Of how the original partnership direction of Western culture veered off into a bloody 5,000 year dominator detour. The chapters tell a story that begins thousands of years before our recorded (or written history). She reevaluates the past and present, sharing insights from research that has often been ignored or misinterpreted. Hence the title The Chalice (the life-generating and nurturing powers of the universe – in our time symbolized by the ancient chalice or grail) and the Blade the power to take rather than give life that is the ultimate power to establish and enforce domination. The original direction in the mainstream of our cultural evolution was toward partnership but that, following a period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, there occurred a fundamental shift. – the partnership model – based on the principle of linking, affiliation and cooperation – the dominator model (popularly referred to as patriarchy or matriarchy) – the ranking of one half of humanity over another and These and other questions lead her to re-examine the past, present and future, captured here in The Chalice and the Blade, looking at human history and pre-history and at both male and female aspects of humanity and in particular, those societies where the feminine aspect was revered. Why do we hunt and persecute each other? Why is our world so full of man’s infamous inhumanity to man – and woman? How can humans be so brutal to their own kind? What is it that chronically tilts us toward cruelty rather than kindness, toward war rather than peace, toward destruction rather than actualization?

I also very early developed a passionate concern about the human situation. Very early in my life I saw that what people in different cultures consider given – just the way things are – is not the same everywhere. When she was a child she and her parents fled for their lives from the Nazis, first to Cuba and finally to the United States, thus she experienced three different cultures, each with their own version of truth and reality. Riane Eisler was born in Vienna, Austria. And because it’s brilliant and deserves a much wider readership.

Today, somewhat reluctantly, as it’s a large and in-depth work that can’t really be summarised, I decided I needed to write about it, especially as the sequel is due out and I’ve pre-ordered it, so I wanted to share my thoughts on this first. This is a book I’ve been fascinated by and slow reading over the past couple of months.

The chalice and the blade works cited