Quotes

The Terrible Male … functions not only as a principle that disintegrates consciousness, but even more as one that fixes it in the wrong direction… [H]e is the destructive instument of the matriarchate, as its henchman; he is its authority, as the maternal uncle; he is the negative force of self-destruction and the will to regression, as the twin; and finally he is the authroity of the patriarchate, as the Terrible Father… whenever the ego is overwhelmed by the sexual, aggressive, or power instincts of the male,or by any other form of instinct, we can see the dominance of the Great Mother… the phallic Terrible Father is only her satellite, not a masculine principle of equal weight.
-- Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness

"Every change in the relations between the sexes is attended by bloody events"
"[E]ach tribe has its tyrant. Since... there is... no such thing as individual paternity, the whole tribe has only one father, the tyrant... the tyrant derives all his rights from woman. The tyrannis is transmitted by way of the womb."
-- J.J. Bachofen, "Myth and Mother Right" (abridged English translation)

[K]ore’s bond with Demeter was the surce of the primacy of mother over father, of daughter over son … in ancient terms, the cultic-religious meaning of the maternal … is pimary and dominant.
-- J.J. Bachofen, Myth and Mother Right