The Alphabet Versus The Goddess
 Leonard Shlain
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 1999 Arkana
 ISBN: 0140196013

The Conflict Between Word and Image. Tracing the rise of alphabetic literacy, the process of reading & writing, & how the human brain was fundamentally reconfigured, creating the profound changes in human history, myth, religion & gender relations.

Like The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, you know how The Alphabet Versus The Goddess is going to end -- with the demoralisation, denigration & demise of the feminine way of life. If you've ever wanted to know how it came to pass, then Leonard Shlain's intense & readable panorama of the story of the alphabet, why it came about & how it became the prime format in which our ancestors recorded their lives, is the book for you, for it will open that Pandora's Box.

Leonard Shlain writes: “I began my inquiry intent on answering the question Who killed the Great Goddess? My conclusion - that the thug who mugged the Goddess was alphabet literacy - may seem repugnant to some and counterintuitive to others, I cannot prove that I am right...[however]...I think a pattern can be discerned showing the shaping influence on culture of writing...[& that]...The rise and fall of images, women's rights, and the sacred feminine have moved contrapuntally with the rise and fall of alphabet literacy.”

The Alphabet Versus The Goddess is an exhilerating read, & yet soul-searing. On the one hand, I wouldn't be typing at my keyboard in this language, reveling in its simplicity & comfortable within its complexity had not men, so many centuries ago, experimented with hen pecks of dyes on dried sheep skins. On the other, the progress of the demolition of the images & the suppression of one entire side of life, is devastating to re-visit.

Perhaps, because I am walking this time around The Wheel in the body female, I have noticed during my studies, the dearth of female ideas within philosophy & the surfeit of misogyny within that realm of thought. As if the only correct way of thinking has been the way men's minds do it, no matter where on earth they dwell.

While men have been at war with each other since time immemorial, there has always been, between the conquerors & the vanquished, a certain bond of respect for the fellowship of warriors. In the war between the genders, there has been no such respect. Which makes me realize that in vanquishing women, men have, down the ages, felt a deep, abiding & surreal shame.

To paraphrase Shakespeare: He doth protest too much. Less eloquent was the comeback going around when I was a child: dirty dog smells first. The laws of the land reflect societies' need to counter anomalies which make them uncomfortable. The laws of the religious & the prosaic are always reactions to something already happening, & must always play at catch-up. Thus, when you read the history of the laws men made, a sneaking suspicion is inevitable that they were protesting the way things were, & by the enforcement of the laws they made up (whether god-given or not), they set about confuting the lively societies based upon the feminine. Prime examples of those reactions, are men's laws around food & blood. Which gender would the preparation of food & the proper proximity to blood, affect the most? What better way to brainwash a people than by changing & controlling the ways they have coped for eons, with feeding their families & taking care of their feminine needs?

Why else would men, for the next couple of thousand years or so, invest such calumny against those who gave them life? All in all, the religions of men have been based on biting the hands that fed them, suffocating the voices which sang them lullabies & enslaving the industry of half of humanity.

The Alphabet Versus The Goddess is a mind-expanding, perspective-altering exploration of our path toward literacy, patriarchy & misogyny; as well as a digression into how other cultures, outside of the navel of civilization, went their ways.

The titles of Leonard Shlain's expedition are vivid examples of the dichotomous nature of our minds, before we make that leap of faith into the realm of transformation: Image/Word; Hunters/Gatherers; Right Brain/Left Brain; Males: Death/Females: Life; Nonverbal/Verbal; Cuneiform/Marduk; Hieroglyphs/Isis; Aleph/Bet; Hebrews/Israelites; Abraham/Moses; Thera/Matzah; Adam/Eve; Cadmus/Alpha; Sappho/Ganymede; Dionysus/Apollo; Athens/Sparta; Lingam/Yoni; Birth/Death; Yin/Yang; Taoism/Confucianism; B.C./A.D.; Jesus/Christ; Death/Rebirth; Patriarchs/Heretics; Reason/Madness; Illiteracy/Celibacy; Muslin Veils/Muslim Words; Mystic/Scholastic; Humanist/Egoist; Protestant/Catholic; Faith/Hate; Sorcery/Science; Positive/Negative; Id/Superego; Page/Screen.

Now, before you go off on a tirade that no author could cover so much in a tome of less than 500 pages, which also includes A Conversation with the author, as well as Notes, Bibliography & Index, let me assure you Leonard Shlain does, with the minimum of verbiage & the maximum usage of engaging lineal thought! It takes one to know one!

He writes: “In laying out the considerable circumstantial evidence implicating the written word as the agent responsible for the decline of the Goddess, I have sought to convince the reader that when cultures adopt writing, particularly in its alphabetic form, something negative occurs. Because of literacy's overwhelming benefits, this pernicious side effect has gone essentially unnoticed...I gave little weight to the content of the works of any period, and focused instead on the perceptual changes wrought by the processes used to learn an alphabet.”

This author is also Chief of Laparoscopic Surgery at California-Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco & knows a thing or two about how our brains work.

I love it when someone takes a look at our hallowed history through the lens of a heretofore unknown set of ideas. You should read the recommendations from other reviewers, they are magnificent & reflect the impact The Alphabet Versus The Goddess has made on their word-weary minds!

This is a keeper, well-written, engaging, accessible & healing!

More from Leonard Shlain: Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light.
The site for this book is: www.alphabetvsgoddess.com
(04/21/02)

Rebecca