Does the D&C Exist or Are There Goddesses?

by Lucio Apollonio

Unfortunately, in the pagan context, the medieval and early modern cult of various female deities
(Diana, Perchta, Holda, the Lady of the Game, the Queen of the Fairies, etc.) is often associated with
the cult of the "Goddess", also ignoring numerous deities men present in the same period (think of
Odin, Hellequin, the Wild Man, the Wild Hunter, Oberon, the King of the Fairies, the Lord of the
Game, etc.) and making believe that all these female entities are only "aspects" of one Goddess.

This view, however, is very limiting. First of all it denies the uniqueness of every single female
divinity. Diana is no longer seen as Diana, with her own personality, with her own characteristics, with
her own individuality, she is reduced to a simple expression of the Woman with a capital D. Essentially
his personality is annulled in function of gender.

It is a depersonalizing action, it is as if you consider every single person simply on the basis of his
gender, and do not look at his uniqueness, his character, his particularities, his person.

Secondly, it bypasses the fact that the Deities present in medieval and early modern times are often
new names deriving from the syncretization or differentiation of numerous pre-Christian deities of
different peoples, and therefore each individual people has made its own specific and unique
contribution. in forming this new name; therefore a Goddess who appears in Italy with the contribution
of specific populations will not be the same Entity that appears in Scotland with the contribution of
other populations.

It is then believed that these cults were practiced exclusively by women, when in reality we also find
many men who carried them forward (think of Giuliano Verdena, Zuanne delle Piatte, Andro Man, etc.)
and 25% of those convicted of witchcraft were in fact men (with peaks of 90% in some countries, see a
previous post on the page where the country-by-country percentages were more accurately marked).

Furthermore, this associating all the Goddesses with the Goddess suggests that this cult is of
Neolithic origin, when instead the various Goddesses that we find in the medieval and modern age
derive from the pantheons prior to Christianity, not directly from the Neolithic, not from the exclusive
cult of a Female divinity, but from religions that had many female goddesses and many male gods.

Also with regard to the cult of the "Goddess" in the Neolithic, it has been discovered that many
scholars who started with the idea of finding the cult of a single Goddess in the Neolithic age fell into
numerous errors, including for example:

1. Consider representations of Divinity what could be representations of human beings or dolls;

2. Consider a priori and without proof the male or animal statuettes as simple "manifestations of
the Goddess";
3. Consider the various female divine representations in different places as representations of the
same female Entity, the Goddess, and not representations of different female Entities, or
different Goddesses.

So even cults that perhaps could have given greater prominence to Dee than to Gods go from being
recognized as polytheisms to being seen as monotheisms. The masculine and theriomorphic Gods (in
animal form) are reduced a priori to expressions of the Goddess and the various Goddesses are only
expressions of the Goddess.

How is it possible not to notice that this is a modern monotheistic projection?

How is it possible not to notice that we have transformed a polytheism into a feminine monotheism?

How is it possible not to understand that we have done this because often, even if we declare
ourselves pagans, we still have the germ of monotheism that influences us in judging the cults we come
into contact with?

How is it possible not to understand that reducing infinite personalities and individualities by
grouping them together on the basis of gender is equivalent to destroying the particularity of every
single Goddess in order to simply project onto it the satisfaction of seeing a representation of us, of our
kind?

But if we are there in the place of these Spirits, if there is our projection of the feminine in place of
the expression of the particularities of a Divine Individual, who are we worshiping when we say
"Goddess"? A Spirit or ourselves?

Reducing the Goddesses to the Goddess means making the different divine personalities invisible as a
function of the veneration of our "human too human" belonging to gender or biological sex.

It is no different from a Christian who worships Jesus not as an individual who died on the cross etc.
but as an expression of the "Great Male". Is replacing the Big Male with the Big Female really an
evolution?

Or are we still in the realm of the "human too human"? If we perceive ourselves we do not perceive
the Gods and Goddesses. If we venerate our projections, how can we make room for understanding
who the Goddesses really are, beyond our preconceptions about masculine and feminine?

If we don't stop investing them with our ideas of what the feminine is for us, how will we be able to
feel what these feminine figures really are?

If we don't see the individual, who are we worshiping? Us, only us.