earliest human religion was a form of paganism that lived in peace and
harmony with Nature, practiced egalitarian ideals, and worshipped the
supreme Mother Goddess. This religion supposedly honored the sacred
feminine because of her life-giving power, and sought a balance between male
and female principles – the yin and the yang.
A great struggle took place, according to this view, when hateful male-
dominated religions – especially Christianity – sought to destroy this pure
Nature worship and to replace it with an oppressive religion where only male
gods reigned supreme. Sexual union came to be viewed as the original sin of
the Garden of Eden, and Eve was vilified as the cause of humanity’s fall. As part
of its campaign to suppress the sacred feminine, the church supposedly
rounded up and burned all free-thinking and scholarly women as witches – a
total of five million in all!
See The Da Vinci Code, p. 125
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webpage is available
in more detail and with
supporting references
in Truth & Error in the
Da Vinci Code, by Mark
L. Strauss
Was the earliest religion an egalitarian celebration of the sacred feminine?
Dan Brown is drawing his ideas here from the modern Wiccan movement, also known as
Neo-paganism, which claims that the earliest religion in the West was a peace-loving and
egalitarian one involving the worship of two great deities, the Mother Goddess who gives
birth to all things, and the Horned (male) God, who died and was resurrected each year.
Adherents to this religion were supposedly attuned to nature and celebrated the natural
cycles of life. It was only when Indo-European invaders swept through Europe and
introduced warrior gods and weapons of war that this Mother Goddess religion was
suppressed and went underground.
This claim of an early universal belief in a Mother Goddess has been discredited by
archaeologists and historians. Most ancient religions were animistic or polytheistic.
Animists believe there are spirits in all physical objects, while polytheists believe in many
different gods. Historically, these gods and goddesses were generally localized and had
specific domains of power. They ruled the mountains, the forests, or the seas, and
controlled war, hunting, love, fertility, harvest, etc. Adherents of polytheism sought to
appease these gods to gain favor or protection.
This same diversity characterized the religions of the Roman empire in the first century.
Contrary to claims of The Da Vinci Code, sun worship was not the “official” religion of the
empire. Rome did not have an official religion, and was generally tolerant of all religions.
Some people worshipped the gods of the Greek Pantheon; others, a variety of Roman
gods; still others participated in the mystery religions – more recent imports from the East.
Emperor worship began with Caesar Augustus, who somewhat reluctantly allowed
himself to be worshipped as a god. Emperor worship was subsequently adopted by many
Roman emperors and all citizens were required to participate as an act of loyalty to the
state.
Jews and Christians were unique in the Roman empire – and viewed with suspicion by
many – because they rejected all such gods and believed in the one true God of Israel, the
Creator and Sustainer of all things. Because of their loyalty to Rome, the Jews had gained
the status of a “legal religion” (religio licita) and were exempt from emperor worship.
Instead, Jewish priests offered sacrifices to Yahweh on behalf of the emperor at the
Jerusalem temple. Christians experienced this same protection as long as Christianity
was viewed as a sect of Judaism. As Jews and Christians gradually parted ways,
persecution against the Christians increased. This was due, at least in part, to their failure
to acknowledge the Roman gods.
“Paganism” was not, then, synonymous with worship of the sacred feminine, but
represented a diverse array of gods and belief systems. Furthermore, the primary
redemptive ritual of pagan religions was not the hieros gamos (“sacred marriage”)
described in The Da Vinci Code but rather animal sacrifices intended to appease the
gods. Obviously, such bloody (and animal-unfriendly!) rituals would not have appealed to
Dan Brown’s readers nearly as much as sex rites. Nor were these ancient religions
egalitarian. In Roman religion, for example, it was normally the male head of the
household, the paterfamilias, who performed the rituals for the family.
The Da Vinci’s Code’s praise of goddess worship as honoring of women is also
misguided. Goddess worship in the ancient world was more often about exploiting
women than extolling their virtues. Fertility rites often revolved around pagan temples
where slave prostitutes served at the whim of their male customers. Consider, for
example, the temple of the goddess Aphrodite in Corinth, which, in the second century BC,
boasted the services of a thousand “sacred prostitutes.” This debauched institution hardly
constitutes the liberation of women that The Da Vinci Code extols
