Women have moved from a state of virtual slavery in the 19th century, to near equality in the 21st century through the efforts of many heroic Women who were willing to challenge patriarchy. One such Woman was Mary Baker Eddy, who not only single-handed started her own Christian Sect; she made a powerful demonstration of the power of the mind.

She was born Mary Baker, in New England on July 16 1821, in a strict Calvinist family. Her Puritan background was to stay with her for the rest of her life, and strongly influenced her beliefs, even though she was also to become a radical spiritual innovator.

At the age of 22 she married George Washington Glover and sailed with him to live a new life in South Carolina, yet seven months later she was a widow. George Glover had died of yellow fever and she had to return home, pregnant. She then had a son also called George, but her health began to deteriorate, to the degree her son was taken from her and cared for by a local nurse.

She then married Daniel Patterson, and hoped to have her son back, but her new husband didn’t agree to this, and then the family looking after her son moved to Minnesota. This so upset her that Mary Baker’s health completely broke down and she became completely bed-ridden for months at a time. She found relief in homeopathic medicine, which she studied herself and even prescribe homeopathic remedies for other people, but the effects of this medicine, on her, were never permanent.

She was also trying to cure herself with prayer. She had tried to use prayer to help her first husband George Glover when he became ill with yellow fever, but her prayers then were completely ineffective.

When she had reached the age of 40, the American Civil War started, and both her son and husband fought in it. Her son was wounded but survived and her husband became a prisoner of war. Before he went to war, her husband heard about a Dr Phineas Quimby who help his patients through a mind cure, and wrote to him. This was to be the turning point of her life and changed her completely. When she felt strong enough to travel, Mary Baker journeyed to Dr Quimby and he was able to bring an instantly cure her. His treatment was explaining to her the psychological origins of her illness and then dipping his hands in water and rubbing her head. His cure was so miraculous that she at first felt he must come from God.

She wanted to understand how he was able to accomplish such cures. He explained to her, that it was the mind that cured, but because of her strict Christian upbringing she couldn’t accept this, and believed healing could only come from God. She was then disappointed to find that Dr Quimby wasn’t interested in religion and that he was a mesmerist. It seems, he was willing to accommodate any beliefs the patient might have, if it helped to heal them.

Mesmerism started with the scientific investigations of Franz Anton Mesmer in the mid 18th century that showed that healing like that of Jesus in the Bible was possible, by ordinary people. He was a respectable doctor and was a contemporary and friend of Wolfgang Mozart and his father Leopold. Mesmer started to experiment with magnets on his patients, which a number of doctors at the time were doing, (even today magnetic healing still exists among alternate therapists). He was successful using magnets, which he would hold in his hand and move them over the effected part of the patient. Then he made an astonishing discovery, he could heal patients just as effectively if he passed his hands over the patient without the magnets in his hands.

To explain this, he formed a theory of animal magnetism but his fellow doctors quickly rejected this theory. Yet in spite of this, he was successful in his treatment and large numbers of people came to him to be cured. As his fame spread he visited Hungary, Switzerland and Bavaria to treat aristocratic people. Yet his treatment remained very controversial among doctors who were unable to reproduce the type of healing he performed. In the end he moved to Paris where again he became a great success in healing very many people. Then a panel of doctors investigated him and demolished his animal magnetism theory and dismissed him as a fraud. Yet in doing this; they threw the baby out with the bath water. Because even though his theories didn’t stand up to scientific investigation, the fact was, even his critics had to admit he was getting amazing results. So how was Mesmer able to heal so many people?

The shooting down of Mesmer’s Animal Magnetism theory wasn’t the end of the story because no one could come up with a sensible explanation for the reason for Mesmer’s ability to cure his patients. Other people leant from Mesmer and from this came the practice of Mesmerism. Later on Mesmerism was to be called the more respectable name of hypnotism.

Mesmerist in the 19th century used their powers in very much the same was as hypnotist do today. With many using it as a form of entertainment by hypnotising people, but others tried to continue Mesmer’s work and use it for healing. One of these stage mesmerists was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-66) who practised in USA. In his act he had another young man called Lucius Burkmar whom he would mesmerise. Then as a side line, Burkmar would also diagnose illness while a trance, and then he would give to patients methods they could cure themselves. Many of these cures outraged Quimby, because to him, they seemed to be nonsensical. Yet he was to find they worked, when the patients tried them out. Burkmar even cured the sceptical Quimby of back trouble using another cranky cure. Quimby then came to the conclusion that it must be the mind that was affecting these cures. He reasoned that if Burkmar could give patients methods of treatment that seem to appeal to their deepest beliefs, then it would heal them. (A better explanation would be that Burkmar was giving treatments that appealed to the patient’s unconscious mind. But this was before Freud made his groundbreaking discoveries.) He put forward the idea that it was the mind that healed patients, and not animal magnetism.

Then he cured Mary Baker Eddy and it was through her efforts, the ideas of mind cure were brought to a wider public, in spite of the derision, ridicule and criticism of her beliefs. When she left Quimby she lapsed back into her old pattern of illness, which disappointed her. Then one winter as she was going to a Temperance meeting she slipped on the ice, and fell heavily. suffering from concussion and internal injuries. She then decided that she would heal herself with the power of her mind, so after reading the healing passages of Jesus in the Bible she got up and dressed. She then walked into the next room where those, with whom she was staying, were shocked by her immediate recovery. A doctor was called, but he couldn’t explain how she seemed to be suddenly healed but his disbelief in her recovery undermined her confidence and she collapsed and had to be taken back to bed. The next day she determinedly done the same thing, she again read of Jesus’ healing in the Bible and dressed and got out of bed. This time she refused to be swayed by others who tried to persuade her to go back to bed and her healing was complete.

She also became a successful healer and she set about with great determination to teach others how to heal also. For years she lived in poverty, as she also divorced her husband who had been continually cheating on her, she had to support herself. Divorced women in the 19th century were considered outcasts of ‘respectable’ society, so she had little support from her friends and family. She was at first unsuccessful in promoting her ideas and beliefs, as people were incapable of comprehending what she was saying to them. She once hired a hall and gave a talk about her ideas on mind cure, then seeing the blank faces of her audience, she stopped her talk and told them to; raise their hand if they understood what she was saying. No one put up their hands. In spite of setbacks like this, she had single-minded personality and kept on persisting.

Slowly she gathers a number of students around her, and made a living teaching others how to heal. She also married a Gilbert Eddy, but unfortunately he was to die a few years later in spite of the healing powers of his wife. Yet nothing was allowed to stand in her way and she created her own Christian sect called Christian Science, which she ruled with a rod of iron. She then claimed that her form of healing was very different from Quimby and this created a controversy that is still being disputed today.

The biggest difference between them both is that Quimby stated that it is the mind that makes a person ill and it is the mind that heals them. So it doesn’t matter what from of healing that is used on the patient, as long as the patient has faith in the healing procedure, they will be healed. Mary Baker Eddy on the other hand claims it is God that heals. She states that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and infinite and loves us all. So God will always heal us if we allow him or her, to do so. (She also brought forward the concept of a Mother and Father God). It is only our lack of faith and wrong thinking, that blocks this healing power from God.

Her authoritarian nature forced many people to leave her organization and these people created their own healing organizations. One of these people was Emma Curtis Hopkins. When she became a Christian Scientist she quickly moved into the inner circle around Mary Baker Eddy and was made the editor of the Christian Science Journal, where she done a very good job in increasing its circulation. As editor she strongly attacked anyone who violated and appropriated Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings and showed herself to be staunch supporter of her leader.

Then in 1883, Julius Dresser who worked with Quimby, wrote an article in the Boston Post claiming that Mary Baker Eddy had pirated Quimby’s work. Hopkins in attempting to defend Mary Baker Eddy of this charge, decided to investigate Quimby’s writings to see if they had any substance to Dresser’s claims. By reading the written works of both Quimby and Dresser she came to the conclusion that both systems of healing were very different. Yet because of this, Mary Baker Eddy dismissed her as editor. Why this happened is in dispute. Some claim that even taking Dresser’s charges seriously, Hopkins was seen as disloyal to Mary Baker Eddy by other Christian Scientists, who felt she should accept what their leader said, without question. Others claim that Hopkins was also showing to be such a very intelligent and capable woman, and being a generation younger that Mary Baker Eddy, was seen as a possible successor to her. So she had to go, because she was a potential rival leader who could take Christian Science in a new direction. Hopkins also became friends with Mary Plunkett an outspoken and strong minded individual who was also causing dissent in ranks of Christian Science.

Emma Curtis Hopkins then moved to Chicago with Mary Punkett and for a while wrote to Mary Baker Eddy to try and overcome their differences, but this didn’t work out. So both women set up her own Christian Science organization, with Punkett being the organizer and Hopkins the teacher. She later became know within the New Thought movement as; “the teacher of teachers”. Her teachings were similar to Mary Baker Eddy’s but she was far more flexible and was able to appeal to a larger number of people. She taught Malinda Chramer and the three Brook sister who later created the organization; Divine Science. Then she taught the married couple Charles and Myrtle Fillmore who created the organization; the Unity School of Christianity. Then she taught Ernest Holmes who later created the organization Science of Mind. These three originations were to become the backbone of the New-Thought movement, but Emma Curtis Hopkins has since become forgotten. Although she may have been a great teacher, she had little interest in forming a organization around herself. Also her writings were far too heavy for the average reader. Her main work, “High Mysticism” was never a popular book and quickly dropped out of print. This was also the problem of Mary Baker Eddy’s original writings but her book, “Science and Health”, the main textbook of Christian Science, was revised many times in her lifetime to make it more assessable to the average reader.

In some of her writing Hopkins also wrote about the future role of Women. She encourage Women to take on leadership roles and her theology was based on the medieval work, of Joachim of Fiore who claimed there were three eras in history. The first was the patriarchal idea of "God the Father", the second was a time of freedom for the general population which was signified by the birth of Jesus, and the third, "the Spirit, the Truth-Principle, or the Mother-Principle," that focused on the power of women.

The main difference between Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins is that the former claims that; “matter has no reality, all is infinite mind” while Hopkins rejected this as being too extreme. She pointed out that there was also life in matter as well. So although patients may of created their own illnesses through their own thoughts, the illness was still real to the patient. Both women agreed that, “God was good”, and loved us all. Therefore they reasoned that if God loves us all, then he or she wouldn’t inflict illness or suffering onto us. Now this was a revolutionary concept in Christianity, because many Christians believed that God, as a form of punishment, created illness and suffering. While some other Christians claimed this was done by the Devil, but if God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and infinite then there cannot be any other power outside of God. This then means that creator of illness and suffering must be ourselves, as we inflict illness onto ourselves through ‘error’. Because we have lost faith in God and his or her Goodness, then we allow negative thoughts to take over our minds and these lead to illness and suffering. Which only can be relieved by the reaffirmation of our faith in God and his or her love and goodness.

While both women were active, both the New Thought movement and Christian Science continued to grow but when both Women died the power of healing began to die with them. In the 20th century the healing aspect of New Thought movement has petered out. Even the Christian Scientists no longer do the same amount of healing as before. It seems that after Mary Baker Eddy died Christian Science Practitioners, (Healers) continued to be very effective, and the movement continued to grow. Then about the 1930s and 40s all the practitioners that Mary Baker Eddy personally taught began to die or retire. The next generation didn’t have the same confidence in their ability to heal and the healing power of Christian Science declined. The same thing seem to have happened with New Thought, which turned more into just positive thinking. Early on in her teachings, Hopkins also taught that not only could we heal ourselves of illness but heal ourselves of poverty. This concept was passed on to her students who also taught this. Some of these students found that although people were not that interested in healing they were very interested in making money. And New Thought books began to be written that only discussed this aspect of Hopkins’s teachings. Ernest Holmes taught Norman Vincent Peale, and he wrote many popular books on Mind Science, like “How to Win Friends and Influence people” and popularised it, but in the process watered-down the teachings in the form of “positive thinking”. Which is New Thought without the healing aspect within it.

Today the most popular books on positive thinking are the ones about making lots of money. Which although there is nothing wrong with this, I feel it is a shame the Healing aspect of New Thought was allowed to die out.

Many people today see Christian Science as a cranky Christian Sect who will not allow their children to be treated by doctors. This is very unfortunate, but the whole concept of mind cure is still very difficult for people to understand. We are all taught from a very early age that we live in a material world, and our bodies are seen as just a complex piece of machinery. So if we become ill, it is because our bodies either has a design fault or has broken down, in much the same way a car breaks down. Therefore a doctor is seen as a sophisticated mechanic who repairs broken down bodies.

Christian Scientist claim that the problem is within the mind, our thoughts are so powerful that negative thoughts about ourselves can make us ill and even kill us. Though he good news is that, our thoughts can also heal us as well.

Quimby and some New Though healers had no problems with people being treated by doctors. Quimby had the attitude that provided the patient believes in the treatment, he or she will be healed no matter what the treatment is. Mary Baker Eddy had a different attitude to this; claiming that only God can heal, and it is error that makes us ill. So to her, if we use another method of healing, then she would say; it was error that made a person ill and it is error that healed them. So the healing can never be permanent, because the person’s mind will be open to other errors later on, that could make them ill again. This is what happened to her; Quimby healed her but when she returned back home, she fell back into her old thinking patterns, and her illness returned. So she finally had to heal herself through the Bible and her faith in God, to achieve a permanent cure.

Even people with Christian Scientist parents who had a Christian Science upbringing have had problems grappling with these concepts. Simply because in their family environment they are taught one form of reality, that we live in a world of mind, but in the outside world, they are taught a different reality, that we live in a material world. So they find themselves living in a world of conflicting realities. This is also true of people who are converted to Christian Science. Although Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings might make sense to them, they still have to live in a society that rejects the concept, we live in a world of mind.

Mary Baker Eddy practised what she preached throughout her lifetime and demonstrated the power of mind. As a middle-aged woman she had endured years of illness with a husband who was continually having affairs with other women. Yet once she learnt the principles of mind power from Quimby, she made good use of it. She not only healed herself, she had the strength of mind to divorce her philandering husband, at a time when divorce was seen as a shameful act and had to find ways to support herself, in a time when women were actively discouraged to be independent from men. She then tried to teach the principles of healing and mind power to a disbelieving world, in an age when women’s voices were not heard. And yet in spite of the all the insurmountable odds against her, she persisted until she gathered enough followers around her, to start a new Christian sect.

So she showed what a woman could do, even in the 19th century patriarchal world when women had as few legal rights as black slaves, and as such she was an inspiration for other women of the period.

Since the middle of the 19th century when Charles Darwin published his theories of evolution, science has believed that life evolved through the, “survival of the fittest”. That is to say; with different life-forms competing against each other and most successful surviving and thriving, while the unsuccessful becoming extinct. This concept has been taken to the extreme through; “The Selfish Gene” theories of Richard Dawkins. He claims that the whole of life is basically selfish, and implies that the only purpose to life is to pass on your genes to the next generation. Which is a depressing thought.

The biggest flaw in this theory, that scientists don’t address, is that a truly successful species of animal, or any other life form, that overcome all it’s competitors will become extinct itself. This is because, if through evolutionary selection, say, a very successful carnivorous animal was created, that was so much faster, manoeuvrable and more powerful than any of its prey, then it would be doomed. Simply because it would soon kill and eat all the animals it preyed on, making them extinct and then because it has nothing to eat, it in turn will also become extinct.

One of the most successful life-forms in the ‘survival of the fittest’ is bacteria. This is because it can change and evolve far quicker than any other life-form, which doctors and research scientists have found to their cost. They might successfully produce a drug that can wipe out a dangerous bacteria, but always a few survive and they mutate to create a strain of bacteria, that is immune to the anti-bacteria drugs created. Now it has been calculated that if a single bacteria divides and repeats that division every twenty minutes, providing it has unlimited food and no other constraints on growth, within two days, the total offspring of the original bacteria, would weigh a much as the planet. Which begs the question; why hasn’t something like this happened? If bacteria can mutate faster than any other life form, why hasn’t a strain of bacteria been produced that was so successful, it overcome all other life-forms and became the only life-form on the planet?

This has very much been the human experience. Human being are very good at destroying it’s competitors in the ‘survival of the species’ game and making other animals, fish, plants and insects extinct. For instance; hunters with rifles in the 19th century quickly made animals like Tasmania Tiger in Australia, and the Passenger Pigeon in USA extinct. Since then, in the 20th century large numbers of wildlife has become extinct or is in danger of extinction because of over hunting or destruction of the animals habitat. At the present time there are about 5,000 species of animals and more than 25,000 species of plants facing extinction. It has only been the efforts of environmentalists that has saved many of these species, but we don’t know for how long. Some of these are already poised on the brink of completely disappearing and may well be beyond all hope of salvation now, whatever attempts might be made to save them.

We can say human beings are very, very successful playing the ‘survival of the fittest” game. Human beings are now the dominant species on the planet, and are increasing at such a high rate, that there is great fear of overpopulation. So that if human beings continue to breed, the planet in time will not be able to produce enough food to feed the growing human population. Not only that, human beings through their success, are in danger of destroying the Planet they live on. It means human beings might become extinct through being too successful.

If we accept the “selfish gene” theory then this is what will happen. Human beings are driven to compete with each other to pass on their genes. So it would be ‘natural’ for us to wipe out all competitors, that is to say all other animals and plants. (Which is what we are doing now). Then when we have successfully become the only species of life on the planet, we ourselves will become extinct because we will have nothing to feed on. Though perhaps we can save ourselves by resorting to cannibalism, the stronger feeding on the weaker. Is this nightmarish world, all we have to look forward to?

Well, no, because not only are we successfully destroying other animals and plants, we are also destroying the biosphere of the planet through pollution, and creating global warming. As the earth warms up, the population explosion will be successfully solved as large areas of the planet will become uninhabitable, through famine or floods. The whole of civilization might be destroyed, so the survivors will find themselves living again, a Stone-age existence.

So is that our destiny? For us to destroy ourselves or our civilization? This is clearly what will happen if we continue the way we are going. Yet things may not be so grim as we might think they are. We might be doing a vast amounts of damage to our planet but it seems that the planet is more than capable of looking after itself. We might be able to survive if we, change our attitudes and work with the planet and not against it.

The evolutionary theory of Darwin has been interpreted in a very competitive and masculine way. So the whole theory was seen by male scientists in terms of, “survival of the fittest”, “nature red in tooth and claw”, and more recently, “the selfish gene”. This all suggests that evolution is only about competition, but is it? What is totally forgotten is that survival also depends on co-operation as well. This is well- known by those whom create aquariums. If you pick species of fish to put into a aquarium that are very fierce and competitive, what will happen is that you will end up with just one large fish. This fish will be the winner, as it has eaten up all the other fish. On the other hand, if you are careful in how you pick your species of fish, in a way that each species will be able to feed of the waste of other species, this will result in a self-sustaining environment. And this is what we find on our planet, before humans interfered with the wild-life, we find in nature, self-sustaining environments where all the forms of life feed off each other. This means, that nature is not only about brutal competition, it is also about co-operation, stability and self-regulation.

Male scientists have unfortunately interpreted Darwin’s theory of evolution in very masculine terms, believing it to be only about competition. Yet there is another way to look at evolution and that is through feminine eyes. This has been done successfully by a male scientist called James Lovelock.

Mystics have for centuries claimed we are all one mind, one spirit. This concept has never caught on as it seems to go against all our personal experiences of competition and conflict with others. So is seen by ordinary people as to be a unrealistic fantasy. Then a scientist called James Lovelock developed a scientific theory that claimed the whole of life on this Earth is simply one organism! Which at first sight seem incredible, but his theory answers many mysteries about the nature of life.

Back in the 1960s James Lovelock was employed by NASA to find ways a space craft, could discover if there was life on Mars. So he started by examining the atmosphere of Mars to see it that would give a clue to signs of life. To understand this better he decided to examine the atmosphere of Earth and compared it with Mars. What he discovered was that the atmosphere on Mars was very stable and inert. Unlike Earth which has an unstable and dynamic atmosphere, because life itself was continually changing the gases within it. With life taking out of the atmosphere and again expelling, the gases Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and Methane. He then realised that you don’t have to send a space craft to Mars to find out if it had life. You could do it by simply by examining it’s atmosphere, which is not what his bosses in NASA wanted to hear. They needed a reason to convince politicians to fund a space mission to Mars. This resulted in him and NASA parting company, but he continued to develop his ideas further, as his studies of the Earth’s atmosphere presented him with a number of scientific puzzles.

Every school child knows that there is a cycle where animals convert oxygen into carbon dioxide while plants convert carbon dioxide back into oxygen once again, to again be breathed in by animals. But Lovelock took this concept even further. He looked at a mystery that no one had addressed, and that was although life began 3 - 4 billion years ago, the sun 3 billion years ago was 30% colder, than today and has since been steadily heating up. Yet at the same time, the temperature of the Earth has changed very little in that time, it has always stayed a stable temperature to support life. So how has that happened?

The answer seems to be that 3 billion years ago the Earth’s atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide so even though the sun was cooler, the CO2 created a greenhouse effect and so keeping the temperature the same as it is today. Since then the levels of carbon dioxide have slowly fallen, as the sun heated up, to keep the temperature of the Earth stable, but that wasn’t the whole story.

Then Lovelock went on to ask a further question. How was it possible for the carbon dioxide to decrease over a period of 3-4 billion years AT EXACTLY THE SAME RATE THE SUN WAS WARMING UP, to keep a constant temperature. This is a real a problem, when you realise that by just making the Earth a few degrees colder can bring on a ice-age. Also it only needs 10 degree increase or decrease in the earth’s temperature to make the vast majority of life on the planet extinct. So how has the Earth kept in the very narrow range of temperatures to make life on Earth possible? There was no answer to this, and to say it was just a lucky fluke was stretching credibility a bit too far. To add to this problem, the Earth has in it’s time been hit by large asteroids, as well as experiencing super-volcanoes. These events have been so terrible, that they have covered the atmosphere with so much dust, that it has blocked the heat of the sun and brought on new ice-ages. Yet in spite of these dramatic events, life on our planet has always recovered.

Then Lovelock came across other amazing coincidences. At present 21% of the atmosphere is oxygen. Now oxygen is a very dangerous and volatile gas. If it was to increase to 25% (only 4% higher) and a fire was to start, through a lightening strike, it would be impossible to put it out. Even green and wet vegetation will continue to burn, causing all vegetation on the earth to quickly burn up. Yet lower levels of oxygen would seriously effect the energy efficiency of animals. This means the oxygen levels on the Earth are about the most effective we need for life, without it increasing to a dangerous level. Yet life is continually taking oxygen out of the atmosphere and putting it back again. So how does life get it so right? In that it doesn’t take too much oxygen out of the atmosphere thereby reducing the efficiency of animal respiration, or get it too high and create a world wide disaster. What is more, life has been able to do this delicate balancing act for billions of years.

Though it is even more complex than this. Through the examination of ancient rocks it was discovered that in the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago, there was 35% oxygen in the atmosphere, which caused problems, because now did the vegetation of the time survive? Then it was discovered that there was probably far more nitrogen in the atmosphere then. This makes a big difference, as flammability depends on the proportion between oxygen and nitrogen. So it is possible to have more oxygen in the atmosphere if you also have more nitrogen as well. This means that since the Carboniferous age life has been taking nitrogen out of the atmosphere to use as fertiliser in the soil, but then it has to take oxygen out as well to keep the oxygen/nitrogen balance just right.

Lovelock realised that as it was life itself producing both carbon dioxide and oxygen and it was life that was regulating temperature and oxygen levels of the Earth. Within the parameters to make life on earth possible. He was to find many more coincidences like this. Life also needs a chemical balanced world that is neither too acid or too alkaline. Which is what we find on Earth, unlike both Venus and Mars which have environments that are too acid to support life. It seems that Earth has many forms of micro organisms that are working away to keep our world chemically neutral.

He presented all his ideas in a scientific meeting about the origins of life but his ideas went down like a lead balloon. Only two scientists took a interest in his ideas, one being Lynn Margulis who had a background in Life science and was able to later help him to present and develop his ideas even further.

It took about 20 years for the scientific community to take his ideas seriously. (After all only theories that nature is very savage, brutal and selfish make sense. The idea that all life works in harmony, is the stuff of fairy tales) Over time the evidence piled up in favour of Lovelock, so many scientists are now very reluctantly, accepting his hypothesis, though he still gets his detractors, and guess who is one of his biggest critic? It is not a surprise to learn it is Richard Dawkins. A man who tries to prove that life is basically selfish, is not going to be sympathetic to any idea that the whole of life is one organism.

Though Dawkins himself even admits that many species of animal do co-operate with each other for their mutual benefit. Like the aphids who live in ants nests; the aphids get the benefit of being protected by the ants while the ants milk the aphids for food. Yet in discussing life that help each other, he prefers to see it in terms of manipulation. He would rather use the word “bearers” instead of “carers” when writing about animals who care for the young. Hinting perhaps that bearers are suckers or losers. While the idea that any form of life could possibly give or help others because they love and care for them, is completely ignored. Even though it is well documented, that mother animals and human mothers who have cared for and looked after young who don’t carry their genes.

Another criticism of the Gaia hypothesis is that there is no very large brain laying around the place, directing life and telling it what to do. Yet this problem is the same we have about social insects like Ants, Termites and Bees. They live in complex societies with different insects having very different roles, (like workers, queens, drones and soldiers). Yet what makes these nests and hives work is a mystery because these insects have minuscule brains and no obvious leader. (the queen is seen as the leader, but her role in directing what goes on in the nest is still a mystery). The Gaia hypothesis just treats the whole of life on this planet as a far bigger and more complex version of a bee hive. With different species of animals, plants and micro-organisms all having different roles in keeping the planet going. This is similar to the concepts of the Collective Unconscious that was put forward by the psychologist Carl Jung. Who discovered that the unconscious minds of his patients were remarkably similar. This means, we don’t have to have an enormous brain lying around somewhere, to make the Gaia theory work. The whole of life can be the brain and intelligence of the planet.

Dawkins has also been a strong critic of creationists, and Lovelock was surprised to have him use the same arguments against the Gaia theory. Which is interesting, because although the Gaia theory has been adopted by New-Agers, creationists haven’t used it. Probably because of it’s name. Had Lovelock named it after a male god it might of gained acceptance by creationists. The name Gaia came from this friend, the author William Golding who named it after the ancient Greek earth Goddess Gaia.

In recent years, except for the USA government under Present Bush, the whole world, has woken up to the dangers of global warming. In James Lovelock’s new book, “The Revenge Of Gaia”, he points out that through our meddling we have inadvertently declared war on Gaia, and this is a war we cannot win. If Gaia has managed to survive for 3-4 billion years and survived asteroid strikes and super volcanoes, she can survive and fight back, against the meddling of a naked ape. The problem we might have, is that the way she might stop this meddling is to make the human race extinct. James Lovelock now wishes that he had called his theory Khali or Nemesis as the nature of these two mythical Goddesses fit the theory far better. Both Goddesses are motherly and nurturing, but ruthlessly cruel towards transgressors, even when they are her own children. Suggesting that although we are children of Gaia, this may not stop her from destroying us, if we are threatening all other life on Earth.

As he points out; the problem we have is although we are now aware of the dangers of global warming, very little is being done to rectify the situation. The biggest polluting country on the planet is the USA, yet the government of this country refuses to recognize global warming. Yet other countries are not doing much better. He regards the Kyoto agreement as nothing more that public relations exercise. Where he claims, most of the countries have got together to pretend to be seen doing something about global warming, but the effects on global warming through this agreement, have been so weak, that it is nearly useless.

He attacks the global warming policies of the British Government, and the European union as being too little too late. Britain and Europe in recent years have built thousands of large windmills to generate electricity, but again he seem to regard this as just a political stunt. Putting large windmills all over the country-side does give the impression to the public, that the government is at least doing something. But he points out that windmills are only going to produce a small percentage of our energy needs and they are a unreliable way of generating electricity. This is because they only work when the wind blows, so it means the national grid has to generate electricity in other ways when it is not windy.

Far more power could be generated through using wave-power, tide power or putting large turbines in the oceans to make use of ocean currents. Yet hardly anything has been done to finance these options.

Europe has also gone over to natural gas to fuel power stations, claiming that it gives off far less pollution than coal or oil. Lovelock dispute this; he points out that natural gas is methane, which is 24 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. The problem is that most natural gas in Europe how comes from Russia, which needs extremely long pip-lines to pump it all the way from Siberia to Britain. Long pipelines cause leakages, and when the amount of methane that goes into the atmosphere through leakages is calculated, it turns out that natural gas causes the same amount of global warming as burning coal.

Although Lovelock is trying to warn the world of the dangers of global warming his solutions are very different to those into Green politics. Lovelock is clearly not a Green and is critical of the person who started the Green movement, Rachael Carson. As a young scientist he worked in the chemical industry on the chemicals she criticized. So he started his career as an opponent of Rachael Carson and everything she stood for. Which means, he is not in anyway a Green idealist and we can see this in his attitude towards nuclear energy. Lovelock is very controversial, because he claims that we now have the technology to generate electricity without causing global warming, if we were to use nuclear power. Which the Greens are very much opposed to.

The whole nuclear industry got itself a very bad name with the Chernobyl accident and since then, hardly any nuclear power-plants have been built throughout the world. Yet he claims that nuclear power is far less dangerous than the public is led to believe. He blames the media, who for the sake of creating sensational stories to sell newspapers, have over dramatised the dangers of nuclear radiation. He also attacks the Greens as well, whom were once part of the ban-the-bomb campaign during the cold war, and had generated a lot of anti-nuclear propaganda, to try and force governments to ban nuclear weapons and now believe their own propaganda and see anything to do with nuclear power as ‘bad’. The biggest fear of using nuclear power-plants is another big accident like that of Chernobyl, but Lovelock believes these fears are unfounded.

The greatest fear we all have about nuclear radiation is that exposure to it will cause cancers. He points out that since the Second World War very large amounts of nuclear radiation have been pumped out into the atmosphere. Two Atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, in 1946, in the 1950s, USA, Russia, Britain and France exploded hundreds of nuclear devices in the atmosphere until there was a test ban in the 1960s. At the nuclear power-station at Windscale in Britain, there was a nuclear accident and cloud of radiation covered the whole of Britain. (Something successfully covered up by the British government at the time). Then there was the Three Mile Island accident in USA, and finally the accident at Chernobyl. Yet he claims there has been no significant rise in cancer rates, when people were exposed to all this nuclear radiation. The biggest problem in trying to make sense of the data. Cancers can take a long time to develop, and there is no way of knowing if a cancer developed because of exposure to radiation or for some other reason. He goes on to point out, that the people who have worked in the nuclear industry, are no more unhealthy than the rest of the population.

He then makes the point, that the biggest causes of cancers are carcinogens which are found in natural foods, and oxygen. What is not well-known is that although we need to breath oxygen to survive, oxygen is also a poison. When our bodies convert oxygen into carbon-dioxide to give the body energy, toxic by-products are created that damage the cells of our bodies. Some of these damaged cells then can end up becoming cancerous. (Oxygen also oxidises the fat in our bodies, this oxidised fat around blood-vessels can swell up constricting the blood vessels, and cause strokes and heart attacks, if the constricted blood vessels stops the passageway of clots in the blood). The body counters the damaging effect of oxygen through antioxidants. These are chemicals found in fresh fruit and vegetables. (Some people also take vitamin pills as a protection against the damaging effect of oxygen, but benefits of vitamin pills are disputed, and shouldn’t be used as a substitute for eating fruit and vegetables).

This means the biggest causes of cancer is not nuclear radiation, in spite of the amount that has been exposed to atmosphere over the years, but oxygen in which we have no choice but to breath. Lovelock goes on to point out that the fumes that come from coal, oil and petrol are also carcinogenic, yet we don’t get anywhere need the fuss made about these pollutants, like we do with nuclear radiation. He then finishes his argument by pointing out that, using fossil fuels is destroying the planet and we need to urgently change our ways. Nuclear power is a technology that is ready available to us and we should be using that now.

He claims we urgently need to do this because Gaia could be dying. As pointed out earlier the sun is slowing heating up, and life counteracts this by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The problem is now carbon dioxide is down to just 0.03% of the atmosphere. So the planet will not be able to take much more CO2 out the atmosphere if the sun continues to warm up. The threat of overheating the planet wasn’t as dangerous in the past as it is now, simply because the sun wasn’t as warm in the past. So to counter the effects of the increasing heat from the sun, Gaia has had to use other methods of cooling the planet besides taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. One of the methods has been the creation of ice-ages.

In the last ice-age, ice and snow covered the whole of Canada, most of Europe and Northern Asia. Ice flows also covered the Northern Pacific and the Atlantic and covered a wider area around the Antarctic. Now, it seems that ice and snow are as nearly as good at reflecting heat as a mirror, so having vast areas of ice and snow enabled the planet to reflect a large amount heat from the sun back into space. Now this is very serious, because already through global warming we are seeing all the ice-flows around the Antarctic melting away, and the ice in the Artic ocean disappearing every summer. This means; another way Gaia keeps the planet cool is rapidly disappearing.

Another problem is that under the ice in northern countries are ice-covered peat bogs, full of frozen methane gas. As pointed out earlier; methane is 24 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, so when these bogs become unfrozen, they will release vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere.

Warming the oceans with the melting of the ice on the Antarctic continent and Greenland will bring about big rise in sea-level, flooding large cities and towns round our coasts. But there is an even bigger problem if the oceans warm up. When we think of deserts we tend to think of deserts on land like the vast Sahara desert. Yet there is deserts in the ocean as well. People very much like tropical seas and oceans because the water is so blue and clear, but what is not realised is that the reason the water is so clear is because it is devoid of life. Life in the water, like life on the land breaths in oxygen, but the amount of oxygen that can mix in water depends on it’s temperature. The colder the water, the more oxygen can be mixed in it, as it becomes warmer the oxygen level drop, this means that the colder waters near the poles can support far greater densities of life than tropical seas and oceans. This is why oceans and seas in colder latitudes are not clear, but are brown or grey, because they are full of microscopic life that can live in the oxygen rich water. Now this microscopic life are even more important in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, than the forests of the world. All of life is made of carbon, in the oceans when any life form dies it is quickly eaten up, but not all of it. A lot of it still escapes being eaten and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. In the cold depths of the ocean the carbon is preserved and becomes part of the ocean silt. This means that life in the oceans is continually taking carbon out of circulation and trapping at the bottom of the ocean. So if the oceans were to warm up the desert areas of the oceans were to greatly increase, there will be less life in which to take carbon out of the atmosphere. Another problem would be that if the oceans gets warmer it will release both carbon dioxide and methane trapped in the ocean silt. Adding to our the increasing greenhouse gases.

What this all suggests is that Gaia is in crises, and human beings have two choices we can be part of the solution and help Gaia to overcome the immediate problem. Or we can be the problem itself, where Gaia will have no choice but to destroy the whole of human kind because we are, without realising it, doing our best to destroy her.

Now it seems that with modern technology there is a lot we can do to help Gaia. One proposal is to create giant sun shades in space. Above our atmosphere, between the sun and Earth there is a place called the Lagrange point. This is where the gravitational pull of the Earth and sun are even and cancel each other out. In this area giant discs can be placed which will could reflect back some of the heat of the sun coming to the Earth and help cool our planet. It seems that this is not some fanciful dream, we have the technology to do this now, if we have the will to do it. A less high-tech way to achieve the same result, would be to launch millions of balloons into the stratosphere made of reflective material. Again these balloons will be reflecting sunlight back into space before it reaches the earth, and so cooling the planet. Lovelock also pointed out that sulphur occurs in aviation fuel, but is taken out as it will cause acid rain. But if it was left in, and aircraft dump the sulphur in the stratosphere, it greatly add to ‘global dimming’ and help to cool our planet down.

Another proposal would be to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The problem then would be what to do with it. Already people have taken carbon dioxide from power-stations and tried dumping it in the ocean but it was discovered that carbon dioxide increases the acidity of sea-water and could damage life in the oceans. The Norwegians have already pumped carbon dioxide into exhausted gas fields, and this could be a short term solution, of pumping this gas into exhausted oil and coal fields as well, but there is no guarantee that the gas will not escape at a later date. Although carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas, it can still kill people, an escaping dense cloud can drown people, as they will be unable to breath oxygen inside the cloud. A solution to this is to react carbon dioxide with serpentine powder and the resulting product would be magnesium carbonate. This is a hard solid and can be used as a building material. So factories all over the world could make magnesium carbonate and greatly reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Food also can be made out of carbon-dioxide. This is what all animals and plants do. Already we have the technology to do this, but it is doubtful if the general public will accept food made in a factory rather than grown on the land. But if we were to do this, farm land can be used to plant trees to soak up more carbon-dioxide. Another advantage of this, is that many of the animals and plants facing extinction today because the increasing use of farm land, that is destroying their habitat. If we were to make food in factories instead of growing it, all the animals and plants on the verge of extinction can be saved and earth can go back to being what it was, before human beings invented agriculture.

There are also vast areas of the earth that have been deforest and trees can be replanted there. There is problems of shortages of water in places like the Sahara desert and Australia, but now with modern technology it is possible to extract salt from sea-water. So if this was done on a massive scale, the deserts of the world can be irrigated with desalinised sea-water and forests can be grown again in these places. Trapping carbon inside the trunks of the trees, and the trees can be cut down to be used as building material and new trees planted in their place.

So we are not helpless, there is a lot of things we can do to save the planet. We have the technology, the engineering skills and the resource to do this. What we don’t seem to have, is the political will to do it. Lovelock has already pointed out, the mistakes politicians and scientists have made already.

In the 1970s Norway and Sweden were discovering that their trees were dying and the wildlife in their lakes and rivers declining. They quickly discovered the cause was acid rain, but the problem was; where was it coming from? It was soon decided that the United Kingdom was the cause of this. At the time the UK produced most of it’s electricity through burning coal and sulphur fumes coming out of the power-stations was mixing with clouds and turning the moisture in the clouds, acid. The UK government accepted blame and agreed to put sulphur removing devices on their power-station smoke stacks. The trouble was this didn’t solve the problem, it was then discovered that sulphur pollution was also coming from Germany, the USSR and from other Scandinavian countries. Sulphur was also coming from the North Sea as the run-off from intensive farming was polluting the sea with fertilizer and this was greatly encouraging the growth of algae which in turn was giving off sulphur gas. (This in itself would be helping Gaia because algae is a plant and uses carbon dioxide so we should be encouraging the growth of algae).

Then as the dangers of acid rain became known the European Union they introduced legislation to ensure all emissions from power-stations were filtered out. Now on the face of it, this was a very good thing but doing this had an unexpected side effect. Since this then the European continent has got dramatically warmer. It seems that the sulphur pollution in the atmosphere was causing what is called, ‘global dimming’. The sulphur haze right across Europe was reflecting sunlight back into space and keeping the ground underneath the haze several degrees cooler. Which is something no one predicted.

This then is the problem, we simply don’t know enough to know how the planet will react to increasing carbon dioxide emissions. For instance, with global warming it is predicted that evaporation from the oceans will greatly increase. This will create more clouds and in theory more clouds will shade the ground and cool it, but it is not as easy as that. It seems that water vapour is also a greenhouse gas. So clouds can have the effect of either reflecting sunlight back into space, or trapping heat under them, depending how high or thick they are. So there is no way of knowing if increasing cloud cover will cool or heat the planet or have no effect on its temperature.

There are also things we cannot know. Volcanoes have the effect of cooling the Earth, simply because they throw up millions of tons of dust and particles into the stratosphere. These particles can travel right around the globe, shading the Earth from the sun’s rays and cooling it down. In extreme cases, super volcanoes have thrown so much debris into the atmosphere they have started off ice-ages. Human beings are able to do the same thing if they want to, simply by exploding large numbers of nuclear bombs just above the ground. During the cold-war scientists worked out that if we did have a nuclear war, so much debris will be blown into the stratosphere it would create what they called a ‘nuclear winter’. So it means we do have a ‘instant fix’ if the earth suddenly warmed up too rapidly. Not necessary to have a nuclear war, but explode a large number of nuclear bombs in unpopulated places on the earth. There will be fears about the amount of radiation in the atmosphere but we have to remember that this happened in the 1950s, where the USSR and USA had a competition about who could explode the biggest nuclear bomb. They were using Hydrogen bombs which uses fusion rather than fission nuclear power. Without going into details, fission nuclear explosions give off radiation whereas fusion nuclear explosions don’t. Though a fission nuclear explosion is needed to cause fusion in hydrogen, so a H bomb will give off some radiation, but not the same amount as a old style Atomic bombs. (This is similar to using dynamite, where a small explosion using gunpowder is need to set the dynamite off.)

Lovelock seems to be very pessimistic about our chances, predicting the end of civilization and human beings going back to the Stone-age with just a few survivors living in the arctic regions. He seems to have very little confidence that the politicians will have the will or wisdom to do anything until it is too late. He doesn’t even have much confidence in environmentalist whom he regards as being wrong headed in their proposed solutions. While the public are being totally mislead about the true dangers and what needs to be done.

As Lovelock points out our rain-forests are the lungs of the planet, yet they are being cut down at the frightening rate of 50 acres per minute; and the probable loss of approximately 800 square miles of wild habitat each day to human needs. There are international laws against the destruction of the rain-forests but they are being totally ignored by the people in those areas, through illegal logging. Now illegal logging is very hard to do in secret, you cannot cut down large trees and transport them in large trucks to saw mills, without everyone in the area knowing about this. Yet it is happening and it happens because of wide-spread corruption, a lot of people can make a lot of money from selling the wood from these trees. Also rain-forests are being cleared in places like Borneo to grow palm-oil, which is being use extensively in super-market produces in the West.

In Brazil rain-forests are being cut down for cattle grazing, to feed the growing burger industry. Unfortunately, cattle grazing is one of the most inefficient methods of producing food. It requires from 4 to 10 times more cultivated fields to grow cereals and vegetables than to graze cattle. We even have the crazy situation where poor countries with starving populations, will export corn to rich nations to feed up live-stock! Not only that, cattle are a major contributor of methane gas, which is one of the most potent of all greenhouse gases. So eating burgers is a major waste of the planets resources and greatly contributes to the greenhouse effect, but the vast majority of people who are burger eaters, would be unaware of this.

One of the biggest causes of global warming is overpopulation. As the population grows more food needs to be grown which means more trees being cut down The human population of Earth reached 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974 and 5 billion in late 1986. On October 12th 1999, the human population of Earth reached 6 billion. Today it is 6,034,213,000 and rising.

Recently, many people claim the population problem has been solved. In India and China the two most populated areas in the world, had to use very draconian laws to keep the population down. In India they even forcibly sterilized women, while in China, couples are restricted to only one child. An unfortunate by-product of these laws is that both countries have a culture, that makes having a son necessity. As the result, female foetus are being aborted or baby girls are being murdered. And now a generation on, both countries have too many men and not enough women. This could spark a population crash in the next few generations as there will be too few women to produce children.

In many third world countries the population is being restricted by the Malthus theory. Thomas Malthus in 1798 pointed out that left unrestricted, human populations would grow until they became too large to be supported by the food available. At this point the population would be limited by famine and warfare, as people starve or fight over food. This is exactly what is happening in Africa today. In places like the Sudan; war and genocide is killing millions of people as men fight over scarce food recourses.

So we can see how the world population problem is being solved. Draconian laws are restricting population growth in India and China and war, genocide, disease and famine are restricting population growth in Africa. The problem is with these ‘solutions’ is that they cause horrendous suffering to the population. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envisage the suffering of a African family living in a famine area. As the parents watch their children die of starvation, thirst or disease caused by drinking contaminated water, or the fear of militias or a warlord coming into their village to steal or kill everyone simply because the villagers belong to a different ethnic group. Or we can look at the fate of Chinese men who now have little chance of ever getting married because there are too few women in the country. Or the fate of Chinese women who have been kidnapped and forced to live with a man she doesn’t know. This is because in China today, people pay criminal gangs to kidnap women for them to marry.

Yet there is a far more humane solution the world’s population explosion, and that is to give women equal rights. Europe up to the 20th century also had problems of overpopulation, but then women began to demand equal rights, and this was to have a dramatic effect on population size. Up until 20th century, the Church had strict rules about the use of contraception and abortion. It was also a rule that a wife could not refuse to have sex with her husband, and by law a husband had a legal right to rape his wife, if he so wished. The result was that women didn’t have control over their own bodies and found themselves forced to produce children every year, whether they wanted them or not.

Then as women became empowered in the 20th century they began to use birth-control methods and found they had the right to decide how many children as they wanted. This was even true in strongly Roman Catholic countries like Italy and Ireland where women were willing to defy the Church’s teachings on birth control. The result was that most women restricted themselves to about 2-3 children and the population stabilised and even went down in some countries. Which goes totally against the “selfish gene” theory, because women when given the choice, don’t want to keep on breeding to pass on as many of their genes to the next generation.

This then begs the question; why did the Christian and Islamic religions make such crazy laws that force women to have children every year and cause a population explosion? Some people put this down to Church dogma but in the USSR a atheist state, they also greatly encouraged women to have more children and even gave them medals for the amount of children they produced. So what is going on? Why do male dominated countries want women to produce lots of children? It seems this has to do with power. A country or a religion that has it’s population increasing every year will greatly outnumber a country or religion that is keeping a stable population. This means that countries that force Women to breed every year will quickly outnumber countries that don’t do this. This gives these countries a greater manpower, which is very useful in times of war. The drawback is that the increase growth in numbers means that it is harder for a country to feed all its citizens and condemns many to a life of poverty and starvation. Also now with a overpopulated world we are destroying our environment. But that doesn’t seem to be a concern to the religions and countries who create these laws and customs.

Back in the 19th century Swedish scientists worked out what would happen if industry kept on pumping out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and predicted this would create a greenhouse effect and warm up our planet. Yet this was completely ignored. Then in the 1950s scientists produced scientific instruments that could measure the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and could measure it increasing and showed direct evidence this was happening because of industry, but again this was ignored.

Then in the 1980s and 90s there has been increasing evidence of global warming as scientists can now show how the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting. Yet the USA government, the biggest polluter in the world is still not convince. Other governments of the world are convinced but still do very little about it. So why?

To understand this we have to look the mentality of male rulers and industrial leaders.

Because men are competitive then what motivates them is being winners, ‘The Number One”. So to male rulers the important thing is to gain or keep power. In democratic countries it means that what happens in the next election is all important. So he knows that to restrict the use of motor cars or aeroplanes, because of the pollutions they give off, would loose him votes. If he is a dictator then the main focus would be making sure he is not assassinated or any other alpha-men will not challenge him for power. So all male leaders will be so caught up in their power games, that global warming will not figure very importantly in their priorities.

The same is true of the industries that pollute our planet. As businessman say; “it is the bottom line that counts”. In the competitive world of business, businessmen know when they are doing better than their competitors when they generate larger profits than them. So in their list of priorities, profits count for far more than the survival of the planet.

This means that governments are only going to do something about global warming if it is going to win them votes. While industry will only change their technology and production methods if it is going to be profitable. Saving the planet it seems are not high on their list of priorities. What many scientists and industrialist claim is that technology and industry has got us into this mess but it will this that will get us out and solve the problem. And to be fair there is some truth in this. Cleaner technology in producing power without carbon dioxide is what could save the planet, but as usual, the motivation is not there.

The fact is that our male political and industrial leaders just don’t care enough to do anything about global warming until it is too late. This is because trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions doesn’t evoke the competitive instincts of men.

If on the other hands our world was in danger of say colliding with a asteroid or comet, then male leaders would become very motivate because you would have the excitement of sending out a nuclear missiles to blow it up. Though unfortunately scientist have discovered that the best way to deal with a asteroid heading for our planet, would be to land a rocket on it and use its engines to slightly change it course. Which is very boring solution, compared with the option of sending nuclear weapons out to blast it, out of the sky.

Likewise there is no excitement, competition or profit in just reducing pollution. The military cannot go out and make war against pollution, it cannot just blast the CO2 out of the atmosphere with guns! While industry doesn’t make a profit in reducing CO2 emissions. And as yet, politicians don’t get votes cleaning up our biosphere, so where is the motivation? The fact that greenhouse gasses could warm up our planet to the degree of destroy most of the life on our planet, it seems, is not motivation enough. It would need female leadership to care about the planet and the life on it to do something about this before it is too late.

Female leadership would be highly motivated, to do something about global warning, simply because Women don’t only think about themselves, they care deeply about the lives of their children and grandchildren. So they would be very concerned about what the world will be like in 50 or 100 years time.

As pointed out earlier the sun is slowing heating up, and life counteracts this by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The problem is now carbon dioxide is down to just 0.03% of the atmosphere. So the planet will not be able to take much more CO2 out the atmosphere if the sun continues to warm up. So the strategy of using carbon dioxide as a means of regulating the temperature of the earth is coming to a end, as there is only a small amount of this gas left. This means life has to devise a new system in which to do this. So perhaps the creation of a clever monkey like humans with hands that can manipulate the environment, is part of this new strategy. Hopefully we will in time produce technology that can keep our planet cool, as the sun heats up. Or we can transport life from our planet to others planets or moons or even other stars with planetary systems. Admittedly at present we are not doing well, in that we are heating up the planet through industrial pollution. Yet even this may be part of the plan. In that an environmental catastrophe caused by global warming may make us human being realise the importance of looking after the planet. We now have the technological power to destroy the Earth which we might do through thoughtless and irresponsible action. Because we still have a attitude of wanting to plunder and exploit the environment for our selfish gain.

It is clear that while men continue to rule our world, they will do little to help and protect Gaia, simply because the alpha-males who rule our world have a really poor track record for taking responsibility for the world they live in. Gaia can only be saved through Women taking over the world and working with Gaia to save our planet.

end

Since the middle of the 19th century when Charles Darwin published his theories of evolution, science has believed that life evolved through the, “survival of the fittest”. That is to say; with different life-forms competing against each other and most successful surviving and thriving, while the unsuccessful becoming extinct. This concept has been taken to the extreme through; “The Selfish Gene” theories of Richard Dawkins. He claims that the whole of life is basically selfish, and implies that the only purpose to life is to pass on your genes to the next generation. Which is a depressing thought.

The biggest flaw in this theory, that scientists don’t address, is that a truly successful species of animal, or any other life form, that overcome all it’s competitors will become extinct itself. This is because, if through evolutionary selection, say, a very successful carnivorous animal was created, that was so much faster, manoeuvrable and more powerful than any of its prey, then it would be doomed. Simply because it would soon kill and eat all the animals it preyed on, making them extinct and then because it has nothing to eat, it in turn will also become extinct.

One of the most successful life-forms in the ‘survival of the fittest’ is bacteria. This is because it can change and evolve far quicker than any other life-form, which doctors and research scientists have found to their cost. They might successfully produce a drug that can wipe out a dangerous bacteria, but always a few survive and they mutate to create a strain of bacteria, that is immune to the anti-bacteria drugs created. Now it has been calculated that if a single bacteria divides and repeats that division every twenty minutes, providing it has unlimited food and no other constraints on growth, within two days, the total offspring of the original bacteria, would weigh a much as the planet. Which begs the question; why hasn’t something like this happened? If bacteria can mutate faster than any other life form, why hasn’t a strain of bacteria been produced that was so successful, it overcome all other life-forms and became the only life-form on the planet?

This has very much been the human experience. Human being are very good at destroying it’s competitors in the ‘survival of the species’ game and making other animals, fish, plants and insects extinct. For instance; hunters with rifles in the 19th century quickly made animals like Tasmania Tiger in Australia, and the Passenger Pigeon in USA extinct. Since then, in the 20th century large numbers of wildlife has become extinct or is in danger of extinction because of over hunting or destruction of the animals habitat. At the present time there are about 5,000 species of animals and more than 25,000 species of plants facing extinction. It has only been the efforts of environmentalists that has saved many of these species, but we don’t know for how long. Some of these are already poised on the brink of completely disappearing and may well be beyond all hope of salvation now, whatever attempts might be made to save them.

We can say human beings are very, very successful playing the ‘survival of the fittest” game. Human beings are now the dominant species on the planet, and are increasing at such a high rate, that there is great fear of overpopulation. So that if human beings continue to breed, the planet in time will not be able to produce enough food to feed the growing human population. Not only that, human beings through their success, are in danger of destroying the Planet they live on. It means human beings might become extinct through being too successful.

If we accept the “selfish gene” theory then this is what will happen. Human beings are driven to compete with each other to pass on their genes. So it would be ‘natural’ for us to wipe out all competitors, that is to say all other animals and plants. (Which is what we are doing now). Then when we have successfully become the only species of life on the planet, we ourselves will become extinct because we will have nothing to feed on. Though perhaps we can save ourselves by resorting to cannibalism, the stronger feeding on the weaker. Is this nightmarish world, all we have to look forward to?

Well, no, because not only are we successfully destroying other animals and plants, we are also destroying the biosphere of the planet through pollution, and creating global warming. As the earth warms up, the population explosion will be successfully solved as large areas of the planet will become uninhabitable, through famine or floods. The whole of civilization might be destroyed, so the survivors will find themselves living again, a Stone-age existence.

So is that our destiny? For us to destroy ourselves or our civilization? This is clearly what will happen if we continue the way we are going. Yet things may not be so grim as we might think they are. We might be doing a vast amounts of damage to our planet but it seems that the planet is more than capable of looking after itself. We might be able to survive if we, change our attitudes and work with the planet and not against it.

The evolutionary theory of Darwin has been interpreted in a very competitive and masculine way. So the whole theory was seen by male scientists in terms of, “survival of the fittest”, “nature red in tooth and claw”, and more recently, “the selfish gene”. This all suggests that evolution is only about competition, but is it? What is totally forgotten is that survival also depends on co-operation as well. This is well- known by those whom create aquariums. If you pick species of fish to put into a aquarium that are very fierce and competitive, what will happen is that you will end up with just one large fish. This fish will be the winner, as it has eaten up all the other fish. On the other hand, if you are careful in how you pick your species of fish, in a way that each species will be able to feed of the waste of other species, this will result in a self-sustaining environment. And this is what we find on our planet, before humans interfered with the wild-life, we find in nature, self-sustaining environments where all the forms of life feed off each other. This means, that nature is not only about brutal competition, it is also about co-operation, stability and self-regulation.

Male scientists have unfortunately interpreted Darwin’s theory of evolution in very masculine terms, believing it to be only about competition. Yet there is another way to look at evolution and that is through feminine eyes. This has been done successfully by a male scientist called James Lovelock.

Mystics have for centuries claimed we are all one mind, one spirit. This concept has never caught on as it seems to go against all our personal experiences of competition and conflict with others. So is seen by ordinary people as to be a unrealistic fantasy. Then a scientist called James Lovelock developed a scientific theory that claimed the whole of life on this Earth is simply one organism! Which at first sight seem incredible, but his theory answers many mysteries about the nature of life.

Back in the 1960s James Lovelock was employed by NASA to find ways a space craft, could discover if there was life on Mars. So he started by examining the atmosphere of Mars to see it that would give a clue to signs of life. To understand this better he decided to examine the atmosphere of Earth and compared it with Mars. What he discovered was that the atmosphere on Mars was very stable and inert. Unlike Earth which has an unstable and dynamic atmosphere, because life itself was continually changing the gases within it. With life taking out of the atmosphere and again expelling, the gases Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and Methane. He then realised that you don’t have to send a space craft to Mars to find out if it had life. You could do it by simply by examining it’s atmosphere, which is not what his bosses in NASA wanted to hear. They needed a reason to convince politicians to fund a space mission to Mars. This resulted in him and NASA parting company, but he continued to develop his ideas further, as his studies of the Earth’s atmosphere presented him with a number of scientific puzzles.

Every school child knows that there is a cycle where animals convert oxygen into carbon dioxide while plants convert carbon dioxide back into oxygen once again, to again be breathed in by animals. But Lovelock took this concept even further. He looked at a mystery that no one had addressed, and that was although life began 3 - 4 billion years ago, the sun 3 billion years ago was 30% colder, than today and has since been steadily heating up. Yet at the same time, the temperature of the Earth has changed very little in that time, it has always stayed a stable temperature to support life. So how has that happened?

The answer seems to be that 3 billion years ago the Earth’s atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide so even though the sun was cooler, the CO2 created a greenhouse effect and so keeping the temperature the same as it is today. Since then the levels of carbon dioxide have slowly fallen, as the sun heated up, to keep the temperature of the Earth stable, but that wasn’t the whole story.

Then Lovelock went on to ask a further question. How was it possible for the carbon dioxide to decrease over a period of 3-4 billion years AT EXACTLY THE SAME RATE THE SUN WAS WARMING UP, to keep a constant temperature. This is a real a problem, when you realise that by just making the Earth a few degrees colder can bring on a ice-age. Also it only needs 10 degree increase or decrease in the earth’s temperature to make the vast majority of life on the planet extinct. So how has the Earth kept in the very narrow range of temperatures to make life on Earth possible? There was no answer to this, and to say it was just a lucky fluke was stretching credibility a bit too far. To add to this problem, the Earth has in it’s time been hit by large asteroids, as well as experiencing super-volcanoes. These events have been so terrible, that they have covered the atmosphere with so much dust, that it has blocked the heat of the sun and brought on new ice-ages. Yet in spite of these dramatic events, life on our planet has always recovered.

Then Lovelock came across other amazing coincidences. At present 21% of the atmosphere is oxygen. Now oxygen is a very dangerous and volatile gas. If it was to increase to 25% (only 4% higher) and a fire was to start, through a lightening strike, it would be impossible to put it out. Even green and wet vegetation will continue to burn, causing all vegetation on the earth to quickly burn up. Yet lower levels of oxygen would seriously effect the energy efficiency of animals. This means the oxygen levels on the Earth are about the most effective we need for life, without it increasing to a dangerous level. Yet life is continually taking oxygen out of the atmosphere and putting it back again. So how does life get it so right? In that it doesn’t take too much oxygen out of the atmosphere thereby reducing the efficiency of animal respiration, or get it too high and create a world wide disaster. What is more, life has been able to do this delicate balancing act for billions of years.

Though it is even more complex than this. Through the examination of ancient rocks it was discovered that in the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago, there was 35% oxygen in the atmosphere, which caused problems, because now did the vegetation of the time survive? Then it was discovered that there was probably far more nitrogen in the atmosphere then. This makes a big difference, as flammability depends on the proportion between oxygen and nitrogen. So it is possible to have more oxygen in the atmosphere if you also have more nitrogen as well. This means that since the Carboniferous age life has been taking nitrogen out of the atmosphere to use as fertiliser in the soil, but then it has to take oxygen out as well to keep the oxygen/nitrogen balance just right.

Lovelock realised that as it was life itself producing both carbon dioxide and oxygen and it was life that was regulating temperature and oxygen levels of the Earth. Within the parameters to make life on earth possible. He was to find many more coincidences like this. Life also needs a chemical balanced world that is neither too acid or too alkaline. Which is what we find on Earth, unlike both Venus and Mars which have environments that are too acid to support life. It seems that Earth has many forms of micro organisms that are working away to keep our world chemically neutral.

He presented all his ideas in a scientific meeting about the origins of life but his ideas went down like a lead balloon. Only two scientists took a interest in his ideas, one being Lynn Margulis who had a background in Life science and was able to later help him to present and develop his ideas even further.

It took about 20 years for the scientific community to take his ideas seriously. (After all only theories that nature is very savage, brutal and selfish make sense. The idea that all life works in harmony, is the stuff of fairy tales) Over time the evidence piled up in favour of Lovelock, so many scientists are now very reluctantly, accepting his hypothesis, though he still gets his detractors, and guess who is one of his biggest critic? It is not a surprise to learn it is Richard Dawkins. A man who tries to prove that life is basically selfish, is not going to be sympathetic to any idea that the whole of life is one organism.

Though Dawkins himself even admits that many species of animal do co-operate with each other for their mutual benefit. Like the aphids who live in ants nests; the aphids get the benefit of being protected by the ants while the ants milk the aphids for food. Yet in discussing life that help each other, he prefers to see it in terms of manipulation. He would rather use the word “bearers” instead of “carers” when writing about animals who care for the young. Hinting perhaps that bearers are suckers or losers. While the idea that any form of life could possibly give or help others because they love and care for them, is completely ignored. Even though it is well documented, that mother animals and human mothers who have cared for and looked after young who don’t carry their genes.

Another criticism of the Gaia hypothesis is that there is no very large brain laying around the place, directing life and telling it what to do. Yet this problem is the same we have about social insects like Ants, Termites and Bees. They live in complex societies with different insects having very different roles, (like workers, queens, drones and soldiers). Yet what makes these nests and hives work is a mystery because these insects have minuscule brains and no obvious leader. (the queen is seen as the leader, but her role in directing what goes on in the nest is still a mystery). The Gaia hypothesis just treats the whole of life on this planet as a far bigger and more complex version of a bee hive. With different species of animals, plants and micro-organisms all having different roles in keeping the planet going. This is similar to the concepts of the Collective Unconscious that was put forward by the psychologist Carl Jung. Who discovered that the unconscious minds of his patients were remarkably similar. This means, we don’t have to have an enormous brain lying around somewhere, to make the Gaia theory work. The whole of life can be the brain and intelligence of the planet.

Dawkins has also been a strong critic of creationists, and Lovelock was surprised to have him use the same arguments against the Gaia theory. Which is interesting, because although the Gaia theory has been adopted by New-Agers, creationists haven’t used it. Probably because of it’s name. Had Lovelock named it after a male god it might of gained acceptance by creationists. The name Gaia came from this friend, the author William Golding who named it after the ancient Greek earth Goddess Gaia.

In recent years, except for the USA government under Present Bush, the whole world, has woken up to the dangers of global warming. In James Lovelock’s new book, “The Revenge Of Gaia”, he points out that through our meddling we have inadvertently declared war on Gaia, and this is a war we cannot win. If Gaia has managed to survive for 3-4 billion years and survived asteroid strikes and super volcanoes, she can survive and fight back, against the meddling of a naked ape. The problem we might have, is that the way she might stop this meddling is to make the human race extinct. James Lovelock now wishes that he had called his theory Khali or Nemesis as the nature of these two mythical Goddesses fit the theory far better. Both Goddesses are motherly and nurturing, but ruthlessly cruel towards transgressors, even when they are her own children. Suggesting that although we are children of Gaia, this may not stop her from destroying us, if we are threatening all other life on Earth.

As he points out; the problem we have is although we are now aware of the dangers of global warming, very little is being done to rectify the situation. The biggest polluting country on the planet is the USA, yet the government of this country refuses to recognize global warming. Yet other countries are not doing much better. He regards the Kyoto agreement as nothing more that public relations exercise. Where he claims, most of the countries have got together to pretend to be seen doing something about global warming, but the effects on global warming through this agreement, have been so weak, that it is nearly useless.

He attacks the global warming policies of the British Government, and the European union as being too little too late. Britain and Europe in recent years have built thousands of large windmills to generate electricity, but again he seem to regard this as just a political stunt. Putting large windmills all over the country-side does give the impression to the public, that the government is at least doing something. But he points out that windmills are only going to produce a small percentage of our energy needs and they are a unreliable way of generating electricity. This is because they only work when the wind blows, so it means the national grid has to generate electricity in other ways when it is not windy.

Far more power could be generated through using wave-power, tide power or putting large turbines in the oceans to make use of ocean currents. Yet hardly anything has been done to finance these options.

Europe has also gone over to natural gas to fuel power stations, claiming that it gives off far less pollution than coal or oil. Lovelock dispute this; he points out that natural gas is methane, which is 24 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. The problem is that most natural gas in Europe how comes from Russia, which needs extremely long pip-lines to pump it all the way from Siberia to Britain. Long pipelines cause leakages, and when the amount of methane that goes into the atmosphere through leakages is calculated, it turns out that natural gas causes the same amount of global warming as burning coal.

Although Lovelock is trying to warn the world of the dangers of global warming his solutions are very different to those into Green politics. Lovelock is clearly not a Green and is critical of the person who started the Green movement, Rachael Carson. As a young scientist he worked in the chemical industry on the chemicals she criticized. So he started his career as an opponent of Rachael Carson and everything she stood for. Which means, he is not in anyway a Green idealist and we can see this in his attitude towards nuclear energy. Lovelock is very controversial, because he claims that we now have the technology to generate electricity without causing global warming, if we were to use nuclear power. Which the Greens are very much opposed to.

The whole nuclear industry got itself a very bad name with the Chernobyl accident and since then, hardly any nuclear power-plants have been built throughout the world. Yet he claims that nuclear power is far less dangerous than the public is led to believe. He blames the media, who for the sake of creating sensational stories to sell newspapers, have over dramatised the dangers of nuclear radiation. He also attacks the Greens as well, whom were once part of the ban-the-bomb campaign during the cold war, and had generated a lot of anti-nuclear propaganda, to try and force governments to ban nuclear weapons and now believe their own propaganda and see anything to do with nuclear power as ‘bad’. The biggest fear of using nuclear power-plants is another big accident like that of Chernobyl, but Lovelock believes these fears are unfounded.

The greatest fear we all have about nuclear radiation is that exposure to it will cause cancers. He points out that since the Second World War very large amounts of nuclear radiation have been pumped out into the atmosphere. Two Atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, in 1946, in the 1950s, USA, Russia, Britain and France exploded hundreds of nuclear devices in the atmosphere until there was a test ban in the 1960s. At the nuclear power-station at Windscale in Britain, there was a nuclear accident and cloud of radiation covered the whole of Britain. (Something successfully covered up by the British government at the time). Then there was the Three Mile Island accident in USA, and finally the accident at Chernobyl. Yet he claims there has been no significant rise in cancer rates, when people were exposed to all this nuclear radiation. The biggest problem in trying to make sense of the data. Cancers can take a long time to develop, and there is no way of knowing if a cancer developed because of exposure to radiation or for some other reason. He goes on to point out, that the people who have worked in the nuclear industry, are no more unhealthy than the rest of the population.

He then makes the point, that the biggest causes of cancers are carcinogens which are found in natural foods, and oxygen. What is not well-known is that although we need to breath oxygen to survive, oxygen is also a poison. When our bodies convert oxygen into carbon-dioxide to give the body energy, toxic by-products are created that damage the cells of our bodies. Some of these damaged cells then can end up becoming cancerous. (Oxygen also oxidises the fat in our bodies, this oxidised fat around blood-vessels can swell up constricting the blood vessels, and cause strokes and heart attacks, if the constricted blood vessels stops the passageway of clots in the blood). The body counters the damaging effect of oxygen through antioxidants. These are chemicals found in fresh fruit and vegetables. (Some people also take vitamin pills as a protection against the damaging effect of oxygen, but benefits of vitamin pills are disputed, and shouldn’t be used as a substitute for eating fruit and vegetables).

This means the biggest causes of cancer is not nuclear radiation, in spite of the amount that has been exposed to atmosphere over the years, but oxygen in which we have no choice but to breath. Lovelock goes on to point out that the fumes that come from coal, oil and petrol are also carcinogenic, yet we don’t get anywhere need the fuss made about these pollutants, like we do with nuclear radiation. He then finishes his argument by pointing out that, using fossil fuels is destroying the planet and we need to urgently change our ways. Nuclear power is a technology that is ready available to us and we should be using that now.

He claims we urgently need to do this because Gaia could be dying. As pointed out earlier the sun is slowing heating up, and life counteracts this by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The problem is now carbon dioxide is down to just 0.03% of the atmosphere. So the planet will not be able to take much more CO2 out the atmosphere if the sun continues to warm up. The threat of overheating the planet wasn’t as dangerous in the past as it is now, simply because the sun wasn’t as warm in the past. So to counter the effects of the increasing heat from the sun, Gaia has had to use other methods of cooling the planet besides taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. One of the methods has been the creation of ice-ages.

In the last ice-age, ice and snow covered the whole of Canada, most of Europe and Northern Asia. Ice flows also covered the Northern Pacific and the Atlantic and covered a wider area around the Antarctic. Now, it seems that ice and snow are as nearly as good at reflecting heat as a mirror, so having vast areas of ice and snow enabled the planet to reflect a large amount heat from the sun back into space. Now this is very serious, because already through global warming we are seeing all the ice-flows around the Antarctic melting away, and the ice in the Artic ocean disappearing every summer. This means; another way Gaia keeps the planet cool is rapidly disappearing.

Another problem is that under the ice in northern countries are ice-covered peat bogs, full of frozen methane gas. As pointed out earlier; methane is 24 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, so when these bogs become unfrozen, they will release vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere.

Warming the oceans with the melting of the ice on the Antarctic continent and Greenland will bring about big rise in sea-level, flooding large cities and towns round our coasts. But there is an even bigger problem if the oceans warm up. When we think of deserts we tend to think of deserts on land like the vast Sahara desert. Yet there is deserts in the ocean as well. People very much like tropical seas and oceans because the water is so blue and clear, but what is not realised is that the reason the water is so clear is because it is devoid of life. Life in the water, like life on the land breaths in oxygen, but the amount of oxygen that can mix in water depends on it’s temperature. The colder the water, the more oxygen can be mixed in it, as it becomes warmer the oxygen level drop, this means that the colder waters near the poles can support far greater densities of life than tropical seas and oceans. This is why oceans and seas in colder latitudes are not clear, but are brown or grey, because they are full of microscopic life that can live in the oxygen rich water. Now this microscopic life are even more important in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, than the forests of the world. All of life is made of carbon, in the oceans when any life form dies it is quickly eaten up, but not all of it. A lot of it still escapes being eaten and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. In the cold depths of the ocean the carbon is preserved and becomes part of the ocean silt. This means that life in the oceans is continually taking carbon out of circulation and trapping at the bottom of the ocean. So if the oceans were to warm up the desert areas of the oceans were to greatly increase, there will be less life in which to take carbon out of the atmosphere. Another problem would be that if the oceans gets warmer it will release both carbon dioxide and methane trapped in the ocean silt. Adding to our the increasing greenhouse gases.

What this all suggests is that Gaia is in crises, and human beings have two choices we can be part of the solution and help Gaia to overcome the immediate problem. Or we can be the problem itself, where Gaia will have no choice but to destroy the whole of human kind because we are, without realising it, doing our best to destroy her.

Now it seems that with modern technology there is a lot we can do to help Gaia. One proposal is to create giant sun shades in space. Above our atmosphere, between the sun and Earth there is a place called the Lagrange point. This is where the gravitational pull of the Earth and sun are even and cancel each other out. In this area giant discs can be placed which will could reflect back some of the heat of the sun coming to the Earth and help cool our planet. It seems that this is not some fanciful dream, we have the technology to do this now, if we have the will to do it. A less high-tech way to achieve the same result, would be to launch millions of balloons into the stratosphere made of reflective material. Again these balloons will be reflecting sunlight back into space before it reaches the earth, and so cooling the planet. Lovelock also pointed out that sulphur occurs in aviation fuel, but is taken out as it will cause acid rain. But if it was left in, and aircraft dump the sulphur in the stratosphere, it greatly add to ‘global dimming’ and help to cool our planet down.

Another proposal would be to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The problem then would be what to do with it. Already people have taken carbon dioxide from power-stations and tried dumping it in the ocean but it was discovered that carbon dioxide increases the acidity of sea-water and could damage life in the oceans. The Norwegians have already pumped carbon dioxide into exhausted gas fields, and this could be a short term solution, of pumping this gas into exhausted oil and coal fields as well, but there is no guarantee that the gas will not escape at a later date. Although carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas, it can still kill people, an escaping dense cloud can drown people, as they will be unable to breath oxygen inside the cloud. A solution to this is to react carbon dioxide with serpentine powder and the resulting product would be magnesium carbonate. This is a hard solid and can be used as a building material. So factories all over the world could make magnesium carbonate and greatly reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Food also can be made out of carbon-dioxide. This is what all animals and plants do. Already we have the technology to do this, but it is doubtful if the general public will accept food made in a factory rather than grown on the land. But if we were to do this, farm land can be used to plant trees to soak up more carbon-dioxide. Another advantage of this, is that many of the animals and plants facing extinction today because the increasing use of farm land, that is destroying their habitat. If we were to make food in factories instead of growing it, all the animals and plants on the verge of extinction can be saved and earth can go back to being what it was, before human beings invented agriculture.

There are also vast areas of the earth that have been deforest and trees can be replanted there. There is problems of shortages of water in places like the Sahara desert and Australia, but now with modern technology it is possible to extract salt from sea-water. So if this was done on a massive scale, the deserts of the world can be irrigated with desalinised sea-water and forests can be grown again in these places. Trapping carbon inside the trunks of the trees, and the trees can be cut down to be used as building material and new trees planted in their place.

So we are not helpless, there is a lot of things we can do to save the planet. We have the technology, the engineering skills and the resource to do this. What we don’t seem to have, is the political will to do it. Lovelock has already pointed out, the mistakes politicians and scientists have made already.

In the 1970s Norway and Sweden were discovering that their trees were dying and the wildlife in their lakes and rivers declining. They quickly discovered the cause was acid rain, but the problem was; where was it coming from? It was soon decided that the United Kingdom was the cause of this. At the time the UK produced most of it’s electricity through burning coal and sulphur fumes coming out of the power-stations was mixing with clouds and turning the moisture in the clouds, acid. The UK government accepted blame and agreed to put sulphur removing devices on their power-station smoke stacks. The trouble was this didn’t solve the problem, it was then discovered that sulphur pollution was also coming from Germany, the USSR and from other Scandinavian countries. Sulphur was also coming from the North Sea as the run-off from intensive farming was polluting the sea with fertilizer and this was greatly encouraging the growth of algae which in turn was giving off sulphur gas. (This in itself would be helping Gaia because algae is a plant and uses carbon dioxide so we should be encouraging the growth of algae).

Then as the dangers of acid rain became known the European Union they introduced legislation to ensure all emissions from power-stations were filtered out. Now on the face of it, this was a very good thing but doing this had an unexpected side effect. Since this then the European continent has got dramatically warmer. It seems that the sulphur pollution in the atmosphere was causing what is called, ‘global dimming’. The sulphur haze right across Europe was reflecting sunlight back into space and keeping the ground underneath the haze several degrees cooler. Which is something no one predicted.

This then is the problem, we simply don’t know enough to know how the planet will react to increasing carbon dioxide emissions. For instance, with global warming it is predicted that evaporation from the oceans will greatly increase. This will create more clouds and in theory more clouds will shade the ground and cool it, but it is not as easy as that. It seems that water vapour is also a greenhouse gas. So clouds can have the effect of either reflecting sunlight back into space, or trapping heat under them, depending how high or thick they are. So there is no way of knowing if increasing cloud cover will cool or heat the planet or have no effect on its temperature.

There are also things we cannot know. Volcanoes have the effect of cooling the Earth, simply because they throw up millions of tons of dust and particles into the stratosphere. These particles can travel right around the globe, shading the Earth from the sun’s rays and cooling it down. In extreme cases, super volcanoes have thrown so much debris into the atmosphere they have started off ice-ages. Human beings are able to do the same thing if they want to, simply by exploding large numbers of nuclear bombs just above the ground. During the cold-war scientists worked out that if we did have a nuclear war, so much debris will be blown into the stratosphere it would create what they called a ‘nuclear winter’. So it means we do have a ‘instant fix’ if the earth suddenly warmed up too rapidly. Not necessary to have a nuclear war, but explode a large number of nuclear bombs in unpopulated places on the earth. There will be fears about the amount of radiation in the atmosphere but we have to remember that this happened in the 1950s, where the USSR and USA had a competition about who could explode the biggest nuclear bomb. They were using Hydrogen bombs which uses fusion rather than fission nuclear power. Without going into details, fission nuclear explosions give off radiation whereas fusion nuclear explosions don’t. Though a fission nuclear explosion is needed to cause fusion in hydrogen, so a H bomb will give off some radiation, but not the same amount as a old style Atomic bombs. (This is similar to using dynamite, where a small explosion using gunpowder is need to set the dynamite off.)

Lovelock seems to be very pessimistic about our chances, predicting the end of civilization and human beings going back to the Stone-age with just a few survivors living in the arctic regions. He seems to have very little confidence that the politicians will have the will or wisdom to do anything until it is too late. He doesn’t even have much confidence in environmentalist whom he regards as being wrong headed in their proposed solutions. While the public are being totally mislead about the true dangers and what needs to be done.

As Lovelock points out our rain-forests are the lungs of the planet, yet they are being cut down at the frightening rate of 50 acres per minute; and the probable loss of approximately 800 square miles of wild habitat each day to human needs. There are international laws against the destruction of the rain-forests but they are being totally ignored by the people in those areas, through illegal logging. Now illegal logging is very hard to do in secret, you cannot cut down large trees and transport them in large trucks to saw mills, without everyone in the area knowing about this. Yet it is happening and it happens because of wide-spread corruption, a lot of people can make a lot of money from selling the wood from these trees. Also rain-forests are being cleared in places like Borneo to grow palm-oil, which is being use extensively in super-market produces in the West.

In Brazil rain-forests are being cut down for cattle grazing, to feed the growing burger industry. Unfortunately, cattle grazing is one of the most inefficient methods of producing food. It requires from 4 to 10 times more cultivated fields to grow cereals and vegetables than to graze cattle. We even have the crazy situation where poor countries with starving populations, will export corn to rich nations to feed up live-stock! Not only that, cattle are a major contributor of methane gas, which is one of the most potent of all greenhouse gases. So eating burgers is a major waste of the planets resources and greatly contributes to the greenhouse effect, but the vast majority of people who are burger eaters, would be unaware of this.

One of the biggest causes of global warming is overpopulation. As the population grows more food needs to be grown which means more trees being cut down The human population of Earth reached 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974 and 5 billion in late 1986. On October 12th 1999, the human population of Earth reached 6 billion. Today it is 6,034,213,000 and rising.

Recently, many people claim the population problem has been solved. In India and China the two most populated areas in the world, had to use very draconian laws to keep the population down. In India they even forcibly sterilized women, while in China, couples are restricted to only one child. An unfortunate by-product of these laws is that both countries have a culture, that makes having a son necessity. As the result, female foetus are being aborted or baby girls are being murdered. And now a generation on, both countries have too many men and not enough women. This could spark a population crash in the next few generations as there will be too few women to produce children.

In many third world countries the population is being restricted by the Malthus theory. Thomas Malthus in 1798 pointed out that left unrestricted, human populations would grow until they became too large to be supported by the food available. At this point the population would be limited by famine and warfare, as people starve or fight over food. This is exactly what is happening in Africa today. In places like the Sudan; war and genocide is killing millions of people as men fight over scarce food recourses.

So we can see how the world population problem is being solved. Draconian laws are restricting population growth in India and China and war, genocide, disease and famine are restricting population growth in Africa. The problem is with these ‘solutions’ is that they cause horrendous suffering to the population. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envisage the suffering of a African family living in a famine area. As the parents watch their children die of starvation, thirst or disease caused by drinking contaminated water, or the fear of militias or a warlord coming into their village to steal or kill everyone simply because the villagers belong to a different ethnic group. Or we can look at the fate of Chinese men who now have little chance of ever getting married because there are too few women in the country. Or the fate of Chinese women who have been kidnapped and forced to live with a man she doesn’t know. This is because in China today, people pay criminal gangs to kidnap women for them to marry.

Yet there is a far more humane solution the world’s population explosion, and that is to give women equal rights. Europe up to the 20th century also had problems of overpopulation, but then women began to demand equal rights, and this was to have a dramatic effect on population size. Up until 20th century, the Church had strict rules about the use of contraception and abortion. It was also a rule that a wife could not refuse to have sex with her husband, and by law a husband had a legal right to rape his wife, if he so wished. The result was that women didn’t have control over their own bodies and found themselves forced to produce children every year, whether they wanted them or not.

Then as women became empowered in the 20th century they began to use birth-control methods and found they had the right to decide how many children as they wanted. This was even true in strongly Roman Catholic countries like Italy and Ireland where women were willing to defy the Church’s teachings on birth control. The result was that most women restricted themselves to about 2-3 children and the population stabilised and even went down in some countries. Which goes totally against the “selfish gene” theory, because women when given the choice, don’t want to keep on breeding to pass on as many of their genes to the next generation.

This then begs the question; why did the Christian and Islamic religions make such crazy laws that force women to have children every year and cause a population explosion? Some people put this down to Church dogma but in the USSR a atheist state, they also greatly encouraged women to have more children and even gave them medals for the amount of children they produced. So what is going on? Why do male dominated countries want women to produce lots of children? It seems this has to do with power. A country or a religion that has it’s population increasing every year will greatly outnumber a country or religion that is keeping a stable population. This means that countries that force Women to breed every year will quickly outnumber countries that don’t do this. This gives these countries a greater manpower, which is very useful in times of war. The drawback is that the increase growth in numbers means that it is harder for a country to feed all its citizens and condemns many to a life of poverty and starvation. Also now with a overpopulated world we are destroying our environment. But that doesn’t seem to be a concern to the religions and countries who create these laws and customs.

Back in the 19th century Swedish scientists worked out what would happen if industry kept on pumping out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and predicted this would create a greenhouse effect and warm up our planet. Yet this was completely ignored. Then in the 1950s scientists produced scientific instruments that could measure the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and could measure it increasing and showed direct evidence this was happening because of industry, but again this was ignored.

Then in the 1980s and 90s there has been increasing evidence of global warming as scientists can now show how the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting. Yet the USA government, the biggest polluter in the world is still not convince. Other governments of the world are convinced but still do very little about it. So why?

To understand this we have to look the mentality of male rulers and industrial leaders.

Because men are competitive then what motivates them is being winners, ‘The Number One”. So to male rulers the important thing is to gain or keep power. In democratic countries it means that what happens in the next election is all important. So he knows that to restrict the use of motor cars or aeroplanes, because of the pollutions they give off, would loose him votes. If he is a dictator then the main focus would be making sure he is not assassinated or any other alpha-men will not challenge him for power. So all male leaders will be so caught up in their power games, that global warming will not figure very importantly in their priorities.

The same is true of the industries that pollute our planet. As businessman say; “it is the bottom line that counts”. In the competitive world of business, businessmen know when they are doing better than their competitors when they generate larger profits than them. So in their list of priorities, profits count for far more than the survival of the planet.

This means that governments are only going to do something about global warming if it is going to win them votes. While industry will only change their technology and production methods if it is going to be profitable. Saving the planet it seems are not high on their list of priorities. What many scientists and industrialist claim is that technology and industry has got us into this mess but it will this that will get us out and solve the problem. And to be fair there is some truth in this. Cleaner technology in producing power without carbon dioxide is what could save the planet, but as usual, the motivation is not there.

The fact is that our male political and industrial leaders just don’t care enough to do anything about global warming until it is too late. This is because trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions doesn’t evoke the competitive instincts of men.

If on the other hands our world was in danger of say colliding with a asteroid or comet, then male leaders would become very motivate because you would have the excitement of sending out a nuclear missiles to blow it up. Though unfortunately scientist have discovered that the best way to deal with a asteroid heading for our planet, would be to land a rocket on it and use its engines to slightly change it course. Which is very boring solution, compared with the option of sending nuclear weapons out to blast it, out of the sky.

Likewise there is no excitement, competition or profit in just reducing pollution. The military cannot go out and make war against pollution, it cannot just blast the CO2 out of the atmosphere with guns! While industry doesn’t make a profit in reducing CO2 emissions. And as yet, politicians don’t get votes cleaning up our biosphere, so where is the motivation? The fact that greenhouse gasses could warm up our planet to the degree of destroy most of the life on our planet, it seems, is not motivation enough. It would need female leadership to care about the planet and the life on it to do something about this before it is too late.

Female leadership would be highly motivated, to do something about global warning, simply because Women don’t only think about themselves, they care deeply about the lives of their children and grandchildren. So they would be very concerned about what the world will be like in 50 or 100 years time.

As pointed out earlier the sun is slowing heating up, and life counteracts this by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The problem is now carbon dioxide is down to just 0.03% of the atmosphere. So the planet will not be able to take much more CO2 out the atmosphere if the sun continues to warm up. So the strategy of using carbon dioxide as a means of regulating the temperature of the earth is coming to a end, as there is only a small amount of this gas left. This means life has to devise a new system in which to do this. So perhaps the creation of a clever monkey like humans with hands that can manipulate the environment, is part of this new strategy. Hopefully we will in time produce technology that can keep our planet cool, as the sun heats up. Or we can transport life from our planet to others planets or moons or even other stars with planetary systems. Admittedly at present we are not doing well, in that we are heating up the planet through industrial pollution. Yet even this may be part of the plan. In that an environmental catastrophe caused by global warming may make us human being realise the importance of looking after the planet. We now have the technological power to destroy the Earth which we might do through thoughtless and irresponsible action. Because we still have a attitude of wanting to plunder and exploit the environment for our selfish gain.

It is clear that while men continue to rule our world, they will do little to help and protect Gaia, simply because the alpha-males who rule our world have a really poor track record for taking responsibility for the world they live in. Gaia can only be saved through Women taking over the world and working with Gaia to save our planet.

end

At about the beginning of the 20th century many western democratic countries allowed women the vote. New Zealand had already led the way by giving Women the vote in 1893, which was followed Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and even Russia. The male dominated establishment in these countries were happy to give women the vote without too much argument. This didn’t happen in Britain, the establishment strongly resisted enfranchising Women and this resulted in conflict and violence as Women end up becoming militant terrorists to fight for their rights.


The Feminist movement started early in Britain with the publication of; “A Vindications of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792. Then in 1832, Mary Smith a property owner, petitioned Parliament for the inclusion of propertied women for the right to vote. She was simply laughed out of the House of Commons.

The Feminist movement through campaigning quietly accomplished a lot during the 19th century. Schools to educate girls were opened, and Women were able vote for town councils, and some became town mayors like Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. But voting for Parliament was still denied them. To campaign for this, the Female Political Association was created, founded by the Quaker, Anne Knight, but their patient and reasonable efforts yielded little results and some Women decide that more direct action was need, these Women were led by Emmeline, Christabel, and Sylvia Pankhurst.

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in 1858 and her father had radical political beliefs and campaigned against slavery, while her mother was a Feminists and introduced her daughter to this cause, taking her to Feminist meetings. Where she once heard the famous American Feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton speak. When she grew up Emmeline married the lawyer Richard Pankhurst, he was a committed socialist and a strong advocate for Women’s rights. He helped draft the Women’s property bill that was passed by Parliament in 1870. Together they had four children, Chistabel, Sylvia, Frank and Adela. Both parents were committed to Women’s rights, and helped form the pressure group, the Women’s Franchise League in 1889. Emmeline became a Poor Law Guardian in 1895, working with the inmates of local workhouses, there she became deeply shocked by the misery she witnessed, and was particularly concerned by the way the Women were treated. This reinforced her desire to campaign more strongly for Women’s rights as she became disillusioned with existing Women’s political organizations.

Then in 1898 her husband Richard died, this meant Emmeline had to find a job to support her family and took a job as the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Rusholme. Yet she still found time to care for her family and continuing to fight for the cause of Women’s rights. At first Emmeline put her energy in helping the cause of poor working class Women, but her eldest daughter Christabel disagreed. She pragmatically pointed out that they would have far more success if they appealed to wealthy Women as they were educated, had far more influence, and it was their money that were financing Feminist groups. She won over her mother but was opposed by her sisters Sylvia and Adela, who believe that they should continue to put their efforts in helping the cause of working class women.

Christabel Pankhurst decided their tactics wasn’t getting enough attention; as their rallies and speeches were hardly reported by the press. She realised the shock value of respectable Women becoming victims of male brutality, so she masterminded a strategy of violence, so women would be jailed and become martyrs. She started this herself, on 13 October 1905, when she and Annie Kenney attended a political meeting. When Sir Edward Grey, a Liberal Politician got up to speak, Annie Kenny shouted out; “Will the Liberal Government give Women the vote?” This resulted in stewards and plain-clothes policemen trying to remove the Women from the hall, both Women strongly resisted and fought and struggled against the men. They both ended up being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, Christabel was also charged with kicking Inspector Mather, hitting him in the mouth, and spitting in the faces of Mather and Superintendent Watson. This incident was so extreme, that it was reported in the newspapers and this helped recruit more members to the Feminist cause.

Christabel Pankhurst was inspired to become a Feminist in 1901 by Eva Gore-Booth who was trying to persuade working class women in Manchester to join the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Christabel was very impressed with their arguments and decided to join the campaign. She also tried to follow the footsteps of her father and studied for a law degree, she obtained her degree in 1907 but her gender prevented her from doing what she wanted; and that was becoming a barrister.

At the time the Pankhurst were also worked to support the new Labour party but Christabel also disagreed with this, as she clearly didn’t trust male left-wing politicians. She reasoned that the failure of the suffrage movement had thus far been its inability to make any appreciable impact on public opinion. She believed that it was useless to expect any backing from left-wing politics as they didn’t have a stake in the enfranchisement of about two million middle and upper class women, who would presumably vote either Liberal or the Conservatives. She claimed it would be better to not back any political party, but to attract funds and backing from wealthy Women on a sex-war basis. To campaign at all major political meetings and use mass-demonstrations against political parties, either to sponsor a Women’s suffrage law, or to expose its refusal to do so. This she hoped this would force the anti-suffrage politicians out in the open, and show their hostility to Women’s rights. This will prove to Women there was a real sex-war against Women, by men. Which will galvanise more Women to join them in fighting for Women’s rights. She again won over support from her mother, with this argument, but not Sylvia and Adela who continued supporting the labour party.

The London Daily Mail ridiculed the more militant Women and called them "suffragettes", and the name stuck, and feminist Women in Britain became proud of being called Suffragettes. On 19 February 1906 an envoy of 300 Women argued with the British Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He agreed with everything the Women said to him, but then told them frankly they he was going to do nothing about it. The reason he gave, that such a proposal would split the Liberal Party, (the ruling party at the time). He then urged them; to go on pestering and exercise the virtue of patience. This so infuriate the Women than many decided a change of tactics was needed, as reasonable and sensible behaviour didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere.

The Suffragette movement was then spit apart; the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, continue the policy of quiet and reasonable campaigning. But the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst wanted more direct action, with the slogan, “deeds not words”. The Pankhurst females were very fashionable, well-dressed, high-society Women who used their feminine charms to get what they wanted. Not the sort of people, you would think, who would be leaders of a militant and violent organisation.


Because by this time, the press barons of Britain had a strict policy of not reporting any of the Suffragette meetings, or printing any article or letter written by a Suffragette, this made it very difficult for them to get their message out to the people. In response the Pankhursts decided on a policy of “press-baiting”. On 9 March 1906 thirty women went to 10 Downing Street and to try and see Campbell-Bannerman, and after waiting an hour they were asked to leave. Irene Fenwick Miller then rapped on the door and Mrs Drummond opened it and rushed inside. Both Women were arrested. Annie Kenny then jumped on the roof of the Prime Minster’s car and began to address the crowd. She was pulled down and also arrested. But the three Women were released without charge, because the Prime Minster did not press charges.

On the 25 April 1906 Kier Hardie, the leader of the Labour party presented to the Parliament a Resolution; “That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that sex should cease to be a bar to the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise.” Twelve members of the WSPU were in Ladies’ Gallery to witnessed it, but as they feared, the anti-Suffragist MPs began to ‘talk it out’. When the time limit of the debate was coming to an end, the Women became angry and shouted out their displeasure from the Gallery. The police evicted them and the Resolution was talked out. The Labour party at the time supported the Suffragettes and the WSPU, but they were disturbed by the increasing militancy of the Pankhursts and in 1907 the WSPU split from the Labour party.

On 23 October 1906 the Suffragettes again invaded Parliament, but only thirty were admitted into the lobby. There they started a noisy protest and ten of them were arrested. At their trial, the Women refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the court, claiming it was carrying out solely man-made laws, and made no attempts to defend themselves. They were found guilty, and ordered to a agree to keep the peace for six months, they refused, and were imprisoned for two months. Adela Pankhurst was one of the ten who were imprisoned.

On 13 February 1907 the WSPU organized a march from Caxton Hall to Parliament, after a brief speech by Mrs Pankhurst 400 Women began marching to Parliament led by Charlotte Despard. When they neared Parliament there way was barred by the police, but the Women refused to back down and tried to break through the police lines. For several hours the Women hurled themselves again and again against the police lines until 15 Women managed to break through and reached Parliament, but were promptly arrested. Fifty-one Women were finally arrested including Charlotte Despard, as well as Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst.

The violence of these demonstrations upset many Women in the WSPU and in 1907 a breakaway organization was created under the leadership of Teresa Billington-Greig and Charlotte Despard These Women protested against what they saw was the Pankhurst’s extreme militancy and authoritarianism. Then Sylvia and Adela Pankhurst also split with their Mother and their Sister Christabel. Sylvia forming a rival socialist Suffrage organisation in London’s East End. Adela meanwhile suffered from bronchitis and after being imprisoned a number of times and working hard organizing the WSPU in Yorkshire, she dropped out through exhaustion. After going back to university to study, she travel to Italy and then later immigrated to Australia.

Yet in spite of prominent Women dropping out of the WSPU there were always others to take their place. Many who were willing to die for Emmeline Pankhurst and worshipped her as superhuman. In the next seven years these Women were bullied, mocked, brutalised, rolled in mud, insulted, imprisoned, force-fed, pelted with rotten eggs, tomatoes, pepper, spat at and often beaten up To the Women who became frighten by these attacks from men, Emmeline Pankhurst said; “Pray to God, my dear – SHE will hear you!”

In 1908 Herbert Asquith the new Prime Minster asked for proof that Women really wanted the vote. Christabel decided to organized demonstrations to prove that they did. Another march was made on Parliament and 48 Women were arrested one of them being Emmeline Pankhurst. On 19 March 1908 7,000 suffragettes filled the Albert Hall, Mrs Pankhurst wasn’t expected to speak because she was still in jail, but the government decided to release her early, which allowed her speak at the end of the meeting.

Then on 19 March, the more moderate wing of the Suffragette movement showed what they could do. 30,000 people marched in Hyde Park for Women’s votes led by people like Bernard Shaw and Keir Hardie, as well as the wives of many famous men, it was estimated that between 250,000 to 500,000 people witnessed this march, but they were dismissed by the papers as, ‘curious onlookers’. In the end, this mass demonstration failed to move the government, who chose to ignore this mass demonstration, and so increasing the frustration of the WSPU.

Christabel forced the police to arrest her, on 8 October 1908 by producing a pamphlet that read; “Votes for women, men and women. Help the suffragettes, to rush the house of Commons”. She then showed this pamphlet to the police, who saw this as an incitement to attack Parliament, and a few days later they arrested Emmeline and Chrisabel Pankhurst as well as Mrs Drummond. That evening 60,000 people gathered at Parliament Square, but were met by 5,000 constables who cordoned of the square, the Suffragettes then tried to force themselves past police lines. In the ensuring battle, 24 Women and 13 men were arrested and 10 people were taken to hospital.

Then on 29 June 1909 Emmeline Pankhurst tried again to speak to the Prime Minster, and went with a group of only 8 Women, but at the door to the Commons she was told that the Prime Minster wouldn’t see her. She became angry at this and when the police tried to push them away, Mrs Pankhurt struck Inspector Jarvis three times in the face. He told her that; “she was striking him for a purpose, and that he would not be perturbed”. Mrs Pankhurst then gave him two very much harder blows and another Woman knocked off his hat. The police were then forced to arrest them. Emmeline Pankhurst was repeatedly imprisoned and inspired other Women to follow her example of civil disobedience. In one 18 month period, she endured 10 hunger-strikes.



The Suffragettes being mostly middle-class or upper-class women, the authorities treated them well in prison, giving them the cells reserved for middle and upper-class people. But with the increasing numbers of Suffragettes now coming into prison the authorities change the way they treated the Women and put them in the normal cells used by working class prisoners. These were damp and musky cells with no heating and filled with rats.

Marion Wallace on 2 July 1909 protested against this treatment by became the first hunger striker, when she was put into jail for painting Suffragette slogans on the wall of a Church. After refusing all food for ninety-one hours, she was released from prison. This quickly caught on, and other Suffragette Women also done the same. The authorities reacted by the policy of forced feeding, hoping that the act having a pipe forced down their throats, and forcing food into their stomachs would discourage the Suffragette Women, but they resolutely continued their hunger strikes. Knowledge of this leaked out to the press and once reported, caused a public outcry, as forced feeding was seen as a form of torture. This was because the prisoner had to be forcefully restrained and the pushing of a pipe down a persons throat was very painful and degrading. Public opinion was now very much on the side of the Suffragettes, more than 150 councils passed resolutions supporting the enfranchisement of Women and even Conservative MPs joined in the protest in Parliament. Yet the government under Asquith still refused budge.

Asquith himself became the target for many Suffragette attacks. As he was leaving Lympne Church, on the 5 September 1909, three Suffragettes Jessie Kenny, Elsie Howey and Vera Wentworth hit him repeatedly. They tried to approach him later on that day on a golf course but were driven away, by his daughter. Then that evening two stones were thrown through a window of the house in which Asquith was dining. Then on 17 September when Asquith spoke at Bingley Hall, no Women were admitted, but two Suffragettes, Mary Leigh and Charlotte Marsh with axes climbed onto the roof of a nearby house. They then chopped slates off the roof and threw them at the police and Asquith’s car. The police tried to get them down by turning a hose on them, but they refused to budge. Finally the police had to climb on the roof themselves to apprehend them. Meanwhile a Suffragette crowd gathered below, and Mary Edwards, was arrested for assaulted several policemen. She then smashed windows in the police station she was sent to. Other Ministers were also attacked, like Wilson Churchill, who was attacked by Theresa Garnett at a railway station with a riding-switch.

Emily Wilding Davison in November 1909 tried to resist forced feeding by barricading herself in her cell, at Strangeways Prison. They tried to dislodge her by turning a hose on her, but she refused to give in. Finally they had to break into her cell. The Home Secretary then ordered her release.

The Suffragettes also began to set alight post-boxes burning all the letters inside. In Newcastle 2,000 letters were damaged, but perpetrators done this in secret and escaped arrest. Mrs Pankhurst make it public that she disapproved of this; saying that all Suffragettes should openly take responsibility for the damage they had done. Other Suffragettes went into breaking windows of public and private buildings. One of the most spectacular incident, was when 150 well dressed Women produced hammers from their handbags and proceeded to break shop-windows in London on Oxford Street, Regent Street and the Strand. Emmeline Pankhurst, was one of the women arrested for this incident. To escape arrest Christabel Pankhurst fled to France where she was able to continue to organize the WSPU without fear of being put into prison.

The government then seemed to have caved into the mounting public pressure, with a promise of a new law. In 1910 the Concliation Bill was drafted in Parliament. The Suffragettes thinking they had won, suspended all militant action for nine months, but the new law was voted out. Feeling betrayed the Suffragettes continued there fight. Then in 1913 the Franchise Reform Bill was created but that was thrown out because of bureaucratic slip-up. The Suffragettes now started to get really angry. “Destructive militancy, now broke out on an unparalleled scale”, wrote Sylvia Pankhurst.

The first incident of arson was done by Ellen Pitfield, whom was dying of cancer. She set light to basket of wood shavings in the General Post Office, and then threw a brick through a window to attract attention to what she had done. So the fire was quickly put out before it done too much damage. At her trial, she was so ill, she had to be carried into the court, she was put in prison for six months and died shortly after coming out. Other Suffragettes followed this lead. Mary Leigh was a very active militant she had already been arrested nine times and had spent 15 months in jail. In Dublin she threw a axe into the carriage in which Asquith had been riding. Then that same evening she and Gladys Evans tried to set fire to the Theatre Royal, where Asquith had just seen a performance. The two women ignited the curtains behind a box, threw a flaming chair down into the orchestra, and set off small bombs made of tin cans. They did not try to evade arrest, and were subsequently sentenced to five years in prison. Both Women then went on prolonged hunger strikes, with the unpopularity of forced feeding, the authorities released them after 16 weeks and the cases against them were allowed to drop.

Because of this, the government changed their tactics introducing what was called; ‘The Cat and Mouse’ act. In 1913 the government passed a law where a hunger-striker could be released from prison, but then be re-arrested when they become stronger again. This act was used on Emmeline Pankhurst when she went on hunger strike.

The fire bombing continued: Emily Davison burnt five rooms of a house belonging to Lloyd George, (The Prime Minster of Britain during the First World War). His speeches were also interrupted by the Suffragettes and he was to remark: “I have no desire to speak by gracious permission of Queen Christabel.”

November 18, 1913 became a day called “Black Friday” as crowd of Women led by the Emmeline Pankurst tried to storm Parliament but were held back by the police, the Women did not give in. They fought a brutal battle with the police for six hours and the police eventually had to arrest the rioters. But the Home Secretary at the time, Wilson Churchill, made the decision not to prosecute, for fear it would inflame even more riots.


Then the next Tuesday, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith announced that no other suffrage bill would be considered. This caused another riot, what the press called, “The Battle of Downing Street”, where 185 women were arrested. What shocked the whole nation was that the Women who fought the police were, middle-class and upper-class Women. The WSPU then issued a statement; “As the Prime Minster will not give us the assurance that women shall be enfranchised next year, we revert to a state of war”.

The WSPU now become increasingly militant. Both public and private property was destroyed. Some of the actions were very petty like stomping on flower beds, pouring acid onto golf courses, breaking street lamps, burning rags pushed into letterboxes, envelopes containing red pepper and snuff sent to every cabinet minister, slashing cushions on train seats, throwing rocks at Parliament buildings and houses of MPs, chaining themselves to railings outside Parliament and Downing Street, cutting telephone wires and blowing up fuse boxes. But other actions were far more serious; Like burning down sports pavilions, and setting fire to public and private houses, placing bombs near the Bank of England and in Churches, slashing thirteen pictures in the Manchester Art Gallery and a package containing sulphuric acid was sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it burst into flames when opened.

Fortunately no one was killed in these many acts of violence, except one. Emily Davison, at a race meeting at Tattenham Centre, threw herself under the King’s racehorse toppling both horse and rider. This caused a riot and by the time Emily Davison body was taken to hospital, she was dead. She then become the first and only martyr to the Suffragette movement. Whether she intend to kill herself or not, is in dispute, but the Suffragettes reacted with this news with increasing violence. In the following month A Boathouse, a cricket pavilion, a racecourse stand, a laboratory, churches, houses and even a castle were bombed, or set on fire, causing considerable damage.

Unfortunately these many acts of violence began to turn the public against the Suffragettes, and the newspapers took the opportunity to attack them. The words "militant suffragettes” was changed to “criminal suffragettes” and later “mad suffragettes”. The Suffragettes were called both ‘crazy’ and ‘frenzied’ when a clockwork bomb was found at St Paul’s Cathedral. As the campaign continued the Daily Express even went as far as calling Suffragettes the "anarchists", and called for the deportation of the suffragettes, and claimed them to be like "housebreakers, White slave dealers and murderers". While in Parliament, the opponents of the Suffragettes claimed the terrorist actions of women activists, were a very good reason why women should not get the vote. Christabel Pankhurst hit back in a series of articles about white slavery and ‘the great scourge’ of venereal disease. She claimed that most of the male population had been effected by this disease, thus presenting men as the source of sexual poison. Extreme militancy, she claimed, was justified as a ‘surgical operation’ to cleanse society of this menace.

The Suffragettes became angry about their treatment from the press. In one incident; a Suffragette came to office of the editor of the Belfast Evening Telegraph, and knocked him down with one blow. When bundled out of his office she went to the office of the editor of the Belfast Newsletter and assaulted him as well. The Government and Suffragettes were now at loggerheads, with neither side prepared to back-down. The violence continue into 1914, and Sylvia Pankhurst wrote. -

"The destruction wrought in the seven months of 1914 before the War excelled that of the previous year. Three Scotch castles were destroyed by fire on a single night. The Carnegie Library in Birmingham was burnt. The Rokeby Venus, falsely, as I consider, attributed to Velázquez, and purchased for the National Gallery at a cost of £45,000, was mutilated by Mary Richardson. Romney's Master Thornhill, in the Birmingham Art Gallery, was slashed by Bertha Ryland, daughter of an early Suffragist. Carlyle's portrait of Millais in the National Portrait Gallery, and numbers of other pictures were attacked, a Bartolozzi drawing in the Doré Gallery being completely ruined. Many large empty houses in all parts of the country were set on fire, including Redlynch House, Somerset, where the damage was estimated at £ 40,000. Railway stations, piers, sports pavilions, haystacks were set on fire. Attempts were made to blow up reservoirs. A bomb exploded in Westminster Abbey, and in the fashionable church of St George's, Hanover Square, where a famous stained-glass window from the Malines was damaged ... One hundred and forty-one acts of destruction were chronicled in the Press during the first seven months of 1914."

Although Sylvia Pankhurst still remained a member of the WSPU her disagreement with her mother and sister over it’s tactics and aims, led to them expelling her from the organization in 1914.

The government and the press tried their best to cover-up the extent of Suffragette violence. For instance; when Mary Richardson destroyed Velázquez' Rokeby Venus in London’s National Galley with a meat cleaver, the National Gallery tried to suppress all knowledge. They managed to repair the painting and tried to conceal the fact it was badly damaged, even to this day in the 21st century they still will not acknowledge that this happened. Mary Richardson was a very active militant and was arrested nine times in two years, and went on hunger-strike and was forced fed. She smashed windows at the Home Office and Holloway Prison, bombed a railway station and set fire to a country house. She was also with Emily Wilding Davidson when she was killed, and was badly beaten-up by the angry crowd afterwards. Men also helped and supported the Suffragettes and took part in many of their demonstrations, but again this fact has been ignored by official history.

Then the First World War started in August 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst was in prison at the time and on hunger-strike. The British government struck a deal with her, to release all Suffragettes and drop all charges, if she would call off the terror campaign. She agreed, and Christabel came back from France and both women decided it was important to help Britain in the war effort. As explained by Christabel-

“War was the only course for our country to take. This was national militancy. As Suffragettes we could not be pacifists at any price. Mother and I declared support of our country. We offered our service to the country and called upon all members to do likewise. As Mother said, ‘What would be the good of a vote without a country to vote in!’. She called for wartime military conscription for men, believing that this was democratic and equitable, and that it would enable a more ordered and effective use of the nation’s man power.”

So while Emmeline and Christabel in Britain were calling for conscription, in Britain Adela in Australia was campaigning against this. Like Sylvia she was a pacifist and she was threatened with jail for repeatedly defying a ban on public gathering and finally sentenced to prison after leading a demonstration in Melbourne against the high price of food. The government offered to release her if she promised to not speak again in public, she refused and served her full prison sentence. She then married a fellow activist to prevent herself from being deported.

Christabel Pankhurst put her war efforts into touring USA and tried to convince the American public to enter the war with the Allies. Then when the Russian Tsar was overthrown in the first Russian Revolution Emmeline Pankhurst journey to Russia to dissuade them from dropping out of the war, and stand up against the Bolsheviks whom were campaigning to make peace with Germany. (Which they done after the second Russian Revolution). The energy and effort the two women put into helping the war effort didn’t go unnoticed. As Sylvia was to write-

“Christabel received the commendation of many war enthusiasts. Lord Northcliffe observed that she ought to be in the Cabinet. Lord Astor told me, when I happened to be seated beside him at dinner, that he had received two letters from her; he had sent one of them to the War Office, the other to the Minister of Blockade. Undoubtedly he was much impressed by their contents.”

They even become friends and allies of Lloyd George, (who became Prime Minister in the second half of the war). Whom Christabel once regarded as the most bitter and dangerous enemy of Women before the war. Sylvia continued working for the rights of working class Women and being a pacified, as always, disagreed with her mother and sister. Conscription was also the policy of the Conservative party and Emmeline found herself campaigning for conscription alongside conservative politicians whom she became friendly with, and eventually joined the conservative party.

With most of Britain’s young men fighting in the trenches, there was a shortage of people in the factories to produce the weapons and ammunition they needed. Women were recruited and showed they were more than capable of doing ‘men’s jobs’. In 1917 Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women's Party. The party advocated equal pay for Women with men, equal marriage and divorce laws, the same rights of guardianship of children as their husbands, and equality in education, health services, opportunity in the professions, and in the public services. Though they also advocated policies such as the abolition of the trade unions, showing how far they had come from their left-wing roots. This party was too far ahead of it’s times and some of it’s policies were only started to realised from the 1960s and even today in the 21st century Women are still paid less than men overall.

After the war, the government used the work Women done in factories and the farms as an excuse to give Women the Vote. Though some MPs admitted the truth like Lord Crewe, who; "warned the House that if the vote was refused to women the old violent atmosphere of the question would return." Yet the government still patronised Women, by first only allowing Women over 30 to have the vote. Christabel took this opportunity to stand for Parliament in both the 1918 and 1919 elections for the Women’s Party but was defeated both times. Then unfortunately the Women’s Party died, it required the next generation of Women to continued to campaign for Women’s right as strongly as the Pankhurst’s, but this didn’t happen until the 1960s.

With the incredible amount of violence caused by the Suffragettes it was a surprise that only one person got killed. This is due to the restraint and responsible behaviour of the Women. When throwing rocks and bricks through windows, some Suffragettes would tie a string to them, so the missile wouldn’t go further than the window, and injure anyone inside the building. The Women were also given lessons on how to break windows safely without hurting themselves and others. Even though the Suffragettes used bombs and set fire to buildings. They ensured that either no-one was in the building at the time, or if there were, they themselves raised the alarm.

So although the Suffragettes ended up becoming a terrorist group, the care and attention the Women took, ensured there was no causalities to other people. This is in total contrast to male dominated terrorist groups. If we look at the I.R.A. and the Protestant, Basque and Islamic terrorist groups we find a total disregard for human life. Emmeline Pankhurst made it clear that their attacks was aimed at property and the Suffragette Women had the self-discipline and concern for human life to ensure none of their bombs or arson attacks, didn’t kill or badly injured anyone.

After the First World War, Emmeline spent several years in the USA and Canada lecturing for the National Council for Combating Venereal Disease. When Emmeline returned to Britain in 1925 she joined the Conservative Party and was adopted as one of their candidates in the East End of London. Sylvia Pankhurst, who still held her strong socialist views, was appalled by this decision.

The reason for Emmeline Pankhurst’s defection could be that the Liberal government that strongly opposed the Suffragettes, were the main Left-wing party of the time. Christabel clearly didn’t trust the motives of left-wing politicians and this also become the view of her mother. Emmeline still campaigned against the government, after the war, to lower voting for Women from 30 to 21 the same as for men. In 1928 the government finally gave in, and done this, and Emmeline died the same day, her life’s ambition finally achieved.

In 1921 Christabel went to live in the United States where she became a prominent member of Second Adventist movement. She lectured and wrote books on the Second Coming. Then returned to Britain in the 1930s but left for the USA at the start of the Second World War. She died in the USA in 1958.

Sylvia Pankhurst on the other hand, was a activist for the Labour Party, and defied the conventions of the time, by becoming a unmarried mother. Something greatly disapproved of, by her mother and Christabel. Sylvia Pankhurst was a prolific writer, she owned and edited a weekly paper called, “The Women’s Dreadnought” where she made it clear, where her views and opinions were different from the WSPU. She renamed it, “The Worker’s Dreadnought” after women got the vote. She founded and edited four newspapers, wrote and published 22 books and pamphlets and countless articles, she was a founder and tireless activist in a variety of women’s, labour movement and international solidarity organisations. She was a deeply committed anti-racist and anti-fascist.

She then became involved in the fight for Ethiopia’s independence when Italy under Mussolini, conquered it in 1935. She created a new weekly paper called, “New Times and Ethiopian News” and sold it in West Africa and the West Indies. She continued this campaign when Britain took control of Ethiopia during the Second World War. Her campaign was so much appreciated by the Ethiopians that in 1960 at the age of 74, she was invited to live in their country, which she accepted. She died four years later and was given a state funeral in Ethiopia. Sylvia Pankhurst has remained a controversial figure in the British Feminist movement. The irony is, that her Mother and Sister ended up becoming part of the British establishment, in spite organizing a terrorist campaign against the state. A statue of Emmeline Pankhurst was erected outside of Parliament and later a plaque to Christabel Pankhurst. Yet there is no mention of Sylvia Pankurst contribution, in spite of her being a more reasonable individual. Some British Feminists have written books and article praising Sylvia Pankhurst and attacking, what they see as the betrayal of working class Women, by her Mother and Christabel.

In Australia Adela Pankhurst became involved supporting Unions and was a founding member of the Australian Communist party, but soon became disillusioned with it and spent the rest of her life a anti-Communist. In 1928 Adela founded the Australian Women's Guild of Empire which raised money to relieve suffering among working class women. She toured industrial areas, speaking at factories and workplaces on the need for industrial co-operation. In her view, the correct response to the Depression was to increase efficiency and raise productivity. Her administrative skill, eloquence and anti-communism attracted large numbers of middle-class supporters. The guild provided a motor car to enable her to extend her message to a wider audience. Braving picket lines to speak against strikes, she often met a hostile reception. Support for the Australian Women’s Guild dropped away, but Adela became worried by Australia’s increasing trade reliance on USA, and thought that Australia should trade more with their Asian neighbours like Japan. She even travelled to Japan and became a guest of the Japanese Government. The result was, that she was interned by the Australian government during the war, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. After the war she dropped out of public life and died in 1961.

In between organizing the WSPU with her daughter Chrisabel and being so many times in prison, Emmeline Pankhurst still found time to sail across the Atlantic to give support to the Feminists in the United States. She said as a way of introducing herself to America Women: “I dare say, in the minds of many of you–you will perhaps forgive me this personal touch–that I do not look either very like a soldier or very like a convict, and yet I am both.”

Women’s suffrage started well in USA, when the state of Wyoming enfranchised Women in 1869. This was followed over 25 years later by Colorado in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896, then over ten years later by Washington in 1910. Like in Britain, the Feminist movement in USA was reasonable in their demands and even though they were achieving results, the pace of change wasn’t fast enough for many Women.

While studying at the School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London, the American Alice Paul, joined the WSPU and her activities resulted in her being arrested and imprisoned three times. Like other suffragettes she went on hunger strike and was forced-fed. Alice Paul returned home to the United States and in 1913 she joined with Lucy Burns and Olympia Brown to form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS) and attempted to introduce to American Women the militant methods of the Pankhursts. This included organizing huge demonstrations and the daily picketing of the White House. Over the next couple of years the police arrested nearly 500 women for loitering and 168 were jailed for "obstructing traffic". Alice Paul was sentenced to seven months imprisonment, but after going on hunger strike, she was released.

This clearly worried the US government who didn’t want an extreme Suffragette terrorist group operating in their country. In January, 1918, Woodrow Wilson announced that Women's suffrage was urgently needed as a "war measure". The House of Representatives passed the federal woman suffrage amendment 274 to 136 but it was opposed in the Senate and was defeated in September 1918. Another attempt in February 1919 also ended in failure. This seem to be following the British experience of Women’s suffrage proposed laws being continually defeated, but in the next year there came a breakthrough. In May 1919 the House of Representatives again passed the amendment (304 to 89) and on 4th June 1919 the Senate finally gave in and passed it by 66 to 30. Canada and most European countries followed suit between the two, world wars. It could be that, looking at the experience of Britain, these countries didn’t want a home grown suffragette terror group starting in their countries.

Emmeline Pankhurst believed strongly that Women’s behaviour was morally superior to men’s. Claiming, that the whole point of getting the vote, was to enable Women to use this superiority to curb male sexual excess, civilise public life and elevate the whole of the human race onto a higher sphere of existence.

The Women’s vote has failed to curb male sexual excess in Britain, but it had some clear influences in the way government’s behave. After the Second World War, it was assumed by everyone that Prime Minster Churchill would win the next election. He was after all, a very successful war Prime Minster and to capitalise on this, he encouraged war heroes to be candidates for the Conservative party. So he was very shocked and surprised when the opposing Labour party won by a land-slide. The reason for this, was that the Labour party had a radical programme of social reform, with the ‘welfare state’ and free medical treatment. Something that greatly appealed to female voters.

This influence of Women voters is hard to assess, but it is clear, throughout Europe, political parties have had to create policies, to care for the poor, disabled and sick to win votes from Women. Creating more caring societies in the Western world.

At about the beginning of the 20th century many western democratic countries allowed women the vote. New Zealand had already led the way by giving Women the vote in 1893, which was followed Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and even Russia. The male dominated establishment in these countries were happy to give women the vote without too much argument. This didn’t happen in Britain, the establishment strongly resisted enfranchising Women and this resulted in conflict and violence as Women end up becoming militant terrorists to fight for their rights.


The Feminist movement started early in Britain with the publication of; “A Vindications of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792. Then in 1832, Mary Smith a property owner, petitioned Parliament for the inclusion of propertied women for the right to vote. She was simply laughed out of the House of Commons.

The Feminist movement through campaigning quietly accomplished a lot during the 19th century. Schools to educate girls were opened, and Women were able vote for town councils, and some became town mayors like Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. But voting for Parliament was still denied them. To campaign for this, the Female Political Association was created, founded by the Quaker, Anne Knight, but their patient and reasonable efforts yielded little results and some Women decide that more direct action was need, these Women were led by Emmeline, Christabel, and Sylvia Pankhurst.

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in 1858 and her father had radical political beliefs and campaigned against slavery, while her mother was a Feminists and introduced her daughter to this cause, taking her to Feminist meetings. Where she once heard the famous American Feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton speak. When she grew up Emmeline married the lawyer Richard Pankhurst, he was a committed socialist and a strong advocate for Women’s rights. He helped draft the Women’s property bill that was passed by Parliament in 1870. Together they had four children, Chistabel, Sylvia, Frank and Adela. Both parents were committed to Women’s rights, and helped form the pressure group, the Women’s Franchise League in 1889. Emmeline became a Poor Law Guardian in 1895, working with the inmates of local workhouses, there she became deeply shocked by the misery she witnessed, and was particularly concerned by the way the Women were treated. This reinforced her desire to campaign more strongly for Women’s rights as she became disillusioned with existing Women’s political organizations.

Then in 1898 her husband Richard died, this meant Emmeline had to find a job to support her family and took a job as the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Rusholme. Yet she still found time to care for her family and continuing to fight for the cause of Women’s rights. At first Emmeline put her energy in helping the cause of poor working class Women, but her eldest daughter Christabel disagreed. She pragmatically pointed out that they would have far more success if they appealed to wealthy Women as they were educated, had far more influence, and it was their money that were financing Feminist groups. She won over her mother but was opposed by her sisters Sylvia and Adela, who believe that they should continue to put their efforts in helping the cause of working class women.

Christabel Pankhurst decided their tactics wasn’t getting enough attention; as their rallies and speeches were hardly reported by the press. She realised the shock value of respectable Women becoming victims of male brutality, so she masterminded a strategy of violence, so women would be jailed and become martyrs. She started this herself, on 13 October 1905, when she and Annie Kenney attended a political meeting. When Sir Edward Grey, a Liberal Politician got up to speak, Annie Kenny shouted out; “Will the Liberal Government give Women the vote?” This resulted in stewards and plain-clothes policemen trying to remove the Women from the hall, both Women strongly resisted and fought and struggled against the men. They both ended up being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, Christabel was also charged with kicking Inspector Mather, hitting him in the mouth, and spitting in the faces of Mather and Superintendent Watson. This incident was so extreme, that it was reported in the newspapers and this helped recruit more members to the Feminist cause.

Christabel Pankhurst was inspired to become a Feminist in 1901 by Eva Gore-Booth who was trying to persuade working class women in Manchester to join the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Christabel was very impressed with their arguments and decided to join the campaign. She also tried to follow the footsteps of her father and studied for a law degree, she obtained her degree in 1907 but her gender prevented her from doing what she wanted; and that was becoming a barrister.

At the time the Pankhurst were also worked to support the new Labour party but Christabel also disagreed with this, as she clearly didn’t trust male left-wing politicians. She reasoned that the failure of the suffrage movement had thus far been its inability to make any appreciable impact on public opinion. She believed that it was useless to expect any backing from left-wing politics as they didn’t have a stake in the enfranchisement of about two million middle and upper class women, who would presumably vote either Liberal or the Conservatives. She claimed it would be better to not back any political party, but to attract funds and backing from wealthy Women on a sex-war basis. To campaign at all major political meetings and use mass-demonstrations against political parties, either to sponsor a Women’s suffrage law, or to expose its refusal to do so. This she hoped this would force the anti-suffrage politicians out in the open, and show their hostility to Women’s rights. This will prove to Women there was a real sex-war against Women, by men. Which will galvanise more Women to join them in fighting for Women’s rights. She again won over support from her mother, with this argument, but not Sylvia and Adela who continued supporting the labour party.

The London Daily Mail ridiculed the more militant Women and called them "suffragettes", and the name stuck, and feminist Women in Britain became proud of being called Suffragettes. On 19 February 1906 an envoy of 300 Women argued with the British Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He agreed with everything the Women said to him, but then told them frankly they he was going to do nothing about it. The reason he gave, that such a proposal would split the Liberal Party, (the ruling party at the time). He then urged them; to go on pestering and exercise the virtue of patience. This so infuriate the Women than many decided a change of tactics was needed, as reasonable and sensible behaviour didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere.

The Suffragette movement was then spit apart; the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, continue the policy of quiet and reasonable campaigning. But the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst wanted more direct action, with the slogan, “deeds not words”. The Pankhurst females were very fashionable, well-dressed, high-society Women who used their feminine charms to get what they wanted. Not the sort of people, you would think, who would be leaders of a militant and violent organisation.


Because by this time, the press barons of Britain had a strict policy of not reporting any of the Suffragette meetings, or printing any article or letter written by a Suffragette, this made it very difficult for them to get their message out to the people. In response the Pankhursts decided on a policy of “press-baiting”. On 9 March 1906 thirty women went to 10 Downing Street and to try and see Campbell-Bannerman, and after waiting an hour they were asked to leave. Irene Fenwick Miller then rapped on the door and Mrs Drummond opened it and rushed inside. Both Women were arrested. Annie Kenny then jumped on the roof of the Prime Minster’s car and began to address the crowd. She was pulled down and also arrested. But the three Women were released without charge, because the Prime Minster did not press charges.

On the 25 April 1906 Kier Hardie, the leader of the Labour party presented to the Parliament a Resolution; “That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that sex should cease to be a bar to the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise.” Twelve members of the WSPU were in Ladies’ Gallery to witnessed it, but as they feared, the anti-Suffragist MPs began to ‘talk it out’. When the time limit of the debate was coming to an end, the Women became angry and shouted out their displeasure from the Gallery. The police evicted them and the Resolution was talked out. The Labour party at the time supported the Suffragettes and the WSPU, but they were disturbed by the increasing militancy of the Pankhursts and in 1907 the WSPU split from the Labour party.

On 23 October 1906 the Suffragettes again invaded Parliament, but only thirty were admitted into the lobby. There they started a noisy protest and ten of them were arrested. At their trial, the Women refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the court, claiming it was carrying out solely man-made laws, and made no attempts to defend themselves. They were found guilty, and ordered to a agree to keep the peace for six months, they refused, and were imprisoned for two months. Adela Pankhurst was one of the ten who were imprisoned.

On 13 February 1907 the WSPU organized a march from Caxton Hall to Parliament, after a brief speech by Mrs Pankhurst 400 Women began marching to Parliament led by Charlotte Despard. When they neared Parliament there way was barred by the police, but the Women refused to back down and tried to break through the police lines. For several hours the Women hurled themselves again and again against the police lines until 15 Women managed to break through and reached Parliament, but were promptly arrested. Fifty-one Women were finally arrested including Charlotte Despard, as well as Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst.

The violence of these demonstrations upset many Women in the WSPU and in 1907 a breakaway organization was created under the leadership of Teresa Billington-Greig and Charlotte Despard These Women protested against what they saw was the Pankhurst’s extreme militancy and authoritarianism. Then Sylvia and Adela Pankhurst also split with their Mother and their Sister Christabel. Sylvia forming a rival socialist Suffrage organisation in London’s East End. Adela meanwhile suffered from bronchitis and after being imprisoned a number of times and working hard organizing the WSPU in Yorkshire, she dropped out through exhaustion. After going back to university to study, she travel to Italy and then later immigrated to Australia.

Yet in spite of prominent Women dropping out of the WSPU there were always others to take their place. Many who were willing to die for Emmeline Pankhurst and worshipped her as superhuman. In the next seven years these Women were bullied, mocked, brutalised, rolled in mud, insulted, imprisoned, force-fed, pelted with rotten eggs, tomatoes, pepper, spat at and often beaten up To the Women who became frighten by these attacks from men, Emmeline Pankhurst said; “Pray to God, my dear – SHE will hear you!”

In 1908 Herbert Asquith the new Prime Minster asked for proof that Women really wanted the vote. Christabel decided to organized demonstrations to prove that they did. Another march was made on Parliament and 48 Women were arrested one of them being Emmeline Pankhurst. On 19 March 1908 7,000 suffragettes filled the Albert Hall, Mrs Pankhurst wasn’t expected to speak because she was still in jail, but the government decided to release her early, which allowed her speak at the end of the meeting.

Then on 19 March, the more moderate wing of the Suffragette movement showed what they could do. 30,000 people marched in Hyde Park for Women’s votes led by people like Bernard Shaw and Keir Hardie, as well as the wives of many famous men, it was estimated that between 250,000 to 500,000 people witnessed this march, but they were dismissed by the papers as, ‘curious onlookers’. In the end, this mass demonstration failed to move the government, who chose to ignore this mass demonstration, and so increasing the frustration of the WSPU.

Christabel forced the police to arrest her, on 8 October 1908 by producing a pamphlet that read; “Votes for women, men and women. Help the suffragettes, to rush the house of Commons”. She then showed this pamphlet to the police, who saw this as an incitement to attack Parliament, and a few days later they arrested Emmeline and Chrisabel Pankhurst as well as Mrs Drummond. That evening 60,000 people gathered at Parliament Square, but were met by 5,000 constables who cordoned of the square, the Suffragettes then tried to force themselves past police lines. In the ensuring battle, 24 Women and 13 men were arrested and 10 people were taken to hospital.

Then on 29 June 1909 Emmeline Pankhurst tried again to speak to the Prime Minster, and went with a group of only 8 Women, but at the door to the Commons she was told that the Prime Minster wouldn’t see her. She became angry at this and when the police tried to push them away, Mrs Pankhurt struck Inspector Jarvis three times in the face. He told her that; “she was striking him for a purpose, and that he would not be perturbed”. Mrs Pankhurst then gave him two very much harder blows and another Woman knocked off his hat. The police were then forced to arrest them. Emmeline Pankhurst was repeatedly imprisoned and inspired other Women to follow her example of civil disobedience. In one 18 month period, she endured 10 hunger-strikes.



The Suffragettes being mostly middle-class or upper-class women, the authorities treated them well in prison, giving them the cells reserved for middle and upper-class people. But with the increasing numbers of Suffragettes now coming into prison the authorities change the way they treated the Women and put them in the normal cells used by working class prisoners. These were damp and musky cells with no heating and filled with rats.

Marion Wallace on 2 July 1909 protested against this treatment by became the first hunger striker, when she was put into jail for painting Suffragette slogans on the wall of a Church. After refusing all food for ninety-one hours, she was released from prison. This quickly caught on, and other Suffragette Women also done the same. The authorities reacted by the policy of forced feeding, hoping that the act having a pipe forced down their throats, and forcing food into their stomachs would discourage the Suffragette Women, but they resolutely continued their hunger strikes. Knowledge of this leaked out to the press and once reported, caused a public outcry, as forced feeding was seen as a form of torture. This was because the prisoner had to be forcefully restrained and the pushing of a pipe down a persons throat was very painful and degrading. Public opinion was now very much on the side of the Suffragettes, more than 150 councils passed resolutions supporting the enfranchisement of Women and even Conservative MPs joined in the protest in Parliament. Yet the government under Asquith still refused budge.

Asquith himself became the target for many Suffragette attacks. As he was leaving Lympne Church, on the 5 September 1909, three Suffragettes Jessie Kenny, Elsie Howey and Vera Wentworth hit him repeatedly. They tried to approach him later on that day on a golf course but were driven away, by his daughter. Then that evening two stones were thrown through a window of the house in which Asquith was dining. Then on 17 September when Asquith spoke at Bingley Hall, no Women were admitted, but two Suffragettes, Mary Leigh and Charlotte Marsh with axes climbed onto the roof of a nearby house. They then chopped slates off the roof and threw them at the police and Asquith’s car. The police tried to get them down by turning a hose on them, but they refused to budge. Finally the police had to climb on the roof themselves to apprehend them. Meanwhile a Suffragette crowd gathered below, and Mary Edwards, was arrested for assaulted several policemen. She then smashed windows in the police station she was sent to. Other Ministers were also attacked, like Wilson Churchill, who was attacked by Theresa Garnett at a railway station with a riding-switch.

Emily Wilding Davison in November 1909 tried to resist forced feeding by barricading herself in her cell, at Strangeways Prison. They tried to dislodge her by turning a hose on her, but she refused to give in. Finally they had to break into her cell. The Home Secretary then ordered her release.

The Suffragettes also began to set alight post-boxes burning all the letters inside. In Newcastle 2,000 letters were damaged, but perpetrators done this in secret and escaped arrest. Mrs Pankhurst make it public that she disapproved of this; saying that all Suffragettes should openly take responsibility for the damage they had done. Other Suffragettes went into breaking windows of public and private buildings. One of the most spectacular incident, was when 150 well dressed Women produced hammers from their handbags and proceeded to break shop-windows in London on Oxford Street, Regent Street and the Strand. Emmeline Pankhurst, was one of the women arrested for this incident. To escape arrest Christabel Pankhurst fled to France where she was able to continue to organize the WSPU without fear of being put into prison.

The government then seemed to have caved into the mounting public pressure, with a promise of a new law. In 1910 the Concliation Bill was drafted in Parliament. The Suffragettes thinking they had won, suspended all militant action for nine months, but the new law was voted out. Feeling betrayed the Suffragettes continued there fight. Then in 1913 the Franchise Reform Bill was created but that was thrown out because of bureaucratic slip-up. The Suffragettes now started to get really angry. “Destructive militancy, now broke out on an unparalleled scale”, wrote Sylvia Pankhurst.

The first incident of arson was done by Ellen Pitfield, whom was dying of cancer. She set light to basket of wood shavings in the General Post Office, and then threw a brick through a window to attract attention to what she had done. So the fire was quickly put out before it done too much damage. At her trial, she was so ill, she had to be carried into the court, she was put in prison for six months and died shortly after coming out. Other Suffragettes followed this lead. Mary Leigh was a very active militant she had already been arrested nine times and had spent 15 months in jail. In Dublin she threw a axe into the carriage in which Asquith had been riding. Then that same evening she and Gladys Evans tried to set fire to the Theatre Royal, where Asquith had just seen a performance. The two women ignited the curtains behind a box, threw a flaming chair down into the orchestra, and set off small bombs made of tin cans. They did not try to evade arrest, and were subsequently sentenced to five years in prison. Both Women then went on prolonged hunger strikes, with the unpopularity of forced feeding, the authorities released them after 16 weeks and the cases against them were allowed to drop.

Because of this, the government changed their tactics introducing what was called; ‘The Cat and Mouse’ act. In 1913 the government passed a law where a hunger-striker could be released from prison, but then be re-arrested when they become stronger again. This act was used on Emmeline Pankhurst when she went on hunger strike.

The fire bombing continued: Emily Davison burnt five rooms of a house belonging to Lloyd George, (The Prime Minster of Britain during the First World War). His speeches were also interrupted by the Suffragettes and he was to remark: “I have no desire to speak by gracious permission of Queen Christabel.”

November 18, 1913 became a day called “Black Friday” as crowd of Women led by the Emmeline Pankurst tried to storm Parliament but were held back by the police, the Women did not give in. They fought a brutal battle with the police for six hours and the police eventually had to arrest the rioters. But the Home Secretary at the time, Wilson Churchill, made the decision not to prosecute, for fear it would inflame even more riots.


Then the next Tuesday, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith announced that no other suffrage bill would be considered. This caused another riot, what the press called, “The Battle of Downing Street”, where 185 women were arrested. What shocked the whole nation was that the Women who fought the police were, middle-class and upper-class Women. The WSPU then issued a statement; “As the Prime Minster will not give us the assurance that women shall be enfranchised next year, we revert to a state of war”.

The WSPU now become increasingly militant. Both public and private property was destroyed. Some of the actions were very petty like stomping on flower beds, pouring acid onto golf courses, breaking street lamps, burning rags pushed into letterboxes, envelopes containing red pepper and snuff sent to every cabinet minister, slashing cushions on train seats, throwing rocks at Parliament buildings and houses of MPs, chaining themselves to railings outside Parliament and Downing Street, cutting telephone wires and blowing up fuse boxes. But other actions were far more serious; Like burning down sports pavilions, and setting fire to public and private houses, placing bombs near the Bank of England and in Churches, slashing thirteen pictures in the Manchester Art Gallery and a package containing sulphuric acid was sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it burst into flames when opened.

Fortunately no one was killed in these many acts of violence, except one. Emily Davison, at a race meeting at Tattenham Centre, threw herself under the King’s racehorse toppling both horse and rider. This caused a riot and by the time Emily Davison body was taken to hospital, she was dead. She then become the first and only martyr to the Suffragette movement. Whether she intend to kill herself or not, is in dispute, but the Suffragettes reacted with this news with increasing violence. In the following month A Boathouse, a cricket pavilion, a racecourse stand, a laboratory, churches, houses and even a castle were bombed, or set on fire, causing considerable damage.

Unfortunately these many acts of violence began to turn the public against the Suffragettes, and the newspapers took the opportunity to attack them. The words "militant suffragettes” was changed to “criminal suffragettes” and later “mad suffragettes”. The Suffragettes were called both ‘crazy’ and ‘frenzied’ when a clockwork bomb was found at St Paul’s Cathedral. As the campaign continued the Daily Express even went as far as calling Suffragettes the "anarchists", and called for the deportation of the suffragettes, and claimed them to be like "housebreakers, White slave dealers and murderers". While in Parliament, the opponents of the Suffragettes claimed the terrorist actions of women activists, were a very good reason why women should not get the vote. Christabel Pankhurst hit back in a series of articles about white slavery and ‘the great scourge’ of venereal disease. She claimed that most of the male population had been effected by this disease, thus presenting men as the source of sexual poison. Extreme militancy, she claimed, was justified as a ‘surgical operation’ to cleanse society of this menace.

The Suffragettes became angry about their treatment from the press. In one incident; a Suffragette came to office of the editor of the Belfast Evening Telegraph, and knocked him down with one blow. When bundled out of his office she went to the office of the editor of the Belfast Newsletter and assaulted him as well. The Government and Suffragettes were now at loggerheads, with neither side prepared to back-down. The violence continue into 1914, and Sylvia Pankhurst wrote. -

"The destruction wrought in the seven months of 1914 before the War excelled that of the previous year. Three Scotch castles were destroyed by fire on a single night. The Carnegie Library in Birmingham was burnt. The Rokeby Venus, falsely, as I consider, attributed to Velázquez, and purchased for the National Gallery at a cost of £45,000, was mutilated by Mary Richardson. Romney's Master Thornhill, in the Birmingham Art Gallery, was slashed by Bertha Ryland, daughter of an early Suffragist. Carlyle's portrait of Millais in the National Portrait Gallery, and numbers of other pictures were attacked, a Bartolozzi drawing in the Doré Gallery being completely ruined. Many large empty houses in all parts of the country were set on fire, including Redlynch House, Somerset, where the damage was estimated at £ 40,000. Railway stations, piers, sports pavilions, haystacks were set on fire. Attempts were made to blow up reservoirs. A bomb exploded in Westminster Abbey, and in the fashionable church of St George's, Hanover Square, where a famous stained-glass window from the Malines was damaged ... One hundred and forty-one acts of destruction were chronicled in the Press during the first seven months of 1914."

Although Sylvia Pankhurst still remained a member of the WSPU her disagreement with her mother and sister over it’s tactics and aims, led to them expelling her from the organization in 1914.

The government and the press tried their best to cover-up the extent of Suffragette violence. For instance; when Mary Richardson destroyed Velázquez' Rokeby Venus in London’s National Galley with a meat cleaver, the National Gallery tried to suppress all knowledge. They managed to repair the painting and tried to conceal the fact it was badly damaged, even to this day in the 21st century they still will not acknowledge that this happened. Mary Richardson was a very active militant and was arrested nine times in two years, and went on hunger-strike and was forced fed. She smashed windows at the Home Office and Holloway Prison, bombed a railway station and set fire to a country house. She was also with Emily Wilding Davidson when she was killed, and was badly beaten-up by the angry crowd afterwards. Men also helped and supported the Suffragettes and took part in many of their demonstrations, but again this fact has been ignored by official history.

Then the First World War started in August 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst was in prison at the time and on hunger-strike. The British government struck a deal with her, to release all Suffragettes and drop all charges, if she would call off the terror campaign. She agreed, and Christabel came back from France and both women decided it was important to help Britain in the war effort. As explained by Christabel-

“War was the only course for our country to take. This was national militancy. As Suffragettes we could not be pacifists at any price. Mother and I declared support of our country. We offered our service to the country and called upon all members to do likewise. As Mother said, ‘What would be the good of a vote without a country to vote in!’. She called for wartime military conscription for men, believing that this was democratic and equitable, and that it would enable a more ordered and effective use of the nation’s man power.”

So while Emmeline and Christabel in Britain were calling for conscription, in Britain Adela in Australia was campaigning against this. Like Sylvia she was a pacifist and she was threatened with jail for repeatedly defying a ban on public gathering and finally sentenced to prison after leading a demonstration in Melbourne against the high price of food. The government offered to release her if she promised to not speak again in public, she refused and served her full prison sentence. She then married a fellow activist to prevent herself from being deported.

Christabel Pankhurst put her war efforts into touring USA and tried to convince the American public to enter the war with the Allies. Then when the Russian Tsar was overthrown in the first Russian Revolution Emmeline Pankhurst journey to Russia to dissuade them from dropping out of the war, and stand up against the Bolsheviks whom were campaigning to make peace with Germany. (Which they done after the second Russian Revolution). The energy and effort the two women put into helping the war effort didn’t go unnoticed. As Sylvia was to write-

“Christabel received the commendation of many war enthusiasts. Lord Northcliffe observed that she ought to be in the Cabinet. Lord Astor told me, when I happened to be seated beside him at dinner, that he had received two letters from her; he had sent one of them to the War Office, the other to the Minister of Blockade. Undoubtedly he was much impressed by their contents.”

They even become friends and allies of Lloyd George, (who became Prime Minister in the second half of the war). Whom Christabel once regarded as the most bitter and dangerous enemy of Women before the war. Sylvia continued working for the rights of working class Women and being a pacified, as always, disagreed with her mother and sister. Conscription was also the policy of the Conservative party and Emmeline found herself campaigning for conscription alongside conservative politicians whom she became friendly with, and eventually joined the conservative party.

With most of Britain’s young men fighting in the trenches, there was a shortage of people in the factories to produce the weapons and ammunition they needed. Women were recruited and showed they were more than capable of doing ‘men’s jobs’. In 1917 Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women's Party. The party advocated equal pay for Women with men, equal marriage and divorce laws, the same rights of guardianship of children as their husbands, and equality in education, health services, opportunity in the professions, and in the public services. Though they also advocated policies such as the abolition of the trade unions, showing how far they had come from their left-wing roots. This party was too far ahead of it’s times and some of it’s policies were only started to realised from the 1960s and even today in the 21st century Women are still paid less than men overall.

After the war, the government used the work Women done in factories and the farms as an excuse to give Women the Vote. Though some MPs admitted the truth like Lord Crewe, who; "warned the House that if the vote was refused to women the old violent atmosphere of the question would return." Yet the government still patronised Women, by first only allowing Women over 30 to have the vote. Christabel took this opportunity to stand for Parliament in both the 1918 and 1919 elections for the Women’s Party but was defeated both times. Then unfortunately the Women’s Party died, it required the next generation of Women to continued to campaign for Women’s right as strongly as the Pankhurst’s, but this didn’t happen until the 1960s.

With the incredible amount of violence caused by the Suffragettes it was a surprise that only one person got killed. This is due to the restraint and responsible behaviour of the Women. When throwing rocks and bricks through windows, some Suffragettes would tie a string to them, so the missile wouldn’t go further than the window, and injure anyone inside the building. The Women were also given lessons on how to break windows safely without hurting themselves and others. Even though the Suffragettes used bombs and set fire to buildings. They ensured that either no-one was in the building at the time, or if there were, they themselves raised the alarm.

So although the Suffragettes ended up becoming a terrorist group, the care and attention the Women took, ensured there was no causalities to other people. This is in total contrast to male dominated terrorist groups. If we look at the I.R.A. and the Protestant, Basque and Islamic terrorist groups we find a total disregard for human life. Emmeline Pankhurst made it clear that their attacks was aimed at property and the Suffragette Women had the self-discipline and concern for human life to ensure none of their bombs or arson attacks, didn’t kill or badly injured anyone.

After the First World War, Emmeline spent several years in the USA and Canada lecturing for the National Council for Combating Venereal Disease. When Emmeline returned to Britain in 1925 she joined the Conservative Party and was adopted as one of their candidates in the East End of London. Sylvia Pankhurst, who still held her strong socialist views, was appalled by this decision.

The reason for Emmeline Pankhurst’s defection could be that the Liberal government that strongly opposed the Suffragettes, were the main Left-wing party of the time. Christabel clearly didn’t trust the motives of left-wing politicians and this also become the view of her mother. Emmeline still campaigned against the government, after the war, to lower voting for Women from 30 to 21 the same as for men. In 1928 the government finally gave in, and done this, and Emmeline died the same day, her life’s ambition finally achieved.

In 1921 Christabel went to live in the United States where she became a prominent member of Second Adventist movement. She lectured and wrote books on the Second Coming. Then returned to Britain in the 1930s but left for the USA at the start of the Second World War. She died in the USA in 1958.

Sylvia Pankhurst on the other hand, was a activist for the Labour Party, and defied the conventions of the time, by becoming a unmarried mother. Something greatly disapproved of, by her mother and Christabel. Sylvia Pankhurst was a prolific writer, she owned and edited a weekly paper called, “The Women’s Dreadnought” where she made it clear, where her views and opinions were different from the WSPU. She renamed it, “The Worker’s Dreadnought” after women got the vote. She founded and edited four newspapers, wrote and published 22 books and pamphlets and countless articles, she was a founder and tireless activist in a variety of women’s, labour movement and international solidarity organisations. She was a deeply committed anti-racist and anti-fascist.

She then became involved in the fight for Ethiopia’s independence when Italy under Mussolini, conquered it in 1935. She created a new weekly paper called, “New Times and Ethiopian News” and sold it in West Africa and the West Indies. She continued this campaign when Britain took control of Ethiopia during the Second World War. Her campaign was so much appreciated by the Ethiopians that in 1960 at the age of 74, she was invited to live in their country, which she accepted. She died four years later and was given a state funeral in Ethiopia. Sylvia Pankhurst has remained a controversial figure in the British Feminist movement. The irony is, that her Mother and Sister ended up becoming part of the British establishment, in spite organizing a terrorist campaign against the state. A statue of Emmeline Pankhurst was erected outside of Parliament and later a plaque to Christabel Pankhurst. Yet there is no mention of Sylvia Pankurst contribution, in spite of her being a more reasonable individual. Some British Feminists have written books and article praising Sylvia Pankhurst and attacking, what they see as the betrayal of working class Women, by her Mother and Christabel.

In Australia Adela Pankhurst became involved supporting Unions and was a founding member of the Australian Communist party, but soon became disillusioned with it and spent the rest of her life a anti-Communist. In 1928 Adela founded the Australian Women's Guild of Empire which raised money to relieve suffering among working class women. She toured industrial areas, speaking at factories and workplaces on the need for industrial co-operation. In her view, the correct response to the Depression was to increase efficiency and raise productivity. Her administrative skill, eloquence and anti-communism attracted large numbers of middle-class supporters. The guild provided a motor car to enable her to extend her message to a wider audience. Braving picket lines to speak against strikes, she often met a hostile reception. Support for the Australian Women’s Guild dropped away, but Adela became worried by Australia’s increasing trade reliance on USA, and thought that Australia should trade more with their Asian neighbours like Japan. She even travelled to Japan and became a guest of the Japanese Government. The result was, that she was interned by the Australian government during the war, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. After the war she dropped out of public life and died in 1961.

In between organizing the WSPU with her daughter Chrisabel and being so many times in prison, Emmeline Pankhurst still found time to sail across the Atlantic to give support to the Feminists in the United States. She said as a way of introducing herself to America Women: “I dare say, in the minds of many of you–you will perhaps forgive me this personal touch–that I do not look either very like a soldier or very like a convict, and yet I am both.”

Women’s suffrage started well in USA, when the state of Wyoming enfranchised Women in 1869. This was followed over 25 years later by Colorado in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896, then over ten years later by Washington in 1910. Like in Britain, the Feminist movement in USA was reasonable in their demands and even though they were achieving results, the pace of change wasn’t fast enough for many Women.

While studying at the School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London, the American Alice Paul, joined the WSPU and her activities resulted in her being arrested and imprisoned three times. Like other suffragettes she went on hunger strike and was forced-fed. Alice Paul returned home to the United States and in 1913 she joined with Lucy Burns and Olympia Brown to form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS) and attempted to introduce to American Women the militant methods of the Pankhursts. This included organizing huge demonstrations and the daily picketing of the White House. Over the next couple of years the police arrested nearly 500 women for loitering and 168 were jailed for "obstructing traffic". Alice Paul was sentenced to seven months imprisonment, but after going on hunger strike, she was released.

This clearly worried the US government who didn’t want an extreme Suffragette terrorist group operating in their country. In January, 1918, Woodrow Wilson announced that Women's suffrage was urgently needed as a "war measure". The House of Representatives passed the federal woman suffrage amendment 274 to 136 but it was opposed in the Senate and was defeated in September 1918. Another attempt in February 1919 also ended in failure. This seem to be following the British experience of Women’s suffrage proposed laws being continually defeated, but in the next year there came a breakthrough. In May 1919 the House of Representatives again passed the amendment (304 to 89) and on 4th June 1919 the Senate finally gave in and passed it by 66 to 30. Canada and most European countries followed suit between the two, world wars. It could be that, looking at the experience of Britain, these countries didn’t want a home grown suffragette terror group starting in their countries.

Emmeline Pankhurst believed strongly that Women’s behaviour was morally superior to men’s. Claiming, that the whole point of getting the vote, was to enable Women to use this superiority to curb male sexual excess, civilise public life and elevate the whole of the human race onto a higher sphere of existence.

The Women’s vote has failed to curb male sexual excess in Britain, but it had some clear influences in the way government’s behave. After the Second World War, it was assumed by everyone that Prime Minster Churchill would win the next election. He was after all, a very successful war Prime Minster and to capitalise on this, he encouraged war heroes to be candidates for the Conservative party. So he was very shocked and surprised when the opposing Labour party won by a land-slide. The reason for this, was that the Labour party had a radical programme of social reform, with the ‘welfare state’ and free medical treatment. Something that greatly appealed to female voters.

This influence of Women voters is hard to assess, but it is clear, throughout Europe, political parties have had to create policies, to care for the poor, disabled and sick to win votes from Women. Creating more caring societies in the Western world.

The story of Inanna's descent into the underworld, is an ancient Sumerian legend that seems to predict the rise of the patriarchal age and its later downfall.

In this story, she is the Queen of Heaven, who wishes to visit her sister Ereshkigal the Goddess of the underworld or netherworld. It is a long story and there are many different versions of it that seem to have changed over time, probably to fit in with the changing social attitudes. So in this retelling I will only use what is consistent in all these stories.

Inanna arrives at the gates to the Underworld displaying all the symbols of Her rank and position: A Golden crown, lapis necklace, a double strand of deep blue beads, a jewelled belt around her waist, gold wrists/arm bands, she was holding a lapis measuring rod and wearing a royal robe. To begin the descent to the underworld Goddess one must pass through seven gates, surrendering one article at each gate. In some versions Inanna questions the removal of each article and is told, "Be satisfied Inanna! The ME of the netherworld is being fulfilled. Inanna you must not open your mouth against the sacred customs of the netherworld".

The ME probably relates to what is called today, the ego. As Inanna is the Queen of Heaven she would of course have a very large ego, so in one sense the removing of each article is the surrendering of her ego.

At the first gate, Inanna is stripped of her crown. The patriarchal Hittites invaded Sumer and ruled. So the Queens and High-Priestesses who ruled before were stripped of their positions. Inanna was renamed Inaras and became the virgin bride of the sacred king. So under the rule of the Hittites she was no longer the supreme ruler and was the consort of a King. So the taking away of Inanna's crown symbolised overthrowing of the matriarchal rulers.

At the second gate, the lapis necklace is taken from Inanna. The necklace goes around the neck and within the neck is the voice box. This symbolises the ability of Inanna to express herself, although the Hittite patriarchal rulers, had political power the people they ruled were still matriarchal in their attitude and ways of living. In more recent times when a despotic dictator takes power in a country the first thing he does is to curb free-speech. So likewise the women who previously held power in the matriarchal societies, were probably silenced under the threat of death from criticising the new patriarchal rulers.

At the third gate, Inanna is stripped of her double strands of blue beads that hung between her breasts. The breast for a woman represents her ability to nourish others, with her milk, so it symbolises a women's ability to love others. When the patriarchal rulers first took control, the women at first must have felt very angry about losing their status and power. Then slowly they must of had "a change of heart", and they began to co-operate and even love these patriarchal men from the North.

As Inanna passed the fourth gate, she is stripped of her jewelled belt around her waist. As it is a jewelled belt it would represent wealth. In matriarchal societies all possessions came down the female line, so in this way all the wealth of society would be in the hand of women, giving them great power. The patriarchs wanted all inheritance to come down the male line but as in matriarchal societies a woman was free to have sex with any man she chooses, there was no way for a man to know who his children were. To overcome this the male rulers and priests introduced the concept of marriage where a woman had to be faithful to one man. So a husband would know that the children his wife produces were his, and allowing inheritance to come down the male line, and putting the wealth of the society into the hands of men.

At the fifth gate Inanna's gold wrist/arm band is removed. The hands and arms symbolise our ability to act and make things happen. So for a long time women were still farmers, builders, traders and even warriors, and were still capable of creating wealth and power for themselves. Slowly these jobs were taken away from women and put into the hands of men. Women also did learn how to hit back at patriarchy by becoming Amazons, but in the end even these women were defeated and the only role left for women in society was that of wife or prostitute.

At the sixth gate, the lapis measuring rod is removed from Inanna's hand. A person using a measuring rod has to be educated to know how to use it. In patriarchal times, women were discouraged from being educated because education can give a person power and status in a society. All knowledge and wisdom was removed from women, so they would have to depend on men for this.

At the seventh and last gate, Inanna is stripped of her royal robe and is left completely naked. Even though power and status was taken away from women, traditional customs and beliefs probably still gave women respect and status in society. Even as late as the Middles-ages women still had respect in society as healers and seers. To counter this, patriarchal religions began to put out propaganda that women had no souls, that they were evil and the cause of all men's suffering. When this didn't work they went further and started to condemn women healers and seers as Witches who were in league with the Devil. They then started the infamous Witchhunt where millions of women were burnt alive. In this way they undermined the respect men had for women, and the respect women had for themselves as they began to believe what the patriarchal priests told them. So now women had nothing left, all respect, power, status and wealth had been taken away she was left naked and defenceless.

After descending the seven gates, Inanna is judged and found to be ignorant, a mortal and not a supreme being, and with a mind full of her own self.

In the patriarchal age women were considered to be stupid, and, not having access to any form of education, were also ignorant. All Goddesses and priestesses were replaced by a supreme male God and priests. Also a woman was expected to devote her whole life to looking after her children and husband, and were condemned for being selfish if they in any way thought about their own needs. Even today this is still true as women fear being thought selfish.

Inanna is then condemned to die hung from a meat hook. While on the surface, without the presence of Inanna the Earth is turned into a wasteland.

Now there are many different versions of the Inanna story and many different interpretations of it, like the Damazi/Inanna story or the Tammuz/Ishter story. In later versions, it is a God who rules the Underworld, and still later it is the Goddess who comes to collect her daughter who was abducted by the Underworld God, as in the story of Demeter and Persephone. In these later versions the story is seen as the reason why in Northern climates everything dies in winter and comes back to life in summer. Because in this story Persephone is married to Hades the God of the Underworld and has to return to him once every year during the winter time.

In the original Inanna story, she simply dies and is reborn. The period of the wasteland is repeated in many ancient myths including the stories of King Arthur, it is more than likely the wasteland is about the patriarchal society.

The matriarchal religions respected all life and nature and were referred to as "nature cults" by the later patriarchal scholars because they worshipped trees and animals. When the patriarchal religions took control the patriarchs no longer respected life and nature. Trees were cut down, causing soil erosion in places like Ancient Greece and throughout the Middle east where fertile land was turned into desert. Archaeologists have found that in Biblical times Israel was a fertile country with extensive forests, but now many of the trees that grew there are extinct in that part of the world. Patriarchy never quite understood that by destroying nature man was causing his own downfall. The hard lessons learnt about soil erosion in Europe was lost when Europeans went to America and Australia, and millions of acres of land were depleted before this lesson was learnt again. On Easter Island the natives cut down all the trees on the island. Destroying for themselves an important food source as with coconut trees, and their ability to build wooden houses and boats for fishing. Even today men still overfish and pollute the oceans and use intensive farming methods that deplete the soil and destroy wildlife.

With the help of Enki, a water and wisdom God and a son of the Goddess, Inanna gains her release from the Great below and is allowed to ascend through the seven gates. In other versions it is Inanna's lover Tammuz who helps her, and he voluntarily, takes her place in the netherworld.

To have a God that brings about Inanna's release is very interesting. Patriarchy has been undermined in the last four hundred years by men themselves. Patriarchal religions not only suppressed women but also men. The peasants, like women were kept ignorant and denied education, to make it easier for the rulers to control them. At the same time patriarchal religions, suppressed science, and prevented the increase of knowledge as much as possible.

When the Protestant sects broke away from the main Roman Catholic religion in Europe, they couldn't see any good reason why science should continue to be suppressed. Though they were to find out hundreds of years later when science took over from religion as the major font of wisdom in patriarchal society. As scientific thought took control the men of science couldn't see why the common people should be denied education, and ideas that all men should be equal began to flower. As the common people became better educated they began to demand more rights, women too began to be better educated and complain about the shackles that patriarchal religion and customs imposed on them. With many men now in power who were no longer influenced by patriarchal religions, the demands by Feminists were seen to be reasonable and over time these demands were granted to them. So like science, Enki the wisdom God released Inanna from her bondage to patriarchal religion. While to have her lover Tammuz take her place symbolises the fact that many men will voluntary submit themselves to women when the matriarchal age comes into being.

At the seventh gate, Inanna is given back her royal robe. Although for a time science continued the patriarchal religion's denigration of women as in the last century claiming that women had smaller brains than men or were too emotional to make sensible decisions. Yet science didn't go as far as patriarchal religions and claim women were evil and had no soul because to scientific men it was clear women were not in any way evil. So women gained more and more respect in society and the royal robe is a symbol of this respect.

At the sixth gate, Inanna is given back her measuring rod. The men of science couldn't see any good reason why women should not be denied education and even in the nineteenth century women began to take on professional jobs like doctors, journalists and scientists. Jobs up until then only men were allowed to do, so the measuring rod was a symbol of women's growing educational qualifications in society.

At the fifth gate, Inanna is given back her golden wrist/arm band. At the beginning of this century higher education was given only to a small majority of women, but other women began to follow their lead. During the first and second world wars, women began to work in factories and on farms doing jobs men normally done and showing they were more than capable of doing them. Although Feminists have complained that after both these wars the returning male troops took over these jobs once again and women went back to being housewives again. But it showed what is possible for women and since then more women have depended upon themselves to earn a living and not on men. To the degree there are men today who stay a home to look after the house and children while the women go to work. So the wrist/arm band symbolises women's ability now to take charge of her own life to earn her own money and not to have to rely on a man.

At the Fourth gate, her jewelled belt is returned. Women are not only now able to earn their own living but some are becoming wealthy. At one time the only way a woman could become rich was to inherit money, to be a widow of a rich man or become a successful actress or courtesan. Now successful business women are becoming millionaires, while other women are taking the top-jobs in many professions. Feminists complain about the "glass-ceiling" that prevent women from getting the top-jobs in society, but slowly the glass-ceiling is collapsing. So the Jewelled belt symbolises the wealth women are gaining in society. Already in USA there are more female millionaires than male millionaires.

At the Third gate, the double strands of deep blue beads are returned to Inanna. In the patriarchal age it wasn't only patriarchal religion that kept women in bondage, it was also the fact that she loved patriarchal men more than she loved herself. Now as we are moving towards a new matriarchal age women are learning more and more how to love themselves. So the beads that hung between her breasts and over her heart, symbolise women changing the way they love. From not only loving others to learning to love themselves, as well. This is seen clearly in the breakdown of marriage in recent times. Women are now demanding more from men and if they do not get what they demand then they would rather break up the relationship.

At the Second gate, Inanna's lapis necklace is returned to her. Although women have in recent years demanded equality with men, a few women now are going further than this and saying that they want dominance over men. This is very unpopular with Feminists, who regard ideas like this as not being "politically correct". But women are changing, the younger generation of women today want far more from society then their mothers did and expected. Soon women in the future will forget about ideas of fairness or "political correctness". So the necklace around her neck will symbolise women speaking out and demanding not just equality but dominance over society and man.

At the first gate Inanna receives back her crown. This is the symbol that women have now taken back control of society. The Earth now begins to flower again, as women once again respect life on earth in all its forms. Already now we see in the Green party, Greenpeace and other environment organisations the concern about what damage patriarchy is doing to our world. As women become more in control this concern will grow until genuine practical steps will be taken to correct these problems. In the Inanna story it was claimed that the Earth was turned into a waste land while Inanna was stayed underground with her sister Ereshkigal. So women's first job when that take back control will be to heal the earth of the damage that was done during the patriarchal age.

Some scholars have made the controversial claim that the story of Inanna's decent into the underworld is the prototype story for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This causes a problem as many Christians believe the stories in the Bible to be historical facts. The problem with that belief is that scholars are very aware that all the Bible stories over hundreds of years have been changed, embellished and censored. These stories might have originally come from real events, but were soon changed and merged with other stories and myths, so it is hard to know how much of the original event is left in the story.

All religions from an early time have been contaminated by politics, and it is unfortunate that it is the politically minded priests who have gained most power and have ruled religions. While priests with genuine beliefs in their religion have always played the subordinate role. So it would be the politically motivated priests who would order changes in the texts and doctrine of a religion for political reasons, but it would probably be the more genuine believers who carried out this task. It is known that the patriarchal religions carried out a wholesale destruction of ancient knowledge for political reasons. But the priests given the task of censoring this knowledge from religious text probably didn't agree with the task they were given. The result of this has been in recent years that many people have realised that there are hidden messages within many religious writings. Probably in the ancient past priests and priestesses were very aware of the patriarchal/matriarchal cycle, but they would also be aware that in the patriarchal cycle life was hell. Which wouldn't be a great encouragement for the common people to go through with it, so all knowledge of this cycle had to be censored to make patriarchy possible. But the priests given the task of rewriting scriptures, tried to pass on the truth of the situation in coded form, to inform people in the future what was happening when matriarchy returned.

In many ancient myths there are stories of matriarchal times where the Queen or High-Priestess would marry a young man who would jointly rule with her for one year as King. Then when this year was up he would be sacrificed and the Queen or High-Priestess would marry another young man and the cycle would continue. Whether these stories are about real events and customs, or is a "mystery" story that is about the cycle of matriarchal and patriarchal ages, is a matter of opinion. But again these stories are used again by some scholars to claim or hint that from these stories the crucifixion of Jesus originates.

So if the story of Inanna is about the downfall of women at the beginning of the matriarchal age and her rise at the end of the patriarchal age. Could then the story of Jesus's crucifixion be the story of man's downfall at the end of the patriarchal age?

The story starts off in triumph, with Jesus mounted on a colt or ass riding through the streets of Jerusalem, where crowds welcome him and proclaim him King. So we can take this to mean he is a fully patriarchal man at the height of his power and ego growth.

Yet his triumph doesn't last long, he prophesies that Jerusalem will be completely destroyed, perhaps symbolising the collapse of patriarchy. Then he goes to the Temple and condemns the priests there for turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves. Which would be a good description of patriarchal religion which became extremely wealthy and powerful during the patriarchal age.

Jesus then begins to give more prophesies to quote,- "Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines, and plagues every-where; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky."

Which sounds like a very good description of the patriarchal age, the mention of "strange and terrifying things coming from the sky" sounds interesting it could be about bomber aircraft that destroyed whole cities in the second world war, and the nuclear attack on Japan.

Then Jesus and his disciples sat down for the Passover meal, during this meal Jesus washed the feet of all his disciples, a job normally done by servants, slaves or women. He also made the point that he was the one who serves the disciples. Why he did and said this is not made very clear, but again it could be a practical prophesy of man's downfall, demonstrating that all men will become slaves. Jesus then goes through a ritual, with the bread and wine saying that, this is his body and blood, which again symbolises a form of sacrifice. Echoing the ancient stories of the King that is sacrificed at the end of each year to the Goddess. In some of these tales the King is not only sacrificed but eaten in a cannibal feast. This was the fate of Dionysus who was torn apart by women and then eaten before he came back to life again. So this would be symbolised by breaking and eating of the bread which Jesus calls "my body". The drinking of wine which symbolises the blood of Jesus Christ is more interesting. In ancient Goddess religions menstrual blood was held to be sacred. While in many later patriarchal religion menstrual blood was held to be taboo and unclean. So the blood coming from Jesus would suggest that Jesus was a woman and there are some authors who have claimed this. Though more likely it means that Jesus was going through a ancient Goddess ritual. To symbolise a cup with wine in it and call it blood is a clear Goddess symbol with the cup being the vagina and the wine being menstrual blood. Later on this symbol was turn into the Holy Grail.

Judas decides to betray Jesus to his enemies, and in this meal Jesus seems to be fully aware of this betrayal, and seems to encourage Judas do it. As pointed out previously the beginning of the downfall of patriarchy was started by men themselves. As they turned their backs on patriarchal religions, allowing greater freedom and education not only to the common people but to women as well. So we seem to see Judas and Jesus colluding together to bring about their own downfall. This is underlined by Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, symbolising a companionship between them.

One of the main reasons science became so popular with the rulers of countries is that it could generate wealth through technology. Judas also betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, this could also represent that Judas is science and technology. So because of this wealth technology generated the rulers were prepared to betray patriarchal religion. Judas then goes on to hang himself, so like Jesus he sacrifices himself. So both Jesus and Judas symbolises men who not only betray patriarchy by quietly helping women to gain power and status in society, but who also willingly sacrifice themselves to women.

When taken capture Jesus makes no resistance, and when condemned and judged by his enemies he makes no attempt to defend himself. In recent years Feminists have attacked both patriarchy and men in general. Although some men have resented this on the whole men have made little attempt to in any way defend themselves and have preferred to remain quiet.

Jesus' enemies took him before Pilate and condemned him, but Pilate wasn't interested. They continued to insist on having him executed and Pilate decided to pass the buck and sent Jesus to King Herod to be tried. It seems that Herod was also sympathetic to Jesus but again Jesus made no attempt to help himself and refused to answer Herod's questions. In the end Herod mocked Jesus and treated him with contempt, put a fine robe on him and sent him back to Pilate.

Now in many ways this reflects the attitude of men today. Religious fundamentalists and extreme right-wing politicians have tried to put the clock back to the "good old days", of extreme patriarchy. Their anger is not only directed at women but other men who seem to be letting the side down. As patriarchal religions and very right-wing politics no longer hold the power in the land they have to appeal to those who do have the power, symbolised by Pilate and Herod. As a result politicians today will get up and talk about going back to "strong family values". But being politicians they only say this because they think it might gain them votes or get people who are pressurising them off their backs. Knowing full well that there is nothing they can really do to reverse the continuous decline in patriarchy.

So Jesus seems to be representing the passive man of today who is allowing women to gain more and more power and status within society. The media of today like Herod mock and treat the "new man" with contempt, but even here there is a division of opinion. Feminism is now very strong within the media as well so the "new-man" also does get some support, probably symbolised by the fine robe Herod gives Jesus.

When Jesus is sent back to Pilate, Pilate still insists that Jesus has done nothing wrong, but bowing to pressure decides to have Jesus whipped to satisfy an angry crowd that Jesus' enemies brought together to condemn him. There are men today who voluntarily pay for themselves to be whipped by Dominatrices. As Jesus made no attempt to help himself to escape from this situation and even encouraged Judas to betray him, it could also be a symbol of the increase of male masochism today.

The whipping fails to satisfy the blood lust of the crowd and Pilate tries to get Jesus free on a Passover pardon for criminals. But the crowd demand that a prisoner who had been put into jail for riot and murder be set free instead. This very much symbolises the attitude of the right-wing, who have far greater regard for patriarchal criminals than the "new man". We can see this on TV and films where there is an increase of violent films, where young men are encouraged to be macho by being violent. As violent men and even serial killers are glamorised and made into heroes. Probably the producers of these violent films hope that it will make young men more macho, who will in turn put women "in their place".

Pilate in the end caves into pressure to have Jesus crucified, and "washes his hands of him". Like Inanna, Jesus is stripped of all his clothing, then the Roman soldiers mock him by putting a crown of thorns on his head. Already men in this century have began to condemn themselves, talking about "man's inhumanity to man". In the past men would put the blame of the problems for the world onto other men. Like Hitler who blamed the Jews, or the rich who blame the poor or the poor who blame the rich etc. But blaming just one group is now becoming more and more unacceptable and it is being realised that all men are the cause of the world's problems. So the crown of thorns is the realisation by men that when they ruled the world they caused great suffering not only to themselves but to all of life. The crown represents the power men had to rule the world and the thorns are the suffering it caused, to whole of humankind as well as the planet.

The cross is put on Jesus' back for him to carry it to the place where he will be crucified. There is no problem with interpretation here because Christians themselves see the image of "carrying your cross" to mean carrying all the sins of the world on your back. Unfortunately Jesus proved to be too weak to carry the cross, and the soldiers forced another stronger man called Simon to carry it for him. The "new man" today is considered by society to be "weak and wimpish" while a normal patriarchal man is seen to be "strong and tough". So to have a strong and therefore patriarchal man carry the cross as well is an interesting development. There are many men today who act like a fully patriarchal macho man but inside they are not like this, so in most cases it is an act because it is how men are expected to behave. This means that seemingly macho men will also begin to carry the cross of shame for the patriarchal past.

Jesus was then crucified between two criminals, who in our society are also considered to be very "macho" so therefore also patriarchal. It means all types of men will be crucified when the matriarchal age comes into being.

One of the criminals mocks Jesus but the other criminal is more sympathetic and Jesus says to him "I promise you that today you will be in Paradise with me". The patriarchal age was not only hell for women but for men themselves, because the aggressive behaviour created wars, conflict, inequality and persecution for men as well as for women. So to live in a society where this aggressive behaviour becomes controlled by women would, compared with the patriarchal society become a paradise. The Paradise Jesus talked about to the criminal, is the matriarchal society that will come into being when men completely sacrifice themselves to women.

The crucifixion is witnessed by the three Marys which would be the ancient Triple Goddess of Crone, Mother and Maid. Jesus's birth was also witnessed by three wise men from the east. Some Scholars claim that Isis is the original Virgin Mary, as the word Mary comes from the ancient Egyptian word meri meaning "beloved" and is the name of the Goddess Meri-f-us a guardian of Osiris and probably another name for Isis. When Jesus died he shouted out in a loud voice "Father! in to your hands I place my spirit". If we are to change the word father to mother what he said is the final complete surrender of men into the hands of women.

Like Inanna, Jesus dies and later "rises from the dead", which is also witnessed by three women, (the Triple Goddess) so in this way a new patriarchal age begins, and like the story of Inanna it is about the continuous cycle of patriarchal and matriarchal ages.

This article was also published at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DivineGoddess

The story of Inanna's descent into the underworld, is an ancient Sumerian legend that seems to predict the rise of the patriarchal age and its later downfall.

In this story, she is the Queen of Heaven, who wishes to visit her sister Ereshkigal the Goddess of the underworld or netherworld. It is a long story and there are many different versions of it that seem to have changed over time, probably to fit in with the changing social attitudes. So in this retelling I will only use what is consistent in all these stories.

Inanna arrives at the gates to the Underworld displaying all the symbols of Her rank and position: A Golden crown, lapis necklace, a double strand of deep blue beads, a jewelled belt around her waist, gold wrists/arm bands, she was holding a lapis measuring rod and wearing a royal robe. To begin the descent to the underworld Goddess one must pass through seven gates, surrendering one article at each gate. In some versions Inanna questions the removal of each article and is told, "Be satisfied Inanna! The ME of the netherworld is being fulfilled. Inanna you must not open your mouth against the sacred customs of the netherworld".

The ME probably relates to what is called today, the ego. As Inanna is the Queen of Heaven she would of course have a very large ego, so in one sense the removing of each article is the surrendering of her ego.

At the first gate, Inanna is stripped of her crown. The patriarchal Hittites invaded Sumer and ruled. So the Queens and High-Priestesses who ruled before were stripped of their positions. Inanna was renamed Inaras and became the virgin bride of the sacred king. So under the rule of the Hittites she was no longer the supreme ruler and was the consort of a King. So the taking away of Inanna's crown symbolised overthrowing of the matriarchal rulers.

At the second gate, the lapis necklace is taken from Inanna. The necklace goes around the neck and within the neck is the voice box. This symbolises the ability of Inanna to express herself, although the Hittite patriarchal rulers, had political power the people they ruled were still matriarchal in their attitude and ways of living. In more recent times when a despotic dictator takes power in a country the first thing he does is to curb free-speech. So likewise the women who previously held power in the matriarchal societies, were probably silenced under the threat of death from criticising the new patriarchal rulers.

At the third gate, Inanna is stripped of her double strands of blue beads that hung between her breasts. The breast for a woman represents her ability to nourish others, with her milk, so it symbolises a women's ability to love others. When the patriarchal rulers first took control, the women at first must have felt very angry about losing their status and power. Then slowly they must of had "a change of heart", and they began to co-operate and even love these patriarchal men from the North.

As Inanna passed the fourth gate, she is stripped of her jewelled belt around her waist. As it is a jewelled belt it would represent wealth. In matriarchal societies all possessions came down the female line, so in this way all the wealth of society would be in the hand of women, giving them great power. The patriarchs wanted all inheritance to come down the male line but as in matriarchal societies a woman was free to have sex with any man she chooses, there was no way for a man to know who his children were. To overcome this the male rulers and priests introduced the concept of marriage where a woman had to be faithful to one man. So a husband would know that the children his wife produces were his, and allowing inheritance to come down the male line, and putting the wealth of the society into the hands of men.

At the fifth gate Inanna's gold wrist/arm band is removed. The hands and arms symbolise our ability to act and make things happen. So for a long time women were still farmers, builders, traders and even warriors, and were still capable of creating wealth and power for themselves. Slowly these jobs were taken away from women and put into the hands of men. Women also did learn how to hit back at patriarchy by becoming Amazons, but in the end even these women were defeated and the only role left for women in society was that of wife or prostitute.

At the sixth gate, the lapis measuring rod is removed from Inanna's hand. A person using a measuring rod has to be educated to know how to use it. In patriarchal times, women were discouraged from being educated because education can give a person power and status in a society. All knowledge and wisdom was removed from women, so they would have to depend on men for this.

At the seventh and last gate, Inanna is stripped of her royal robe and is left completely naked. Even though power and status was taken away from women, traditional customs and beliefs probably still gave women respect and status in society. Even as late as the Middles-ages women still had respect in society as healers and seers. To counter this, patriarchal religions began to put out propaganda that women had no souls, that they were evil and the cause of all men's suffering. When this didn't work they went further and started to condemn women healers and seers as Witches who were in league with the Devil. They then started the infamous Witchhunt where millions of women were burnt alive. In this way they undermined the respect men had for women, and the respect women had for themselves as they began to believe what the patriarchal priests told them. So now women had nothing left, all respect, power, status and wealth had been taken away she was left naked and defenceless.

After descending the seven gates, Inanna is judged and found to be ignorant, a mortal and not a supreme being, and with a mind full of her own self.

In the patriarchal age women were considered to be stupid, and, not having access to any form of education, were also ignorant. All Goddesses and priestesses were replaced by a supreme male God and priests. Also a woman was expected to devote her whole life to looking after her children and husband, and were condemned for being selfish if they in any way thought about their own needs. Even today this is still true as women fear being thought selfish.

Inanna is then condemned to die hung from a meat hook. While on the surface, without the presence of Inanna the Earth is turned into a wasteland.

Now there are many different versions of the Inanna story and many different interpretations of it, like the Damazi/Inanna story or the Tammuz/Ishter story. In later versions, it is a God who rules the Underworld, and still later it is the Goddess who comes to collect her daughter who was abducted by the Underworld God, as in the story of Demeter and Persephone. In these later versions the story is seen as the reason why in Northern climates everything dies in winter and comes back to life in summer. Because in this story Persephone is married to Hades the God of the Underworld and has to return to him once every year during the winter time.

In the original Inanna story, she simply dies and is reborn. The period of the wasteland is repeated in many ancient myths including the stories of King Arthur, it is more than likely the wasteland is about the patriarchal society.

The matriarchal religions respected all life and nature and were referred to as "nature cults" by the later patriarchal scholars because they worshipped trees and animals. When the patriarchal religions took control the patriarchs no longer respected life and nature. Trees were cut down, causing soil erosion in places like Ancient Greece and throughout the Middle east where fertile land was turned into desert. Archaeologists have found that in Biblical times Israel was a fertile country with extensive forests, but now many of the trees that grew there are extinct in that part of the world. Patriarchy never quite understood that by destroying nature man was causing his own downfall. The hard lessons learnt about soil erosion in Europe was lost when Europeans went to America and Australia, and millions of acres of land were depleted before this lesson was learnt again. On Easter Island the natives cut down all the trees on the island. Destroying for themselves an important food source as with coconut trees, and their ability to build wooden houses and boats for fishing. Even today men still overfish and pollute the oceans and use intensive farming methods that deplete the soil and destroy wildlife.

With the help of Enki, a water and wisdom God and a son of the Goddess, Inanna gains her release from the Great below and is allowed to ascend through the seven gates. In other versions it is Inanna's lover Tammuz who helps her, and he voluntarily, takes her place in the netherworld.

To have a God that brings about Inanna's release is very interesting. Patriarchy has been undermined in the last four hundred years by men themselves. Patriarchal religions not only suppressed women but also men. The peasants, like women were kept ignorant and denied education, to make it easier for the rulers to control them. At the same time patriarchal religions, suppressed science, and prevented the increase of knowledge as much as possible.

When the Protestant sects broke away from the main Roman Catholic religion in Europe, they couldn't see any good reason why science should continue to be suppressed. Though they were to find out hundreds of years later when science took over from religion as the major font of wisdom in patriarchal society. As scientific thought took control the men of science couldn't see why the common people should be denied education, and ideas that all men should be equal began to flower. As the common people became better educated they began to demand more rights, women too began to be better educated and complain about the shackles that patriarchal religion and customs imposed on them. With many men now in power who were no longer influenced by patriarchal religions, the demands by Feminists were seen to be reasonable and over time these demands were granted to them. So like science, Enki the wisdom God released Inanna from her bondage to patriarchal religion. While to have her lover Tammuz take her place symbolises the fact that many men will voluntary submit themselves to women when the matriarchal age comes into being.

At the seventh gate, Inanna is given back her royal robe. Although for a time science continued the patriarchal religion's denigration of women as in the last century claiming that women had smaller brains than men or were too emotional to make sensible decisions. Yet science didn't go as far as patriarchal religions and claim women were evil and had no soul because to scientific men it was clear women were not in any way evil. So women gained more and more respect in society and the royal robe is a symbol of this respect.

At the sixth gate, Inanna is given back her measuring rod. The men of science couldn't see any good reason why women should not be denied education and even in the nineteenth century women began to take on professional jobs like doctors, journalists and scientists. Jobs up until then only men were allowed to do, so the measuring rod was a symbol of women's growing educational qualifications in society.

At the fifth gate, Inanna is given back her golden wrist/arm band. At the beginning of this century higher education was given only to a small majority of women, but other women began to follow their lead. During the first and second world wars, women began to work in factories and on farms doing jobs men normally done and showing they were more than capable of doing them. Although Feminists have complained that after both these wars the returning male troops took over these jobs once again and women went back to being housewives again. But it showed what is possible for women and since then more women have depended upon themselves to earn a living and not on men. To the degree there are men today who stay a home to look after the house and children while the women go to work. So the wrist/arm band symbolises women's ability now to take charge of her own life to earn her own money and not to have to rely on a man.

At the Fourth gate, her jewelled belt is returned. Women are not only now able to earn their own living but some are becoming wealthy. At one time the only way a woman could become rich was to inherit money, to be a widow of a rich man or become a successful actress or courtesan. Now successful business women are becoming millionaires, while other women are taking the top-jobs in many professions. Feminists complain about the "glass-ceiling" that prevent women from getting the top-jobs in society, but slowly the glass-ceiling is collapsing. So the Jewelled belt symbolises the wealth women are gaining in society. Already in USA there are more female millionaires than male millionaires.

At the Third gate, the double strands of deep blue beads are returned to Inanna. In the patriarchal age it wasn't only patriarchal religion that kept women in bondage, it was also the fact that she loved patriarchal men more than she loved herself. Now as we are moving towards a new matriarchal age women are learning more and more how to love themselves. So the beads that hung between her breasts and over her heart, symbolise women changing the way they love. From not only loving others to learning to love themselves, as well. This is seen clearly in the breakdown of marriage in recent times. Women are now demanding more from men and if they do not get what they demand then they would rather break up the relationship.

At the Second gate, Inanna's lapis necklace is returned to her. Although women have in recent years demanded equality with men, a few women now are going further than this and saying that they want dominance over men. This is very unpopular with Feminists, who regard ideas like this as not being "politically correct". But women are changing, the younger generation of women today want far more from society then their mothers did and expected. Soon women in the future will forget about ideas of fairness or "political correctness". So the necklace around her neck will symbolise women speaking out and demanding not just equality but dominance over society and man.

At the first gate Inanna receives back her crown. This is the symbol that women have now taken back control of society. The Earth now begins to flower again, as women once again respect life on earth in all its forms. Already now we see in the Green party, Greenpeace and other environment organisations the concern about what damage patriarchy is doing to our world. As women become more in control this concern will grow until genuine practical steps will be taken to correct these problems. In the Inanna story it was claimed that the Earth was turned into a waste land while Inanna was stayed underground with her sister Ereshkigal. So women's first job when that take back control will be to heal the earth of the damage that was done during the patriarchal age.

Some scholars have made the controversial claim that the story of Inanna's decent into the underworld is the prototype story for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This causes a problem as many Christians believe the stories in the Bible to be historical facts. The problem with that belief is that scholars are very aware that all the Bible stories over hundreds of years have been changed, embellished and censored. These stories might have originally come from real events, but were soon changed and merged with other stories and myths, so it is hard to know how much of the original event is left in the story.

All religions from an early time have been contaminated by politics, and it is unfortunate that it is the politically minded priests who have gained most power and have ruled religions. While priests with genuine beliefs in their religion have always played the subordinate role. So it would be the politically motivated priests who would order changes in the texts and doctrine of a religion for political reasons, but it would probably be the more genuine believers who carried out this task. It is known that the patriarchal religions carried out a wholesale destruction of ancient knowledge for political reasons. But the priests given the task of censoring this knowledge from religious text probably didn't agree with the task they were given. The result of this has been in recent years that many people have realised that there are hidden messages within many religious writings. Probably in the ancient past priests and priestesses were very aware of the patriarchal/matriarchal cycle, but they would also be aware that in the patriarchal cycle life was hell. Which wouldn't be a great encouragement for the common people to go through with it, so all knowledge of this cycle had to be censored to make patriarchy possible. But the priests given the task of rewriting scriptures, tried to pass on the truth of the situation in coded form, to inform people in the future what was happening when matriarchy returned.

In many ancient myths there are stories of matriarchal times where the Queen or High-Priestess would marry a young man who would jointly rule with her for one year as King. Then when this year was up he would be sacrificed and the Queen or High-Priestess would marry another young man and the cycle would continue. Whether these stories are about real events and customs, or is a "mystery" story that is about the cycle of matriarchal and patriarchal ages, is a matter of opinion. But again these stories are used again by some scholars to claim or hint that from these stories the crucifixion of Jesus originates.

So if the story of Inanna is about the downfall of women at the beginning of the matriarchal age and her rise at the end of the patriarchal age. Could then the story of Jesus's crucifixion be the story of man's downfall at the end of the patriarchal age?

The story starts off in triumph, with Jesus mounted on a colt or ass riding through the streets of Jerusalem, where crowds welcome him and proclaim him King. So we can take this to mean he is a fully patriarchal man at the height of his power and ego growth.

Yet his triumph doesn't last long, he prophesies that Jerusalem will be completely destroyed, perhaps symbolising the collapse of patriarchy. Then he goes to the Temple and condemns the priests there for turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves. Which would be a good description of patriarchal religion which became extremely wealthy and powerful during the patriarchal age.

Jesus then begins to give more prophesies to quote,- "Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines, and plagues every-where; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky."

Which sounds like a very good description of the patriarchal age, the mention of "strange and terrifying things coming from the sky" sounds interesting it could be about bomber aircraft that destroyed whole cities in the second world war, and the nuclear attack on Japan.

Then Jesus and his disciples sat down for the Passover meal, during this meal Jesus washed the feet of all his disciples, a job normally done by servants, slaves or women. He also made the point that he was the one who serves the disciples. Why he did and said this is not made very clear, but again it could be a practical prophesy of man's downfall, demonstrating that all men will become slaves. Jesus then goes through a ritual, with the bread and wine saying that, this is his body and blood, which again symbolises a form of sacrifice. Echoing the ancient stories of the King that is sacrificed at the end of each year to the Goddess. In some of these tales the King is not only sacrificed but eaten in a cannibal feast. This was the fate of Dionysus who was torn apart by women and then eaten before he came back to life again. So this would be symbolised by breaking and eating of the bread which Jesus calls "my body". The drinking of wine which symbolises the blood of Jesus Christ is more interesting. In ancient Goddess religions menstrual blood was held to be sacred. While in many later patriarchal religion menstrual blood was held to be taboo and unclean. So the blood coming from Jesus would suggest that Jesus was a woman and there are some authors who have claimed this. Though more likely it means that Jesus was going through a ancient Goddess ritual. To symbolise a cup with wine in it and call it blood is a clear Goddess symbol with the cup being the vagina and the wine being menstrual blood. Later on this symbol was turn into the Holy Grail.

Judas decides to betray Jesus to his enemies, and in this meal Jesus seems to be fully aware of this betrayal, and seems to encourage Judas do it. As pointed out previously the beginning of the downfall of patriarchy was started by men themselves. As they turned their backs on patriarchal religions, allowing greater freedom and education not only to the common people but to women as well. So we seem to see Judas and Jesus colluding together to bring about their own downfall. This is underlined by Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, symbolising a companionship between them.

One of the main reasons science became so popular with the rulers of countries is that it could generate wealth through technology. Judas also betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, this could also represent that Judas is science and technology. So because of this wealth technology generated the rulers were prepared to betray patriarchal religion. Judas then goes on to hang himself, so like Jesus he sacrifices himself. So both Jesus and Judas symbolises men who not only betray patriarchy by quietly helping women to gain power and status in society, but who also willingly sacrifice themselves to women.

When taken capture Jesus makes no resistance, and when condemned and judged by his enemies he makes no attempt to defend himself. In recent years Feminists have attacked both patriarchy and men in general. Although some men have resented this on the whole men have made little attempt to in any way defend themselves and have preferred to remain quiet.

Jesus' enemies took him before Pilate and condemned him, but Pilate wasn't interested. They continued to insist on having him executed and Pilate decided to pass the buck and sent Jesus to King Herod to be tried. It seems that Herod was also sympathetic to Jesus but again Jesus made no attempt to help himself and refused to answer Herod's questions. In the end Herod mocked Jesus and treated him with contempt, put a fine robe on him and sent him back to Pilate.

Now in many ways this reflects the attitude of men today. Religious fundamentalists and extreme right-wing politicians have tried to put the clock back to the "good old days", of extreme patriarchy. Their anger is not only directed at women but other men who seem to be letting the side down. As patriarchal religions and very right-wing politics no longer hold the power in the land they have to appeal to those who do have the power, symbolised by Pilate and Herod. As a result politicians today will get up and talk about going back to "strong family values". But being politicians they only say this because they think it might gain them votes or get people who are pressurising them off their backs. Knowing full well that there is nothing they can really do to reverse the continuous decline in patriarchy.

So Jesus seems to be representing the passive man of today who is allowing women to gain more and more power and status within society. The media of today like Herod mock and treat the "new man" with contempt, but even here there is a division of opinion. Feminism is now very strong within the media as well so the "new-man" also does get some support, probably symbolised by the fine robe Herod gives Jesus.

When Jesus is sent back to Pilate, Pilate still insists that Jesus has done nothing wrong, but bowing to pressure decides to have Jesus whipped to satisfy an angry crowd that Jesus' enemies brought together to condemn him. There are men today who voluntarily pay for themselves to be whipped by Dominatrices. As Jesus made no attempt to help himself to escape from this situation and even encouraged Judas to betray him, it could also be a symbol of the increase of male masochism today.

The whipping fails to satisfy the blood lust of the crowd and Pilate tries to get Jesus free on a Passover pardon for criminals. But the crowd demand that a prisoner who had been put into jail for riot and murder be set free instead. This very much symbolises the attitude of the right-wing, who have far greater regard for patriarchal criminals than the "new man". We can see this on TV and films where there is an increase of violent films, where young men are encouraged to be macho by being violent. As violent men and even serial killers are glamorised and made into heroes. Probably the producers of these violent films hope that it will make young men more macho, who will in turn put women "in their place".

Pilate in the end caves into pressure to have Jesus crucified, and "washes his hands of him". Like Inanna, Jesus is stripped of all his clothing, then the Roman soldiers mock him by putting a crown of thorns on his head. Already men in this century have began to condemn themselves, talking about "man's inhumanity to man". In the past men would put the blame of the problems for the world onto other men. Like Hitler who blamed the Jews, or the rich who blame the poor or the poor who blame the rich etc. But blaming just one group is now becoming more and more unacceptable and it is being realised that all men are the cause of the world's problems. So the crown of thorns is the realisation by men that when they ruled the world they caused great suffering not only to themselves but to all of life. The crown represents the power men had to rule the world and the thorns are the suffering it caused, to whole of humankind as well as the planet.

The cross is put on Jesus' back for him to carry it to the place where he will be crucified. There is no problem with interpretation here because Christians themselves see the image of "carrying your cross" to mean carrying all the sins of the world on your back. Unfortunately Jesus proved to be too weak to carry the cross, and the soldiers forced another stronger man called Simon to carry it for him. The "new man" today is considered by society to be "weak and wimpish" while a normal patriarchal man is seen to be "strong and tough". So to have a strong and therefore patriarchal man carry the cross as well is an interesting development. There are many men today who act like a fully patriarchal macho man but inside they are not like this, so in most cases it is an act because it is how men are expected to behave. This means that seemingly macho men will also begin to carry the cross of shame for the patriarchal past.

Jesus was then crucified between two criminals, who in our society are also considered to be very "macho" so therefore also patriarchal. It means all types of men will be crucified when the matriarchal age comes into being.

One of the criminals mocks Jesus but the other criminal is more sympathetic and Jesus says to him "I promise you that today you will be in Paradise with me". The patriarchal age was not only hell for women but for men themselves, because the aggressive behaviour created wars, conflict, inequality and persecution for men as well as for women. So to live in a society where this aggressive behaviour becomes controlled by women would, compared with the patriarchal society become a paradise. The Paradise Jesus talked about to the criminal, is the matriarchal society that will come into being when men completely sacrifice themselves to women.

The crucifixion is witnessed by the three Marys which would be the ancient Triple Goddess of Crone, Mother and Maid. Jesus's birth was also witnessed by three wise men from the east. Some Scholars claim that Isis is the original Virgin Mary, as the word Mary comes from the ancient Egyptian word meri meaning "beloved" and is the name of the Goddess Meri-f-us a guardian of Osiris and probably another name for Isis. When Jesus died he shouted out in a loud voice "Father! in to your hands I place my spirit". If we are to change the word father to mother what he said is the final complete surrender of men into the hands of women.

Like Inanna, Jesus dies and later "rises from the dead", which is also witnessed by three women, (the Triple Goddess) so in this way a new patriarchal age begins, and like the story of Inanna it is about the continuous cycle of patriarchal and matriarchal ages.

This article was also published at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DivineGoddess

The story of Inanna's descent into the underworld, is an ancient Sumerian legend that seems to predict the rise of the patriarchal age and its later downfall.

In this story, she is the Queen of Heaven, who wishes to visit her sister Ereshkigal the Goddess of the underworld or netherworld. It is a long story and there are many different versions of it that seem to have changed over time, probably to fit in with the changing social attitudes. So in this retelling I will only use what is consistent in all these stories.

Inanna arrives at the gates to the Underworld displaying all the symbols of Her rank and position: A Golden crown, lapis necklace, a double strand of deep blue beads, a jewelled belt around her waist, gold wrists/arm bands, she was holding a lapis measuring rod and wearing a royal robe. To begin the descent to the underworld Goddess one must pass through seven gates, surrendering one article at each gate. In some versions Inanna questions the removal of each article and is told, "Be satisfied Inanna! The ME of the netherworld is being fulfilled. Inanna you must not open your mouth against the sacred customs of the netherworld".

The ME probably relates to what is called today, the ego. As Inanna is the Queen of Heaven she would of course have a very large ego, so in one sense the removing of each article is the surrendering of her ego.

At the first gate, Inanna is stripped of her crown. The patriarchal Hittites invaded Sumer and ruled. So the Queens and High-Priestesses who ruled before were stripped of their positions. Inanna was renamed Inaras and became the virgin bride of the sacred king. So under the rule of the Hittites she was no longer the supreme ruler and was the consort of a King. So the taking away of Inanna's crown symbolised overthrowing of the matriarchal rulers.

At the second gate, the lapis necklace is taken from Inanna. The necklace goes around the neck and within the neck is the voice box. This symbolises the ability of Inanna to express herself, although the Hittite patriarchal rulers, had political power the people they ruled were still matriarchal in their attitude and ways of living. In more recent times when a despotic dictator takes power in a country the first thing he does is to curb free-speech. So likewise the women who previously held power in the matriarchal societies, were probably silenced under the threat of death from criticising the new patriarchal rulers.

At the third gate, Inanna is stripped of her double strands of blue beads that hung between her breasts. The breast for a woman represents her ability to nourish others, with her milk, so it symbolises a women's ability to love others. When the patriarchal rulers first took control, the women at first must have felt very angry about losing their status and power. Then slowly they must of had "a change of heart", and they began to co-operate and even love these patriarchal men from the North.

As Inanna passed the fourth gate, she is stripped of her jewelled belt around her waist. As it is a jewelled belt it would represent wealth. In matriarchal societies all possessions came down the female line, so in this way all the wealth of society would be in the hand of women, giving them great power. The patriarchs wanted all inheritance to come down the male line but as in matriarchal societies a woman was free to have sex with any man she chooses, there was no way for a man to know who his children were. To overcome this the male rulers and priests introduced the concept of marriage where a woman had to be faithful to one man. So a husband would know that the children his wife produces were his, and allowing inheritance to come down the male line, and putting the wealth of the society into the hands of men.

At the fifth gate Inanna's gold wrist/arm band is removed. The hands and arms symbolise our ability to act and make things happen. So for a long time women were still farmers, builders, traders and even warriors, and were still capable of creating wealth and power for themselves. Slowly these jobs were taken away from women and put into the hands of men. Women also did learn how to hit back at patriarchy by becoming Amazons, but in the end even these women were defeated and the only role left for women in society was that of wife or prostitute.

At the sixth gate, the lapis measuring rod is removed from Inanna's hand. A person using a measuring rod has to be educated to know how to use it. In patriarchal times, women were discouraged from being educated because education can give a person power and status in a society. All knowledge and wisdom was removed from women, so they would have to depend on men for this.

At the seventh and last gate, Inanna is stripped of her royal robe and is left completely naked. Even though power and status was taken away from women, traditional customs and beliefs probably still gave women respect and status in society. Even as late as the Middles-ages women still had respect in society as healers and seers. To counter this, patriarchal religions began to put out propaganda that women had no souls, that they were evil and the cause of all men's suffering. When this didn't work they went further and started to condemn women healers and seers as Witches who were in league with the Devil. They then started the infamous Witchhunt where millions of women were burnt alive. In this way they undermined the respect men had for women, and the respect women had for themselves as they began to believe what the patriarchal priests told them. So now women had nothing left, all respect, power, status and wealth had been taken away she was left naked and defenceless.

After descending the seven gates, Inanna is judged and found to be ignorant, a mortal and not a supreme being, and with a mind full of her own self.

In the patriarchal age women were considered to be stupid, and, not having access to any form of education, were also ignorant. All Goddesses and priestesses were replaced by a supreme male God and priests. Also a woman was expected to devote her whole life to looking after her children and husband, and were condemned for being selfish if they in any way thought about their own needs. Even today this is still true as women fear being thought selfish.

Inanna is then condemned to die hung from a meat hook. While on the surface, without the presence of Inanna the Earth is turned into a wasteland.

Now there are many different versions of the Inanna story and many different interpretations of it, like the Damazi/Inanna story or the Tammuz/Ishter story. In later versions, it is a God who rules the Underworld, and still later it is the Goddess who comes to collect her daughter who was abducted by the Underworld God, as in the story of Demeter and Persephone. In these later versions the story is seen as the reason why in Northern climates everything dies in winter and comes back to life in summer. Because in this story Persephone is married to Hades the God of the Underworld and has to return to him once every year during the winter time.

In the original Inanna story, she simply dies and is reborn. The period of the wasteland is repeated in many ancient myths including the stories of King Arthur, it is more than likely the wasteland is about the patriarchal society.

The matriarchal religions respected all life and nature and were referred to as "nature cults" by the later patriarchal scholars because they worshipped trees and animals. When the patriarchal religions took control the patriarchs no longer respected life and nature. Trees were cut down, causing soil erosion in places like Ancient Greece and throughout the Middle east where fertile land was turned into desert. Archaeologists have found that in Biblical times Israel was a fertile country with extensive forests, but now many of the trees that grew there are extinct in that part of the world. Patriarchy never quite understood that by destroying nature man was causing his own downfall. The hard lessons learnt about soil erosion in Europe was lost when Europeans went to America and Australia, and millions of acres of land were depleted before this lesson was learnt again. On Easter Island the natives cut down all the trees on the island. Destroying for themselves an important food source as with coconut trees, and their ability to build wooden houses and boats for fishing. Even today men still overfish and pollute the oceans and use intensive farming methods that deplete the soil and destroy wildlife.

With the help of Enki, a water and wisdom God and a son of the Goddess, Inanna gains her release from the Great below and is allowed to ascend through the seven gates. In other versions it is Inanna's lover Tammuz who helps her, and he voluntarily, takes her place in the netherworld.

To have a God that brings about Inanna's release is very interesting. Patriarchy has been undermined in the last four hundred years by men themselves. Patriarchal religions not only suppressed women but also men. The peasants, like women were kept ignorant and denied education, to make it easier for the rulers to control them. At the same time patriarchal religions, suppressed science, and prevented the increase of knowledge as much as possible.

When the Protestant sects broke away from the main Roman Catholic religion in Europe, they couldn't see any good reason why science should continue to be suppressed. Though they were to find out hundreds of years later when science took over from religion as the major font of wisdom in patriarchal society. As scientific thought took control the men of science couldn't see why the common people should be denied education, and ideas that all men should be equal began to flower. As the common people became better educated they began to demand more rights, women too began to be better educated and complain about the shackles that patriarchal religion and customs imposed on them. With many men now in power who were no longer influenced by patriarchal religions, the demands by Feminists were seen to be reasonable and over time these demands were granted to them. So like science, Enki the wisdom God released Inanna from her bondage to patriarchal religion. While to have her lover Tammuz take her place symbolises the fact that many men will voluntary submit themselves to women when the matriarchal age comes into being.

At the seventh gate, Inanna is given back her royal robe. Although for a time science continued the patriarchal religion's denigration of women as in the last century claiming that women had smaller brains than men or were too emotional to make sensible decisions. Yet science didn't go as far as patriarchal religions and claim women were evil and had no soul because to scientific men it was clear women were not in any way evil. So women gained more and more respect in society and the royal robe is a symbol of this respect.

At the sixth gate, Inanna is given back her measuring rod. The men of science couldn't see any good reason why women should not be denied education and even in the nineteenth century women began to take on professional jobs like doctors, journalists and scientists. Jobs up until then only men were allowed to do, so the measuring rod was a symbol of women's growing educational qualifications in society.

At the fifth gate, Inanna is given back her golden wrist/arm band. At the beginning of this century higher education was given only to a small majority of women, but other women began to follow their lead. During the first and second world wars, women began to work in factories and on farms doing jobs men normally done and showing they were more than capable of doing them. Although Feminists have complained that after both these wars the returning male troops took over these jobs once again and women went back to being housewives again. But it showed what is possible for women and since then more women have depended upon themselves to earn a living and not on men. To the degree there are men today who stay a home to look after the house and children while the women go to work. So the wrist/arm band symbolises women's ability now to take charge of her own life to earn her own money and not to have to rely on a man.

At the Fourth gate, her jewelled belt is returned. Women are not only now able to earn their own living but some are becoming wealthy. At one time the only way a woman could become rich was to inherit money, to be a widow of a rich man or become a successful actress or courtesan. Now successful business women are becoming millionaires, while other women are taking the top-jobs in many professions. Feminists complain about the "glass-ceiling" that prevent women from getting the top-jobs in society, but slowly the glass-ceiling is collapsing. So the Jewelled belt symbolises the wealth women are gaining in society. Already in USA there are more female millionaires than male millionaires.

At the Third gate, the double strands of deep blue beads are returned to Inanna. In the patriarchal age it wasn't only patriarchal religion that kept women in bondage, it was also the fact that she loved patriarchal men more than she loved herself. Now as we are moving towards a new matriarchal age women are learning more and more how to love themselves. So the beads that hung between her breasts and over her heart, symbolise women changing the way they love. From not only loving others to learning to love themselves, as well. This is seen clearly in the breakdown of marriage in recent times. Women are now demanding more from men and if they do not get what they demand then they would rather break up the relationship.

At the Second gate, Inanna's lapis necklace is returned to her. Although women have in recent years demanded equality with men, a few women now are going further than this and saying that they want dominance over men. This is very unpopular with Feminists, who regard ideas like this as not being "politically correct". But women are changing, the younger generation of women today want far more from society then their mothers did and expected. Soon women in the future will forget about ideas of fairness or "political correctness". So the necklace around her neck will symbolise women speaking out and demanding not just equality but dominance over society and man.

At the first gate Inanna receives back her crown. This is the symbol that women have now taken back control of society. The Earth now begins to flower again, as women once again respect life on earth in all its forms. Already now we see in the Green party, Greenpeace and other environment organisations the concern about what damage patriarchy is doing to our world. As women become more in control this concern will grow until genuine practical steps will be taken to correct these problems. In the Inanna story it was claimed that the Earth was turned into a waste land while Inanna was stayed underground with her sister Ereshkigal. So women's first job when that take back control will be to heal the earth of the damage that was done during the patriarchal age.

Some scholars have made the controversial claim that the story of Inanna's decent into the underworld is the prototype story for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This causes a problem as many Christians believe the stories in the Bible to be historical facts. The problem with that belief is that scholars are very aware that all the Bible stories over hundreds of years have been changed, embellished and censored. These stories might have originally come from real events, but were soon changed and merged with other stories and myths, so it is hard to know how much of the original event is left in the story.

All religions from an early time have been contaminated by politics, and it is unfortunate that it is the politically minded priests who have gained most power and have ruled religions. While priests with genuine beliefs in their religion have always played the subordinate role. So it would be the politically motivated priests who would order changes in the texts and doctrine of a religion for political reasons, but it would probably be the more genuine believers who carried out this task. It is known that the patriarchal religions carried out a wholesale destruction of ancient knowledge for political reasons. But the priests given the task of censoring this knowledge from religious text probably didn't agree with the task they were given. The result of this has been in recent years that many people have realised that there are hidden messages within many religious writings. Probably in the ancient past priests and priestesses were very aware of the patriarchal/matriarchal cycle, but they would also be aware that in the patriarchal cycle life was hell. Which wouldn't be a great encouragement for the common people to go through with it, so all knowledge of this cycle had to be censored to make patriarchy possible. But the priests given the task of rewriting scriptures, tried to pass on the truth of the situation in coded form, to inform people in the future what was happening when matriarchy returned.

In many ancient myths there are stories of matriarchal times where the Queen or High-Priestess would marry a young man who would jointly rule with her for one year as King. Then when this year was up he would be sacrificed and the Queen or High-Priestess would marry another young man and the cycle would continue. Whether these stories are about real events and customs, or is a "mystery" story that is about the cycle of matriarchal and patriarchal ages, is a matter of opinion. But again these stories are used again by some scholars to claim or hint that from these stories the crucifixion of Jesus originates.

So if the story of Inanna is about the downfall of women at the beginning of the matriarchal age and her rise at the end of the patriarchal age. Could then the story of Jesus's crucifixion be the story of man's downfall at the end of the patriarchal age?

The story starts off in triumph, with Jesus mounted on a colt or ass riding through the streets of Jerusalem, where crowds welcome him and proclaim him King. So we can take this to mean he is a fully patriarchal man at the height of his power and ego growth.

Yet his triumph doesn't last long, he prophesies that Jerusalem will be completely destroyed, perhaps symbolising the collapse of patriarchy. Then he goes to the Temple and condemns the priests there for turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves. Which would be a good description of patriarchal religion which became extremely wealthy and powerful during the patriarchal age.

Jesus then begins to give more prophesies to quote,- "Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines, and plagues every-where; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky."

Which sounds like a very good description of the patriarchal age, the mention of "strange and terrifying things coming from the sky" sounds interesting it could be about bomber aircraft that destroyed whole cities in the second world war, and the nuclear attack on Japan.

Then Jesus and his disciples sat down for the Passover meal, during this meal Jesus washed the feet of all his disciples, a job normally done by servants, slaves or women. He also made the point that he was the one who serves the disciples. Why he did and said this is not made very clear, but again it could be a practical prophesy of man's downfall, demonstrating that all men will become slaves. Jesus then goes through a ritual, with the bread and wine saying that, this is his body and blood, which again symbolises a form of sacrifice. Echoing the ancient stories of the King that is sacrificed at the end of each year to the Goddess. In some of these tales the King is not only sacrificed but eaten in a cannibal feast. This was the fate of Dionysus who was torn apart by women and then eaten before he came back to life again. So this would be symbolised by breaking and eating of the bread which Jesus calls "my body". The drinking of wine which symbolises the blood of Jesus Christ is more interesting. In ancient Goddess religions menstrual blood was held to be sacred. While in many later patriarchal religion menstrual blood was held to be taboo and unclean. So the blood coming from Jesus would suggest that Jesus was a woman and there are some authors who have claimed this. Though more likely it means that Jesus was going through a ancient Goddess ritual. To symbolise a cup with wine in it and call it blood is a clear Goddess symbol with the cup being the vagina and the wine being menstrual blood. Later on this symbol was turn into the Holy Grail.

Judas decides to betray Jesus to his enemies, and in this meal Jesus seems to be fully aware of this betrayal, and seems to encourage Judas do it. As pointed out previously the beginning of the downfall of patriarchy was started by men themselves. As they turned their backs on patriarchal religions, allowing greater freedom and education not only to the common people but to women as well. So we seem to see Judas and Jesus colluding together to bring about their own downfall. This is underlined by Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, symbolising a companionship between them.

One of the main reasons science became so popular with the rulers of countries is that it could generate wealth through technology. Judas also betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, this could also represent that Judas is science and technology. So because of this wealth technology generated the rulers were prepared to betray patriarchal religion. Judas then goes on to hang himself, so like Jesus he sacrifices himself. So both Jesus and Judas symbolises men who not only betray patriarchy by quietly helping women to gain power and status in society, but who also willingly sacrifice themselves to women.

When taken capture Jesus makes no resistance, and when condemned and judged by his enemies he makes no attempt to defend himself. In recent years Feminists have attacked both patriarchy and men in general. Although some men have resented this on the whole men have made little attempt to in any way defend themselves and have preferred to remain quiet.

Jesus' enemies took him before Pilate and condemned him, but Pilate wasn't interested. They continued to insist on having him executed and Pilate decided to pass the buck and sent Jesus to King Herod to be tried. It seems that Herod was also sympathetic to Jesus but again Jesus made no attempt to help himself and refused to answer Herod's questions. In the end Herod mocked Jesus and treated him with contempt, put a fine robe on him and sent him back to Pilate.

Now in many ways this reflects the attitude of men today. Religious fundamentalists and extreme right-wing politicians have tried to put the clock back to the "good old days", of extreme patriarchy. Their anger is not only directed at women but other men who seem to be letting the side down. As patriarchal religions and very right-wing politics no longer hold the power in the land they have to appeal to those who do have the power, symbolised by Pilate and Herod. As a result politicians today will get up and talk about going back to "strong family values". But being politicians they only say this because they think it might gain them votes or get people who are pressurising them off their backs. Knowing full well that there is nothing they can really do to reverse the continuous decline in patriarchy.

So Jesus seems to be representing the passive man of today who is allowing women to gain more and more power and status within society. The media of today like Herod mock and treat the "new man" with contempt, but even here there is a division of opinion. Feminism is now very strong within the media as well so the "new-man" also does get some support, probably symbolised by the fine robe Herod gives Jesus.

When Jesus is sent back to Pilate, Pilate still insists that Jesus has done nothing wrong, but bowing to pressure decides to have Jesus whipped to satisfy an angry crowd that Jesus' enemies brought together to condemn him. There are men today who voluntarily pay for themselves to be whipped by Dominatrices. As Jesus made no attempt to help himself to escape from this situation and even encouraged Judas to betray him, it could also be a symbol of the increase of male masochism today.

The whipping fails to satisfy the blood lust of the crowd and Pilate tries to get Jesus free on a Passover pardon for criminals. But the crowd demand that a prisoner who had been put into jail for riot and murder be set free instead. This very much symbolises the attitude of the right-wing, who have far greater regard for patriarchal criminals than the "new man". We can see this on TV and films where there is an increase of violent films, where young men are encouraged to be macho by being violent. As violent men and even serial killers are glamorised and made into heroes. Probably the producers of these violent films hope that it will make young men more macho, who will in turn put women "in their place".

Pilate in the end caves into pressure to have Jesus crucified, and "washes his hands of him". Like Inanna, Jesus is stripped of all his clothing, then the Roman soldiers mock him by putting a crown of thorns on his head. Already men in this century have began to condemn themselves, talking about "man's inhumanity to man". In the past men would put the blame of the problems for the world onto other men. Like Hitler who blamed the Jews, or the rich who blame the poor or the poor who blame the rich etc. But blaming just one group is now becoming more and more unacceptable and it is being realised that all men are the cause of the world's problems. So the crown of thorns is the realisation by men that when they ruled the world they caused great suffering not only to themselves but to all of life. The crown represents the power men had to rule the world and the thorns are the suffering it caused, to whole of humankind as well as the planet.

The cross is put on Jesus' back for him to carry it to the place where he will be crucified. There is no problem with interpretation here because Christians themselves see the image of "carrying your cross" to mean carrying all the sins of the world on your back. Unfortunately Jesus proved to be too weak to carry the cross, and the soldiers forced another stronger man called Simon to carry it for him. The "new man" today is considered by society to be "weak and wimpish" while a normal patriarchal man is seen to be "strong and tough". So to have a strong and therefore patriarchal man carry the cross as well is an interesting development. There are many men today who act like a fully patriarchal macho man but inside they are not like this, so in most cases it is an act because it is how men are expected to behave. This means that seemingly macho men will also begin to carry the cross of shame for the patriarchal past.

Jesus was then crucified between two criminals, who in our society are also considered to be very "macho" so therefore also patriarchal. It means all types of men will be crucified when the matriarchal age comes into being.

One of the criminals mocks Jesus but the other criminal is more sympathetic and Jesus says to him "I promise you that today you will be in Paradise with me". The patriarchal age was not only hell for women but for men themselves, because the aggressive behaviour created wars, conflict, inequality and persecution for men as well as for women. So to live in a society where this aggressive behaviour becomes controlled by women would, compared with the patriarchal society become a paradise. The Paradise Jesus talked about to the criminal, is the matriarchal society that will come into being when men completely sacrifice themselves to women.

The crucifixion is witnessed by the three Marys which would be the ancient Triple Goddess of Crone, Mother and Maid. Jesus's birth was also witnessed by three wise men from the east. Some Scholars claim that Isis is the original Virgin Mary, as the word Mary comes from the ancient Egyptian word meri meaning "beloved" and is the name of the Goddess Meri-f-us a guardian of Osiris and probably another name for Isis. When Jesus died he shouted out in a loud voice "Father! in to your hands I place my spirit". If we are to change the word father to mother what he said is the final complete surrender of men into the hands of women.

Like Inanna, Jesus dies and later "rises from the dead", which is also witnessed by three women, (the Triple Goddess) so in this way a new patriarchal age begins, and like the story of Inanna it is about the continuous cycle of patriarchal and matriarchal ages.

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