Were there really ancient Middle-Eastern societies where a kind and virtuous Mother Goddess was worshipped above all other deities? No, says author Judith Antonelli, who argues that the born-again Goddess Myth is a product of biblical misinterpretation and wishful thinking. .

Once upon a time there was a Great Mother Goddess who was worshipped all over the world. Under Her benevolent care, humans lived in peace with each other and in harmony with nature. Women were honored as Her earthly representatives and served as Her priestesses, enacting Her sacred sexual rites in groves and temples as seasonal festivals.

One day a band of male warriors with a violent male god invaded this utopia, destroying the Goddess and installing their god as the "one and only" deity. From that day forward, women were subjugated, nature was exploited, militarism was glorified, and sexual repression became the law. This new order is described in the Hebrew Bible.

The feminist spirituality movement was born two decades ago when women who had rejected the sexist teachings of their traditional religious upbringings discovered they needed some form of spirituality to nourish their souls. A kind, nurturing mother Goddess seemed to fill the void.

Searching for female images of the Divine, they inevitably turned to ancient pagan goddesses such as Isis of Egypt and Ishtar of Babylonia, and, in the process, adopted the romantic notion that the societies that worshipped them held women, sexuality, and nature in high regard. Thus the feminist fairy tale above came into being. Twenty years later, now widely accepted as historical fact, the tale continues to fuel the imaginations of thousands of women looking for an alternative to male-dominated religion.

There's just one problem: The fairy tale isn't accurate. It whitewashes the male supremacy and militarism of ancient paganism, falsely attributing the origin of these phenomena to "the Hebrews." In the new goddess myth, Egypt and Babylonia are portrayed as benevolent, peaceful, and matriarchal societies, despite the fact that sexual abuse and exploitation, ritual castration, phallus worship, and even human sacrifice were all integral aspects of their religious traditions. Do women who are enchanted by Isis, for instance, know that worship of her involved the annual drowning of a young virgin girl in the Nile to assure a plentiful harvest? Do devotees of Ishtar realize that many of her priestesses were simply temple slaves who were branded with a star (Ishtar's symbol) just like the animals that were dedicated to her?