At the beginning of this year’s spring, I embarked on a journey through the Anatolia peninsula, seeking evidence of the veneration of the feminine cult. Not the feminine as a hierarchical power within a specific society, but rather aiming to understand what a matriarchal or matrifocal society truly means.
Anatolia, located in present-day Türkiye, holds strategic geographical importance as a connector between Asia and Europe, facilitating the exchange of peoples, cultures, and goods throughout history. As a crucial waypoint on the ancient Silk Road, it enabled the transit of valuable products between East and West. Its central location and control over vital straits, such as the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, drew the attention of empires such as the Hittites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans, consolidating it as a multicultural and commercial hub for millennia.
During antiquity, especially in the pre-Hellenic and Hellenistic periods, this region was marked by strong cultural influences that oscillated between the worship of the feminine and the rule of patriarchal structures.
Before the consolidation of Greco-Roman patriarchy, Anatolia was home to significant centers of worship dedicated to female deities. One of the most notable examples was the Temple of Artemis in the city of Ephesus, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Although Artemis is known in the Greek pantheon as the goddess of hunting and virginity, in Ephesus, she was revered as a mother goddess, protector of fertility, nature, and vital cycles, reflecting older and deeply rooted traditions of feminine worship. Her image with multiple breasts symbolized abundance and creative power.
Another important example is Pergamon (Bergama), which, although it became a Hellenistic and Roman center, preserved traces of older cults associated with the Great Mother. The goddess Cybele, for instance, had her cult spread throughout Anatolia, especially in the region of Phrygia, where she was worshiped as the Mother of the Gods and a symbol of fertile and wild territory.
In these contexts, religious practices and social organizations reflected matrifocal characteristics. The presence of these goddesses in monumental temples suggests that, for long periods, there was a recognition of feminine creative power, both spiritually and communally.
With the arrival of the Greeks and later the Romans, social and religious structures underwent a significant transformation. The process of Hellenization and Romanization brought with it male deities and a more patriarchal political and social organization.
During the Hellenistic era, Anatolia became a stage for the ascent of warrior gods and commanding male deities, as the spirit of the land shifted from a feminine-centered reverence to a landscape in which divine and political power entwined with the masculine. Pergamon, once touched by the essence of the Great Mother, now stood as a vital sanctuary for Zeus and Asclepius—a testament to the evolving order, where strength and dominance replaced nurturing and creation as sacred ideals.
This transition also reflected a symbolic restructuring: Artemis, who once symbolized fertility and the protection of the land, was reinterpreted in many contexts as a more distant goddess, associated with virginity and the control of natural instincts. The integration of Cybele’s cult into the Roman pantheon also diluted her matrifocal character, rendering her a more marginal and exotic figure within the dominant culture.
The rise of Christianity marked another profound transformation: as it solidified its presence within the Roman Empire, many ancient goddesses were gradually absorbed or reshaped into the figures of Christian saints and martyrs. This shift from the worship of the Great Mother to the reverence of the Virgin Mary in certain regions reveals a subtle, yet powerful, reconfiguration of the sacred feminine.
With the rise of monotheistic patriarchal religions, goddess worship was suppressed, reconfigured, or even demonized. Women ceased to be sacred and became sinful. The body turned into a prison for the soul. Sexuality became taboo.
Collectively, we lost our connection to cycles, to the Earth, to the intuitive knowledge that once flowed through priestesses, healers, midwives, and artisans. The silence imposed on the feminine was not just historical and political—it was spiritual.
Long before the great patriarchal religions shaped the world with their celestial gods and linear laws, the Earth’s womb was the first temple, and the female body, its most sacred reflection. During my immersion in the mountains and caves of Anatolia, especially in the stunning Cappadocia, I contemplated the radical shift that led humanity from an era of working in harmony with the earth and its cycles to an unceasing quest to dominate it.
The fate of planet Earth mirrors the fate of the feminine, and it is striking to witness how this evolution unfolds. From ancient reverence for nature—its rivers, forests, and vital cycles—to the relentless drive for control and exploitation, we see the rise of armies and new belief systems that subjugated the feminine, stripping it of its freedom and voluptuous sensuality, once celebrated as the source of life in all its splendor, instead recasting it as a possession, a perceived threat to the dominator’s mindset.
We passed through the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, where powerful images are preserved: female figures seated on thrones flanked by felines, with generous bellies and full breasts: symbols of fertility, protection, and abundance. These statues, dating back more than 7,000 years, were not mere decorative objects. They were expressions of reverence for the Earth as the Mother, for the cycle of life and death, for the generative force that resides in the feminine.
In the absence of temples, the woman’s body was the temple. The womb was the sacred center, the connection between Heaven and Earth, the visible and the invisible.
This worship of the Goddess was not exclusive to Anatolia. In other parts of the ancient world, we find resonances: in Mesopotamia, Inanna (or Ishtar) was the goddess of love, fertility, and war; an archetype unafraid of her shadows. In Egypt, Isis represented mystery, regeneration, and divine motherhood. In the Hindu tradition, Durga, Kali, and Lakshmi manifest distinct facets of feminine power (Shakti): protection, transformation, and abundance.
In India, despite being a patriarchal society, the philosophy of tantra offers one of the most profound expressions of the sacred feminine: Shakti, the creative energy that permeates all existence. Shakti is not just a goddess: it is the very movement of life, the flow of nature, the vibration of sound, the warmth of desire, the dance of the soul.
In tantra, the body is not sinful. It is an instrument. It is sacred. Pleasure is a bridge to the divine. The union of Shiva (consciousness) and Shakti (energy) symbolizes the balance between masculine and feminine principles—both within us, between us and in the cosmos.
When discussing these cultures, the question arises: did matriarchal societies exist? Not necessarily in the sense of female domination over males, but rather as more horizontal structures where the feminine was the symbolic and spiritual axis of social organization.
The Lithuanian-American archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–94), renowned for her extensive research on the subject, proposed that many prehistoric European cultures were guided by a Goddess-centered cosmology, where gender balance and respect for natural cycles prevailed. Patriarchy, with its vertical power structures, would emerge later, along with the cult of war and possession.
In these ancient societies, symbolic and social power was centered on the feminine figure, but this did not necessarily mean that women dominated men. Life in these communities was rooted in agriculture and craftsmanship, with a focus on the fertility of the land and abundance, and there was little evidence of violence or warfare. The worship of the feminine was at the core of spiritual and cultural life, and the primary deity was the Great Mother, symbolizing the earth, fertility, and the life cycle. The iconography of these cultures was rich with symbols, such as rounded female figurines representing fecundity and continuity, as well as motifs of serpents, spirals, birds, bees dripping honey, and bulls carrying their horns like crescent moons over their heads, reflecting rebirth, eternity, and the interconnectedness between life and death.
The arrival of Indo-European tribes from the Central Asian steppes around 3000 BCE brought profound changes to these societies. According to Gimbutas, these people were nomadic, warlike, and hierarchical, promoting a patriarchal model that replaced the ancient social and spiritual structures. The figure of the Goddess was then relegated to lesser or even demonized roles, while male deities associated with power and warfare began to dominate the pantheon. This transition also led to the fragmentation of the feminine archetype, which was now divided between the pure virgin and the seductive vulgar woman, breaking the symbolic unity that once embraced the woman as both creator and nurturer.
The return of the Goddess is not a battle against the masculine. It is an invitation to integration. Shiva and Shakti, sky and Earth, reason and intuition—they need to dance together. By looking back and reclaiming the symbols, rituals, and values of cultures that celebrated the feminine, we open space for a more integrated present and a more compassionate future.
May this memory awaken in us not just knowledge, but experience. May the body become a temple once more, and may the soul regain its fertility.
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