Our Roots

Remembering Our Roots: Why It’s Important

There was an almost 8,000 year era where life on Earth was matricentric, and life was organized around life-giving and feminine principles. This period is considered PRE-history because it isn’t recorded in writing. In reality, this era is HER-story. It is recorded in massive stone monuments around the world: Egypt, Mesoamerica, in the British Isles, in Peru, in India, in Tibet, in Australia, and in many parts of Africa.

Her-story can’t be read linguistically, with the left hemisphere of the brain. It is symbolic and energetic, which means it is “read” by the body–sensed and felt. Stone, like crystals, acts as a “library” where past wisdom is stored for future withdrawals.

Remembering My Roots

I remember a point in my life when I felt lost and nothing I did had meaning. I had followed all the traditional “good girl” rules, only to feel empty and disillusioned at the age of 39. Nothing I did seemed appreciated or sacred, I didn’t feel very connected to my femininity and certainly not to the Divine Feminine. I gradually fell into depression and then despair. I thought my marriage was the cause of my problems, and it was. But the real problem emerged in therapy. Here I confronted my broken attachment with my mother, and how I had coped with it by running on my male polarity.

This crisis and therapy marked the point of my journey to the Inner World. Here I discovered not only many trauma, but also resources that previously seemed invisible. I remember reading, The Moon Under Her Feet, a novel telling the story of Jesus’ life through the eyes of Mary Magdalene. This really spiritual book moved me very deeply. It moved me so deeply that I changed my birth name from Jean to Janae, after reading that names with ANA in them designate a person who has devoted her life to serving the Goddess. I have shared this with very few people since I made the change in 1986.

While making this commitment didn’t seem very significant at first, I developed a thirst for reading more books about the sacred feminine: The Woman With the Alabaster Jar, The Expected One, The Book of Love, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I eventually accumulated a big collection of books about the goddess, such as When God Was a Woman.

After someone gave me a book about the Black Madonna, I began reading everything I could find about her, and visited sacred sites dedicated to her in Switzerland, Mexico, Costa Rica, and New Mexico. I came to understand how this “dark” aspect of the feminine related to my mother loss issues, my eating disorder, my codependent and counterdependent behaviors, and my struggle with intimacy.

One summer I read every book written by Russian mystic, Helena Roerich. I also visited the Roerich Museum in New York City, and made a pilgrimage to her home in India that is now a museum. I bought many prints of paintings made by her husband, Nicholas.

I’m sharing this about myself to make a point: women’s way of awakening is a journey of REMEMBERING and bringing alive what has been invisible and invalidated for 2,500 years. It is available in Her Stories (pre-HiStory), in myths, in archeology, in ancient sites, in art, and in all sorts of place. Once you begin to seek Her, She begins to seek you.

OUR ROOTS give you a taste of what is out there.

HER-story

Patriarchy’s limited and short-sighted perspective marks the beginning of human His-tory with writing around 2500 B.C.E. This view omits all the archeological evidence of a matrifocal period of human evolution when people lived in tribes, organized their cultures around feminine values, and had few wars or other large-group conflicts.

In her book, The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler writes about the period from 7000 to 3500 B.C.E. She describes the archeological evidence found in a region known as Old Europe of the matrifocal Cucuteni-Trypillia cultures who practiced equal gender relations and had peaceful relations with neighboring settlements.

Archeologist Maria Gimbutas (1982) extensively analyzed prehistoric mythology, archeology, and art. Her research revealed that these early societies were governed primarily feminine values, beliefs, and deities. Some societies were matrilineal, meaning that property and lineage came through the women. Others were also matriarchal, or governed by women.

Between 3000 to 1500 B.C.E., the Minoan culture on Crete also flourished in peace. Many of their family and social practices emphasized feminine values. The critical factor during this matrifocal period of history, however, was the emphasis on feminine values such as inclusion, life-giving, nurturing, partnering, cycles and circular or non-linear thinking.

When these two periods are combined, we have more than 8,000 years of Her-story, which dwarf the past 2,500 years of His-story. Her-story is still available to those who seek it, and provides a strong foundation for awakening and recovering it and all the values, practices, and principles contained in it.