Barbara G. Walker > Quotes

“In the beginning, in a time that was no time, nothing existed but the Womb. And the Womb was a limitless dark cauldron of all things in potential: a chaotic blood-soup of matter and energy, fluid as water yet mud-solid with salts of the earth, red-hot as fire yet relentlessly churning and bubbling with all the winds. And the Womb was the Mother, before She took form and gave form to Existence. She was the Deep.”
― Barbara G. Walker, Restoring the Goddess: Equal Rites for Modern Women

“To each living thing the Mother gave a temporary form that would eventually dissolve, back once more into the infinite churning a cauldron of potential, where matters and energies are constantly exchanger and recombined. She made the world an image of that uterine cauldron, so that every life form sustains itself by absorbing, decomposing , and assimilating other forms.”
― Barbara G. Walker, Restoring the Goddess: Equal Rites for Modern Women

“Few words are so revealing of western sexual prejudice as the word Goddess, in contrast to the word God. Modern connotations vastly differ from those of the ancients, to whom the Goddess was a full-fledged cosmic parent figure who created the universe and its laws, ruler of Nature, Fate, Time, Eternity, Truth, Wisdom, Justice, Love. Birth, Death, etc.”
― Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

“Until the Crone figure was suppressed, patriarchal religions could not achieve full control of men's minds. Such religions tended not only to ascetic rejection of the physical experiences of life, but also to fearful rejection of the Divine Old Woman, and by extension of old women generally.”
― Barbara G. Walker, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power – A Probing Account of Ancient Societies Restoring Respect and Self-Value for Contemporary Women

“A Goddess religion should be out in the open, not underground as it is right now. A Goddess religion would cause men to look at women differently.”
― Barbara G. Walker, Restoring the Goddess: Equal Rites for Modern Women

“Our culture's official rejection of the Crone figure was related to rejection of women, particularly elder women. The gray-haired high priestesses, once respected tribal matriarchs of pre-Christian Europe, were transformed by the newly dominant patriarchy into minions of the devil. Through the Middle Ages, this trend gathered momentum, finally developing a frenzy that legally murdered millions of elder women from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries.”
― Barbara G. Walker, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power – A Probing Account of Ancient Societies Restoring Respect and Self-Value for Contemporary Women

“The priestesses did not understand how dangerous the new stories would be to their daughters and their daughters’ daughters, down through the generations. The men were learning that even the stupidest story will be believed if it is repeated often enough, while alternative stories are suppressed. Instead of questioning the improbable-sounding miracles of the god, generations of men tried to turn their own common sense inside out to invest ways of explaining them. This process sooner or later attains a time when the improbably becomes Truth, and to question it is a sin, and questioners may be summarily destroyed. Many generations can be raised in ignorance, forbidden to discover any real truths that might undermine the imaginary One. After that, nothing can dislodge the improbably fiction but a major social revolution.


Sot it came about that women, who used to be holy repositories of life force and mystic power, were debased along with the Goddess who embodied these qualities. Instead of men trained to revere the Mother who gave them life, the new societies produced women trained to revere a Father who cursed their progenitress and subordinated them all. In such societies, men became able to appropriate the clan names, properties, children, money, rulerships, and priesthoods. Education, lawmaking, and other lucrative professions were retained in exclusively male hands. Though women continued to do nearly all the same kinds of work by which ancient Clan Mothers supported their families, such work was robbed of dignity and recompense. Instead of a voluntary gift of love and grace, women’s work became involuntary slavery.


So it happened that men believed they had won. In fact, they had lost. They created for themselves a world filled with violence, war, injustice, irrationality, and naked greed.”
― Barbara G. Walker, Women's Rituals: A Sourcebook

“Reading has been a ritual procedure ever since the barest beginnings of literate civilizations, even when the written word was holy, and those were able to read it were regarded with awe. In the world of classical paganism, literacy was fairly common: but it became less so in the subsequent Dark Ages of Europe. The early church opposed education for lay persons and forbade the reading of scripture by anyone other than clergy. Reading became a standard Christian ritual, however, even when the reading was given in Latin to congregations, who couldn’t understand a word of it.”
― Barbara G. Walker, Women's Rituals: A Sourcebook

“The Latin Cross is not inappropriate for a church that composed itself entirely of men, for in several early societies the Latin Cross was a primary phallic symbol.”
― Barbara G. Walker

“Because our civilization has been patriarchal for millennia, it has forgotten or destroyed most of the law codes laid down by our remote ancestresses in the name(s) of the Goddess. She was said to have delivered these codes on mountaintops... thus prefiguring the Moses myth by many centuries. Certain provisions of Goddess law were later copied into patriarchal codes. Others were dropped because they did not suit the more warlike and acquisitive father-worshipers...

Out of the few hints of prepatriarchal low still extant, we can perceive that matrifocal societies long ago established some fairly sensible, humane guidelines for human behavior. Roman jurists even in the classical period described the prepatriarchal code as the ius naturale, the ‘natural law’ reflecting mother-right as naturally as a mother instructs and guides her children. Legal codes of ancient Asia were based on the karmic law embodied in Goddess figures like Kali Ma. Karmic law postulated in effect that every action produces and equal and opposite reaction, because the Mother’s universe demanded balance in all things.”
― Barbara G. Walker

“Woman, remember. You have the memory living deep in your mind, in your blood, in your lifegiving darkness. Reach down to it and bring it forth.


Remember the time before men began to count time. Remember when woman was the world, and the world was woman. Remember when every mother established her clan, guided her children, set the standards of behavior for her lovers, and owned the home place to be passed down to her daughters. Remember when the Mother’s laws forbade man to do violence to others, especially to women and children. Remember when rape was un-known, because every sexual encounter was by woman’s choice. Remember when men dared not claim the right to control any aspect of women’s economic, political, sexual, or reproductive activities, but honored all women for bringing forth and nurturing the human race...


Remember that woman alone... had the right to decree wise laws for the benefit of future generations. Remember that woman alone knew the mysteries of life and death, of healing and cursing. Remember the shrines established by the primal ancestresses. Remember the great temples where priestesses dwelt, helping their people. Remem-ber that the world was at peace, because men were forbidden to kill.


Realize that the real foundation of human life is Woman. Remember your Goddess.

Woman, remember.”
― Barbara G. Walker, Women's Rituals: A Sourcebook