Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee Allabest. On season one of our podcast,

we learned that ancient Mesopotamian goddesses had at first been all-powerful, encompassing

many different strengths. But when patriarchal cultures took over, they placed an all-powerful

male god at the top of the pantheon and divided up

the goddesses into many less powerful goddesses like the goddess of love, the goddess of wisdom,

the goddess of war, and the goddess of the hearth, and even lesser goddesses. There were many goddesses,

but each one was just a splinter of the original creator goddess,

preventing a consolidation of power in any one female figure.

In these new patriarchal mythologies, if there was an all-powerful god like Zeus, for example,

if he did have a female counterpart, she was a weak, jealous wife with no real authority.

Unlike the religions of the Middle East and of Europe, some ancient religions did not undergo

this patriarchal change. Hinduism, which may be the world's oldest religion, has been around

since at least 2000 BCE, and it is still very much a

religion of powerful goddesses. Today we're going to learn about these goddesses and about what the

implications of such a religion can be for women. And I'm so honored to welcome to the podcast today,

Acharya Shunya, who is a Hindu teacher and spiritual

leader, and she'll be teaching us all about the Hindu goddesses. Welcome, Acharya Shunya.

Thank you, Amy, for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

I am so looking forward to it, and I learned so much from your book. And we're going to take your book as a focal point for the conversation today. It's called Roar Like a Goddess, Every Woman's Guide to Becoming Unapologetically Powerful, Prosperous, and Peaceful. I wondered if we could start out the episode with you just introducing yourself. Tell us a little bit

about where you're from and what brings you to the work that you do. My name is Acharya Shunya,

rather my name is Shunya, which means infinity in Sanskrit. And Acharya is my title, which is given to an ordained teacher.

I'm the first female head of a 2,000-year-old Hindu lineage of male monks and the first to

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