Speaker 1: Hi, Hello, and welcome. This is let's talk about mits baby,
Speaker 1: and I am your host and raging, angry feminist who
Speaker 1: somehow gives fewer fucks than ever before live. Everything in
Speaker 1: the world is awful. We're all just watching babies die
Speaker 1: from our phones while our country's fun the killing. I've
Speaker 1: spent months and months like wishing I could say how
Speaker 1: horrified I am about what is happening in Palestine into
Speaker 1: this microphone. But somehow I have to fear that my
Speaker 1: saying that innocent people, mostly children, shouldn't be killed because
Speaker 1: of the actions of one group will lead some wild
Speaker 1: people in the world to tell me that this means this,
Speaker 1: this not wanting children to die, means that I must
Speaker 1: hate an entire ethnic and religious group of people, rather
Speaker 1: than what the actual truth of my saying those words is,
Speaker 1: which is that I hate and blame the one very
Speaker 1: specific country that is bombing hospitals and sniping children, and
Speaker 1: I mean also the ones funding it, including my own country.
Speaker 1: The world is how we're doing fine, We're doing fine.
Speaker 1: Utterly wild that the mass murder of innocent people is
Speaker 1: somehow not something that we can all agree is bad. Actually, Like,
Speaker 1: do you remember when the us punish an entire country
Speaker 1: with war after one group of people attacked them, Like
Speaker 1: that was bad too, actually, like like war is bad actually,
Speaker 1: and punishing innocent people for the actions of other people
Speaker 1: that they have literally no control over is bad. Actually,
Speaker 1: Like no matter what the situation is, Like, that's bad.
Speaker 1: Anyway here we are what are way to start the episode? Right? Me?
Speaker 1: I just don't know how anyone is like just behaving
Speaker 1: like business as usual, you know, Like I just like
Speaker 1: I just can't there's a disconnect in this world that
Speaker 1: we aren't just like all talking about this and all
Speaker 1: on the right side, you know, the side that like
Speaker 1: doesn't want more death of innocent people, like any innocent people,
Speaker 1: you know, no more death. It's just like that capitalism
Speaker 1: and Western supremacy are diseased cults that we're all just
Speaker 1: forced to live in. And on that light note, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the before times when maybe actually they let
Speaker 1: women run shit. Yeah, that's what today's episode is about,
Speaker 1: or rather theorizing on it. At least. So it is
Speaker 1: now March, which means that not only do we have
Speaker 1: a month's worth of episodes featuring powerful and interesting and
Speaker 1: complex women, but I also get a theme to work
Speaker 1: off of and thus make my crumbling life just slightly
Speaker 1: easier thanks International Women's History Month. And so for the
Speaker 1: past week, I've been either editing past episodes like the
Speaker 1: one from Friday about Winter Harvest and the Wrath of
Speaker 1: Demeter and the one coming this Friday about a queer
Speaker 1: reading of Circe's Badass Witchery, or I've been recording new
Speaker 1: ones like an upcoming chat about the worship of Artemis
Speaker 1: and goddess worship generally, and another about women's sexuality in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece. And like the thread of it, all these
Speaker 1: episodes all ended up working together in ways that I
Speaker 1: wasn't really expecting, and I'm just I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: hear what you all think of them. But they've also
Speaker 1: inspired me when it comes to this narrative episode, very
Speaker 1: specifically because in many of these conversations that are coming up,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the ways in which many of the
Speaker 1: goddesses are intentionally subjugated by the gods in similar ways
Speaker 1: to the way real women were subjugated by real men.
Speaker 1: It's always been something that I've been interested in, obviously,
Speaker 1: like this specific treatment of these goddesses, but the chats
Speaker 1: that I have recently recorded and edited have given me
Speaker 1: some fascinating new ideas to explore some specific examples of
Speaker 1: what exactly might have been happening in both the mythology
Speaker 1: and the culture itself. Today we are going to look
Speaker 1: at some of those ideas goddesses who once reigned supreme,
Speaker 1: who proved they didn't need men for anything, and the
Speaker 1: resulting actions of the men when they felt those threats
Speaker 1: too acutely, plus the parthenogenic stingray. But before that, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about another series that has come
Speaker 1: up next month on the show. In past years, I've
Speaker 1: done those deep dives into the so called myth and
Speaker 1: history of Atlantis and the skewed and fractured story of
Speaker 1: ancient Sparta, and now we are diving into the Bronze
Speaker 1: Age and it's so called collapse. The Bronze Age is
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting time periods of the ancient world.
Speaker 1: For countless reasons. Egypt was thriving, Mesopotamia was popping off,
Speaker 1: and Greece was giving Homeric bards the inspiration for the
Speaker 1: Iliad and the Odyssey. And then something happened. The Loud
Speaker 1: History Bros. On YouTube or Instagram or TikTok will tell
Speaker 1: you that, like out of the blue, entire civilizations collapsed
Speaker 1: around the Mediterranean and just disappeared. That to this day
Speaker 1: it remains an utter mystery what happened to the Myceneans
Speaker 1: just gone without a trace. They'll tell you that Greece
Speaker 1: descended into a dark age where they lost the ability
Speaker 1: to read the written word. That from the dark and
Speaker 1: dreary period of nothingness, Homer sprung fully formed like Athena
Speaker 1: from Zeus's head. What actually happened is like obviously far
Speaker 1: more complicated, considerably less mysterious and alien, but far far
Speaker 1: more interesting, mostly because well like it's the truth and
Speaker 1: not pseudohistorical nonsense. So that's what's coming out in April.
Speaker 1: Until then a month of episodes about the women who
Speaker 1: came during, after, and in some cases maybe even before
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age. Like today, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the concept of a prehistoric goddess who reigned supreme in
Speaker 1: what would later become ancient Greece. This is episode two
Speaker 1: fifty one Parthenogenesis, Prehistoric Goddesses and the Threat of an
Speaker 1: independent Woman. There's a stingray and an aquarium in the
Speaker 1: States that's become pregnant all by herself. The scientific word
Speaker 1: for this type of pregnancy, that is, one that happens
Speaker 1: without the involvement of a male, is called parthenogenesis. A
Speaker 1: literal translation of the word into English today would be
Speaker 1: virgin birth. Parthenos is Ancient Greek for virgin, but unmarried woman.
Speaker 1: It's often referred to just as virgin. There are probably
Speaker 1: some philologists who might take issue with unmarried women, and
Speaker 1: that's like fair, I guess, But my point in this
Speaker 1: case is to make clear that the modern connotation of
Speaker 1: virgin isn't what they would have considered in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: or at least this part of the ancient world. Today,
Speaker 1: at least in English and in the Western world, we
Speaker 1: think of the word virgin in this more much more
Speaker 1: christianize context, some kind of like physicality involved and the
Speaker 1: explicit idea that the person has just like never had sex.
Speaker 1: But especially when it comes to the term parthenogenesis, it
Speaker 1: doesn't remotely matter whether the woman has ever had sex before.
Speaker 1: It's simply the matter of there being no man involved
Speaker 1: in the conception. It's important and empowering to have that
Speaker 1: additional context to consider the term without the implication of
Speaker 1: Christianized purity, right, because that simply isn't the point. She
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be pure, She just didn't have fucking
Speaker 1: sperm in there to help make the baby. The word
Speaker 1: parthenogenesis might sound familiar to and not just because you
Speaker 1: know I put it in that title of this episode.
Speaker 1: I have told you about parthenogenesis before. There are a
Speaker 1: number of goddesses in Greek myth who have children this
Speaker 1: way without a man. Gia is the most obvious mother
Speaker 1: Earth gave birth to most of the physical world as
Speaker 1: we know it without the involvement of a man. Nixt To,
Speaker 1: the Goddess of Night had like this whole slew of
Speaker 1: kids without a god to help her, and then of
Speaker 1: course Harah, who gave birth to Havistas without the help
Speaker 1: of Zeus. There's a very big difference in terms of
Speaker 1: the story and its implications as we go through the
Speaker 1: generations between Gia down to Hera and oh are we
Speaker 1: going to talk about it all? Because well, if you
Speaker 1: look at the theogony, both the work of Hesiod, which
Speaker 1: I have shared with you all in intense detail over
Speaker 1: the years, and all of which you can listen to
Speaker 1: in a reading episode and the concept of the theogony itself,
Speaker 1: the genealogical history of the Greek gods. I've been looking
Speaker 1: at the theogony lately with a new set of eyes.
Speaker 1: I guess that's a very weird way of phrasing it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what I'm going to present to you all today is
Speaker 1: that there is a way in which you can read
Speaker 1: the theogony and almost watch as the world changed from
Speaker 1: one where women reigned supreme to one where men were
Speaker 1: threatened enough by this by women's abilities, that they just
Speaker 1: took over, making the power of the women around them
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller generation by generation, until it became almost forgotten.
Speaker 1: The world just forgot that they ever reigned at all.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, there was Guya, Mother Earth, the creator
Speaker 1: of everything. She didn't do it with the help of
Speaker 1: a man. She created the physical world by herself. Quote.
Speaker 1: She brought forth long hills, graceful haunts of the goddess
Speaker 1: nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills. She
Speaker 1: bore also the fruitless deep with his raging swell. Pontus
Speaker 1: without sweet union of love, Without the sweet union of love.
Speaker 1: It's a very funny way of saying sex. But it's
Speaker 1: Hesiod after all. Fortunately, this isn't about Hesiod as any
Speaker 1: kind of person. It is simply about what exists within
Speaker 1: the theogony. So the point remains, Gia did all of this.
Speaker 1: She created the earth and the beauty of nature, all
Speaker 1: of it without a man. This is one of the
Speaker 1: very first stories not only of parthenogenesis, but of like
Speaker 1: creation itself, at least from the ancient Greek world. And
Speaker 1: it was this woman creating and bearing children without ever
Speaker 1: even considering the involvement of a man. But of course,
Speaker 1: although the story itself was likely much much older, you know,
Speaker 1: this work created and then written down by men. So
Speaker 1: before we even hear of Gya creating all of that
Speaker 1: without the help of a man, we are told that,
Speaker 1: you know, she did create one quote and earth first,
Speaker 1: bore starry, heaven equal to herself, to cut her on
Speaker 1: every side, and to be an ever sure abiding place
Speaker 1: for the blessed gods heaven Oranos, you know, sounds awfully nice. Actually,
Speaker 1: for now, at least we'll get back to Uranos. For now,
Speaker 1: let's look at Nick's night. Her children weren't, you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps a little less joyful, but numerous quote and knight
Speaker 1: bore hateful doom and black fate and death, and she
Speaker 1: bore sleep in the tribe of dreams. And again the
Speaker 1: goddess murky night, though she lay with none, bore blame
Speaker 1: and painful woe, and the hesperities who guard the rich
Speaker 1: golden apples and the trees bearing fruit beyond glorious ocean.
Speaker 1: And then, of course we have the only Olympian child
Speaker 1: born of parthenogenesis, the son of Hara Hephistus quote, but
Speaker 1: Harah without union with Zeus, for she was very angry
Speaker 1: and quarreled with her mate, bore famous Hephistas, who is
Speaker 1: skilled in crafts more than all the sons of Heaven. Now,
Speaker 1: on its face, these are three interesting examples of parthenogenesis
Speaker 1: and goddesses during the earliest days of the Greek mythological cosmos.
Speaker 1: But I'm interested in where these ideas might have come
Speaker 1: from and how they might have been manipulated. Before we
Speaker 1: look a little closer at what's happening here, or rather
Speaker 1: what I theorized might be happening here. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the prehistoric mother goddess. Here's the thing about anything prehistoric.
Speaker 1: There's a reason it's called that it's because we don't
Speaker 1: have written records of the time period. It's literally pre history.
Speaker 1: It means we don't know for certain what's going on. Obviously,
Speaker 1: time period wise, there are lots of other names for
Speaker 1: like neolithic, paleolithic, all of that. I'm not gonna tend
Speaker 1: that I'm good enough at that. My point is what
Speaker 1: we're talking about now does not have written record to
Speaker 1: explain what's happening. But it does mean we can still
Speaker 1: make some educated guesses. Before I tell you about the
Speaker 1: prehistoric mother Godess, though, let's look at some things from
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age that support the existence of her. On
Speaker 1: the island of Crete and on many of the Cycladic islands,
Speaker 1: there are many, many examples of figurines which have often
Speaker 1: been called simply the goddess figurines. In the case of
Speaker 1: the Cycladic figurines, they are iconic as fuck. There have
Speaker 1: been so so many of them found across the islands
Speaker 1: that and they've come to symbolize the islands in many ways.
Speaker 1: They're on flags, logos, they fill the museums. The quintessential
Speaker 1: Cycladtic mother Goddess figurine, at least in my mind, are
Speaker 1: the pieces which depict this like vaguely human form. They
Speaker 1: have like really big heads, and their arms are often
Speaker 1: like crossed below their chests, and then they have these
Speaker 1: cute little boobs. They're adorable. They're not always called goddess figurines,
Speaker 1: and their gender isn't even always assumed to be women,
Speaker 1: But frankly, I refuse to believe that they are anything
Speaker 1: but goddess figurines. Does this mean that they were meant
Speaker 1: to represent a particular goddess? I mean, probably not, maybe,
Speaker 1: but I think to deny that these pieces depict some
Speaker 1: kind of worship of the divine feminine is frankly bullshit.
Speaker 1: I mean, the volume of them shifting to creed. There's
Speaker 1: a whole other tradition of goddess figurine. The unnamed goddesses
Speaker 1: of Crete are often very different from those of the Sicklides,
Speaker 1: but no less powerful and prehistoric. I mean, actually, these
Speaker 1: are just all from the Bronze Age. The most famous
Speaker 1: goddess of Crete is the snake goddess Ah. She's a
Speaker 1: woman wearing a traditional Minoan dress with the big, flowing
Speaker 1: and teared skirt and the exposed breasts similar to what
Speaker 1: was painted onto the walls of the palace at Kenosos,
Speaker 1: the remnants of which survive. You can google these images.
Speaker 1: They're incredible. She's often got a cool little head piece,
Speaker 1: and well she's got snakes. Sometimes she's holding the snakes
Speaker 1: up in the air. Sometimes they're wrapped around her arms
Speaker 1: or her in some way, but there are almost always snakes.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, the Minoan snake goddess is fucking awesome.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you might see her with the name Ariadne, but
Speaker 1: as far as I understand it, that's like a later invention,
Speaker 1: this desire to attribute this famed and prehistoric figurine with
Speaker 1: the goddess of the later mythology. And here's where I
Speaker 1: diverge from the way I usually write these episodes with
Speaker 1: you know, heavy amounts of research and context and detail,
Speaker 1: because well, like today, I want to theorize, so you know,
Speaker 1: grain of salt here, whatever I'm saying, because most of
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about now is is my
Speaker 1: own ideas. Obviously I like to think I have a
Speaker 1: pretty decent grounding in the mythology, in the history. But
Speaker 1: still this is all me, so you know, don't go
Speaker 1: using it as a source for anything important, because well,
Speaker 1: like no one can agree on who these figures. These
Speaker 1: figurines were meant to represent, where the inspiration for them
Speaker 1: came from, or what purpose they served. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: read like about the very theories on them. A little
Speaker 1: dive into the Wikipedia page for the Minoan snake goddess
Speaker 1: gives you like a whole host of suggestions to work
Speaker 1: off of. She's coming from a tradition originating in Syria
Speaker 1: or Phoenicia. She's a precursor to a goddess of animals,
Speaker 1: She's a fertility goddess, or she represents domesticity in some way.
Speaker 1: I think I might you might guess how I feel
Speaker 1: about that one, But not to say that she, you know,
Speaker 1: couldn't or shouldn't be a fertility goddess. But there's this
Speaker 1: old tradition the past few hundred years of men claiming
Speaker 1: basically anything to do with women must be about fertility,
Speaker 1: or in the case of the claim that I read,
Speaker 1: you know, because her tits are out, she must represent fertility,
Speaker 1: like she couldn't just like have her tits out because
Speaker 1: they're just like a part of the body like anything else.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, we have existing wall paintings showing that
Speaker 1: maybe the Minoan women just like had their tits out,
Speaker 1: because why shouldn't they And if there's like ten women
Speaker 1: dressed like that, like, why would the goddess be a
Speaker 1: fertility goddess? Anyway, I digress because the sources mentioned on
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page they made me grumble. The point really
Speaker 1: is that no one knows for sure, and that's not
Speaker 1: entirely because of the prehistory of it all. Many of
Speaker 1: these figurines, you know, are from the Bronze Age, when
Speaker 1: there was writing that we can decipher now. It's just
Speaker 1: that the writing that we have wasn't interested in telling
Speaker 1: humans of like thirty five hundred to four thousand years
Speaker 1: later what their figurines were meant to represent. Weird. I
Speaker 1: know this is the case for the Minoan figurines more
Speaker 1: than the Cycladic because the latter are sometimes more like
Speaker 1: forty five hundred or five thousand years old, like well
Speaker 1: before Linear B. As far as I know, they're like,
Speaker 1: they're some of the oldest fines in all of Greece.
Speaker 1: They're fucking cool. All of this is to say that,
Speaker 1: while it hasn't and probably will never be confirmed, the
Speaker 1: existence of so so so many figurines which can be
Speaker 1: reasonably seen as women or goddesses suggest something important about
Speaker 1: the beliefs that came before. For all my talk of
Speaker 1: these being primarily my own speculations, though, I am going
Speaker 1: to first read you a little something from Sarah Pomeroy's
Speaker 1: book Goddesses Whoores, Wives and Slaves. It's such a good title.
Speaker 1: Women in Antiquity as a subtitle makes more sense. Quote.
Speaker 1: Mother goddesses were prominent in the Bronze Age cults of
Speaker 1: Minoan Crete. Numerous statuettes from the Bronze Age and earlier
Speaker 1: periods that may represent the mother goddess and their worshippers
Speaker 1: or priestesses have been found. Pomeroy later writes, quote it
Speaker 1: has been thought that fertility goddesses were worshiped in crete
Speaker 1: as well as by an autochthonous matriarchal population on the
Speaker 1: mainland of pre Bronze Age Greece. Greek speaking invaders brought
Speaker 1: with them the worship of Zeus, with its emphasis on
Speaker 1: male dominance and patriarchal law. The invaders, to consolidate their conquests,
Speaker 1: married their gods to the native goddesses. Helping me with
Speaker 1: my theorizing, Honestly, it was great because I huddle these
Speaker 1: ideas and then found that quote. See I want to
Speaker 1: explore the idea that these are goddess figurines and that
Speaker 1: the unnamed goddesses that they represent are in fact this
Speaker 1: prehistoric mother goddess or many prehistoric goddesses. And since I
Speaker 1: had already intended on breaking down the written sources alongside
Speaker 1: the idea that these goddesses came first and Greek myth
Speaker 1: came second, having the quote about the introduction of Zeus
Speaker 1: worship is deeply helpful. I'm certain that the ideas that
Speaker 1: I want to explore here, by the way, like I'm
Speaker 1: sure that they have been explored in academic writings. I
Speaker 1: am not suggesting I am the first to say this.
Speaker 1: It's just that, like, I don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: access to that, and today I feel like just talking
Speaker 1: about what I think. The conversations I recorded last week end,
Speaker 1: which will be coming out later this month, and the
Speaker 1: Demeter conversation last Friday inspired these ideas that I just
Speaker 1: I can't quite let go of. I want to look
Speaker 1: at how Hesiod's Theogony could, in its own way, show
Speaker 1: how the Greek world might have transitioned from a patriarchal
Speaker 1: society that worshiped this prehistoric mother goddess to the patriarchal
Speaker 1: society that we know so well, the one that worshiped
Speaker 1: the Olympians and namely Zeus. I've always been fascinated by
Speaker 1: the idea of this prehistoric mother goddess, a period of
Speaker 1: time when the people of the region worshiped women over men,
Speaker 1: where women ran things, or honestly, more likely like where
Speaker 1: everyone ran things together and women just weren't seen as
Speaker 1: less than men. When I was doing my ba like
Speaker 1: far too many years ago now, I wrote a paper
Speaker 1: on the goddess figurines of the Cycladic Islands for an
Speaker 1: archaeology class. It's one of the only papers I really
Speaker 1: remember writing, because I was so utterly consumed by this
Speaker 1: idea of hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of these
Speaker 1: goddess figurines that have been found from this fully prehistoric
Speaker 1: time period, and which provide us with pretty fucking good
Speaker 1: evidence that there was a time when goddesses were worshiped
Speaker 1: more prominently than gods. It's no coincidence that these figurines
Speaker 1: come from this time before the written records that tell
Speaker 1: us of Zeus and all of his godly relations. So
Speaker 1: what If this is true, What if it's true that
Speaker 1: the people of the region, over a thousand years before
Speaker 1: the Theogony ever existed to tell us about the gods
Speaker 1: of Olympus and their genealogy. What if those people worshiped
Speaker 1: a supreme mother, goddess and goddesses just more generally. If
Speaker 1: that's true, then is it something that we can see
Speaker 1: evidence of in the Theogony? Because the more I had
Speaker 1: those conversations, the more I thought about what the story
Speaker 1: of the Theogony really is, the more I realized that
Speaker 1: I can see this in the text, happening just before
Speaker 1: our eyes. So once more, let's return to those bits
Speaker 1: of the Theogony that I talked about earlier. The world
Speaker 1: begins with Gia. Chaos maybe sometimes gets to be the
Speaker 1: first being, but Chaos is very clearly not something tangible
Speaker 1: or even a god to be worshiped. Really, it's Gia,
Speaker 1: Mother Earth, this literal mother, goddess of the natural world,
Speaker 1: and without any involvement from a male, Gia creates this
Speaker 1: natural world. She is the earth and the mountains and
Speaker 1: the rivers and forests and plains and plants and animals.
Speaker 1: They are her children. These she gives birth to parthenogenically.
Speaker 1: Her body creates them without any male intervention, just like
Speaker 1: Charlotte the Stingray. But then what happens to Guya. She
Speaker 1: creates a man, She creates a husband, and as the
Speaker 1: story continues, that husband, Uranos, becomes threatened by her her
Speaker 1: ability to create life when he cannot, and his response
Speaker 1: to feeling like his power is being threatened is to
Speaker 1: not only literally cover over Gaya's body completely, but he
Speaker 1: begins to subjugate her in very meaningful ways. Uranos doesn't
Speaker 1: like all of the children that they have together, again,
Speaker 1: like he's threatened by the control that Gaya has in
Speaker 1: creating life. He sees her ability as a threat, and
Speaker 1: the children she creates as in certain cases horrible monsters,
Speaker 1: namely the hecatonkyries and the cyclops. He's so horrified by
Speaker 1: them that he traps Gya's children inside the earth, inside
Speaker 1: Gaya herself quote, for of all the children that were
Speaker 1: born of Gia and Uranos, these were the most terrible,
Speaker 1: and they were hated by their own father from the first,
Speaker 1: and he used to hide them all away in a
Speaker 1: secret place of Gia so soon as each was born,
Speaker 1: and would not suffer them to come up into the light,
Speaker 1: and Uranos rejoiced in his evil doing. He's taken Guya's
Speaker 1: supreme power, her status as the earth itself, and he's
Speaker 1: turned it against her. And then what happens. Gia turns
Speaker 1: to her son Cronos for help. We're told that Porgia
Speaker 1: is straining and groaning with her children trapped inside her,
Speaker 1: so she makes his plan with Cronos to overthrow his father.
Speaker 1: It will happen at night, which is described like this quote.
Speaker 1: And Uranos came bringing on night and longing for love,
Speaker 1: and he lay about Gia, spreading himself full upon her.
Speaker 1: It screams subjugation, don't you think Like by nature of
Speaker 1: being the god of the sky, he gets to basically
Speaker 1: surround her completely. And that's ignoring what we can read
Speaker 1: into the idea of a husband whose wife is explicitly
Speaker 1: angry with him, covering her with his whole body and
Speaker 1: quote longing for love. Of course, we all know what
Speaker 1: happens next. Gia trusts Cronos to help her, and he
Speaker 1: does defeat Uranos, castrates his father and basically renders him
Speaker 1: harmless to Gia, but he also renders him harmless to Cronos,
Speaker 1: and Cronos takes over the role his father took from Gia.
Speaker 1: He rules over the world, he rules over Gia, and
Speaker 1: of course Chronos didn't even bother to free those children.
Speaker 1: And so with Guia still under a man's thumb, another
Speaker 1: mother Earth type goddess emerges. She kind of takes this
Speaker 1: role her daughter Raya, wife to Chronos, and God's we
Speaker 1: know how that goes. Chronos was just as threatened by
Speaker 1: women as his father, just as threatened by the female
Speaker 1: ability to create life that he does exactly as his
Speaker 1: father did before him. He subjugates his wife through the
Speaker 1: imprisonment of her children. One by one. Chronos swallows the
Speaker 1: children birthed by Raya, and again Raya trusts her son
Speaker 1: Zeus to stop his father. I won't tell you that
Speaker 1: story again, like we know that Zeus manages it. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's no question that with Kronos gone and the women
Speaker 1: that he and before him subjugated would not be given
Speaker 1: their agency back. Like Raya isn't so explicitly subjugated, but
Speaker 1: she hasn't celebrated either, And instead, the next woman in
Speaker 1: this long line of those subjugated by their husbands is
Speaker 1: actually not Harah yet, but she's coming instead. It's Zeus's
Speaker 1: first wife, Matus. Here's how Hesiad describes Zeus's relationship with
Speaker 1: the Titan goddess of wise counsel Matus. Quote. Now, Zeus,
Speaker 1: king of the gods, made Matus his first wife, and
Speaker 1: she was wisest among gods and mortal men. But when
Speaker 1: she was about to bring forth the goddess bright eyed Athena,
Speaker 1: Zeus craftily deceived her with cunning words and put her
Speaker 1: in his own belly. Later, Athena's birth is described, you know,
Speaker 1: the way she burst from Zeus's head, fully grown. But
Speaker 1: we're interested in her conception. Zeus's first wife, Matus probably
Speaker 1: better understood as his first like lover, you know, which
Speaker 1: in this case is just kind of interchangeable with wife.
Speaker 1: She was herself swallowed because of the threat that her
Speaker 1: fertility posed to him. What we learned elsewhere and he
Speaker 1: see it is that Zeus was told that made Us
Speaker 1: would bear a child more powerful than him, so he
Speaker 1: just ate her. He literally ingested the woman whose fertility,
Speaker 1: whose ability to create life posed a threat, and then
Speaker 1: he gave birth to Athena himself, explicitly co opting the
Speaker 1: role of a woman in order to ensure that he
Speaker 1: maintained complete control. And the most horriforing part of this
Speaker 1: is that if you go looking for who Athena's parents
Speaker 1: are like, there are countless books and websites and everything
Speaker 1: that will tell you that Zeus bore her without the
Speaker 1: inclusion of a woman, like that Athena, like Guia's children,
Speaker 1: was a child of parthenogenesis, when in fact, there doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to be a single ancient source that says this,
Speaker 1: Like some don't mention matis, but that tends to be
Speaker 1: because they don't retell the whole story, just the birth,
Speaker 1: so there's no need. But none of the ancient sources
Speaker 1: that I've found, even with the help of crowdsourcing this question,
Speaker 1: suggest that Zeus actually conceived Athena parthenogenically. Meanwhile, Wikipedia says
Speaker 1: it multiple times without crediting an ancient source, and even
Speaker 1: Britannica dot Com makes his claim without explaining where it
Speaker 1: came from. It's everywhere, this idea that he had the
Speaker 1: genetic ability to create life without a female, even though
Speaker 1: even the most patriarchal of Greek myth sources don't actually
Speaker 1: say that that's the case, but Zeus's status as Athena's
Speaker 1: only parent, because he certainly is that since he ingested
Speaker 1: Matis and never let her free, is later served as
Speaker 1: another means of subjugating a woman, his most famous wife,
Speaker 1: his sister Harah. What Zeus does to keep Harah in check,
Speaker 1: like controlled by her husband, is much more human than
Speaker 1: the gods who came before him. He just puts her
Speaker 1: in her place like constantly right. He makes her jealous intentionally,
Speaker 1: he spreads his nasty godly seed all over town without
Speaker 1: ever considering her whatsoever, and he brags about having given
Speaker 1: birth to a child without not only Harah, but any
Speaker 1: woman at all. See even Zeus intentionally ignores the role
Speaker 1: that made Us played in Athena's conception, and this is
Speaker 1: what leads Harah to become our next goddess, who creates
Speaker 1: a child parthenogenically without any intervention by a man, the
Speaker 1: goddess Ephyistus. And as we all know, Hara finds Epheistas
Speaker 1: to be imperfect because he has an issue with his foot,
Speaker 1: and she casts him from Mount Olympus. Obviously, this makes
Speaker 1: Hara look bad, and really most of Harah's actions in
Speaker 1: reaction to Zeus make her look bad, but that's important
Speaker 1: in itself. Basically, what I want to draw your attention
Speaker 1: to is the way that these three mother goddesses, because
Speaker 1: they are not only mother goddesses but fertility goddesses, are
Speaker 1: slowly being subjugated by the men. Of course, Matus is
Speaker 1: part of it, but she fits the mother goddess role
Speaker 1: a little bit less, but certainly is perfect evidence for
Speaker 1: the same general argument. As the generations proceed down the
Speaker 1: line of the theogony, the women become less and less powerful,
Speaker 1: particularly in relation to the men. They become more petty,
Speaker 1: they become more stereotypically jealous and angry, just as the
Speaker 1: men become more righteous and powerful through the Theogony of Hesiod.
Speaker 1: In my reading, at least, you can essentially watch this
Speaker 1: transition from a matriarchal society that worshiped a supreme mother goddess,
Speaker 1: you know, all the way down the line until you
Speaker 1: reach the period when this work was likely recorded, the
Speaker 1: early archaic period, When you can watch the progression of
Speaker 1: a new patriarchy and the regression of the old matriarchy,
Speaker 1: it feels like it could almost be a chart, you know,
Speaker 1: like depicting the fall of women in the Rise of Men.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, I am not saying that this
Speaker 1: was done intentionally, like I think this hesiodic tradition. Of course,
Speaker 1: it is oral storytelling, right. It is a story that
Speaker 1: was being told over hundreds and hundreds of years and
Speaker 1: was changing and adapting and flowing, and I think it
Speaker 1: became this way it is. It is a memory, a
Speaker 1: human memory of what came before, unintentionally put into this
Speaker 1: new and defining thing. At the beginning, the goddesses are
Speaker 1: all powerful. They are the creators of everything and everyone.
Speaker 1: Then slowly but surely, they are subjugated by the men
Speaker 1: they create or are related to, until they are goddesses
Speaker 1: like Harah, who is often depicted as little more than
Speaker 1: this nagging, jealous wife. But even still there are these
Speaker 1: little remnants of the time period, like leftover pieces that remained,
Speaker 1: like Harah being able to conceive Hepphistus without a man,
Speaker 1: even if he's nothing like the children that Gia was
Speaker 1: able to conceive without the help of a man. And
Speaker 1: that's sort of dig on Hephistus like he's incredible, But
Speaker 1: it is how the story goes to Hara. He is
Speaker 1: a failure. Gia is supreme until she is smothered by
Speaker 1: her husband and her children are used against her. Rahea
Speaker 1: is powerful until her children are systematically stolen by their father,
Speaker 1: rendering her status as a mother goddess almost pointless. Like
Speaker 1: what is a mother goddess when her children are being
Speaker 1: consumed by their father? Matus is this Titan goddess of
Speaker 1: wisdom and intelligence until Zeus eats her and steals the
Speaker 1: birth of their daughter. It is no coincidence that not
Speaker 1: only is Athena regularly called just the daughter of Zeus
Speaker 1: alone due to the fact that basically Zeus kills her mother,
Speaker 1: but that Athena is the man's goddess, the hero's goddess,
Speaker 1: her father's favorite right Like Athena is the example of
Speaker 1: Zeus not only taking over the role of conception from
Speaker 1: the mother, but letting it influence how the daughter behaves.
Speaker 1: The goddess who was born because her father couldn't bear
Speaker 1: to let her mother be the powerful being that she
Speaker 1: naturally was, is the same goddess who becomes the most
Speaker 1: egregious agent of the patriarchy. And Harah, the third generation
Speaker 1: mother goddess, is just this stereotype of a jilted, jealous woman.
Speaker 1: There's so much more to be said of this, but God,
Speaker 1: this episode is long enough. I just had to look
Speaker 1: at this in detail, because now that I've seen how
Speaker 1: this structure is visualized and the theogony, like, I can't
Speaker 1: unsee it. To me, it feels so explicitly like this
Speaker 1: means of probably unintentionally rewriting the history that was only
Speaker 1: half remembered by the time of the Hasiotic tradition. This
Speaker 1: means of taking what existed in the history and corrupting it,
Speaker 1: turning this supreme mother goddess into these women who were
Speaker 1: less powerful deities, just stripping them of their power in
Speaker 1: the world in order to hand it over to the men.
Speaker 1: But hey, at least I get to be a woman
Speaker 1: like a few thousand years later, reading it and then
Speaker 1: seeing what they used to have this power that they
Speaker 1: had before they were stripped of it by the men,
Speaker 1: who were so threatened by the female ability to create
Speaker 1: life that they had to turn it into something that
Speaker 1: they controlled. Oh, Nerds, that was so fun to write, Like,
Speaker 1: I am just utterly obsessed with this now. A large
Speaker 1: part of these ideas were inspired by a conversation that
Speaker 1: I had with my friend Cossy for the podcast it's
Speaker 1: coming out at the end of the month, among other
Speaker 1: wild and sexy things, Cossy and I. The threat that
Speaker 1: women posed in the ancient world when it comes to
Speaker 1: paternity something I never thought of. But the fear that
Speaker 1: men had that the children that their wife bore weren't
Speaker 1: actually theirs was like huge, and now I can see
Speaker 1: that it just like manifested in all of Greek myth Like.
Speaker 1: I won't say too much about this, but goddess is
Speaker 1: it's vital to this episode, so stay tuned for that,
Speaker 1: and just imagine, like you're an Athenian man who's worried
Speaker 1: that his pregnant wife might not be having his baby,
Speaker 1: Like where else would you look for reassurance than the mythology,
Speaker 1: like where countless women had children who weren't their husbands,
Speaker 1: like but because they were children of the gods instead,
Speaker 1: it was fine. It feels like all of Zeus's escapades
Speaker 1: are are like personifications of this fear over paternity. Fucking
Speaker 1: wild Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, And oh Goddess, there is so much more
Speaker 1: fascinating women's centric content to come this month. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about many niche goddess concepts and real life
Speaker 1: women like as many as possible. We are going to
Speaker 1: have a thrill of a fucking time. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: MIT's Baby is written and produced by Me Live. Albert
Speaker 1: Nichaylasmith is the hermes to my Olympians. My assistant producer,
Speaker 1: Laura Smith is the production assistant and audio engineer. Select
Speaker 1: music used in this episode was by Luke Chaos. The
Speaker 1: podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on
Speaker 1: Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Help
Speaker 1: me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and
Speaker 1: the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron, where you'll get
Speaker 1: bonus episodes and more. Mostly, you just support me. The
Speaker 1: bonuses are They're tough, they're few and far between, but
Speaker 1: there are, like, I don't know, fifty to one hundred.
Speaker 1: You can go listen to in the back lots, visit
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash myths Baby, or click the link
Speaker 1: in this episode's description. I am live and I fucking
Speaker 1: love this shit, like particularly when I can talk about
Speaker 1: a supreme goddess who maybe waved snakes in the air
Speaker 1: while wearing a pretty swishy dress. Honestly, like, even though
Speaker 1: I'm scared at shit of real snakes, that it sounds
Speaker 1: pretty fucking awesome. Which is a pretty pretty flowy dress
Speaker 1: you can spin in while your snakes fly mate like
Speaker 1: it's the dream.