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Full description for Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity

  • This book is the first to provide detailed and comprehensive evidence that various female deities of Graeco-Roman antiquity were conceived of as virgin mothers in the earliest layers of their cults. The primary goddesses explored are Ge/Gaia (Earth), Athena, Demeter, Artemis, Hera, Isis, and Sophia. The study takes previous feminist analysis of such divinities to its logical conclusion. That is, not only does the work affirm that these goddesses in their earliest forms were considered far more potent than they were later envisioned under patriarchy, but it also demonstrates what other authors have only hinted at: that these deities were considered nothing less than parthenogenetic (self-generating) creators who produced the heavens, the earth, and all creatures purely independently. In doing so, the book provides a fresh angle on our understanding of the original nature, attributes, and agency of these deities. Moreover, it resolves the previously confounding paradox of goddesses' simultaneous virginity and motherhood. It suggests that rather than being seen as contradictory, these two co-existent aspects may be understood as forming a complex of "Virgin Motherhood" in which goddesses were considered consortless but nevertheless generative.