The Forgotten Mother Goddess
Explores the ancient, monotheistic devotion to the Mother Goddess across diverse cultures, reclaiming her erased legacy and challenging patriarchal and colonial narratives.
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The Forgotten Mother Goddess
What if the divine feminine was not a side note in religious history, but one of its original foundations?
This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars exploring the Mother Goddess, matriarchy, the Great Mother, and the Feminine Divine from the Neolithic era to the present. Tracing mythological, linguistic, and spiritual connections across Iran, India, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and beyond, the contributors examine the possibility that diverse goddesses represent culturally distinct manifestations of a shared ancient divine presence—from Shâmaran, Shamurammat, Shakti, and Zhiva to Indigenous cosmologies and women’s spiritual traditions.
Bringing together perspectives from Gender Studies, Goddess Studies, Kurdish and Near Eastern Studies, Religious History, Mytho-Ethnography, and Decolonial Studies, the volume challenges patriarchal and colonial narratives of religious origins and opens new avenues for research into the forgotten histories of the sacred feminine and monotheaism.
The volume seeks to open a new path of inquiry into a feminine single-divine tradition—coined here as “monotheaism,” meaning a faith centered on a single goddess—that may have endured for millennia yet has been obscured or marginalized by patriarchal interpretations of monotheism within academia. By introducing and critically examining the concept of monotheaism, the volume invites further research into how categories of religious history have shaped our understanding of the ancient past.
The Forgotten Mother Goddess
What if the divine feminine was not a side note in religious history, but one of its original foundations?
This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars exploring the Mother Goddess, matriarchy, the Great Mother, and the Feminine Divine from the Neolithic era to the present. Tracing mythological, linguistic, and spiritual connections across Iran, India, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and beyond, the contributors examine the possibility that diverse goddesses represent culturally distinct manifestations of a shared ancient divine presence—from Shâmaran, Shamurammat, Shakti, and Zhiva to Indigenous cosmologies and women’s spiritual traditions.
Bringing together perspectives from Gender Studies, Goddess Studies, Kurdish and Near Eastern Studies, Religious History, Mytho-Ethnography, and Decolonial Studies, the volume challenges patriarchal and colonial narratives of religious origins and opens new avenues for research into the forgotten histories of the sacred feminine and monotheaism.
The volume seeks to open a new path of inquiry into a feminine single-divine tradition—coined here as “monotheaism,” meaning a faith centered on a single goddess—that may have endured for millennia yet has been obscured or marginalized by patriarchal interpretations of monotheism within academia. By introducing and critically examining the concept of monotheaism, the volume invites further research into how categories of religious history have shaped our understanding of the ancient past.
Dilşa Deniz is a Kurdish Alevi scholar specializing in marginalized ethnic, cultural, and religious identities, with a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology and a focus on decolonial, gendered approaches to Kurdish and Near Eastern religious history.
