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Brian Griffith - A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization

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ForeWord Reviews Mothers Day Staff Pick: Books Mom Will Love

A valuable historical reference guide. Publishers Weekly

This is a very ambitious and timely book, a book that many historians, literary theorists and story tellers who care about China and its Other Half of the Sky want to write, but Brian Griffith did it first, with such scope, ease and fun. WANG PING, author of The Last Communist Virgin and Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China

This book is a most engaging and entertaining read, and the depth of its scholarship is astounding. Griffith vividly describes the counterculture of Chinese goddesses, shows that their fascinating stories are alive and active today, and points us toward a more inclusive and caring partnership future. RIANE EISLER, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics and The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

Touching on the whole story of Chinafrom Neolithic villages to a globalized Shanghaithis book ties mythology, archaeology, history, religion, folklore, literature, and journalism into a millennia-spanning story about how Chinese womenand their goddess traditionsfostered a counterculture that flourishes and grows stronger every day.

As Brian Griffith charts the stories of Chinas founding mothers, shamanesses, goddesses, and ordinary heroines, he also explores the largely untold story of womens contributions to cultural life in the worlds biggest society and provides inspiration for all global citizens.

Brian Griffith grew up in Texas, studied history at the University of Alberta, and now lives just outside of Toronto, Ontario. He is an independent historian who examines how cultural history influences our lives, and how collective experience offers insights for our future.

Brian Griffith: author's other books


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Table of Contents Acknowledgements This book builds on the efforts of a - photo 1
Table of Contents Acknowledgements This book builds on the efforts of a - photo 2
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
This book builds on the efforts of a group of Chinese scholars called the Chinese Partnership Studies Group. In 1995 this group, headed by chief editor Min Jiayin, produced a book called The Chalice and the Blade in Chinese History. This is a major account of the relations between men and women through all of Chinas history, from the earliest Neolithic villages before 5000 BCE to the 1990s. As the books name implies, it was inspired by Riane Eislers book The Chalice & the Blade: Our History, Our Future. As Eisler does for Western society, the Chinese Partnership Studies Group presents a fresh and balanced vision of social evolution, which restores proper emphasis to womens values and creativity in shaping the world. Both books do this using a fascinating combination of new evidence from archaeology, history, sociology, plus great reviews on literature and popular religion. I want to thank Min Jiayin, all the members of the Chinese Partnership Studies Group, and Riane Eisler for their inspiring work, which has led me to explore the worlds of Chinese goddesses. I also want to thank my visionary publisher, Tod Davies, and the artists who shaped the project, Paul Mavrides, Mike Madrid, and John Sutherland, plus my extremely helpful wife.
Neolithic China ca 10000 BCE to 2000 CE Modern China - photo 3

Neolithic China, ca. 10,000 BCE to 2,000 CE
Modern China Periods of History Major Dynasties - photo 4

Modern China
Periods of History Major Dynasties A Few of the Wom - photo 5

Periods of History
Major Dynasties A Few of the Women Who Became Goddesses or at Least - photo 6

Major Dynasties
A Few of the Women Who Became Goddesses or at Least Legends Other - photo 7

A Few of the Women Who Became Goddesses, or at Least Legends
Other Important People 1 How a Texan Man Became an Admirer of Chinese - photo 8

Other Important People
1 How a Texan Man Became an Admirer of Chinese Goddesses Maybe Im not - photo 9
1. How a Texan Man Became an Admirer of Chinese Goddesses
Maybe Im not qualified to write this book. Im not Chinese and dont speak any Chinese languages. Im just a curious independent historian, who hopes to praise good people. I think lies have been told about whos important in this world. And the greatness of Chinas women is underappreciated, both in China and the West. These women have their own traditions, religions, and visions of the future. I think theyre a gigantic force for good in the world, and they always have been. Maybe this view of womens culture is simplistic. But Id like to tell some stories about their wisdom, their history, their heroes, and their goddesses. First though, my publisher wanted me to give a brief explanation of how a Texan man got so interested, so here it is.
In the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, where I grew up, my dad was the only person I knew with a short-wave radio. He made it himself, because the stores didnt have short-wave radios. Hed listen to the news from other countries, like radio Moscow, Beijing, or Havana. It seemed like everybody else heard only local American AM or FM radio stations, or American TV. Back then, short-wave radio was the only sort of internet. Near as I could tell, other families I knew never heard about the world from anyone except a fellow American.
I got an urge to learn what was outside the bubble of my society, which to me seemed a kind football society. There was lots of cheerleading for the home teamour school, our lifestyle, our nation, our religion. And a lot of this cheerleading concerned the legend of how the West was won. We saw a lot of heroic movies about the Wild West, or WWII. I heard we were a nation that had never been defeated. We were the best and most advanced people the world had ever seen. Maybe we didnt even need to go to church, because we were already so close to God.
Supposedly, we Americans gained our position in the world by dint of cultural superiority. But a lot of the heroic movies we saw were about victory in battle. Later, I learned it was an ancient Roman beliefvictory goes to those favored by the gods. It was an ego-boosting belief, depending on who you identified with. In my city, the Whites, Hispanics, or Blacks seemed to be clustered in separate sections of town. My high school was almost entirely White, though most people in the city were Hispanic.
When I took history in school, I wasnt that interested in the West. I already heard how it was won. I wanted to know about Chinese, African, Russian, or Latin American history. And of course it was plain to see in the histories of all these placesthose who managed to dominate others were not the best people.
I did a few things to see the world. One was to join a village development organization and work for seven years in India and Kenya.
In India, our village was running out of water. The villagers climbed down their wells to dig them deeper. But across the Deccan Plateau, the water table was falling at maybe a foot per year. Near the end of the dry season, the wells in our neighborhood reached rock bottom. And this brought me the deepest, most basic fear I had ever known. I had assumed that these villagers of huge Asian nations were struggling with problems of the past. But they were dealing with problems of the future.
In Kenya the villages were mainly female. The young men were mostly gone to the cities, leaving the women to work the farms and raise the kids. And these people were marvelous. Among other things, they were covering the hillsides in young trees. Looking out from their hilltops, I realized that these women were the main force holding back the great African desert. Thats when I started to see the power and importance of womens wisdom. The person who helped me the most with this was Riane Eisler, with her book The Chalice & the Blade (1988). This book exposed a whole world of womens values and cultures and how they have shaped society in every age. After that, and cultures and how they have shaped society in every age. After that, I got more interested in learning about womens values and dreams. After going back to North America, I wanted to tell stories about that. Thats why I wrote The Gardens of Their Dreams, about the culture wars behind environmental decline or renewal.
It slowly dawned on me that women commonly have their own alternative versions of culture and religion, even in officially patriarchal religions like Islam and Christianity. This struck me strongly when a Muslim friend had trouble at her mosque. She said that some men had watched her from the doorway as she prayed in the womens section. This wasnt surprising, because shes a beautiful woman. But then some of these men complained. They said that she was inspiring sinful thoughts in their house of prayer. On hearing this, I asked her why she stayed in a community where such prejudice passed for morality. And she answered that those men knew nothing of the real Islam. The first Muslim women were business managers, religious leaders, or generals in the army. Those men at the mosque were not the real Muslimsshe was.
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