When God was a Girl Divine Women

'From the dawn of time,

'men and women have felt the need to worship.

'To make sense of life and what lies beyond.

'To find a purpose and to bring a shape to human existence.

'Women have always been at the heart of our relationship with the divine.

'But this part of our history is often hidden.'

If you leave out Jesus and the Apostle Paul,

it's perfectly possible to tell the story of early Christianity

without ever mentioning a man.

I think the wives of the Prophet would be quite shocked actually

if they saw many Muslim majority countries today.

'For thousands of years, all over the world,

'religion has shaped the lives of billions.'

This is why I want to go back,

to uncover the remarkable and neglected stories

of women and religion.

'Their stories can unlock a secret history of the world.'

It's not the male god who created this universe. It's the female.

'I start at the beginning.

'At a time when women were thought to be sacred.

'Creators of life who were touched by the divine.

'Found at the birth of organised religion.

'Some were fearsome goddesses who controlled life and death.'

She's the big mamma. She will protect you, but you don't want to mess with her.

'And I go to a place where divine women are still all-powerful today.'

For us, she's a living being who's always around us, taking care of us.

'I'm going in search of a world

'where goddesses ruled the heavens and the Earth.'

30 years ago, I was shown an old black-and-white slide

of this amazing creature.

'But nobody could tell me

'whether this prehistoric figurine was a goddess,

'a priestess or just an ordinary woman.'

From that moment on, I was determined

to try to get to the bottom of her story.

'She gave me a tantalising glimpse of an intriguing history.

'One that's been buried.

'Evidence of a distant past where women were sacred.

'The Ashmolean Museum contains a treasure trove

'of artefacts from across the world.

'When I studied at Oxford, I came face to face with the enigmatic figurine

'who first inspired me to explore civilisation's story.

'She was made on the island of Crete around 1600 BC.'

I don't know if you agree, but she seems to me

to radiate a kind of fierce, dangerous sexuality.

The remarkable thing about her

is that if you search the collections here,

you'll find that she's not alone.

'For tens of thousands of years,

'our ancestors fashioned a multitude of mysterious female figurines.

'They've been found in religious spaces right across the globe,

'and most of them are explicitly sexual.'

But the terrible thing is that when many of them were discovered,

particularly by Victorian archaeologists,

they were described as disgusting and barbaric

and were hidden away in storage boxes at the backs of museums.

These represent just a tiny fraction

of what's been dug up all over the world.

If you look at the total number of human figures

unearthed between now and around 30,000 BC,

then the massive majority of them are of the female form.

So, what is going on here?

To understand the full story of human history

and the nature of religion itself,

I think we have to follow the trail of these little women.

CALL TO PRAYER CHANT

'I'm travelling to the East, where organised religion began.

'To places where some of the oldest of these little women were found.

'Today, most of the world's major religions

'have a distinctly masculine flavour.

'For millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims, God is male.

'Of course, women have a presence,

'but more often than not, they're fighting for space.

'But if you travel back in time, you'll find a very different world.

'I'm making the journey from Europe to Asia

'to a time and a place where women were touched by the divine.'

I'm going back to the beginning of society itself,

close on 12,000 years ago.

And to a place where religion as we know it began.

'This is south-east Turkey, near the Syrian border.

'Back then, this landscape was untamed.

'Wild beasts roamed free.

'In 1994, archaeologists began excavating here

'at a site called Gobekli Tepe.

'They discovered something extraordinary.

'A sophisticated temple

'pre-dating Stonehenge and the Pyramids

'by a staggering 7,000 years.'

What the archaeologists had uncovered here

is the oldest religious building in the world.

The people who built this place lived in small nomadic bands.

There were no towns, there were no villages,

there was no writing, there was no metalworking.

And yet, somehow, they managed to shift

these 16-tonne blocks of stone up here.

They've carved them with fantastical figures

and decided to turn this side of the hill into a sacred space.

'The site is still being excavated

'and yielding new clues about how our ancestors worshipped.

'Intriguingly, there's no evidence of a permanent settlement here.'

We always used to think that organised religion began

when men and women started to come in

off vast landscapes like this and settle down together.

But the evidence from Gobekli Tepe

seems to suggest exactly the opposite.

Here, you've got people collaborating for the first time,

not in order to farm or to set up a little village community,

but specifically to have a religious experience.

So society isn't creating religion,

it's religion that's forming human society itself.

'Carved into the massive limestone pillars that make this stone circle

'are savage beasts.

'Images of nature red in tooth and claw.'

There was one particular figure discovered here

between a stone carved with two lions

that gives an intriguing glimpse into what it was that mattered

to the people who came here close on 12,000 years ago.

'She was found in a sacred spot

'which archaeologists called the Lion Temple.'

So far, only three explicitly human figures

have been found at the site, and this is one of them.

She's obviously a woman.

She's either lying down, or it's more likely that she's squatting.

And there is clearly something very sexual going on here.

It looks like she's both being penetrated

and giving birth at the same time.

Because the image has been scratched out of the rock,

there's a real vigour to it.

It's like a bit of Stone Age graffiti.

And whoever made it

obviously thought it was both important and appropriate

that a woman should be commemorated

right at the heart of a prehistoric temple.

'I think this shows women were central to our relationship with the divine

'long before we'd even come together to build villages or towns.

'For millennia, we lived as nomads, hunting and fishing to survive.

'But by 7,000 BC, there'd been a major development.

'Our ancestors discovered how to farm,

'and their lives were totally transformed.

'I'm heading 400 miles west to one of the oldest cities in the world.'

It's called Catalhoyuk and, around 7000 BC,

it was almost certainly the largest human settlement in existence.

It was actually discovered in the 1960s

by an English archaeologist called James Mellaart.

And what he unearthed here

would shape a generation's ideas about early religion.

'In this town, more than 5,000 people lived together,

'cheek by jowl, in mud brick houses.

'In and around these houses,

'Mellaart uncovered numerous female figurines

'and what he thought were small shrines.

'He believed the people who lived here worshipped a mother goddess.

'His key evidence was this.

'A remarkable figure found buried deep in a grain bin.

'This is a replica of his discovery.'

She's obviously female

and she's sitting on a throne flanked by two lions

and she is wonderfully voluptuous and potent.

There's nothing actually to say

whether she's a real woman or a goddess,

but Mellaart was convinced.

He wrote,

"The statues allow us to recognise that the main deity

"worshipped by the Neolithic peoples of Catalhoyuk was a goddess."

'Mellaart's conclusions captured the public's imagination,

'but current excavations are revising this picture.

'I want to find out why figures like this were made.

'Shahina Farid is the Field Director at Catalhoyuk.'

Clearly, they had a meaning,

they had a symbolism to the Neolithic people.

And the fact that they're made in this very voluptuous form,

I don't think we've found any skinny women,

means that they were aspiring to something

that's big and opulent and voluptuous.

Some symbol of fertility and a life-giving force.

But when we find the graves of women,

size doesn't indicate that they were large women.

So there is a difference between the portrayal of these women

and how we find their human remains afterwards.

So I like to think that they're an ideal.

That beautiful figurine found in a grain bin. Do you think she was placed there for a reason?

We're at the beginning of agriculture,

the introduction of growing crops,

and so to start seeing this symbol of this female at this time,

we can interpret that she's a life-giving force.

Because women give birth and produce a next generation of children,

it does suggest that there's some kind of connection being made

between their life-giving powers and the fertility of the earth.

Certainly, that interpretation fits with what we find, yes.

Catalhoyuk marks a seismic shift

in our ancestors' relationship with nature.

The survival of this community now depended on growing food.

And the evidence suggests

the fertility of the earth was linked to women.

So, who, or what, is that figurine?

I don't think she's a goddess at this stage

and I think we're at the beginning

of this role of the female form becoming a goddess.

She's kind of halfway to being a goddess.

Mother Goddess did not come from nowhere. She has to start somewhere.

And we think that Catalhoyuk is one of the places where she started.

'Other evidence from Catalhoyuk suggests the people here

'saw a darker, more dangerous side to women's ability to give life.

'This is another figurine found in the city.'

From the front, she's plump and actually quite welcoming.

She's probably pregnant

and she's very definitely fertile and fecund.

But if you turn her around, then it's a rather different story.

She starts to morph into something a bit more sinister.

Her flesh starts to fall away from her bones,

and from the back, she just looks like a skeleton.

Now, I think there's a good reason for this.

Life in early societies like Catalhoyuk was very precarious.

And when women gave birth,

for every child that was born alive, one would be born dead.

And so I think they were considered to be creatures

who could actually create both life and death.

'I believe this powerful idea

'shaped human religion for thousands of years,

'giving extraordinary status to the female.

'As centuries wore on, through the Middle East,

'Asia Minor and North Africa,

'we find the ground littered with striking female figures.

'And many of them were very definitely goddesses.'

As prehistory gives way to history,

and men and women start to write down the stories of their lives,

we begin to learn the names of some of these divine women.

Isis,

Ishtar, Innana, the Queen of Heaven.

They actually come in all shapes and sizes.

But a notable number share two key traits.

These are still creatures in charge of both life and death,

of conflict and fertility.

They inspire awe,

and they are terrifying.

'I'm going to the wild highlands of Central Turkey

'in search of one of them, to see how divine women evolved

'as small societies grew into vast kingdoms.

'In the first millennium BC,

'a people called the Phrygians lived on this mountainous frontier.

'Blasted by long, hard winters

'and bordered by the great warrior empires of the Near East,

'life was a constant battle for survival.

'They worshipped a great goddess

'who would be revered and feared across three continents.

'She was known as Kybele,

or Mater, the Mother.

'But this goddess is not very maternal.

'She stands on her own in wild and savage places.'

This is where you'll find one of the most mysterious monuments to the goddess in the East,

because this is the place where she was thought

to emerge from her mountain home.

'The Phrygians believed that at monuments like this,

'the Mother would appear

'from a doorway in the side of the mountain to be worshipped.'

The goddess originally stood in the middle here,

and you can probably just make out

that she's flanked on either side by two lions.

The terrible thing is that

up until a couple of years ago, she did still stand here.

But treasure hunters have hacked her out of the rock.

For close on 3,000 years, the goddess protected this mountain.

And now she's just a pile of fragments.

'Solitary, crumbling shrines

'give us tantalising glimpses of a powerful ancient goddess

'in danger of disappearing from the landscape, and from history.

'Following her trail,

'I'm going to the most important Kybele site in Phrygia.

'A whole city dedicated to her worship.

'Midas City is named after the kingdom's most famous ruler,

'whose touch was said to turn everything to gold.

'I'm meeting Professor Taciser Sivas

'to find out what this goddess meant to her people.'

Why do you think she was always worshipped in mountains and high places like this?

The high places were the main sanctuaries for the Mother Goddess

because she controlled the nature.

She controls the animals.

She controls the wild world.

-It's almost as if without her nature is an enemy, not an ally?

-Yes.

Without the Goddess Mother, there's a wild nature here and dangers.

So the Mother Goddess was the protector of the people.

Do you think they really believed this goddess inhabited these rocks,

that this was her earthly home?

Yes. They shaped the rocks as temples, open-air temples.

This doorway, it's obviously a doorway into her home in the rocks.

Could it be a doorway between life and death?

Yes. She is responsible for life and afterlife.

-That's a pretty powerful position to be in.

-Yes, sure.

She's the Mother Goddess.

'This goddess who controlled life and death

'seems to have a lot in common

'with those semi-divine figures we saw back in Catalhoyuk.

'But she's evolved.'

As societies developed in scale and got more sophisticated,

the goddess has got bigger.

She's no longer a diminutive little figurine at Catalhoyuk.

Now she's a kind of dominatrix,

guarding and ruling over a vast landscape.

'But the domination of Kybele and other powerful goddesses like her

'wouldn't go unchallenged.'

The goddess would have to deal with a new pretender to her throne.

He was a belligerent boy, spoiling for a fight.

A god who would be king.

'I'm going to the country

'we think of as the birthplace of Western civilisation

'to see that titanic struggle played out in myth and in stone.

'The Greeks worshipped one of the most powerful goddesses of all time.

'In the 8th Century BC, Hesiod, the celebrated Greek poet,

'recorded the epic story of the birth of the universe.

'At its heart was the primal goddess Gaia.'

Hesiod described the creation of the world

out of a kind of primordial chaos.

And Gaia was there right from the start.

"In the beginning, there was only chaos, the abyss.

"But then Gaia the beautiful rose up.

"Her broad bosom the firm foundation of all.

"And fair Gaia first bore starry heaven itself

"to cover her on all sides

"and be a home forever for the blessed gods.

"And then she created the mountains.

"And then the barren, raging sea."

'Gaia also creates the gods themselves.

'But within a generation, a divine war of the sexes is raging.

'For 10 long years, a series of epic battles is waged

'between three generations of gods and goddesses,

'all vying for supremacy.

'Through these titanic clashes, the youngest god, Zeus,

'overthrows his elders and becomes supreme.

'He is now top god.

'The power of Gaia, the creator, is massively diminished.'

In Hesiod's words,

"Now, king of the gods, Zeus,

"was wiser than any other god or any mortal man."

The message is clear.

He's also now greater than any goddess or any woman.

'The mother of all the gods had been firmly demoted.

'I'm meeting historian Edith Hall

'to find out why the Greeks elevated Gaia's grandson, Zeus.'

Gaia is rather a peaceful goddess,

whereas the hallmark of Zeus is that he's an agent.

He hurls thunderbolts.

He helps you win on the battlefield.

You always set up a trophy on the battlefield in honour of Zeus.

That was Zeus' own thing. And he's retributive,

which means if anybody does wrong, he goes around administering justice.

The thunderbolt of Zeus is very similar to Jehovah,

who smites the opponents of the Israelites

or smites people who dare to go near the Ark of the Covenant.

This is a god who actually intervenes with brute force

to police morality on earth.

Do they actually reflect what's going on in real historical terms?

Walled cities start to be built all around the Mediterranean world

and you get large armies, you get very powerful kings,

you get accumulation of money and capital.

You get something you've got to defend,

something really worth fighting for.

And violence, in terms of policing the world,

becomes, I think, much more common.

Mass violence between different communities.

And that's the moment you start to get these big, masculine gods.

It's, I think, a reflection

of a much more militaristic culture on the ground.

'Hard evidence for the demotion of goddesses can be found here,

'in one of the most important sites in the ancient world.

'Nestled amongst the slopes of Mount Parnassus in Central Greece

'is the sanctuary of Delphi.

'It's dedicated to the god Apollo, the son of Zeus,

'and was home to a famous oracle.

'Here, people came to find out what the future held.

'But this was a sacred place long before Apollo's temple was built.'

What's interesting is there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever

that it was dominated by a male deity.

In fact, what we have suggests exactly the opposite.

When the site was excavated,

hundreds of these little things were found.

They're Bronze Age figurines, close on 3,500 years old.

And they're a kind of incarnation of a sublime, female power.

'The Greeks believed that in the distant past,

'this was a sanctuary of the goddess Gaia.

'They used to tell stories that this holy place had been taken by force.

'It was said that the young Apollo had come here

'and strangled to death the Python,

'the monstrous guardian of the place, with his bare hands.'

The Python was one of the children of Gaia.

And, what's really interesting

is that the archaeology actually matches the myth.

This is a much later polygonal wall

and it's been built slap bang on top of the original sanctuary of Gaia.

So, in some senses, this is a new world

crushing out the distant past.

'The goddess didn't disappear,

'but now she shared the stage with many macho gods,

'recognising one as lord and master.

'This hierarchy would be adopted

'by one of the greatest powers in the ancient world.

'Rome was founded on an ideal of masculinity.

'The Romans worshipped the same gods as the Greeks in all but name.

'They looked to Jupiter and his son Mars, the god of war,

'to lead them to victory.

'By the 3rd century BC,

'the Romans were locked in a life or death struggle

'with Carthage, an ancient empire in modern-day Tunisia.

'Led by their famous general, Hannibal,

'the Carthaginians had battled their way across the Alps into Italy

'and had pushed to the gates of the capital.'

The survival of Rome was absolutely not certain.

And the omens were clearly not good.

Strange meteor showers in the sky

threatened to throw the people into a panic.

And the leaders of Rome realised

that in order to avoid mass hysteria,

they had to turn to the most powerful force available to them.

'The most direct way to talk to the gods was to consult an oracle.

'Rome's greatest prophet was a woman, called the Sybil,

'whose predictions were collected in an extraordinary set of scrolls.'

They were so precious they were guarded by a select group of keepers

called the Quindecimviri Sacris, the Sacred 15.

These men promised to guard the scrolls with their lives

and to keep their contents sacred and secret forever.

'Originally they were all stored in the massive temple of Jupiter that stood here.

'But the temple is long gone and most of the scrolls were burnt in fires.

'So I have to seek them out elsewhere.'

Down the centuries, a few fragments of the sacred prophecies were preserved.

And I'm told you can find some of them in here.

'This library holds 180,000 books and scrolls,

'covering 2,000 years of human history.

'All sorts of treasures are hidden in their pages.

'I want to consult the words of the Sybil,

'just as the Romans did when Hannibal was at their gates.'

One of the premiere officials in the city came,

desperate to find an answer to Rome's problems in the oracle.

The oracles were written in Greek hexameter verse,

so he needed two translators to help him.

But eventually, he found what he was looking for.

"Should a foreign enemy ever invade Italy,

"he could be defeated and driven out

"if Kybele, Idaean mother of the gods,

"was brought to Rome."

So it seemed that in her hour of need,

the all-protecting mother of the gods

was going to be Rome's salvation.

'With the gods' stamp of approval,

'Rome immediately arranged for the sacred icon of Kybele

'to be sent from her home in Phrygia.

'On April 12th, 204 BC,

'a delegation of the highest ranking most virtuous men and women in Rome

'came to the port of Ostia to greet the goddess.'

Amidst huge jubilations,

her boat was towed up this river, the Tiber,

and then her icon was triumphantly and tenderly carried into the city.

The Mother had arrived at Rome.

'The Romans believed Kybele's arrival

'changed the course of the war, and history.

'A grateful city embraced the potent goddess

'they called the Magna Mater, the Great Mother.

'A temple was built for her here, overlooking the forum

'in the heart of the capital.

'And each April, the Romans, led by the goddess' priests, the Galli,

'honoured her in a great annual festival.'

But in the middle of the celebrations

came an aspect of the festival that was shocking to the Romans

and is still pretty hard for us to stomach.

The young priests would whip themselves into a frenzy

and then, just as the sun was setting,

they would make the ultimate sacrifice to the Great Mother.

Taking a knife or a sharp stone or a piece of pottery shard,

they would castrate themselves.

For Romans, the idea of castration was absolutely abhorrent.

Rome drew real strength from an idealisation

of a kind of rock-hard virility.

Roman men were meant to be real men.

Hello.

And yet these eunuch priests wore women's clothes,

they used to put their long hair up in elaborate styles

and wear very garish make-up.

There are even rumours that some of them worked

as temple prostitutes and indulged in orgiastic sex frenzies.

It's little surprise that, originally,

Roman citizens were banned from being priests of the Great Mother.

I'm fascinated by these eunuch priests

and why they'd emasculate themselves for a goddess.

Professor Corey Brennan is from the American Academy in Rome.

The Galli were what I'd call a negative foil to the Goddess.

In other words, you have this very, very powerful woman

and her powers are even magnified by being surrounded by effeminate men

with high voices, wearing feminine dress, make-up

and who had been castrated.

How does self-castration become a religious act?

I think the Galli worked themselves into a state of ecstasy

and this allowed them also to do the self-mutilation

and some of the more outrageous forms of worship that went along with the cult.

One thing that runs through is the sort of initiates' remorse

after having been initiated and come out of this frenzied, ecstatic state

and say, "What have I done?" Because you really are painted into a corner.

You are, de facto, in the service of this Goddess for the rest of your life.

I'm really curious to understand what the war-mongering Romans made of these emasculated priests.

I tell you what I can't quite get my head round is how the Romans,

who adore masculinity so much, how it is that they allow

these self-castrating priests to be a part of their society?

The self-castrated priests were so foreign to the Romans

that they decreed that only foreigners could serve in the cult.

Romans were banned.

This didn't mean that it didn't have a certain attraction for Romans.

Every once in a while, we can actually detect Romans sneaking

into the cult and, in fact, going the full measure,

including self-castration in service of the Goddess.

Magna Mater's subversive cult went from strength to strength

in Roman society.

Within a hundred years,

even Roman citizens were allowed to become her priests.

And, at another critical moment in her history,

Rome turned to the Goddess once more.

In the 1st century BC, Rome was plunged into the horrors

of civil war.

Men vied for control of what would become the world's greatest empire.

In 44 BC, Julius Caesar, the famous general and statesman,

was assassinated.

His adopted heir emerged triumphant as Augustus, Rome's first emperor.

To cement his control, he called on the Magna Mater.

I'm meeting historian Alexander Evers to find out why.

The Republic has come to an end and Augustus is the heir apparent,

who begins to build an empire from scratch almost

and he really needs all the forces on board.

He makes Magna Mater one of his central figures.

She's the big mamma, she will protect you.

She's there, not just with Augustus, but she's also there for the Romans.

But why did he choose her?

Because he's got lots of very powerful male gods,

very warlike gods and yet, he goes for a goddess.

On the one side, she's powerful, aggressive, violent, scary.

On the other hand, she's the Great Mother and she will look after you,

she will protect you, she will nurse you.

And so, these two elements make her the perfect fit, in a way.

-I suppose you want to have that on your side, rather than one of your enemies.

-You do.

She represents the entire cycle of life.

She's there at the beginning, and the end.

But you don't want to mess with her,

because she can upset that whole cycle.

Although she was now part of the official, state religion,

this wild goddess was not tamed.

Across the Empire,

live bulls were sacrificed in their thousands to satisfy her bloodlust.

She doesn't lose her taste for blood, also.

You see it in the sacrifices. People bring in the bull.

You know, there's this huge male animal,

and the person who's sacrificing, standing underneath the platform,

is taking a rather bloody shower.

It's such a gruesome form of sacrifice.

I wonder if that just drives home again that this is not a creature to be messed with.

Absolutely not, no. She can't be controlled.

You can have her on your side, but, at the end, she's still the Goddess.

For four centuries, the Great Mother's blood rites

and her eunuch priests flourished here in the capital.

And then, in the early centuries of the first millennium,

a new religion would emerge from the East

that would challenge the Goddess's control of the Empire.

Christians fervently believed there was just one God.

Its followers were hostile to the Goddess and her ritual sacrifices.

Their new faith spread and grew in strength

and, by the end of the fourth century,

it was the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Pagan worship was banned.

The Goddess was now an outlaw.

Christianity had triumphed.

And there's physical evidence of that victory.

Just up here is St Peter's Basilica.

It's one of the most influential and totemic

of all of Christianity's power bases.

But this complex was not built on virgin soil.

Hundreds of years before St Peter's was built,

Kybele's worshippers came here in their droves.

Priests made bloody sacrifices to the Great Mother.

This is where they slaughtered bulls in her honour,

drenching themselves in animals' blood.

In 1609, a Vatican archivist called Giacomo Grimaldi

made very detailed notes of some reconstruction work that was going on here.

And what's fascinating, if you read them,

is that you find out that underneath this entire Basilica complex

there are vast numbers of remains of the sanctuary of the Great Mother.

"About 30 spans deep into the ground,

"the remains of the pagan altars were discovered,

"some of which were smashed into pieces with iron bars by Christians,

"dumped and buried in contempt for this idolatry,

"one thrown on top of the other."

Christians wouldn't allow the Great Mother to survive in the new order.

Her cult was obliterated.

She was symbolically and physically buried.

Worshipping one god left no space for goddesses.

But in societies that honour many gods,

goddess worship has proven incredibly durable.

I'm heading East to pick up the goddess trail.

Nearly 900 million people follow Hinduism,

making it the third largest religion in the world

and the most popular polytheistic faith of the modern age.

I've pieced together the clues from prehistory and the ancient world

to try to recover those goddesses that were buried long ago.

But here in India, they are alive and well.

While Christianity was suppressing goddess worship,

in Central Asia, right the way across to Afghanistan

and here in the Indian subcontinent, it was gathering strength.

One object of devotion was the goddess Durga.

She sits right at the heart of Hinduism,

one of the most ancient living religions.

Hinduism emerged more than 3,500 years ago.

Its central beliefs were written down in an ancient language

called Sanskrit, in sacred texts known as the Vedas.

These record many of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon.

Wherever I've been, whether it's been Greece or Turkey or Rome,

I've found this kind of jigsaw puzzle of evidence

that people believe that the central sacred power was feminine.

And what's really intriguing about coming here

is that I've discovered that that idea been physically set in stone.

There's a temple that I'm going to now

where hundreds of thousands of worshippers still come every year.

Can I have one of these?

This is Kamakhya Temple, high in the hills of Assam,

one of the most sacred goddess temples in India.

It's dedicated to her yoni, Sanskrit for womb or vagina,

which, it's believed, fell here from heaven.

For nine days every year,

hundreds of thousands of Hindus come to worship Durga

and to celebrate a great festival in her honour, the Durga Puja.

Hi, nice to meet you. Do you love the Goddess here?

-Yes.

-Yeah. Why do you love her?

Because she gives us protection and she also loves us very much.

She gives us many things, like lives,

and then things to eat, things to wear.

-So, she really looks after you?

-Yes.

The festival celebrates the birth of the goddess Durga

and her epic battle with the evil demon king.

This famous story was first recorded in the 5th or 6th centuries AD,

in one of the most important religious texts in Hinduism,

called the Devi Mahatmyam

According to the sacred text,

the demon king takes the form of a buffalo

and terrorises the heavens and Earth.

Neither man nor god can defeat him,

so the gods combine their celestial power to create Durga -

the Shining One.

She appears riding a lion and carrying a fearsome weapon in each of her many arms.

After a titanic series of battles, Durga slays the buffalo demon,

liberating humanity and the gods.

Almost 1,500 years later, Durga's worshippers re-enact

her great victory by sacrificing buffalos in her honour.

The animal's being prepared for sacrifice by the priest,

who's covering it in garlands and flowers and herbs.

And, actually, the blade that's going to be used

is being prepared too.

It's just so poignant, this, because this is exactly as it would've been

in those great temples of the goddess of antiquity, like Kybele,

because the drums and the cymbals are working themselves up into a frenzy.

The man who's doing the sacrifice has just walked in

in his ceremonial robes, dressed.

He's got garlands around him as well.

And he's preparing himself in front of the buffalo's head.

CYMBALS CLASH LOUDLY

So, the head's come off.

It's being held up by the priest on his shoulders as if it's his own head

and now it's being carried into the temple.

This bloody celebration is inspired

by the story told in the Devi Mahatmyam.

This sacred text marked a radical new direction in Hinduism -

the emergence of an all-conquering goddess

who could perform feats that no male god could manage.

When it was written, in the 5th or 6th centuries AD,

the Brahmins, elite priests in charge of the sacred texts,

were consolidating their power in this part of India.

To understand what role their arrival here played in the emergence of the Goddess,

I'm meeting Professor Nilima Chitgopekar.

We found inscriptions where the patrons are giving Brahmins

these huge grants of land in areas like Bengal, Orissa,

you know, in the eastern area where we are right now, in Assam.

They actually started exactly in the 5th century.

Now, when those Brahmins must have come here,

when they were granted the land,

they must have encountered people like this, you know, powerful goddesses.

Maybe there was conflict to begin with, but they must have said,

"Hey, we have to incorporate this because it's not going to go away."

And that's when they incorporated it into their own text.

The powerful local goddesses encountered in areas like this

were gradually accepted into mainstream Hindu religion, in works like the Devi Mahatmyam.

And Professor Chitgopekar believes these divine beings were inspired by real women.

There must have been an army, if not an army, sets of women,

who were good with weaponry, who were good at warfare

and who were taking part in all that, otherwise you just couldn't have goddesses like that.

You know, religion very often reflects reality in a way, you know?

And maybe it's a forgotten culture today which has got crystallised in religion.

Just like those semi-divine females I encountered back in prehistory,

Durga's power comes from a kind of inner life force,

found both in the spirit world and in real-life women.

The Devi Mahatmyam calls this feminine force Shakti.

For the Goddess's worshippers,

Shakti is a kind of subatomic energy and the foundation of life itself,

animating every living thing in the universe.

Shakti means alive. Shakti means nature.

Shakti means creative force, the kinetic energy,

the creative force that a woman has within her.

The whole idea that she procreates, so she's the Shakti,

and for the followers who come here,

it's not the male God who created this universe. It's the female.

We believe that this is the origin of the universe.

I see. And do you bring your daughter here?

Yeah, she is my Shakti.

-She is.

-The goddess, a small goddess.

-You are a small goddess.

Deep inside the temple of Kamakhya is a secret underground chamber

which is particularly sacred for those seeking the blessing

of the great Goddess.

Her worshippers believe that this cave is the womb or vagina

of the Goddess herself.

During the festival of the Goddess,

thousands of Hindus come before dawn,

queuing all day for the chance to enter this secret space.

I feel incredibly privileged to be able to share their experience.

But this site is so sacred, the cameras aren't allowed,

so I'll have to see you on the other side.

That was a fairly extraordinary experience and a very, very hot one

because you go right into the temple,

deep down into this inner rock-cut sanctum,

which is where the holy water of the Goddess herself flows.

The priest will bend you down, he allows you to touch the holy water,

he covers your face with water and also, as you can probably see,

covers you with red.

It was a peculiar experience. I do feel inspired, though, in a way

because the rice they were putting all over my head was for my children

and they reminded me that I needed to be a good mother.

In the Devi Mahatmyam,

the Goddess is incarnated in several different forms.

The most terrifying is Kali.

She emerges when Durga finds herself in an even more desperate battle

against another demon king.

Each time Durga lands a blow on her enemy

and a drop of his blood hits the Earth, he's cloned,

until she finds herself battling countless demon hordes.

At a critical point in the battle,

a monstrous creature emerges from Durga's fierce frown.

She has demonic red eyes, her tongue lolls out of her mouth

and she is filled with fury.

In a murderous rampage, Kali slays the demon king

and his many clones, lapping up their blood.

The Hindu texts leave us in no doubt whatsoever

as to just how powerful she was.

She's described as the beginning of all things,

the creator, the protector and the destroyer of all.

This terrifying face of a goddess, who can be both a killer

and a giver of life, seems to be an incredibly enduring idea.

I've found it in prehistory at the very beginning of human society in Catalhoyuk,

in ancient Phrygia and in Rome.

I'm meeting Professor Madhu Khanna

to find out how it's embodied in this Hindu goddess.

She's just the antithesis, the opposite of Durga,

when the battle becomes more and more fierce.

She's Durga's anger all rolled into one.

I know from lots of ancient cultures, you often have male gods

who vanquish demons or, you know, warriors sent out to kill monsters.

So, why here have you got a goddess doing all of that?

But may I ask, why not?

She is a mother, she is a nurturer.

In the times of calamity, she becomes Kali.

And one of the reasons why goddess culture has survived is

because of the very reconstruction of the notion of femininity

which is so unique, because she's an all-embracing goddess.

She has a terrific side as well as a benign side,

so all aspects of the human psyche are part and parcel of her personality.

It's just interesting for me that those two sides, you know,

the terrifying and the maternal and the protective,

that we want to see those united in a female figure, in a woman, rather than in...

-A man can be one thing, but a woman can be two things.

-Too many.

A woman can be many things. So, within the Devi Mahatmyam context,

the Goddess is a nurturing mother and she never really loses that role

and, at the same time, she can also be fearful.

After years spent piecing together the Goddess's story from fragments,

I want to find out what she means as a real, living force

to her followers today.

Politically and economically,

India is one of the most successful nations in the world.

And despite the massive changes that have swept this country,

the Goddess seems stronger than ever.

I want to know how she fits into this thriving, modern society.

I've come to Kolkata in Bengal,

where her festival - the Durga Puja,

has taken over the city.

Like most Bengalis, Tanushree Ghosh is celebrating Durga's festival.

She's invited me to join her as she gets ready for its finale.

Yeah, over here, it's a very big day because it happens once a year,

we wait for these four days.

And also today is a very women-centric day

because, today, women do the Pujas, the majority of them, it's for them.

So, this is where you do your make-up?

-We do. This is Lotha.

-Hi, namaste.

-Hi, namaste.

-Please have a seat.

-Thank you.

And this is where all the make-up happens for the four days

that we get ready for the Puja, all the saris, everything.

So, this is where we get dressed and all the heavy make-up.

This is the only time when we put on very heavy make-up

and heavy jewellery, not before this.

Tanushree is taking me to her community's pandal,

a temporary shrine built especially for the festival.

When you think of the Goddess, what's in your mind?

Do you think she actually exists as a creature with eight or ten arms?

She does exist.

For us, she's a living being who's always around us, blessing us,

protecting us, taking care of us.

So, for us, we've seen her drawn like this throughout...

Yet, actually, we don't believe she has ten arms, but it shows that,

you know, she's multi-tasking, a woman who's multi-tasking.

So, really she's a kind of role model goddess?

She controls the world,

so she's a role model for men and for women because,

in a different way, she shows women how to control and she also shows men

that even if women can be quiet, but still, you know,

don't meddle with her too much, don't mess with her,

then she can take up ten weapons in ten hands and kill you,

and can be the monster.

-Are we a bit late?

-Yeah, we are late.

-OK.

Every year, thousands of different neighbourhoods all over Kolkata

come together to create their own special Durga shrine.

-Are you married?

-I am married, yeah.

-So, then we put it in our hair.

Durga's image is made from clay and water from the sacred Ganges.

Described by many as the Mother of India, for nine days,

she is celebrated, worshipped and treated with the greatest respect.

She's not a goddess to be messed with, is she?

She's the power god. Everybody finds solace and power, everything.

And everybody come and pray, give us the power to sustain another year.

At the end of the festival, Durga will return home.

She'll be brought to the sacred Ganges,

which flows from the Himalayas, the seat of the gods.

But first, she must be prepared.

So, the idea is that I've given the Goddess food for her journey,

I've looked after her, that's why I'm smoothing her cheeks,

and because she's married I'm giving her the red mark on her forehead.

But, all the time, I have to remember just how powerful she is and do it right.

It's like doing the... There.

Do one.

-BANG!

-Oh!

LOUD BANGS

-Hi, are you enjoying yourselves today?

-Very much.

I hear that some girls come here and you meet up with young boys,

-is that true, at this festival?

-ALL: Yeah!

-Is it the mating season here?

-Yeah.

In the ancient world, when women danced ecstatic dances for the Goddess,

99% of the time, men weren't there,

so they used to write about it as being these demonic, sad, terrifying occasions.

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that, actually, the women were having a great time

and this seems, to me, to prove it.

Now we're on the way to the Ganges,

where the idol's going to be immersed in the river.

So, how many of these idols will go down? How many pandals?

-Around 100,000.

-Will you be sorry to see her go?

Yes, it's very emotional,

because you're going to wait another year for her to come back, so it's like your mother going away.

-Like your mother leaving for a year?

-Absolutely.

-Bolo Durga mai-ki.

-Jai.

What are they saying?

"Bolo Durga mai-ki" is to the glory of Mother Durga.

And "aashchhe bochhor abar hobe" is we will celebrate again next year.

OK.

We're actually on the banks of the Ganges now

and it's heading down to the sacred water.

This is the moment Hindus think she's starting to return to heaven,

to her husband Shiva.

Across the globe, the Goddess has pretty much been consigned to history.

But, just like those great ancient goddesses of antiquity,

here, she's celebrated and worshipped

with a wild and heartfelt passion.

And also, just like them

and, I suspect, like the women who've worshipped her for centuries,

she's thought to be both protective and threatening.

Someone who demands respect and inspires devotion.

By following in the trail of that enigmatic female figurine

who inspired me as a teenager, I've come to know the goddesses

who shaped our ancestors' lives.

Their fortunes might have waxed and waned,

but one thing has remained constant.

By giving birth, real women have always danced with life and death.

For our ancestors,

this meant the female of the species was close to divine.

And what I've seen has proved to me just how tenacious this idea was

and continues to be.

In the next episode, I discover a time when women were priestesses who walked with the gods.

When the fate of an empire depended on a woman's virginity.

And when a major new faith gave women unprecedented power -

and freedom.

For a free Open University booklet,

covering the issues and themes featured in this programme

and to learn about controversies surrounding women and goddesses in religion, ring:

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And follow the links to the OU.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd