•	Heide Goettner-Abendroth: The Dancing Goddess. Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic 
•	Beacon Press, Boston MA, 1991 

•	“Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a philosopher and researcher on culture and society, focused on matriarchal studies. She was born in Thuringia (Germany) in 1941 In 1973 she took her Ph.D. in philosophy and theory of science at the University of Munich and taught philosophy for ten years there (from 1973-1983).

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•	Since 1976 she has been doing pioneering work in Women’s Studies in West Germany. She has published various books on matriarchal society and culture. 
•	In 1986 she founded the “HAGIA. International Academy for Matriarchal Studies  and Matriarchal Spirituality” in Germany, and since the beginnings she has been its director” 
•	http://www.goettner-abendroth.de/en/biography.html
•	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJNq-O7CEU  Gottner Abendroth lecturing

•	Principles of Matriarchal aesthetics derived from description of [ancient] matriarchal art.  
•	Matriarchal aesthetic is descriptive and prescriptive of aspects of modern art, some of which already has matriarchal features.  
•	I develop a matriarchal art utopia.
Nine Principles
•	First, located beyond the fictional, art becomes magic, which intrudes in reality by means of symbols, and changes reality:
–	Ancient: influences nature,
–	Modern: changes psychic and social reality.
•	Second, its framework is the structure of matriarchal mythology, which is universal for all mythologies and religions:  a fundamental objective category of human imagination.  Matriarchal art, which derives from this, is diversity in unity, not dogmatic or subjective.

Ritual Dance and Matriarchal Mythology
•	Third, transcends the traditional mode of communication of author/text/reader.  It is not limited to manufacturing art products, but is a process expressing a structure found in ritual dance.  All participants are authors and spectators. Dogon ritual dance 2012:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxKjSGpHhBg

Karagam dance form of Tamil Nadu (South India), in honor and praise of rain goddess Mari amma. 
Imagination
•	Matriarchal mythology exists as a fundamental category of human imagination, from which come all later religious and artistic artifacts.
•	The imagination involved is not undisciplined eclecticism or arbitrary chain of associations:  follows its own complex code of rules.
•	To study these rules look at past matriarchal societies.

Shango Praise Dance Part 2
•	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAxJOtcxPQg&list=PL1CEB62EDE1CAF67A&index=1  [start in at 2 minutes]
•	worshipping of shango and inauguration of shango priest by the babamogba and iyamogba with the priest kneeling down, while babamogba and iyamogba are praying for him.(BABAMOGBA male and IYAMOGBA female, are the priest makers of the shrine) after the inauguration

•	Fourth, demands total commitment of all participants, [and there is] no division between author and audience, emotion and thought.  All participants operate at the levels of emotional identification, theoretical reflection and symbolic action.
•	Matriarchal art welds together feeling, thinking and doing in a concrete mythological image, releasing ecstasy.
Dancing Maenad, painted Greek vessel  [This, and the next three illustrations were chosen by Gottner-Abendroth to illustrate the principles of matriarchal aesthetics.]
Women’s ceremonial dance, gold-ring from Crete, 1550 B.C.
Labyrinth, dancing place of the Muses, Greek coin
Temple in the shape of the Goddess, Malta, Mnaijdra, 3500 B.C.

•	Fifth, does not correspond to the model of communication of author/text/dealer/agent/audience.  The dealer and agent/critic are redundant. [opposed to Danto’s notion of art requiring the artworld] It cannot be sold, archived, in a museum, or objectified (turned into an object).
•	The universal, objective nature of this mythology is known to all.
•	It is a dynamic process characterized by ecstasy and magic.

•	Sixth, it cannot be divided into genres, the ritual dance embracing all the arts while it praises the goddess.  It rejects the division between art and non-art and the one between art and theory.  It merges with philosophy, the humanities, the sciences.
•	It breaks down the barrier between art and life, and is associated with lifestyles ranged against the status quo.  It is not one-way communication a process of social interaction.

•	Seventh, it shares the system of values of matriarchal mythology:  the erotic vs. work and discipline.  “The continuation of life as a cycle of rebirths is its primary principle, and not war or heroic death for abstract, inhuman ideals” characterized by patriarchy.  Motherliness and sisterly love, not paternal authority and egoism, are stressed.

•	Modern matriarchal art, bringing psychic and social changes, is a subversive, but not power-interested or disguising ideological, process in patriarchal society.

•	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z72hzU1_5aE

•	Eighth, its social changes override divisions into formalist, elitist art vs. popular, outcast art.
–	Returns art to original public role as most important social activity and bringing aestheticization of the whole of society.
•	Ninth, is not “art” as fictional (vs. patriarchal aesthetics) and artificial.  It requires not technical know-how. It is the ability to shape life and change it:  it is a drive to aestheticization of society.  

Further Remarks:  First Principle
•	Is “modern magic” a contradiction in terms?  No.  
•	Even seeing ancient magic in terms of interference with natural forces oversimplifies.  They could forecast weather but were convinced that rational-technical knowledge was not enough:  emotion had to be in involved.

•	The rain dance would only be performed when there were physical signs of coming rain.
•	They saw nature as a living being that could change its mind (a goddess) and could be communicated with by means of symbols.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WNLLNxURt4  5 minutes in:  footage of rain dance

•	They were also aware of magic in psychosocial reality, that medicines alone would not help the sick. There is a psychological element to medicine.  Magic was complementary with medicine.
•	Erotic and aggressive drives were controlled, danced out, and contained, leading to communal living.
•	Contemporary psychology, by contrast, is not healing since the ethos of magic has been lost, replaced by patriarchal pressure to conform.
Magic
•	Magic was seen as witchcraft and was a target of patriarchy.
•	Ancient magic was based on the ideal of harmony in the individual and society.
•	Modern magic means symbolic practices which influence psychosocial reality but are based on an ethos of totality that is not sectarian or private.
•	Matriarchal art should develop symbolic activities based on the ethos of magic consistent with present knowledge.
On the Second Principle
•	Matriarchal mythology is a category of human imagination found in primitive peoples as well as in early complex cultures.  It had an impact on patriarchal religions, philosophies, and arts, in secret cults or as images and ideas, in folklore and festivals.
•	I am only demanding that something that has always existed in poetry and art now be consciously realized.
•	We need no theory of mysterious archetypes here, but ethnological and cultural-historical research.
On the Third and Fifth.
•	Is it a multi-media show?:  yes, but not merely:  Is it performance?  Yes, but not limited to the individual.  Environmental art?  Yes, but not committed to creating passive objects.  Is it art?  Yes, creates beauty, but as reality not as veil.  Is it a cult?  No, no stipulated religious content, and does not divide art from cult/religion.
•	Matriarchal art cannot establish itself outside of a matriarchal society.

•	Matriarchal art is what the nine muses did:  ritual dance festivals following the seasonal cycle, representing initiation-marriage-death-return.
•	It is possible to revive ritual dance festivals since they merely symbolize fundamental categories of human imagination.
•	Trial and error will see how they can be symbolized today.
•	Matriarchal art is not ornament, commodity, mere pleasure.  Nor is it dogmatist.  It is coherent without being subjective because it follows the categories.
The Fourth Principle
•	Climax of ecstasy.  Our understanding of ecstasy today is vague, or seen as kind of delirium, or gentle madness.
•	True ecstasy:  spontaneous meshing of all human forces, emotional, intellectual, active:  the erotic is always involved too.
•	When these forces create harmony there are moments of ecstasy.
The Sixth Principle
•	Imagine a process of art that lasts for several days:  actions of daily life are integrated into a symbolic context. [Burning Man 2017]

Cox, Renée  “A Gynecentric Aesthetic” Hypatia. 5:2 (1990): 43-63. 
   In the proposed gynecentric aesthetic, which follows the work of Heide Gottner-Abendroth and Alan Lomax, aesthetic activity would function to integrate the individual and society Intellect, emotion and action would combine to achieve a synthesis of body and spirit. Song and dance would involve the equal expressions of all participants, and aesthetic structures would reflect this egalitarianism. 

The erotic would be expressed as a vital, positive force, divorced from repression and pornography. The emphasis would be off aesthetic objects to be coveted, hoarded and contemplated, and on dynamic process, fully engaging and socially significant

Cynthia Eller  The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory:  Why and Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future, 2001

•	“According to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, men and women lived together peacefully before recorded history. Society was centered around women, with their mysterious life-giving powers, and they were honored as incarnations and priestesses of the Great ...”  Eller
Bodies in China: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender, and Politics (The Chinese University Press, 2016) 
by Eva Kit-Wah Man  
•	“We can see that such a matriarchal paradigm accentuates nature’s unity with human beings as opposed to nature’s exploitation and utilization by men, as well as emphasizing the harmony of the individual’s capacities as opposed to their fragmented specialization. I want to suggest that each of these is already implied in traditional Chinese philosophy.”
Feminist Art in U.S. began at CSU, Fresno!
•	“The nation’s first feminist art education program took place at California State University, Fresno in California in 1970 when fifteen female students and instructor Judy Chicago helped pioneer key strategies of the early feminist art movement, including collaboration, the use of “female technologies” like costume, performance, and video, and early forms of media critique. Judy Chicago, with painter Miriam Schapiro, went on to found the feminist art program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, whose students created, in 1972, a month-long installation in an empty house, entitled Womanhouse.”  Wikipedia “Feminist Art Movement”