matrilineal

There is a small wooden viewing tower, and pamphlets from the State of Ohio, but they focus on facts__or instance, the Serpent Mound is as long as four football fields__ot 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 __hat 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__ntil 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__ goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory.