the domestication of plants and animals and then could it be that the patriarchy was formed in the hopes of domesticating the women.....? Not sure, but it seems to me that the utter value of the female domesticated animal and the use of 98% of the male for meat purposes has a very sobering effect on a person, on a group of people. Even now, anyone who raises livestock is sort of stunned by this. It is so sad and I have long felt that the religious rituals associated with animal slaughter are all about helping people who have changed themselves enough to nurture the domesticated animals so completely can be helped in some way when it comes time to kill them.
Until I had sheep I had no idea what "good shepherd " meant. To me it seems to be all about bottle feeding lots of lambs, or getting the mom to take care of the rejected lambs. Taking care of sick animals, watching them and chasing predators away. One does all this and the sheep don't even like you. Then these guys you fed for months grow up and if they are males they get killed for meat. These ones that looked up at you with love every time you fed them. Who one cannot help loving back- a good shepherd really loves their sheep, enough to get up in the night to feed lambs and check on them. And so I am of the opinion that this change from hunter to killer of domesticated semi-tamed highly cared for animals presented (and presents) such a moral dilemma to us as humans that we needed help, and lots of it. And that this killing and eating of animals one has cared for so much creates utter confusion emotionally and spiritually.
The old series "When God Was a Woman" I think chronicled the timing of the change in image of the source of the life force from female to male in the collective imagination, which religions then cater to.
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