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In Search of Her
From the beginning, women have had a place of secondary importance. Woman was
the body and man was the soul; woman was flesh and man was spirit. Because of
her lesser rational capacity, woman was persuaded by the serpent in the Garden of
Eden and, because she could not control her passions, she was seduced. The image
of the naked Eve brazenly taking the apple from the servant and then cowering
before a wrathful God, tell one that the female is the source of all evil in the universe
and that the naked female body is part of the problem. This image communicates to
the deep mind the message that the female will and female nakedness must be
controlled and punished by male authority. By way of contrast, the Goddess shows
us that the female can by symbolic of all that is creative and powerful in the
universe. Her most profound message is the legitimacy and goodness of female
power, the female body, and female will.
The God of monotheism carries the image of a wise and powerful man with a white
beard. This image is at the root of the problem for women seeking to connect with
deity – they have nothing with which to relate. Women will never be “in the image of
God.” Women are not likely to be valued until deity can be called Mother, Daughter,
and Goddess.
Starhawk describes the Goddess as,
“Mother Earth, who sustains all growing, who is the body, our bones and cells. She is
the air – the winds that move in the trees and over the waves, breath. She is the fire
of breath, the blazing bonfire and the fuming volcano, the power of transformation
and change. And she is water – the sea, the original source of life, the rivers, streams,
lakes and wells, the blood that flows in the rivers of our veins. She is mare, cow, cat,
owl, crane, and flower, tree, apple, seed, lion, sow, stone, woman. She is found in the
world around us, in the cycles and seasons in nature, in mind, body, spirit, and
emotions”
Until God can also be known as or called Goddess, the spectre of the male God will
always be with us. “The mystery, the paradox, is that the Goddess is not “she” or “he”
– or she s both – but we call her “she” because to name is not to limit to describe but
in to invoke. We call her in and a power comes who is different from what comes
when we say “he” or “it.” Something happens, something that challenges the ways in
which our minds have been shaped in the images of male control.”
I have often wondered why we can’t just have a “neutral” deity in which we focus
neither on male or female or we focus equally on both. I have feared the pendulum
swinging too far in the direction of feminism and isolating men the way men have
isolated women; however, it seems that the Goddess needs to be named and
invoked. Healing comes from the reclamation of power that has been denied and
deprived from women; they seek to reclaim as women – as Goddess. Ntozake
Sahange said, “I found God in myself and I loved Her. I loved Her fiercely.” Women
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need not only to find God as Goddess, but to love her and thereby love themselves,
to love themselves and their femininity fiercely.
Rituals of the Goddess take many different forms. Some women create altars, some
pour themselves into building and tending a garden, while others conduct formal
ritual either alone or with a group. In all of these forms, women are committed to
transforming and changing the patriarchal milieu. “Transforming culture is a longterm project…If we cannot live to see the completion of that revolution, we can plant
its seed in our circles, we can dream its shape in our visions, and our rituals can feed
its growing power.”
Goddess rituals do not require a specific pantheon, Goddess name, or even set of
beliefs. Some view the Goddess as a personality to be invoked; others see the
Goddess as nature or the energy within nature, while others think of her as a
metaphor for the deepest aspects of the self. “When I feel weak, the Goddess is
someone who can help me and protect me. When I feel strong, she is the symbol of
my own power. At other times, I feel her as the natural energy in my body and the
world.”
The simple act of invoking the Goddess reveals how deeply we have internalized
and accepted the notion that all significant and beneficial power in the universe is
male. And rather than putting us in touch with a “changeless” God who stands above
the world, Goddess rituals connect us to a divinity who is known within nature and
who personifies change. Instead of portraying God as primarily as the “light shining
in the darkness,” Goddess rituals value darkness as a place of transformation. Not
focused on life after death, Goddess religion calls us to hallow the cycles of birth,
death, and regeneration in this life.
These images depict female power as creative and vital. Images of the Goddess tell
us that we participate in the mysteries of nature and the cycles of birth death, and
renewal. A woman claiming these images may isolate herself from established
society and inherited religious communities, family, and friends. The journey to the
Goddess is sometimes a lonely one as women struggle with their identity, as it has
been defined by patriarchal society.
Women have discovered the Goddess in a myriad of ways. Some have had dreams of
Her or have had out-of-body experiences in which the Goddess speaks to them.
Others hear of the Goddess at conventions or meetings or from trusted friends. Still
others find Her in art and music, or in a profoundly moving experience within
Nature. Others find Her through study and searching. The call of the Goddess and
the manner in which it manifests is different for each woman, but in the end, each is
called. They are called to recognize their beauty, to claim their feminine essence as
strength, to stand tall and proud in their fierceness, their gentleness, their
lovingness, and their wrath. They are called to be woman
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Thealogy Begins in Experience
Questioning Objectivity
The journey to the Goddess is a journey from experience. This requires a radical
transition from the rational objectivity that has saturated Western history. The reign
of rationality and logic was the result of a desire to stay out of the “mire of ignorance
and superstition” and eventually came to shape higher education and religion,
culminating in the scientific method.
The ethos of objectivity tells us that dispassionate, rational analysis is the bulwark
of civilization; whereas subjectivity and passion open the floodgates of irrationality
and chaos This can be seen in the progression of myths. One starts with a Goddess
centered mythos where the Mother is synonymous with creation and nature
(Astarte, Devi-Shakti, Nut). This progresses to the mythos of the Mother Goddess
and the Dying God/Consort archetype (Isis, Inanna, Cybele) to one in which the
Mother is abused and demeaned (Tiamat, Izanami, Eve, Pandora). Finally, the
abused Goddess becomes sublimated and conquered, fading into the background as
the sky gods take center stage and establish patriarchal dominance and eventually
monotheism (Marduk, Yahweh, Allah, Indra). This progression of myths is indicative
of the shift towards cold rationality and logic, excluding the feminine domains of
mystery, passion, and intuitive experience.
There is some measure of fear in the rationalist approach because it cannot control
or understand mystery and intuitive experience. The failure to name the fear that
lurks beneath the ethos of objectivity means that the myth that underlies it cannot
be discussed, criticized or deconstructed. When exposed to the light of day, the
belief that objectivity protects us against irrationality and chaos does not seem to be
true.
Carol Christ argues that higher education has always presented scholarship in an
objective, rational, analytical, and dispassionate that preserves a male elite? Why?
Because analysis and rationality are inherently male and polar opposite the
experiential and intuitive characteristics of a female essence. She argues that it is
impossible to thought from the body and personal history of the thinker. Our view of
the world will always be shaped by our personal history, our ethnicity, sex, race,
class, nationality, etc. So how does one reconcile the fact that our history and
personal experience shape our belief and thoughts with the objectivity required of
higher education?
Embodied Thinking
The way out is through “embodied thinking.” Embodied thinking is a concept that
Goddess thealogian Carol Christ came up with as an alternative way of thinking. In
it, we think through the body, we reflect on the standpoints embedded in our life
experiences, histories, values, judgments, and interests. We do not presume to speak
universally or dispassionately as we acknowledge that our perspective is limited
and subjective. Embodied thinking enlarges experience through empathy. Empathy
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is the act of putting ourselves in the place of another, reaching out and attempting to
understand their views. Empathy is possible because we have the capacity to make
connections imaginatively with experiences different from our own. So rather than
living in the cold logic of our minds and rather than abandoning ourselves
completely to wild abandon, we think through our bodies. We claim our experience,
our intuition, and our passion and we use our minds to make sense of that data; we
don’t deny it.
Embodied thinking uses the same tools of research (gathering historical data,
careful attention to detail analysis, criticism, concern for truth), but it unmasks the
biases and passions that are hidden in traditional scholarship and the embodied
thinker freely admits their own. We acknowledge that the judgments we make are
finite and overcome our personal bias by situating our work in a community of
discourse in which it can be affirmed, amplified, and criticized from a standpoint
different from our own. The theoilogy of experience can no longer be written in an
impersonal voice, but rather personal experience must be integrated with reflective
thinking!
Experience
The word “experience” is embodied, relational, communal, social, and historical. My
experience includes everything I have ever tasted, touched, heard, seen, or smelled.
It encompasses everything I have ever thought, felt, or intuited, as well as everyone I
have ever met, everything I have ever heard about, and everything I have ever done
or suffered.
All experiences are shaped through the pens by which we view them. The lens of
interpretation includes factors of which we are aware, as well as those of which we
are not aware, the “fundamental assumptions” which we subconscious presuppose.
These assumptions are embedded in language, linguistic conventions, habits of
thought, and cultural symbols that provide us with notions of what is real, possible,
and valuable. There are reinforced by educational, economic, religious, political, and
other institutional structures that reward those who agree with the prevailing
norms while punishing those who disagree with them.
Interpretation of experience involves an element of choice. For example many
women have had the experience of feeling excluded by masculine language of God,
but they have interpreted this experience differently. One woman perceives the
experience of being excluded by male language and symbolism threatening her faith
so she tried to suppress it. Another decides to work from within her religion to
create change. A third concludes that all religions are patriarchal and plot against
women and becomes an atheist. A fourth explored Eastern Religions. The last seeks
the Goddess.
Experience and interpretation are an ever-shifting, but seamless web. Both
experiences and interpretations are built up out of other experiences and
interpretations. Though there are times when we reflect consciously, and others
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when we react impulsively or intuitively, and even times when we change our
worldviews, there is no moment of pure experience, no moment of pure
interpretation.
The ethos of objectivity would deny mystical or revelatory experience as a valid
source of information, dismissing it as a subjective psychological phenomenon,
perhaps even labeling it as “irrational” or “dangerous.” We can choose to interpret
them as revelation of the nature of being. To do otherwise would be to deny our
“deepest non-rational knowledge.” It would be to deny some of the most important
ways women and men have gained knowledge of the Goddess in our time.
That being said, we must also have a way to “test” our deepest non-rational
knowledge. People have committed great wrongs in the name of mystical
knowledge. We should not do anything on the authority of mystical experience that
our reflective mind says it harmful to self or others. On the other hand, if mystical
and revelatory experience makes my life richer and more meaningful, helping me to
better understand my place in the world, than I am willing to accept it as valid even
if I cannot “prove” it to a skeptic.
The idea that we are interdependent in the web of life is open to scientific
investigation and there is no “proof” that the Goddess exists. No rational argument
can convince a determined atheist to change his or her mind. Some women says that
the Goddess is a psychologically meaningful metaphor, yet reject the idea of divinity
as an ontological reality. They are willing to admit that the experience of the
Goddess affirms the body and helps women gain self-esteem, but they find the idea
of the Goddess outside of the human psyche implausible. Another woman might
insist that the ground of being is an awesome yet ambiguous power that often seems
indifferent to human, moral struggles. Others see the Goddess as an ontologically
distinct reality and persona.
There must be recognition of the limitations of the human mind. We can affirm
ourselves in our finitude, particularity, and uniqueness, coupled with a openness to
learning from others.
Community
I have often felt that we “create” the Goddess as we call Her into our own lives. We
say we believe in the power of the Goddess, but deep down we are not always so
sure. This is why we are drawn to ceremonial magick, opening and closing the circle,
calling the directions, raising the cone of power, casting spells, and experimenting
with tarot and other forms of divination. The psychic effort needed to “create” the
Goddess can often leave one feeling ungrounded.
There is an excitement to raising energy, chanting, singing, and dancing. This creates
a feeling of excitement and intensity that is heightened awareness; however, all
energy comes from the earth, flows through the body, and must return to the Earth.
If we live more in the “mind” that the body, energy can get “stuck” in the head rather
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than enlivening our body and returning to the earth.
If we can learn to experience the Goddess through our bodies and to see Her in the
sacredness of the everyday world outside of ritual, our ritual will become the
pattern of our lives. Our lives will become a constant, meaningful ritual. She
surrounds us in the air we breathe, we don’t need to light candles to create Her. If
we invite the Goddess to enter our very bones, we see Her in our homes, in the faces
of friends, family, and strangers. We hear her whispers in the trees, her roaring in
the ocean. When this happens, we no longer need to “create” the Goddess in ritual.
This explains why the practice of magic is not central to most feminist paganism. We
still find meaning in attuning ourselves to the seasons, the cycles and rhythms of
nature and life. We still celebrate the seasons and the moons, but as our practice
becomes a part of ourselves, it will become rooted in the land around us. We will
find meaning and profound experience in gardening, walking along the beach,
talking to a friend, and serving others. The Goddess resides in al these things and
not just in circles.
Nature
The power of the Goddess is present in the earth and in all beings in the universe.
We can learn a great deal from attending to the lessons of plants and animals, stones
and sea. We can learn from traditional peoples that honor the land. We can learn to
live in sacred harmony with the earth, but especially with our local geography. We
can become intimate with our local areas, learn to care for them, to participate in
projects that protect them and maintain their health.
Mythos and Ethos
In thinking about the meaning of the Goddess in an embodied way, we must
remember that religious symbols shape the way we see the world and ourselves.
Those attracted to the Goddess religion make this connection intuitively, rejecting
exclusively masculine images of God as serving the interest of male dominance and
control. Many are also drawn to the image of the Goddess because they provide an
orientation that can help save the planet from ecological destruction.
Religious symbols set the tome of a culture, defining some things as real and
important, or decreeing how we should live. Religious symbol and rituals give rise to
the “moods,” psychological attitudes or deep feelings, that make us accept some
things and reject others, attend to some things and not to others. Religious symbols
thus motivate us to act in certain ways and not others. A “mythos”, or symbolic
worldview, and an “ethos,” or way of life of a community or society, are integrally
related.
Thought we can analyze religious symbols in light of our ethical concerns, we cannot
create symbols through our rational intellect alone. Symbols cannot be produced
intentionally because they grow out of the individual and collective unconscious and
cannot function without being accepted by the unconscious dimension of our being.
We must be sensitive to the complex ways in which symbols arise, are sustained,
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and fall out of use.
Though we cannot invent new symbols, we can reflect on the inadequacy of old
symbols, this opening ourselves to recognizing new symbols as they arise in our
experience. We can experiment with unfamiliar symbols, knowing that some will
take root and others will not, and we can examine the symbols that rise up from
dreams or the unconscious from the perspective of our ethical visions, deciding
whether we want to affirm them in ritual practice and in life.
The History of the Goddess
The Mother in the Paleolithic Area
The search for the history of a pre-patriarchal Goddess necessarily focuses on prepatriarchal history, which focuses on the Paleolithic and Neolithic time periods. In
the Paleolithic period (32,000-10,000 B.C.E., archeological excavations have
unearthed a plethora of Goddess figurines, including those from Willendorf,
Lespugue, and Laussel.
The cave paintings of bison, wild oxen, horse, deer, etc. in mammoth caves, such as
Lascaux, Altamira, and Chauvet tend to be interpreted as depictions of hunting
magic; however, these cave drawings occur within a cave, which is understood to be
the womb of the Creatress, the Great Mother, and the Earth. Echoes of this
understanding are to be found in the cave shrines to the Goddess and to Pan and the
Nymphs in Greek and Hellenistic religion.
If the cave is the womb of the Goddess, then the two major symbols of Paleolithic
art, the painted caves and the images of the Goddess, are deeply connected. The
journey into the cave is a journey into the great womb of life and death. In the
darkness, the mystery is revealed and we are reborn.
Paleolithic scholarships has challenged the idea of male dominance since woman, as
a gatherer, is thought to have provided 80% of the good, hunted for small animals,
and prepared the food. Therefore, they would symbolize not only the birth-giving
powers of women, but also the status of women as food providers and participants
in the sacred mystery through their primary role in the birthing process.
The Neolithic Revolution
This time period from about 10,000-8,000 B.C.E., illustrated some of the
contributions of women as the inventors of agriculture, the care team for infants and
children, and their primary involvement, and most likely invention, of weaving and
pottery. This agricultural “revolution” enabled humans to settle in one place.
All of the new discoveries of the Neolithic era, probably understood to be
“mysteries,” whose secrets were revealed by the Goddess. Seed into plant into edible
food, abundant and good to eat. Flax or wool into thread into cloth, carpets,
blankets, and other items of use and beauty. Earth, water, and fire into well-crafted
pots to hold food and water. Though all of these processes begin with raw materials
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found in nature, the secrets of their transformation are not self-evident. Later
mythology connects all of these mysteries to women and Goddesses. In Greece, the
mysteries of agriculture were given by the Goddess Demeter and Persephone,
whose most ancient rites, the Thesmoprhia, were celebrated exclusively by women.
To three ancient women, the Fates, was attributed the “weaving” of human history.
Vessels molded with eyes and breasts or in the image of a Goddess, suggest that the
secrets of making pottery may have also been understood as entrusted to women by
the Goddess.
Old Europe
“Old Europe” is a term coined by Marija Gimbutas to differentiate the Neolithic and
Chalcolithic (Copper) age (6500-3500 B.C.E). Marija Gimbutas notes the difference
between these two cultural systems. The first was matrifocal, sedentary, peaceful,
art-loving, earth-and sea-bound. The second was patrifocal, mobile, warlike,
ideaologically sky oriented, and indifferent to art.
In the Neolithic era, the Goddess was worshipped as the Giver, Taker, and Renewer
of Life. “The Great Mother Goddess who gives birth to all creation out of the holy
darkness of her womb became a metaphor for Nature herself, the cosmic giver and
taker of life, ever able to renew Herself within the eternal cycle of life, death, and
rebirth.”
The Goddess was symbolized and celebrated in art, which Gimbutas calls the
“language of the Goddess.” She was symbolized as various natural aspects of life and
in different manners for each aspect. For example, as the Renewing and Eternal
earth, she was Earth Mother, pregnant Goddess, lozenge and triangle with dots, sow,
sacred bread, and stone as omphalos (belly), tomb as womb. As Energy Unfolding
she was spiral, lunar cycle, snake coil, hook and axe, opposed spiral, caterpillar,
snake head, whirls, standing stone and circle. Two of the most important symbols
were the bird and the snake. The bird represents, life, death, and the power of flight,
while the snake represents death and regeneration, connection to the earth.
Gimbutas does not call this society matrifocal, but uses the aforementioned evidence
to suggest an equality in which women were valued and participated in the sacred
alongside men.
Catal Huyuk
Catak Huyuk was a town in the Neolithic period that has been thoroughly excavated.
James Mellart has proposed that the society of Catal Huyuk was created and ruled by
women. The Mother Goddess was the central deity based on observation of burial
customs in which the mother and children (but not the men) were found under
sleeping platforms, as well as in matriliny and matrilocality in which family line and
inheritance were both passed through the mother with women remaining in the
homes of their mothers. Catal Huyuk was to have a profound influence on feminine
scholarship.
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Female Power versus Male Dominance
Peggy Reeves Sanday conducted a survey of 150 indigenous societies top determine
sex roles and power based on information. She found that in societies in which the
forces of nature are sacralized…there is a reciprocal flow between the power of
nature and the power inherent in women. In such societies, women have
considerable power, but they are dominant because they freely share their power
with men. Sanday noted a strong correlation between Goddesses or female Creators,
participation of women in sacral roles, and female power in society. Other variables
correlated with female power were a positive view of nature, connection to the land,
lack of environmental stress such as prolonged drought, and the absence of external
threats such as warfare. Societies characterized by female power were usually
focused around gathering, fishing, and the early stages of agriculture.
In contrast, Sanday found that male dominance is correlated with societies
organized around hunting, animal husbandry and advanced (large-scale)
agriculture. Male dominance often arose in response to am environmental stressor
or war. Male dominance is correlated with symbolic changes in the way women and
nature is viewed, with male gods and a male priesthood.
Women and Goddesses in Neolithic Cultures
There is an emerging picture of the Neolithic era. It is one in which prosperous,
settled, Neolithic villages and towns existed and women played a central role in
farming, weaving, and the making of pots. The primary religious symbol, the
Goddess, celebrated women’s roles not only as birth givers, but also as transformers
of seed into grain into bread, of clay to pot, of wool or flax into thread into cloth.
Given the important social roles of women and the predominance of Goddess
symbolism, there is no reason not to believe that women created and played a
central role in Neolithic religion and culture.
The Rise of Patriarchy and War
Despite the proposed role of women in the Neolithic era, scholars agree that the
societies of the period eventually developed into a warlike patriarchal Iron Age by a
process of internal evolution rather than by violent overthrow. It may be that the
institutionalizing of warfare as way of life was the single most important factor
leading to the subordination of women. Warfare brings with it major changes in
society, including kingship, large-scale land ownership, and resultant class division,
slavery, concubinage, and the subordination of women. It was men who became the
warriors in most cultures and the rise of the warrior to social power inevitably led
to the decline in the social power of women as a group.
Slaying the Goddess
Jane Harrison points out that the writers of patriarchal mythology are motivated by
a desire to dethrone the Goddess and to legitimate the new culture of the patriarchal
warriors. In the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, the primordial
Creatress of the Sumerian Religion, Tiamat, the Goddess of the Salty Sea, is slain by
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the new God Marduk. As is common in such epics, the Goddess is vilified so that her
murder can be justified. The Creator Goddess is allged to have given birth to a race
of evil monsters who wreak havoc upon the earth: “She spawned enormous
serpents with cutting fangs chockfull of venom instead of blood, snarling dragons
wearing their glory like Gods.” Even though Tiamat gives birth to these monsters in
order to fight the God, Marduk, who plans to usurp her, the listeners of the tale are
implored to agree that the Creatress of such creatures must be destroyed.
“The Lord Marduk shot his net to entangle Tiamat, and the pursuing tumid wind,
Imbullu, came from behind and beat her in the face. When the mouth gaped open to
suck him down, he drive Imbullu in, so that the mouth would not shut but wind
raged through her belly, her carcass blown up, tumescent, she gaped – And now he
shot the arrow that split the belly, that pierced her gut and cut the womb. Now that
the Lord Marduk had conquered Tiamat, he ended her life and flung her down and
straddled her carcass. Tiamat was dead.”
The writer celebrated not just the death of Tiamat, but the rendering of her womb as
well. In celebrating the violence done to the Goddess, the Enuma Elish legitimated
the violence done to the women of the “enemy” in war and to “evil” women at home.
The Enuma Elish employs several tactics to discredit the Goddess that are used in
other versions of the myth of slaying the Goddess. First, it discredits the Goddess as
Birth, Death, and Regeneration by stating that she created evil monsters. Second, it
glorifies the warrior who kills her. Third, it has the warrior commit the ultimate
sacrilege of defiling the womb that previous mythologies have names the Source of
Life. Finally, this epic is regularly re-enacted, in this case as part of Babylonian New
Year celebration, to reinforce the long-lasting moods and motivations it is designed
to engender.
Other myths that also re-enact the slaying of the Goddess and the rise of patriarchal
power are Apollo’s conquest at Delphi, Zeus’s killing of the Goddess Metis as well as
celebrated “rape” of other Goddesses and mortal women. There is a mythological
patriarchal lie that mother is nothing but the soil for the seed man plants. The
Goddess Athena is said to have sprung forth from the loins of Man alone. In the
classical mythology of Greece, each of the Goddesses is deprived of the powers that
once were hers. Hera becomes the frustrated wife of Zeus, Pandora, whose name
means, “Giver of All,” is portrayed as a woman who releases evil into the world. Eve
is portrayed as the weakness by which sin enters the world. On the symbolic level,
the Genesis story tells us that the Mothers-of-All, living, the Sacred Tree, and the
Sacred Snake are the sources of evil and suffering.
Resistance to Goddess History
The story of women and the Goddess in the previous section is heatedly debated
amongst scholars and a fair number of feminist scholars, such as Cynthia Eller,
pointedly refute a matriarchal pre-history. Those arguing for attention to be called
to Goddess history are often contemptuously dismissed by male and female scholars
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as emotionally biased, politically motivated, naïve, idealistic, unscientific, wishful
thinkers.
The history of women’s religious and social roles and the history of resistance to
women’s power are ignored in traditional scholarship, but they must become
central in feminine analysis. There must be a new framework or interpretation in
which new facts and hypotheses hold together, make sense, and affect our
understanding of other facts and hypotheses. A feminist critical approach to
scholarship requires a framework of interpretation be constructed n which women
are recognized as important historical and religious players. The previous section
outlined a framework in which the conceded facts of women’s inventions of
agriculture, pottery, and weaving; anthropological and other theories about
women’s roles in gathering and hunting and early agricultural societies; and
hypotheses about the meaning of female or Goddess symbolism hold together and
affect the interpretation of a variety of other facts and hypotheses. This hypothesis
is called the “Goddess hypothesis.”
Pre-History
History is the product of a selective reading of data. History is not so much a matter
of facts as a matter of interpretation, affected not only by power and space, but by
power relations. Our views of the past are neither complete nor unbiased.
It is worth noting that most history if discussed and interpreted based on textual
writings (i.e. the written word). Pre-history can be defined as history that occurred
before the written word. Scholars argue that the interpretation of physical data is
largely subjective, whereas text is largely objective, though this doesn’t seem to take
into account the prejudices, biases, and orientations of the author.
This last point makes the case that the written word is not objective “fact.” For
example, the texts available to the historian of pre-modern Christianity, which are
mostly theological, create a distorted picture of Christian spirituality. Written by
elite males, they would have been inaccessible to the average Christian, who was
illiterate. A clearer understanding of what Christianity meant to the common
person, female as well as male, can be gained through the study of images. The
architecture, sculpture, and wall paintings in churches would have the “text” the
common person “read” to learn about the Christian faith. Some scholars have found
that the intellectual disputes that are the subject of theological tomes were not
always reflected on the walls of churches, and thus, presumably, also no in the faith
of the people.
Another case-in-point is Hesiod, whose Theogony and Works and Days (circa
700B.C.E) are among the major surviving literary sources of Greek religion and is
used to reconstruct our modern understanding of Greek religious life. Jane Harrison
argues that Hesiod’s writings were biased and did not reflect Greek society. For
instance, Hesiod wrote that Pandora was the first woman and that she was
responsible for unleashing pain and sorrow in the world, yet Harrison argues on the
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basis of artistic evidence that Pandora, who name means “All Gifts” was worshipped
as the Earth Goddess in Hesiod’s time and afterwards. Hesiod also tells the
improbable story that the Goddess Aphrodite was born from the severed genitals of
Ouranos, yet neither the surviving Homeric Hymn “To Aphrodite” nor the fragments
of Sappho make any mention of this story. The point here is that when scholars
quote Hesiod without first critiquing his work, they are promoting “objective and
factual” history from a text that may not be objective and factual.
Time, Text, and God
Time is often said to begin with the Hebrew patriarchs, with Abraham (c. 1800B.C.E)
or with Moses (c 1000 B.C.E), to the time of the classical Greeks (c. 500-300 B.C.E),
to the time of the origins of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism in the first century C.E.
When time before Abraham is mentioned, it is usually discussed within the
framework provided by Samuel Noah Kramer’s book, History begins at Sumer, so t
hat if history begins at Sumer, than all history is patriarchal history.
In contrast, the Goddess hypothesis challenges us to radically expand our
conception of time. The time of the Neolithic Revolution is some 8,000 years before
the time of Moses and David, more than 5,000 years before history was said to have
begun at Sumer. Evidence of religion in the Paleolithic period occurs tens of
thousands of years before the Neolithic revolution, yet the time from Moses to the
present is only about 3,000 years. The debate is important because it will be difficult
to fully grasp the most ancient history of religion (the Paleolithic through Neolithic
periods), if we are excluding such large time periods on the basis of lacking textual
contributions. As such, scholars must develop methods for dealing with non-textual
artifacts of history so that “pre-history” can be brought forward into recorded
history.
When we expand our notions of history to include record that are not written, we
can begin to allow physical data to transform not only our understanding of
Goddesses and women in religion, but also notions about religious origins and
theories about the nature of religion. For instance, ritual studies should have a
central rather than peripheral place in the study of religion. Ritual embodies, in a
fuller way than text, the non-rational, the physical side of religion, putting us in the
presence of body and blood, milk and honey and wine, song and dance, sexuality and
ecstasy.
The Goddess hypothesis challenges historians of religion to abandon their almost
exclusive commitment to text, requiring them to accept physical evidences –
paintings, sculptures, bones, pots, weavings, etc. – as reliable evidence upon which
to build theory. This will allow inclusion of the Paleolithic and Neolithic time
periods to influence our understanding of feminist spirituality.
The Goddess hypothesis also challenges biblical and traditional ideas about the
nature of God. Goddesses are presented in the bible and the Torah as an
“abomination” and it is hard for scholars to shake the mindset that has encouraged
all of us to think of the Goddess in terms such as idolatry, fertility fetish, nature
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religion, orgiastic cult, bloodthirsty, and ritual prostitution.
All of these prejudices can be countered. An idol is someone else’s religious symbol.
The Goddess represents fertility and sexuality as the cosmic power of
transformation. Sexuality is Goddess religion is transformative power. Prostitution
is not the oldest profession; rather it is the product of patriarchal and classstratified societies. When sexuality is mutual and women are equal, there is no
question of buying or selling.
Scholar’s inability to understand the Goddess is reinforced by a deep and
unquestioned assumption that divinity represents rationality, order, and
transcendence, as opposed to the alleged irrationality and chaos of the finite,
changeable world of nature and body. The contrast between rationality and
irrationality, order and chaos, transcendence and immanence, is genderized as a
contrast between male and female. Scholars have been unable to see naked female
images as Goddess because they have been taught to view the body and sexuality,
especially the female body and female sexuality as being “lower” than the rationality
that is associated with divinity and man’s “higher” nature. Naked female images
must therefore be “fertility fetishes” or “sexual objects,” or if they are called
Goddesses, they must be understood to reflect a “lower” and more physical stage in
the “evolution” of religious consciousness.
In the worldview defined by pre-patriarchal Goddesses, the divine power is present
within nature and within the processes of birth, growth, death, and regeneration
symbolized by the female body. Sexuality and birth are sacred, and death and
disintegration are not negations of life because they are followed by regeneration.
Clearly, the prehistoric Goddesses can only be understood if we questions the
assumptions that divinity is transcendent of the body, nature, and change that is
man’s spiritual destiny to rise above, conquer, or tame nature the body, and the
female.
Ignoring Women and Goddesses
One of the strategies employed to ignore women and Goddesses in history is to
simply dismiss them or ignore the evidence that challenges the traditional view of
the patriarchy. Consider the following example. At an exhibit in Greece entitle
“Neolithic Culture in Greece” no women or goddesses are mentioned at all, despite
the fact that much of the displayed artwork hinted at the significant role of women
in the time period and a plethora of female figurines. Even more astonishing is the
fact that much of the exhibit contained figurines excavated by Marija Gimbutas who
is one of the leading feminist scholars of Goddess history, yet no mentioned is made
of her or her theories.
Another strategy used to deny Goddess history is to admit some of the evidence, but
to then present it in a framework of androcentric theories. This occurs quote often
in the works of religious historian and scholar, Mircea Eliade. For example, in
History of Religious Ideas, he conceded many elements of the Goddess hypothesis
and even mentions the appropriation of pre-Hellenic local goddesses by the figure of
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Zeus. Despite this, he defines “sacred” in such a way as to exclude the feminine.
Through experience of the sacred, the human mind has perceived the difference
between what reveals itself as being real, powerful, rich, and meaningful, and what
lacks these qualities, that is, the chaotic and dangerous flux of things, their fortunate
and senseless appearances and disappearances.
Using this definition, the Goddesses who are associated with the body and changing
life, which Eliade calls the “chaotic and dangerous flux of things,” cannot be
understood as representations of the sacred. He hypothesizes on the basis of very
little evidence that “divinities of the Supreme Being – Lord of the Wild Beasts” as
well as animal spirits were probably worshipped in the Paleolithic era, but when
discussing what he calls “feminine representation of the last Ice Age,” he does not
used the words Supreme Being, Lady of the Wild Beasts, or Goddess. Instead he tell
us,
It is impossible to determine the religious function of these figurines. Presumably
they in some sort represent feminine sacrality and hence the magico-religious
powers of the goddess (not the lower case). The “mystery” constituted by woman’s
particular mode of existence has played an important part in numerous religions
both primitive and historical.
Eliade leaves the reader with the impression that aside from a few indecipherable
figurines, Paleolithic religion was a male affair, an interaction between (male)
hunters and a (male) Lord of the Wild Beasts. Additionally, since images associated
with the female body represent the “chaotic and dangerous flux of things” that he
defines as antithetical to the sacred, it is not surprising that he cannot imagine
women or female symbolism were central in Paleolithic religion.
Eliade ignored women and Goddesses in his depiction of Neolithic religion as a
“cosmic religion.” He speaks of the World tree as a central symbol of cosmic religion,
without speculating on its relation to Goddess imagery, and of the sacralization of
space and dwellings, without mentioning that in matrilineal societies, dwellings
would have been passed through the motherline and that some of the earliest
religious structure seem to be modeled on the body of the Goddess. When he
mentioned the feminine statuettes of the Neolithic period, he designates them as
part of a “fertility cult” and not as central images of cosmic religion.
He also tends to rely almost exclusively on androcentric texts, such as Homer,
Hesiod, and the tragedians written hundreds of years after the entrance of the IndoEuropeans to Greece, paying very little attention to archeological records that
record data from wall and vase paintings, sculptures, temples votive offerings, and
inscriptions. Careful and systematic analysis of Eliade’s work revealed that it is
shaped throughout by androcentric assumptions and passions, while his framework
of interpretation is rooted in his theory that religion is about transcendence shaped
by his conviction that religions repeat the symbolic patterns associated with man
the hunter, his projectile weapon, and a male Supreme Being.
The Unconscious Goddess
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Since traditional scholarship has provided so little guidance in uncovering a history
of the Goddess, many have turned to the archetypal theories of Jungians Erich
Neumann and Joseph Campbell and poet-mythologer, Robert Graves.
For Neumann, as for Jung, the so-called masculine represents consciousness,
rationality, and the “light” of the ego, while the so-called feminine represents the
unconscious, the irrational, and a “dark” and primitive stage of (pre) consciousness
where the ego has not yet emerged.
Neumann agreed with Jung that modern western society had veered too far in the
direction of the so-called masculine and needed an infusion of the so-called feminine
for balance. He identified the feminine, and thus the images of the Goddess, with the
unconscious mind and with a stage of consciousness where the ego had not yet
emerged. Since the powers of the Goddess rise up from the uncontrolled and
uncontrollable unconscious, the Goddess is a dangerous figure who nurturing power
may at any time erupt unto destruction. Viewing the Goddess through the lens of
dualistic thinking, Neumann distorts the cyclic image of the Goddess as birth, death,
and regeneration by polarizing it into the archetype of the Great and Terrible
Mother. He argues that it was necessary for the age of the Goddess to come to an end
so that the ego and the light of rationality could emerge from the chaos and
darkness of the unconscious.
Joseph Campbell’s works are shaped by similar Jungian theories that provide a
limited and ultimately disparaging view of the history of the Goddess. He says that
“women in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be
known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow
initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of
transformations.”
For Campbell, the Goddess (and women) are the unconscious material background
for the spiritual quest of the male hero, who gradually comes to know what will
always remain unknown (unconscious) for her. When asked by a female student
about the importance of women in myth, he said, “The woman is the hero’s mother;
she’s the goal of the hero’s achieving…what more do you want?”
Robert Graves was also influences by Jungian theories. In his classic work, the White
Goddess, he wrote that he viewed the Goddess as the inspiration for poetry, but he
understood the poet as the masculine ego fertilized by the mysterious feminine.
Graves produced his own version of the “great and terrible mother” when he depicts
Goddess religion as inevitable involving the sacrifice of the Son to the Mother
Goddess.
The works of Neumann, Campbell, and Graves have each distorted the history of the
Goddess through the imposition of theories that see the Goddess as symbolic of the
unconscious feminine. In this view, there could never have been a “civilization” of
the Goddess because civilization is considered a product of “man” into the “light” of
“rationality” and “consciousness.” Nor could there have been a “conscious” Goddess
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because consciousness is identified as the realm of the masculine ego. Women, as
representatives, of the unconscious feminine, cannot be expected to play anything
but supportive and animating roles in a male project of culture.
The Meaning of the Goddess
Once we have a sense of who the Goddess was in the past, we can begin to think
about what she means today. We cannot understand the Goddess unless we
question dualistic thinking and hierarchical assumptions about God’s relationship to
a changing world that arose in the wake of the slaying of the Goddesses of the Earth.
Images of the earth as body of the Goddess challenge the traditional view that God
transcends the earth, body, and nature, as well as the fact that God is often
considered a male. The Goddess is not an abstraction, but the place where we live. In
California, she is the tallest redwood and the tiniest hummingbird. In New England,
she is intrepid crocuses and exuberant forsythia, sweetly scented lilacs and lacy
dogwoods. In the American Midwest, she is wide-open spaces and waves of grain. In
Hawaii, she is Pele, the volcano. In Denmark and Ireland, she is the holy well. When
the earth is the body of the Goddess, the radical implications of the image are more
fully realized. The female body and the earth, which have been dominated and
devalued, are re-sacralized. The image of the Earth as the body of the Goddess can
inspires us to repair the damage that has been done to the earth.
The Goddess as the Giver of Life is more accurately called the Creatress, since she
gives birth to plants and animals as well as human children. Celebration of the
female body and the nurturing if life in the language of the Goddess is attractive
because it r reverses thousands of years of devaluation.
Some feminists fear that the emphasis on women’s biology will inevitably be turned
against women; however Z Budapest responds to this, saying “People come to me
and say Z, ‘How can you allow biology to become destiny again. You know what they
did with that before.‘ ‘I’m sorry,’ I reply, ‘we do give birth, we do issue people forth,
just as the Goddess issued forth the universe…it is not something I am going to keep
quiet about. It is what women do…we make people.”
The problem here is that the biologic view is not fully embodied and still accepts the
concept that the self is located in the mind, rather than the min-body continuum. If
our bodies are ourselves, then women’s location in female bodies must shape the
way they see the world. To keep quiet about the fact that women give birth, that
they breastfeed, and that they nurture is to deny the physical realties of most
women’s lives.
Some women may find the concept of God as a white woman every bit as offensive
as the notion that is a man. One of the manifestations of racism is a devaluation of
blackness. Consider the words “black market,” “blackmail,” “Black Monday, “or the
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association of white light with heaven, blackness with hell, and naming the devil as
the “black one.” We need to understand the positive valuation of blackness as one of
the primary symbols of the Goddess. The worship of Mother Night has been
universal – she is the night from which all living thing arise and into which they
vanish, hence the innumerable black goddesses. Consider also the cave as the womb
of the earth. In our culture, caves evoke fear. Going into the dark has become a
metaphor for going into the unknown, the unshaped, and the unformed. Just as a
seed must need stay in a dark, cool place to sprout, so must we embrace the
darkness at our center so find healing and transformation. In patriarchal culture t
the darkness of the womb is seen as symbolic of women’s irrationality ignorance,
and deceitfulness and is associated more with death than regeneration. We must
embrace and face our shadow side. To reclaim the darkness is to reclaim the female
body.
It is imperative to overcome hierarchical dualism and the most fundamental notion
is that of God as transcending the changing world. If the Earth is the body of the
Goddess, then the Goddess is not transcendent of change, for change is the nature of
life on earth. When Mircea Elieade was expressing the sacred as standing in
opposition to what he called the “chaotic and dangerous flux of things,” he was restating widely held belief about divinity, mainly that deity does not change.
The idea originated with Plato who said that beauty is “eternal, absolute, existing
alone with itself, unique, and not suffering change.” This dualistic understanding of
perfection as changeless and absolute became the philosophical model for
Christianity and its theological understanding of God as a disembodied mind or
spirit, totally transcendent of world and nature and of change. These conceptions
became fixed as polar opposites of dualistic and hierarchical thinking: the
unchanging is valued over the changing, soul or mind over the body, spirit over
nature, rational over irrational, spiritual over sexual, and male over female.
The notion that the Goddess is involved in changing life is reflected in the ancient
understanding of the Goddess as Giver, Taker, and Renewer of Life. The conception
of Goddess as the source of change in the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration
forces is to rethink our notions of divine power. Because dualistic habits of thinking
are so ingrained it is tempting to simply turn them upside down and affirm nature,
body, and sexuality, the nonrational and the female, and to deny or devalue spirit,
mind, rationality and the male; however, this schema still is subject to dualistic
modes of thinking, simply in the opposite direction.
In holistic and embodied thinking, spirit and nature, mind and body, rationality and
irrationality are not distinct entities or absolute categories, nor are they poles along
a horizontal continuum because this would still imply that poles exist. All of these
concepts are just that – concepts, and humankind has created them. When nature is
defined as antithetical to spirit, the hidden assumption is that there can be no
meaning in life that involve change and ends in death, but in holistic thinking, spirit
and meaning are found within nature. Traditional science has operated within this
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dualistic framework and has argued that because our mental and psychological
processes have physical correlates, human beings are nothing more than a series of
chemical reactions; however, if we think holistically, we can accept the traditional
scientific view as evidence of our embodiment, while recognizing it does not account
for our sense that we really do think and make decision. The binary oppositions of
traditional theology, including transcendence-immanence, theism-pantheism, and
monotheism-pantheism, do not accurately describe the meaning of the Goddess.
Transcendent means that God is seen as beyond, surpassing, and dominant over
nature and human nature. This is called theism. God’s immanence means that what
has been called God is found (entirely or exclusively) within nature and human
nature. This is called pantheism. In theistic traditions, God’s transcendence is
reflected in the notion that God as Creator and Lord of nature is not in any way
subject to or dependent upon the laws of nature, which supposedly guarantees that
God is free. Traditional theism defines God’s power as an omnipotence that stands
totally outside the laws of nature and morality and above or beyond history.
Traditional theories of God’s immanence state that because God is the creator of
nature, his purposes are reflected in natural processes; however monotheistic
tradition sees nature and human nature as corrupted through sin so that knowledge
gained through observing natural processes must be run through the filter of
revelation and the “law” is a fence around nature so that we can be taught to control
our natural impulses.
Understanding the Goddess as immanent is appealing because it sharply
distinguishes the Goddess from traditional theism’s notion of God as transcendent,
but when the Goddess is found within nature, certain questions arise. If the Goddess
is found within nature, is she simply an image for the sum total of natural processes?
If she is fond in the deepest self, is she simply an image for the deepest self? Is our
understanding of the Goddess thus pantheistic, affirming that all is Goddess? Is it
being denied that in some sense the Goddess is a personality who cares about the
world? For pantheists, it is important to speak as if there is a Goddess who hears our
prayers and has a personal relationship with us.
In the end, notion theism and pantheism both fail to do justice to the experience of
the Goddess. We find the Goddess “in nature” and “in ourselves,” but we experience
the Goddess most fully when we enter into a relationship. She is a personal power
that we invoke in prayer and ritual. When we call her name, we come into a
relationship with a power tat cares about our lives and the fate of the world.
The terms immanence-transcendence and theism-pantheism have been given
meaning within a dualistic framework so it is not surprising to find that neither
term is adequate for defining the nature of the divine power of Goddess spirituality.
Process Theology offers a notion of panentheism (all is in God/Goddess) as a way of
understanding that God/Goddess moves beyond polarities of immanence and
transcendence, pantheism and theism. Process theology’s deity is omnipotent or
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omniscient, nor immutable and impassive or removed from the world. In process
theology, God/Goddess is both transcendent and immanent because God/Goddess is
more than the sum total of all the discrete beings of the world. Just as an organism is
more than a collection of cells and just as the mind is more than a collection of
chemical reactions, the Goddess is the organism that unites the body of the world
with mid or soul of the world body. Just as our minds are not separated from our
bodies, so the Goddess is not separate from the body of the world, but rather the
Goddesses body and the Goddesses mind are two different ways of looking at a
single, unified reality.
Process Theology says that the Goddess is both immanent and transcendent. The
world and all of its inhabitants are “in” the body of the Goddess, but the Goddess is
more than their sum. She is an ever-changing process. That means that we are
constantly co-creating our reality with the Goddess. We have a symbiotic
relationship with her. She suffers when we suffer and she experiences what we
experience. She is constantly and forever changing. The laws of nature and history
limit her power. She cannot end death because the processes of birth, death, and
transformation are the way that nature works. As fully immanent, the Goddess is
embodied in the finite, changing world. She is known in rock and flower and in the
human heart. As the organism uniting the cells of the earth body, she is the
foundation of changing life. As the mind, soul, or enlivening power, the Goddess in
intelligent, aware, alive, a kind of person with whom we can enter relation. Thus, the
Goddess can speak to us through the natural world, through human relationships,
through communities, through dreams and visions, expressing her desire to
manifest life ever more fully in the world. And we can “speak” to her in song,
meditation, and ritual, manifesting our desire to attune ourselves to her rhythms, to
experience our union with the body of the earth and all beings who live upon it.
The power of the Goddess is the intelligent, embodied love that is the ground of all
beings – it undergirds every individual being, including plants, animals, and humans
we participate in the physical and spiritual processes of birth, death, and renewal.
She is the ground of all being and is often best conceptualized as love, not to be
cliché. The great matrix of love that supports life is embodied, intelligent, and the
power of all being. To say that love of the Goddess is embodied means that concrete
relation is the ground of all being. Embodied love is grounded in al senses, in seeing,
in hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling. Embodied love is not the dispassionate,
moralistic love sometimes identified with Christianity. Embodied love is rooted in
deep feeling and in that sense is almost erotic. Our relationship to other beings, our
interdependence, is not ephemeral, passing, or an irrational feeling. The deep feeling
of connection to all beings in the web of life is reflected in the nature of reality. To
say that love is the ground of all being is intelligent and recognizes intelligence in all
beings. When we understand that intelligent embodied love as the ground of all
being, we know that we are interdependent with all beings in the web of life.
It seems that neither monotheism nor polytheism adequately express the Goddess.
We need the Goddess as an affirmation of the unity of being underlying the
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multiplicity of life and we need the multiplicity of Goddesses and Gods to fully
reflect our differences and remind us of the limitation of any single image. The
Goddess or the God is a single unity that is both transcendent and immanent. There
is one deity, but we relate to the various facets of deity through the mythological
archetypes of the deities. We live a metaphorical polytheism “as if” it were true,
recognizing that the metaphor allows us to more closely relate to and experience the
Goddess.
The Web of Life
One of the most fundamental premises in paganism is the interconnectedness of all
life – all beings are interdependent in the web of life. This sense of connection is the
core of “mystical experience” chronicled by Aldous Huxley in the Perennial
Philosophy. Mystics from every religion and every nation have reported the same
subjective experience of “oneness” with the universe. Native Americans express this
concept when they say, “we ARE the land.” Poets express this sense in various ways
and sometimes in sensual and erotic ways. This can occur because the sense of
connection, in that mystical state, is intensely physical and can be reminiscent of
sexual orgasm. Wendy Griffin writes, “As I go into her, she pierces my heart. As I
penetrate further, she unveils me. When I have reached her center, I am openly
weeping. I have known her all my life, yet she reveals stories to me, and these
stories are revelations and I am transformed. Each time I go into her, I am reborn
like this. Her renewal washes over me endlessly, her wounds caress me.” A
perception of great beauty often accompanies this experience as well and is
reflected in the Navajo chant, “In beauty I walk.”
The Earth is considered to be not only alive, but intelligent as well. All life forms are
intelligent in that they have a particular wisdom and ways of communicating. There
is also accumulating evidence that evolution is not “random,” but rather creatures
and their ecosystems are produced by self-organization. We can learn to see
cooperation and intelligence rather than the brutal, blind competition of natural
selection in the way some flowers cling to the side of bare rocks, drawing bees,
forming topsoil, allowing other plants to take root, holding water in what had once
been a dry and barren place, creating the conditions for other life forms to flourish.
Difference and diversity are the great principles of nature. Mystical experiences tell
us that we are interconnected, but not that we are the same. A theology that
envision the Earth as the body of the Goddess will recognize, appreciate, and
celebrate the great diversity of life within the earth body. We may not love all the
things the Goddess loves, but if we cannot love all beings in the web of life, perhaps
we can at least begin to recognize that each plays a role in creating the things that
we do love.
Although we recognize the Earth as holy, we form a concrete connection with this
notion via our local environment – where we live. Connection to place is a
fundamental element of ritual and daily life, yet we often live in cities and locations
that alienate us from nature. “Imagine an entire city of people waking and arising
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together and the first thing they do is to sing themselves – body, mind, and spirit –
into the day…they send out…loving goodwill while visualizing all the creatures, all
the plants, all the elements, and especially all the microorganisms that plants,
creatures, and humans depend on to keep the balancing machinery
working…Picture, if you will, this city of people singing to the water spirits of the
bubbling brooks and streams, of laughing happy rivers filled with the water of life, of
saltwater seas and oceans filled with saltwater life.”
The world is the body of the Goddess and we are part of the world, and we
experience her love, including our sexuality, in our bodies. So why have Western
Theologians denied that we are part of nature for so long by positing a wholly
transcendent deity? Much of it stems from the notion that we can control the
conditions of our lives. We have often heard the notion that we “create our own
reality;” however, this sometimes glosses over the fact that we exist in a WEB of life.
Imagine the Goddess as the source of the web – all strand lead to her. When we
perform magic or send out an intention we do not have a “straight shot” to the
Goddess. Our web intersects with every other web of every other being on the
planet so that when we send out an intention or perform magic, our web is
influences by every other web. Our individual wills are embedded in a web of
relationships in which we are not the only significant actors. We can cause ourselves
to think positively, but we cannot cause everyone else to think the same way and
everyone has an influence on the web. Cancer, rape, the death of a child, starving
children in third world countries – to believe that we fully control our lives is to not
have divorced ourselves from the notion that we can escape the finitude of our lives.
Until we give up this illusion of control, we have not fully integrated the meaning of
a finite and interdependent life.
Tradition Christian theology denies that death is a part of life, but in paganism,
death is not a punishment for sin, but rather a natural part of the cycle of life. The
fundamental rule is that everything that is born will die and eventually be
transformed. We have been taught to think that human life is eternal, or at least
subject to our control, but this is not true. To worship the Goddess as embodied in
the earth means to accept that we and those we love may die at any time. To
recognize that death is part of life does not mean that death is not sad or that we
should not grieve – tears and pain open the way for the renewal of life.
One of the ways in which death and life are intertwined is that we must kill to live.
Whether we eat plants or animals or both, we take the lives of other beings to
sustain our own. This is why Native Americans honor the animals they killed and
why pagans pour out libations in thanks for the life that has been sacrificed. One day
our own bodies will be returned to the earth, providing food and life for other
beings. Pagans need to develop rituals and ways to acknowledge the connection of
life and death.
Dualistic thinking posits natural disasters as evil, but from the viewpoint of the Gaia
Body, hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are part of the
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cycle of birth, death, and renewal. The Egyptians celebrated the flooding of the Nile
because it was understood that crops were regenerated in this way. Natural
phenomenon has been posited as evil only because humans have been taught that
we should be able to control all the conditions of life. Natural disasters are one way
in which the body of the Goddess renews herself. Disease too is part of life and it
cannot always be conquered.
Accepting our finitude means understanding irretrievable loss as one of the
conditions of life. To accept finitude does not mean to deny, attempting to
rationalize, or to rise above suffering. We grieve when tragedy befalls us or the ones
we love and that is the appropriate response, but death is not the final world –
rebirth and renewal will follow. This does not mean that life is tragic. The tragic
worldview derives from the perception of the limitations of the heroic ideal in Greek
literature where the hero is supposed to be able to overcome and triumph all so his
failure to do so is seen as a tragedy. The writers of the classical tragedies were able
to present nature only as a boundary, a limit to the pretension of the hero. When we
realize that nature is not a boundary to be overcome, we can leave the sense of life
as a tragedy behind and begin to celebrate it.
Paganism counsels us to accept death as part of the cycle of life. Death is understood
to return to the earth, to the womb that gave us birth. This means that death does
not separate us from the web of life or from the power of the Goddess. Our bodies
will be transformed, providing nourishment for the earth and other creatures. Our
spirits and our bodies will live on in the memory of Gaia. So what do we make of
after-death experiences? Ervin Laszlo has proposed an Akashic field that permeates
the universe where all information, memory, and experience form the beginning of
time are stored. Our memories live on within this Akashic field, which might be seen
as the evolving soul of the Goddess. This understanding is congruent with the notion
of life as interdependent. Another idea concerning life after death is reincarnation.
Reincarnation becomes plausible when we consider the Goddess as the Giver, Take,
and Renewer of Life. Our bodies become reincarnated (re-in-fleshed) when they
become food for other beings in the web of life. Our spirits live on for better or for
worse in the memories and the lives of those who remember us and as the eternal
memory of the Goddess. There is also a sense in which we share collective or
communal memories of time, events, and people in the past. Reincarnation, in this
sense, is fully consistent with the understanding of life as connected,
interdependent, and embodied. Reincarnation in which our essence is reborn again
smacks of the same type of control and refusal to accept our finitude.
Humanity in the Web of Life
Human beings are part of nature, but rather we are one of its many inhabitants and
contrary to the biblical story, the Goddess did not give us dominion over the earth.
Our intelligence does not set us apart from nature, but is a reflection of the
intelligence found within nature – all life forms communicate. Animals can express
emotions as we do (dogs whimper), they create technologies (spider webs), they
23
engage in symbolic behavior (peacocks preening), and they can even learn language
(chimpanzee studies). Understanding human nature as part of nature allows us a
greater respect for the diversity of human experience than if we define nature in
rational analytical tones. If being human is essentially rational-self reflection, than it
is hard to conclude that educated white males are not MORE human than other
people.
We are relational creatures and our lives are defined by a series of relationships
with our parents, friends, lovers, work, etc. Because there is no self apart from
relationships, parents have the power to create their children as intelligent and
loving by treating then with intelligent love. We learn to love because we are loved
and the self is created in reflection. The self is not some “self-contained” unit who
must give up a portion of his/her independence to enter into a relationship, but
rather our lives are interdependent with other people and with nature. Thus, it is
within the context of relationships that we obtain the clearest sense of ourselves.
When embodied, intelligent love is withheld, the web of life is ruptured and a child
does not form the relational attachments that form a healthy self. The idea that
children are to be seen and not heard and must conform to the will of their parents,
deprives them of the individuality, spontaneity, and life itself. The idea of sparing
the rod spoils the child legitimates violence as a way to enforce control, and some
parents who do not hit their children still use subtler form of control. This causes
children to suppress their feelings and sensations, the power of the life force within
them, in their deepest attempts to please their parents.
Joining together the terms relational and interdependence expresses the insight that
relationships are necessary in human life and that life-sustaining relationships
promote the independence of both partners. Society often has an expectation that a
woman’s primary role is for the care of “her” children and she must cope with the
demand and responsibilities alone. Mutual interdependence would be more
effectively achieved if jobs were structured to allow all of us (male and female) to
spend time with our children without repercussions. Women should be given large
amount of time after birth to bond with and care for their children without fear of
losing their job and having children should not be an anchor that holds a woman
down from promotion.
Giving birth and having children are important expression of relational,
interdependent, embodied life. Goddess imagery celebrates the female body and its
powers, inspiring a sense of respect for mothers and mother that has been lost in
patriarchal societies. Goddess religion provides an important antidote to the
widespread view that success is to be found in individual achievement and
independence of relationship.
Just as we cannot live without taking the lives of other beings for sustenance, so too
conflict inevitably arises in all human relationships. Just as we are different, both
limited and enriched by our particular background and perspectives, we will not
24
always see things the way others do. Thus, conflicts in vision and judgment will
arise. We should not attempt to suppress conflict because it does not fit into our
idea of loving behavior. Rather, we should recognize conflict, embrace and own our
differences, and then strive to be as harmonious as we can.
We are not just interdependent and relational – we are also embodied. Our bodies
are not flawed homes for our rational souls, nor are the flesh a corruption of a more
perfect nature. Rather, our bodies are our mode of being in this world. Beverly
Harrison noted that “all knowledge is rooted in sensuality. We know and value the
world though our ability to touch, hear, and see. Ideas are dependent on sensuality.
Feelings are the basic bodily ingredient that mediates our connectedness to the
world. All power, including intellectual power, is rooted in feeling. If feeling is
damaged or cut off, our power to imagine the word and act is destroyed.” Attending
to sensation and feeling grounds is in the body and relationship and puts us in touch
with the basic energies of life.
Although pagans may view sexuality and the body as sacred, we do not often live
this truism. We work so hard that our bodies are stressed and when we come home
from a long day at work, we do not want to interact, we use TV, drugs, and alcohol to
soothe and deaden our feelings. Our bodies are temples yet how many pagans put
food into their bodies that honor themselves and the earth? Do you buy sustainable
produce and organic produce, do you avoid fast food, do you honor your bodytemple with exercise?
Audre Lorde has named the “erotic” as a power that can awaken us form the
numbness and alienation from our bodies. We can experience the power of the
erotic in sexual passion as well as in any “physical, emotional, psychic, or
intellectual” exchange. Only when we allow our deepest feelings and sensations to
surface within us are we truly alive. The erotic is transformative because we have
been taught that we should not feel good – that we must deny our bodies and their
urges and “take up our cross.” Sexuality is one of many gates to spiritual satisfaction
and can be a powerful expression of our connection to others and to all beings in the
web of life.
Gender roles have been almost arbitrarily assigned in our society. Women’s roles as
mothers have been said to be less important than military, intellectual, or spiritual
roles of men. In Christian theology, women must become more like men to approach
God, meaning they had to deny their bodies and become rational and analytic. All
assign sex characteristics fall along a continuum and men and women possess all of
them to varying degrees. Although our “sex characteristics” fall along a continuum,
our bodies affect the way we experience the world. The biologic fact that women get
pregnant, give birth, and are usually the primary care-takers of the young make it
easier for women to understand that life is embodies, relational, and interconnected.
If we want to make it easier for men to come to the same realization, they should be
present at the birth, and devote considerable time to the care-taking of their
children.
25
Human relationships are embedded in communities and societies, cultures and
social institutions. Communities are created cultures of human meaning and culture
shapes our lives from the moment of birth, telling us what to believe and shaping
our perceptions of reality. We have been taught that we are separate from nature
and that nature can be controlled. Even our language enforces this. When Susan
Griffin writes that “we are nature weeping” we are jarred because these
constructions are unfamiliar in our language. It is also important not to romanticize
the past – we need to create a new vision in our culture and time right here an right
now – where it is needed.
One of the greatest temptations in life is to limit the sphere of our love and to be
concerned only with those dearest and closest to us. Goddess theaology affirms that
we all come from one source while stating that diversity is the great principles of the
earth body. Difference is not antithetical to unity, but a natural and wondrous part
of unity. We have been taught to fear the unknown and to fear difference. In our
dominator society, we define the conquered or the different as barbarians or
ignorant savages. If we can learn to appreciate the differences within nature without
categorizing them as low or high, better or worse, perhaps we can also begin to
accept and appreciate differences among ourselves.
Our technologies often have the consequence of separating us from nature and
taking us further and further away from a sense of interconnectedness with the
earth and other people. Additionally, the violence in our world found in the media,
in war, and in all aspects of society produce violence human beings – the cycle
perpetuates itself; however, cultures CAN change and we have the ability to
transform our symbol systems and institutions. So how can we do this….
In Goddess religion, the source of morality is the deep feeling of connection to all
people and to all beings in the web of life. We act morally when we live in conscious
and responsible awareness of the intrinsic value of each being with whom we share
life on this earth. In Goddess religion, morality is not revealed from on high, but
naturally stems from an embodied loving, and intelligent nature. If we do not love
life on its own account and through others, it is futile to seek to justify it in any other
way. Morality arises from within life itself. When we are in touch with our feelings,
we know that our joy in living can only exist as in interdependence with the joy of
other people and all beings.
To transform the cycle of violence, we must proceed simultaneously on several
levels. We must change our intimate relationships, especially those and ourselves
with our children, we must transform the deepest values of our culture, and we
must reconstruct our social institutions. We must recognize that we are finite and
our perspectives will always be incomplete. We live in a world that includes death
and disease and natural disasters. Our families and cultural symbols systems have
shaped us. We carry the violence of our past within us. As we come to understand all
of the forces that have shaped us individuals and societies, we can stop demanding
26
perfection from ourselves and from others. If we value the feelings of deep
connection, if we love life on its own accord and through others, and if we find the
courage to act together on what we know, then maybe we build a better future.
Ethos and Ethics
A mythos is a culturally shared system of symbols and rituals that define what is
real and valuable for a culture. An ethos is a way of life expressed in the everyday
activities, customs, social institutions, and moral sensibility of a culture. A mythos
supports the ethos, telling us that certain ways of living are appropriate because
they put us in touch with what is real. Conversely, the living of an ethos reinforces
the sense that the mythos to which we are connected is true. In cultures
experiencing social transformation, new values and new ways of living are made
possible and become validated through change in mythos and new ways of living
and new values legitimate the new mythos.
The ethos of a dominator culture such as ours states that power comes from control
– control of women, of children, of other people and nations, and even our own
bodies. Dominator ethos teaches one to deny or control feelings, disparages human
embodiment, relationality, and interdependence (the core pagan values). The values
of dominator cultures are legitimized through mythos, stories, and rituals.
Goddesses and women were raped by the Gods, and myth names violence as an
acceptable mode of relation between t he sexes. Military training is an example,
where people are broken down to mindlessly follow order. The military turns “boys”
into “men,” where the eros of connection and relationality is replaced with an ethos
of domination, control, and violence. Domination and control are enshrined in
hierarchical and authoritarian power structures in all the institutions of society,
including business, media, and religion. Rather than providing a consistent
countervailing force to the ethos of domination, monotheism all too frequently
enforces it.
One of the most pernicious lies of dominator cultures is their assertion of cultural
superiority, which portrays ancient Goddess cultures and all pre-conquest societies
as primitive and bloodthirsty barbarians who needed to be civilized.
Goddess religion is a system of symbols and rituals that shape an ethos, providing a
sense of what is real and establish patterns of action. Those of us growing up in
dominator cultures must learn must learn to value the experience of connection and
the rituals and symbols of Goddess religion provide us this link. The symbols and
rituals help us celebrate our connection to the cycles of the moon and the seasons
and to participate I the mysteries of birth, death, and renewal. Goddess symbols
honor the body of the Goddess and our own bodies, calling us to embrace embodied
life and to care for the earth body. They affirm the interconnectedness and
sacredness of all life. Goddess images re-sacralize the female body, enabling women
to take pride in their female selves and to encourage men to treat women and
children with respect.
27
Our task is to create a new mythos and a new ethos that can help us resists the
values of a dominator culture and to embrace and embody the values of that
Goddess religion promulgates. Through symbols and rituals we name our values,
and ourselves strengthening our commitment to transformation. The author talks of
“touchstones” that can help translate the mythos of the Goddess religion into an
ethos. These are not commandments but guiding principles that must be evaluated
in each unique situation.
 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
 Practice great generosity
 Make relationships the center of your world
 Think about the consequences of your actions for seven future generations
 Repair the web
Change begins in our daily lives. Our acts not only affect other people and beings
whose life we touch, but they also enter into the collective memories and will
possible have an influence for healing or harm far beyond anything we can imagine.
We can create the space and time to commune with nature and other people.
Consider the recent blackout…. We can pay more attention to our feelings and our
bodies. We can view our relationships with other people and with plants, animals,
and other beings not as leisure activities, relegated to the weekend but as the stuff
that life is made of.
What are ways in which we can create a new ethos for ourselves and for our
culture? How can we live an embodied life that focuses on relationships and
considers the touchstones? What individual actions can we take to challenge our
dominator culture and institute the change that Goddess religion embodies?
As our individual actions bring us up against immovable structures, we come to
understand the importance of community. Actions that take place in relationships
and in communities do make a difference and may affect the web for seven
generations because our voices become much more powerful in the collective.
Communities are places where we can share values and envision a different world.
How does the pagan community embody this idea and do we do it well?
Men who have been influences by women and feminist ideas see how greatly men’s
strength, including their own, has been used in abusive and oppressive was. We
often respond by denying our strength completely or by denying that we had
anything to do with past oppressions. We must redefine masculinity and strength,
creating a new mythos that does not define strength and masculinity in terms of
domination and control. What is a strong man in a woman’s eyes? What is
masculinity and how do we define it? Do men and women define it the same way?
28
Ethos and Ethics
A mythos is a culturally shared system of symbols and rituals that define what is
real and valuable for a culture. An ethos is a way of life expressed in the everyday
activities, customs, social institutions, and moral sensibility of a culture. A mythos
supports the ethos, telling us that certain ways of living are appropriate because
they put us in touch with what is real. Conversely, the living of an ethos reinforces
the sense that the mythos to which we are connected is true. In cultures
experiencing social transformation, new values and new ways of living are made
possible and become validated through change in mythos and new ways of living
and new values legitimate the new mythos.
The ethos of a dominator culture such as ours states that power comes from control
– control of women, of children, of other people and nations, and even our own
bodies. Dominator ethos teaches one to deny or control feelings, disparages human
embodiment, relationality, and interdependence (the core pagan values). The values
of dominator cultures are legitimized through mythos, stories, and rituals.
Goddesses and women were raped by the Gods, and myth names violence as an
acceptable mode of relation between t he sexes. Military training is an example,
where people are broken down to mindlessly follow order. The military turns “boys”
into “men,” where the eros of connection and relationality is replaced with an ethos
of domination, control, and violence. Domination and control are enshrined in
hierarchical and authoritarian power structures in all the institutions of society,
including business, media, and religion. Rather than providing a consistent
countervailing force to the ethos of domination, monotheism all too frequently
enforces it.
One of the most pernicious lies of dominator cultures is their assertion of cultural
superiority, which portrays ancient Goddess cultures and all pre-conquest societies
as primitive and bloodthirsty barbarians who needed to be civilized.
Goddess religion is a system of symbols and rituals that shape an ethos, providing a
sense of what is real and establish patterns of action. Those of us growing up in
dominator cultures must learn must learn to value the experience of connection and
the rituals and symbols of Goddess religion provide us this link. The symbols and
rituals help us celebrate our connection to the cycles of the moon and the seasons
and to participate I the mysteries of birth, death, and renewal. Goddess symbols
honor the body of the Goddess and our own bodies, calling us to embrace embodied
life and to care for the earth body. They affirm the interconnectedness and
sacredness of all life. Goddess images re-sacralize the female body, enabling women
to take pride in their female selves and to encourage men to treat women and
children with respect.
29
Our task is to create a new mythos and a new ethos that can help us resists the
values of a dominator culture and to embrace and embody the values of that
Goddess religion promulgates. Through symbols and rituals we name our values,
and ourselves strengthening our commitment to transformation. The author talks of
“touchstones” that can help translate the mythos of the Goddess religion into an
ethos. These are not commandments but guiding principles that must be evaluated
in each unique situation.
 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
 Practice great generosity
 Make relationships the center of your world
 Think about the consequences of your actions for seven future generations
 Repair the web
Change begins in our daily lives. Our acts not only affect other people and beings
whose life we touch, but they also enter into the collective memories and will
possible have an influence for healing or harm far beyond anything we can imagine.
We can create the space and time to commune with nature and other people.
Consider the recent blackout…. We can pay more attention to our feelings and our
bodies. We can view our relationships with other people and with plants, animals,
and other beings not as leisure activities, relegated to the weekend but as the stuff
that life is made of.
What are ways in which we can create a new ethos for ourselves and for our
culture? How can we live an embodied life that focuses on relationships and
considers the touchstones? What individual actions can we take to challenge our
dominator culture and institute the change that Goddess religion embodies?
As our individual actions bring us up against immovable structures, we come to
understand the importance of community. Actions that take place in relationships
and in communities do make a difference and may affect the web for seven
generations because our voices become much more powerful in the collective.
Communities are places where we can share values and envision a different world.
How does the pagan community embody this idea and do we do it well?
Men who have been influences by women and feminist ideas see how greatly men’s
strength, including their own, has been used in abusive and oppressive was. We
often respond by denying our strength completely or by denying that we had
anything to do with past oppressions. We must redefine masculinity and strength,
creating a new mythos that does not define strength and masculinity in terms of
domination and control. What is a strong man in a woman’s eyes? What is
masculinity and how do we define it? Do men and women define it the same way?