Buzz Coil: January

Here’s what’s been buzzin’ on other blogs recently. If we missed an blog post you think is important. Please leave the info as a "comment."

At the end of desire: Blogger Inanna, who has a MA in Philosophy, is devoting Mondays to thealogy posts. Recent posts include: "Thealogy" (Jan. 8) "Imagining the Goddess" (Jan. 15) .
On another topic, in a Jan. 16 post,"On healing and being broken," Inanna compares assumptions underlying Christian baptism and Pagan healings, writing:

...I worry that the idea that we all always need healing, that healing is an on-going process, that we are all healing old wounds, whether from childhood or ancestors or past lives - I worry that this way of thinking about healing implies the assumption that we're all sick or broken. And that doesn't sound so different from the idea that we're born in sin and need to be redeemed. Do we unwittingly model some of our ideas about healing on a Christian model that we mean to reject?

The Adventures of Dr. Diana: Is a woman’s desire for a butt implant a sign of our culture’s spiritual decline? Find out in Diana Blaine’s Jan. 4 post, "And Now A Word from the Oracle," with a comparison to Incan cosmology.

Radical Goddess Thealogy: In a Jan. 14 post, "Marriage? Say Wha????What’s That?" blogger Athana writes about the possibility that "ancient Goddess people might not have known the institution of marriage," after reading a contribution by Vicki Noble to a 2005 anthology (see Athana’s post for complete citation).

Hecate: In her Jan. 17 post, "Nice Pagan Ladies," blogger Hecate ponders her feelings at "interfaith" functions and wonders if she’s behaving properly.( Well, she’s sure wearing a nice hat!) She writes:

We share many values -- peace activism, concern for the poor and homeless, opposition to capital punishment, green concerns -- and when we work together on those problems, I'm just fine. But still I find that the majority Abrahamics tend to slip into their assumption that all the world's population is monotheistic. It bugs me. I feel I should try to bring it up in as constructive a way as I can. How do others deal with it?

The Continuum: The relationship of the contemporary emergence of Goddess spirituality with women being admitted to the Anglican priesthood is examined by Fr. Robert Hart in his Jan. 13 post, "Priesthood and the Church" There’s some technical Christian stuff in this, but the post is notable for Hart’s acknowledgement of ancient Goddess artifacts and the feeling that something important is happening today. For instance, he writes:

....In a sense, if I am right about their meaning, these ancient pagans had a clearer understanding of a sacredness of the feminine than modern theologians who want to convert the Church into a religion with a Divine Feminine. ...It is not an accident or mere coincidence that women priests and the new "Divine Feminine" are conntemporary with each other.

And a few paragraphs later:

We see that redemption cannot be separated from the feminine presence of Mary.... In fact, not simply a feminine presence, but a female presence. This distinction is necessary in order to clarify its significance to an age that confuses the meanings of the word "sex" and "gender." People come in two sexes, male and female, rather than in genders. The Mother of God is a woman. However, the Church is not a woman, but it is the Bride of Christ, and as such is of the feminine gender, though not of the female sex.

Earth Family Alpha: Susan Bright’s Jan. 10 post, "The Age of Quan Yin" relates some of the many stories about the this Goddess.

Newbies (blogs begun in last 1-2 months)

Goddessnews.com: Short blurbs linking to news stories of female firsts (Yemen’s first female zone chief, Alabama’s Female Chief Justice, Baltimore’s first female mayor, etc.) plus other news such as, "Immigrant Faces Female Genital Mutilation If Deported" (Jan. 17), "Indian Woman Accused of Witchcraft Is Killed" (Jan. 13), "Witch in WW II," (Jan. 12), "Jewish Clergy Sexual Predators," (Jan. 11), "Indonesian Women Fight Sharia Laws" (Jan. 9), "Bishop Admits He was Wrong About Female Priests" (Jan. 9), "Women Burned to Death in East Timor"[for witchcraft], Jan.8, "Mormon Founder Descended from Mary Magdalene," (Jan. 7), "Italian Christmas Witch" [Le Befana] Jan. 5.

Cryptidcrits: A Jan 12 post, "Baba Yaga Bitches!,"retells Russian folklore about Baba Yaga and concludes, "Demon - not, She is a Goddess!!!"