Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths [Paperback]

Charlene Spretnak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 1992

For thousands of years before the classical myths were recorded by Hesiod and Homer, the Goddess was the focus of religion and culture. In Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, Charlene Spretnak recreates, the original, goddess-centered myths and illuminates the contemporary emergence of a spirituality based on our embeddedness in nature.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Spretnak's treatment of the myths is most impressive." --Walter Burkert, author of Greek Religion

"Charlene Spretnak has succeeded extremely well in presenting pure characterizations of the Old European goddesses as they were revered for millennia, long before the Indo-European elements were imposed to create Olympian mythology." --Marija Gimbutas, author of The Language of the Goddess

"A truly beautiful book. With it Charlene Spretnak has raised new and important questions about the power of myth." --Merlin Stone, author of Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood

"The book is essential...both academically accurate and a personal medium of passage." --CoEvolution Quarterly

"Charlene Spretnak rediscovers the goddesses' early significance and in fascinating portraits restores them to their original glory." --Publishers Weekly

"A basic text of the goddess movement that has spread through feminist and ecological circles for a decade." --Boston Globe

"A poetic revelation of pre-Hellenic mythology." --Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Charlene Spretnak is the author of several books that proposed a "map of the terrain" and an engagement with various emergent social movements, intellectual orientations, and largely unexplored subjects. She has helped to create an eco-social frame of reference and vision in the areas of social criticism, cultural history, philosophy, and religion and spirituality. Since the mid-1980s, all of her books have been an engagement with modernity, its discontents, and the corrective efforts that are arising. She is a co-founder of the Green Party movement in the United States and is a professor of philosophy and religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a graduate institute in San Francisco. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time."

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (August 3, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807013439
• ISBN-13: 978-0807013434
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genuine & Appealing Insight, March 26, 2000

By 

Robert Shuler (Friendswood, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (Paperback)

The other reviewer says that if the book had not been presented as history it would deserve a 5 star rating. I also thought when I picked up the book that the historical argument was tremendously tenuous. However, taken as modern artistic interpretation of "Old European" goddess culture, not documentary about such culture, which is all it technically claims to be, it is wonderful. Myths are NOT historical. None of them. Sometimes a historical story is behind a myth, but often not recognizable. But myths are gross revisions of stories. The key is the revisions appeal to some part of the human unconscious, and seem to make "true" statements about the state of the collective human psyche. As such, and the author does after all present these as "reconstructed myth" not actual transcripts of old texts, then anyone reading the fine print would not be mislead about historicity, and the book should get its deserved 5-star rating.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Glimpses of Goddesses Before They Were Demoted, January 20, 2002

By 

Wendy A. B. Whipple (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (Paperback)

Some of the reviews of this book I believe are misleading. Yes, Ms Spretnak is a feminist; yes, she can be political about it. But I don't think she was presenting an agenda with this book. She took fragments of pre-Hellenic myths, and fleshed them out so they'd make sense. And she did so in a beautiful lyric style!

"The goal of such work [extending the knowledge of pre-Hellenic culture] is not the reinstatement of prehistoric cultural structures, but rather the transmission of possibilities" As we know, history is written by the winners, and when the gods we now are most familiar with, the "classical" myths, were brought into the culture, the older myths which were more matrifocal largely vanished. Not to devalue Homer, but there is genuine value in these much older myths, just as we hold Virgil and Homer in high regard for their telling of newer gods.

The pre-Hellenic myths give us a glimpse into a culture where Hera (for instance) was powerful in her own right, not merely a consort and sister to Zeus. How can knowing two sides of a story be a bad thing? History may be written by the winners, but those who were conquered left traces of themselves behind, too, and you can read about some of it here.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pre-Transformation Goddesses, December 26, 2002

By 

Joe Hughes (Huntington, WV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (Paperback)

Like Robert Graves, Spretnak has merged history and myth, using both to support the other. As such, she has left herself open to accusations of presenting bad history which leaves her poetry ignored. And, like the White Goddess, it is the poetry that is this book's strength and purpose. Unlike Graves, though, her scholarship is not all bad. She gives her interpretation of evidence, which she then references for anyone to see where she got her ideas. I would have liked to see her give an explanation for her interpretations, and I would also have liked for her introductions to each myth to have been more in depth; for this only four stars. However, her interpretations are in line with other authors who have looked at the Goddesses of Greece as more than background characters for the male actors. For more scholarly works on the subject of early Greek goddesse, I would recommend The Transformation of Hera by Joan O'Brien, and Foley's translation and commentaries on The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Previous comments misrepresent this book as touchy-feely, matriarchal, rock worship. Such is not the case. Hellenic women were married at an early age in order to `tame' them - an unmarried, post-pubescent girl was thought to be dangerous (compare with myths of male heroes taming the Amazons by sleeping with their Queen). This book, while growing out of feminist and earth-centered movements, is myth and history illuminating who these goddesses may have been before myth tamed them through marriage to gods.