What effect has the switch from Matriarchical societies to Patriarchical societies had on religious beliefs?

Answer 1

Wow, I would need three days to explain all the changes that happened as a result of that, but the most important change and effect that happened as a result IMHO, was that women went from being people, to being property, chattel, dependants, (Evil!) and we went from a Goddess based theology to one where males give birth???? What's up with that? Church leadership dominated by males, yet the better part of the congregants are women and children, and women lost thier rightful place as leaders alonside the men... But nature seeks balance, and the pendulum has been swinging in to the other direction for some time now, maybe one of these days we will manage to find our way to the center...

Answer 2

Most modern archaeologists and other anthropologists contend that the existance of an ancient matriarchy is a sexist fabrication of the twentieth century.
The idea, of course, is that women used to control the world, but lost it through their own inepitude.

I suggest Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Won't Give Women A Future as well as the books critical of it for an understanding of how the matriarchy myth hurts women....or at least what modern archaeologists believe.

http://wicca.timerift.net/matriarchal.shtml is a quick and dirty run down.

Answer 3

The decline of goddess worship and the suppression of the role of women. Way back in matriarchal times there were famele priests, godesses etc. Patriarchal societies brought in male priests, male gods etc. We talk of God as a man, when it is actually male, female, both and neither, all wrapped up in one. Higher dimensions are beyond what we know as gender. The male priests suppressed the sacred feminine to control women. The vatican had to tell people to say loads of Hail Mary's to appease the goddess after all the wrongs they are doing to her and her people.

Answer 4

The abandonment of the Goddess and the God/Goddess duality in favor of a monotheistic God.

The formation of all-male clergy, who then rounded up female clergy of earlier faiths and burned them as witches.

The creation of Medicine as an organized discipline of study, again, all male. Again, female practitioners (herbalists and midwives) were rounded up and executed.

The demotion of woman as partner to man, to woman being servant of man.