When man started with religious and spiritual rites the woman was in the centre. Her ability to create life was considered as sacred. Myths and rites was created to explain what was hard to understand.
About 35 000 years ago the Cro Magnons (an early Homo sapiens, the species to which modern humans belong) lived in parts of what we nowadays call Europe. Archeologists has found sculptures, carvings and cave paintings featuring the sacred woman and the sacred cunt.

Its hard to say what those members of mankind wanted to say with those images and sculptures. The only thing we can be sure of is that it has to be some kind of worship of the woman. When it comes to the men, there are no early findings worshipping him or his magical powers.

The early man knew that life came out of the woman, because it has her who gave birth. The men's role in creating life was not known. They thought that children was born through a combination between the woman's magical powers and higher powers involvement. It was first in more modern time, after year 1000 ac, that the men's role became more clear.
But there are cultures that still didn't know - even in the 20th century.
Because of this we can draw the conclusion that man has always ”known” that it was the woman's magical powers that could guarantee that life would go on. That knowledge could have been the reason behind the evolvement of different religious rites and rituals celebrating the feminine and what she represents.

The men took over

At some point in history, the exact point differs between different cultures, the female oriented religions were crushed or forced underground by male oriented systems.
One close example is the male dominated and patriarchic religions (like Judaism, Christianity and Islam) who crushed the female oriented religion.
In the bible we can read about Moses and stone tablets with the ten commandments, that he got directly from God. When Moses took time on the mountain, talking to God, the people started to worship and dance around the golden calf. When Moses came back he got furious and crashed the first set of stone tablets, while accusing the people of idolatry. What few people know is that the golden calf represented the great Cow Goddess (a goddess of water, of creation and of rebirth). The three first commandments are about obedience and the willingness to actively deny the existence
of "other gods." So with that demand the culture of the Goddess was crushed.

There is a similar scenario within Islam. Allah's soldiers converted the Arabs to a belief in the one and only God (Allah - the same in Christianity's God, and the Judaism's Javhe) instead of worshipping the three Goddesses. In the Islamic myth the goddesses became the three daughters of Allah. And the holy stone, Kabah in Mecca (where all male Muslim pilgrims should visit once during their lifetime) was a heritage from the time of the Goddesses. There are similarities in what happened in other cultures like the Greek.

The Christianed Romans spread Christianity, the male oriented religion while the conquered people from Egypt in the south to Ireland in the north.

In the Nordic countries we can imagine or suspect the strong position the women had in the Goddess Freya.

Vid någon punkt i historien, tidpunkten skiljer sig mellan olika kulturer, har nästan alla gudinneorienterade religioner krossats eller tvingats under jorden av mansorienterade system. Ett exempel som ligger nära oss är de manligt dominerade, patriarkaliska religionerna (som judendom och kristendom) som krossade den gudinneorienterade religionen. I Bibeln kan vi läsa om Moses och stentavlorna med tio Guds bud, som han fick direkt ur Guds (Jahves) hand. När Moses dröjde upp på berget i sitt samtal med Gud, dansade folket runt den Gyllene kalven. Och, som du säkert minns, blev Moses vansinnigt arg och slog sönder den första omgången stentavlor, medan han anklagade folket för avgudadyrkan. Vad färre vet är att den gyllene kalven representerade den stora ko-gudinnan. De tre första budorden handlar om lydnad inför ”den ende guden” (Jahve). Och i kravet på lydnad krossades gudinnekulturen.

Ett liknande scenario finns inom islam. Allahs soldater omvände det arabiska folket till att tro på den ende guden (Allah - som i princip är densamme som Gud eller Jahve) istället för att dyrka de tre gudinnorna. I myten förvandlades senare de tre gudinnorna till Allahs döttrar. Så kan det gå! Den heliga svarta stenen kabah i Mecka (dit muslimska manliga pilgrimer ska bege sig en gång i livet) var ett arv från gudinnornas tid. Liknande episoder skedde i Grekland och Indien. De kristnade romarna spred kristendomens mansorienterade religion, samtidigt som de underkuvade en mängd folk från Egypten i söder till Irland i norr. I Norden kan vi ana den starka ställningen kvinnan hade i gudinnan Freja.

During a few thousands of years (and sometimes shorter) the world had changed from being dominated by many female Goddesses to one single male God. By rewriting the history and our myths the men and their god took over the world and became rulers.

In younger male myths it has been said that even men could create, give birth and give life. In those myths the women's role is totally denied.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche points out in his work ” On the Genealogy of Morals” that there is a time in history when man forgot who he really was. He explains that this oblivion started out with the Greek philosopher Aristotle and was later reinforced by religions like Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It was when man, through a state of resentment (reaction of the mind which we instinctively feel when we think ourselves wronged. Pride and selfishness are apt to aggravate this feeling until it changes into a animosity. Being founded in a sense of injury, this feeling is hard to be removed; and hence the expressions bitter or implacable resentment) stepped in to a word of lies and illusions. Maybe its the change from the goddess cultures to male dominated religions he is aiming at…?

Vaginaworship and Goddess cultures where forced away and was replaced by male Gods like God, Allah, Buddha, Jahve, Shiva…
But there are places where the Goddesses cultures, their ideas and thoughts has survived. One example is Yonipuja, a tantric form of vaginaworship that still (after 6000 years) is being practiced within Hinduism. Yonipuja is still alive, but is not practiced openly. Similar rituals even exist within Buddhism.

One truth?

here is a lot that suggests that there has been cultures around the world that worshiped the woman, the cunt, life, sexuality and diversity. We can assume that goddesses and different symbols for life and the joys of life was important to the people that lived during those ages.
There was not one holy truth, a variety of truths and beliefs existed side by side. Today some of those old truths are making a come-back (conscious or unconscious) in different alternative movements and in what is called ”New age”.