Publisher's Synopsis
We think of God as male, but the most common representation of the divine through our history has been female, as the Goddess. When did this major change happen, and why? More importantly, what did it do to our psyches, and what does it mean for present day relationships between men and women? Ward decided to seek out the Goddess in order to answer these questions and more, with his own demons in tow. Over a period of seven years he travelled to the ruined temples and shrines of the goddess in the cradles of Western Civilization. At each he encountered one aspect of the many faces of the Goddess. He vividly recreates the experience of ancient believers: the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter, the sexual rites of the priestesses of Aphrodite, and a human sacrifice on a mountaintop shrine in Crete. And in Turkey he sits at the feet of the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus, whose rioting followers once threatened to kill the Apostle Paul. Savage Breast is the intimate tale of one mans discovery of the feminine divine through myth, art, archaeology, and personal encounter.
