Goddess movement
Encyclopedia
The Goddess movement is an overall trend in religious or spiritual beliefs or practices which emerged out of second-wave feminism
, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s. Spurred by centuries of alleged poor treatment of females by organized religions with a male supreme deity (or a supreme deity referred to by masculine pronouns, such as English "he"), some women embraced the idea of a female deity that was more in keeping with feminist beliefs and the inherent value of women. A unifying theme of the movement was that the gender of deity characterizes the political gender-bias of the religion, so a Goddess Worshipping religion is held to be matriarchal and a "God" worshipping religion is held to be patriarchal.
Goddess beliefs can take many forms; some people in the Goddess movement recognize multiple goddesses. Some also include gods. While others honor what they refer to as "the Goddess", which is not necessarily seen as monotheistic, but is often understood to be an inclusive, encompassing term incorporating many goddesses in many different cultures. The term "the Goddess" may also be understood to include a multiplicity of ways to view deity personified as female, or as a metaphor, or as a process. (Christ 1997, 2003)
One can regard a goddess (in this sense) as an aspect of the Great Goddess as well as a specific goddess with a particular role within a pantheon
. The Hindu goddess, Durga
, is a case in point. The name Durga can refer to a specific aspect of the Goddess but in the Shakti forms of Hinduism generally refers to the Great Goddess as AdyaShakti: the primoridal Shakti who incorporates all aspects. Anthropologists
in their studies of goddesses have noted that adherents of goddesses often view their own goddess as a personal guardian or teacher.
such as Matilda Joslyn Gage
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
published their ideas describing a female Deity, whilst anthropologists such as Johann Jakob Bachofen
examined the ideas of prehistoric matriarchal Goddess cultures. However these ideas were largely ignored in the North America and much of Europe until second-wave feminism
. In addition to Bachofen, second-wave feminists who became interested in the history of religion also refer to the work of Helen Diner (1965) and M. Esther Harding (1935) Elizabeth Gould Davis (1971) and Merlin Stone
(1976).
Since the 1970s Goddess Spirituality has emerged as a recognisable international cultural movement. From 1974 to 1984, WomanSpirit, a journal edited in Oregon by Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, published articles, poetry, and rituals by women, exploring ideas and feelings about female deity. The journal The Beltane Papers, which started publication at about the same time, has been publishing continuously for more than 30 years, making it the longest still-published Goddess publication in the U.S. In 1983, Jade River and Lynnie Levy founded the Re-formed Congregation of the Goddess, International(RCG-I) in Madison, Wisconsin, RCG-I continues today with groups called "Circles" in many U. S. localities, as well as an educational program, priestess training, and ordination. The Goddess movement has found voice in various films and self-published media, such as the Women and Spirituality trilogy made by Donna Read for the National Film Board of Canada
.
These myths are not understood literally, but rather figuratively or metaphorically as reflecting ancient understandings and worldviews. For instance, creation myths (Budapest 1980, Laura 1989, Starhawk 1979) are not seen as conflicting with scientific understanding but rather as being poetic, metaphoric statements that are compatible with, for example, the theory of evolution, modern cosmology and physics (Starhawk 1979, Laura 1997).
Myths from ancient cultures are often reinterpreted as new evidence comes to light. Because myths from religions that included goddesses, those after the Bronze Age, including Greek and Roman mythology, are believed to have patriarchal bias, reinterpretation by Goddess movement writers and women scholars help to provide a truer mirror of the social set up of the period in which the story was written. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is one that has been reinterpreted. (Christ 1987, Pollack, 1997, Spretnak 1978).
and monotheism
; immanence, transcendence and other ways to understand the nature of the Goddess.
); to refer to a modern metaphoric concept of female deity; to describe a form of energy, or a process. (Long 1996, Laura 1997, Christ 1997 and 2003).
The concept of a singular divine being with many expressions is not a new development in thought: it has been a major theme in India for many centuries, at the very least as far back as the 5th century, though hymns in the early Vedas too speak of a one-Goddess-many-goddesses concept. (Jayran 2000)
One of the underlying themes of the earlier forms of Goddess religion is the concept of the aspects of deity. This is neither syncretism nor henotheism but a realization of the unity behind a multiplicity of manifestations. It is apparent from the earliest written records that we have from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Goddess speaks of herself as being known by many names and in many forms, and then recounts the individual names, attributes and placenames. This is as true of Inanna from Sumer as it is of the Isis in Rome and Egypt.
Starhawk (1979:77) also speaks of the Goddess as both a psychological symbol and "manifest reality. She exists and we create Her" (italics hers). Laura (1997:175) describes Goddess as being interactive. Possibly building on Mary Daly's (1973 and 1978) suggestion that the divine be understood not as a Being (noun), but as Be-ing (verb), Carol P. Christ (2003), shows the similarities between Goddess theology and process theology
, and suggests that Goddess theologians adopt more of the process viewpoint.
The Aristasian religion, Deanism, on the other hand, states strongly that the Mother created us, that She exists independently of human beings and is the First Cause of all things.
dictating a specific code of behavior, there are commonly held tenets and concepts within the movement that form a basis for ethical behavior. (Christ 2005) Those participants in Goddess spirituality who define themselves as Wiccan/en, usually follow what is known as the Wiccan Rede
: " 'An it harm none, do what ye will", ("an" being an archaic English word understood to mean "if", or "as long as"). Many also believe in the Threefold Law, which states that "what you send (or do), returns three times over", (Starhawk 1979). Some traditions believe that this means it will be returned to the sender three times, or in a portion three times in volume, while others say it will instead be returned to the sender on three levels of being- physical, mental, and spiritual. Still others postulate that the number "three" is symbolic, meant to indicate a magnified karmic result for one's actions.
Some people in the Goddess movement honor the Triple Goddess
of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The Maiden aspect of the Goddess shows women how to be independent and strong; the Mother aspect shows women how to be nurturing; and the Crone aspect shows that respecting elders is important and focuses on wisdom, change, and transformation.(Starhawk 1979)
Because the Crone aspect of the Goddess is understood by some to be destructive at times, some consider it to contain both positive and negative imagery and to present an ethical quandary. The Hindu Goddess Kali
, or Kali Ma, is often seen as an example of the Crone aspect. The concept is that the corrective force in a Dark Age must be a righteously directed dark force. Thus, to combat the demons of ignorance, ego, anger, etc. the darker aspect manifests. Later on, even her fierce image softens in the love of her devotees. Her duality is easily reconciled with the monism of Hinduism, which claims to understand the fundamental unity of truth as being impersonal and stratified in an ego-knotted existence (such as the human condition), and thus to the evil or unrighteous she is destruction personified and to the loving and moral devotee she is nothing but the love of the mother. (Jayran 2000)
Other Goddess ethical beliefs are that one should not harm the interconnected web of life, and that peace and partnership should be the goals, rather than war and domination. According to Goddess theologian Carol P. Christ
the following are ethical touchstones: "Nurture life; Walk in love and beauty; Trust the knowledge that comes through the body; Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering; Take only what you need; Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations; Approach the taking of life with great restraint; Practice great generosity; Repair the web." (Christ 1997:167).
(Gimbutas 1974 and 1989, Mellaart 1967), whose interpretation of artifacts excavated from the region she called "Old Europe" points to societies of Neolithic Europe
that were "matristic" or "goddess-centered".
Heide Göttner-Abendroth
, working in the 1970s to mid 1980s and writing originally in German, called these cultures "matriarchies", introducing a feminist field of "Modern Matriarchal Studies"
She presented a theory of the transformation of prehistoric cultures in which the local goddess was primary and the male god, if there was any, derived his power from the goddess. In what she terms the "Downfall," which occurred at varying times in various cultures, the gods overcame the goddesses and made them subservient. (Göttner-Abendroth 1987) This is believed to mirror the gradual suppression of women and the rise of patriarchy.
Göttner-Abendroth's terminology is idiosyncratic. The term "matriarchy
" to describe these cultures has been rejected by many Goddess movement scholars, especially those in North America, because it implies female domination as the reverse of the male domination present in patriarchy. These scholars make the point that such a reversal was not the case; rather these prehistoric cultures were egalitarian and had a social structure that included matrilineality
, inheritance of assets and parentage traced through the maternal line (Lerner 1987, Eisler 1987, Gimbutas 1989, Christ 1997, Dashu 2000).
According to Eisler, cultures in which women and men shared power, and in which female deities were worshipped, were more peaceful than the patriarchal dominator societies that followed. Eisler proposed the terms "dominator" and "androcracy" instead of "patriarchy", and "partnership" and "gylany" (taking the first letters of the prefixes gyne [female] and andro [male] and linking them with an "l") instead of "matriarchy." Others use the terms matrifocal (Christ 1997, Pollack 1997, Starhawk 1979) and matrix. Carol P. Christ (1997:58-59) writes, "The term matriarchy is not used by scholars who are aware of its controversial history."
Ian Hodder's reinterpretation of Gimbutas and Mellaart (2004) dispute the existence of "matriarchal" or "matrifocal" cultures, as do some other archaeologists and historians in this field (Hutton, 1991, Tringham & Conkey, 1998, Meskell, 1998, see also Eller 2000). However, mythologist Joseph Campbell compared the importance of Gimbutas' output to the historical importance of the Rosetta Stone in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Campbell provided a foreword to Gimbutas' The Language of the Goddess (1989) before he died, and often said how profoundly he regretted that her research on the Neolithic cultures of Europe had not been available when he was writing The Masks of God.
Marija Gimbutas
was dubbed "Grandmother of the Goddess Movement" in the 1990s, and continues to be cited by many feminist writers, including Max Dashu. Many other scholars, including Joan Marler and Marguerite Rigoglioso, support her work. (Marler 2003 and 2004, Rigoglioso 2002). Still, Gimbutas' theories had been widely criticized as mistaken on the grounds of dating, archeological context and typologies
Some archaeologists consider her goddess hypothesis implausible some assert that her work is pseudo-scholarship.
"the Goddess" is a deity of prime importance, along with her consort the Horned God
. In the earliest Wiccan publications she is described as a tribal goddess of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor universal, and it was recognized that there was a greater "Prime Mover
", although the witches did not concern themselves much with this being.
Within many forms of Wicca the Goddess has come to be considered as a universal deity, more in line with her description in the Charge of the Goddess
, a key Wiccan text. In this guise she is the "Queen of Heaven", similar to Isis
; she also encompasses and conceives all life, much like Gaia
. Much like Isis and certain late Classical conceptions of Selene
, she is held to be the summation of all other goddesses, who represent her different names and aspects across the different cultures. The Goddess is often portrayed with strong lunar symbolism, drawing on various cultures and deities such as Diana
, Hecate
and Isis
, and is often depicted as the Maiden, Mother and Crone triad popularized by Robert Graves
(see Triple Goddess below). Many depictions of her also draw strongly on Celtic
goddesses. Some Wiccans believe there are many goddesses, and in some forms of Wicca, notably Dianic Wicca
, the Goddess alone is worshipped, and the God
plays very little part in their worship and ritual.
Robert Graves
popularized the triad of "Maiden" (or "Virgin"), "Mother" and "Crone", and while this idea did not rest on sound scholarship, his poetic inspiration has gained a tenacious hold. Considerable variation in the precise conceptions of these figures exists, as typically occurs in Neopaganism and indeed in pagan religions in general. Some choose to interpret them as three stages in a woman's life, separated by menarche
and menopause
. Others find this too biologically based and rigid, and prefer a freer interpretation, with the Maiden as birth (independent, self-centred, seeking), the Mother as giving birth (interrelated, compassionate nurturing, creating), and the Crone as death and renewal (holistic, remote, unknowable) — and all three erotic and wise.
Some, but not all, participants in the Goddess movement self-identify as witches
, Wicca
ns or Wiccens. (Likewise, some, but not all, Wiccans and witches consider themselves to be part of "the Goddess movement.") Other participants in the Goddess movement call themselves Goddessians (Laura 2002). Still others use "pagan" as a generic label for their spiritual worldview, or no identifying label at all.
Some witches, especially Dianics, believe in a witch-cult hypothesis
. This theory attempts to trace the historical origins of their beliefs to Neolithic pre-Christian cultures, believing that Wicca
nism is a distillation of a religion found at the beginning of most, if not all, cultures. They consider wise women and midwives to be the first witches. Dianic witchcraft first became visible in the 1970s, with Z. Budapest's writings.
Her feminist version of witchcraft followed a few decades after the founding (or discovery) of Wicca by Gerald Gardner in the 1940s. In its original and traditional forms, Wicca is a duotheistic pagan religion that honors a God
and a Goddess
equally. Gerald Gardner
(1884–1964) who, with Doreen Valiente
(1922–1999) founded Gardnerian Wicca
in Britain, claimed to be initiated in the 1940s into a surviving coven of traditional witches, who worshipped both a male Horned God and a female Goddess.
For their time, Gardner and Valiente advocated a fairly feminist ideal of priestess authority in service to the Wiccan God and Goddess. Covens in 'traditional' Wicca (i.e., those run along the lines described by Gardner and Valiente) were and still are led pretty much equally by both a priest and a priestess; but the priestess is often considered "prima inter pares" (first among equals); according to the book A Witches' Bible, by Stewart and Janet Farrar. (Other early authors on Wicca and witchcraft, such as Paul Huson in his book Mastering Witchcraft, and Charles Cardell of the Coven of Atho, and Robert Cochrane of the Clan of Tubal Cain, generally saw the male priest or magister as being of more importance.)
While virtually all Wiccans honor the Goddess as one of their two main deities, they may or may not consider themselves to be feminists. For this reason, they may or may not identify with the label "Goddess worshipper" when it is construed as connoting a feminist ideological position, or when it is regarded as an ideology that aims at elevating the Goddess to a position of more importance than the God. Thus, the worship of a goddess or even a Great Goddess should not necessarily be construed as a feminist position per se. (For example, the worship of feminine deities by both men and women in India was historically very widespread, as it was in ancient Greece; even though both of those cultures can be considered more patriarchal than most.)
Doreen Valiente became known in Britain as the 'Mother of the Craft' and contributed extensively to Wicca's written tradition. She is the author of The Witches' Creed, which lays out the basics of Wiccan religious belief and philosophy; including the polarity of the God and the Goddess as the two great "powers of Nature" and the two "mystical pillars" of the religion. One way to characterize the central male-female divine dyad in Wicca is to say that it's a duotheistic religion with a theology based on the divine gender polarity of male and female. Valiente also wrote both the Invocation to the Horned God and the Charge of the Goddess
, the latter of which now exists in a number of variations, and is one of the most famous texts of the Neopagan movement.
The existence of witchcraft as the remnants of an old pagan religion as late as the early Modern Age was first suggested to a wide readership by Margaret Murray
's books, The Witch Cult in Western Europe, The God of the Witches (1933) and The Divine King in England. Margaret Murray's books were focused mainly on the worship of a male Horned God, but she saw witches themselves as being either male or female. Murray's theories were widely discredited by experts at the time, and have been thoroughly debunked now, despite still having mass appeal. Gardner's publications on Wicca followed her theories and argued that witchcraft had survived longer than even she had guessed. Gardner's claimed history of Wicca is similarly discredited. See History of Wicca
.
In formulating an outline of Wiccan theology and liturgy, Gardner drew not only upon the writings of Margaret Murray and her ideas about the worship of an ancient Horned God, but also upon the writings of Charles Godfrey Leland, author of Aradia, the Gospel of the Witches - who speculated that witchcraft involved the worship of a moon goddess. In combining ideas from these two authors, Gardner arrived at Wicca as a duotheistic religion that honored both the male and female deities, and that saw them as divine lovers, in a polar male-female dyad.
Wicca and Neopaganism
, and to some extent the Goddess movement, were influenced by 19th-century occultism, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
(Greer 1995), and romantic nature movements in which both male and female were valued and honored as sacred, in contrast to and perhaps in reaction to mainstream Christian spirituality. Such views are described, for example, in the work of Robert Graves
, especially The White Goddess
(the origin of the neopagan 'Triple Goddess' concept) and Mammon and the Black Goddess.
Wicca was also heavily influenced by the ideas of alchemic symbolism, which emphasized the essential complementary polarity of male and female, and that characterized that basic duality or gender polarity as a partnership of the solar (male) and the lunar (female). In Wicca the moon is the symbol of the Goddess and the sun is the symbol of the God; and the central liturgical mystery and ritual act is "The Great Rite" or Hieros Gamos, which is a symbolic union of the God and the Goddess, as the primal male and female powers of the cosmos. In alchemy this was known as "the alchemical wedding" of the sun and the moon. In a parallel vein, traditional Wicca also draws heavily upon the Western Hermetic Tradition and its roots in the kabbalistic Tree of Life; where the twin pillars of masculine and feminine divine forces are joined by a Middle Pillar that encompasses and transcends both male and female. These "twin pillars" as they are shown in tarot decks are analogous to Valiente's depiction of the God and the Goddess as the two "mystical pillars." In this emphasis on the feminine as the equal and complementary polar opposite of the masculine, Wicca echoes not only kabalistic sources but also the polarity of yin and yang—feminine and masculine—in Taoism.
The main forums for the movement during the 70s and 80s were independently produced magazines and journals such as Green Egg in America and Wood and Water in the UK, among many others. These periodicals attempted to represent the diversity of thought and belief. Mention should also be made of the work of UK feminist groups such as the London-based Matriarchy Study Group which produced the Goddess issue of the feminist periodical Shrew (this was an occasional publication, produced by a different collective each issue) as well as the pamphlets Menstrual Taboos and The Politics of Matriarchy; these featured the early writings of Asphodel (Pauline) Long and the artist Monica Sjoo among others. Internal newsletters of the Matriarchy Study Group and the later Matriarchy Research and Reclaim Network contained much discussion of goddesses and their significance to modern and ancient women, and some of their members produced the periodical Arachne, which brought similar material to the public.
One of the founders of modern American Goddess religions is Zsuzsanna Budapest
, (Zee or "Z"), who started a women-only Dianic Craft
or Dianic Tradition version of witchcraft; this was in the mid-1970s, a few decades after Gerald Gardner. She was a prolific author, and who twinned Tarot and witchcraft from her Hungarian background, with feminism. Z challenged laws in California against Tarot reading and won.
The Dianic view is that separatism, in a world where gender roles were once strictly defined, is sometimes considered dangerous because it challenges what they see as patriarchal assumptions of Western culture (Budapest 1980). Zee is considered by her sect to be the honoured Mother of the American Dianic Craft and a primary proponent of modern separtist Goddess theology.
Later, in America came Starhawk
, activist and author of numerous books, is an influential author/priestess in the American Goddess movement. Her 1979 book, The Spiral Dance, played a large role in popularizing the Goddess movement as well as modern Witchcraft among committed feminists, and is considered a classic of modern Paganism.
Many non-Dianics, as well as Starhawk (herself considered to be one of Z Budapest's students), who also reject monotheistic patriarchal culture, do not agree with Z's justification for separatism. Starhawk's paganism was more broadly based and also drew on the Feri tradition of Witchcraft which, itself, incorporated Hawaiian, European, and Middle Eastern elements. She was initiated into the Feri tradition in California by Victor and Cora Anderson. Starhawk is one of the founders of the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft, which includes both women and men, and which honors both the God and the Goddess.
in The Power of Myth
, a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers
, links the image of the Earth or Mother Goddess to symbols of fertility and reproduction.
For example, Campbell states that, "There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source... We talk of Mother Earth. And in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut
, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere". Campbell continues by stating that the correlation between fertility and the Goddess found its roots in agriculture:
Campbell also argues that the image of the Virgin Mary was derived from the image of Isis and her child Horus: "The antique model for the Madonna, actually, is Isis with Horus at her breast".
According to Joseph Campbell, "half of the world population believe that the myths of religious traditions are facts. The other half states they are not fact at all. The outcome of it is that we have individuals who consider themselves faithful because they accept these metaphors as facts and the other half believe they are atheist because they don't accept". One of these metaphors is Eve. Campbell argues that Christianity, originally a denomination of Judaism, embraced part of the Jewish pagan culture and the rib metaphor is an example of how distant the Jewish religion was from the prehistoric religion—the worship
of the Mother Goddess
or the Goddess
.
is sometimes used as a synonym for the Earth. Many of those in the Goddess movement become involved in ecofeminism
, and are concerned with environmental and ecological issues.
Goddess-movement adherents claim the hierarchical scheme giving humans dominion over the Earth (and nature) has led to lack of respect and concern for the Earth, and thus to what environmentalists identify as environmental crises, (Eisler 1987) such as global warming
. Rather than having dominion over the Earth, Goddess-movement theorists see humans living as part of the Earth environment, and also refer to Earth as "Mother". (Budapest 1980, Starhawk 1979)
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s. Spurred by centuries of alleged poor treatment of females by organized religions with a male supreme deity (or a supreme deity referred to by masculine pronouns, such as English "he"), some women embraced the idea of a female deity that was more in keeping with feminist beliefs and the inherent value of women. A unifying theme of the movement was that the gender of deity characterizes the political gender-bias of the religion, so a Goddess Worshipping religion is held to be matriarchal and a "God" worshipping religion is held to be patriarchal.
Goddess beliefs can take many forms; some people in the Goddess movement recognize multiple goddesses. Some also include gods. While others honor what they refer to as "the Goddess", which is not necessarily seen as monotheistic, but is often understood to be an inclusive, encompassing term incorporating many goddesses in many different cultures. The term "the Goddess" may also be understood to include a multiplicity of ways to view deity personified as female, or as a metaphor, or as a process. (Christ 1997, 2003)
Terminology
Capitalization of terms such as "Goddess" and "Goddesses" usually vary with author or with the style guides of publications or publishers. Within the Goddess community, members generally consider it proper to capitalize the word "Goddess", but not necessary when generic references are made, as in the word "goddesses".- Goddesses refers to a local or specific deities linked clearly to a particular culture and often to particular aspects, attributes and powers (for example: the MesopotamiaMesopotamiaMesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
n goddess IshtarIshtarIshtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
; AthenaAthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
; or HinduHinduHindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
goddesses like Sarasvati, the goddess of learningLearningLearning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
, poetryPoetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, music, inspirationArtistic inspirationInspiration refers to an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavour. Literally, the word means "breathed upon," and it has its origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration came from the muses, as well as the gods Apollo and...
and wisdomWisdomWisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...
; and LakshmiLakshmiLakshmi or Lakumi is the Hindu goddess of wealth, prosperity , light, wisdom, fortune, fertility, generosity and courage; and the embodiment of beauty, grace and charm. Representations of Lakshmi are also found in Jain monuments...
goddess of wealth and sovereigntySovereigntySovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
).
One can regard a goddess (in this sense) as an aspect of the Great Goddess as well as a specific goddess with a particular role within a pantheon
Pantheon (gods)
A pantheon is a set of all the gods of a particular polytheistic religion or mythology.Max Weber's 1922 opus, Economy and Society discusses the link between a...
. The Hindu goddess, Durga
Durga
For the 1985 Hindi Film of Rajesh Khanna see DurgaaIn Hinduism, Durga ; ; meaning "the inaccessible" or "the invincible"; , durga) or Maa Durga "one who can redeem in situations of utmost distress" is a form of Devi, the supremely radiant goddess, depicted as having eighteen arms, riding a lion...
, is a case in point. The name Durga can refer to a specific aspect of the Goddess but in the Shakti forms of Hinduism generally refers to the Great Goddess as AdyaShakti: the primoridal Shakti who incorporates all aspects. Anthropologists
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
in their studies of goddesses have noted that adherents of goddesses often view their own goddess as a personal guardian or teacher.
- The Goddess or the Great Goddess is a female deity that is regarded as primary. Such a religious system existed historically in many cultures, though not under the same names and not necessarily with the same traits. If there is a male god, his powers may be seen as deriving from her. (Gottner-Abendroth 1987). These terms are not usually understood to refer a single deity that is identical across cultures but rather a concept common in many ancient cultures, which those in the Goddess movement want to restore. (Christ 1997). When Goddess is spoken of as a personal guardian, as in 'my Goddess' it means 'my worldview in Goddess spirituality.'
- Goddess Spirituality is sometimes used as a synonym for Goddess Movement and sometimes as the spiritual practice that is part of the Goddess movement.
- Goddessing is a recent contribution to Goddess vocabulary, possibly derived from the British journal of the same name, following from Mary DalyMary DalyMary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at Boston College, a Jesuit-run institution, for 33 years. Daly retired in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male...
's linguistically suspect suggestion that deity is too dynamic, too much in process and changing continually, to be a noun, and should better be spoken as a verb (Daly 1973). Goddessing may also mean Goddess culture, Goddess way of life, Goddess practice, or 'my goddessing' as in my individual interpretation and experience of Goddess.
- Priestess refers to women who dedicate themselves to one or more goddesses. It may or may not include leadership of a group, and it may or may not include legal ordination. The analogous term for men is "priest." However, not everyone who dedicates themselves to the Goddess or goddesses calls themselves a priestess (or priest).
- ThealogyThealogyThealogy, a neologism coined by Isaac Bonewits in 1974, is a discourse that reflects upon the meaning of Goddess and Her relationship to life forms. It is a discourse that critically engages the beliefs, wisdom, practices, questions, and values of the Goddess community, both past and present...
is a term whose first use in the context of feminist analysis of religion and discussion of Goddess is usually credited to Naomi Goldenberg, who used the term in her book Changing of the Gods, published in 1979. It substitutes the Greek feminine prefix "thea-" for the supposedly generic use of the Greek masculine prefix "theo-". Frequently used to mean analysis of Goddess thought and mysticism, it can also be used more liberally to mean any kind of divine, not just deity divine, as in meditation, ethics, ritual pragmatics.
Background
In the 19th century, some first-wave feministsFirst-wave feminism
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It focused on de jure inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage .The term first-wave was coined retroactively in the 1970s...
such as Matilda Joslyn Gage
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage was a suffragist, a Native American activist, an abolitionist, a freethinker, and a prolific author, who was "born with a hatred of oppression".-Early activities:...
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...
published their ideas describing a female Deity, whilst anthropologists such as Johann Jakob Bachofen
Johann Jakob Bachofen
Johann Jakob Bachofen was a Swiss antiquarian, jurist and anthropologist, professor for Roman law at the University of Basel from 1841 to 1845....
examined the ideas of prehistoric matriarchal Goddess cultures. However these ideas were largely ignored in the North America and much of Europe until second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
. In addition to Bachofen, second-wave feminists who became interested in the history of religion also refer to the work of Helen Diner (1965) and M. Esther Harding (1935) Elizabeth Gould Davis (1971) and Merlin Stone
Merlin Stone
Merlin Stone was an author, sculptor, and professor of art and art history. She is best-known for her book, When God Was a Woman.-Biography:...
(1976).
Since the 1970s Goddess Spirituality has emerged as a recognisable international cultural movement. From 1974 to 1984, WomanSpirit, a journal edited in Oregon by Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, published articles, poetry, and rituals by women, exploring ideas and feelings about female deity. The journal The Beltane Papers, which started publication at about the same time, has been publishing continuously for more than 30 years, making it the longest still-published Goddess publication in the U.S. In 1983, Jade River and Lynnie Levy founded the Re-formed Congregation of the Goddess, International(RCG-I) in Madison, Wisconsin, RCG-I continues today with groups called "Circles" in many U. S. localities, as well as an educational program, priestess training, and ordination. The Goddess movement has found voice in various films and self-published media, such as the Women and Spirituality trilogy made by Donna Read for the National Film Board of Canada
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
.
Use of mythological materials
Participants in the Goddess movement often invoke myths. However sceptics claim that these have been reconstructed from ancient sources and others are modern inventions.These myths are not understood literally, but rather figuratively or metaphorically as reflecting ancient understandings and worldviews. For instance, creation myths (Budapest 1980, Laura 1989, Starhawk 1979) are not seen as conflicting with scientific understanding but rather as being poetic, metaphoric statements that are compatible with, for example, the theory of evolution, modern cosmology and physics (Starhawk 1979, Laura 1997).
Myths from ancient cultures are often reinterpreted as new evidence comes to light. Because myths from religions that included goddesses, those after the Bronze Age, including Greek and Roman mythology, are believed to have patriarchal bias, reinterpretation by Goddess movement writers and women scholars help to provide a truer mirror of the social set up of the period in which the story was written. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is one that has been reinterpreted. (Christ 1987, Pollack, 1997, Spretnak 1978).
Theology
Goddess Spirituality characteristically shows diversity: no central body defines its dogma. Yet there is evolving consensus on some issues including: the Goddess in relation to polytheismPolytheism
Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....
and monotheism
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
; immanence, transcendence and other ways to understand the nature of the Goddess.
One or many?
One question often asked is whether Goddess adherents believe in one Goddess or many goddesses: Is Goddess spirituality monotheistic or polytheistic (Eller 2000)? This is not an issue for many of those in the Goddess movement, whose conceptualization of divinity is more all-encompassing (Starhawk 2001). The terms "the Goddess", or "Great Goddess" may appear monotheistic because the singular noun is used. However, these terms are most commonly used as code or shorthand for one or all of the following: to refer to certain types of prehistoric goddesses; to encompass all goddesses (a form of henotheismHenotheism
Henotheism is the belief and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities...
); to refer to a modern metaphoric concept of female deity; to describe a form of energy, or a process. (Long 1996, Laura 1997, Christ 1997 and 2003).
The concept of a singular divine being with many expressions is not a new development in thought: it has been a major theme in India for many centuries, at the very least as far back as the 5th century, though hymns in the early Vedas too speak of a one-Goddess-many-goddesses concept. (Jayran 2000)
One of the underlying themes of the earlier forms of Goddess religion is the concept of the aspects of deity. This is neither syncretism nor henotheism but a realization of the unity behind a multiplicity of manifestations. It is apparent from the earliest written records that we have from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Goddess speaks of herself as being known by many names and in many forms, and then recounts the individual names, attributes and placenames. This is as true of Inanna from Sumer as it is of the Isis in Rome and Egypt.
Within or without?
Another point of discussion is whether the Goddess is immanent, or transcendent, or both, or something else. Starhawk (1988) speaks of the Goddess as immanent (infusing all of nature) but sometimes also simultaneously transcendent (existing independently of the material world). Many Goddess authors agree and also describe Goddess as, at one and the same time, immanently pantheistic and panentheistic. The former means that Goddess flows into and through each individual aspect of nature—each tree, blade of grass, human, animal, planet; the latter means that all exist within the Goddess (Starhawk 1979, Laura 1997, Christ 1997).Starhawk (1979:77) also speaks of the Goddess as both a psychological symbol and "manifest reality. She exists and we create Her" (italics hers). Laura (1997:175) describes Goddess as being interactive. Possibly building on Mary Daly's (1973 and 1978) suggestion that the divine be understood not as a Being (noun), but as Be-ing (verb), Carol P. Christ (2003), shows the similarities between Goddess theology and process theology
Process theology
Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and further developed by Charles Hartshorne . While there are process theologies that are similar, but unrelated to the work of Whitehead the term is generally applied to the...
, and suggests that Goddess theologians adopt more of the process viewpoint.
The Aristasian religion, Deanism, on the other hand, states strongly that the Mother created us, that She exists independently of human beings and is the First Cause of all things.
Ethics
Although the Goddess movement has no Ten CommandmentsTen Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
dictating a specific code of behavior, there are commonly held tenets and concepts within the movement that form a basis for ethical behavior. (Christ 2005) Those participants in Goddess spirituality who define themselves as Wiccan/en, usually follow what is known as the Wiccan Rede
Wiccan Rede
The Wiccan Rede is a statement that provides the key moral system in the Neopagan religion of Wicca and other related Witchcraft-based faiths. A common form of the Rede is An it harm none, do what ye will....
: " 'An it harm none, do what ye will", ("an" being an archaic English word understood to mean "if", or "as long as"). Many also believe in the Threefold Law, which states that "what you send (or do), returns three times over", (Starhawk 1979). Some traditions believe that this means it will be returned to the sender three times, or in a portion three times in volume, while others say it will instead be returned to the sender on three levels of being- physical, mental, and spiritual. Still others postulate that the number "three" is symbolic, meant to indicate a magnified karmic result for one's actions.
Some people in the Goddess movement honor the Triple Goddess
Triple Goddess
The Triple Goddess is the subject of much of the writing of Robert Graves, and has been adopted by some neopagans as one of their primary deities. The term triple goddess is sometimes used outside of Neopaganism to refer to historical goddess triads and single goddesses of three forms or aspects...
of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The Maiden aspect of the Goddess shows women how to be independent and strong; the Mother aspect shows women how to be nurturing; and the Crone aspect shows that respecting elders is important and focuses on wisdom, change, and transformation.(Starhawk 1979)
Because the Crone aspect of the Goddess is understood by some to be destructive at times, some consider it to contain both positive and negative imagery and to present an ethical quandary. The Hindu Goddess Kali
Kali
' , also known as ' , is the Hindu goddess associated with power, shakti. The name Kali comes from kāla, which means black, time, death, lord of death, Shiva. Kali means "the black one". Since Shiva is called Kāla - the eternal time, Kālī, his consort, also means "Time" or "Death" . Hence, Kāli is...
, or Kali Ma, is often seen as an example of the Crone aspect. The concept is that the corrective force in a Dark Age must be a righteously directed dark force. Thus, to combat the demons of ignorance, ego, anger, etc. the darker aspect manifests. Later on, even her fierce image softens in the love of her devotees. Her duality is easily reconciled with the monism of Hinduism, which claims to understand the fundamental unity of truth as being impersonal and stratified in an ego-knotted existence (such as the human condition), and thus to the evil or unrighteous she is destruction personified and to the loving and moral devotee she is nothing but the love of the mother. (Jayran 2000)
Other Goddess ethical beliefs are that one should not harm the interconnected web of life, and that peace and partnership should be the goals, rather than war and domination. According to Goddess theologian Carol P. Christ
Carol P. Christ
Carol Patrice Christ is a teacher and author and holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.-Biography:She is the author of the widely reprinted essay "Why Women Need the Goddess,", which argues in favor of the concept of there having been an ancient religion of a supreme Goddess. Christ has written five...
the following are ethical touchstones: "Nurture life; Walk in love and beauty; Trust the knowledge that comes through the body; Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering; Take only what you need; Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations; Approach the taking of life with great restraint; Practice great generosity; Repair the web." (Christ 1997:167).
Prehistoric cultures
The Goddess movement draws some of its inspiration from the work of such archaeologists as Marija GimbutasMarija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...
(Gimbutas 1974 and 1989, Mellaart 1967), whose interpretation of artifacts excavated from the region she called "Old Europe" points to societies of Neolithic Europe
Neolithic Europe
Neolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...
that were "matristic" or "goddess-centered".
Heide Göttner-Abendroth
Heide Göttner-Abendroth
Heide Göttner-Abendroth is a German feminist advocating a branch of feminist anthropology known as Matriarchy Studies , focusing on the study of matriarchal or matrilineal societies.-Life:Göttner-Abendroth was born during World War II, and at the age of 12 escaped from East Germany to West...
, working in the 1970s to mid 1980s and writing originally in German, called these cultures "matriarchies", introducing a feminist field of "Modern Matriarchal Studies"
She presented a theory of the transformation of prehistoric cultures in which the local goddess was primary and the male god, if there was any, derived his power from the goddess. In what she terms the "Downfall," which occurred at varying times in various cultures, the gods overcame the goddesses and made them subservient. (Göttner-Abendroth 1987) This is believed to mirror the gradual suppression of women and the rise of patriarchy.
Göttner-Abendroth's terminology is idiosyncratic. The term "matriarchy
Matriarchy
A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership and moral authority. It is also sometimes called a gynocratic or gynocentric society....
" to describe these cultures has been rejected by many Goddess movement scholars, especially those in North America, because it implies female domination as the reverse of the male domination present in patriarchy. These scholars make the point that such a reversal was not the case; rather these prehistoric cultures were egalitarian and had a social structure that included matrilineality
Matrilineality
Matrilineality is a system in which descent is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. Matrilineality is also a societal system in which one belongs to one's matriline or mother's lineage, which can involve the inheritance of property and/or titles.A matriline is a line of descent from a...
, inheritance of assets and parentage traced through the maternal line (Lerner 1987, Eisler 1987, Gimbutas 1989, Christ 1997, Dashu 2000).
According to Eisler, cultures in which women and men shared power, and in which female deities were worshipped, were more peaceful than the patriarchal dominator societies that followed. Eisler proposed the terms "dominator" and "androcracy" instead of "patriarchy", and "partnership" and "gylany" (taking the first letters of the prefixes gyne [female] and andro [male] and linking them with an "l") instead of "matriarchy." Others use the terms matrifocal (Christ 1997, Pollack 1997, Starhawk 1979) and matrix. Carol P. Christ (1997:58-59) writes, "The term matriarchy is not used by scholars who are aware of its controversial history."
Ian Hodder's reinterpretation of Gimbutas and Mellaart (2004) dispute the existence of "matriarchal" or "matrifocal" cultures, as do some other archaeologists and historians in this field (Hutton, 1991, Tringham & Conkey, 1998, Meskell, 1998, see also Eller 2000). However, mythologist Joseph Campbell compared the importance of Gimbutas' output to the historical importance of the Rosetta Stone in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Campbell provided a foreword to Gimbutas' The Language of the Goddess (1989) before he died, and often said how profoundly he regretted that her research on the Neolithic cultures of Europe had not been available when he was writing The Masks of God.
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...
was dubbed "Grandmother of the Goddess Movement" in the 1990s, and continues to be cited by many feminist writers, including Max Dashu. Many other scholars, including Joan Marler and Marguerite Rigoglioso, support her work. (Marler 2003 and 2004, Rigoglioso 2002). Still, Gimbutas' theories had been widely criticized as mistaken on the grounds of dating, archeological context and typologies
Typology (archaeology)
In archaeology a typology is the result of the classification of things according to their characteristics. The products of the classification, i.e. the classes are also called types. Most archaeological typologies organize artifacts into types, but typologies of houses or roads belonging to a...
Some archaeologists consider her goddess hypothesis implausible some assert that her work is pseudo-scholarship.
Wicca
In WiccaWicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
"the Goddess" is a deity of prime importance, along with her consort the Horned God
Horned God
The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in some European pagan religions. He is often given various names and epithets, and represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system, the other part being the female Triple Goddess. In common Wiccan belief, he is...
. In the earliest Wiccan publications she is described as a tribal goddess of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor universal, and it was recognized that there was a greater "Prime Mover
Cosmological argument
The cosmological argument is an argument for the existence of a First Cause to the universe, and by extension is often used as an argument for the existence of an "unconditioned" or "supreme" being, usually then identified as God...
", although the witches did not concern themselves much with this being.
Within many forms of Wicca the Goddess has come to be considered as a universal deity, more in line with her description in the Charge of the Goddess
Charge of the Goddess
The Charge of the Goddess is a traditional inspirational text sometimes used in the neopagan religion of Wicca. Several versions exist, though they all have the same basic premise, that of a set of instructions given by a Great Goddess to her worshippers...
, a key Wiccan text. In this guise she is the "Queen of Heaven", similar to Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
; she also encompasses and conceives all life, much like Gaia
Gaia (mythology)
Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born...
. Much like Isis and certain late Classical conceptions of Selene
Selene
In Greek mythology, Selene was an archaic lunar deity and the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. In Roman mythology, the moon goddess is called Luna, Latin for "moon"....
, she is held to be the summation of all other goddesses, who represent her different names and aspects across the different cultures. The Goddess is often portrayed with strong lunar symbolism, drawing on various cultures and deities such as Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
, Hecate
Hecate
Hecate or Hekate is a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and crossroads.She is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod's Theogony...
and Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
, and is often depicted as the Maiden, Mother and Crone triad popularized by Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
(see Triple Goddess below). Many depictions of her also draw strongly on Celtic
Celtic mythology
Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure...
goddesses. Some Wiccans believe there are many goddesses, and in some forms of Wicca, notably Dianic Wicca
Dianic Wicca
Dianic Witchcraft and Dianic Feminist Witchcraft, is a tradition, or denomination, of the Neopagan religion of Wicca. It was founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the United States in the 1970s, and is notable for its focus on the worship of the Goddess, and on feminism...
, the Goddess alone is worshipped, and the God
Horned God
The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in some European pagan religions. He is often given various names and epithets, and represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system, the other part being the female Triple Goddess. In common Wiccan belief, he is...
plays very little part in their worship and ritual.
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
popularized the triad of "Maiden" (or "Virgin"), "Mother" and "Crone", and while this idea did not rest on sound scholarship, his poetic inspiration has gained a tenacious hold. Considerable variation in the precise conceptions of these figures exists, as typically occurs in Neopaganism and indeed in pagan religions in general. Some choose to interpret them as three stages in a woman's life, separated by menarche
Menarche
Menarche is the first menstrual cycle, or first menstrual bleeding, in female human beings. From both social and medical perspectives it is often considered the central event of female puberty, as it signals the possibility of fertility....
and menopause
Menopause
Menopause is a term used to describe the permanent cessation of the primary functions of the human ovaries: the ripening and release of ova and the release of hormones that cause both the creation of the uterine lining and the subsequent shedding of the uterine lining...
. Others find this too biologically based and rigid, and prefer a freer interpretation, with the Maiden as birth (independent, self-centred, seeking), the Mother as giving birth (interrelated, compassionate nurturing, creating), and the Crone as death and renewal (holistic, remote, unknowable) — and all three erotic and wise.
Some, but not all, participants in the Goddess movement self-identify as witches
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
ns or Wiccens. (Likewise, some, but not all, Wiccans and witches consider themselves to be part of "the Goddess movement.") Other participants in the Goddess movement call themselves Goddessians (Laura 2002). Still others use "pagan" as a generic label for their spiritual worldview, or no identifying label at all.
Some witches, especially Dianics, believe in a witch-cult hypothesis
Witch-cult hypothesis
The Witch-cult is the term for a hypothetical pre-Christian, pagan religion of Europe that survived into at least the early modern period. As late as the 19th and early 20th centuries, some scholars had postulated that European witchcraft was part of a Satanic plot to overthrow Christianity; most...
. This theory attempts to trace the historical origins of their beliefs to Neolithic pre-Christian cultures, believing that Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
nism is a distillation of a religion found at the beginning of most, if not all, cultures. They consider wise women and midwives to be the first witches. Dianic witchcraft first became visible in the 1970s, with Z. Budapest's writings.
Her feminist version of witchcraft followed a few decades after the founding (or discovery) of Wicca by Gerald Gardner in the 1940s. In its original and traditional forms, Wicca is a duotheistic pagan religion that honors a God
Horned God
The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in some European pagan religions. He is often given various names and epithets, and represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system, the other part being the female Triple Goddess. In common Wiccan belief, he is...
and a Goddess
Triple Goddess
The Triple Goddess is the subject of much of the writing of Robert Graves, and has been adopted by some neopagans as one of their primary deities. The term triple goddess is sometimes used outside of Neopaganism to refer to historical goddess triads and single goddesses of three forms or aspects...
equally. Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
(1884–1964) who, with Doreen Valiente
Doreen Valiente
Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente , who also went under the craft name Ameth, was an influential English Wiccan who was involved in a number of different early traditions, including Gardnerianism, Cochrane's Craft and the Coven of Atho...
(1922–1999) founded Gardnerian Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca, or Gardnerian Witchcraft, is a mystery cult tradition or denomination in the neopagan religion of Wicca, whose members can trace initiatory descent from Gerald Gardner. The tradition is itself named after Gardner , a British civil servant and scholar of magic...
in Britain, claimed to be initiated in the 1940s into a surviving coven of traditional witches, who worshipped both a male Horned God and a female Goddess.
For their time, Gardner and Valiente advocated a fairly feminist ideal of priestess authority in service to the Wiccan God and Goddess. Covens in 'traditional' Wicca (i.e., those run along the lines described by Gardner and Valiente) were and still are led pretty much equally by both a priest and a priestess; but the priestess is often considered "prima inter pares" (first among equals); according to the book A Witches' Bible, by Stewart and Janet Farrar. (Other early authors on Wicca and witchcraft, such as Paul Huson in his book Mastering Witchcraft, and Charles Cardell of the Coven of Atho, and Robert Cochrane of the Clan of Tubal Cain, generally saw the male priest or magister as being of more importance.)
While virtually all Wiccans honor the Goddess as one of their two main deities, they may or may not consider themselves to be feminists. For this reason, they may or may not identify with the label "Goddess worshipper" when it is construed as connoting a feminist ideological position, or when it is regarded as an ideology that aims at elevating the Goddess to a position of more importance than the God. Thus, the worship of a goddess or even a Great Goddess should not necessarily be construed as a feminist position per se. (For example, the worship of feminine deities by both men and women in India was historically very widespread, as it was in ancient Greece; even though both of those cultures can be considered more patriarchal than most.)
Doreen Valiente became known in Britain as the 'Mother of the Craft' and contributed extensively to Wicca's written tradition. She is the author of The Witches' Creed, which lays out the basics of Wiccan religious belief and philosophy; including the polarity of the God and the Goddess as the two great "powers of Nature" and the two "mystical pillars" of the religion. One way to characterize the central male-female divine dyad in Wicca is to say that it's a duotheistic religion with a theology based on the divine gender polarity of male and female. Valiente also wrote both the Invocation to the Horned God and the Charge of the Goddess
Charge of the Goddess
The Charge of the Goddess is a traditional inspirational text sometimes used in the neopagan religion of Wicca. Several versions exist, though they all have the same basic premise, that of a set of instructions given by a Great Goddess to her worshippers...
, the latter of which now exists in a number of variations, and is one of the most famous texts of the Neopagan movement.
The existence of witchcraft as the remnants of an old pagan religion as late as the early Modern Age was first suggested to a wide readership by Margaret Murray
Margaret Murray
Margaret Alice Murray was a prominent British Egyptologist and anthropologist. Primarily known for her work in Egyptology, which was "the core of her academic career," she is also known for her propagation of the Witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials in the Early Modern period of...
's books, The Witch Cult in Western Europe, The God of the Witches (1933) and The Divine King in England. Margaret Murray's books were focused mainly on the worship of a male Horned God, but she saw witches themselves as being either male or female. Murray's theories were widely discredited by experts at the time, and have been thoroughly debunked now, despite still having mass appeal. Gardner's publications on Wicca followed her theories and argued that witchcraft had survived longer than even she had guessed. Gardner's claimed history of Wicca is similarly discredited. See History of Wicca
History of Wicca
The history of Wicca documents the rise of the Neopagan religion of Wicca and related witchcraft-based Neopagan religions. Wicca originated in the early twentieth century, when it first developed amongst several secretive covens in England who were basing their religious beliefs and practices upon...
.
In formulating an outline of Wiccan theology and liturgy, Gardner drew not only upon the writings of Margaret Murray and her ideas about the worship of an ancient Horned God, but also upon the writings of Charles Godfrey Leland, author of Aradia, the Gospel of the Witches - who speculated that witchcraft involved the worship of a moon goddess. In combining ideas from these two authors, Gardner arrived at Wicca as a duotheistic religion that honored both the male and female deities, and that saw them as divine lovers, in a polar male-female dyad.
Wicca and Neopaganism
Neopaganism
Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...
, and to some extent the Goddess movement, were influenced by 19th-century occultism, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
(Greer 1995), and romantic nature movements in which both male and female were valued and honored as sacred, in contrast to and perhaps in reaction to mainstream Christian spirituality. Such views are described, for example, in the work of Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
, especially The White Goddess
The White Goddess
The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by author and poet Robert Graves. First published in 1948, based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine, corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961...
(the origin of the neopagan 'Triple Goddess' concept) and Mammon and the Black Goddess.
Wicca was also heavily influenced by the ideas of alchemic symbolism, which emphasized the essential complementary polarity of male and female, and that characterized that basic duality or gender polarity as a partnership of the solar (male) and the lunar (female). In Wicca the moon is the symbol of the Goddess and the sun is the symbol of the God; and the central liturgical mystery and ritual act is "The Great Rite" or Hieros Gamos, which is a symbolic union of the God and the Goddess, as the primal male and female powers of the cosmos. In alchemy this was known as "the alchemical wedding" of the sun and the moon. In a parallel vein, traditional Wicca also draws heavily upon the Western Hermetic Tradition and its roots in the kabbalistic Tree of Life; where the twin pillars of masculine and feminine divine forces are joined by a Middle Pillar that encompasses and transcends both male and female. These "twin pillars" as they are shown in tarot decks are analogous to Valiente's depiction of the God and the Goddess as the two "mystical pillars." In this emphasis on the feminine as the equal and complementary polar opposite of the masculine, Wicca echoes not only kabalistic sources but also the polarity of yin and yang—feminine and masculine—in Taoism.
The main forums for the movement during the 70s and 80s were independently produced magazines and journals such as Green Egg in America and Wood and Water in the UK, among many others. These periodicals attempted to represent the diversity of thought and belief. Mention should also be made of the work of UK feminist groups such as the London-based Matriarchy Study Group which produced the Goddess issue of the feminist periodical Shrew (this was an occasional publication, produced by a different collective each issue) as well as the pamphlets Menstrual Taboos and The Politics of Matriarchy; these featured the early writings of Asphodel (Pauline) Long and the artist Monica Sjoo among others. Internal newsletters of the Matriarchy Study Group and the later Matriarchy Research and Reclaim Network contained much discussion of goddesses and their significance to modern and ancient women, and some of their members produced the periodical Arachne, which brought similar material to the public.
One of the founders of modern American Goddess religions is Zsuzsanna Budapest
Zsuzsanna Budapest
Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay is an American author of Hungarian origin who writes on feminist spirituality and Dianic Wicca under the pen name and religious name Zsuzsanna Budapest or Z. Budapest. She is the High Priestess and the founding mother of the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1, the first feminist,...
, (Zee or "Z"), who started a women-only Dianic Craft
Dianic Wicca
Dianic Witchcraft and Dianic Feminist Witchcraft, is a tradition, or denomination, of the Neopagan religion of Wicca. It was founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the United States in the 1970s, and is notable for its focus on the worship of the Goddess, and on feminism...
or Dianic Tradition version of witchcraft; this was in the mid-1970s, a few decades after Gerald Gardner. She was a prolific author, and who twinned Tarot and witchcraft from her Hungarian background, with feminism. Z challenged laws in California against Tarot reading and won.
The Dianic view is that separatism, in a world where gender roles were once strictly defined, is sometimes considered dangerous because it challenges what they see as patriarchal assumptions of Western culture (Budapest 1980). Zee is considered by her sect to be the honoured Mother of the American Dianic Craft and a primary proponent of modern separtist Goddess theology.
Later, in America came Starhawk
Starhawk
Starhawk is an American writer and activist. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion...
, activist and author of numerous books, is an influential author/priestess in the American Goddess movement. Her 1979 book, The Spiral Dance, played a large role in popularizing the Goddess movement as well as modern Witchcraft among committed feminists, and is considered a classic of modern Paganism.
Many non-Dianics, as well as Starhawk (herself considered to be one of Z Budapest's students), who also reject monotheistic patriarchal culture, do not agree with Z's justification for separatism. Starhawk's paganism was more broadly based and also drew on the Feri tradition of Witchcraft which, itself, incorporated Hawaiian, European, and Middle Eastern elements. She was initiated into the Feri tradition in California by Victor and Cora Anderson. Starhawk is one of the founders of the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft, which includes both women and men, and which honors both the God and the Goddess.
Joseph Campbell
Joseph CampbellJoseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
in The Power of Myth
The Power of Myth
The companion book for the series, The Power of Myth, was released in 1988 at the same time the series aired on PBS...
, a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public...
, links the image of the Earth or Mother Goddess to symbols of fertility and reproduction.
For example, Campbell states that, "There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source... We talk of Mother Earth. And in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut
Nut (goddess)
In the Ennead of Egyptian mythology, Nut was the goddess of the sky.-Goddess of the sky:...
, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere". Campbell continues by stating that the correlation between fertility and the Goddess found its roots in agriculture:
- Bill Moyers: But what happened along the way to this reverence that in primitive societies was directed to the Goddess figure, the Great Goddess, the mother earth- what happened to that?
- Joseph Campbell: Well that was associated primarily with agricultureAgricultureAgriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and the agricultural societies. It has to do with the earth. The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants...so woman magic and earth magic are the same. They are related. And the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. It is in the agricultural world of ancient MesopotamiaMesopotamiaMesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
, the Egyptian NileNileThe Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
, and in the earlier planting-culture systems that the Goddess is the dominant mythic form.
Campbell also argues that the image of the Virgin Mary was derived from the image of Isis and her child Horus: "The antique model for the Madonna, actually, is Isis with Horus at her breast".
According to Joseph Campbell, "half of the world population believe that the myths of religious traditions are facts. The other half states they are not fact at all. The outcome of it is that we have individuals who consider themselves faithful because they accept these metaphors as facts and the other half believe they are atheist because they don't accept". One of these metaphors is Eve. Campbell argues that Christianity, originally a denomination of Judaism, embraced part of the Jewish pagan culture and the rib metaphor is an example of how distant the Jewish religion was from the prehistoric religion—the worship
Worship
Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship — to give, at its simplest, worth to something, for example, Christian worship.Evelyn Underhill defines worship thus: "The absolute...
of the Mother Goddess
Mother goddess
Mother goddess is a term used to refer to a goddess who represents motherhood, fertility, creation or embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.Many different goddesses have...
or the Goddess
Goddess
A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....
.
Earth as Goddess
Many people involved in the Goddess movement regard the Earth as a living Goddess. For some this may be figurative, for others literal. This literal belief is similar to that proposed by Gaia theory, and the Goddess-name GaiaGaia (mythology)
Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born...
is sometimes used as a synonym for the Earth. Many of those in the Goddess movement become involved in ecofeminism
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
, and are concerned with environmental and ecological issues.
Goddess-movement adherents claim the hierarchical scheme giving humans dominion over the Earth (and nature) has led to lack of respect and concern for the Earth, and thus to what environmentalists identify as environmental crises, (Eisler 1987) such as global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
. Rather than having dominion over the Earth, Goddess-movement theorists see humans living as part of the Earth environment, and also refer to Earth as "Mother". (Budapest 1980, Starhawk 1979)
See also
- Babalon WorkingBabalon WorkingThe Babalon Working was a series of magic ceremonies or rituals commenced on March 2, 1946 by author, pioneer rocket-fuel scientist, and occultist Jack Parsons, essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of the archetypal divine feminine called Babalon, as well as to catalyze the...
- Dianic tradition
- Dianic WiccaDianic WiccaDianic Witchcraft and Dianic Feminist Witchcraft, is a tradition, or denomination, of the Neopagan religion of Wicca. It was founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the United States in the 1970s, and is notable for its focus on the worship of the Goddess, and on feminism...
- Dominator cultureDominator cultureDominator culture is a term coined by futurist and writer Riane Eisler. This term first appears in her book The Chalice and the Blade . This book outlines in detail her theory of hierarchical dominator cultures vs...
- FeminismFeminismFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
- Feminist theologyFeminist theologyFeminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective...
- Goddess worshipGoddess worshipGoddess worship may be*the cult of any goddess in polytheistic religions*worship of a Great Goddess on a henotheistic or monotheistic or duotheistic basis**Hindu Shaktism**the neopagan Goddess movement**Wicca**Dianic Wicca...
- The Hebrew GoddessThe Hebrew GoddessThe Hebrew Goddess is a 1967 book by Jewish historian and anthropologist Raphael Patai. In this book, Patai argues that the Jewish religion historically had elements of polytheism, especially the worship of goddesses and a cult of the mother goddess...
- Triple GoddessTriple GoddessThe Triple Goddess is the subject of much of the writing of Robert Graves, and has been adopted by some neopagans as one of their primary deities. The term triple goddess is sometimes used outside of Neopaganism to refer to historical goddess triads and single goddesses of three forms or aspects...
- Heavenly MotherHeavenly MotherIn Mormonism, Heavenly Mother or the Mother in Heaven is the mother of human spirits and the wife of God the Father. Those who accept the Mother in Heaven doctrine trace its origins to Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. The doctrine was not widely known, however, until...
- Sex magicSex magicSex magic is a term for various types of sexual activity used in magical, ritualistic or otherwise religious and spiritual pursuits. One practice of sex magic is using the energy of sexual arousal or orgasm with visualization of a desired result...
- Shekinah
- Terence McKennaTerence McKennaTerence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...
- ThealogyThealogyThealogy, a neologism coined by Isaac Bonewits in 1974, is a discourse that reflects upon the meaning of Goddess and Her relationship to life forms. It is a discourse that critically engages the beliefs, wisdom, practices, questions, and values of the Goddess community, both past and present...
- Third Wave FeminismThird-wave feminismThird-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
- Matriarchal religionMatriarchal religionThe concept of a Matriarchal religion is a concept forwarded in second-wave feminism since the 1970s, based on the notion of a historical matriarchy first developed in the 19th century by J. J...
- The Myth of Matriarchal PrehistoryThe Myth of Matriarchal PrehistoryThe Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future is a book by Cynthia Eller that deconstructs the theory of a prehistoric matriarchy. This hypothesis developed in 19th century scholarship and taken up by 1970s second wave feminism following Marija Gimbutas...
Further reading
- Bailey, Douglass. (2005). Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic. Routledge Publishers. ISBN 0-415-33152-8
- Bolen, Jean ShinodaJean Shinoda BolenJean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. is a psychiatrist and author. Bolen has written several books on the archetypal psychology of women and men in the development of spirituality, and is one of the women featured in the 1986 film Women - for America, for the World and 1989 National Film Board of Canada...
, Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women, 1984 - _________, Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women over Fifty, 2001
- Budapest, Z., The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries, Part II, Susan B. Anthony Books, 1980 and later editions.
- Christ, Carol P., "Musings on the Goddess and Her Cultural Despisers--Provoked by Naomi Goldenberg", 2005 on http://www.belili.org/marija/carol_christ.html accessed 1/25/06.
- _________, Rebirth of the Goddess, Addison-Wesley, 1997.
- _________, She Who Changes, Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.
- _________, The Laughter of Aphrodite, Harper & Row, 1987.
- _________, "Why Women Need The Goddess", in Womanspirit Rising, Harper & Row, 1979, p. 273.
- Cohen, Daniel, "Iphigenia: A Retelling", in Christ, 1997, p. 179.
- Daly, Mary, Beyond God The Father, Beacon Press, 1978.
- ___________, Gyn/Ecology, Beacon Press, 1978.
- Dashu, Max,"Knocking Down Straw Dolls: A critique of Cynthia Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal PrehistoryThe Myth of Matriarchal PrehistoryThe Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future is a book by Cynthia Eller that deconstructs the theory of a prehistoric matriarchy. This hypothesis developed in 19th century scholarship and taken up by 1970s second wave feminism following Marija Gimbutas...
", http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller.html, accessed 12/30/05; posted in 2000. - Dexter, Miriam Robbins, Whence the Goddesses, Pergamon Press,1990.
- Dexter, Miriam Robbins, "Earth Goddess" In Mallory, J.P. and Douglas Q. Adams, eds., The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997: 174.
- Diner, HelenBertha DienerBertha Eckstein-Diener, also known by her American pseudonym as Helen Diner was an Austrian writer, travel journalist, feminist historian and intellectual. Her book Mothers and Amazons , was the first to focus on women's cultural history...
, Mothers and Amazons, (Introduction by Joseph Campbell, trans. John Philip Lundin), Julian Press, 1965. - Eisler, Riane, The Chalice and the Blade, Harper, 1987.
- Eller, Cynthia, The Myth of Matriarchal PrehistoryThe Myth of Matriarchal PrehistoryThe Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future is a book by Cynthia Eller that deconstructs the theory of a prehistoric matriarchy. This hypothesis developed in 19th century scholarship and taken up by 1970s second wave feminism following Marija Gimbutas...
, Beacon Press, 2000. - Gimbutas, Marija, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, Thames and Hudson 1974 [1982].
- _____________, The Language of the Goddess, (Foreword by Joseph Campbell), HarperCollins 1991 [1989].
- Goddess Alive UK print publication with online presence.
- Goldenberg, Naomi, The Changing of the Gods, Beacon Press, 1979.
- Göttner-Abendroth, HeideHeide Göttner-AbendrothHeide Göttner-Abendroth is a German feminist advocating a branch of feminist anthropology known as Matriarchy Studies , focusing on the study of matriarchal or matrilineal societies.-Life:Göttner-Abendroth was born during World War II, and at the age of 12 escaped from East Germany to West...
, Matriarchal Mythology in Former Times and Today (pamphlet), Crossing Press, 1987. - Greer, Mary K., Women of the Golden Dawn, Park Street Press, 1995.
- Harding, M. Esther, MD, Woman's Mysteries, Longmans, Green and Co., 1935.
- Henning, Jan and Cohen, Daniel, Hawk and Bard Reborn: Revisions of Old Tales, Wood and Water, 1988.
- Hodder, Ian, "Catalhoyuk", Scientific American, January 2004.
- Hutton, Ronald, The Pagan Religions in the Ancient British Isles, 1991.
- Jayran, Shan, presentation at Goddess Studies Colloquium, Bristol U.K, 2000.
- Laura, Judith, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century, RTP/Open Sea, 1997.
- __________, "Naming Ourselves," in The Beltane Papers,27:1, Spring 2002.
- __________, She Lives!The Return of Our Great Mother, Crossing Press, 1989
- Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Partriarchy, Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Long, Asphodel P., In A Chariot Drawn By Lions, Crossing Press, 1993.
- ____________, "The One or the Many--The Great Goddess Revisited," presented at the Feminist Theology Annual Conference, Dublin, Ireland, July 1996.
- Marler, Joan, "Correcting the Picture", Letter to the Editor of Scientific American, Awakened Woman, March 2004 at http://www.awakenedwoman.com/marler_hodder.htm .Accessed 1/25/06.
- ____________, "The Myth of Universal Patriarchy", posted 2003 on http://www.belili.org/marija/eller-response.html . Accessed 1/25/06.
- MatriFocus A cross-quarterly web magazine for and by Goddess women.
- Mellaart, James, Catal Huyuk, McGraw-Hill, 1967.
- Meskell, Lynn, "Twin Peaks: The Archaeologies of Çatalhöyuk" in Goodison, LucyLucy GoodisonDr. Lucy Goodison is an archeologist and author from Dorset in the United Kingdom. She is a leading expert in Minoan tomb architecture and sacred practices, and has also written numerous general interest books on mythology, personal and social change....
and Christine Morris (ed.) Ancient Goddesses, 1998 - Monaghan, Patricia, The Goddess Path, Llewellyn Worldwide, 1999.
- Pollack, Rachel, The Body of the Goddess, Element, 1997.
- Ramprasad SenRamprasad Sen' was a Shakta poet of eighteenth century Bengal. His bhakti poems, known as Ramprasadi, are still popular in Bengal—they are usually addressed to the Hindu goddess Kali and written in Bengali...
(1720–1781) Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair : Selected Poems to the Mother Goddess. (ISBN 0-934252-94-7) - Ranck, Shirley Ann, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, Delphi Press, 1995.
- Rigoglioso, Marguerite, "Women's Spirituality Scholars Speak Out: A Report on the 7th Annual Gender and Archeology Conference at Sonoma State", 2002, on http://belili.org/marija/rigoglioso.html, accessed 1/25/06.
- Ruickbie, LeoLeo RuickbieLeo Ruickbie is an historian and sociologist of magic, witchcraft and Wicca. He is the author of several books, beginning with Witchcraft Out of the Shadows, a 2004 publication outlining the history of witchcraft from ancient Greece until the modern day. Ruickbie was born in Scotland and took a...
, Witchcraft Out of the Shadows, Robert Hale, 2004. - SageWoman U.S.print magazine with online presence
- Sjoo, Monica and Mor, Barbara The Great Cosmic Mother : Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, Harper and Row, 1987.
- Spretnak, Charlene, Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece, Beacon, 1978.
- Starhawk, "Starhawk's Response to Charlotte Allen's Article", Letter to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, January 5, 2001 on http://www.belili.org/marija/allen_response.html. Accessed 1/25/06.
- Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, Harper, 1979 and later editions.
- _________, Truth or Dare, HarperCollins, 1988.
- The Beltane Papers U.S.print magazine with online presence
- Tringham, RuthRuth TringhamRuth Tringham is an anthropologist, emphasizing in the archaeology of Neolithic Europe and southwest Asia. She is currently a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Before going to Berkeley, she had taught at Harvard University and University College London...
& Conkey, Margaret, "Rethinking Figurines: A Critical View from Archaeology of Gimbutas, the 'Goddess' and Popular Culture" in Goodison, Lucy (ed.) Ancient Goddesses, 1998
External links
- MatriFocus Web Magazine
- GAEA: Goddess Ambrea Earth Alliance
- Women and Spirituality
- Alien Dreamtime Talk by Terence McKenna that describes male dominator culture and the rejection of The Goddess in the context of his main ideas.