, one of the last repositories
of ancient wisdom and knowledge
• And with Saint Cyril, he hacked to pieces with oyster shells Hypatia of
Alexandria famous mathematician and astronomer (had presumed to teach
men).
• Savagery of Crusades, witch hunts, inquisition, book burnings, people
burnings to spread repression, devastation and death
• Witch craze, well ordered procedures, executed by church and state
• Pathologically misogynistic view of women
• Justification of male dominance
• Distortion and perversion of Jesus’ teachings
• Christianity became a powerful way of maintaining that order

31. History will then swing between gylanic
ascendancy and androcratic regression
• Cyclical alternation
• Historical swings between sexually
permissive to sexually repressive attitudes,
same as between freer, more creative and les
creative periods.
• Next gylanic resurgence:
– Troubadour in Southern France
– Eleanor d’Aquitaine, powerful woman
– Veneration of Mary and feast of Immaculate
Conception

32. Recurrent gylanic surges threaten to
overturn father’s authority
• Common threads between Cathars, Baghards,
Troubadours, Renaissance
• Sign that pendulum is about to swing back: revival of
misogynist dogmas and myths in litterature:
– Lady killer Don Juan, idealized as greatest seducer of Spain
when in reality rapist whose underlying motives are
aggression, hate, desire to humiliate and punish women
• Permanent self delusion of patrists that standards of
behavior are declining
• More repressive attitudes towards women are
predictors of aggressive warfare
• Reidealization of male supremacy signals

33. When challenged, the androcratic system
reasserts masculine stereotypes
• A period of warfare can be predicted by the weakening of gylanic values.
• The brutal contempt for women is a signal
• Ex before WWI after changes in XIXe: Nietzche reidealizes primitive and
protoandrocracy, considered Judeo Christian not androcratic enough //
Mein Kampf
• Male dominance marks the most repressive regimes. Even in the US.
• Islamic resurgence is as well a resurgence of the androcratic system,
violently resisting the strong gylanic thrust of modern times.
• Return of women to their traditional subservient place is a top priority
• Charles Fourier: The degree of emancipation of women is an index of
the degree of a society’s emancipation

34. The recording of history has been very
selective, done for, by and about the
historically dominant group
• Women’s studies are still anecdotic, not an academic requirement
• Even educated people ignore the role of women in history
– Mary Beard’s Women as a Force in History
– Italian women Renaissance
– French enlightenment, salons
– Elisabeth Gould Davis, the First Sex
– Critical role of feminists XIXes
– Impact of female ethos
– Christine Pisan Book of city of ladies
• If women can move freely, they inject gylanic views into society

35. There have been challenge to
androcratic premises
• Enlightenment, Rousseau, Progress
• Revolutions
• Continuous weakening of male control in the family
• Rise of Equalitarian Family book
• Changes in families changed men who governed England
• Denmark: the only European country in which the people
joined together the non violently resist Hitler’s orders
• But since it represents such a threat to the prevailing system,
there are massive efforts to suppress it.
• Ex: James Mellaart had to stop excavations in Hacilar.

36. But the system changes haven’t challenged the
family patriarchal structure
• Capitalism was actually an important step to
move from dominator to equalitarian, away from
feudal but still fundamentally androcratic
• Then socialism and communism: Russian
revolution but in the end masculine values
remained in control
• Violent Stalin replaced as well equality within
families
• Trotsky: failure of communist revolution partly
failure of changing family patriarchal structure
• 2 halves of humanity were still ranking and not
linking

37. Androcratic system’s first line of defense
has been reassertion of male control
• Thoughout history, violence against women has
been the androcratic systems response to any
fundamental change
• If androcracy is to be maintained, women must be
suppressed at all cost.
• And if violence is mounting now, it is because
never before the male dominance has been so
vigorously challenged (Mushrooming of NGOs).
• When feminine rises, aroused and fearful
androcracy thrusts back.

38. Fundamentalism is also an
androcentric reaction
• Neither capitalism nor communism has
fulfilled its promises.
• Disillusionment: return to fundamentalism
• Frightened by increasing signs of impending
chaos, turn back to androcratic idea that
what matters is if we will or not be punished
for eternity
• Only way out religious, or escape through
nihilism, or imaginary past of good old days

39. We have internalized the
dominator system
• The problem is not men as sex but men and women
socialized in a dominator system
• Andersen: Emperor with no clothes
• Our dominator-dominated way of relating to other human
beings is so internalized by birth that we are not aware of it
any more.
• Some rule and some are meant to be ruled.
• A mind socialized to submit to male authority will tend to turn
to his protection of a strong leader in times of crisis.
• Bible, Koran, communism… obedience is supreme virtue
• All is not hopeless if we recognize it is not human nature but
a dominator model of society that drives us to war.

40. Men and women are taught to equate true
masculinity with violence and dominance
• Masculinity must equal violence if a
system of force-based rankings is to be
maintained
• Root of problem: blade idealized
(paintings, movies, games).
• In male dominated societies, women’s
issues shall be resolved when all the other
more important issues will be resolved.
• Intellectual ghetto of women’s studies

41. Problems are still denied or
minimized
• To limit population, we need reproductive
freedom and equality for women but that
would mean the end of system so strong
opposition.
• Foreign aid geared almost exclusively to
men.
• Information gathered by experts leaves
out women

42. Until now ideological challenge
has been fragmented
• Only feminism offers the vision of reordering
the most fundamental social institution: the
family
• Connection between male violence of rape
and wife beating and violence of war.
• Only ideology challenging this model of
human relations is feminism, unique position
• Modern ideology of mid 19e
• Never before, people have been so literate
and had access to so much media

43. We are reaching the limits of the
system
• Our masculine militarism is the most energy
intensive activity: converts energy into destruction
and waste without any useful fulfillment of basic
needs
• Ruths SIvard: World Military and social
expenditures
– The cost of a new single nuclear submarine equals the
budget of education of 23 countries.
– One intercontinental ballistic missiles=feed 50M
children, build 160.000 schools, open 340.000
healthcare centers
• We need a metamorphosis in culture premises

47. Now even nature seems to be
rebelling against androcracy
• Rational man subdues nature, poisons his
physical environment
• We see the limits of the system: destruction of
rain forests, species dying out, loss of arable soil,
population growth at fantastic rate
• Supermaterialistic and consumerist lifestyle
• Media propaganda glamorizing male violence
• Persistence of dominator gender stereotypes
• Harm of structural adjustments of World Bank

48. There is growing awareness,
higher consciousness
• Alfred Adler: For both men and women, this ranking of one
half of the humanity over the other is poisoning all human
relations.
• Interconnectedness,new science of empathy, love
• How to make conflict productive rather tan destructive
• Suppressive dominator approach to conflict still prevails but
feminine approach to conflict resolution offers hope for
change (Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King)
• Gandhi’s aim: to transformconflict
• The vision of power has to shift: either you control people or
they control you.
• But the greater the development of each individual, the better
• “Sisterhood is powerful"

49. The androcratic system is like a
rubber band
• When strong gylanic resurgence, rubber band stretches far,
boundaries were reached then snapped back
• For the first time in record history, it might break and transcend the
confines
• Risk of final bloodbath of dying system violent effort to maintains its
hold
• It is impossible to create a more equal society of dominator model
is in place
• We must leave behind the masculine conquest oriented values
• Shift in our technological direction from destruction to enhance life
• Economic resources are distributed according to human choices
• Our roads to the future will be shaped by human values and social
arrangement

50. A new world is possible
• Caring labor needs to be fully integrated: economic and social
transformation
• Human spirit has been imprisoned, needs to live free from war
• Changes in man-woman relations from recrimination to openness and trust
• Result in prosperous economy
• Decentralised economy, cooperative units of production and distribution
• New myths to reawaken the lost senseof gratitude and celebration of life
• Reconnecting us to innocent psychic roots
• Sexual bonding for pleasure and love
• New myths, epics and stories where human beings are good and men are
peaceful, power of creativity and love
• After bloody detour of androcratic history, women and men will be free

51. We need a critical mass of new images
• In modern totalitarian societies: main industry is manufacture of myths
• Nazi Germany: dark short Adolf Hitler sells myth of racially pure Aryans
• Nietzche’s view of women: pleasant domestic animal
• Nazi Germany one of the most violent reactions to gylanic thrust
• Fatal error to underestimate the power of myth
• Humankind is hungry for meaning
• Need to create new myths, new symbols
• Symbols and myths have changed in the past so they can change
again
• Original meaning of crosses as health and happiness
• We need to challenge destructive myths of hero as killer like Theseus or
Rambo or James Bond
• Children of both sexes need to value caring and affiliation more than
conquest and domination

52. Now is the time
• Today we are nearing the possibility of a second
social transformation, this time from dominator to a
more advanced version of a partnership society
• Fear grows but revulsion against violent repression is
strong like in Burma or Pakistan
• cf Peace Nobel Prizes: Malala, Aung Suu Kyi, ...
• Similarities between our time and turbulent years of
Roman empire (one of the most powerful dominators
societies of all time) when broke down
• Chaos theorists: increasing systems disequilibrium
• Small fluctuations can lead to systems transformation

53. The achievement of full equality between
sexes is a prerequisite for world peace
• When the power of the blade and dominator
model is actually threatening all human
civilization now.
• Male dominance, male violence and
authoritarianism are not eternal givens.
• A more peaceful and equalitarian world is a
real possibility for our future.
• Are we finally reaching the end of a 5.000
year androcratic detour?

54. Other resources to check
• New books: Breaking free and Sacred pleasure and The partnership way
• Center for Partnership Studies
• International Partnership Conference in Crete
• From Power to Partnership
• Sex, Death and the Angry young Men
• MILLET Sexual Politics book
• Power: the inner experience, Mc Clelland
• Judith Plaskow blaming jews for inventing patriarchy
• http://lilith.org/articles/blaming-jews-for-inventing-patriarchy/
• http://lilith.org/articles/blaming-jews-for-the-death-of-the-goddess/
•
• Genesis: Multiply your sorrow
• women lost sexual freedom and birth control