Where Did the Goddess Go?

This is part of the series From Ego to Soul: Remembering the Right Brain’s Wisdom. [Read Part 1] [Read Part 2] [Read Part 3] [Read Part 5]

It seems she was usurped by the written word. 

The Great Goddess reigned supreme for 30,000 years of documented human existence, she lived in the hearts of both men and women—they worshiped her as the fertile fields, the living Earth, and the vastness of the universe. But then someone invented the alphabet, and the people began to rise up violently against her. They chose to enthrone a male God instead.  

That’s the case Leonard Shlain makes in his fascinating page-turner, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image.

In The Great Mother and the Fall, I wrote that the authors ascribed the patriarchal takeover of civilization to external forces—surplus grain, sacred metal-making turned to tools and then weapons, nomadic warrior tribes. I suggest these demonstrate the conditions that began the shift. War, tools, weapons, excess food to manage, all favor the left brain. 

Shlain then provides us with his theory that the takeover was an internal one. The alphabet, as I see it, showed up as the perfect mechanism for managing this emerging left-brained environment. He surveys human history showing that the shift from spoken (right brain) to written (left brain) communication rewired our brains and led to the rise of patriarchy and the demise of feminine values, goddess worship, and women’s rights. 

Writing locked in the neurological shift.

“I propose that alphabets are the principal reason cultures have reviled goddesses, banned women from conducting religious ceremonies, and ignored or devalued the beauty and beneficence of nature.”

While the left brain is known as the side of our brain that talks, speech requires both sides to collaborate. When we speak, the left brain handles the administrative tasks, like physical speech production, word order, and literal definitions. The right brain handles the emotion and meaning. It provides the intonation, the rhythm, and more complex aspects like humor, metaphor, and irony. When we listen to a speaker, the right side is the one that reads eye movements, body language, and implied meanings.

Speaking and listening, then, provide an embodied experience that engages both the right brain and the left.  

Writing, on the other hand, only engages the left brain. Once a word is written, it becomes a static representation of thing, abstracted from the lived experience. There is no tree in the letters we use to refer to a tree. And this is where the left brain excels, because it can focus in on an object without the right brain’s messy emotion and context. Both reading and writing require a concentrated, narrow focus and a linear, left to right, sequential flow. And compared to speaking, they are highly controlled experiences, which the left brain loves.

Writing and reading, then, allow the left brain to work solo, and over time, to believe that it’s so smart, it doesn’t need the right brain at all. 

Shlain shows that in cultures that rely on speaking and oral storytelling for communication, the Goddess, and women, thrive. Men and women live a holistic, right-brained, cyclical experience, and feminine values are primary. But as soon as the alphabet arrives and the people learn to read and write, everything shifts. The left brain takes over and revolts against all things right-brained and feminine—women, nature, art, spirituality. A world of aggression, private property, contracts, the rule of law, technology, and war becomes the norm and the Goddess becomes God.    

Patriarchy and literacy were well established in Europe when the first white men set foot in North America. The Native peoples I’m aware of were firmly rooted in their right brains—oral storytelling, feminine values, and the Earth, were still alive and well. We told them they had to read books to be educated, to know things. But we didn’t understand that their knowledge was in the sky and the land, gesture and tone. They communicated through dance, and song, and silence, and it all spoke to them. 

The Native Americans avoided writing until we forced them into our schools. I suspect their right brains knew what literacy would do to consciousness and cautioned them to stay away from it. 

Now that we understand the mechanism that led to the left brain’s takeover—how literacy itself rewired our consciousness—we face a choice. We can’t unlearn reading and writing, nor would we want to. But we can make conscious decisions about how we use these tools.

Writing and literacy don’t have to serve left-brain dominance. They can be used in service of right-brain wisdom, preserving oral knowledge, expressing spiritual understanding, pointing toward what words alone can’t capture.

We understand the brain framework now. We know the proper hierarchy. We’ve seen the historical sweep of ego domination and the neurological mechanism.

But what did right-brain-led life actually look like in practice? What kind of culture emerges when the Master is in charge?

Continue the series: A More Dignified Way of Life