Divine by Default
Divine by Default: Why Women Were Goddesses Long Before They Became Property
The design of life lived within Her blood. Property and names originally followed Her female bloodline, because Hers was the only one that could be realistically tracked.
We've been told a story about human civilization that goes like this: men have always been in charge, women have always been subordinate, and this arrangement is natural, biological, inevitable. But this story is a lie so profound that we've forgotten our own species' history.
The truth is that for most of human existence, women weren't fighting for equality—they were equality. They weren't seeking divine status—they were divine by default, by design.
The Blood That Carried Life
Before DNA tests, before genetic science, before anyone understood that men contributed to conception at all, there was one undeniable biological fact: children came from women's bodies. Not just physically, but genealogically, legally, spiritually. The mother's bloodline was the only one that could be tracked with certainty.
In virtually every ancient city we can trace archaeologically, property and names followed the female line. This wasn't a political choice or a feminist statement—it was practical reality. When paternity was uncertain (which was always), maternity was absolute.
Research from archaeological sites across the globe confirms this pattern. In ancient China, DNA analysis of Neolithic burials reveals entire cemeteries organized around maternal lineages. At Chaco Canyon in North America, an elite matrilineal dynasty ruled for over 300 years. Across Africa's "matrilineal belt," societies spanning thousands of years traced descent through mothers because that's where the certainty lay.
Some cultures even had women sleep with multiple men so their children would inherit the best qualities from each. The idea that one man "owned" a woman's reproductive capacity was not just alien—it was counterproductive to creating strong offspring.
Men Had to Become Divine. Women Already Were.
Think about this radical difference: Men had to be initiated into becoming kings. They had to prove themselves, earn divine status, undergo rituals and tests. Women did not. They were divine by default—vessels of the creative force that brought new life into existence.
The Egyptian trinity tells this story perfectly: Isis (the mother), Ra (the divine child), and El (the father)—always three, always balanced, always cyclical. The morning sun of the female births the child, who grows to become the parent with the energy of the noonday sun, aging into the setting sun father. Then the mother renews herself with the dawn. Everything was cyclical, like the sun itself, like life itself.
This African wisdom passed directly into Jewish and Christian traditions. The very name "Israel" contains this ancient formula: Is (Isis, the Egyptian queen mother), Ra (the African child/sun), and El (the Canaanite father). The balance of forces needed to create life, encoded in the name of the people who would give birth to Christianity.
But notice—this wasn't a hierarchy where one gender dominated another. It was a cycle where each played their essential role in the sacred work of continuation.
When Creation Was Sacred Work
In these ancient worldviews, women weren't just baby-makers—they were the managers of the most important process in the universe: the creation and nurturing of life. Science itself was considered a feminine domain because creation was feminine. Museums—from "muse"—were originally temples to female sources of inspiration.
The first known author in human history was Enheduanna, a woman writing hymns to the goddess Inanna. Libraries, learning, the preservation of knowledge—all of this emerged from traditions that saw women as the natural keepers of wisdom because they were the keepers of life itself.
When Cleopatra dissolved pearls in vinegar at banquets or gave away gold table settings as party favors, she wasn't just showing off wealth. She was demonstrating what power looked like when it didn't need to diminish others to sustain itself. She named her twins after the sun and moon—Helios and Selene—claiming dominion over the very forces that governed life on earth.
The Great Inversion
The shift to patriarchal systems didn't happen because men discovered they contributed to reproduction—that understanding came much later. It happened because new technologies (like weaponized chariots) allowed those who mastered violence to accumulate power and resources. Suddenly, the ability to destroy became more valued than the ability to create.
Property inheritance through the male line only makes sense when men can control women's sexuality enough to ensure paternity. This required treating women as property themselves—confining them, monitoring them, reducing them from sacred vessels of creation to owned objects whose main value was producing legitimate heirs for male landowners.
The transformation was so complete that we now think of the old ways as primitive or backwards. We've been taught to see thousands of years of female-centered spirituality and social organization as an evolutionary step that "advanced" societies needed to outgrow.
What We Lost
When Rome systematically destroyed goddess-centered cultures, when they turned Isis into the Virgin Mary and Cleopatra into a seductress, they didn't just change religion—they changed the fundamental human understanding of what women were for.
Instead of beings whose bodies housed the creative force of the universe, women became problems to be solved. Instead of natural sources of wisdom and authority, they became distractions from men's important work. Instead of sacred, they became profane.
The ripple effects are still with us. When we treat motherhood as a private burden rather than sacred community work, when we pay people who care for children less than people who trade stocks, when we see women's bodies as political battlegrounds rather than the literal source of human continuation—we're living out the consequences of that ancient inversion.
Divine by Default, Not by Permission
Understanding this history doesn't mean we need to return to some idealized ancient past. But it does mean recognizing that the current arrangement—where women and children are often treated as appendages to men's lives—isn't natural law. It's a relatively recent invention that served the specific purpose of allowing some men to accumulate land and power.
For most of human history, the question wasn't whether women deserved equality. The question was how communities could best support the sacred work of creating and nurturing life. Women weren't fighting for a seat at the table—they were the table.
That's not ancient history. That's our birthright, buried under millennia of stories designed to make us forget who we've always been.
The design of life still lives in her blood. The only question is whether we'll remember in time to honor it.
