The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (Paperback)

by Riane Eisler (Author) "Preserved in a cave sanctuary for over twenty thousand years, a female figure speaks to us about the minds of our early Western ancestors..." (more)
Key Phrases: gylanic resurgence, androcratic system, gylanic thrust, Catal Huyuk, Old European, Old Testament (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Some books are like revelations, they open the spirit to unimaginable possibilities. The Chalice and the Blade is one of those magnificent key books that can transform us and...initiate fundamental changes in the world. With the most passionate eloquence, Riane Eisler proves that the dream of peace is not an impossible utopia. -- Isabelle Allende, author of The House of the Spirits

From Publishers Weekly
Women played leading roles in the first Christian communities; Jesus' teachings had a feminist bent; ancient Hebrews worshipped the prehistoric goddess-mother well into monarchic times; and Nazis, with their system of male dominance, were a direct throwback to the Indo-European or Aryan invaders whom they crudely imitated. These controversial ideas and findings suggest the thrust of Eisler's highly readable synthesis. She convincingly documents the global shift from egalitarian to patriarchal societies, interweaving new archeological evidence and feminist scholarship. In her scenario, as womenonce veneratedwere degraded to pawns controlled by men, social cooperation gave way to reliance on violence, hierarchy and authoritarianism. The book, despite its jargon, is an important contribution to social history. Eisler wrote The Equal Rights Handbook.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (September 21, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062502891
• ISBN-13: 978-0062502896
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,797 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #9 in	Books > Nonfiction > Women's Studies > History
  #19 in	Books > History > Historical Study > History of Ideas

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

299 of 332 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars History or Myth? Does it Matter?, August 22, 1998

By	Tom Fulton (Minneapolis, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

The Chalice and the Blade describes idyllic, Goddess-worshipping societies that Eisler believes existed several thousand years ago in eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. She presents images of agrarian villages that had no defensive fortifications because there was no war. The communities were non-violent and egalitarian. There was no hierarchy and no sexism. There was no class system or great disparities of wealth. The people were deeply spiritual and practiced free love. They were profoundly connected to the natural world. Eventually, however, aggressive warrior nomads from the east (patriarchal peoples who worshipped male sky gods) destroyed these peaceful, Goddess-worshipping communities. The warrior nomads killed the men, raped the women, and took the children as slaves. The Goddess was suppressed and the patriarchy has ruled ever since.

I read the book as a refreshing, life-affirming counter-myth that challenges the abusive aspects of our patriarchal traditions. The Chalice and the Blade celebrates the value of partnership, equality, collaboration, non-violence, and connectedness to nature. Eisler gives us some sense of the enormous power to heal that resides in the repressed feminine and lunar realms. However, I would offer the following cautions:

1. It is possible that Eisler has extrapolated a few scraps of evidence into a highly idealized society that didn't really exist.

2 . It is possible that Eisler's vision is pyschologically naive in the sense that everything has a shadow or dark side. If the Goddess societies existed, they would, by necessity, have a dark side.

3. It is possible that the problem with western society is not that it has a male image of divinity but that it has a one-sided, gender-specific image of divinity. Substituting a Goddess-based image might not lead to Utopia, but might bring its own set of problems. Perhaps we need images of the divine that honor both genders.

4. Eisler is a nationally known advocate of partnership models as superior forms of human interaction in contrast to "dominator" approaches. Faced with the choice of partnership or domination, the former is clearly preferable. A more neutral way of distinguishing between these two approaches would be to subsitute consensus for partnership and hierarchy for domination. It is possible that each approach - consensus and hierarchy - has its own merits and drawbacks. The negative shadow of consensus systems might be passive aggression, confusion, paralysis. It is possible that when grounded with love and respect, hierarchical systems can be generative and empowering.

I suspect that the humanity would best be served by a society that reveres both male and female, earth and sky, soul and spirit, hierarchy and collaboration, passion and gentleness - a social order with a pluralistic approach that reflects mythopoetic diversity and celebrates consciousness. Yet, whatever the book's shortcomings I must confess that my heart is with Eisler.

113 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riane's words needed more than ever in these dark times . ., May 21, 2005

By	Janie Rezner (mendocino, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'd like respond to some recent reviews that suggest Riane Eisler's work is not based on fact and that it lacks plausibility. It is quite a sweeping dismissal of a scholarly and well researched ten year work, drawing from many disciplines, from a woman whose life has been dedicated to helping us understand the mess we are in: how we got here, how violence is perpetuated, and how we can get out of it. Riane Eisler presents us with a roadmap to peace; whether we have the wisdom to understand it and respond to it is something else. Until violence against children and women has been abated there will be no peace. Violence begets violence.

Quoting from Adele Gettys "Goddess, Mother of Living Nature." "Since time immemorial our ancestors have left sacred images of the female form. From the caves of Lascaux in France to the Balkans in Eastern Europe the art and artifacts of the Paleolithic and Neolithic, which represent human's earliest myth-making impulses, indicated a deep reverence for life, and, in particular, for the Great Mother."

30,000 year old Stone Age nude figures are the first Western Goddess Representations. Twenty thousand years later, in the agricultural societies of the Neolithic (8,000----3,000 BCE) female images still predominated, indicating a remarkable, millennia-long cultural continuity. And, none were depicted with weapons. This is very important material, for to understand it means to reclaim our heritage.

In the depths of my own profound spiritual journey twenty- five years ago, awakening to the loss of the Sacred Feminine, . . . living in isolation, creating constantly . . . Riane's book came into my hands. I was amazed and heartened to learn that humanity had such a history. Like many folks, I had never heard of the Goddess or our pre-history. Barbara Walker's "The Crone" also found it's way into my hands about that time. There is Merlin Stone's well researched book, "When God Was A Woman," which fleshes out even more this picture of a harmonious, egalitarian, spiritual and immensely creative life that spanned thousands of years, before patriarchy and "father god."

The most convincing thing of all is that the religion and the temples of the Goddess, in her many names, are referred to again and again in the Bible. And, somewhere in the Koran it states, clearly with disgust, that some peoples engaged in the abomination of "worshiping women."

The research of Riane Eisler, noted anthropologist Maria Gimbutus, and more recently James DeMeo, PhD (among many, many others) drawing upon global archaeological and anthropological evidence present substantial proof that our ancient ancestors were non-violent. In his book, "Saharasia: The 4,000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World" professor DeMeo writes, "These early peoples were peaceful, unarmored, and matrist (partnership model) in character. I have concluded that there does not exist any clear, compelling or unambiguous evidence for the existence of patrism (patriarchy--dominator model) anywhere on Earth significantly prior to c.4000 BCE . . . . . . and the earliest evidence appears in specific locations, from which it first arose, diffused outward over time to infect nearly every corner of the globe."


It has been now a bit more than 2,500 years since religious myths of the sacred marriage of the Goddess and her divine lover faded from Western Cultural consciousness. Today our sacred images and myths tend to focus more on death, punishment, and pain than on sex, birth, and pleasure.


Riane writes, "One of the challenges of our time is to create for ourselves and our children images and stories of the sacred more congruent with a partnership than dominator social organization. Images and stories in which giving and receiving pleasure and caring, rather than causing or submitting to pain, occupy center stage.


For in truth we are living in a dysfunctional and antihuman system that threatens to destroy us all. At the same time, there is a new partnership system that is struggling to emerge."


In this time of regression to a harsher, more violent dominator system, Riane's wise words are needed more than ever. May we pay attention to them.

Janie Rezner, Mendocino, CA

57 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New View of Human History and Evolution, January 30, 2000

By	Carrie A. Luikens (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews

This book is based upon the premise that our current society arose from a patriarchal, dominator system and prior to the advent of Christianity there were peaceful, agricultural societies that worshipped goddesses.

From this premise the author hypothesizes that if we humans as a whole adopt the partnership characteristics of the ancient matriarchal societies, we will also become a peaceful, egalitarian society.

The majority of the book explores the earliest civilizations and their worship of the Goddess and then the deliberate destruction of these civilizations by power-hungry men who utilized religion to control and manipulate people. This we all know to be a fact. Those events did take place. But what most us of don't know (and are learning now) is that many aspects of the Bible were derived from the Goddess religions.

Consider the story of Adam and Eve: Eve is responsible for the downfall of man. Eve is symbolic of the Goddess, and the men who created the new religion reversed meanings of Goddess symbols to demonstrate their beliefs. For example, in Goddess religions the serpent was a regenerative life symbol but in the Christian Bible it is a symbol for Satan (Satan being representative of the Goddess). Taken in context of a patriarchal and dominator model, it is completely understandable why this particular group of men sought to destroy the Goddess religion: to obtain absolute power over all people.

In light of this information I developed a better understanding of human history and a greater compassion for all humanity. Yes much of the information in this book will be a shock to those unfamiliar with the subject material, but from learning about the tragedies and mistakes of our past we can build ourselves a better future. For this very reason I highly recommend this book and all books that seek to enlighten the human race to its greatest potential.