Shifting things up on this episode of Goddess Bible Study with an interview, hopefully this will be the first of many.
I interviewed Bernie Taylor, who is a naturalist, author, and cultural astronomer. He has written two books: Biological Time (2004) and Before Orion: Finding the Face of the Hero (2017). Bernie’s work centers on Paleolithic cave art (back to 40,000 years), which he believes encodes humanity’s earliest astronomy, self-realization, and biological knowledge — material that still shapes religious practice and story today. He gives many talks to academic and private audiences and has appeared on over 200 podcasts.
Like me, Bernie stumbled into the mother goddess material, which he discovered by studying the city of Ephesus, a critically important city in mother goddess traditions. Ephesus is on the Aegean coast of modern-day Turkey and was once a major pilgrimage site as it was home to the grandest temple and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the famed temple to Artemis.
Ephesus and this temple are also important in the history of Christianity. The Apostle Paul visited the temple in the Book of Acts and nearly started a riot after insulting their traditions. Later Christians destroyed the temple in 401 AD after paganism was banned in the Roman Empire, and the site was razed to the ground with all the stones hauled off for other building projects.
Yet the goddess traditions in Ephesus did not die off, they were absorbed into Christianity. By tradition, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to have lived in Ephesus with the Apostle John after the resurrection. In 431 AD, the Catholic Church sanctified the Virgin Mary, with Ephesus serving as the home of all Marian traditions, which continues today.
About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. It began with a silversmith named Demetrius who made silver shrines of Artemis, bringing much business to the craftsmen.
Demetrius assembled the craftsmen, along with the workmen in related trades. “Men,” he said, “you know that this business is our source of prosperity. And you can see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in nearly the whole province of Asia, this Paul has persuaded a great number of people to turn away. He says that man-made gods are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our business will fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited and her majesty deposed—she who is worshiped by all the province of Asia and the whole world.”
When the men heard this, they were enraged and began shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Soon the whole city was in disarray. They rushed together into the theatre, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia.
- Acts 19:23-29
Artemis is a complex character as she syncretized different goddesses from Anatolia and the Greek pantheon. Anatolian Artemis was the supreme matriarchal mother goddess who was never created and had always existed since time immemorial.
The Greek Artemis, on the other hand, was a young goddess and submissive to patriarchy, she was the daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo. In the Hellenistic era after Alexander the Great’s conquest, these two disparate Artemises were combined into one, leading to theological disputes that carried on into the Roman era.
Bernie prepared a presentation that traces the symbolism of Anatolian Artemis back through the most ancient Neolithic sites in Turkey, Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe, demonstrating the continuity of mother goddess traditions from the first settlements at the dawn of agriculture.
We touch on some of the evidence at Göbekli Tepe, including the motif of the seated woman giving birth, flanked by lions. This symbolism has been commonly misinterpreted by scholars who have failed to recognize that these are birth scenes and have instead made ridiculous claims about sex and detached penises.
Bernie also introduced me to some interesting new DNA studies (published January 2026) on Çatalhöyük that provide hard evidence of matrilineal society in the Neolithic. A genetic study of 395 individuals buried under Çatalhöyük homes found maternal lines (mother-to-daughter-to-daughter) determined the burials and that women/females received more grave goods than males.
We also talked about Amazon warriors and various possible interpretations for the breast-like features on the coat of Anatolian Artemis that have long intrigued researchers.
And more! Enjoy the conversation with Bernie Taylor. You can find his work at:
https://beforeorion.com/
You can also see the interview on YouTube:
