The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth

The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor

Reading the first editions of this book when first published back in 1981 and 1987 transformed my thinking, making me a lifelong Goddess worshipping feminist. So I looked forward to re-reading this 1991 second edition from the perspective of thirty years later.

Swedish artist Monica Sjöö and American poet Barbara Mor met after Sjöö published a 1975 short pamphlet The Ancient Religion of the Great Cosmic Mother of All in the UK. This was edited and extended by Mor and republished as an 80 page small book in Norway in 1981, which is when I became aware of it through its distribution in the USA by the feminist press WomanSpirit. It was very influential to members of the Feminist Goddess movement. Barbara Mor completely rewrote and updated the book to its present size of 500 pages for publication by Harper & Row in 1987 with a second edition in 1991 that included color plates and a new Introduction by Monica Sjöö. She wanted this book to be called The First God, but was over-ruled by publisher Harper & Row. It has never been out of print and is one of the classics of Second Wave Feminist thought.

The book is divided into four sections:
1. Women's Early Culture: Beginnings
2. Women's Early Religion
3. Women's Culture and Religion in Neolithic Times
4. Patriarchal Culture and Religion

The first three sections cover the first 400,000 years of human development in Matriarchal Goddess worshipping cultures, while the last section examines the last 4,000 years of male-god societies and religions with their endless war, female oppression, and profiteering use of Nature and people. Reading the first three sections again did wonders towards breaking my mind free of society's Patriarchal assumptions, both in the 1980s and on rereading it this year. The last 200 page section on "Patriarchal Culture and Religion" was difficult to read as the immense harm to people and the planet that Mor claims comes from male cultural assumptions and power gets hammered home by her extensive analysis. I would read a couple pages and have to put the book down, depressed and unable to continue for a while, before I could push on. The book is worth the effort it takes to read as it is truly mind expanding and transformative.

Monica Sjöö died in 2005 and Barbara Mor in 2015. Their spirits will live on in this classic work on Goddess Feminist thinking.