The Cultural Revolution of the Sacred Marriage: And other Patriarchy-critical Texts

Dr. Gerhard Bott is Germany ́s leading mastermind in the field of patriarchy-critical research. He puts the main emphasis of his analyses on the social, political and theological development from the Neolithic to the Iron Age which led to the oppression of women and, closely connected with that, to the devaluation of female deities in favor of male-dominated divine hierarchies. The Cultural Revolution of the Sacred Marriage (Die Kulturrevolution der Heiligen Hochzeit): This essay deals with the cult of the Sacred Marriage with respect to its three aspects (fertility cult, legitimation of the king, sanctification of the heir to the throne), thus stressing the political nature of this cult. Furthermore, the text delineates the basic lines of a development which led to the devaluation and, eventually, the elimination of the goddess, starting with the prehistoric belief in a monogenetically creating Primordial Mother and leading via various polytheistic constructions to the belief in a monogenetically creating supreme male god. Summary of the Book: The Invention of the Gods. Essays on Political Theology: This text sums up Dr. Bott ́s complex theory of the social, political and theological development of human society from the Paleolithic via the Neolithic to the Iron Age with particular consideration of the worsening of women ́s position in social and religious contexts. The Sanctification of Sexuality in the Neolithic and Paternity (Die Heiligung der Sexualität im Neolithikum und Vaterschaft): This essay deals with the question whether the interrelation of sexuality and pregnancy was discovered only in the Neolithic or already many thousands years earlier in the Paleolithic. The author presents lots of convincing arguments for the first option, thus un-masking the conventional opinion, that paternity has been known from the beginnings of human evolution, as an ideological kind of wishful thinking. The Origin of Patriarchy and Warfare in the Neolithic (Die vier Modi des Neolithikums): This essay deals with four developmental phases in the Neolithic which the author calls Modes I-IV, thus introducing a yet unknown but necessary and helpful differentation into the scientific reflections on the Neolithic.