‘God is a Woman’, the single from
Ariana Grande, is a good excuse to remember that archeologists believe God was
considered female for the first 200,000 years of human life on earth. This work
examines what it has been and continues to be like for female to be more
powerful than male in the world of all time.
INTRODUCTION
“When all is said and done... You'll believe God is a Woman.”
Ariana Grande declared, in a four octave vocal range, on July 12, 2018.[1]
From the pool of iridescent paint resembling the female anatomy, to the shot of
the pop star suggestively straddling a globe, every candy-colored scene in the accompanying
music video delivered a heaven-sent message: it’s a woman’s world.[2]
And, accordingly, the Internet erupted in feminist applause.[3] Mike Nied of Idolator
described it as a sexually liberated bop, “The beat picks up as [Ariana Grande,
acs] moves into the chorus. Incorporating a hip-hop edge, her voice gets
progressively breathier. Although the single is obviously a sexy banger, it
also includes a resilient message. In the face of critics, she defiantly takes
a stand.”[4] Bryan Rolli of Forbes.com called it an
impressive show of both virtuosity and restraint and one of the best pop songs
of the summer—if not the year—nor praised Ariana Grande’s vocal performance
sprinkling her signature falsetto across the sultry chorus and reining in her
vocal acrobatics in the verses.[5] So, the question is, “Is ‘God is a Woman’ only a song?” This literature review
highlights examines what it has been and continues to be like for female to be powerful
in the matriarchal world. Our elaboration based on the context of theological history
with archaeological evidence for the first 200,000 years of human life on earth.
‘GOD IS A WOMAN’ VIDEO DECODED
There is a lot to digest in Ariana Grande's video for ‘God
Is a Woman’, which was born on Friday July 13, 2018, and is packed with a head-spinning
array of visual, pop culture and historical references.[2] We are finding
ourselves watching the video repeatedly, trying to pick up on the obvious and more
subtle nods and special moments in the action-packed clip, which features 18 different
looks for the singer. Between a vocal cameo by Madonna, a screaming gopher that
seems destined for instant meme fame and allusions to significant religious paintings,
the video is full of memorable moments. Here are the most special scenes from the
dreamy drama that interlaces spirituality and sexuality.
1) The Galaxy Revolves Around Ariana (0:05)
For hardcore Arianators-Ariana Grande’s fanbase, it might
feel like the galaxy revolves around Ari. However in this video, the galaxy literally
spins around her. Utilizing some slick visual effects, Ariana Grande sways her
body back and forth, with the galaxy acting like a hula hoop around her.
2) Swimming In...Paint? (0:16)
Ariana Grande teased a picture on her Instagram of her
laying naked in a pool of watercolor, and this look certainly didn't disappoint
in the video. Throughout the journey, Ariana Grande waves her arms up and down,
re-circulating and drifting the various colors around her body like giant
Spin-Art toy.
3) Deflecting The Haters (0:51)
Taking a page out of book, Ariana Grande sits on a large
book with various hateful words being thrown at her from small men standing on the
pages of what looks like a French novel. Words such as ‘bitch’, ‘fake’, and ‘annoying’
are thrown at Ariana Grande, but never penetrate through. As such, she flexes her
immunity to hate thrown her way online and in the press by those who assume they
know who the ‘real’ Ariana Grande is.
4) Harry Potter Reference (1:01)
Ariana Grande is a massive Harry Potter fan, so
it would only make sense that she would include a possible reference to Fluffy,
the three-headed dog from the first novel. Ariana Grande sings, “when you try and
come for me I keep on flourishing” while moving towards the camera, with a tri-muzzle
mutt howling from behind her head.
5) Ariana Grande Emerges In A Flame (1:10)
Ariana Grande literally is on fire, or at least it
appears that way in this soft-focus scene. The singer dances atop a thin wax
candle, with the flame burning all around her, singing “you love it how I touch
you,” giving a not-so-subtle visual reference to the heat of the intimate
experience she's describing.
6) Screaming Gopher (1:43)
It's hard to get through this scene without laughing. The
music abruptly stops after the first chorus, and suddenly several gophers pop out
of their ground holes in a desert. One gopher looks at the camera, and starts screaming
hysterically. The others then join in for what is sure to be a many meme'd scene.
7) Surprise Madonna Appearance, As God (2:28)
In arguably the most talked-about moment, the music stops
yet again, with Ariana Grande holding a Thor-like hammer. Possible referencing the
iconic 1984 Apple commercial, Ariana Grande seductively holds the weapon before
throwing it up at the high cathedral ceilings, smashing the glass above.[6]
While this is happening, Ariana Grande mouths the famous Samuel L. Jackson monologue
from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film classic “Pulp Fiction.”[7] In an amazing
pop culture moment, the Ezekiel 25:17 passage made famous by Jackson in the film
is recited by Madonna, who talks down from above as God, commanding, “I will strike
down upon thee, with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison
and destroy my sisters, and you will know my name is the lord, when I lay my vengeance
upon you.”[8] Eagle-eyed fans will notice that "brothers" is
swapped out for "sisters" in this case, adding to the track's ladies-first
vibe. The surprise cameo settled our speculation about whether the two pop superstars
were collaborating, after Ariana Grande posted a photo on July 11 thanking the ‘Like
A Pray’ singer, saying “you know why.”[9]
8) Ariana Takes Us To Altar (3:25)
Taking into account the chanting-type vocals at the
end of the song and the spiritual undertones, it's no surprise that towards the
end of the video Ariana Grande leads what appears to be a massive choir.
Dressed in white gowns, the dozens of singers put their hands in the air,
praising nor worshiping Ariana Grande.
9) Ariana Walks the Line (3:30)
In a surprising turn of events, Ariana Grande walks across
a thin copper wire over a field, holding onto large planet balloons that seemingly
help her defy gravity and float like a gymnast over the verdant scene.
10) Michaelangelo Buonarroti's Creazione di Adamo
(3:47)
Ariana Grande ends the video paying tribute to Creazione
di Adamo (English: The Creation of Adam, acs), a biblical representation
of God giving life to the first man, Adam.[10] The original Michaelangelo
Buonarroti fresco from the circa 1512 can be seen on the dome of Vatican's Sistene
Chapel, but Ariana Grande puts a new spin on the iconic image, cropping herself
in as God.
EVIDENCE SAYS GOD HAS BEEN A WOMAN
In the context of theological history, though, it’s actually
remarkable that Ariana Grande’s assertion would make such a splash in 2018. True,
female Gods have been considered heretical in many cultures for millennia, and the
suggestion that God is anything other than an old, white man in the sky is, for
some, still a deeply troubling thought. Just look at Harmonia Rosales’s 2017 reimagining
of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Creazione di Adamo, depicting both God and the
first man as Black women, for proof that daring to widen religious imagery can cause
serious uproar.[11] But if we travel back to the ancient origins of human
civilization, we find evidence that female deities were worshipped far and wide
for millennia. Long before the main world religions were established, during the
earliest periods of human development, many belief-systems venerated a supreme female
creator.
In When God Was a Woman, historian Merlin Stone
traces ancient worship of the Goddess back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages.[12]
In the Near and Middle East, she writes, we can find evidence that the “development
of the religion of the female deity in this area was intertwined with the earliest
beginnings of religion so far discovered anywhere on earth.” This Goddess was unquestionably
the supreme deity to rule them all; “creator and law-maker of the universe, prophetess,
provider of human destinies, inventor, healer, hunter and valiant leader in battle.”
Isis with Horus the Child[13]
It’s worth noting that many anthropologists believe
these Upper Paleolithic societies are likely to have followed a matrilineal
structure, meaning women held supreme status at the center of the household.
Merlin Stone explains that these communities revered ancestor worship, whereby
“the concept of the creator of all human life may have been formulated by the
clan’s image of the woman who had been their most ancient, primal ancestor.” In
other words, the Divine Ancestress. Indeed, anthropologists studying the rites
and rituals of Paleolithic communities over the last two centuries have
discovered countless stone figurines of pregnant women across Europe, the
Middle East, and India—some dating back to 25,000 BC—that point to the worship
of the divine feminine.[14]
During this period in the ancient world, worship of female
deities was widespread and immensely powerful. But it was with the advent of agriculture
after the Paleolothic age that Goddess worship really started to take off. Statuettes
from that period representing the Mother Goddess have cropped up in Canaan (now
Palestine/Israel) and Anatolia (now Turkey), and Goddess figurines have appeared
all over the Neolithic communities of Egypt dating back to 4000 BC. “The deifications
of the Goddess in the ancient world were variations on a theme,” writes Lynn Rogers
in Edgar Cayce and the Eternal Feminine, with representations of a supreme
female Creator in Sumer, Egypt, Crete, Greece, Ethiopia, Libya, India, Elam, Babylon,
Anatolia, Canaan, Ireland, Mesopotamia, and even ancient Judah and Israel.[15]
But there could be no doubt that She was, as mythologist Robert Graves described
it, “immortal, changeless, omnipotent.”[16]
In Mother God, Sylvia Browne offers a detailed history
of the female principle that flourished after the Paleolithic period.[17]
The Inuit people had Sedna, the goddess of the sea and mother of the ocean, while
the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures worshipped Ishtar, the goddess of love and
war. In Aztec culture, Teleoinan was considered the Mother of the Gods. According
to the ancient Egyptians, Isis was the goddess of children and magic, while in ancient
Sumer, the primary goddess was Inanna, the goddess of love and war. Meanwhile, the
ancient Phoenicians actually had two female goddesses of equal status: Anat, the
fertility goddess, and Astarte, the Mother goddess considered to be the planet Venus.
Creators of the universe, bearers of children, providers of culture, valiant warriors,
and wise counsellors, these goddesses were anything but an afterthought.
When women rise to prominence, misogyny often ensues,
and by 1500 BC, Goddess-worshipping civilizations had mostly fallen from grace.
Scholarship differs in its analysis of why, but many experts assert that the
dominant masculine religions and patrilineal customs brought to Europe by
invading Indo-Europeans seriously upset the state of play. The suppression that
followed makes for bleak reading. “At the dawn of Western civilization,” writes
Lynn Rogers, “25,000 years of ‘her-story’ of the Goddess’ bountiful creativity
were obliterated.”[18] Creation myths were rewritten, symbols of
Goddess worship were denigrated, and “the ancient belief in the Goddess as the
Ground of Being, The Universe from which The All emerged, was overturned.”[18]
Burney relief / Queen of the Night[19]
As Judaism, Christianity, and Islam evolved in the Middle
East and Europe, the monotheistic religions began to cement the worship of a new,
exclusively male order: God, King, Priest, and Father. These new theologies placed
the goddess in a subordinate status, with a man as her dominant husband, or even
as her murderer. In her book, Merlin Stone writes at length about the erasure of
female deities, arguing that at that time Goddess worship became the victim of “centuries
of continual persecution and suppression by the advocates of the newer religions
which held male deities as supreme.”[20] Worse yet, this major about-turn
in religion meant the status of women around the world declined, too.
Al-Qurān as the
central religious text of Islam which Muslims believe to be a revelation from
God (Allāh), according to santri-scholar Nong Darol Mahmada, was dominated by
the male perspective in it interpretation (tafsīr), which ultimately
benefited the interests of men and disadvantaged women.[21] She also
noticed that the hadith, which became the source of the second Islam's source
after al-Qur'ān, some ulamā' tend to transmite more misogynistic traditions
(traditions that demean women). As a result, fiqh into patriarchal fiqh. While
fiqh the body of Islamic law extracted from detailed Islamic sources which are
studied in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence and the process of gaining
knowledge of Islam through jurisprudence. It seems that in Islam women are less
valued than men, although this is certainly wrong based on Nong Darol Mahmada's
opinion.
Not all religions that followed in the wake of Goddess
worship obscured the female deity, though. In The Path of the Mother, Savitri
L. Bess points out that Hindus have never stopped worshipping the Mother. “The Mother,
who has been obscured in the shadow of Western religions for thousands of years,”
she writes in chapter The
enduring presence of the divine feminine in Hinduism, “is considered to be the sum total of the energy in the
universe.”[22] From Durga, the fearless goddess who vanquished her foes
atop a tiger, to Saraswati, the four-armed guardian deity of knowledge, the vast
spectrum of venerated Hindu goddesses highlight the power of the feminine principle,
none more so than Shakti, the divine force sometimes called “The Great Mother.”
There are multiple expressions of Shakti, Bess notes, though her cosmic energy is
entirely responsible for the creation of the universe; she is “known to be the activity
in all things, the great power that creates and destroys, the primordial essence,
the womb from which all things proceed and into which all things return.”
Buddhism, too, celebrates the feminine principle by way
of the Bodhisattva Guan Yin, whose name means “the one who hears and sees the cries
of the world.” With beauty, grace, and boundless compassion for the suffering of
humanity, it has been said that Yin’s “greatest significance is as the outpourings
or embodiment of the divine feminine.”[23]
As the major world religions evolved over thousands of
years, however, the supreme female deity increasingly faded from view. While, around
27 BC, the first emperor of Rome gave the goddess Cybele the title of Supreme Mother
of Rome, by 500 AD, attitudes toward female Gods couldn’t have been more different.
The last Goddess temples in Rome and Byzantium were closed by the Christian emperors,
and the so-called polytheistic “pagan” religions were driven out of worship, taking
the female deities with them.
CONCLUSION
Today, instead of a history of the ancient female
religions that were celebrated for thousands of years, we are most familiar
with the creation story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden courtesy
of Eve, making her, you know, responsible for the downfall of mankind from
Paradise. As for the supreme female deity? “The Old Testament does not even
have a word for ‘Goddess,’” writes Merlin Stone. “In the Bible, the Goddess is
referred to as Elohim, in the masculine gender, to be translated as God. But
the Koran of the Mohammedans was quite clear. In it we read: ‘Allah will not
tolerate idolatry...the pagans pray to females.’”[24] Some might say
the disappearance of the Goddess occurred naturally with the march of modern
civilization. But, as many historians and theologians have pointed out, it’s
likely no coincidence that the patriarchal cultures that conquered earlier
indigenous populations are fundamentally intertwined with the downfall of the
Goddess, and the reframing of this revered form of worship as cultic, lewd, and
primitive.
Our video decoded and literature review reveals that Ariana
Grande’s ‘God Is Woman’ is
not only a song, it’s also very subtly a reminder that there lies before us a rich
history of Goddess worship altogether separate from the patriarchal religions, customs,
and laws most of us were raised on. Archaeological evidence suggests that God was
considered female for the first 200,000 years of human life on earth, even if male-dominated
religions sought to displace the matriarchal order.[25] Ultimately, by
making ourselves independent of male culture, we can better understand our heritage,
and, as Merlin Stone writes, cultivate “a contemporary consciousness of the once-widespread
veneration of the female deity as the Wise Creatress of the Universe and all life
and civilization.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
After almost 9 months of working on
this work, we couldn’t possibly come up with a full list of all the people who
had helped. But, we dedicate this work to Nong Darol Mahmada as our educator
and Ariana Grande-Butera as an inspirator.
REFERENCES
[1] Ariana Grande. (2018).
Ariana Grande - God is a woman (Lyric Video). YouTube Ariana Grande,
July 12.
[2] Ariana Grande. (2018).
Ariana Grande - God is a woman. YouTube Ariana Grande, July 13.
[3] Bonnie Stiernberg. (2018). Ariana Grande's 'God Is a Woman' Video
Is an Incredible Manifesto for Empowering Female Sexuality. Glamour.com,
July 14.
[4] Mike Nied. (2018). Ariana Grande’s “God Is A Woman” Is A
Sexually Liberated Bop. Idolator.com, July 13.
[5] Bryan Rolli. (2018). Review: Ariana Grande’s ‘God Is A
Woman’ Might Just Be The Song Of The Summer. Forbes.com, July 13.
[6] Sean Collier. (2005).
1984 Apple's First Macintosh Commercial. YouTube Sean Collier, December
12.
[7] The Lord of the
Gings. (2013).
Pulp Fiction - Samuel L Jackson Speech. The Lord of the Gings, April 16.
[8] Movieclips. (2011).
Ezekiel 25:17 - Pulp Fiction (3/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD. YouTube Movieclips,
September 28.
[9] Ariana Grande. (2018). Twitter’s Post. Twitter
@ArianaGrande, July 11, 11:47.
[10] Michaelangelo
Buonarroti. (c. 1512). Creazione di Adamo. Vatican:
Sistine Chapel.
[11] Harmonia Rosales. (2017).
Instagram’s Post. Instagram @honeiee, May 6.
[12] Merlin Stone. (2012). When God was a Woman, pp. 55.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[13] Anonymous
(Egyptian). (c. 680-40 BC). Isis with Horus the Child.
Walters Art Museum.
[14] Rachel S. McCoppin.
(2015). The Lessons of Nature in Mythology,
pp. 45. McFarland.
[15] Lynn Rogers. (2004). Edgar Cayce and the Eternal Feminine,
pp. 52. We Publish Books.
[16] Lynn Rogers. (2004). Edgar Cayce and the Eternal Feminine,
pp. 50. We Publish Books.
[17] Sylvia Browne. (2004). Mother God, pp. 14-5. Hay House,
Inc.
[18] Lynn Rogers. (2004). Edgar Cayce and the Eternal Feminine,
pp. 57. We Publish Books.
[19] Anonymous
(Babylonian). (c. 19-8 BC). Burney relief / Queen of the
Night. British Museum.
[20] Merlin Stone. (2012). When God was a Woman, pp. 16.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[21] Nong Darol Mahmada.
(2001). Membangun Fikih yang Pro-Perempuan. Majalah
TEMPO, July 30-August 5.
[22] Savitri L. Bess. (2000). The enduring presence of the divine
feminine in Hinduism. In The Path of the Mother. Ballantine Wellspring.
[23] Martin Palmer, Jay
Ramsay, & Man-Ho Kwok. (2009). Kuan Yin Chronicles: The Myths and
Prophecies of the Chinese Goddess of Compassion, pp. 53. Hampton Roads
Publishing.
[24] Merlin Stone. (2012). When God was a Woman, pp. 22.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[25] Gordon Lynch. (2007). The New Spirituality: An
Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty-first Century, pp. 29. I.B.Tauris.
[26] Merlin Stone. (2012). When God was a Woman, pp. 32.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.