By Dr. Adnan Bozan

Introduction:
Since the first time humanity inscribed symbols on cave walls, woman was never merely a biological being in human consciousness. Rather, she was a cosmic symbol rich in meaning, her physical presence transcended by layers of concepts: creation and death, nature and emotion, wisdom and seduction, chaos and order.

Mythology, as the foundational narrative of ancient cultures, served as the earliest mirror reflecting a people's understanding of themselves, the universe, and their relationship with the sacred and the forbidden. Within these foundational texts, woman emerges as one of the oldest and most controversial symbols—interpreted, revered, or feared across civilizations. She is the Mother Goddess in Eastern mythologies, the alluring beauty in Greek legends, the priestess-seeress in Celtic traditions, and also the wrathful, capricious force bearing either destruction or healing.

Tracing the image of woman in both Eastern and Western mythologies aims not only to revisit ancient tales, but to deconstruct the symbolic structures upon which societies were built. It seeks to reveal how these representations were employed to either establish specific roles for women or to exclude them from others.

Eastern mythology, steeped in spirituality and fertility, often portrayed woman as the origin of existence—a creative force and a source of knowledge. In contrast, Western mythology, grounded in the dualities of good and evil, mind and body, often depicted woman as a force of chaos or an inevitable curse, such as in the tale of Pandora who opened the box, or Medusa who turned all who gazed upon her into stone.

This study, therefore, is not limited to a comparison of mythological symbols, but delves into the deeper cultural structures, striving to answer fundamental questions:

• Why was woman sanctified in one civilization, and cursed in another?
• What makes the womb a symbol of fertility in the East, and a symbol of sin in the West?
• Was woman in mythology a victim of patriarchal imagination? Or was she the vessel through which the sacred entered life?

In light of these questions, this research undertakes a comprehensive comparative study between Eastern and Western myths, analyzing feminine symbols, modes of presence, and their transformations over time. It seeks to understand how the image of woman was culturally constructed in the collective imagination, and how mythology played a role in either reinforcing or resisting this image.

Chapter One: The Theoretical and Methodological Framework

• Definition of mythology and its function in shaping collective consciousness and culture.
• The significance of the feminine presence in myth.
• Methodological approach: symbolic-cultural comparison, narrative analysis, anthropological and critical tools.

Mythology and Woman: Between Symbol and Culture

A scholar examining the representations of women in mythology cannot begin from a vacuum. Mythical narrative is not a mere tale to entertain; it is a metaphysical mirror reflecting humanity’s earliest conceptions of itself and the universe. It outlines the symbolic map upon which roles, identities, and meanings are distributed. As a language preceding philosophy, science, and the state, myth is the first attempt of humankind to interpret its own existence and to define its place in the cosmos, its relationship to nature, to the gods, and to the sacred.

In this sense, mythology holds a central position as the original structure shaping collective consciousness and framing the cultural values that would later solidify into religious, moral, and social systems. Among the most prominent elements of this symbolic structure is woman—not merely as a narrative character, but as a cosmic symbol of dense significance, where the body intersects with metaphysics, mystery with truth, desire with authority.

The representation of woman in myth is never neutral—it is a cultural act containing ancient societies' visions of femininity, creation, and the boundaries between the sacred and the profane. These representations, as this chapter will demonstrate, mirror the internal tensions of collective consciousness, the interplays between power and symbol, between imagination and social order.

This chapter thus provides the theoretical and methodological foundation of the entire study. It will:

• Define mythology not as fiction, but as a system of meaning.
• Analyze its role in shaping culture, identity, and gender roles.
• Explore woman’s position in the mythological structure as a cultural construct that goes beyond reality to reshape it.
• Finally, present the methodological framework of the research, encompassing symbolic and cultural analysis, and the comparative study between East and West.

This introduction is more than a preamble—it is an invitation to delve deeper into how meaning is formed, and how symbols were used to define woman’s role—whether as a divine creator or a threat to be subdued.

Mythology, ultimately, is not just about what the myth says, but what the society hides within its symbols.

I. Mythology: Concept and Cultural Function

Mythology is not merely a collection of ancient tales told to children, as some may think, but a complex symbolic system that reflects the deep structures of culture, society, and the collective unconscious. At its core, mythology is not just the study of myths; it is a system of meaning, a worldview forged over centuries of symbolic accumulation and interaction between human beings and the cosmos, between reason and imagination, between reality and metaphysics.

It is the first language by which humanity attempted to comprehend its existence. Before science and philosophy, myth was the symbol of the unknown. It sought to answer the greatest existential questions:

• Who are we?
• Where did we come from?
• What is death?
• What is love?
• What is justice?
• Who brings the rain? Why does lightning strike the sky?

Hence, mythology’s function goes far beyond explanation. It serves to shape cultural identity, codify values, legitimize power, encode gender roles, and communicate humanity’s vision of itself. Every myth is a mirror of its society—exposing its power dynamics, its religion, its class structures, its dreams, and its fears.

Moreover, mythology is one of the primary tools through which collective consciousness has been formed, a symbolic system organizing the relationship between humanity and the world, giving form to the sacred in a way that can be understood and engaged with.

II. Woman in Myth: From Cosmic Womb to the Image of Chaos

Woman’s presence in mythology is not incidental—she is one of the oldest and most symbolically rich figures. From the dawn of myth-making, woman has been associated with creation, fertility, water, earth, the moon, emotion, and mystery. It is thus no surprise that the earliest deities in many ancient cultures were feminine, not male.

In ancient Eastern civilizations, woman was synonymous with the cosmic womb. The Mother Goddess was the primal creator, the giver of life, and the one who always returns from death.

• In Sumer and Babylon, Inanna and Ishtar symbolized love, war, and fertility.
• In Egypt, Isis was the cosmic mother, protector of mysteries, whose tears renewed the Nile each year.
• In ancient Iran, Anahita was the Lady of Water and Purity.

Yet mythology did not only portray woman in her life-giving aspect; she also appeared as seductive, terrifying, and destructive. Across religious and social shifts, her image oscillated between sacred and profane, between creator and temptress, shame and beauty. In the West, she appeared as a source of temptation for gods and men alike:

• Pandora, who opened the box of evil.
• Medusa, who turned men to stone.
• Lilith, who defied Adam and left paradise.

Thus, the female presence in mythology was not a mere reflection of reality—it was a symbolic production expressing woman’s place in cultural, psychological, and political systems. Each mythological image of woman established her social status and redefined her roles in politics, religion, sexuality, and family.

III. Methodological Framework of the Study

Given the complexity of this research—which analyzes a culturally charged symbol like “woman” in two vastly different civilizational contexts, East and West—the adopted methodology is comparative, analytical, and multi-dimensional. It integrates four main levels:

1. Symbolic-Cultural Approach

This method starts from the premise that myth is not just a tale but a cultural symbol revealing the subconscious depths of the society that produced it. Female figures are analyzed as cultural representations conveying concepts of femininity, nature, power, and danger. Symbols like the mother, the witch, the virgin, the seductress, the goddess—each carries meanings that shift across time and space.

2. Narrative Analysis

This approach is used to examine the structure of myth and the roles played by female characters:

• What is her position in the story?
• Is she an agent or a passive figure?
• Is she central or peripheral?
• Is she granted voice and desire, or reduced to an instrument of fate or male longing?

3. Cultural Anthropology

This method ties mythological symbols to the social, religious, and historical context of their origin. A myth cannot be read in isolation from its environment. Woman’s image in an agrarian society differs vastly from her image in a warrior culture, and likewise between patriarchal and matriarchal societies.

4. Feminist Critique (Implicitly Employed)

This method informs the analysis of how woman is represented in myth: Were these representations tools of a male-dominated worldview aiming to control femininity as a symbol of danger and mystery? Or was woman an active creator of myth? These questions are posed with rigor and without succumbing to simplification or ideological reductionism.

Conclusion

Mythology is not a lifeless archive of old tales tucked away in museums or consumed as obsolete literature. It is a symbolic cartography of human cultural and cognitive formation—a primal existential laboratory where humanity forged provisional meanings for life, and where it constructed its first image of self, cosmos, the unknown, and the “Other.”

If mythology is a cosmic narrative shaping our understanding of the world, then woman lies at the very heart of this narrative—not as a secondary figure, but as an interpretive key to the cultural essence of being. She was not merely a character in the myth but a symbolic condensation through which ancient humans projected their existential tensions, ethical codes, and their fears of creation and death, body and soul, pleasure and sin, fertility and ruin.

In the female womb, humankind saw the first image of creation; in the female body, it perceived mystery and temptation; in her silence, it saw sacred secrets; and in her rebellion, it feared the collapse of cosmic order.

Thus, the image of woman in mythology is not a clear reflection of reality, but the outcome of a long symbolic conflict between desire and fear, between the need for fertility and the fear of chaos, between the glorification of femininity as cosmic force and its marginalization as an enigmatic threat.

To study woman in mythology is, at its core, to deconstruct the original structure of human consciousness—its view of self and other, of power and longing, of the sacred and the forbidden. This research, therefore, seeks not only to document mythological images of woman, but to understand the cultural structures that produced them, the social contexts that reproduced them, and the symbolic functions that turned woman into either a goddess to be worshiped or a being to be condemned.

Ultimately, myth cannot be understood without interpreting its symbols, and its symbols cannot be interpreted without pausing deeply at the image of woman. There, in the heart of the myth, woman pulses as a symbolic being who both founds and challenges existence—carrying life and death within the same womb, and embodying the eternal struggle between human and shadow.

This study, rooted in a broad methodological foundation, seeks to understand representations of woman in mythology—not as simple reflections of reality, but as symbolic structures that helped shape that very reality. It will deconstruct these symbols and compare them across East and West to achieve a deeper understanding of the relationship between woman and symbol, myth and power, mythology and culture.

Eastern Mythologies: Sumerian – Babylonian – Assyrian – Canaanite – Egyptian – Persian – Indian – Kurdish

• The Mother Goddesses (Ishtar/Inanna, Isis, Anahita…)

• Woman as a symbol of fertility, nature, life, and death

• The sorceress, the seer, the priestess, the rebel

• Dualities: the woman as sacred/profane, good/evil (e.g., Lilith or Tiamat)

• Woman as a link between human and divine realms

The Female as a Cosmic Origin and Driver of Existence

The image of woman in Eastern mythology cannot be understood outside the deep civilizational and metaphysical context that produced it. Unlike many later Western traditions, Eastern mythology did not separate matter from spirit, nor woman from the cosmos. The feminine was at the core of cosmic creation—considered the womb of existence, the origin of life, and a manifestation of the universal powers.

In these mythologies, woman was never reduced to mere biology or a social function. She was a complete symbolic structure embodying concepts such as Earth, fertility, nature, cyclical time, and the underworld. Her image was interwoven with that of the goddess and with the very concept of life itself. In fact, one could argue that ancient Eastern man could not conceive of life outside the image of the feminine—whether as the Great Mother, the sacred lover, the wise enchantress, or the dual embodiment of life and death.

Eastern mythologies—Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Kurdish—are rich with depictions of women who create, rule, rebel, and breathe life into fields, rivers, and stars. These archetypes were not mere ornamental elements added to mythic narratives; they were the original text through which ideas of power, nature, divinity, and gender relations were expressed and interpreted.

When Inanna emerged in Sumer, she wasn’t just the goddess of love and war—she embodied the cosmic paradox: life and death, creation and destruction, beauty and rage, sacred and profane. When Isis wept in Egypt, the Nile overflowed, and the land became fertile. When Ishtar descended into the underworld, life halted, births ceased, and the doors of love were shut.

These are not merely tales—they are symbolic codes expressing the perceived reality of women in the Eastern imagination: the soft, silent force driving existence without dominating it; the unseen source of creation and eternity; the cosmic cradle from which life flows—and into which it returns.

It is especially noteworthy that in Eastern mythology, women are typically portrayed as active, self-willed, and full of desire, intention, and cunning—not passive recipients of fate, as they often appear in many Western traditions. She loves, betrays, weeps, avenges, and resurrects—yet never loses her sacred stature. This integral presence of the woman reflects a cosmic vision that does not divide reality into harsh dichotomies—mind and body, good and evil, man and woman—but rather sees all contradictions unified in the feminine womb.

This chapter will take us on a journey through key Eastern myths in which the woman is not merely the subject of the narrative, but its voice and heartbeat. We begin with the Mother Goddesses of Sumer and Babylon—Ishtar, Isis, Anahita—and move through to Indian and Kurdish mythologies, where the feminine is present in every facet of nature and destiny. We will also examine the moments of decline, as patriarchal tendencies began to rise—turning goddesses into wives, lovers, or shadows of male deities.

Yet even with this decline, the Eastern woman did not vanish from myth. She wore new masks—becoming the sorceress, the oracle, the savior, or the martyr. Thus, her presence remained not only sacred but resistant—defiant of time, oblivion, and male supremacy.

Accordingly, this chapter will not merely analyze female symbols but will uncover the cultural, religious, and symbolic logic that granted the woman such centrality—and explore why her status later waned, and how she remained subtly present within the Eastern collective imagination.

1) Woman in Ancient Eastern Mythologies: Between Goddess and Cosmic Symbol

Most ancient Eastern mythologies agree on a central symbolic principle: the feminine is not a biological detail, but a cosmic essence—a central symbol of creation and renewal. In these myths, woman is not secondary or derivative; she is the mythic agent par excellence, who initiates the story, guides destiny, and embodies the cosmic unity of life and death, time and cycles, nature and spirit. These ideas are expressed through a vast range of symbols, most notably:

✦ 1. The Mother Goddesses: Femininity as Cosmic Origin

▫ Inanna / Ishtar (Sumerian – Babylonian Mythology):
Inanna, later known as Ishtar, is one of the oldest divine female archetypes in human history. She was the goddess of love, fertility, war, the heavens, sexuality, and death. Her seeming contradiction—love and destruction, sex and war—reflects the dual nature of the feminine in Eastern mythology: simultaneously creator and destroyer, lover and warrior, nurturer and avenger.

In her descent to the underworld, Inanna strips herself of her garments and power, confronts death, and returns—symbolizing the cosmic cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and establishing the feminine as the entity that governs time itself.

▫ Isis (Egyptian Mythology):
Isis reassembled the dismembered body of her slain husband Osiris, breathed life into him, and conceived Horus, who would avenge his father. She represents the universal mother, magic, loyalty, protection, and esoteric knowledge. She combines strength and compassion, wisdom and mystery, love and sacrifice.

Associated with water, tears, the moon, and the Nile’s fertility, Isis became the archetype of a woman capable of restoring cosmic order through love, magic, and sacrifice.

▫ Anahita (Persian – Zoroastrian Mythology):
Anahita is the goddess of waters, purity, and fertility—a river deity and healer. Worshipped as the source of life, she was linked to the moon and stars, and to the feminine lunar cycle. She embodies woman as a source of purity, regeneration, and cosmic cleansing—but also a warrior who protects and fights for justice.

▫ The Divine Feminine in Indian Mythology:
In Hinduism, numerous manifestations of the goddess reflect the principle of Shakti—the feminine cosmic energy animating the universe.

• Lakshmi: Goddess of beauty, prosperity, and abundance

• Parvati: Goddess of motherhood and devotion

• Durga and Kali: Fierce, warrior goddesses who destroy evil

These figures portray femininity as infinite power, blending mercy with destruction, preserving cosmic balance through creative chaos.

▫ The Feminine in Kurdish Mythology:
Though less widely recorded, Kurdish myths contain figures like Khaney Khatoon, Zin, Birevan, and Khanzad, representing sacred femininity, wisdom, and luminous love. Even the tale of Kawa the Blacksmith, the revolutionary hero, attributes his triumph to a grieving mother who fed her children through tears and patience—symbolizing the woman as a vessel of endurance, pain, and birth.

✦ 2. Woman as a Symbol of Fertility, Nature, Life, and Death

In Eastern mythology, the Earth was female. The river was female. The moon, the night—female. Everything that holds, nurtures, transforms, and brings forth life was inherently feminine.

• In Sumer, the Earth was “Ninhursag”—the Mountain Lady, the primordial mother

• In Canaan, “Anat” governed agricultural cycles and revived the land

• In Egypt, “Nut,” the sky goddess, swallowed the sun at dusk and birthed it at dawn

Femininity was cyclical time itself. Woman embodied dawn and rain, tears and harvest, death and rebirth—all at once.

✦ 3. The Sorceress, Seer, Priestess, and Rebel

The woman wasn’t always a lofty goddess. She also appeared as the priestess, the seer, the mystic, the rebellious sorceress who defied the gods and men alike.

• Inanna seduced gods and kings and wielded spells and secrets known only to her

• Lilith, in Mesopotamian lore, refused to submit to Adam, rebelled, and left paradise

• Kali, the black-bodied Hindu goddess, danced on corpses and destroyed illusions—not to punish, but to liberate the soul

These portrayals do not diminish woman’s status—they show her as a boundary-breaking force threatening male-dominated order, a portal to mystery, prophecy, and hidden truths.

✦ 4. Dualities: Sacred vs. Profane, Good vs. Evil

Eastern mythology, though venerating woman, was not without contradictions. The woman often appeared in stark dualities—goddess and demoness, lover and seductress, light and shadow.

• Tiamat (Babylonian Myth): the primordial sea goddess of chaos, slain by male gods to establish order—her body used to form the heavens and Earth. This symbolizes woman’s transformation from a divine force to raw material

• Lilith: The rebellious woman turned into a demon because she would not conform

These dualities reflect not just moral struggles, but society’s fear of the independent, self-knowing woman—her ability to create outside patriarchal structures.

✦ 5. Woman as a Link Between Humans and Gods

In nearly all Eastern mythologies, woman was the intermediary between the human and the divine. She guarded secrets, birthed prophets, received visions, and channeled divine inspiration.

• In Babylon, priestesses spoke on behalf of the gods

• In Egypt, women served in temples and received prophecies

• In India, Shiva only manifests through union with Shakti—feminine energy

The feminine is not only creative—it is the vessel of secret knowledge, spiritual perception, and the threshold between the visible and the invisible.

✦ Conclusion

Eastern mythologies show that woman was never marginal to the story—she was the story. She appeared as goddess, earth, tear, and war. In every form, she retained her symbolic essence: the creation that carries death, the light that cloaks shadow, the love that births worlds.

Woman in these mythologies is the cosmos embodied. Every reading of myth that omits her is incomplete. She is not in the myth—she is the myth.

Her sacredness does not stem solely from childbirth, but from her role in remaking the world from its ashes. She knows what cannot be said, senses what cannot be seen, and opens gates of knowledge no man dares approach. In Eastern mythology, woman is not just the beginning—she is time itself: revolving like the moon, blooming like spring, fading like dusk, returning like dawn.

Despite the later patriarchal overlay, Eastern myth could not erase her. It simply reimagined her—first as grieving mother, then as waiting lover, then as seer of doom. To analyze her image is to deconstruct the roots of power, knowledge, and identity in ancient Eastern consciousness.

The woman in Eastern mythology was more than a mythical figure. She was a mirror of the human vision of the cosmos—and the cosmos gazing back through a woman’s face. She was not merely the first word of the mythic text—she was the very language in which it was written. Every fertile field, every sky-born rain, every rebirth from ashes was attributed to her—not because she was a symbol, but because she was life, made legend.

• Greco-Roman, Norse, and Celtic Mythology:

• The Olympian Goddesses: Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis.

• Woman in the Odyssey and Iliad: Between loyalty and deceit.

• Female symbolism in Norse myths: Frigg, Hel, and warrior women.

• The seductive / fatal / fateful woman (e.g., Medusa, Circe, Pandora).

• Women as vessels of divine wrath or gifts to the gods.

(Between Feminine Seduction and the Sin of Knowledge)

If woman in Eastern mythology embodied a cosmic center—manifesting earth, water, fertility, and time—her presence in Western mythology, though symbolically deep, took on a different structure and meaning. In the Western narrative, woman is situated in a structure of tension: between creation and sin, beauty and destruction, body and mind, desire and punishment. She is rarely the source of life itself, but more often the fracture point, the moment when chaos erupts or damnation begins.

Western mythology—whether Greco-Roman, Norse, or Judeo-Christian—features a stark dualism, where woman is often held responsible for the original catastrophe, or cast as the driving force behind the collapse of cosmic or moral order. While woman in the East symbolized fertile land and flowing waters, she is in the West a sealed box of evils, or a being who tempts gods or men and earns punishment.

In Greek myth, woman is bound to her enchanting beauty that leads to ruin, her wisdom that turns to cunning, or her body that seduces, corrupts, and is ultimately punished. Although these myths give us strong female figures—Athena and Artemis, for instance—they also cast others as responsible for destruction:

• Pandora, who opened the box.

• Helen, whose beauty sparked the Trojan War.

• Medusa, who became the image of a woman to be slain in order to restore order.

• Aphrodite, goddess of love, yet closely tied to deceit and seduction.

In Western religious tradition, woman emerges from the very beginning as the origin of sin:

• Eve, who ate the fruit and brought the Fall.

• Lilith, who defied Adam and refused submission, and in Jewish tradition became a demon, not a free woman.

These portrayals are not merely poetic or theological fantasies. They arise from a cultural structure that opposes mind (male) to body (female), assigns chaos to the feminine, and casts woman as "the other" who must be controlled to maintain ethical, religious, or political order.

In this chapter, we explore woman’s representations in Western mythology through several lenses:

• How is woman portrayed as a symbol of hidden danger behind beauty?

• How is she reduced to body, or transformed into an object of fear or scorn?

• Conversely, how does she appear as goddess, priestess, or warrior—symbols of resistance to patriarchal structure?

• And how can these images be understood in light of the deep tension between soul and body, knowledge and sin?

These questions will lead us to a critical reading of female symbols in Greco-Roman myths, and to an analysis of the woman’s narrative in monotheistic Western religions, pausing at the binaries that shaped her image:

• Sacred / Defiled

• Virgin / Seductress

• Wise / Witch

• Pure / Sinful

This chapter does not aim to retell the myths, but to deconstruct the symbolic framework that produced the Western image of woman—why she shifted from goddess to demon, from oracle to burned witch, from beloved to eternal curse.

In doing so, we move from the Eastern myth, which celebrates femininity as a cosmic mystery, to the Western myth, which casts it under suspicion, binding it to seduction, sin, and death. Yet even within these patriarchal structures, Western mythology hides a silent feminine rebellion, whispering between the lines that woman was, and remains, the first and last story in every myth.

1. Woman as a Symbol of Danger Disguised as Beauty:

Seduction as a Weapon of Destruction

At the heart of Western mythology lies a disturbing notion: feminine beauty is not merely a blessing, but a threat—an alluring trap that destabilizes order. Beauty here is not a virtue, but a dangerous force masked by grace. This idea surfaces repeatedly in myths, where the beautiful woman causes catastrophe, war, or ruin:

• Helen in the Iliad becomes “the face that launched a thousand ships”—her beauty inciting a blood-soaked war.

• Pandora, the first woman, was created to be irresistibly beautiful, yet carried doom inside her.

• Circe and Medusa, though embodiments of extraordinary beauty, bring death in their wake.

These figures represent what might be called beautiful danger: the woman does not strike directly but entices, deceives, and topples the hero—not by the sword, but by a glance. She is not an enemy in battle, but a breach in the hero’s armor. Thus, female beauty in Western myth becomes a symbol of original sin, the fatal flaw of human nature, and death wrapped in honey.

2. Reduction of Woman to the Body: Fear, Contempt, and Erasure

In most Western myths, woman is rarely portrayed as an independent intellect or spirit. She is often reduced to body—a subject of desire, a source of temptation, or a vessel for reproduction. This reduction recurs in many forms:

• Women are presented as prizes at the end of wars or quests—not as heroes.

• They are raped by gods (Zeus being a prime offender), and yet punished themselves—not the perpetrators.

• A woman who defies her role is demonized (Medusa, Lilith), or condemned simply for her femininity (Pandora, whose only crime was curiosity).

Even in religious tradition (Judaism and Christianity), the woman is tightly linked to sin: Eve eats the apple, causing humanity’s fall; Lilith defies male authority and is exiled from creation.
The woman becomes bearer of original guilt, source of moral decay, and thus must be controlled, subdued, or expelled from the public sphere.

This produces a dual image:

• On one side, a desired body.

• On the other, a condemned body.
  In both cases, there is no space for woman as mind or self.

3. Woman as Goddess, Priestess, or Warrior: Symbolic Resistance to Patriarchy

Despite these restrictions, Western mythology does include powerful feminine images that express deep resistance to subjugation. Among these:

▫ Wise or Independent Goddesses:

• Athena, though born from Zeus’s head, embodies intelligence and strategic thought.

• Artemis, insisting on virginity and independence, lives on the margins of male authority.

• Calypso and Circe, the enchantresses of the Odyssey, command power, transformation, and obedience from heroes.

▫ Priestesses and Oracles:

• In some traditions, only women possess the gift of prophecy and future sight.

• The priestess connects with the divine, interpreting signs, becoming a bridge between human and sacred—a bearer of meaning and knowledge.

▫ Norse Valkyries:

• Women who do not seduce, but fight.

• They decide who dies and who lives eternally.

• They are not objects of desire, but judges of war and fate.

These images, though not dominant in mythic discourse, form a counter-symbolic layer—redefining femininity as a force unto itself, not an instrument. They may well be distant echoes of ancient Eastern matriarchal mythology, striving to survive within a distinctly patriarchal narrative.

4. Woman Between Soul and Body, Knowledge and Sin

Western mythology is built on a deadly binary: soul vs. body, reason vs. desire, purity vs. seduction. Woman is typically assigned to the side of body, desire, and sin, while man claims soul, reason, and virtue. This structure turns woman into a mirror for society’s conflicts with body, knowledge, and authority.

• The knowledge Eve (or Pandora) acquired led to exile from paradise.

• The beautiful body became the gateway to ruin (Helen, Circe, Aphrodite).

• Desire is always framed as sin—not love or life.

Thus, woman becomes the threshold:

• Between heaven and earth.

• Between innocence and fall.

• Between human and divine.

She is not evil by nature, but she is always the site where catastrophe begins—just as the earth is the source of earthquakes, Pandora’s box the source of evil, and the apple the source of the Fall.

Conclusion:

Western mythology reveals a profound fear of unbound femininity. Every woman who refuses submission is fought: Medusa is killed, Lilith exiled, Pandora cursed, Eve expelled.
Yet even within these frameworks, female figures whisper a quiet resistance—insisting that woman is not reducible to body or sin, but remains the key to creation, the mystery of the unknown, and a co-partner in existence.

Let me know if you’d like this formatted as a book chapter, academic paper, or visual presentation.

So, the Woman in Western Mythology

✦ First: The Olympian Goddesses – Symbols of Power, Body, and Sovereignty
(Athena – Hera – Aphrodite – Artemis)

In Greek mythology, the Olympian goddesses represent a complex face of femininity: a sacred femininity, but one conditioned by the patriarchal structure of Olympus. Each goddess symbolizes a specific dimension of womanhood—mind, love, body, virginity, jealousy, control, and revenge. Yet, even the greatest of these goddesses are presented within a symbolic framework that does not grant them full autonomy. They remain, in some form, tied to men—whether as father, lover, or rival.

▫ Athena:
Goddess of wisdom, just war, and the arts. Born fully armed from Zeus’s head, without a mother—an image rich in symbolism: a woman not born of a female womb, but from the mind of a male god, as if she is a de-sexed wisdom, or a rationalized femininity that poses no threat to the patriarchal order.

Despite her power, Athena remains a virgin, fighting alongside men but never offering her body or emotions. She is the disembodied woman, embodying the masculine side of femininity. In war, she sides with logic and strategy over emotion and often supports male heroes while framing the role of other women within the logic of male power.

▫ Hera:
Goddess of marriage and royalty, and wife of Zeus. She appears as the jealous wife, protector of the household, but at her core, she is a woman constrained by the authority of her domineering, unfaithful husband, who betrays her with mortals and goddesses alike.

Hera does not retaliate against Zeus, but against the women he cheats with, reflecting a transformation of female rage into internal conflict among women rather than a confrontation with the source of patriarchal power.

▫ Aphrodite:
Goddess of love, beauty, and desire. Born from sea foam after Cronos castrated his father Uranus, she emerges as a product of violence, yet carries the allure of life and the body. Aphrodite embodies pure physical femininity—lust and seduction—but is often treated with contempt in myths, blamed for chaos and viewed as a shallow being.

This reflects the ancient Western paradox toward femininity: it is revered as beauty and condemned as sin.

▫ Artemis:
Goddess of the hunt, virginity, and wild nature. A free woman, she rejects men and despises marriage. Yet her independence is not portrayed as conscious rebellion, but as withdrawal from the world. She thus represents a strange duality: feminine power that is non-maternal and non-sexual.

Artemis is the woman who rejects physical femininity to remain outside the logic of subjugation—but also outside the logic of participation.

✦ Second: Woman in the Iliad and the Odyssey: Between Loyalty and Deceit

In the Iliad and the Odyssey, women are active characters within the narrative, but always framed within a masculine heroic-ethical code.

▫ Helen – the beautiful woman / the curse
She is described as the most beautiful woman in the world, but her beauty becomes the cause of a ten-year war—Troy. She is either abducted or elopes with Paris, and thousands fight over her. Helen lacks clear will: at times she is fearful, at others in love, and then regretful. She represents the woman who is punished for loving, who is desired and thus targeted.

She is the irresistible beauty—yet a destructive fate.

▫ Penelope – the faithful wife
Wife of Odysseus, who waited twenty years for his return, rejecting countless suitors, weaving her loom by day and unraveling it by night. She is portrayed as the "virtuous" woman, but also described as cunning and clever, navigating a world of desiring men.

She protects herself through wit, not power—a recurring image of women in Western mythology.

✦ Third: Woman in Norse Mythology
(Between Fate, Winter, and Blood)

Norse mythology presents a darker worldview—and the woman within it is no exception. The world is built from bones, and even the gods know they will die in the end. Within this framework, the woman appears as a fateful being—one no one can control, but who also shows no mercy.

▫ Frigg:
Wife of Odin, the chief god. Known for her wisdom, she foresaw the death of her son Baldr but could not prevent it. She is the mother who knows her children’s fate but is powerless before destiny.

She symbolizes the woman who sees but does not intervene—representing the boundary between knowledge and silence.

▫ Hel:
Goddess of the underworld, daughter of Loki. Her face is half-beautiful and half-dead. She rules over the dead who did not die heroically. She represents the fear of the woman who dwells at the threshold between life and death. Her dual face embodies the woman/fate dichotomy.

▫ Valkyries:
Warrior women who choose who dies in battle and carry the souls of heroes to Valhalla. They are not lovers or mothers, but priestesses of war who determine destiny.

They represent a form of femininity that decides who is worthy of immortality—without being a sexual or romantic object.

✦ Fourth: The Enchantress / Temptress / Fateful Woman

▫ Pandora:
The first woman, created from clay by the order of Zeus as punishment to mankind. She is given a box containing all evils, which she opens out of curiosity—releasing disease, death, hatred… Only “hope” remains inside.

Pandora represents the curious woman who disobeys and corrupts the world through her pursuit of knowledge. She is later mirrored by Eve in Christian tradition. She is the woman as cause, as temptation, as sin.

▫ Medusa:
Once a beautiful woman, she was raped in Athena’s temple. Athena then turned her into a monster with snakes for hair and eyes that turn men to stone. She was killed by beheading, and her head used as a weapon.

She is the woman transformed from victim to demon, from seductress to destroyer.

▫ Circe:
An enchantress who lures men and transforms them into animals. In the Odyssey, she falls in love with Odysseus. But at her core, she symbolizes the woman capable of dismantling male identity, reshaping or destroying it.

A woman irresistible and inexplicable.

✦ Fifth: Women as Tools of Wrath and Gifts to the Gods

Many women in Western mythology are used as tools within conflicts between gods and men. Women are not decision-makers, but instruments of punishment, rewards, or bait.

• Helen is given to Paris by Aphrodite in a divine contest, sparking a cosmic war.

• Pandora is sent as punishment.

• Women are granted to heroes as prizes—not partners.

• Numerous female characters are raped by male gods (Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo), with the victims often blamed or transformed into trees, birds, or stone.

This dynamic portrays the woman not as subject, but as object—a tool within the power games of men, be they gods or heroes.

✦ Conclusion
Woman in Western mythology is a complex figure, living in a double symbolic space—suspended between reverence and degradation, cosmic glory and eternal fall. Goddesses such as Athena and Aphrodite represent immense symbolic powers—wisdom, war, love, nature—but these powers are rarely given to women as independent agency. Rather, they are confined within defined limits: as adornment, support, or punishment.

The power women possess in these myths is not one of free action but is conditioned by male narratives and enclosed within the Olympian structure ruled by a dominant father-god.

Outside the realm of goddesses, the situation is harsher. Most women in these myths are merely instruments of fate they do not control, tools in battles they do not choose, and bodies that are worshipped only to be punished, desired only to be condemned. They are given as prizes, kidnapped for pleasure, blamed for faults, and burned as sins. Worst of all, woman is often the origin of ruin in the story—the center of moral or cosmic collapse: Pandora who opened the box, Eve who ate the fruit, Helen who caused the war, Medusa who turned men to stone.

What unfolds from this mythological structure is a deep-rooted tendency in ancient Western culture to demonize femininity—or at least to confine it within symbolic masks: virgin, witch, temptress, mother… All of them are roles that ultimately prevent woman from being what she is: a fully autonomous symbolic and existential being.

Yet despite the fear embedded in these texts toward women, femininity in these myths is not fully defeated. Some symbolic figures have endured through time and represent a hidden voice of resistance—a faint whisper of freedom, a covert will to rebel. Athena with her rational silence, Artemis in her rejection of men, Circe in her irresistible magic, and the Valkyries in their control over fate—all embody shades of a suppressed desire to redefine femininity as a power not bound by guilt or reduced to the body.

Reading Western mythology critically reveals not only past perceptions of woman, but also the collective male unconscious and its existential anxiety toward the being that resists easy subjugation. Woman in these myths is not merely the “other” of man—she is his dark mirror, reflecting his weakness, his lust, his death, and his limitations.

Thus, mythology does not exclude woman so much as it condemns itself through its representations of her. The desire to control femininity, to enclose it within rigid binaries (virgin/sinner, goddess/witch), is but a fear of diversity—and of a being that defies fixed identity.

In closing this chapter, we face a pressing question:
Was Western mythology truly telling the woman’s story?
Or was it telling man’s story about woman?
Or was it trying to tame femininity by encrypting it into symbols charged with fear, wonder, and desire?

This question finds its answer only through comparison: when we turn to Eastern mythology, we discover alternative narratives and models of woman—no less mysterious, but infused with an older and deeper cosmic vision that sees woman not as the fall, but as the source of creation.

Thus, what we aim to explore next, in the comparative chapter, is not merely the contrast between the image of woman in East and West—but the contrast between two symbolic systems, two worldviews, and two cultural structures: one patriarchal and authoritarian, the other matriarchal and primordial, hidden beneath the layers of myth.

Yet what is most striking is that this mythological portrayal of woman—despite its tendency to marginalize or objectify—was not without cracks. Symbolic fissures through which dormant feminine voices whisper, trying to breathe beneath the male-dominated narrative rubble. When woman appears as the goddess who knows, or the sorceress who reshapes the world, or the warrior who determines fates—she is not merely an image in a frame, but a sign of silent resistance stretching back to the first myth.

This resistance is not always a scream or an overt rebellion—but a structural whisper at the heart of the text, declaring that femininity cannot be fully contained, nor erased from the story. Thus, the symbolic image of woman in Western mythology does not merely reflect her social status—it reveals the structural anxiety of Western culture toward woman as a being that defies ultimate classification, that belongs neither entirely to purity nor fully to sin.

One could say that woman in these myths, even when demonized or condemned, retains an indelible symbolic allure—because she embodies the paradox of existence: she gives life, but is condemned for desire; holds wisdom, yet is feared for temptation; possesses a body, yet cannot be possessed. This paradox is what renders femininity, in the mythological Western unconscious, a mysterious force completed only through contradiction.

Therefore, reading these texts is not about passing moral judgment, but about deconstructing the symbolic structure that produced them, and analyzing the cultural struggles they conceal—over body, knowledge, desire, and power. These themes become even clearer when contrasted with another model: the model of the ancient East, where woman takes on a different role—not because she is free of contradictions, but because she occupies the center of the myth, not its margin—and is summoned as creation, not sin.

Chapter Four: Shared and Contradictory Symbolic Patterns

• The Mother/Creator Woman vs. the Destructive/Seductive Woman

• Recurring Symbols: the “Serpent,” the “Moon,” “Fertility,” “Fire,” “Blood”

• Cultural Intersections: Did certain symbols originate in the East and spread to the West—or vice versa?

• The Concept of the “Cosmic Feminine” or the “Sacred Woman”

(The Feminine Between Creation and Destruction—Between Cosmic Symbol and Collective Fear)

When read at a deep symbolic level, mythology is not merely a repository of ancient tales, nor simply an archive of collective imagination. It forms a substructure for human cultural and existential consciousness—a symbolic mirror through which societies project their views of the cosmos, good and evil, life and death, and of the “other”—most centrally, the Woman: that eternal Other who has been deified, desecrated, and consistently feared.

In the previous chapters, we explored the image of the woman in Eastern and Western mythologies separately. We observed diverse forms of feminine presence: the goddess, the oracle, the sorceress, the virgin, the mother, the demoness, the lover, the rebel… Yet these were not isolated images. Rather, they emerged from recurring symbolic patterns—archetypal structures that transcend cultural boundaries, even when names and contexts differ.

This is where the significance of this chapter lies—not in merely compiling symbols, but in attempting to deconstruct the deep network of symbolic parallels and contradictions that form what might be termed the symbolic architecture of femininity in mythology. In mythological texts, Woman is not merely a character—she is a symbolic apparatus containing meanings of creation and destruction, fertility and death, purity and defilement, knowledge and sin. She appears not as a biological being, but as an interpretive horizon, open to metaphysical, political, and sacred readings.

This chapter proposes a symbolic-cultural approach, analyzing several major binary oppositions that recur in the representation of women, and tracing shared cosmic symbols (such as the Moon, the Serpent, Fire, Blood) that appear in both Eastern and Western mythologies. Yet, these symbols carry divergent connotations in each tradition—reflections of the deeper societal and cultural psyche.

At the heart of these binaries lies a central question:

Is the feminine universal?
Is there a shared symbolic essence of Woman across all cultures, merely expressed through different forms?
Or did each culture reconstruct Woman based on its own patriarchal or matriarchal systems and interests?
Did these symbols travel from East to West as an ancestral legacy, or were they produced simultaneously in various cultures, as responses to similar human experiences of nature, reproduction, and death?

Here, Woman is not merely a subject of analysis, but a platform through which symbolic conflicts within myth are revealed—conflicts that are reshaped in every era. Woman is not just narrated as a character; she is used symbolically to depict the unknown, to give form to what is not understood: fear, desire, destruction, birth, the divine, instinct.

If mythology attempts to shape the world through symbols, then Woman has been its most potent and dangerous symbol—not merely a binary of “Creative Mother” vs. “Seductive Witch,” but the embodiment of binary itself, mirrored in the body, manifesting the male psyche’s internal conflict with self, body, and nature.

This chapter thus does more than compare mythological symbols; it excavates the layers beneath:

• How femininity oscillates between the sacred and the profane,

• How Woman encodes power and knowledge,

• And how her image in mythology reveals the structure of human fear toward the limitless.

Therefore, this chapter represents the core of mythological inquiry, grasping the hidden threads linking feminine representations across time and culture, deconstructing and reassembling them. It attempts to map the internal landscape of the symbolic feminine—that archetype embedded in ancient texts, still shaping Woman’s place in collective, social, and religious consciousness today.

It asks a profound philosophical-cultural question:

Was Woman a myth—or was myth born from Woman?
Are we analyzing feminine symbols, or unraveling masked masculinity through those symbols?

In this light, the chapter becomes a reading of mythology from within—not through story, but through symbol; not via the hero, but via the Woman, who was never marginal—but the unspoken center of the entire symbolic cosmos.

I. The Mother/Creator Woman vs. the Destructive/Seductive Woman

(Opposing Archetypes Pulsing from the Same Root)

One of the oldest dualities in the mythological consciousness of Woman is the binary of creation and ruin—the “Mother/Creator” versus the “Destroyer/Seductress.” This is more than a moral opposition; it expresses the ambivalence of humankind toward both nature and the feminine: she is the source of life, yet also a force of uncontrollable power.

◦ The Mother / Creator Woman

In Eastern mythologies, the Mother figure represents an original archetype:

• Ninhursag in Sumerian mythology

• Ishtar/Inanna in Babylonian myths

• Isis in Egyptian lore

• Anahita in Persian beliefs

• Prithvi in Hindu cosmology

• and even Kawa-Khatun or the Kurdish Mother figures in oral traditions

All represent Woman as the source of fertility, principle of creation, and center of vital existence—the Earth/Womb, the field that births, the cave where gods are born or heroes resurrected.

In the West, this image fades or is split: motherhood may be spiritually exalted (e.g., Virgin Mary), yet bodily motherhood is often rendered impure or suspect (e.g., Pandora, Lilith).

◦ The Destructive / Seductive Woman

Alongside the creative mother, the seductive woman arises—she gives, only to take away; she loves, only to punish:

• Pandora, who unleashes evils upon the world

• Medusa, whose beauty petrifies men

• Circe, who enchants and transforms men into beasts

• Lilith, who refuses submission and is demonized

This archetype expresses the patriarchal culture’s fear of unrestrained femininity—beauty not subject to authority, love that cannot be tamed. It mirrors humanity’s fear of nature itself: life-giving yet potentially destructive.

In the end, Woman stands at the heart of mythological tension:

• Beginning and End,

• Heaven and Hell,

• Salvation and Curse.

A duality not easily unraveled—reinscribed endlessly across mythic narratives.

II. Recurring Symbols: “Serpent,” “Moon,” “Fertility,” “Fire,” “Blood”

(Symbol as the Language of Myth)

Myth does not speak in words—it speaks in symbols, and each symbol is a layered vessel of cultural meaning. Concerning Woman, certain symbols recur across both East and West, though often with contrasting implications.

◦ Serpent

A deeply ambivalent symbol.
In Eastern mythologies, the serpent is not always demonic:

• In India, Naga is sacred—symbolizing wisdom and protection.

• In Sumer, associated with renewal and immortality.

• In Egypt, Wadjet is the protective cobra of pharaohs.

In the West:

• The serpent becomes the devil in the Garden of Eden, the agent of temptation.

• Linked to cunning and downfall.

Thus, the serpent morphs from wisdom and rebirth in the East to evil and deceit in the West—revealing differing views of knowledge, femininity, and sin.

◦ Moon

In nearly all cultures, the Moon aligns with Woman due to menstrual cycles and transformation.

• In the East: linked to Sin (the Sumerian moon god), fertility, nature, and often goddess archetypes.

• In the West: the Moon becomes a symbol of mystery and witchcraft—Artemis, Hecate, and other lunar deities.

A symbol of cycles, shadows, renewal—the ever-shifting feminine.

◦ Fertility

A central symbol in all mythologies—earth, rivers, rain, breasts, menstruation.

• In the East: fertility is celebrated in sacred rituals.

• In the West: it becomes something to be controlled, judged morally, especially under Christian influence.
  Eastern fertility is cosmic; Western fertility is an ethical burden.

◦ Fire

Symbol of light, punishment, and life-force.

• In the East: woman embodies fire as a creative light (e.g., Zoroastrian fire goddesses).

• In the West: fire often links to female magic or punishment (witch burnings).

◦ Blood

In the East, feminine blood (menstruation/childbirth) is part of sacred fertility rituals.
In the West, blood is often marked as unclean or threatening.

The female body transitions from sacred life-source to moralized burden.

III. Cultural Intersections – Who Came First?

(Myth as a Transcivilizational Symbolic Transmission)

In exploring mythology, certain thorny questions arise:

• Did symbols migrate from East to West?

• Or did humanity create them in parallel across different geographies?

Evidence suggests that the ancient East—Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India—preceded the West in structured myth-making. Many Western symbols thus appear inspired by or adapted from Eastern prototypes:

• Ishtar morphs into Aphrodite.

• Tiamat inspires chaotic female forces in Western myths.

• The Babylonian Flood story echoes in Genesis.

Yet some symbols appear to have emerged simultaneously across cultures—Jung’s concept of universal archetypes supports this. Shared symbols may not always imply cultural borrowing, but rather shared existential responses to nature, birth, death, the body, and the feminine.

IV. The Cosmic Feminine or “Sacred Woman”

(Woman as the Image and Key of Existence)

Beyond binary oppositions (sin/purity), there lies a primordial symbolic thread that sees Woman as the embodiment of the cosmos itself. In some philosophies and mythologies, this is the “Great Goddess” or the “Cosmic Feminine.”

This figure appears most vividly in Eastern traditions:

• Ishtar embodies not just fertility, but life-death cycles.

• Isis resurrects Osiris, restoring cosmic order.

• Kali in Hinduism fuses life, death, creation, and annihilation.

In the West, she wanes—but echoes remain:

• Gaia (Mother Earth),

• Virgin Mary (purity and creation),

• Wise Witches (women who understand and tame chaos).

This “Cosmic Feminine” is not a person, but a metaphysical being uniting:

• Multiplicity,

• Paradox,

• Renewal,

• Mystery,

• Cosmic Meaning.

She is not a figure but a threshold between sky and earth, time and blood, fire and moon.

Conclusion: Between Story and Symbol—Beyond the Myth

To compare symbolic patterns of Woman in Eastern and Western mythologies is not to trace superficial differences in names or tales—it is to uncover deep layers of collective human consciousness. Myth does not merely reproduce Woman as a mythological figure, but as a mirror of existential anxiety, a symbolic medium through which humans interpret fear, fertility, the unknown, desire, and the sacred.

Woman in mythology is not a character—she is a complex symbolic structure. A mythic map where birth and death, light and shadow, good and evil, purity and danger intersect. She is a knot of paradox—impossible to unravel through singular interpretation, woven from contradiction and symbolic tension. In myth, Woman is not the story—she is the riddle behind the story.

Tracing the symbolic feminine across time reveals that the Ancient East envisioned Woman as a source of fertility, maternal protection, creative mystery, and sacred renewal. She was the Earth-Goddess, terrifying yet purifying, destructive yet regenerative, seductive yet not treacherous. Woman in this view is not a negation, but the center of cosmic structure—a gate through which existence flows, a mystery understood not by reason alone, but by cosmic experience.

In the Western mythos, symbols shifted from reverence to restriction, from ritual to punishment, from celebration to suspicion. The seductive woman, the cursed temptress, the dangerous beauty—these became tools to control the symbolic chaos Woman represented to the male imagination. Woman was reframed as the cause of downfall, the object of perilous desire, and the target of mythic discipline.

Yet even at its most reductive, Western mythology could not erase Woman. She remained not just a “necessary evil” but a symbolic necessity—without her, the mythic structure collapses. She was not erased, but reframed under the lens of male dominance, where feminine freedom became danger to suppress, and feminine mystery a secret to hide.

Thus, comparing symbols across East and West becomes a study of cultural consciousness itself:

• Is Woman a divine force—or an existential threat?

• Is she the Great Mother from whom time is born—or the temptation to be buried beneath patriarchal law?

• Is she the structure of creation—or the cause of expulsion from it?

This chapter does not merely present a catalogue of symbols—it opens a larger inquiry:

Did myth create the image of Woman—or did Woman create myth?
Were feminine symbols meant to explain the cosmos—or to justify authority?
Is the feminine an original cosmic archetype—or a cultural battlefield disguised as mythology?

In the end, all these symbols converge on a singular realization:

Woman was never given a final answer in myth—because she is the question.
The question of fertility and death.
The question of meaning and chaos.
The question of desire and punishment.
The question of the known and the unknowable.

She is multiplicity without end, mystery without resolution, and meaning that resists all reduction.

And if this chapter attempted to deconstruct the symbolic matrix of Woman, then the next chapter will take us one step further:

How were these symbols transformed into cultural discourse?
How did language itself become a mechanism for reproducing these images?
And how did power—religious, political, literary—take shape around this deep structural fear of the feminine?

It is a passage from myth to culture, from symbol to system, from story to structure—
where Woman is no longer a myth—but a site of contestation between meaning and control, self and other, body and text.

Chapter Five: Comparative Analysis

• What is the difference between depicting women in the East as a source of power and magic, and in the West as a source of seduction or chaos?

• Comparing the religious and mythological images of women: Are they goddesses or victims?

• The social and moral representations resulting from these mythologies within each culture.

(From Ishtar to Pandora… from the womb to sin)

Mythology, when placed under comparison, reveals more than just stories and legends: it strips bare the underlying structure of culture itself and exposes how each civilization understands women, encodes them symbolically, and constructs the relationship between body and spirit, between the sacred and the forbidden. In this chapter, we move from reviewing myths to a deep analysis of the comparative symbolic structure between East and West, across three spheres: magic and seduction, divinity and victimhood, and the social reality emerging from these images.

✦ First: Women in the East – Source of Power and Magic, vs. Women in the West – Source of Seduction and Chaos

▫ The East: Woman as a Cosmic Force
In Eastern mythology, the woman is not presented as a danger but as a multifaceted power:

• Ishtar/Inanna blends love and war, fertility and death.

• Isis revives the dead and teaches humanity the arts of agriculture and magic.

• Khatun in Kurdish legend is the woman who guards the fire and saves the nation.

Here, the woman is not merely an attractive body or a sexual threat, but a passage to existence itself, a gateway to the unseen, and a bearer of hidden knowledge, often respected even when feared. She is a priestess, a seer, a goddess, and a sorceress, but not a "fall" of existence—rather, its essential mover.

▫ The West: Woman as Seduction and Cosmic Disorder
By contrast, Western mythology often depicts women as beings bearing a disguised danger of beauty:

• Pandora was sent as a "gift," but she unleashed evil.

• Medusa seduces then terrifies.

• Helen was not the decision-maker but the "cause" that ignited the Trojan War.

• Eve seduced and expelled humanity from paradise.

Here, femininity is viewed as a disruption of cosmic order rather than its origin. She is not the source of creation but the reason for exile from bliss. She does not give life but corrupts its meaning. This comparison exposes a fundamental difference in the male-female, mind-body, sacred-instinct relationships. Despite symbolic violence at times, the East preserves the image of woman as a necessary power, while the West reveals an existential anxiety toward femininity as a disorder that must be controlled.

✦ Second: Woman Between Divinity and Victimhood

Comparing the Religious–Mythological Image

▫ Goddess Woman in the East:
In Eastern mythology, women are granted divine status not apart from the body but through it.

• Fertility is not shame but a cosmic symbol.

• Menstruation is not impurity but a sacred season.

• Pregnancy, birth, love, embrace, dance—all are rituals reflecting the divine feminine presence.

Even in ancient religions inheriting these symbols (such as Magianism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism), women appear as partners in divinity, not as its shadow.

▫ Victim Woman in the West:
Conversely, the symbol in the West transforms into a story of downfall:

• Eve is not a creator but created from a rib.

• Pandora is sent as deception.

• Women in the Odyssey and Iliad are tests for men, not partners in fate.

Worse, the female body is punished for its beauty. It is viewed as a "source of temptation," demonized, forced into moral veiling, or burdened with original sin.

Christianity, inheriting these symbols, did not abolish them but framed them—turning women into either saints (Mary) or sinners (Eve/Magdalene). Thus, femininity became morally divided and lost its unified cosmic image.

The difference here is not only between two images but between two worldviews:

• One that sees woman as a mirror of existence (East),

• Another that sees her as a fracture in existence’s order (West).

✦ Third: The Social and Moral Representations Resulting from These Symbols

From Symbol to Society, from Myth to Structure

▫ East: Woman’s Central Presence Despite Patriarchy
Even when the East later descended into patriarchal societies, ancient myths continued to inhabit popular consciousness, granting women some symbolic power.

• In Kurdish folk songs and the seers of Syrian deserts,

• In wedding rituals, lamentations, and “women of vows,”
  there is an extension of those maternal symbols.

The woman is not only a "wife" but the "giver of meaning," keeper of memory, maker of bread and fire. Although male authority dominated, Eastern mythology left an indelible mark on women’s symbolic presence.

▫ West: Woman Between the Virgin and Sin
In the West, mythology contributed to producing a dual image of women:

• Either as a pure virgin,

• Or as a destructive seductress.

And despite apparent social liberation, Western society remains governed by this unconscious structure:

• In cinema, women are portrayed as sources of lust or salvation.

• In literature, as muses or murderers.

• In theology, the “Eve complex” is reproduced in discourses of purity, virtue, and fall.

Women here are not subjects but sites of meaning—neither free nor autonomous but surrounded by interpretive fences.

✦ Chapter Conclusion:

The comparison between East and West does not aim to pass normative judgments but to reveal how mythology never dies; rather, it reincarnates within language, consciousness, and moral systems. What began as a symbol in mythology becomes a constraint in culture, a driver of imagination, or a field of power.

The woman who appeared in the East as a goddess transformed in the West into a riddle to be contained, or a desire to be controlled. Yet in both cases, femininity remains at the heart of the symbolic struggle over meaning, existence, and the sacred.

In the final chapter of this work, we will move from comparative analysis to posing a bolder, more urgent question:

• Can femininity be reimagined outside of myth?

• Can we liberate women from the symbols that have shackled them for thousands of years?

• Or is humanity incapable of understanding women except through myth—and fear of them?

Chapter Six: The Female Outside the Myth
(Towards Deconstructing the Symbol and Recovering the Self)

First: Woman as Myth – The Deadly Limits of the Symbol
Second: Deconstructing the Symbolic Heritage – A Critical Reading of the Myth
Third: Femininity as a Project of Symbolic Liberation
Fourth: From Recovering "Femininity" to Recovering the "Self"

Can we imagine woman outside the myth?
Can femininity survive the history that shaped it into a symbol, a mask, a function, or a living myth?
This is not a simple or passing question; it is the essential question in every cultural and intellectual liberation project for women. This chapter attempts to approach it—not with ready-made answers, but by diving deep into the roots of femininity’s symbolic formation and by proposing possibilities for "exiting the text."

As revealed in previous chapters, myth is not merely an old tale but a continuous cultural structure that reproduces itself in religion, language, ethics, institutions, and collective imagination. Within this system, woman was never granted a free voice; instead, narratives about her turned into molds, images into masks, and masks into destinies.

In this chapter, we ask: How does the female free herself from being a symbol?
How can a woman reclaim her self, not as a metaphor, but as a tangible being, as an entity irreducible to symbols?
Is it conceivable to imagine femininity not defined by the snake, the moon, sin, motherhood, or seduction?
And can the myth be deconstructed without destroying the self formed through it?

✦ First: Woman as Myth – The Deadly Limits of the Symbol
Woman in mythology was never a person but always a symbol of something else:

• A symbol of fertility,

• Or death,

• Or chaos,

• Or forbidden wisdom.

The more mysterious the myth, the more authoritarian the symbol over the real body becomes. Woman was never narrated as an "I," but as a "She"—the one who is interpreted and defined. Thus, she was imprisoned in symbolic roles:

• The pure virgin,

• The sacrificing mother,

• The seductive lover,

• The tempting demoness,

• The cursed witch.

All are images, all symbols, all masks… but where is the self?
Can a woman, always constructed within the symbol, find her own image?
Can the "female" exist as an existential presence, not a cultural representation?

✦ Second: Deconstructing the Symbolic Heritage – A Critical Reading of the Myth

Deconstructing symbols does not mean erasing the myth but exposing how it became a tool of power.
Myth is not innocent; it weaves moral and social structures, reshapes collective imagination, and implants in our unconscious what we take for "nature," which is actually "discourse."

Thus, myth must be deconstructed on two levels:

▫ In language:
We must observe how words move:

• Woman "tempts" rather than "loves,"

• She "falls" rather than "decides,"

• She is "given" rather than "chooses."

Language itself carries mythical heritage and re-forms it in daily expression, religion, education, and media.

▫ In collective imagination:
Myth still works inside drama, cinema, stories, and even political movements.

• The heroine must be beautiful,

• The mother virtuous,

• The wife silent,

• The rebel often killed or stigmatized.

Myth operates silently inside people’s imagination, convincing them that what they see is "reality," whereas it is a symbol not yet dead.

✦ Third: Femininity as a Project of Symbolic Liberation

If masculinity in classical culture is the center, the act, the voice, then femininity remains an "image," an "echo," or a "shadow."
Therefore, legal, political, or economic liberation alone is insufficient without symbolic liberation—that is, dismantling old representations, creating new symbols, or perhaps escaping the symbol itself.

This requires that the female write herself, not as an object, but as the author of her self and narrator of her meaning.
No goddess, no victim, but a human inventing her identity beyond the mythic mold.

This project is not confined to women alone but extends to all who have been reduced to symbolic roles within culture: women, bodies, nature, marginalized peoples.
It is a comprehensive human project: the liberation of the self from the captivity of myth.

✦ Fourth: From Recovering "Femininity" to Recovering the "Self"

Ultimately, the problem is not the myth as a fictional narrative but its use as a tool of symbolic domination.
The solution does not lie in replacing one symbol with another but in dismantling the need for the symbol itself.

To be female does not mean to be Ishtar or Pandora, Mary or Lilith; it means to be what cannot be reduced to a model.
To be a woman does not mean to be "the other," but to be the "I."

In this sense, the "female outside the myth" is not a new being but the true female who was always behind the texts, waiting for the mask to be removed.

✦ Conclusion:
We began this work deep within mythology, exploring representations of women as shaped by ancient cultures, from East to West, from fertility symbols to moral myths, from goddess to witch, and from mother to sin. We revealed that mythology is not a clear mirror but an ideological text saturated with fear, desire, and power.

In all these tales, woman remained the heart of meaning and the center of the question.
But today we aspire to a new phase:

• Where femininity is not read through the symbol,

• Nor the body understood through myth,

• Nor meaning spoken except from within it, not above it.

It is a call to write the self outside the myth—not to deny it, but to liberate it.

Myth does not die… but it is resisted.

Chapter Seven: The Impact on Contemporary Culture

• How have these images been used later in literature, art, religion, and politics?
• The presence of these symbols in feminist movements or their critique.
• A feminist reinterpretation of mythology from a modern perspective.

(From Mythology to Culture: Symbols Do Not Die, They Disguise Themselves)
Mythology does not remain trapped in ancient times, nor fossilize in the archives of legends; rather, it crosses into the present in renewed forms, sometimes hidden, sometimes overt. Every culture, no matter how modern it appears, carries deep within it its primordial symbols and original images that camouflage themselves in language, art, identity, and collective imagination. In this chapter, we trace how the mythological images of women transformed from stone statues and ancient goddesses into artistic icons, literary narratives, religious models, political debates, and feminist critique tools—all at once.

✦ First: The Presence of Feminine Symbols in Literature, Art, Religion, and Politics

▫ In Literature:
From classical epics to modern novels, the mythological image of the woman continues to be reproduced, albeit in new forms.

• Figures like Medusa, Cersei, and Pandora have been revived in literature as symbols of seduction, mystery, or rebellion.
• In Arabic literature, the woman appears alternately as Layla the beloved, Ishtar the destroyer, or the unattainable lover.
• The symbol has not vanished but has become more transparent: the woman is no longer described as a goddess but treated as a mystery to be misunderstood, feared, or desired.

▫ In Art:
Visual arts, cinema, theater, and commercial advertising all revive mythological symbols—sometimes unconsciously—and recycle them.

• The naked woman embodied in light is nothing but an extension of Aphrodite emerging from the sea.
• Women with wings, mirrors, fire, or blood in modern paintings often invoke a hidden mythological heritage.
• In cinema, symbolism remains tethered to the ancient dichotomy: woman as savior or destroyer.

▫ In Religion and Politics:
Despite societal modernization, religious and political power systems continue to invoke old images of women.
• Models like "the pure woman," "the dangerous temptress," or "the silent wife" are all mythological extensions at the heart of moral discourse.
• The female as a symbol of discipline or deviance still represents a central knot in political debates on dress, freedom, motherhood, and participation.

Thus, mythology has not been forgotten but has colonized modern culture from within. The only difference is that the symbol is no longer spoken outright but broadcast through images, narratives, metaphors, and legislation.

✦ Second: Mythological Symbols in Feminist Movements
Between Critique, Deconstruction, and Reappropriation

Feminist movements have not been oblivious to the presence of these symbols. On the contrary, many have made the analysis of mythology a starting point for understanding the patriarchal structure of culture.

▫ Critique:
Radical and existential feminism (such as Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and others) saw mythology as a repository of masculine images of women, where the female is entrenched as the "other" to man, not an independent self.
• Eve, Pandora, Lilith—all were created to embody man’s weakness, sins, or authority.
• The "divine" models were not alternatives but masks: the goddess subject to cycle, function, or sacrifice.

▫ Deconstruction:
Post-structuralist and cultural feminist schools worked to dismantle these symbols and expose their origins in power.
• Why is the woman always linked to the moon? Why is the serpent a feminine symbol?
• Who established the purity/impurity dichotomy?
• Why is the woman portrayed either as a mother or a prostitute, but never in between?

▫ Reappropriation:
Some contemporary feminist currents (especially spiritual and eco-feminist ones) sought to reclaim certain feminine mythological symbols to give them new meaning.
• Ishtar is not only a goddess of sex but also of fertility and knowledge.
• Lilith is not a demon but the first woman who refused submission.
• The moon is not merely an indicator of biological cycles but a symbol of renewal and reflection.

This trend does not seek to deny the symbol but to transform it from within—i.e., dismantle its power as domination and convert it into a tool for self and cultural empowerment.

✦ Third: Toward a Feminist Reinterpretation of Mythology

Reinterpreting mythology does not mean abolishing it but reopening it to questions previously forbidden:
• Who wrote the myths? And why were they shaped this way?
• What if women had told those stories? How would Inanna, Pandora, Eve, or Aphrodite have looked?
• What remains unspoken in the myth? What is the other side of the symbol?

The modern feminist vision attempts to break the male-centered narrative in mythology and liberate the symbols from moralistic molds. It tries to say:
• Woman is not "she," but "I."
• Myth is not fate but a text that can be rewritten.

Thus, mythology transforms from a tool of restriction to a horizon of symbolic liberation.
Old tales become fields of resistance and self-discovery—not as mysterious beings but as voices capable of recreating their own symbols.

✦ Chapter Conclusion:
The presence of mythological symbols of women in contemporary culture confirms that mythology has not vanished but deepened. Unless we confront these symbols and deconstruct their mechanisms, they will continue to shape our perceptions of the body, morality, and destiny.
But tragedy has turned into opportunity:
Today, women do not stand merely before old mirrors; they wield the hammer and reshape the mirrors themselves. In this sense, women’s liberation is not achieved only through laws but also through symbols. Breaking the myth is one of the deepest forms of freedom.

What these paths reveal is that mythology still controls the language with which we describe women, even when we believe we have transcended the past. Old images hide behind the veil of "realism," yet they still dictate social roles, define what is possible and forbidden, and classify women into packaged moral models. Myth has not died but changed its name to "culture," "custom," "beauty," or even "freedom."

This does not mean surrender but recognizing that every symbolic system can be unsettled from within. As feminist movements, creatives, and thinkers have overturned symbols against their original power, the symbolic future of women remains open to interpretation and the creative capacity to rewrite the self outside the tyranny of the archetype and deadly binaries.

Ultimately, we are not only searching for a "new female" but for a new human being emerging from the grip of myth, consciously crafting their existence in critical liberation, reconciled with their symbols, not enslaved by them.

Chapter Eight: Conclusion

• Has mythology sanctified women or stripped them of their humanity?
• Do myths differ in their representations of women according to environment and culture?
• The role of rereading these mythologies in understanding the cultural present and future of women.

(Between Sanctity and Abstraction, Between Symbol and Self)
Tracing the image of women in mythology, from its earliest depictions in the East to its most fractured symbols in the West, does not lead us to easy conclusions or final results. Myth, as shown in this study, is not a simple mirror of what peoples believe, but a complex symbolic language that interacts simultaneously with fear, desire, power, and identity. Women, at the heart of this language, were never fixed subjects but fluid symbols—sometimes deified, sometimes despised, and in both cases shaped from outside themselves.

✦ Has mythology sanctified women or stripped them of their humanity?
This is the central question around which the entire work revolves, and it cannot be reduced to a simple “yes” or “no.”
In its earliest stages, mythology presented women as active cosmic beings:

• Ishtar, Isis, Tiamat, Frigg, Inanna—all were representations of creation, fertility, violence, and death.
• Women were not “secondary,” but often “ladies of the universe” or “its gatekeepers.”

But as mythology transformed into a tool for moral interpretation—and with the rise of patriarchal power and theology—women began to be reduced to their bodily function or moral danger.

• No longer seen as priestesses but as temptresses,
• Not as goddesses but as causes of the fall,
• Not as voices but as narrative devices.

Thus, mythology did not sanctify women as much as mythologize them—and this in itself is a form of abstraction. A goddess does not mean a free human being, but a symbol controlled by others. Sanctity, when devoid of freedom, becomes another form of bondage.

✦ Do myths differ in their representations of women according to environment and culture?
Yes, undoubtedly. Myth is the daughter of its environment and reproduces the social structure in which it is born.

• In fertile agricultural societies, women were often symbols of the earth, the mother, the cycle, and life.
• In warlike or priestly societies, women became symbols of chaos, evil, or limits to be controlled.

Therefore, the representation of women in mythology is not merely a reflection of imagination but a cultural embodiment of patterns of power, knowledge, and relationships with the body and nature.

However, it is less a strict East-West divide than interconnected symbolic transformations that feed on each other and vary according to social, religious, and political needs to employ the female as symbol.

✦ What is the role of rereading these mythologies in understanding the cultural present and future of women?
Rereading mythology today is not merely a cultural act but a philosophical and political necessity.
We live in a time when old images return in new masks:

• Women are used in advertisements as bodies,
• Despised in some discourses as mere instincts,
• Deified in others as sacred mothers.

Yet, often, they remain absent as free selves.

Therefore, reclaiming mythology as an open text for interpretation rather than a fixed destiny is a fundamental step toward dismantling the images sedimented in our cultural unconscious.
Myth still affects how we love, fear, raise, judge, and dream.
If we do not rewrite it, it will continue to write us without our knowledge.

The cultural future of women begins with questioning these symbols:

• From transforming Ishtar from a “goddess” to a “voice,”
• From reclaiming Lilith as a right,
• From turning the body from a “mythical object” into a “place of freedom.”

✦ Chapter Conclusion:
Women are not myths, but they have long been imprisoned in mythic molds. Mythology was never innocent; it was a battleground between what we fear and desire, between what we believe and what we hide.
In the midst of this conflict, the female was placed as a symbol, a meaning, a mask—and rarely as a self.
But humanity cannot free itself from symbols without passing through them, nor can it shape its freedom without deconstructing the old stories that made it.
Thus, the woman’s journey from myth to self, from symbol to freedom, is not just the story of the female—it is the deepest consciousness humanity can reach about itself.

✦ The Final Note:
(When a Woman Removes Her Last Mask)
These pages are not merely a history of myths, nor just a comparison of symbols from East and West, but a journey into one of the deepest mirrors: the human mirror in which the image of woman was reflected—not as she is, but as fear, desire, and power wanted her to be.
From Ishtar to Pandora, from Isis to Medusa, from fire priestesses to the promised virgin, woman remained at the heart of myth—but never her own voice. She was always a symbol: of creation or destruction, fertility or sin, the unknown or temptation. The closer she came to divinity, the farther she moved from humanity. The closer she came to the body, the farther she moved from freedom.
If the East deified her then shackled her, and the West demonized her then sanctified her, the bitterest truth lies in this question:
Was woman ever a true self inside mythology? Or was she merely a mask woven from memories of longing and fear, from fire rituals, and from sacred masculinity politics?

Myth, as we have seen, is not a relic of the past but a living fabric in our language, poetry, laws, and moral conscience. It tells us—without our knowing—who the woman is, when she is wrong, when she is sacrifice, and when she is beautiful enough to be punished.

But today, we live in an era that no longer accepts a single narrative. Woman has begun to write her own myth—not to reproduce symbols, but to break them and reshape language from within.
She no longer waits to be described but deconstructs description.
She no longer looks for a mirror but for a window.
She no longer asks for salvation from gods but reclaims herself from the mouth of time.

Thus, despite its vast symbolic scope, this study is neither a call to sanctify the past nor to entirely reject it, but to reread it with a new lens, where the female is not a symbol but a free being rising from the ashes—not to become a new myth but to be herself.

Ultimately, woman is not a mythological question… but what remains of myth when all masks fall away.

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• Joseph Campbell – The Power of Myth -(Anchor Books, 1988)
• Marija Gimbutas – The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images
  (University of California Press, 1982)
• Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype -(Ballantine Books, 1992)
• Carl G. Jung & Marie-Louise von Franz – Man and His Symbols -(Dell Publishing, 1964)
• Robert Graves – The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth -(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948)
  · Elaine Pagels – Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (Vintage, 1988)
• Jean Shinoda Bolen – Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes in Women's Lives
  (Harper & Row, 1984)
• Gerda Lerner – The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford University Press, 1986)

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