Overview

For thousands of years, the sacred feminine has balanced the sacred masculine in egalitarian societies, an equality that has been lost in the western world beginning with the rise of patriarchy some 5,000 years ago. Today, evidence of goddess worship in the Neolithic Age is being written out of history books once again by a patriarchal backlash in archaeology. Dance of the Deities weaves together memoir with anthropological research, taking the reader on a journey back in time to complex ancient societies and into a future in which women's spiritual and secular authority is being revitalized by many forces, including encounters with psychedelic medicines and new kinds of modern villages. Patricia McBroom compiles evidence of the ancient Nature goddesses, while calling for contemporary women to replace comic book images of feminine beauty with authentic Earth-based images of female power and authority. The author's existential quest for an understanding of the role of the sacred female is set into her wide-ranging journey through time and across cultures. Inviting the reader to join in the ""dance of the deities,"" she argues that a thriving human future on the planet is dependent on rebalancing the masculine and feminine in a science-based environmental sense of the sacred.

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9781732841451

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Patricia McBroom is an anthropologist, science journalist and professor of women's studies. Her 1985 book on women adapting to professional roles on Wall Street, The Third Sex, was described in a New York Times review as ""a brave and stunningly intuitive journey."" A former science writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, McBroom earned her degree in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1980 published a book on the genetics of behavior. She taught at Rutgers University, Mills College and the University of California at Berkeley. Her memoir challenges male-biased academic narratives of human culture and evolution with evidence of female authority in ancient and modern egalitarian societies.

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