Merlin Stone: American Author, Sculptor and a Professor of Art and Art History, who wrote many books, including the controversial feminist book "When God Was a Woman" in 1976.

Merlin Stone became interested in archaeology and ancient religions from her study of ancient and paleolithic art.

Her book "When God Was a Woman" described how Judeo-Christian religions suppressed goddess-based religious practices; and how this affected existing matriarchial and matrilineal society structures resulting in much of the gender roles that we see in society today.

Her other major work "Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood"
collects stories, myths, and prayers involving goddess-figures from a wide variety of world religions, ancient and otherwise.

Stone's book When God Was a Woman had a profound effect on the emerging Goddess Culture of the 1970s and 80s worldwide. It spoke clearly and simply to women raised in traditional Judeo-Christian traditions, and made the concept of a feminine deity accessible.

In 1989, Merlin Stone was involved in a Canadian film "Goddess Remembered". This poetic documentary is a salute to 35,000 years of "pre-history", to the values of these ancestors, and to the Goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. The documentary proposed a return to the belief in an interconnected life system, with respect for the earth and the female, as fundamental to our survival.

“For people raised and programmed on the patriarchal religions of today, religions that affect even the most secular aspects of our society, perhaps there remains a lingering, almost innate memory of sacred shrines and temples tended by priestesses who served in the religion of the original supreme deity. In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?”
– Merlin Stone
“When God Was A Woman”