Self Portrait: Zombie Food (My Brain)

I've been rereading The Alphabet vs The Goddess, by Leonard Shlain. Published in 1998, it was inspired by a 1991 tour of ancient Greek sites led by a University of Athens professor. At every site toured in Greece, Crete, and Turkey, the professor explained how the site had originally been consecrated to a Goddess and later was repurposed for a male deity. Leonard Shlain was a brain surgeon. On the way home from his trip, he was contemplating what could have caused such a widespread cataclysmic change in human culture. He hypothesized that the development of alphabetic writing may have had enough of an effect on human brains that it moved our societies from being peaceful and Goddess focused, valuing the feminine, to being patriarchal and violent, valuing the masculine. He spent the next seven years researching and then published his national bestseller.

It's a fascinating book, especially in light of recent debates over differences between male and female brains.

Before reading about male and female brains in the context of trans activism, I had read about gender and the brain in education courses, and in The Alphabet Versus The Goddess. I've read a lot more in the past few years as my daughter has been exploring the idea of gender.

This is my brain, based on an MRI from a couple of years ago. My corpus callosum is in gold.

Self Portrait: Zombie Food (My Brain), original painting by Echoing Multiverse. Available for purchase via Saatchi Art. Prints, stickers, and other merch available through RedBubble or Fine Art America.

The primary function of the corpus callosum is to connect the two hemispheres of the brain. Different sections of the corpus callosum connect different functional areas. Women's corpus callosums are differently shaped than men's and have higher densities of connective tissues. Our right and left brains are more well connected (source). Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania note, "The female connections likely facilitate integration of the analytic and sequential processing modes of the left hemisphere with the spatial, intuitive information processing modes of the right side" (source). In terms of shape, women's spleniums are more bulbous. The splenium is the most posterior part of the corpus callosum (closest to the back of the head). A 1991 study from the Journal of Neuroscience illustrate the difference in shape of corpus callosum between males and females (source).

A: Male corpus callosum. B. Female corpus callosum. Source: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/11/4/933.full.pdf

My splenium is clearly female based on this diagram and my MRI.

Our brains are like the CPUs of a robot. Connected to our brains, we also have sensors. There are also sex differences in our sensory organs. Men's and women's eyes have different ratios of rods to cones. Men and women literally see the world differently. Additionally, our hearing tends to differ by the equivalent of approximately 3 volume notches on a car stereo. (Source: Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax).

Even our senses of smell operate differently. Dr. Sax writes, "In the laboratory Dr. Pamela Dalton and her colleagues exposed men and women to several smells. Not just once, but over and over again. Dr. Dalton and her coworkers found that with repeated exposure, the women's ability to detect the odor improved. How much did it improve: By a factor of 50 percent? Or maybe by 500 percent--a fivefold improvement? No, the average improvement for women was an improvement of 100,000-fold: the women were able to detect the odor at a concentration once 100,000th of the concentration they had noticed at the beginning of the study. The men, on average, showed no improvement at all in their ability to detect the odor."

At the Mutter Museum recently, I saw Einstein's brain. It was unusually small for a man, closer in size to the brain of an average woman. It was also more well connected.

Comments

Asherah

An inscription from Khirbet El-Qôm (near Jerusalem) dated to the 700s BCE and translated by archaeologist Judith Hadley reads, "Uriyahu the Rich wrote it. Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh for from his enemies by his Asherah he has saved him by Oniyahu by his Asherah and by his A[she]rah.” ( Source ) Asherah was the Great Goddess of the Ancient Near East. From this inscription and other evidence, it is surmised that Yahweh, the God of the Jews, once had a wife - Asherah. Asherah was also sometimes known as Astarte and was associated with lions and the planet Venus, like her relative, Ishtar/Inanna. Asherah's symbol was the tree of life, and her worship involved sacred groves and asherah poles. Asherah original painting available through Saatchi Art . Stickers, prints, and other merch available in shop or through RedBubble or Fine Art America. All of the Asherahs in my painting are based on figurines housed in the Isra...

Saint Helena

I generally blame much of the patriarchy in today's society on Abrahamic religion. I recently started reading Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It, by Janina Ramirez, and I was struck by the fact that it was largely women who first brought Christianity to the English speaking world, and who were the early adopters. Even before that time, it is widely believed that it was Helena, the mother of Constantine, who convinced her son, the Roman Emperor, to convert to Christianity. Why, ladies? Today's painting shows Helena, now known as Saint Helena, following her travels to the Holy Land where she built the Church of the Nativity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Church of the Ascension. She's posing with the cross upon which Jesus was crucified, which she located and brought back with her as one of the most sacred relics of Christianity. She has the nails in her outstretched right hand. Helena has been given a position of honor ...

Jowangsin

Jowangsin is a Korean Goddess of fire and the hearth. An offering to Jowangsin in the form of a bowl of fresh water would be placed on an altar above the hearth. Jowangsin had rules for the kitchen. Do not curse while in the hearth. Do not sit on the hearth. Do not place your feet on the hearth. Maintain the cleanliness of the kitchen. You may worship other deities in the kitchen. ( source ) Throw your muddy shoes inside or put them on the hearth, and you will experience her vengeance. She was believed to keep track of household activities and communicate with the heavens. Jowangsin helping with the cooking in a traditional Korean kitchen, circa 1950. Original painting, prints, and merch available in shop or via Fine Art America or Saatchi Art . Left: Women in a kitchen in Korea in 1950. Right: An example of a traditional kitchen in hanok (traditional Korean-style homes) during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). [National Archives of Korea, N...

Cosmic Goddess Eggs

I'm reading The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas. She writes about the abundance of divine feminine figurines found in almost all levels of almost all Neolithic archaeological sites throughout Old Europe. She discusses how exaggerated body parts on these Neolithic figurines express various manifestations of the divine force. For example, “The symbolic value of exaggerated buttocks relates to ... double eggs, where the power of the life giving symbol increases by doubling. Sometimes the artisan molded the buttocks of a figurine on egg-shaped clay cores or pebbles; thus she or he may have felt the interconnectedness of the symbols of buttocks and eggs.” Creation myths around the world, from prehistory to Big Bang quantum science, involve the cosmic egg . Perhaps there were two cosmic eggs. The cosmic Goddess eggs. Cosmic Goddess Eggs original painting and fine art prints available through Saatchi Art . Prints and other merch also a...

Dewi Danu

Dewi Danu is a Balinese water, lake and river Goddess. The form of Hinduism practiced in Bali is also called Agama Tirta, or religion of the water ( source ). The "floating temple" of Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, on the western shore of Lake Bratan, is dedicated to Dewi Danu ( source ). Built in 1633, the temple is used for offerings and ceremonies dedicated to the Goddess, due to the importance of Lake Bratan as a main source of irrigation in central Bali ( source ). In Bali, besides supporting irrigated agriculture, holy water also holds power that can "cleanse spiritual impurities, fend off evil forces, and render the recipient immune to the attacks of negative or demonic forces." "In Indonesian Hindu Dharma, the 4 elements of Nature, or panchamahabhuta (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) are used in all religious rituals. Out of those, Water is the building block of life and of all living beings that are at the mercy of [the] God[dess]" ( source ). Dewi Danu orig...

Sophia and the Apocryphon of John

In 1945, thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by an Egyptian farmer near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt. These early Christian texts date from the 3rd century CE, and include writings attributed to John the Baptist. The writings of John became known as the Secret Book of John, or the Apocryphon of John. A translation by Frederik Wisse can be read online . In the Apocryphon, there is a female counterpart to the Father - the holy Mother, Barbelo. "She is the forethought of the All - her light shines like his light - the perfect power... The first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory in the aeons, the glory of the revelation... she became the womb of everything, for it is she who is prior to them all, the Mother-Father." I became aware of the Apocryphon of John after reading a graphic novel by Marisa Acocella, The Big She-Bang, The Herstory of the Universe According to God the Mother (highly recommended, by ...

Echoing Multiverse

Search This Blog