In order to understand the history of mankind more deeply and to examine the origins of patriarchy and to analyze important changes in society, we must go far back in history. For this purpose, the science of women and life – Jineoloji – examines various mythologies that were of great importance before the emergence of the monotheistic world religions. It attempts to recover the lost history through stories of mother goddesses, natural society, and a look at the Neolithic.
With the rise of positivist science, much knowledge has been lost that could give us closer insight into the times before the beginning of patriarchal oppression. The writing of history has been taken over by men who present their one-sided perspective on the world as the unique untouchable reality. We want to better analyze the history of women, which was not given much importance in positivism at any time. What makes a woman? What is a woman?
We, as young internationalist women, have now made it our task to research further into this topic of mythology and for this purpose we want to introduce to you in the coming time some goddesses who had a great influence in the earlier times.
Diana – Goddess of the roman mythology
A very diverse figure of Roman mythology is Diana, the goddess of the moon, the sun, hunting and birth. At the same time, she is known as the protector of women and girls, and thus also embodies virginity. Since Roman mythology is very much derived from Greek mythology, Diana can be identified with Artemis, the Greek deity of the moon.
The goddess Diana is the daughter of Latona, the goddess of night and all things hidden, and Jupiter, the god of the sky, daylight and thunder. Apollo is her twin brother and the god of light, healing, the arts, archery and spring.
As the personification of virginity and protector of all women and girls, Diana never entered into a love relationship with any of the other gods and punished them if they tried to seduce the female sex. In this respect she was considered very strict and cruel. Her virginity had a strong influence on the interest of the male gods and so it happened one day that Actaedon observed her bathing in a lake with her nymphs after the hunt. Diana noticed this and punished him by turning him into a stag, whereupon he was mauled by his own hunting dogs.
Originally, she can be derived from prehistoric goddesses of the Neolithic period. Primarily as a goddess of hunting, she supervised the killing of animals. If this happened outside the given rules according to certain rites, Diana punished those.
In general, it can be said that Diana can be called the goddess of free nature. Her independence from men, her closeness to nature and her role as a protector of women and girls led to her being portrayed as a witch or a pagan deity of witches in the Middle Ages. Accordingly, witches were in her service and could ride animals at night with her help. She was referred to as the female side of the devil and was said to have fornicated with the devil on Blocksberg during Walpurgis Night. In this period, due to the influence of Christianity, the cult of the goddess Diana became less and less. Holidays that were previously intended to pay homage to her were thus transformed into Christian holidays, for example. Here you can see very well how exactly the monotheistic world religions have displaced the mythology more and more and have taken its place.
In addition, the medieval view of Diana, which was influenced by the church, shows how women were increasingly associated with everything bad, i.e. with everything satanic. With this, Christianity later justified the cruel witch hunts that took place in this age. All the power in the form of knowledge about healing and other nature-related things that women possessed before and that were dangerous in the eyes of the ruling powers were taken away from them. This period was a great step on the ever-advancing oppression of the patriarchy.
– Rûken Gabar