I just finished The Hebrew Goddess by Raphael Patai today. Patai is an ethnographer, historian and anthropologist and the book explores the influence and presence of a feminine component to God within and throughout patriarchal Judiasm.

Goddess worship was quite the norm during Biblical times and a lot of the history contained in the Old Testament consists of the old prophets admonishing the people for reverting to the pagan worship of their neighbors.

By including a frequent lens of Jungian psychological principals in his analysis, Patai demonstrates how the psychological needs for both father and mother divine projections were dealt with culturally and religiously. He suggests that the pagan goddesses of ancient times were integrated symbolically among the Jews as the Shekinah. It is also interesting to roughly compare the role of sexuality in religion rituals between the pagans and the early monotheists.

I'm not Jewish myself, but consider the Bible and Judaism to have a remarkable and foundational impact on the structure of western civilization and, of course, monotheism. As such, reading about this stuff seems pertinent to understanding the personal and collective psychology of today.

Just started writing and somehow this turned into a mini book review, so I'll post it.