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The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future
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About The Chalice And The Blade: Our History, Our Future
Product Description Now with an updated epilogue celebrating the 30th anniversary of this groundbreaking and increasingly relevant book. "May be the most significant work published in all our lifetimes." – LA Weekly The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past. 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. -- , author of Review “Everyone…should have the opportunity to read it.” -- Chicago Tribune “Validates a belief in humanity’s capacity for benevolence and cooperation in the face of so much destruction.” -- San Francisco Chronicle “ The Chalice and the Blade may be the most significant work published in all our lifetimes.” -- LA Weekly “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.” -- Isabel Allende “The most important book since Darwin’s Origin of Species .” -- Ashley Montagu From the Back Cover The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past. About the Author Riane Eisler is an internationally acclaimed scholar, futurist, and activist, and is codirector of the Center for Partnership Studies in Pacific Grove, California. She is the author of Sacred Pleasure and The Partnership Way. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One Journey into a Lost World:The Beginnings ofCivilization Preserved in a cave sanctuary for over twenty thousand years, a female figure speaks to us about the minds of our early Western ancestors. She is small and carved out of stone: one of the so-called Venus figurines found all over prehistoric Europe. Unearthed in excavations over a wide geographical area--from the Balkans in eastern Europe to Lake Baikal in Siberia, all the way west to Willendorf near Vienna and the Grotte du Pappe in France--these figurines have been described by some scholars as expressions of male eroticism: that is, an ancient analogue for today's Playboy magazine. To other scholars they are only something used in primitive, and presumably obscene, fertility rites. But what is the actual significance of these ancient sculptures? Can they really be dismissed as the "products of unregenerated male imagination"?1 Is the term Venus even appropriate to describe these broad-hipped, sometimes pregnant, highly stylized, and often faceless figures? Or do these prehistoric sculptures tell us something important about ourselves, about how both women and men once venerated the life-giving powers of the universe? The Paleolithic Along with their wall paintings, cave sanctuaries, and burial sites, the female figurines of the peoples of the Paleolithic are important psychic records. They attest to our forebears' awe at both the mystery of life and the mystery of. death. They indicate that very early in human history the human will to live found expression and reassurance through a variety of rituals and myths that seem to have been associated with the still widely held belief that the dead can return to life through rebirth. "In a great cavern sanctuary like Les Trois Frères,
