Review: Book by Nancy Vedder-Shults

The World is Your Oracle: Divinatory Practice For Tapping Your Inner Wisdom And Getting The Answers You Need by Nancy Vedder-Shults, Quarto Publishing Group USA 2017,240 pages (Also available as an e-book.)

This short interview is meant as an introduction to Nancy Vedder-Shults’ book, The World is Your Oracle. For the interview section of this review, the reviewer is using the name she usually writes under, Judith Laura. Her blogger name for this blog is Medusa, and will appear at the end of the review

Judith Laura: How does The World is Your Oracle relate to Goddess spirituality?

Nancy Vedder-Shults: The book is a compilation of 40 different techniques for accessing your deep knowing, 1/3 of which are visual, 1/3 auditory, and 1/3 kinesthetic. It comes directly out of my work in feminist spirituality, although it certainly could be used by men as well.

Judith Laura: In what way(s) do these techniques come out of your work in feminist spirituality?

Nancy Vedder-Shults: I was in a deeply magical coven of seven women in the 1990s. Since there were 7 of us, we decided that for a year and a day each of us would be responsible for one of the 7 chakras. We put colored slips of paper into a hat and selected one a piece. When I picked indigo, signifying the 6th chakra, I must have blanched. The sixth chakra, also known as the third eye, is the site of intuition and psychic awareness. I didn’t consider myself very psychic at the time and wondered why I had chosen that chakra. What this experience began was an intense exploration of intuition and ways of tapping into our inner wisdom. The World is Your Oracle is a direct result. I don’t think I would have researched and written it if I hadn’t been in that coven.
 
Judith Laura: Are there any other ways that your approach in this book grew out of your work in feminist or Goddess spirituality?
 
Nancy Vedder-Shults: I discovered divination as a Goddess woman, so for me it’s obvious that these techniques are a part of my spirituality. If I had remained in my birth religion, I would never have encountered them. I practice Wicca, and I’m also a Unitarian Universalist. This second religion may be THE most tolerant religion in the world. There are no dogmas or beliefs that we ascribe to, so there are UUs of many stripes — Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, pagan, atheist, agnostic, and even a few Muslims. As a UU, I wanted my book — which comes out of the magical practices that Goddess feminists perform — to be accessible to any open-minded person. Molly Remer in her review called it "not a specifically pagan book, but instead is markedly (and enjoyably!) interfaith in approach, while also being culturally respectful.” That made me feel great, because it meant that I had not imposed my beliefs on others, but allowed them to realize how the techniques could be useful to them, whatever their beliefs.

And now for my review:

Beginning with the first chapter, “Preparing, Interpreting, and Honoring your Oracle,” the book contains a wealth of helpful material. In addition to being a look at oracles through the author’s lens of feminist spirituality, The World Is Your Oracle is a fascinating book on a metaphysical topic that the author bases strongly on science. For example, Vedder-Shults writes in the 2^nd chapter, “… Science has recently demonstrated a number of techniques that can make our divinations even more successful.” Some of these techniques, the author writes, are smiling, replacing worry and anxiety with trust, broadening your attention but also letting your mind wander. In addition, in this section the author discusses 5 other ways for aiding divination based on scientific research.

 
While maintaining a focus on science, Vedder-Shults includes light touches that keep the book from bogging down. The title of the book itself is one of these for me. “The World is Your Oracle,” to me is a play on the saying “The world is your oyster,” (an expression originally from Shakespeare), only in the case of the book we are looking for answers to questions, or help from what some call “psychic” perceptions, whereas in the common maxim, we are giving a new meaning or an expanded role to oysters—that an oyster represents enjoyment or simply that we have some type of ownership of the world . Another light touch is use of the term “brain blink” in the chapter discussed above on science. The author gives four recommendations for encouraging “brain blink.”
 
Both the cover (which shows what I assume is a world egg breaking open and releasing a bird, and which surrounds the main title with the subtitle), and the interior illustrations are by the author’s daughter, Linnea Vedder. They add greatly to this book. Most of the chapters begin with a color illustration. Beginning with the chapter sections of “Visual Techniques” the chapter sections also have color illustration. For example, the section on air begins with a color illustrations that seems to me to illustrate the displayed boxed text for “winds of change: this modern form of wind divination (austromancy) allows you to read your oracle in the movements of an object blown by the wind.” This chapter section and those that follow on visual techniques connected with air (ashes, balloon diagrams, books, candles, creatures, dreams, mirrors, numbers, scrying, spirit guides, stars) also contain further instructions titled “Steps” and “Continuing the Journey.” Similar color illustrations, accompanied by boxed explanatory quotes, as well as separate sections with instructions are included in the chapters on Auditory Techniques and Kinesthetic Techniques, each of which have at least 14 sections each on various techniques.
 
The Back Matter contains Works Frequently Cited; References; Endnotes, including those from the works of Layne Redmond, Gerina Dunwich, Robert Graves, D.J. Conway, James Lovelock; Resources, with sections on “chanting and other music” including material on Atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, “Om Tara,” featuring Chants for the Queen of Heaven and Songs of the Earth: Music of the Earth; and Pagan, Wiccan, or Native American. Also, “drumming,” “gods, goddesses, saints, and power animals,” whose material includes work by Ted Andrews, and Patricia Monaghan; and “birds, animals, and insects.” There is also a 6-page index, whose citations include Alpha brain wave activity, Sigmund Freud, Gaia theory, Guided meditation, Carl Jung, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Trance state. The Appendix section has spaces for the reader to fill in personal meanings and includes topics of “Creatures” with 3 charts of Associations with Common North American Bugs, ….Animals, …Birds’. The topics of “Numbers” and “Body Sense” have one chart each.

The World Is Your Oracle is a down-to-earth description of how to use mysticism and mystical techniques to achieve excellence in oracular practice. Well thought out and organized, it is appropriate for the person first starting to use oracles as well as those who have been involved in this form of divination for quite some time.

According to Vedder-Shults’ biography at the end of the book, she participated in the Women’s Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1975-1991, received a Ph.D, and is “a storyteller, writer, and musician.” She has written for SageWoman magazine and Tikkun Daily blog and has recorded Chants for the Queen of Heaven. Her website is Mamasminstrel.net

Review of Book Co-Authored by Carol P. Christ & Judith Plaskow

Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (Fortress Press, 2016) 364 pages, trade paperback, 6” x 9,” also available as an e-book.

Written by two of the most well-known authors in feminist spirituality, Goddess and God in the World is an extraordinary combination of autobiography and theological discourse. In this book, the authors continue a relationship that goes back to their days at Yale graduate school, a relationship that also includes collaboration as editors of two landmark books: Womanspirit Rising: a Feminist Reader in Religion (1979), the first anthology of essays on feminist theology, which included Goddess, Jewish, and Christian authors; and Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (1989) an anthology that included authors from these and many other religions and cultures. Carol P. Christ is also author of 6 other books; Judith Plaskow is author of 5 other books. Both also have innumerable journal essays and articles to their credit. (All of their publications are listed in the backmatter of this book.)

The authors identify each other by only their first names in the book, so I will do the same in this review. Goddess and God in the World is the first book that Carol and Judith have co-authored, with each writing individual chapters and collaborating on other chapters, including the Introduction. A footnote in the Introduction reveals that a coin toss determined the order of the chapters and whose full name would come first on the cover and title page. The first part of the book focuses on autobiography, with its pattern a separate chapter by each author, followed by a jointly written chapter giving a more scholarly view of the autobiographical material. This pattern in repeated twice in Part I, “Embodied Theologies,” and ends with last two of Part I’s 8 chapters individually written. The second part of the book alternates chapters between authors in a conversation about theological issues many of which they feel have roots in their life stories. The last chapter in Part II is jointly written.

At the end of the jointly-written Introduction, the authors present 8 questions that, they write, “lie at the heart of our book.” They encourage readers to answer the questions before reading the book and again after reading it. These questions are:

“Is God or Goddess to be found outside the world, or within it?

“Are we called to a life beyond the body and nature, or is this world our home and our bodily life the only life we have?

“Is there someone listening to us when we worship, pray, or meditate or is addressing Goddess or God a metaphoric way of speaking?

“Is everything that happens in the world the will of Goddess or God, or is the world shaped by chance and a multiplicity of wills?

“Is Goddess or God good, or does divine power include both good and evil?

“Does the idea that divinity loves the world inspire us to promote flourishing of all, or does the notion that divine power includes both good and evil encourage greater human responsibility for the fate of the Earth?

“Should we speak of Goddess, God, neither, or both?

“Is what each of us believes about divine power a personal choice with only private meaning, or do our beliefs matter because they shape the world we share?”

(italics theirs)

In Carol’s first chapter, titled after a Protestant hymn,“For the Beauty of the Earth,” (Chapter 1 – she apparently won the coin toss), she writes about her life, beginning with her birth “just before Christmas” near the end of World War II, and continues to discuss religious background and incidents of her childhood and youth, including deaths of relatives, undergraduate college at Stanford — including a sophomore year abroad reading Dante and Augustine — and studying other matters relevant to Christian history. In her last two years at Stanford she studied “Old Testament” in Hebrew and became “fascinated with a God who did not stay in heaven, but came down to earth to enter into a covenant with His own special people.” She also studied Roman Catholic theology and authors considered Existentialist. She came to the conclusion that her “view of God was in many ways as Jewish as it was Christian.” She was accepted into the “Old Testament” program at Yale graduate school, during which her views changed, she experienced disappointments, and began to develop feminist thoughts and actions.

Apparently neither author was thrilled with the situation at Yale. Judith’s first chapter (Chapter 2,“Stirrings,”) also begins at birth, with her statement, “I am certain that I was born a theologian.” She discusses her Jewish childhood, during which her family belonged to a Reform Temple though her mother grew up in a family participating in the Conservative branch of Judaism and her father’s in an Orthodox branch. Judith writes of attending Hebrew school for 12 years (my memory is that this was very unusual for a girl at that time, even in Reform Judaism). She recalls an incident when she was nine years old, when it suddenly occurred to her that “God might be a woman.” Though she didn’t think about this again for a number of years, it reappeared and influenced her later in life. In high school, she recalls learning about the civil rights movement at a time when she was already “obsessed with the Holocaust.” Of this, she writes, “For me, it was never a simple matter of us and them, the good guys and the bad guys. Rather...the Holocaust made me aware of what human beings are capable of.” She attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and entered Clark University, where, like Carol, she was impressed with the works of Elie Weisel and Albert Camus. Also like Carol, she spent a year abroad during undergraduate school. She also spent a month in Israel, just after the Six Day War. In a section called “Yale and Its Discontents,” she enumerates the various problems there. One positive outcome, imo, was that it was at Yale that she and Carol met, became friends, and together developed their interest in feminist theology.

In Chapter 3, the jointly written “God in the History of Theology,” the authors’ discussion includes the attempt to reconcile two concepts of God: the Biblical and the Philosophical. They discuss how feminist theory emerged from this and, in particular, the influence of 3 essays: Valerie Saiving’s “The Human Situation," Rosemary Radford Ruether’s “Earth and the Magamachine,” and Mary Daly’s “After the Death of God the Father: Women’s Liberation and The Transformation of Christian Consciousness.” They write that these essays raised questions still being pondered by today’s feminist theologians. They also begin to investigate possible explanations of how a “good” God could allow “evil” in the world, a topic brought to their attention by World Wars I and II.

In the next three chapters, the authors discuss their postgraduate work, Carol at Columbia University, San Jose State University, Harvard, and elsewhere, and Judith at New York University, Drew Theological School, and Wichita State University. At Columbia, Carol “…became part of the kind of open-minded religious and theological discussion I had hoped to find at Yale.” She discusses her introduction to and investigation of various theological authors and movements including feminist theology and liberation theology. She questions the relationship of deity to war and warriors. Her interests also included the changes that both Jewish and Christian women were attempting to make. She writes of the situation at that time: “… while Christian women have recovered Sophia, female Divine Wisdom, they have shown little interest in the Hebrew Goddess. Though some Jewish women have begun to reclaim the Hebrew Goddess [Asherah, as discussed in Raphael Patai’s The Hebrew Goddess], they are likely to speak of Her as Shekhinah, the female Divine Presence.” She writes that both the Jewish and Christian women seemed less than eager to face questions raised about the “triumph of Judaism and Christianity over paganism and idolatry.” The chapter continues as Carol leaves Christianity for Goddess religion, spends time in California, writes her extraordinary and still influential essay, “Why Women Need the Goddess,” collaborates with Judith on the anthology, Womanspirit Rising, and writes her first book, Diving Deep and Surfacing. She moves to Greece, where she still resides, has founded the Ariadne Institute and leads Goddess pilgrimages to Crete.

In this group of chapters, Judith continues to tell of the evolution of her belief system. She writes of the differences in language and theology of the services in the Reform Temple in which she was raised and those she attended in an Orthodox synagogue after she married. She also writes of her exploration of spiritual communities during her graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School. Of her post graduate work she writes, “When I finished my dissertation, I found myself in the extremely awkward position of having been trained to be something I could never be: a Protestant theologian….Yet how could I be a Jewish theologian when I had virtually no training in Jewish studies?” She writes about “turning points” including her mother’s death, the discovery of certain authors and articles and books, and her need to “resolve the matter of where I stood in relation to Judaism,” including whether she could fully move towards Goddess spirituality. She continues by describing the many challenges of a group she helped found called B’not Esh (Daughters of Fire) and describes the work she did on her first — and important — book, Standing Again at Sinai, in which, among other things, she resolves for herself “The enterprise of theodicy – the effort to justify God’s goodness and power to the existence of evil....” and becomes more interested in “the ways in which our language about God supports social, political, and religious inequalities of power.”

The next chapter, “Feminist Theology at the Center,” which is co-authored, traces its development, both from a theological point of view and its intersection with various social movements. Among the issues the authors explore are questions raised by the traditional interpretation of Jewish and Christian texts, the decision that many women made about whether to reform the religion they were born into (or reared in), or leave that tradition and join the Goddess movement, and the role of embodiment in both these options.

The last two chapters of Part I, which are individually written, are about what I would call the maturing of spiritual exploration into both action and wisdom. I will allow you to discover on your own what this means for each of the authors.

Part II, “Theological Conversations,” is the shorter of the two parts yet the part that contains some of the most revealing, moving, and contentious passages in the book. Its first four chapters alternate between the two authors (who write them in the first person) in discussing the issues raised in Part I, such as the nature of “divine power,” how people arrive at understandings about deity, whether Goddess (or God) is all love (or all good) or also includes evil, and reflections about what beliefs, experiences, and issues the two authors have in common and which are different. When it comes to areas in which they disagree, the discussions often include strongly stated arguments. In the last, Chapter 13 (a significant number in both Judaism and Goddess spirituality), both authors draw their conclusions about “Embodied Theology and the Flourishing of Life,” emphasizing agreements that allow them to work together despite their differences.

As far as I know, there is no other book like Goddess and God in the World in spiritual feminism. It contains details about the authors’ personal lives as well as the thea/theologies of two of our greatest and most influential thea/theologians. It is also unique in the way its structure and shared authorship supports the conclusion that there is a relationship between theology and personal experience. It takes a giant step forward in centering its focus on today’s development of thea/theology, rather than looking backwards on what may or may not have been ancient beliefs and mythology of specific goddesses. There are many more fascinating details in these chapters than what I have been able to share in this already-long review. I will just say that the authors’ discussions of their lives and evolution of their beliefs in this extremely valuable book are sure to fascinate and be treasured by anyone interested in feminism and religion and probably others as well.

In addition to continuing her work in Greece, Carol P. Christ now teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Judith Plaskow is professor emerita of religious studies at Manhattan College and a founding editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.

Podcast Interview About Book, Goddess Matters

I was pleased to be interviewed by host Kimberly Moore about my book, Goddess Matters: the mystical, practical, and controversial, on a podcast of Goddess Alive! on Saturday, September 19. You can listen to it now in the program’s archives. The podcast is a feature of the Motherhouse of the Goddess, an online community that also features classes through its Mystery School.  In Saturday’s podcast, I discuss a number of issues included in the first section of Goddess Matters, “Today’s Trends,” including how I got into Goddess spirituality back in the 1970s, today’s challenges, and Goddess in Christianity and Judaism. The section on Christianity starts at about 35:44; the section on Judaism starts at about 42:00. I end with a reading (at about 52:13). The plan is that my “appearance” there last Saturday is the first in a series on the material in Goddess Matters, which was the second of my Goddess books to receive awards--two finalists award in the “Spirituality” and “Women’s Issues” categories of the International Book Awards 2012. My previous book, the Second Enlarged Edition of Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century, was Winner of the USA Best Books Award 2009 in the “comparative religion” category.

Goddess Ritual Scheduled for Parliament of World Religions

{updated 9/15/15}
We are glad to share with you,  with permission,  an announcement from Faelind, High Priestess of the Tree of Knowledge Coven in Dallas.  (We edited it only slightly. Goddess Alive! is a different ritual from the "Dancing the Goddess Home" ritual that was part of the Goddess 2000 celebration.)   

 

“Goddesses Alive! A Ritual with Masks” has been chosen to be performed at the upcoming Parliament of World Religions in Salt Lake City, Utah, in October 2015.  Originally created in celebration of the Goddess 2000 Project by M. Macha NightMare (Aline O’Brien) and mask-maker Lauren Raine, this ritual draws from several different contemporary and historical Pagan paths.  Incorporating music and singing, chant and narrative, dance and direct interaction with attendees, 13 embodied indigenous, ethnic, and historical faces of Goddesses speak to the issues of climate change and care for creation, respect for women and Nature, and can bring an experiential awareness of the divine feminine.

 

What: The 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions

When: October 15 - 19, 2015

Where: Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

The Parliament is the oldest, the largest, and the most inclusive gathering of people of all faith and traditions. The first Parliament took place in 1893. Since then, this historic event has taken place in Chicago, USA • Cape Town, South Africa • Barcelona, Spain R 26; Melbourne, Australia - and this year will be in Salt Lake City, Utah!

  

http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/content/salt-lake-2015

 

I am honored to be presenting Inanna among the 13 Goddesses. . . .Let me know if you would like to participate. We need technical assistants (low-tech for hand-held mag lights).

 

I hope to see some of you there!

 

Blessings,

Faelind

High Priestess of the Tree of Knowledge Coven in Dallas, TX 

 

 

AAR Extends CFP Deadline for 2015 Regional Conference

The American Academy of Religion, Western Region, has extended to Oct. 5 the deadline of its Call for Papers.  The regional conference will be held in  Santa Clara CA on March 20-22. 2015. Among the many religions and traditions included in the Call is Goddess Studies, for which the Call includes:
"Whatever your methodology (archetypal, cultural studies, feminist, postcolonial theory, queer theory, race and ethnicity) or academic field (anthropology, archeology, literature, mythology, philosophy, psychology, religious studies), this panel seeks contributions to the importance of Goddess Studies within academia. From Egyptian goddesses to Catholic saints to the Haitian Vodou pantheon, we welcome a wide array of perspectives."

Among the other topics included in the CFP are Buddhism and Magick; Ecology and Religion; Ethics; Indigenous Religions; Pagan Studies; Philosophy of Religion; Queer Studies; Religion and Arts; Religion, Literature, and Film; Womanist/Pan African; and Women and Religion. 

Second Chance to Hear Me on Goddess Alive Radio

[updated 8/16, 12:05 a.m., 8/16 11:21 p.m. ET]
I really enjoyed doing the program described below. You can listen to it now (and in the future) at this link.

I'm scheduled to make my second appearance on Goddess Alive Radio this Saturday at 8 7 p.m. Eastern Time. In the live broadcast, I'll be talking about gender equality (or the lack thereof), and other aspects of Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah, and my re-visioning of the Kabbalah Tree of Life based on these and other factors. The material is based on my  award-winning book, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: From Kabbalah to Quantum Physics. Towards the end of the show, I plan to lead a guided meditation based on my re-visioning. If you can't make it Saturday night, the show will be available in the Goddess Talk Radio archives, where you can also find the recording of my previous appearance, marking the new moon of late May. Goddess Alive Radio is part of Blog Talk Radio. The hosts are Kimberly F. Moore and Tracey Paradiso of the MotherHouse of the Goddess.     

'Interfaith Observer' devotes March issue to Embodiment of 'Divine Feminine'

The March issue of the monthly e-journal, The Interfaith Observer focuses its special feature section on "The Divine Feminine Embodied." The issue begins with an editorial, "Women – the Heart of Interfaith Culture" by Paul Chaffee. The special feature section has 10 articles, including an article about the Hindu Goddess Radha by Catherine Ghosh, "The Divine Feminine Emerging, Embodied, and Emboldened" by Kathe Schaaf and Kay Lindahl, "Missing in Action for 5,000 Years, Great Mother Found Alive" by ALisa Starkweather, and "Finding a Worthy Consort for the Divine Feminine" by Matthew Fox. 

Tomorrow's Vigil Responding to WV Chemical Spill

[second paragraph updated 11.40 a.m. Jan. 21]
In what started in West Virginia and is turning into a multistate event, "Honoring the Waters - Candlelight Vigil" is planned for tomorrow (Tuesday) evening near the West Virginia Capitol building and other sites in that state, and in North Carolina.  One location of what has been announced as a statewide event in West Virginia is near the Capitol building in Wheeling, near the river. Announced time of Gathering is at 5:45 p.m., with the event starting at 6 p.m. with an interfaith prayer. This will be followed by a Blackfoot nation ceremony called "Honoring the Waters," led by Kanawha Valley and Native American Elder Danny Two Eagles. Candle lighting will follow at 6:30 p.m, and be followed by several speakers and music presentations. For full schedule see Jan.18, 5:26 p.m. post at link above.  The Wheeling WVA event will take place at 6 p.m. at the Wheeling Jesuit University.

The North Carolina events will occur in Asheville NC, announced by Byron Ballard of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple, and at Lake Tomahawk in Black Mountain, announced by Sarah Vekasi. Both events start at 5:30 p.m.  As of 1/21, Mother Grove  Goddess Temple added a Facebook page, Ceremony of Grief and Empowerment for the Waters and People of West Virginia.  

We will try to keep you informed if other related events are announced. If you know of a public event on this issue being held concurrently, please leave a link to info in a Comment and I will add it.

I'm not going to be able to get to any of these events, but will be joining in spirit by lighting a candle, meditating and praying between 6 and 6:30 p.m. ET  tomorrow evening.

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!

SageWoman Lists Goddess Spirituality 'Wisdom Keepers'

The Summer Into Fall issue (Issue 84) of SageWoman magazine just out contains an article, "Tapestry of Voices: Wisdom Keepers of the Goddess Spirituality Movement," by Hayley Arrington, who prefaces the article by explaining that it was undertaken in response to "a number of 'Top Pagan Leaders' articles that recently appeared in the Pagan blogosphere....Many such lists omit important figures in the women's spirituality movement. This piece is intended to remedy that lack."

The article contains an annotated list with 78 entries (not limited to Pagans), divided into three sections: "Pioneers 19th to mid-20th Century"; "Popularizers: 1970s and 1980s"; "Remodelers and Renewers: 1990-Present."   Most of the entries are about individuals (most --but not all--of them women), but there are also entries about organizations (such as the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers), courses (such as Cakes for the Queen of Heaven), and magazines (such as Of A Like Mind). 

From Lady Liberty League About Fox News

February 18, 2013
For Immediate Release

Statement by the Lady Liberty League on Fox News

Barneveld, WI - The Lady Liberty League denounces the ignorant and unprofessional statements made by Fox News commentators this weekend. The statements, made by Fox personalities including Anna Kooiman, Clayton Morris, Tucker Carlson, and Tammy Bruce were in regards to the University of Missouri's 2011 decision to include Wiccan and other holidays, along with the holidays of other many other faiths, in that university's "Guide to Religion."

We are deeply disappointed that Fox's leadership would chose to allow such ill-informed statements on the air. The commentary of the Fox News personalities over the weekend betrayed not only deep ignorance about Paganism and Wicca but also a fundamental distain for the nature of religious diversity in the United States and the establishment clause in the US constitution.

Paganism and Wicca (not "Wiccanism" as stated by Tucker Carlson) are contemporary religious practices that include an honoring of the Divine as immanent in Nature. Nature religions are growing in significant numbers not just within the United States, but significantly in the UK, Australia, South America, and Europe. The Lady Liberty League (LLL) is a program of Circle Sanctuary founded to dispel misconceptions and combat discrimination against Pagans, Wiccans and other Nature religion practitioners.

Rev. Selena Fox, Executive Director of the Lady Liberty League said, "In 2006 and 2007 Fox News was among the media sources that covered the quest to have equal rights for Wiccan and Pagan US Military veterans, and they did so in a factual and respectful manner. We are extremely disappointed at the ill-informed and disrespectful tone of their coverage about academic accommodation of Pagan and Wiccan holidays. We hope that Fox News will adopt and stay with a policy of respect for diverse faiths and philosophies in the USA."

The Fox News personalities, and others making similar arguments, seem to assume that because a religious faith is in the minority, that it should not be accorded equal rights or respect.

What they fail to realize is that the same protections granting Pagans at public universities fair treatment are what, for example, prevents a public school teacher from telling a child that she 'isn't really a Christian' because of the way she was baptized, and which prevents the government from banning the sale of bread during Passover. In the United States our government is not allowed to favor one religious practice over another and that is a good thing for everyone. Our founders knew very well the suffering that religious wars had inflicted in Europe and they worked to ensure that their new United States would be a place where people were free to worship and still coexist with one another.

We applaud the work done by the University of Missouri and by numerous other colleges, universities and public school systems across the country, to extend respect and understanding to all religions practiced on their campus. We are disgusted by the attempt of Fox News employees to belittle their efforts and to go for a cheap laugh at the expense of people and religions they obviously do not understand. We should expect better of American journalists.

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ASWM Issues Call for Papers

The Association for the Study of Women & Mythology (ASWM) has issued a Call for Papers to be presented at its upcoming biennial symposium, "Lady of Ten Thousand Lakes: Finding Wisdom in Places" to be held in St. Paul, Minnesota on April 20, 2013. Proposals may include papers, panels, and workshops. ASWM says it will give preference to the following topics, but is not limiting submissions to these topics: 

--How do and should the scholarship in Goddess Studies and Women’s Mythology and Spirituality engage with the sense and reality of place? 

--What women’s myths are especially grounded in a place or places?

--What happens when such disciplines as Natural History, Ecology, and other sciences of place interact with Women and Mythology?

--What does place mean methodologically?

--How does our scholarship change when place becomes an element or partner in our research? How does this intersect with Embodied Research or Embodied Methodologies?

--What are the criteria for solid scholarship using these new models?

--Do issues of place add an activist quality to our scholarship?
--Does activism have a place in scholarship?
--What does it mean to find wisdom in places?
 Papers should be 20 minutes; panels with up to four papers on a related topic may be proposed together. Workshop proposals should be organized to provide audience interaction and must clearly address the theme. (Workshops are limited to 90 minutes.)

Presenters from all disciplines are welcome, as well as creative artists and practitioners whose work includes scholarly presentation of mythic themes. Deadline for submissions is January 15. If interested, please read complete information on the ASWM website. 

Canadian Publisher Explores "Divine Feminine"

The Fall Issue of Namaste Insights, a publication of Namaste Publishing, located in Canada, is titled "The Imperative of Unleashing the Divine Feminine." In her introduction, "There's Something About Mary, All Right!,"  Constance Kellough, Namaste's president and publisher,  writes that "restoring the Divine Feminine to its rightful stature" will result in "restoration of the Sacred Masculine." It seems to me that choosing to justify "restoring the Divine Feminine" because it will restore the "Sacred Masculine" is rather odd first, because restoring the divine imaged as female needs no justification and second, because the "sacred masculine" needs no restoration. The "sacred masculine" (why is masculine "sacred" and feminine "divine'?) has been in charge for several thousand years without ceasing. But be that as it may, this publisher is trying, and has recently published a number of provocative books related to spiritual feminism, some of which are highlighted in this issue. As part of this introduction to the articles, Kellough includes an analysis of books and films related to the subject, discusses the status of Christian figures related to the "Divine Feminine," and includes cartoon-like drawings of belly dancers.

In the first article, Joan Chittisster comments on Matthew Fox's new book on Hildegard of Bingen, who has just been elevated to "Doctor of the Church." The same pope who just elevated Hildegard ex-communicated Fox, a Dominican friar, mainly for his feminist stances. Namaste has published both Fox's book and a recent book by Chittisster, who is a Benedictine nun, as was Hildegard. The second article, titled "Book Review" is Mary Lou Kownacki's review of Mary Sharratt's book, Illuminations: a novel of Hildegard von Bingen. Kownacki is also a Benedictine nun. You might find it interesting to compare her take on Sharratt's book with our review of it here.

For me the highlight of this issue of Namaste Insights is the "Dialogue" between Sharratt and Fox about Hildegard, in which Fox calls this Pope's elevation of Hildegard an irony. Fox says, "She's a Trojan Horse not only to patriarchal religion, but to patriarchy in general. " Sharratt then asks: "What will happen once they let the Trojan Horse in through the gates?" 

There follows two articles about men and the sacred: "The Hidden Spirituality of Men," in which Fox probes what might be meant by the "Sacred Masculine," and David Robert Ord's "The Terror of the Tender." Ord is Namaste's editorial director.

Next are interviews of Ord, Bishop John Shelby Spong, Starhawk, and Marianne Williamson. In his interview, Spong, known to support equality for women as well as other progressive views, says, "If you go back far enough in human experience you'll find that we envisioned God as feminine," and goes on to speak of Mother Nature. Yet he connects child sacrifice to Goddess veneration, an unprovable contention.
In her interview, Starhawk discusses the development of her Goddess path, her views on other women's issues related to religion, and her work with Fox. 

The issue concludes with the articles, "Modern Mystics Walk Among Us, " by Sarah McLean, and "How to Raise Boys and Girls to be Equal," by Shfali Tsabary.

Novel About Hildegard by Mary Sharratt

Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen by Mary Sharratt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, 272 pages, available beginning Oct. 9 in hardcover and as an e-book.

Mary Sharratt’s fascinating historical novel, Illuminations, is written from the first person point of view of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century German Benedictine abbess, composer, poet, theologian, herbalist, and scientist, who recognized divinity in nature, opposed mortification of the flesh, and desired more freedom for herself and for her nuns. Ironically to some, her sainthood was made official last May by Pope Benedict XVI, who announced he will elevate her to "Doctor of the Church" on Oct. 7. The release date of this book is set to coincide with this elevation, granted to fewer than 40 saints, only 4 of whom are women. 

Author of four previous novels, the most recent of which is Daughters of the Witching Hill, Sharratt begins Illuminations with a prologue set in the year 1177 when Hildegard is 79. She and her nuns are burying on hallowed ground a runaway monk whom the archbishop has declared an apostate. As Hildegard awaits a decision on whether the burial will result in her being punished by the Church, she is visited by a young monk who apparently hasn’t heard of the controversial burial because it occurred while he was traveling to visit Hildegard. The purpose of his journey is to interview the abbess so he can write her vita. He asks her such questions as "...is it true that you bade your nuns to wear tiaras?" and "....Did I correctly understand that God appears to you as a woman?"

Hildegard ponders how to respond to the monk's questions as the prologue ends and, in Part I ("The Tithe"), the novel flashes back to Hildegard, age 5, the 10th child of a noble but not very wealthy family. Hildegard plays with her dolls, her older sisters, and her brother Rorich, suffers various illnesses, and begins to have visions. In Hildegard's voice, here is the first one described in the novel:
"A shadow passing overhead made me glance up to see an orb come floating out of the sunlight. A ball of spun gold, yet clear as glass. Inside grew a tree adorned with fruits as dazzling as rubies. The tree breathed in and out, as a living creature would."
Hildegard reaches for the orb, but "like a bubble, it burst." After she asks her nursemaid Walburga and her mother where the orb has gone, Hildegard overhears them asking each other whether she is "mad, or simply bad?" Hildegard prays for the to visions stop, but they  persist and some are prophetic. When she is 8, her mother explains that consistent with the custom of tithing 10 percent of one’s income to the Church, she is donating Hildegard, the 10th child, to the Church. This will be accomplished by Hildegard’s accompanying a young noblewoman of a wealthier family, the beautiful but troubled Jutta von Sponheim, to a monastery where they will be "anchorites," walled into a small area called an anchorage beneath the monastery and given to understand that they will never be allowed to leave. In return for this "donation," the Sponheims give Hildegard’s mother dowries for two of her other daughters.

After the rite of anchorage on All Souls Eve, Hildegard compares her situation of being hidden away both to "being sealed in a tomb" and to that of "women in the glittering harems of the East." As Jutta, who is a few years older than Hildegard, sinks deeper into starvation and other forms of masochism, Hildegard daydreams about escaping, possibly with the help of her brother. And she continues to have visions, which she keeps secret. The first night in the anchorage she sees a golden pulsing orb containing "a face like Walburga’s but not Walburga’s. A face bathed in tenderness, the Mother of my deepest longing...." who tells her, "....When the time is ripe, I will set you free...."
 During Advent, Hildegard remembers Walburga’s stories about the customs of her ancestors who were heathen and observed the Twelve Nights of Yuletide, "a time out of time when fate hung suspended...the Old Ones roaring across the midwinter skies: the Wild Hunter...in pursuit of his White Lady with her streaming hair and starry distaff...." As a winter storm rages outside, a vision comes to Hildegard:
"... a white cloud bursting with a light that was live, pulsing and growing until it blazed like a thousand suns. In that gleaming I saw a maiden shine in such splendor that I could hardly look at her....Her mantle, whiter than snow, glittered like a heaven full of stars. In her right hand she cradled the sun and the moon. On her breast, covering her heart, was an ivory tablet and upon that tablet I saw a man the color of sapphire. A chorus rose like birdsong on an April dawn—all of Creation calling this maiden ‘Lady’. The maiden’s own voice rose above it... I bore you from the womb before the morning star."
The vision fades but the voice continues, telling Hildegard she is here for a purpose she does not yet understand. Then another vision, in which Hildegard is in "a greening garden so beautiful it made me cry out." She hears the Lady’s voice again, this time whispering:
 "See the eternal paradise that has never fallen." Hildegard then sees
 "a great wheel with the all-embracing arms of God at its circumference, the Lady at its heart. Everything she touched greened and bloomed."
 Another vision follows on Christmas night, in which the image in the orb appears as Mother rather than Maiden; Hildegard calls this Mother, God. She speaks to Hildegard, saying,
"I am the supreme fiery force who kindles every living spark. I flame above the beauty of the fields. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With the airy wind, I quicken all things...."   

Hildegard's relationship with Jutta, her magistra (superior, teacher), is a very difficult one. Jutta teaches her to read and write in German and Latin and to play the psaltery, but her magistra also becomes increasingly distant as her health declines, apparently due to her fasting, along with damage to her body caused by her hair shirt and self-flagellation. A few years pass as Hildegard develops a crush on a kind young monk, Volmar, who brings her fabric for a less irritating garment to replace her hair shirt, books on herbalism, and plants for her to nurture. But alas, Volmar is smitten with Jutta, and we have an unrequited love triangle.

When she is about 15, Volmar introduces Hildegard to a female hermit of the peasant class who has come to see Jutta. Jutta has a large following as a holy woman but isn’t particularly anxious to talk with this woman. The hermit tells Hildegard that she has prophetic visions, and insists on seeing Jutta to tell her of a vision she had about her. After impudently asking Volmar for a mug of beer, the hermit at last gets her audience with Jutta. Hidden, Hildegard overhears the hermit’s prophecy, which includes her. The hermit also tells Jutta that Hildegard has visions. Hildegard, frightened that this discovery will bring punishment, retreats to her pallet and receives a vision in which a "pale blue woman, crowned in majesty" descends in a cloud, calling herself  "Eclessia, the true and hidden church." Hildegard then sees in Ecclesia’s arms, "a company of consecrated virgins," who weren’t veiled or starving but whose hair flowed freely and wore not hair shirts, but royal garments in bright colors. One of them, beautiful with long black hair, smiles at Hildegard, saying, "Have courage and endure. One day I shall come to you."

When Hildegard is 17, Jutta requests and receives new oblates, ages 11 and 5. Hildegard watches as the girls undergo the ceremony of entombment on All Soul’s Eve. The wall entombing the anchorites is to be knocked down so that the new anchorites can enter. The entire group will then be re-walled in. During the brief opportunity when the wall is down, Hildegard plans to escape with the help of her brother, a priest rising in the Church hierarchy, who is present at the ceremony along with other important men of the Church.
And I’ll leave the plot there, about a third of the way into the book.

Sharratt brings to life Hildegard and the other characters in a realistic, down to earth writing style, while imparting to passages such as Hildegard's visions an appropriate but not overwritten inspirational quality. This is the kind of writing that you don't think about while you're reading because it allows the story to shine. With great enthusiasm I recommend Illuminations, whether you presently know a little or a lot about Hildegard.

In the book’s Afterword, Sharratt discusses the sources she used, the discrepancies in historical accounts, and why she chose some accounts over others. She writes that she has "taken some liberties with the timeline." In an interview provided by the publisher, Sharratt discusses some of the controversies surrounding Hildegard. Regarding the claim, made most famously by neurologist Oliver Sacks, that Hildegard’s visions were part of the migraine headache syndrome, Sharratt points out that critics of this theory counter that although Hildegard describes migraines in her medical treatise Causae et Curae, she doesn’t write that she herself had migraines (in Illuminations, Hildegard’s mother has headaches that can be intepreted as migraines). Further, the "rings" that Hildegard sees in some accounts and on which Sacks bases his claim because he says they resemble the aura preceding migraines, are from illustrations drawn by artists other than Hildegard. Sharratt says that to her "the migraine theory remains speculative." Regarding whether Hildegard and one of her nuns, Richardis, had a lesbian relationship, Sharratt says, "I don’t believe their relationship was sexual. Hildegard made no attempt to hide her love for Richardis, I don’t believe that she thought their love was in any way shameful." In the Afterword, Sharratt lists the music composed by Hildegard that she listened to while writing Illuminations. I’ll close by sharing with you the music of one of Hildegard’s songs, "Veridissima Virga" ("Greenest Branch"), whose unconventional first performance is described in the novel. Here it is performed in the 20th century by the musical group, Sequentia:

Hildegard von Bingen To Be Elevated to "Doctor of the Church"

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), a German Benedictine abbess who interests not only Roman Catholics, but also today's spiritual feminists of many paths, will be elevated to "Doctor of the Church"  on Oct. 7. Hildegard's Feast Day is Sept. 17, the day of her death.

Hildegard's interest to spiritual feminists revolves around her teachings that include a closeness to nature; opposition to self-flaggellation, hair shirts and other RC customs of the time based on denial of embodied life as sacred; imaging the divine as feminine/female; as well as her emergence in an time of misogyny as an influential abbess, composer, poet, herbalist, and scientist.

Pope Benedict XVI announced Hildegard's forthcoming elevation to "Doctor of the Church" last May 12  when he also  declared her a saint, making official a title first sought for her centuries ago, and conferred on her by millions of people for just as long, but delayed due to problems in the process of canonization beginning hundreds of years ago . Pope Benedict's declaration of Hildegard's sainthood is known as an "equivalency canonization," according to a May 29 post on catholicism.org. "Doctor of the Church" is a title the Roman Catholic Church gives to saints whose teachings it considers valid for all time. Hildegard will be only the fourth woman to be given this title, while thirty male saints have been so elevated. (John of Avila will also be elevated to "Doctor" on Oct. 7.)

I am currently reading an advance copy of Mary Sharratt's historical novel about Hildegard, Illuminations, scheduled to be released October 9, and plan to post a review sometime before then. You may also be interested in my 2010 review of "Visions," a film about Hildegard's life.

An example of Hildegard's music, performed by the group, Sequentia:

Circle Sanctuary Urges Aid for Wisconsin Sikh Community

From the Circle Times & Circle Community News emailed today and published by Circle Sanctuary in Wisconsin. (I have slightly edited and excerpted the material, mostly to be consistent with our policy of not giving email addresses, phone numbers, but rather referring readers to the originating website) :

Help the Sikh community of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and others impacted by the shootings at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin this past Sunday, August 5, 2012.

Here are some ways to help:
(1) ATTUNE: On Friday, August 10, from 9-11 am central time at Oak Creek High School near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there will be a public visitation and remembrance of the six Sikhs killed on Sunday. Circle Sanctuary is among the religious communities in Wisconsin with representation at this event. Wherever you are, please attune and send blessings of condolence, healing, strength, protection, and support during this time. We also invite you to kindle a candle of remembrance, healing, and renewal this Saturday, August 11 at Noon central time. Circle Sanctuary minister Bob Paxton will be facilitating a community meditation then as part of this month's Sanctuary Day.Sanctuary Day is free and open to the public. If you wish to attend some or all of the day, please contact the Circle office for more details

(2) DONATE: Circle Sanctuary is among those taking part in an interfaith effort to raise funds for those directly affected by the shootings, including the families of the slain, those injured, and the police office who was shot multiple times in the line of service and his family. We will be raising funds at our website through August 31, 2012 and then sending the money we collected to the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. . . . We also are accepting donations for this special fund by postal mail. All donations are tax deductible in the USA.

(3) NETWORK: Support interfaith endeavors. Speak out in support of religious freedom. Express condolences and support to the Sikh community of Oak Creek, Wisconsin and elsewhere. Share this email with others. Circle Sanctuary's expressions of support:
Audio: http://circlepodcasts.org/condolences-and-support-to-sikh-temple-of-wisconsin-community/
Written: http://www.circlesanctuary.org/ministries/interfaith/sikh_temple/

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.

From Selena Fox: Help for NC Pagans in Church-State Conflict

I received the following by email from Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary, who requests that it be shared:

Please send blessings of Protection, Healing & Well-being to Ginger Strivelli of Weaverville, North Carolina & her family.

Ginger is co-founding priestess of The Appalachian Pagan Alliance. Her writings have appeared in CIRCLE Magazine and other publications. She lives with her husband and six children in rural North Carolina near Asheville.

Last month, Ginger challenged the policy that permitted distribution of Gideon Bibles at the local elementary school after her fifth grade son came home with one on December 19, 2011. When the school stated that any religious literature could be available for students to pick up, Ginger brought Pagan books to the school for distribution. However, the school refused to accept these books and have them distributed in the same way they had been distributing the Bibles, indicating that a new policy was being crafted.

This separation of church and state situation has been covered in various media reports for several weeks, and on Thursday was covered by national/global television news:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/18/pagan-mom-challenges-bibles-in-north-carolina-school/

That evening, Ginger received a death threat phone call while at home with her family. She immediately contacted the police who have begun investigating. A news article has just been published:
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20120121/NEWS/301210018/School-Bible-giveaway-protester-reports-threats?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage

Lady Liberty League is among those in the coalition that has formed to provide support to the Strivelli family and the quest for fair and equal treatment of students of all beliefs in the local school system. Byron Ballard, a writer & Wiccan priestess from Asheville, North Carolina, is coordinating the coalition and helping to administer the Strivelli Family Support page on Facebook.

HOW TO HELP:

(1) Do prayers, meditations, rituals of Protection, Healing, & Well-being to Ginger Strivelli & her family.
(2) Learn more & Post words of support for Ginger & her family on their support page on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Strivelli-Family-Support-Page/300249743360631?sk=wall
(3) Speak out in support of separation of church & state in comments sections of media sites carrying news and editorials about this issue.
(4) Those with interfaith and/or law enforcement contacts in North Carolina interested in working with Lady Liberty League in providing support to the family and this situation should contact:liberty@circlesanctuary.org as soon as possible.
(5) Share this email & support page link with others - by email, through social networking sites, on blogs & websites.

Thanks!
Selena
Selena Fox
Lady Liberty League & Circle Sanctuary
www.circlesanctuary.org
(608) 924-2216
PO Box 9, Barneveld, WI 53507 USA

Saturday, January 21, 2012