There is a small wooden viewing tower, and pamphlets from the State of Ohio, but they focus on facts–for instance, the Serpent Mound is as long as four football fields–not on meaning. In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen, a Native poet, mythologist, and scholar, explains that Serpent Woman was one of the names of the quintessential original spirit “that pervades everything, that is capable of powerful song and radiant movement, and that moves in and out of the mind…she is both Mother and Father to all people and all creatures. She is the only creator of thought, and thought precedes creation.” In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful–until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus–a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory. Gloria Steinem
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More Quotes By Gloria Steinem
  1. Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.
  2. Rich People plan for three generations Poor people plan for Saturday night
  3. Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.
  4. Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.
  5. No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin–because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid...
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