The Cult of the Mother Godess and Homosexuality
Evola As He Is
On those who study the cult of the mother goddess, both in its ancient and in its modern forms, 'The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies' by James Neill has the effect of a bombshell. Its significance cannot be stressed enough. The whole book is available at humanbehaviors.free.fr/Livre%20-%20Human%20bisexuality%20-%20The%20Origins%20and%20Role%20of%20Same-Sex%20Relations%20in%20Human%20Societies%202009.pdf. This is an excerpt :

« In the years following the end of the last Ice Age some of the early hunter-gatherer societies began to supplement their diet of game and nuts and berries with grains they learned to cultivate in small patches adjacent to their dwelling sites. At about the same time they began to keep and raise young animals taken from wild herds of cattle, sheep and goats, which greatly simplified their acquisition of meat. The development of agriculture and animal husbandry had a profound effect on these early tribes. Scholars, in fact, have used the appearance of agriculture to signal a major demarcation in the development of human culture, assigning the term Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, to the primordial hunter-gatherer phase, and Neolithic, or New Stone Age, to stone age cultures who acquired knowledge of agriculture.

The cultivation of crops tied the early agriculturalists to land in specific locations, and led to a more settled way of life, in contrast to the nomadic wanderings of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Similarly the myths and rituals of the hunter-gatherers, which involved a mystical contract with the spirits of the game animals they depended on, gave way to rituals seeking to promote the fertility of their animals and an abundant harvest. A similar transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic can be seen in the lifestyles of the North American Indians before the encroachment of European settlers. The Indians of the Great Plains continued a way of life similar to that of the Paleolithic clans who hunted the great herds of grazing animals on the plains of Eurasia that lay south of the Pleistocene ice fields. The Plains Indians hunted the herds of bison which roamed the North American plains and depended on their meat for sustenance and on their hides for clothing and shelter. Tied more to the bison herds than to the land, Plains Indian tribes would move their encampments to be closer to the herds if necessary. In contrast, the Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest cultivated crops of maize, and so developed settled communities of mud brick dwellings close to their crops. While the Plains Indians used animal hides for clothing, and made straw baskets for storage, the Pueblo Indians wove cloth for clothing and produced ceramic pottery for use in grain storage and for water vessels.

Starting around 9,000 B.C., similar settled communities began to develop in the fertile river valleys of the Middle East. Cultivating crops of wheat and barley, grains that at the time grew wild in a belt from Asia Minor to northern Iran, the early farming communities thrived in the mild climate and regular rainfall of the upland areas of the region. In the eighth millennium, towns of mud brick houses, not unlike those of the Pueblo Indians, began to appear, first around 8,000 B.C., at Jericho, the site of a large oasis in Palestine, and shortly thereafter at Jarmo, in northern Mesopotamia.1 Around 6500 B.C., at Catal Huyuk, in southern Anatolia (modern Turkey), ceramic pottery first appeared, and by the beginning of the next millennium tools of copper were being used in eastern Anatolia. It is, of course, impossible to know with certainty to what degree homosexual behavior figured in the lives of these early clans and tribes. However, given the ramifications of the widespread homosexual behavior among primates on human sexual evolution, and considering what the virtually universal appearance of homosexuality among aboriginal tribal societies around the world reveals about human sexuality, there seems to be little doubt that homosexual behavior would have been widespread among these Neolithic tribes, as well as among their Paleolithic forebears, most likely in patterns similar to those found among tribal peoples around the world in recent times.

Over the next several thousand years, as knowledge of crop cultivation and stock-raising slowly spread throughout the region, an increasingly refined lifestyle developed among these Neolithic peoples. The division of labor and role specialization became increasingly complex, with a multitude of occupations emerging, ranging from farmers and shepherds to craftsmen and traders. By 4500 BC fine ceramic pottery, painted in sophisticated geometric designs, was being made throughout northern Mesopotamia, and spread via trade as far away as the Mediterranean coast The rituals of the Paleolithic shamans evolved into complex rites of worship presided over by a priesthood who began to exercise increasing influence and authority in the communities. Serving as mediators with the goddess, who was believed to control the fertility of the crops and livestock the communities depended on, the priests gradually took on the role of managing and coordinating the labor required in agricultural production.

In the early fourth millennium B.C., the people who settled on the fertile delta that was formed where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet the Persian Gulf discovered the techniques of crop irrigation. As a result of this advance they were able to grow crops of such abundance that for the first time a people was producing more food than it needed for survival. The subsequent surpluses, which were traded with distant peoples for goods ranging from timber to precious stones, served as a basis of accumulating wealth and propelled the growth of the delta farming villages into cities. With the achievement of economic surpluses, a portion of the society was freed from the day-to-day struggle for survival that had characterized humans since earliest times, and was able to spend time on political administration and on intellectual and artistic pursuits. Writing was invented, the sciences of astronomy and mathematics were developed, monumental architecture was erected, and representational art replaced the largely decorative art of earlier periods. The resulting political, economic and cultural attainments form the basis for that blossoming we have come to know as the Sumerian civilization. The economic and political infrastructure developed in these city-states served as the prototype of the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations that were to succeed them and of the high civilizations that were to later develop in Egypt and around the Mediterranean and eastward in the Indus Valley of India and in China.

During a thousand years of flourishing development, the Mesopotamian city-states remained an island of civilization in a sea of Neolithic tribal cultures. Over time, the prosperous Sumerians became targets for increasing predation and invasions by bordering mountain tribes and nomadic peoples from the arid steppes north and south of the Sumerian civilization. From the south, nomadic tribes of Semites moved north in search of greener pastures and attracted by the wealth of the Sumerian city-states. Around 2300 B.C. Sargon the Great, a warrior-king who was descended from Semitic nomad tribes who had settled in the north and west of the river valley, conquered the Mesopotamian city-states and brought them together under the rule of what became known as the Akkadian Empire. Toward the end of the Third Millennium, after a brief resurgence of Sumerian rule, Amorite Semites from the south conquered the region, setting up the Babylonian Empire, which was to endure, in one form or another, for nearly two thousand years. In succeeding centuries, Sumerian culture retained a strong influence on Babylonian life, with much of the literature and documents continuing to be written in the Sumerian language. Likewise, the Assyrians, who succeeded the Amorite Semites in Babylon, adopted with little change the political structure and legal tradition of the Babylonians, and continued rites of worship similar to those practiced since earliest Sumerian times. Because of the continuities in the artistic, political, legal and religious traditions from Sumerian to Assyrian times, it is possible to view the successive Mesopotamian cultures as one continuous civilization. »

See, in particular, chap. 4 : 'Homosexuality and Religious Practices'.