How fear, sex and power shaped ...
From 21A
exhibition there’s a bronze dish, probably made in Birmingham, and decorated by women.”
Feared and revered
While many goddesses were thought to lend their support to women in conceiving and delivering children, there were also individuals credited with the power to do the opposite. Female figures of power could in fact be a source of anxiety to women in the very sphere in which their assistance was needed most. Among the Sumerians, Lamashtu, a goddess with the head of a lion and the jaw of a donkey, was believed to creep into the houses of women while they were in labour to steal their babies. In Mexico, Cihuateteo (“divine women”), the spirits of would-be mothers who had died in labour, were rumoured to return on five days in the Aztec year to snatch newborns from their cradles. And Lilith was described as the first wife of Adam, and as a bringer of infant death and sterility. A haunting sculpture of her by contemporary artist
Kiki Smith is mounted high on one wall of the exhibition. Her fierce blue eyes are liable to catch you off guard.
These deities were profound manifestations of real human fears. It would be true to say that anxiety has helped shape several of the stories that have come down to us about female figures of power.
In many early cultures, the Earth itself was seen to be female, or to revolve around the behaviour of Earth goddesses. The ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, for example, was used to explain the existence of the seasons. Upon hearing that her daughter had been abducted by Hades of the Underworld, Demeter went into mourning, causing the crops she usually protected to fail. Persephone’s consumption of some pomegranate seeds kept her in the darkness for part of the year only. Her return to the upper world cheered her mother and heralded the arrival of spring and its fruits. Similarly, in Hindu texts, the goddess Shri-Lakshmi was described as leaving the Earth after suffering a slight, thereby wreaking devastation in the fields.
These stories had agency because feminine power was intrinsic to man’s conception of our planet. In Hinduism, Shiva’s wife, Sati, was believed to become part of the physical universe after she died. Her body fell in pieces across the landscapes below, inspiring the foundation of the Kamakhya Temple in Assam, on the very spot her vulva was said to have settled. Still today, a festival is held here in the monsoon season. Worshippers gaze in wonder as the natural spring turns red with the seepage of iron oxide. It is as if the goddess were menstruating.
As important as these modes of worship are, one can’t help but feel that men have endowed female deities with powers beyond their human counterparts to illustrate why female rule on Earth would be disastrous. While the Egyptian Sekhmet was upheld for her life-giving potential, like Shri-Lakshmi and Demeter, she could also deliver destruction. It was said that she was sent to plunder the Earth after mortals rebelled against her father, the sun god, Ra. Sekhmet did as she was told but got carried away. Ra was so ashamed by her bloodlust that he recalled her. Sekhmet would not give up. The only way Ra could stop her in her tracks was by disguising alcohol as blood so that she would become too inebriated to continue.
Still today, women in power are often as much feared as they are revered or, at least, are presented as threatening in their success and their ability to smash glass ceilings. If the examples of the past reveal anything, it is that female figures of authority are always at the ready to rise up and defy expectations. They are brilliant for being everything people assume they are not.
Feminine Power – the Divine to the Demonic is at the British Museum, London, until 25 September.