FOR HERA’S SAKE

IDEAS In the beginning, some believe, was the Goddess. One of those believers is JO WHARTON, whose life work is helping today’s women reclaim their collective past.

“Civilization didn’t begin with the Greeks,” says Wharton. “The Goddess, way before the Greeks, was the original primary deity of humankind until five or six thousand years ago.”

Shelves and tabletops in Wharton’s far North Dallas home are filled with replicas of those deities, figures once central to the worship of cultures in Egypt, Crete, Malta, India and the Balkans. The oldest is a Venus of Willendorf, dating back, Wharton says, to Austria some 30,000 years ago.

“Early people saw that creation came from women, and Goddess cultures had to do with giving life and sustaining life,” Wharton says. “But many women feel the traditional Western system leaves us out. Recognition of history as it really was shifts consciousness and perspectives.”

When Wharton began her Goddess study in 1978, there were only a few books available. In 1990, Wharton started a business to make these books, and the powerful ancient images of women, more accessible. She calls the business, with an ironic bow to the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe, “The Rose Window.”

“A church’s rose window is usually dedicated to Mary, and it’s usually in the west wall, while the congregation faces east,” Wharton says. “So this incredible light streams in on the people, even though they’ve turned their backs on it.” The Rose Window also offers study groups, rituals and retreats to help women face the light and find the power within themselves.