Design by Jesse Turri

“The Old Testament was the first alphabetic written work to influence future ages. Attesting to its gravitas, multitudes still read it three thousand years later. The words on its pages anchor three powerful religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each is an exemplar of patriarchy. Each monotheistic religion features an imageless Father deity whose authority shines through His revealed Word, sanctified in its written form. Conceiving of a deity who has no concrete image prepares the way for the kind of abstract thinking that inevitably leads to law codes, dualistic philosophy, and objective science, the signature triad of Western culture. I propose that the profound impact these ancient scriptures had upon the development of the West depended as much on their being written in an alphabet as on the moral lessons they contained.

Goddess worship, feminine values, and women’s power depend on the ubiquity of the image. God worship, masculine values, and men’s domination of women are bound to the written word. Word and image, like masculine and feminine, are complementary opposites. Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image, patriarchy dominates. When the importance of the image supersedes the written word, feminine values and egalitarianism flourish.“

The excerpts above come from Leonard Shlain’s book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. Shlain uses the work of literary theorist Marshall McLuhan (one of my favs) to show how the invention of the phonetic alphabet, and the advent of literacy, is majorly linked to patriarchy. I came across this great book on Brain Pickings.

Tags:alphabetgoddessimagesleonard shlainmarshall mcluhanpatriarchyreligionwriting