Feared and Revered: Feminine Power Through the Ages

I recently went to see the exhibition called Feared and Revered: Feminine Power Through the Ages, at the National Museum of Australia (on loan from the British Museum).

I left it feeling glad that I had made the effort to go, and I would have liked to have spent some more time there, to really soak it all in, but I also had mixed feelings. As others have mentioned, many of the objects in the collection were of course stolen, so there is that uncomfortable legacy of British imperialism to grapple with; but the narrative provided was also flawed, at least in part. 

The title itself is a thorny thing. Are ‘feared’ and ‘revered’ suitable words to describe how women and the divine are/were understood? Reverence is apt, at least in a pre-patriarchal cultural context, though aspects of it did extend well into patriarchal times in some instances. But I wonder whether the notion of fear (in the cultural, not the individual, sense) is a more recent interpretation, stemming from the very times that began to lose that reverence for women and the Earth. It seems that either word could cancel out the other—a culture of reverence can have no real cause for fear; a culture of fear can have no real feeling of reverence. Though ultimately I think both terms do have relevance, and many goddesses do have fearsome aspects.

It’s the ‘feminine power’ of the subtitle that proves to be more controversial. I would have preferred it to be ‘female power’, or better yet, ‘female (cultural/spiritual) authority’. ‘Power’ is a loaded term, and easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to the kind of authority that women once wielded; but the use of ‘feminine’ instead of ‘female’, to my mind, suggests that the exhibition was less to do with women, or the fact of femaleness, whether human or divine, but more about an abstract idea of femininity. The opening commentary on the wall mentioned how some artefacts combined ‘multiple gender identities’ or ‘transcend gender entirely’—and I found myself rolling my eyes (as I’m sure many other women did too). Was it too much to hope that the regressive contemporary concept of ‘gender identity’ would not be mentioned, let alone imposed anachronistically upon past ages? Thankfully, I didn’t notice it cropping up again, but it left me with the sense that despite being a display full of images of the female body, actual women were sneakily and subtly being sidelined (just in case anyone was offended).

As for the notion of power/authority/strength, it was evident—though it has to be noted that the majority of the display was firmly ensconced in the patriarchal period in which the conception of the female divine (and of women themselves) was already, or was in the process of being, degraded, eroded, and redefined to suit a male-dominated narrative. The section titled ‘Passion and Desire’ was a good example of this, especially as two Greek painted vases seemed to deal almost exclusively with male sexual behaviour, which was inappropriate given the theme. The ‘Magic and Malice’ section also had the usual portrayals of women as witches and demons, without explaining that such depictions were usually the result of (often Christian) distortions of earlier earth-based practices and beliefs that did not split ‘good’ from ‘evil’. 

The only real exceptions to the patriarchal era (but only just) were the Cycladic figurines, the earliest of which was dated to c. 2800 BCE in the early Bronze Age. Being the oldest pieces, derived from an earlier neolithic tradition, and incredibly beautiful, these were the highlight for me, but they do indicate the temporal limitations of the exhibition. Feminine power through the ages should look back even further than the Bronze Age.

What’s more, the vague commentary for these three figurines said: ‘Their meaning is unclear, but their abundance suggests that women or femininity were culturally or spiritually significant for these early societies’ … It’s as if Marija Gimbutas never existed.

‘Through the ages’ did, however, mean that there were numerous contemporary pieces, which I was not expecting. Some of them were entirely suitable, like the yawkyawk (water spirit) pieces made by indigenous women from the Northern Territory; others were a little jarring, such as Kylie Minogue’s Aphrodite tour costume (though I did like the headdress; it’s in the background of the statue of Demeter below); but one, a series of images by a Muslim artist depicting the names of Allah via black and white abstract patterns, was entirely beside the point—not a trace of the female to be seen, as if the category had simply evaporated.

I’ve always struggled a little with the museum experience, finding it can be mind-numbing and generally exhausting to be constantly standing, looking, and reading tiny snippets of information. Perhaps it is due mostly to my own health issues, but I wonder whether it is also in part to do with the decontextualisation of the artefacts. Cultural ‘objects’, whether stolen or rescued from oblivion, end up completely abstracted from their original settings, and therefore partially devitalised, like wild animals are devitalised by being kept in captivity. The Russian icon of the Virgin Hodegetria (She Who Shows the Way) had clearly lost some of Her magic by being placed behind glass. I feel sad for her.

Overall, I wanted to know more about the lived context of the pieces: Where were the objects/images from? Where did they originally stand (a temple, a church, a private room)? Most importantly, how did people interact with them? Were they really feared and/or revered? I also wanted more enquiry into the meaning of things, and what this meant for women themselves, but in an exhibition that tended towards abstract ideas, a genuine appraisal of embodied culture and women’s place in it, then or now, was always going to be missing. (Though perhaps the accompanying book would fill in more of the details.) 

Despite my misgivings, it was still a great privilege to see the pieces in this collection, so I am grateful for the opportunity. With artefacts from six continents—from Egyptian Sekhmet to Mexican Cihuateotl, Indian Parvati to Inuit Sedna—it was diverse, culturally and aesthetically. Apart from the elegant Cycladic figurines, other highlights—and definite beings of reverence—were the Mesopotamian clay relief of the Queen of the Night (Inanna/Ishtar; also sometimes identified as Lilith), c. 1750 BCE, and the Irish Sheela-na-gig, 1100–1200 CE. 

And my pick for the most fearsome goddess was definitely Chamunda (the most terrifying manifestation of Kali), with her corpse-like aspect and those uncanny extra arms. But even she, as ‘the destroyer of the ego and of maya (illusion), the false distinction between opposites, including the mind and the body, the self and the universe’, as the commentary put it, ‘symbolises compassionate guidance.’ When we see beyond her frightening appearance, we find that she is just the other half of the beautiful Parvati. They are one.  

If Isis’s words from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses were understood as a spiritual truth about the nature of Earth and Cosmos, if we remembered that reality is a who rather than a what, and if women truly were venerated, what a different world—of much more reverence and far less fear—we would live in. 

A few more images can be seen on Instagram here and here.