Hip Glossary: Goddess

A goddess is a female deity, in contrast with a male deity known as a "god". Many cultures have goddesses, sometimes alone, but more often as part of a larger pantheon that includes both the conventional genders and in some cases even hermaphrodite deities. As the concept of monotheism and polytheism is relativistic, so the related concepts of god and goddess can to be culturally misunderstood. The concept of gender as applied to a god and goddess, may to connote deeper tendencies of patriarchy and matriarchy, which may to have equivalence to the rift between monotheism and polytheism. The goddess concept is advocated by modern matriarchs and pantheists as a female version of or analogue to god (i.e., the Abrahamic god), who in the feminism and in other circles is perceived as being rooted in the patriarchal concept of dominance — to the exclusion of feminine concepts. The feminine-masculine relationship between deifications is sometimes rooted in the monism, ("One-ism") rather than through a definitive and rigid concept of monotheism versus polytheism, wherein the goddess and god are seen as the genders of one transcendental monad.