“Being straight line thinkers, and trying to set up a new heavenly hierarchy with Zeus at the top, the Hellenes didn’t like her very much. So, they started chipping away—splitting her into lots of different pieces as a way to weaken her power. The part of her that was love and beauty was called Aphrodite. The part of her that was wisdom became Athena. The protector of wild creatures and the hunt was Artemis. Hera became the guardian of motherhood. The part of the goddess that ruled the fertility of all living things was called Gaia.
“Now, even to the Hellenes, Gaia was the oldest of the old ones. They admitted she had created everything out of herself before their gods arrived. Her name translates to something like Grandmother Earth. But to the people who worshipped her before the Hellenes took over, she was a whole lot more than just a nature goddess. She was the creator of the universe, and she lived in and through every part of her creation. Olympian mythology tried to tame her and make her play nice with the new kids on the mountain. The Hellenes told stories of how she defied their gods and got trounced by them, but they were never able to get rid of her completely. She was in the hearts of the people who worked the land.”
“Like the pythia,” Cassie said softly.
Maddie stared at her in surprise. “Did Faye tell you that story?”
“She did, and that they couldn’t write the pythia out of their mythology either.”
“You’re exactly right, kiddo,” Maddie nodded approvingly. “Gaia remained a thorn in the side of Zeus and his cronies. They loosened her hold but couldn’t uproot her. In the end, they had to tolerate her existence even though she’s the exact opposite of everything they valued.”
“What do you mean?”
The frown lines around Maddie’s mouth deepened. “Gaia is nothing less than the principle of creation. The overlords valued destruction because that was how they acquired land, wealth, and power. All the people who came before them valued creation, and creation was originally viewed as female.”
“Why is that?”
The older woman rolled her eyes impatiently. “It should be obvious. When you talk about building life, biologically speaking, we all know which sex does the heavy lifting. The ancients knew it too. That’s why the earliest origin myths tell of a primordial goddess who gave birth to everything. There might even be some science behind the notion of parthenogenesis. At least a few researchers are convinced that the female sex evolved long before the male. After all, there are lots of species on this planet that are all female, but none that are all male.”
“What?” Cassie was stunned.
Maddie blew a final puff of smoke and ground out her cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. “The basic template for the human body, for all mammal bodies, is female. Until they’re seven weeks old, all embryos start out being proto-female. It doesn’t take a huge change for a fetus to grow up to be a girl. That’s what it does naturally. But with little boys, at seven weeks, the Y-chromosome kicks in and testosterone turns a “she” into a “he.” How else can you explain nipples on a male body? I mean, for crying out loud, what’s that about?”
Cassie was speechless. This theory had never been discussed in her Biology 101 class.
“And it isn’t just physical creation that’s associated with the female sex. It’s the creation of the necessities of life. Things that have been around for so long that we take them for granted: clothing, houses, cooking, not to mention agriculture, domesticated animals, and, oh yes, art and writing. All invented by female humans.”
“But… but…” Cassie stuttered. “Everybody assumes men invented all those things. Didn’t they?”
Maddie noted her expression and grinned. “Nope. Shocking isn’t it when you realize how much you’ve been brainwashed by overlord values. I make some of my associates cringe when I get on my soapbox, but they know I’m right.”
She seemed to realize she had roamed far afield in her explanation. More softly she said, “It isn’t simply artifacts that the Arkana is protecting. The people who crafted those artifacts had a different way of looking at life. A more constructive way. That’s what we’re really protecting until the day comes when the overlord system loses its shiny appeal.” She smiled ruefully. “I guess I’ve beaten your first question to death. Now you know why we call ourselves the Arkana. What else do you want to know?”
Cassie was silent for several seconds, trying to wrap her brain around the boatload of radical ideas Maddie had just thrown at her. When she had time to recover she asked, “If this is an international organization, what made you pick Illinois of all places to set up your operation? There can’t be many artifacts here.”
“Good one,” Maddie commented approvingly. “Actually, the Arkana started out centuries ago in England right after the witch hysteria that swept Europe in the 1600s. You’ve heard about that, right?”
“Are you saying that you’re all a coven of witches?” Cassie asked warily.
Maddie let out an exasperated groan. “We don’t have enough daylight hours left for me to set you straight on all the popular misconceptions about witches. The short answer is that we’re not. The point I was trying to make is that a lot of valuable information was lost during the witch craze. Women and men who were the herbalists, midwives, and healers died at the stake, and their knowledge died with them. Once the last fire burned itself out, whoever managed to survive went underground.
