Female Supremacy Articles - Page 19

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The concept that women once ruled the world in ancient times is nothing new. It got started by a scholar called J.J Bachofen (1) in the 19th century. He brought together all the evidence of matriarchy in ancient times then available. He was strongly criticized for this by other scholars who dismissed and discredited his work. Yet in spite of this, his work was to inspire the scholars James Frazer to write his famous book, "The Golden Bough". It also influenced Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who publicly praised Bachofen's work. As well as the famous psychologist Carl Jung who developed from it the theory that the ancient Great Mother was a very important archetype in the collective unconscious. (2) In spite of the condemnation of Bachofen the controversy wouldn't go away. Other scholars in the early 20th century also wrote about matriarchy like Robert Briffault,(3) Jane Harrison (4) and Dr Margaret Murray.(5) But this argument was kept very much within academic circles. Then in the 1940s the poet Robert Graves wrote his book, "The White Goddess女神 — a woman treated as divine" which was the first attempt to bring this argument to the general public, even though it was a very complex book. Then on the wave of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s feminist scholars like Merlin Stone (6) and Barbara G. Walker (7) also continued to dig deep into ancient history to find more evidence of matriarchy in ancient times.