This is a reading response to “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” by Leonard Shlain.

In the first 50 pages, Shlain goes over the history of how women interacted in the world during hunter/gather time.  The woman was valued for her skills in foraging, gathering food for her lover and/or family.  Without these feminine skills the masculine beings would suffer, especially when hunting was scarce or unsuccessful.  These two roles were essential in life and were each valued.

Leonard Shlain says, and I find it important to note that, “Every individual has encased in his or her skull both a feminine brain, and a masculine one. Any particular society can accentuate one or the other of these two ways of interacting with the world, depending on the demands of the environment or the shaping influences of its inventions.” (Shlain 27)

Things started to shift when our environment moved from a more nomadic style, or a more settlled way of being in the world. Once people began to become steady on land, things shifted, men no longer went out on hunts, and instead they would stay on the land, learning how to take care of and raise animals. They also began to take part in the, once strictly feminine role, of gathering food.  Men learned to pray to the earth goddess to bring fertility to the land.  It is mysterious still, how these prayers changed towards masculine like gods, and why they no longer prayed to the goddess. Maybe it was simple that the masculine brain wasn’t getting worked in the same way because of the lack of hunting, that the “masculine brain” needed to be manifested elsewhere?

A poetic response to The Alphabet Versus the Goddess:

Woman gathered food to disperse in trade for iron,

to enrich her bleeding body.  She must have done this

or either traded her sex for their huntings.

She later watched as the words were stolen from her body, from her cherished skills, to now engage in an act that brought apon shame to her collecting, to her giving.

The words were stolen from her body they say.

Because they no longer speak in prayer

for her to bring them fertility. They no longer ask for nourishment as the crops grow plump by manipulated man hands.

She watched

and she, the giver of light, shed on this shift; of body to word

of right, to left

brain

gracefully allowing the

embarking on endeavors that could not hold the sight of her slippery hips, and sturdy hands.

They moved they’re hands to the stolen spaces of the page

the page filled with imageless faces and heartless prayers.

they stole the words from her body

and now her vessel is missing

the piece of fulfillment

that the valued iron gave her.

and yet, She walks on,

handing out poppy’s to the still outstretched hands.

Liberty P.