Partnership vs Dominator Society Models

Riane Eisler describes how humankind once lived in a caring, sharing environment. That period, which lasted for tens of thousands of years, survived, though barely, just into historical times. It was characterized by a worship of the divine feminine as represented by the chalice in the title of Eisler's book.

In a blink of the eye, historically speaking, that environment was brutally overthrown and replaced with the beginnings of the patriarchy in which we live today. Those who overthrew this golden age worshipped not life and creativity, but death and destruction; in short, the blade. Those in power today continue to worship that blade, which has been changed by the rapid rise of technology into the lethal systems that could end all life on the planet in a matter of days or hours.

The premise of The Chalice and the Blade is that the rapid transition from a partnership society to a male dominator society was the result of the sociological equivalent of a "critical bifurcation point" in Chaos theory. Eisler explains in some detail how the currently popular scientific theory applies to that sudden shift into darkness that occurred approximately six or seven thousand years ago. However, she also goes on to propose that we once again face a critical bifurcation point; that we live in an exciting, dangerous time in which we can just as rapidly overthrow our hierarchically controlled patriarchal system and replace it with a technologically advanced model of the partnership system in which both genders work together to emphasize the nurturing side of life.

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