Brazilian Author Announces World Goddess Day

Claudiney Prieto, author of several books  on Wicca in Portuguese and participant in the Dianic Nemorensis tradition in Brazil, is encouraging people worldwide to celebrate a World Goddess Day yearly on the first Sunday in September. This year the holiday falls on Sept. 7.  The link to the World Goddess Day website above is in English (there is also a Portuguese version), and includes a page where you can volunteer to be a "local coordinator," and another page where you can list the event you have planned for this holiday. 

Kimberly Moore of the Motherhouse of the Goddess, in a comment on Facebook, points out that September 7 is Orisha/Goddess Yemaya's feast day  (in Santeria, her Brazilian Feast day is Feb. 2).  

Here is an excerpt (from  home page of the World Goddess Day site) of Prieto's explanation of this holiday :
"The World Goddess Day Project emerged to unite the Mother Goddess' worshipers world wide through their many expressions and manifestations. The purpose of the Project is grant to the Goddess one day of visibility to share Her many myths, stories and worship diversity, so everyone will remember or will know that the first religion of humanity was the Worship of the Goddess....
She returns for several reasons. The Goddess is calling all who feel dissatisfied; she calls out all who have found in Western religions just political institutions focused only on a male dominant figure; She also calls for all who feel dissatisfied with the patriarchal religion inherited from their ancestors who have only contributed to sicken the world with their distorted and corrupted values...."

Changes Here for New Year

Taking a cue from the traditional New Year's maxim, "out with the old, in with the new," I'm making the following changes on this blog in 2014:

Events will be covered in a different way. "Events Coil" will be discontinued for (at least) two reasons: (1) People now have more ways to find out about events than when we started listing them in July 2006 --especially local events sponsored by smaller groups. There are more websites, and people are posting about them on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. (2) Though I still feel it's inspirational to see how many events are going on all over the world, the job (big job!) of gathering them and listing them has become taxing as I try to cope with other issues in my life. Also, when I posted about a year ago asking whether people still found the Events Coil useful, there was only one response. So instead of attempting to cover all events, no matter how big or how small, here's what I have planned:

Coverage of Larger Events
I will attempt to give you notice of larger events related to Goddess and other spiritual feminisms--no matter where in the world they are being held. These will usually be events lasting more than one day, mostly festivals and conferences. My best guess is that in most cases, these will each have a separate post. This will give you more notice than you now get from the "Events Coil" in case you want to register for the event and make travel and hotel reservations. I will try to spot as much information as I can on my own, but if your group is having such an event, to make sure that I know about it please send me an email with the link to a web page that has details of the event. If you already have an email address for me send it there. If you don't presently have an email address for me, send the info to < medusa  AT  judithlaura  DOT  com >   Please remember that events should be Goddess-related or related to some other form of feminist spirituality, and that I must have a web page to link to that is fully accessible (no pdf; no FB pages unless they are public). You don't have to send me the information itself, just the link to the web page. I will write the post from that and will link to it so people can get information not contained in my post.

News from Temples
I would like to have more coverage on this blog of what is going on at the increasing number of Goddess temples, "houses," etc., worldwide that meet in specific physical/geographical places. This is not limited to events.  In fact, I'd prefer it be about other matters: for example, it could include your temple's views on Goddess topics, issues that your temple is dealing with, plans (other than events) for the future, etc.   I feel this is best done by having guest posts by people affiliated with the each temple, preferably a leader or someone designated by the leader or the group. I invite you to write up to one post a month  (fewer or less frequently is fine) about your temple . If your temple is not in a country where English is the primary language, I invite you to write your post in your language of choice and, if possible, include a translation into English, to the best of your ability (hint: Google translate is pretty good if you need help). If you are interested in writing guest posts about your temple, please let me know by emailing me as described above.

Happy New Year to all!

Initiation?

(Note: I am scheduled to have cataract surgery the last week of June and it is getting progressively harder for me to read/write on the computer (mostly I think from screen glare, which the cataract makes me more sensitive to). I'm told that after surgery I may have about a week of possibly blurry or less than perfect vision so don't be surprised if there is little or no other posts from me for a few weeks. In the interim, I thought I'd give you something to chew on :-)

A dream I had while in college in the early 1960s was so unusual to me that I wrote it down when I woke up (not something I did then and rarely do even now). Years later when I wrote my novel, Three Part Invention, having the dream notes enabled me to give the dream to Beth, one of the main characters, changing little except shifting point of view from 1st to 3rd person. Plus a little a little novelistic embellishment. Would you call this an initiatory dream? A calling? The dream on which this excerpt is based occurred about a decade before I knew anything of  "Goddess" or "Great Mother." I have bolded the parts I think most made the dream an initiation or calling:

BEGIN EXCERPT 

[Beth] went back to her dorm room where she fell asleep immediately and began to dream....yellow walls of a mental institution. Beth was there to visit Valerie, who had been committed. Mistakenly, Beth was convinced. "You've got to release her," she told a nurse," Val's not insane!"

But the nurse looked dubious and, handing Beth a notebook, said, "Look at this."

Beth turned page after page of scribbling. Looks like German, Beth thought, but then realized it was no known language. Nevertheless, Beth told the nurse, "That's perfectly good middle German. Valerie is a German scholar."

The nurse laughed; her laughter bounced off the yellow walls like yodeling in a canyon. "Valerie is very sick," she said and, still laughing, walked away.

But where was Val? What if she couldn't find her? No, that couldn't happen. She was going to get Val out. Beth looked up and down the hall...and suddenly knew with certitude that Val was behind the third door down the hall on the right. The door had no windows, indicating that this was a top security cell for the dangerously insane and should have been locked. Yet when Beth turned the knob, it opened.

Val sat resplendent in middle of her bed, smiling serenely, her dark hair flowing about her....Val didn't seem to be concerned about being in a mental asylum, but Beth...had to get Val out of there. Beth took her friend's hand and...they floated through the doorway through hall and towards the outside door. As they exited, Beth realized that Val was not just Val. Somehow she was also Beth's mother. But not her real-life mother. Another mother, one who was truly hers and whom Beth also had to save. As Val-Mother and Beth ran down the hilly lawn in front of the asylum, the nurses and psychiatrists pursued them, calling to them to come back. But they outran the medical staff and reached the parking lot where Beth remembered leaving her car. But neither Beth nor Val-Mother could see the car anywhere. Val-Mother had become weak, weak from sitting on her bed in the hospital so long, weaker yet from running. She leaned on Beth and Beth helped her walk. Slowly they crossed the lot, and Beth thought she spotted her car, but before she could be sure a big yellow school bus suddenly bore down on them....

When Beth regained consciousness she crawled out from under the school bus which had crashed and which was now empty and broken. Val-Mother was nowhere to be seen. Then Beth was away from the bus, in another place, a place of wind and light--a highway. Beth was on foot on a highway, alone. First, cars whizzed by so fast she couldn't even see them. Then traffic ceased. The wind stopped. Beth walked along the vacant highway, feeling that she had a destination, though she could not name what it might be....

Beth awoke with a start, able to recall the whole dream, wondering at its weirdness.

END OF EXCERPT from Three Part Invention, a novel. Copyright 2002, 2009 by Judith Laura. All rights reserved.

IWD: Politics and Religion

International Women’s Day this year – today – comes at a time when in the US, many of us feel that women’s rights, women’s health, women’s role, (add any you think missing) are under attack. From the right. From the Republican Party, which has been taken over by the radical right. From the Radical Right which has been heavily influenced by radical right Christian groups such as the Christian Dominionists , who teach that the United States must become a theocratic Christian nation that does not allow for other religious points of view. This is what underlies what some have recently called the "war on women." In the last few months we have seen this underlying cause made clear by several events in rapid succession. The Komen Fund attempted to defund breast exams – crucial to diagnosing breast cancer when it is still highly treatable. The organization under this threat was Planned Parenthood, which gives health care to women, regardless of ability to pay. Planned Parenthood has been under constant attack, pressure, call it what you want, for a number of years by organizations and politicians of the Christian right using the LIE that Planned Parenthood receives federal funds for abortions. For this non-reason, they have persisted in trying (and sometimes succeeding) in closing down Planned Parenthood facilities. A very vocal protest, backed up by the threat of withholding of funds from Komen and the monetary support of Planned Parenthood, forced the Komen Fund to backtrack on their threat. Then the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill requiring women seeking abortions to have medically unnecessary penetrative trans-vaginal untrasound exams even if they didn't consent. Public outcry prevented Gov. McDonnell from signing the bill, but he substituted and signed a form of the bill that still requires an unnecessary medical procedure (top of the belly ultrasound). In the last month or so it has become evident that abortion is not the only objection the radical right politicians/religionists have to women’s health care. They’re against contraception too! Many of us scratched our heads over this, and then rubbed our eyes trying to wake up from a nightmare that would seem to be set in the 19th century or earlier. What’s going on? Why is this happening? Is there a tie-in with jobs being hard-to-find?  Do men resent the fact that they have to compete with women for jobs? Do they feel this "problem" would be solved if only they could keep the women "barefoot and pregnant" once more? But since that would mean less money for the household, perhaps there is a deeper, less obvious reason?

To me, in patriarchy, politics and religion are always mixed. Sometimes (like now) we are (made) conscious of it by events that make the mix obvious, and sometimes it lies just "below the radar" or in the subconscious motivations of our thoughts and actions. As I noted in a post a few years ago  many people deny or do not understand the relationship of politics and religion in history and because of this do not understand how it is interwoven at present. This despite the situation described in the previous paragraph, and despite ongoing examples in other parts of the world.  These "many people" include people who consider themselves feminists, some of whom teach courses related to women in our universities. We may have made a little progress, because there was a time when what I’ll term exclusively-political feminists did not see the relevance of religion at all. Today, in most cases in the US, both exclusively-political feminists and spiritual feminists (a term I use for spiritual-political feminists) usually agree on the problem: that Abrahamic religions have played a role in establishing patriarchal rule and their doctrines continue to play a part in sustaining misogyny. What we disagree on is the solution. Exclusively-political feminists tend to either count themselves out of any organized religion and/or be atheists. I think this is a valid personal position. But, as we can see today, it doesn’t solve the problem for our culture, for our society as a whole. Spiritual feminists point out that religion isn’t going away. It would seem that some sort of belief system that causes us to seek connection with a spiritual source or dimension is hard-wired into us. So, while atheism may be a valid path for an individual, it doesn’t solve the problem of an oppressive religious system that validates oppression of women (along with validating oppression of other groups seen as "other"). The solution that spiritual feminists see as essential is replacing oppressive religions with religions of equality. For many of us this means having female deity as primary, or imaging the divine (0r sacred) as female. We find historical justification for this, described by now in many books, and verified it seems almost daily by new archeological finds. These finds verify that in almost every culture, the divine was worshipped in female form. Anthropologists find these societies more egalitarian than those that developed after the Goddess religions were destroyed. It is no accident that Christian Dominionists attack what they call the "Queen of Heaven," which includes all female representations of the divine, including the Christian Virgin Mary. And it has become clear that what the radical right is after is the re-subjugation of women.

This International Women’s Day, in this Women’s History Month, is a good time to remind ourselves and remind others, of the importance of rooting out the misogyny in politics by going to its roots, misogyny in religion.

What the President Said

What is true for religious minorities is also true when it comes to the rights of women. History shows that countries are more prosperous and peaceful when women are empowered. That is why we will continue to insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men - by focusing assistance on child and maternal health; by helping women to teach, or start a business; by standing up for the right of women to have their voices heard, and to run for office. For the region will never reach its potential when more than half its population is prevented from achieving their potential.

~U.S. President Barack Obama, Speech on the Middle East, May 19, 2011

What Do You Think of This from 'Conscious Men?'

This video, "Dear Woman," was posted on You Tube by a group called Conscious Men. It includes reference to the "divine feminine." I'm interested to know what you think of it.

They also have a "Manifesto" with sentiments similar to those in this video.

Pagans Pray for Japan at Cherry Trees in DC

Tonight beginning at 8 p.m., there will be a prayer effort to help Japan at the Tidal Basin in Washington DC, surrounded by cherry trees originally donated to the U.S. by Japan. The event is sponsored by the DC Firefly Pagan Meetup Group. More info, including how to participate if you can't physically be at the meetup, is at the DC Firefly Pagan Meetup site. The announcement gives, imo, a good summary of the Pagan outlook on a natural disaster. Wish I could have given you more notice, but apparently Japan events are being scheduled rapidly.

Worldwide Healing Ritual for Japan

UPDATE: March 18: The following is from an email I received this evening from Selena Fox. (I've turned the urls into links because long links mess up the blog's format.):

"Please join us in doing spiritual healing work for Japan as part of your upcoming Equinox & Full Moon ceremonies and gatherings this weekend. Some possibilities for individuals & groups:
(1) Work with or adapt the Healing for Japan Ritual by Selena Fox
(2) Create a Healing for Japan Altar for use in healing prayers, rites, & meditations - this could include items such as a map, flag or other symbol of Japan, objects made in Japan, Japanese sacred images, quartz crystals, other healing tools.
(3) Envision egg-shaped containment around damaged Japanese nuclear reactors & send support to workers at the reactors sites.
(4) Call on Kannon, Japanese Goddess of Mercy, known also in other parts of Asia as Kwan Yin, to aid Japan, its people, creatures, plants, land, waters, air, energy sources.
(5) Attune to the Circle Sanctuary Community's endeavors on Saturday, March 19. Circle Sanctuary will have a community Healing for Japan Altar set up in its Temple Room at Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve near Barneveld, Wisconsin throughout the day of its Welcome Spring Festival on Saturday, March 19, and as part of its Full Moon Circle in the evening.Shibaten of Japan, who is now in Singapore, will be among those spiritually attuning with those of us celebrating - you are welcome to join in as well.
(6) Post about your own spiritual healing work for Japan on Selena Fox's main Facebook page throughout the weekend.
(7) Tune into internet radio for special show on Pagan relief efforts for Japan - join Don Lewis, Peter Dybing, Selena Fox, Zaracon, others on Saturday night, March 19 on Pagans Tonight. Selena is presently scheduled to do her Healing for Japan Ritual shortly after 9 pm CDT on this internet radio show.
(8) Join Pagans of many traditions in Pagan First Giving charity efforts for Doctors without Borders, which is among the international relief organizations now working in Japan.
(9) Network: share this email & links with others."
[end of update]

Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary has announced, on the Sanctuary's website, by email, and on Facebook, a healing ceremony for Japan coordinated with Japanese shamanic healing musician Shibatan, currently in his home country. Selena invites all interested to take part in the coordinated ritual scheduled for this evening at 7 p.m. CDT /9 a.m. Monday Japanese time. The full suggested ritual is on this Circle Sanctuary website page. If you can't do the ritual at the 7 p.m. CDT time, it can be used at other times you feel the ritual is appropriate, needed.

Congrats Mother Grove of Asheville!

Congratulations to Mother Grove Temple of the Goddess of Asheville, North Carolina. These folks are building a Temple and have just received their 501 (c) 3 non-profit status. WTG! Take a look! And if you're in the area, don't miss the benefit concert on Aug. 30.

Our Third Blogaversary!

Our Third Blogaversary slipped quietly by us while we were celebrating Independence Day. I hope to blog a "think piece" later this month to initiate our 4th year. Meanwhile, I want to thank the other bloggers, our guest bloggers, everyone who leaves comments and who links to our posts - and all our readers - for their participation in Medusa Coils, and for making blogging here a very enriching experience for me.

Pre-Inaugural Ritual of Unity and Blessing in DC

UPDATE Jan. 11: If you're planning to attend, please also read this.

The following is from a press release from Caroline Kenner:

Animating the Spirit of Democracy With a Ritual of Unity and Blessing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 5 JANUARY---The Washington, D.C. community of magical and spiritual progressives will join together on Monday afternoon, January 19th, at the Jefferson Memorial Plaza, to sweep the town clean and welcome President-elect Obama and his administration to the White House.

The Ritual of Unity and Blessing is organized by a triumvirate of native Washingtonians, one of whom is the great-granddaughter of slaves, one the great-granddaughter slave owners, and one the daughter of a populist New Deal Congressman. The ceremony will begin promptly at 2 pm with a Witches' Broom Dance, intended to cleanse Washington of the malfeasance, deceit and partisanship of the last eight years.

Washington Witchdoctor Caroline Kenner, a Pagan shamanic healer and organizer for the Sacred Space Foundation, says, "Many of us are worried by the ruinous course our country has taken for the last eight years, and we are also concerned for the safety of the Obama and Biden families. This ceremony gives us a chance to request help from our loving ancestors and our multitude of deities, and to bless and protect the incoming administration. We will begin the work by magically sweeping away the detritus of the worst administration in American history with our consecrated Witches' Brooms."

Wiccan Priestess Katrina Messenger, founder of Connect DC and the Reflections Mystery School, and faculty member at Cherry Hill Seminary, says "We have an opportunity not only to sweep away the old, we also need to bless this beautiful city in preparation for what is to come. With all that is churning around the world in recent times, we need clear leadership and compassionate hearts at the helm of this great nation. Washington is such a jewel in the larger fabric of peace, freedom, beauty and justice, let us charge this historic incoming administration with all the good juice we can conjure!"

Caroline W. Casey, founder of Coyote Network News (the Compassionate Trickster Mythological News Service) as well as the host-creator of Pacifica Radio Network's, "The Visionary Activist Show," said, "The word "inauguration" comes from the "augur", the pattern-tracker, the diviner within us all. The augur would walk out into nature to divine the patterns indicating which human was deemed the most responsible steward of the Common Wealth, the well-being of all our relations. And that chosen person would be "inaugurated" as the ruler who weds the land. We invite you to contribute your medicine blessing to our collective brew, and toast our new President, with whom we vow to collaborate: Barack Hussein Obama!"

A large quartz crystal resembling the Washington Monument will be charged with the blessings of unity and protection during the ritual. At the culmination of the ceremony, the crystal will be sacrificed into the Tidal Basin, whence it will broadcast the energies of the ritual to the Potomac River and the world at large.

A Drum Circle will follow, lasting until 4:45pm. People from all religious faiths and spiritual traditions, or none, are welcome to join us. A detailed description of the ceremony, including instructions for parking and what to bring, can be found at paganreligiousrights.org starting January 9th.

Women's Equality Day

How shall we celebrate? August 26 was designated Women's Equality Day in the US by Jimmy Carter when he was President. It marks the anniversary of the achievement of woman's suffrage with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Yes, dear ones, women have been allowed to vote for less than 100 years in the US of A.

You might want to celebrate by reading this brief history of the long, 72-year struggle for women's voting rights. And you might want to resolve to vote. I know it's part of my religion.

TAGS:news Women's Equality Day women's suffrage voting rights 19th Amendment

Looking Back, Looking Forward

My first post of the calendar new year is dedicated to the Goddess Anna Perenna, who is sometimes seen as having two faces: Postverta, looking to the past, and Prosrsa, looking to the future.

Postverta: A Look Back
In the spirit of Postverta, a look back at the development of Goddess spirituality and spiritual feminisms can help us better understand where we are today. Feminist spirituality grew out of the consciousness-raising activities of the 1960s and 1970s, and evaluated the status of women in religion in ways similar to the critiquing of women’s social and political situation. Some women reacted to the information about the oppressive nature of mainstream religions by attempting to reform those religions. Others left mainstream religions and sought to establish (or re-establish) religious/spiritual paths that included Goddess figures or concepts, including seeing nature as good rather than as a negative force to be controlled. These modern Goddess pioneers understood that respecting nature, valuing women, and revering goddesses were intertwined, and they felt that the downgrading and erasing of goddesses was at the root of women’s social and political oppression.

The contemporary Goddess movement began with explorations by individual women or small informal groups sharing information and intuitions about ancient religions. Small groups became larger, a bit more structured, but usually remained all-women. As the movement grew, many women either opened their groups to men or joined existing mixed-gender Pagan groups. The migration of Goddess-honoring feminists into the Pagan community played an important role in the growth of that community in the last two decades of the 20th century. Women were to drawn to Paganism because the groups honored goddesses along with gods and also because nature is held sacred in many forms of Paganism. Women assumed that if a group honored the divine as female, it would also treat human females equitably. This assumption may have been naive. Women report that in many Pagan and Wiccan groups both online and "in real life," the input and opinions of women are resented or downright ignored, and sometimes, reflecting the larger society, "feminist" has become a bad word. Why, how, has this happened? One important reason is that the basic underpinnings of the old power-over, male-dominance paradigm haven’t been thoroughly rooted out. Rather, the old paradigm has been transferred from mainstream religions to some (many?) Pagan groups, which give short shrift to the empowered goddesses in matrifocal cultures of more than 3,000 years ago, and have instead adopted pantheons and viewpoints from later eras, which, while they include goddesses, envision them from a patriarchal rather than egalitarian perspective. This trend of downplaying women’s contributions and the importance of female deities is bolstered today, particularly in the U.S., by the backsliding socio-religio-political framework of the larger culture which, at least partly in defensive reaction to the slight progress made by women, is increasingly antagonistic to feminism and to equity for women.

This backlash occurs in spite of (because of?) another response to the writings, teachings and actions of spiritual feminists during the last two decades of the 20th Century: Many Jewish and Christian denominations became more open to women’s full participation in religion, including ordination, and grew sensitive to how exclusively-male god language serves to exclude women. Some of these groups responded by degenderizing language used to describe and address the divine. Some denominations added female "god language" or imagery to their texts and became more open to visioning the divine as female, or as they sometimes prefer to call it "feminine." (There’s a difference, but that’s a topic for another blog post.) A more recent development is Christian and Jewish groups who allow embodiment of the Divine as Female. People in these groups sometimes identify as Goddess Christians or Goddess Jews . (There are also a significant number of people people identifying themselves as "Jewitches," but imo the focus of many of these individuals and groups seems to be polytheist and magickal, but not particularly feminist.)

Let’s say you left a (non-fundamentalist) mainstream religion for Paganism as a result of your feminist views 20 or 30 years ago. An interesting experiment might be to revisit whatever group you left and see if there’s a difference in the language and the participation of women. Then compare that to how women are treated in your Pagan group. Where would you say women are treated more equitably today? Is there as great a difference in gendered "god language" between the Pagan group and the mainstream denomination as when you left it? What about male and female representations of the divine?

Prosrsa: A Glimpse of the Future
As we look towards the future with the vision of Prosrsa, the forward-looking face of Anna Perenna, I’m going to continue asking questions, borrowing from my column of a few years ago, "Goddess Spirituality at the Crossroads," in The Beltane Papers. These questions are about groups we may be involved in now:

- Do women participate equally in discussions in our mixed gender groups (including covens), or do they defer to, or are they often interrupted by men?
- Are leadership roles, other than high priest/ess, filled as often by women as by men in mixed gender groups?
- Are deities referred to as "the gods" when we actually mean both goddesses and gods?
- Are the group's teaching materials free of sexist assumptions (for example, characteristics assigned to gods and goddesses)?
- Do the books and techniques used for metaphysics (such as tarot, astrology, kabbalah, meditation, magick) depend on outdated patriarchal frameworks?

In addition to assessing whether groups are meeting our goals and needs, imo there is another important question to ask ourselves at this New Year: Do we Goddessians want to stay on the outskirts of spiritual paths or do we want to evolve into a fully-accepted religion? Many of us dislike "organized religion," and this feeling may be increased at present because we see in stark specifics, the harm that foisting religion onto political decisions and actions can do. Yet the outcome of continuing to remain on the margins – of both mainstream religions and Paganism – could mean that groups for which Goddess(es) are primary, groups that emphasize equality for women, will eventually disappear and fade into the persisting patriarchal culture. A year ago or two ago I thought this was likely to happen. But more recently I’ve been encouraged by the emergence of Goddessian and other spiritual feminist bloggers. And I’ve become more hopeful that there will be at least some sort of structure, (dare I say organization?) that will sustain us. To me, the most encouraging sign of this is the establishment of several Goddess temples, which I found out about in the last year while developing this blog. Medusa Coils has been fortunate to have guest blogs by people involved with a number of these temples – they’re listed over there on the right under "Archived Favorites," and some of the activities of these temples are listed in our "Events Coil" every month. I hope we’ll have more posts on physical spaces devoted to Goddess celebration in the future. At present I’m aware of contemporary Goddess temples in the western and midwestern USA, in England, the Netherlands, and in Australia. And I say wow!!! What these groups are doing is really impressive!!!! I’m optimistic that existing temples will continue to flourish, and that more Goddess temples will join them.

At the turn of the millennium, Abby Willowroot encouraged people to create Goddess statues and art in what she called "Goddess 2000 Project", whose aim was "A Goddess on Every Block!" Now that we are well into this millennium, I’d like to state another goal – a Goddess temple in every town!

I believe Goddess temples will bring us increased visibility and stability, lessen the perception of us as an unimportant or fringe group (or groups), and enable people to see contemporary Goddess religion(s) as a legitimate spiritual path. This, in turn, will help us reach other goals, such as having our research, scholarship, and writings published more easily, having our findings accepted in academic circles, and having Goddessian representatives included in "interfaith" programs and gatherings.

Recently, on her blog, M. Macha Nightmare (author with Starhawk et al. of The Pagan Book of Living and Dying) described an interfaith forum at Napa College in California. Macha was the speaker on "Contemporary Pagan, " in a program that also included speakers on Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other mainstream religions, and a speaker(Leilani of the Daughters of the Goddess) on what the program described as "Goddesses Based Wicca." In a footnote to her blogpost, Macha wrote, "This is how it was listed in the program, but the speaker actually said she was talking about goddess spirituality, which seemed more accurate to me." Napa College should be complimented on making a distinction, too infrequently made, between Paganism and Wicca and Goddess[es]-based Wicca, and I cheer Leilani’s and Macha’s further distinction between "Goddesses Based Wicca" and "Goddess spirituality." I consider the latter a wider category, a bigger tent. A tent that might even include Goddess Christians and Goddess Jews.

So at this dawning of a new calendar year, let us pour a libation to Anna Perenna, as well as to She who has many faces, many embodiments, many names. And let us toast to a year of continuing Goddessian progress.

TAGS:life news spiritual feminism feminisms Goddess women and religion New Year 2007 Goddessian Pagan feminist spirituality interfaith Goddess temples

Why Are We Here?

As Medusa Coils, we hope to counter a trend many of us have noticed in the last few years: A tendency to downplay the contributions of spiritual feminist scholars, including Goddess authors. We are also here to provide information about other concerns of people involved in modern feminist Goddess religions and spiritual paths, including the various permutations now snaking through some Jewish and Christian circles.

Goddess authors, philosophers, researchers, and practitioners have spent a good deal of time and effort over the last several decades researching the history of the suppression of the divine embodied as female. Unlike the adherents of most other religions, who are rarely challenged when they base their beliefs on faith, Goddess people have used anthropology, archeology, and history to substantiate their claims. Yet we are still criticized for lack of evidence, a criticism that few would level at mainstream religions.

It seems to some of us that when we aren't being criticized with unfounded and distorted statements, we are being ignored. By ignored, I mean that concepts, ideas, historical findings, that originated with Goddess thinkers and writers are now being un-Goddessed: the thoughts and ideas are used pointedly without reference to Goddess spirituality and sometimes at the same time as the writer or speaker is putting down "that Goddess stuff" or feminist theology. As the Goddess is being disappeared from discourse, so are women's contributions to 20th and 21st century religious and spiritual thinking being erased. Sound familiar?

Medusa Coils is going to try to give you the real story on writings and other statements that are critical of Goddess claims, concepts, practices, particularly when it's done in a way that distorts them. Some writers have already been doing this. Two examples are Max Dashu's "Knocking Down Straw Dolls" and Starhawk's "Response to Charlotte Allen's Article" . These were written a few years ago and are terrific. We plan to do more! And we hope you will help by leaving suggestions in the comment area about examples of these we should cover.

We also plan to point out writing that takes concepts from Goddess or feminist theological writings but fails to credit them as such. Although a certain amount of "borrowing" from one spiritual path to another is common, it seems to us that much of what is going on today is an intentional slight of Goddess scholars and of women. We will be particularly critical of writing that ignores the Goddess or feminist sources of ideas it espouses while at the same time putting down modern Goddess religion or spiritual feminism. Look for a diary here on such an article in the near future. And if any instances of this devious practice comes to mind, please leave a comment for us to follow up.

We also plan to help readers find articles and information on Goddess websites and blogs, tell you about opportunities to publish papers and articles, and give you information about Goddess groups in various geographical locations. We are particularly interested in groups that have incorporated as religious non-profits and/or who have a building dedicated to Goddess use.

This blog is named after Medusa, a protective goddess sometimes associated with righteous anger. Her hair has, or is, coiling snakes, a symbol of regeneration. For more about her, go here