TY - JOUR AU - Linjamaa, Paul PY - 2021/06/23 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The Diminishing Importance of Fate and Divine Femininity During the High and Late Roman Empire JF - Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion JA - Temenos VL - 57 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.33356/temenos.97345 UR - https://journal.fi/temenos/article/view/97345 SP - 81-101 AB - <p>Weaving and femininity are historically intimately connected with<br />the concept of Fate. In antiquity Fate was portrayed as a powerful<br />female principle controlling the cosmic system humans inhabited.<br />However, as the antique religious world gave way to a new era,<br />the role of Fate subsided under Christian dominance. This article<br />examines how this change played out, and how the worldview that<br />won prominence as Christianity prevailed gradually lost touch with<br />the presence of powerful female cosmic principles. It shows that the<br />disappearance of Fate from the prevailing world was seminal in the<br />birth of a new ‘technology of the self’. In conclusion, the article places<br />the disappearance of Fate in the context of a discussion of how the<br />view of the self changed in the aftermath of Christianity, which had<br />become dominant. This discussion is related to the scholarship of<br />Peter Brown, among others, as well as a newly published posthumous<br />work by Michel Foucault (2018).</p> ER -