The book proved controversial amongst some contemporary Pagans and feminists involved in the Goddess movement, one of whom, Asphodel Long, issued a public criticism of Hutton in which she charged him with failing to take non-mainstream ideas about ancient goddess cults into consideration. Ultimately, Hutton would later relate, she "recognised that she had misunderstood me" and the two became friends. Another feminist critic, Max Dashu, condemned the work as containing "factual errors, mischaracterizations, and outright whoppers" and claimed that she was "staggered by the intense anti-feminism of this book". She went on to attack Hutton's writing style, calling the book "dry as dust" and claimed that she was "sorry I bothered to plough through it. If this is rigor, it is mortis."