The Christian War Against Woman and Nature

The War on the Sacred Feminine: Christianity’s Long Campaign Against Women

Long before the iron cross cast its shadow over the earth, humanity lived under a different light—a softer, older sun that bathed the world in reverence for the sacred feminine. Across the fertile valleys of Old Europe, the highlands of Mesopotamia, and the forested groves of Celtic Gaul, matriarchal societies thrived for millennia. These were not utopias, but balanced worlds where the divine was understood not through domination, but through reciprocity, intuition, and communion with nature.

Women were central—spiritually, socially, and biologically. The goddess was not a metaphor but a living reality. She was the earth that bore fruit, the moon that bled with the tides, the womb through which life returned. These were cultures shaped around fertility, rhythm, and the sacred tree of life, its roots buried in the underworld and its branches touching the stars.

And then came the war.

From the Grove to the Gallows: How Matriarchy Was Buried

The ancient matriarchal societies—Minoan, Thracian, Druidic, Sumerian, and beyond—did not vanish through natural evolution. They were uprooted. The rise of patriarchal dominator cultures brought not just a shift in leadership or social norms, but a violent inversion of spiritual cosmology. What had been sacred became sinful. What had been natural became shameful.

Check out the article: Christian Guilt: The Weaponization of Sin

The female body, once celebrated as a temple of creation, became the site of humanity’s fall. The myth of Eve eating the forbidden fruit was not a benign origin story—it was a weaponized metaphor. Taken from older pagan symbols, the Tree of Knowledge was originally the Tree of Life, a symbol of sacred wisdom revered by Druids and pagans across the ancient world. Inverting its meaning, the Christian Church portrayed this act not as awakening but as betrayal. The woman—curious, autonomous, and in communion with the serpent (a sacred symbol of renewal)—was turned into the origin of sin itself.

From that myth onward, the course was set: childbirth was no longer a miracle, but a punishment; the earth, no longer a mother, but a fallen world. And the woman? No longer the bearer of life, but the bearer of guilt.

Original Sin: The Desecration of Birth and the Body

The doctrine of Original Sin, one of Christianity’s foundational pillars, was a theological act of aggression. With Eve cast as the transgressor, all women were seen as her spiritual descendants—tainted, weak, and in need of male control. The very process of childbirth, once sacred and communal, was stained by association. Genesis 3:16 proclaimed: “In pain you shall bring forth children... your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

This was no mere myth—it was a manifesto.

The Church seized on this story to justify centuries of female subjugation. Midwives were pushed aside by priests. Pregnancy became something to fear. The female body was reinterpreted as dangerous, unstable, and impure. Blood—so central to the cycles of life—was cast as unclean. And as Christianity spread, its priests—male, celibate, and alienated from the body—declared themselves the sole mediators between humanity and the divine.

Marriage as Control: The Chain of Obedience

With theology in hand, the Church set about reorganizing society. Marriage was redefined not as a union of souls, but a contract of subjugation. A woman’s duty was to obey her husband as the Church obeyed Christ. This hierarchy was divine, immutable, and ruthlessly enforced. Women could no longer inherit property in many regions. Their legal status was absorbed into their husbands. Their sexuality was regulated, their voices silenced.

Even Mary—the lone female figure venerated in Christianity—was stripped of her complexity. She was not celebrated as a sensual, powerful woman, but sanitized into a sexless, obedient vessel for divine will. The Virgin Mother replaced the many goddesses of old, not as an equal, but as a spiritual cage: the only “good woman” was the one who bore a son without ever having sex.

The Burning Times: Witch Hunts and the Inquisition

The Church’s war on women reached its blood-soaked zenith between the 14th and 17th centuries. The Inquisition, backed by both ecclesiastical and secular powers, targeted anyone who resisted orthodoxy—but especially women.

Midwives, herbalists, wise women—those who preserved the healing arts and spiritual knowledge of the pre-Christian world—were accused of witchcraft. Their crime? Knowing the ways of plants, cycles, the stars, and the body. Their fate? Torture, confession, and fire.

The Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”), written in 1486, became the Church’s handbook for female persecution. It proclaimed that women were more susceptible to demonic influence because of their “weaker faith” and “insatiable carnal desires.” It was not theology—it was terrorism.

Tens of thousands of women were executed in Europe under this logic. The very traits once honored in matriarchal societies—intuition, sensuality, communion with nature—were now punishable by death.

The Demonization of the Pagan Way

To cement control, the Church needed more than violence—it needed erasure. Pagan festivals were absorbed and Christianized. Temples to goddesses became churches to saints. The equinox and solstice were recast as Easter and Christmas. Ancient symbols were co-opted, inverted, or demonized.

The horned god of the forest became the devil. The serpent became Satan’s agent. The tree of life became the site of original sin. The drum, the moon, the circle—all sacred tools of the old religions—were rendered profane.

This wasn’t just religious conquest—it was cultural genocide.

Falling From Nature: Alienation as Doctrine

Christianity’s war on the feminine was also a war on nature itself. By casting the earth as “fallen,” it severed the spiritual bond between humans and the environment. The land was no longer sacred but cursed. Dominion replaced stewardship. The spiritual became abstract, male, and distant—God moved to the sky, and the earth was left behind.

This alienation paved the way for ecological devastation. The forests once revered were now resources to be exploited. Rivers were no longer spirits, but utilities. Women’s connection to nature—cyclical, embodied, intuitive—was feared and ridiculed.

By severing the feminine from the divine, the Church also severed humanity from the world it lived in.

Sin, Sex, and the Shame of the Body

Central to the Church’s power structure was the regulation of sexuality. Sex, once celebrated in ancient rites as a form of communion and creation, became synonymous with sin. Abstinence became purity. Desire became guilt.

Women bore the brunt of this repression. Their bodies were doubly cursed: first through Eve, then through Mary. They were taught that their sexuality was a danger to themselves and others. That their only holy role was submission.

In pagan cultures, sexuality was sacred—it was a rite of passage, a source of power, a celebration of life. The Church replaced that joy with fear. Masturbation became damnable. Homosexuality became heresy. Sensual pleasure was repressed, and celibacy was exalted.

It was a war not just on women’s power—but on the human body itself.

The Aftermath: A Wound Still Bleeding

Today, the echoes of this war persist. Women continue to battle for bodily autonomy. The earth still suffers from the legacy of dominion theology. The divine feminine, while rising again in feminist spirituality, remains marginalized in mainstream theology.

The Church’s war on women was never just metaphorical—it was material, historical, and devastating. It was a campaign to control reproduction, silence wisdom, and erase memory. It succeeded in building an empire, but at the cost of a profound disconnection from the sacred.

Reclaiming What Was Lost

Yet the sacred feminine endures—in the whispering of trees, the cycles of the moon, the blood that brings forth life. It flickers in forgotten myths, in feminist rituals, in the quiet rebellion of remembering. Though centuries of fire and doctrine tried to bury it, the earth remembers.

And so do we.

We stand now, not just at the end of an age, but at the cusp of a return—not to the past, but to a deeper truth. A truth where the feminine is no longer feared, but honored. Where the body is no longer shamed, but celebrated. Where the earth is not fallen, but sacred.

The war was long. The damage was great. But the roots run deep.

And the goddess—buried, burned, and banished—has never stopped dreaming through us.

— Zzenn