REVIEW: Anthology - She Is Everywhere Vol. 3

She Is Everywhere! An anthology of Writings in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality. Volume 3. Gathered by Mary Saracino and Mary Beth Moser, (iUniverse 2012) 460 pages. Available in softcover, hardcover, and as an e-book.

She is Everywhere, Volume 3, combines essays of significant scholarship with poetry, fiction and art of deep inspiration. This volume focuses on the international community of people who honor the divine or sacred as female. Its contents contain articles not only from many different nationalities, but also from a variety of cultures and religions.

In alphabetical order by last name of contributor, this volume includes: Laura Amazzone, "The Fijian Kava Ceremony: An Ancient Menstrual Ritual?"; Michele Arista, "A Midrash of Rosary Prayers"; Gael Belden, "Soror Mystica: New Myth for a Changing Earth"; Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, "Story, gifts, standpoint, and methodologies of feminist cultural history"; Nancy Caronia, "Underworld"; Giana Cicchelli, "Journey to the Center," "In the Name of Jesus," and "Resounding Response"; Joanna Clapps-Herman, "Psychic Arrangements," "Potions, Lotions and Solutions"; Lori Coon, "The Dark Goddess"; Randy P. Conner, "Of Diana, Witches, and Fairies"; Nancy Cosgriff, "Hecate," and "Browned Beauty"; Elizabeth Cunningham, "Hymn to Ma of Ephesus" and "Ave Matres"; Max Dashu, "The Meanings of ‘Goddess’," Leslene della-Madre, "The Luminous Dark Mother"; Chickie Farella, "I Love You Mom: Do Me a Favor…Don’t Tell Nobody"; Catlyn Fendler, "The Black Madonna and the Labyrinth"; Jean Feraca, "Crossing the Great Divide," "Mater Dolorosa" and "Nursing My Child Through His First Illness"; Annie Finch, "Goddess," "Moon From the Porch" and "Eve"; Mischa Geracoulis, "Secret Hair"; Tricia Grame, "Beyond The Symbol, VIII" and "Isis"; Mama Donna Henes, "Terra Mater" and "Holy Yoni"; Sheila Marie Hennessy. "Lilith" and "Contemplate Creation"; Theresa Gale Henson, "Finding Ixchel," and "Enough"; Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, "Making the Gyonocentric [sic] Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism"; Nané Ariadne Jordan, "A Poetics of the Placenta: Placental cosmology as gift and sacred. economy"; Anne Key, "The Stuff of Life: Clay Figurines and Priestesses in Mesoamerica"; Lê Pham Lê, "The Fairy and the Dragon," "Hát River and "Journey to Langbian Mountain"; Glenys Livingstone, "Spelling and Re-Creating Her"; Yvonne M. Lucia: "Black Madonna Cradles the Earth"; Lindy Lyman: "Mother and Daughter/The Forest"; Anne Key, "The Stuff of Life: Clay Figurines and Priestesses in Mesoamerica"; MamaCoAtl, "It is My Heart Who Reminds Me"; Nicole Margiasso-Tran, "Healing Wells and Sacred Fire"; Kathy Martone "Rebirth" and "Gathering Forces"; Judy Maselli, "Connected"; Harita Meenee, "Orphic Mysteries and Goddess(es) of Nature: Greek Hymns Honoring the Divine Feminine."; Etoyla McKee, "Garden Okra"; Mary Beth Moser, "The Motherline: Laundry, Lunedi, and Women’s Lineage"; Andrea Nicki "Vagina Dentata"; Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, "Saint Sara-La-Kali: The Romani Black Madonna"; Luciana Percovich, "Momolina Marconi: An Italian Passionate Scholar of the Goddess"; Shelley R. Reed, "The Red Mother of the Salish Mountains"; Sandy Miranda Robinett, "Sardegnan Nuraghe"; Lydia Ruyle: Three Goddess Icon Spirit Banners: Crow Mother, Isis, Palden Lhamo"; Bridget Saracino, "U Hades nfamiliar," "Anubis" and "Strawberry Lullaby"; Mary Saracino, "The Tarantata," "Holy Mary" and "Sicily"; Lisa Sarasohn, "Lisa & Zeb-un-Nissa" Kristin Shilling, "Puberty," "The China Line" and "Tendrils"; Elisabeth Sikie, "Descent," "Tantra With Beloved"and "Song to Demeter"; David Hatfield Sparks, "The Birth of Xochiquetzal at 948 Noe St."; Solace Wales, "Messages From the Black Madonna"; Claudia von Werlhof, "The Interconnectedness of All Being: A New Spirituality for a New Civilization."

The anthology contains fiction by Mary Saracino and poetry by Lori Coon, Elizabeth Cunningham, Annie Finch, Jean Feraca., Lê Pham Lê, MamaCoAtl; Judy Millard-Maselli, Andrea Nicki. and Elizabeth Sikie. Art includes front cover "Black Madonna Cradles the Earth," by Yvonne M. Lucia and back cover, "Contemplate Creation" by Sheila Marie Hennessy; interior art by Mary Beth Moser, Nicole Marigiasso-Tran; original artwork by Tricia Grame, Lori Coon, Lydia Ruyle, Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Kathy Martone, Theresa Gale Henson, Shelley R. Reed, Sandy Miranda Robinett, Chris Gordoni, Nané Adriadne Jordan, Lindy Lyman, Sheila Marie Hennessy, and Harita Meenee. A "List of Illustrations" at the beginning of the Table of Contents gives more information on the original media of the artwork.

An unusual statement on the copyright page explains the use of "gathered," rather than "edited"

The gatherers/editors of this anthology do not wish to define an author or define an author’s work by trying to make the text of this anthology consistent in style, grammar, punctuation, etc.

One of the challenges in reviewing anthologies is that usually the contributions are diverse in subject matter, approach, and style, while the number of contributions makes it impractical to review each one. This anthology is no exception. Yet I will try to give you an idea of the variety, breadth, and depth of its contents.

The opening essay, " Healing Wells and Sacred Fire: A Pilgrimage to Brigit’s Land," by Nicole Margiasso-Tran, is a personal story of the author’s journey to Kildare, Ireland, to celebrate the Pagan holiday Brigit/Imbolc and the Catholic Saints Day for St. Brigid with a community of nuns named "Solas Bhride,"which translated from the Celtic into English means "Brigit’s Light (or Flame)." The author also describes visiting Goddess Brigit’s holy places.
This is followed by Max Dashu’s global, scholarly, and for me, inspirational, essay, " The Meanings of ‘Goddess’." Dashu looks at a large number of female deities from a wide variety of cultures and historical periods, including the present. Pointing out the difficulties that some academics (including some feminist academics), and others have with the word and concepts associated with "Goddess," Dashu asserts a wonderfully strong socio-political stance, stating:

The Goddess movement recognizes the political uses of male-supremacist religion, and undermines its dominionist foundations. We challenge theologies that make females stand for the "inferior" material realm, reduce us to sex, decree our submission to male privilege. We repudiate hierarchy of all kinds, including the demonization of matter, of bodies, of darkness in patriarchal religion. We recognize how the twisted ideas of diabolism not only degraded women in the witch hunts, and inculcated hateful ideas about human sexuality, but at the same time demonized dark peoples and indigenous religions.

In addition to "Goddess," Dashu discusses the use of the word. "Mother," writing that in many cultures,"Mother" is synonymous with "Goddess"; that in such cultures "Mother is a truly expansive concept, and a divine one." She also also discusses the roles of ritual and metaphor.

Leslene della-Madre‘s essay,"The Luminous Dark Mother," was sparked by her interest in "the true origins and beginnings of the spiritual life of humankind." Della-Madre equates "Dark Mother" with "Great Mother," and describes her own journeys to find out more about "the African Dark Mother and her relationship to the dark matter of the Universe" (which she also calls the "yoni-verse"). She goes on to relate the Dark Mother to several other scientific theories and discoveries, including for instance, multiple universes, as well as to social and political issues.

Anthology series founder Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum’s contribution to this volume. "Story, gifts, standpoint, and methodologies of feminist cultural history," begins with her explanation about why she doesn’t like capitalization: primarily because it denotes hierarchy. From her usage in this essay, I conclude that this applies to adjectives denoting proper nouns (e.g. chinese food), but not to nouns (e.g. China). This is consistent with capitalization in Romance languages (e.g. French, Spanish, Italian). I’ve also observed that there are languages, such as those in what is today commonly called the Middle East, which don’t capitalize anything. It is unclear to me whether non-capitalization correlates with egalitarianism. OTOH, I like experimentation in language, so why not give it try? Birnbaum moves on to an "Author’s Note" about her

transitioning from teaching in the Women’s Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) to another phase of my life....

She also explains that this essay is the "first" chapter of her forthcoming book. Birnbaum, whose ancestry is European Mediterranean, or more specifically, Sicilian, sees feminist cultural history as beginning "in 100,000 BCE in Africa." Her current research focuses on relating this to areas now called Italy, France, and Spain. She then takes up, as an example of steps backward, the important issue of lack of publishers’ openness to work of spiritual feminist scholars, writing of her own experience with her earlier work that included:

the many rejections at the end of the 1990s of my manuscript dark mother, african origins and grandmothers by white male editors in the United States, including two cases of acceptance by women editors at university presses subsequently reversed by white male editors.

Birnbaum then goes into detail about her academic background, affiliations and awards. The essay concludes with a look at the significance of what she understands to be her African-Sicilian ancestry.

At the beginning of her essay, "Lisa & Zeb-un-Nissa," Lisa Sarasohn writes:

She may be everywhere, but if she wants to tag me with clear directive, she’ll snag me at the library or in a book store....The books she chooses for me tip off the shelf, into my hands.

After telling us how the book by a 17^th century Sufi poet came to her and giving details on its physical construction, Sarasohn shows us some of Zeb-un-Nissa’s poems and gives examples of how she, Sarasohn, recrafted them. She explains the ghazal form of poetry, which Zeb-un-Nissa ordered into a diwan, a series of groups of ghazals "ordered according to their rhyme." This clearly and beautifully written essay makes what might be new material for some easily understandable. It is likely to be a particular favorite of those who love books and poetry.

In her scholarly essay about East Asian religion, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang writes that she coined the term "Magoism" to refer to "the organic structure that relates" diverse sources and materials from the ancient "gynocentric cultural and historical context of East Asia, which venerates Mago as supreme divine." Magoism, she says, is both monotheistic and polytheistic. " Mago is the Great Goddess in her multiple manifestations." The essay continues with a detailed description of Magoism.

Lydia Ruyle, whose many Goddess icon banners fly or have flown at libraries and other institutions and at conferences and celebrations, contributes the art and explanations for three of them: Crow Mother, the Hopi Mother of all katsinas (spirits); Isis, Great Mother of Egypt whose worship extends to many other areas, shown in this banner with her son Horus; and Palden Lhamo, "fierce protectress of Tibet and the Dalai Lama." Ruyle writes:

The only thanka, prayer flag, which the Dalai Lama took with him when he fled the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, was Palden Lhamo. Since then, she travels with him whever he goes.

Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba’s essay about, "Saint Sara-La-Kali" begins with two quotes, regarding the relationship of blackness with light or radiance. Oleszkiewicz-Peralba then goes on to discuss the "black madonna" honored by many Romani (sometimes called Roma or the Rom, and sometimes called "gypsies." a term generally considered incorrect by the Rom). The author says that Sara-La-Kali is "possibly a blend of the Catholic Virgin Mary and the Indian goddess Kali/Durga/Sara, and describes the yearly celebration of Sara-La-Kali in the French town of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer. She relates the possibly historical but at this point unverifiable story of Mary Magdalene arriving with family and friends by boat to southern France, discusses the role of the Cathars, and the long intermingling of Egyptian and French deity worship, takes a look at various theories and legends about the identity of the human Sara and includes details of the Romani migration from India to Persia in 250-650 CE, and then through Europe, including 600 years of slavery in Romania. She notes that today, Sara-La-Kali’s "cult" persists not only in Europe but also in the Americas and Australia. The author describes the relationship of Sara-La-Kali to other goddesses who are nurturing, protectors of childbirth, and often located in grottos, caves, near or in the sea or other bodies of water. With several photos the author took while visiting sites in France.

This essay is followed by a group of meditations by Solace Wales, inspired by visits to Black Madonna sites.

Anne Key’s essay, "The Stuff of Life: Clay Figurines and Priestesses in Mesoamerica." examines the "gap" between the Mesoamerican artifacts and other materials she has seen at various sites in the field and Mesoamerican materials included in museum exhibits. She goes on to present what she has found to be the role of women spiritual leaders in Mesoamerica.

Laura Amazzone’s "The Fijian Kava Ceremony: An Ancient Menstrual Ritual?"explores the kava ceremony on Fiji, where the population is now predominantly Christian, but where there still remains remnants of a culture that included ancestor worship, spirit possession, and "ingestion of consciouness-altering substances," of which kava is one. Amazzone writes that although kava is known to induce menstruation, today only men participate in the kava ceremony. She presents information and theory about whether this was always the case.

Mary Beth Moser likes to hang her laundered clothes to dry on a clothesline outdoors. "The Motherline" includes her remembrances of clotheslines past, combined with the honoring of the Goddess Tanit. With photos of her Tanit clothesline and a sacred well she discusses in this essay.

Nané Ariadne Jordan, begins her essay, "A Poetics of the Placenta," with a "Prelude" about her paternal grandmother. She then tells about her experience as a lay midwife/doula including the medical, symbolic, and possible ritual significance of the placenta and its possible uses after the baby is born. She also proposes a cosmology and economy based on the birth process.

Donna Henes' essay, "Holy Yoni," is a remarkable tour de source of sex in Goddess religions. Beginning with the metaphor of Earth as our mother, continuing through a discussion of the role of women in early "Earth-identified societies," Henes goes on the discuss the significance of women's primary and secondary sex characteristics in symbolism, language, architecture, ritual, and other aspects of a variety Goddess-venerating cultures over the centuries.

Harita Meenee’s essay on "Orphic Mysteries and Goddesses" discusses the Orphic Hymns, a collection of 87 poems used in rituals of the Orphic Mystieries, in which goddesses were prominent. She speculates on the role of women in the Mysteries and then quotes the "Orphic Hymn to Nature."

The book's last essay, Glenys Livingstone’s "Spelling and Recreating Her," begins:

"Goddess," as I understand the term, is the Female Metaphor for the Great Creative Principle of the Universe. As such, She is both the Matrix and a wholistic template of Being: that is, She is whole and complete within Herself....there is no need to masculinize certain of Her qualities, though she includes qualities that have been termed "masculine."

Livingstone defines the three aspects of Goddess as Virgin/Maiden, Mother/Creator, and Crone/Old One. She writes that they may be but are not necessarily limited by age association, and responds to those who maintain that three aspects are insufficient. She also discusses the Triple Spiral and its symbolism, as well as the symbolic and scientific role of the Moon. Livingstone then moves on to other thealogical and cosmological concepts, integrating science and thealogy as she draws from authors Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. She also explores the meaining of body/embodiment, especially of the female body, and its relevance to the indigenous spirituality of Australia, where she lives.

The essays are footnoted or endnoted and have bibliographies.

She is Everywhere Volume 3 is likely to be a valuable text for college courses in women’s studies, gender studies, religion, sociology, and probably some other subjects I haven’t thought of. I would also expect it to be useful in adult groups studying Goddess and other spiritual feminisms. It will also be useful to individuals studying on their own, especially those looking for material that cannot be easily found elsewhere. For more information on this book and other volumes in this anthology series, visit sheiseverywhere.net

For Poetry Month

(In observance of National Poetry Month in the U.S. , here is one of my poems/invocations from my book, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century.)

Waning Moon Invocation

On the wings of the waning moon,
we see the spiral arms of our galaxy,
and you, Goddess, are there.
On the wings of the waning moon,
we sense the spiral within us,
and you, Goddess, are there.
In the smallest of particles, you shine.
In waves of light, you flow.
In the dying of the darkest hole,
you bear the spark of new life.

Slowly fading crescent,
Honored Crone of change
Ancient One of transition,
open our minds to your wisdom
and our hearts to your love.
On the wings of the waning moon,
be with us here now.

Copyright 1997 by Judith Laura. All rights reserved. Permission given for use in ritual without further inquiry. Reprinted in A Pagan's Muse (Kensington/Citadel 2003). Appeared in slightly different form in Goddess 2000 Project's "Dancing the Goddess Home" Ritual.

Study Guide Available in Ebook Formats

A study and discussion guide to the four Kabbalah chapters in my award-winning book, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century, is now available as a low-priced ebook, titled Exploring Re-Visioned Kabbalah: Study Guide for the 4 Kabbalah Chapters in Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics. (Yes, it's a long title; I wanted to be clear about exactly what the ebook is.)

Something happened while I was working in PhotoShop on the ebook that might be considered sychronicity or fortunate coincidence. I think of it as Goddess guidance. Probably many of us working in creative fields experience something like this fairly often. I was trying to come up with art for the "cover" and was going to use art I had posted on Cafepress and Zazzle in the past, showing, among other things, the design that the re-envisioning I did of the Tree of Life forms among the Tree's round areas (known as sefirot). The lavender and rose-gold connecting lines were a little hard to see computer-sized against the green background I had used previously for the art (behind which was a black background) so I turned off the green layer. Wow! says I to myself, the whole thing looks great against the black. And so it is.

The new study/discussion guide is in addition to the shorter study guide for all chapters of the book included in its Combined Second Edition. The new, separate, ebook guide is meant for readers, teachers, and discussion leaders who want a more extensive guide to the book's chapters 2-5 describing and giving the history of Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah, and proposing a more egalitarian kabbalistic Tree of Life. The new guide is available as a Kindle E-Book, a NOOKbook, and at Diesel eBook Store, Sony Ebook Store, Smashwords in multiple formats, and at other ebook vendors. Its intended U.S. price is $2.99, and hopefully it's comparatively priced elsewhere. BTW, if you like the black background design, I've put it on Zazzle (on t-shirts and posters) but I haven't gotten around to putting it on Cafepress yet. Somebody remind me...LOL

Scholarly 'Avatar' Papers Sought

Spurred on by the various reactions to the film Avatar, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, is seeking proposals for papers for an issue discussing Avatar and nature spirituality. For more info, including how to submit proposal, go here.

Goddess Book Wins Award

The second enlarged edition of my book, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: From Kabbalah to Quantum Physics has been declared the Winner in the "Religion: Comparative" category of the National Best Books 2009 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News. This is happy news for me and I hope all Goddessians, who may not be used to our books winning awards, especially in "religion" categories. I say, let's get used to it!

For those of you interested in the "comparative religion" angle: The first part of the book compares concepts of emerging Goddess religions to concepts of Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity and Judaism. These concepts include immanence and transcendence and nature of deity. The book then moves on to a conceptual history of Jewish forms of Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah (also sometimes spelled Kabbalah, and itself a combination of Christian, Jewish, and earlier ideas from the Ancient Near East), and is the first book to give a feminist analysis of all of these and go on to propose a more egalitarian, balanced and Earth-friendly version, based partly on Ancient Near East Tree of Life concepts. The final section compares the comfort (or discomfort) with which most forms of Abrahamic religions and Goddess religions can assimilate new scientific knowledge, focusing especially on "new physics." The book also contains guided meditations and rituals. For more info, reviews, excerpts visit judithlaura.com/gs21.html

'Save The Moon'

As you may know, NASA is planning to send missiles to the Moon THIS FRIDAY. Why? They want to find out if there's water below the surface. Besides the symbolism (!) there are other issues, which Amy Ephron sums up in her excellent article in The Huffington Post. And also thanks to Amy, here is a link to a Twitter page about it:
http://twitter.com/helpsavethemoon

UPDATE Oct.8 2:09 p.m.: And in the interest of equal time (or something) here is the Twitter url for something or someone pretending to be the LCross spacecraft involved in the Moon crash:
http://twitter.com/Lcross_Nasa

Science & the Cutting Edge of Goddess Thought

This is the post I promised earlier this month to mark our 3rd blogging year–or the beginning of our 4th year—however you like to look at the passage of time. I’d like to explore with you the ideas of some authors who "push the envelope" of what has been become traditional in Goddess spirituality: Carol P. Christ, Glenys Livingstone, Jeri Lyn Studebaker and Judith Laura (who is me, when I’m not blogging). These aren't the only authors writing "on the edge"; they are mentioned here as being representative of a trend in Goddess spirituality, which many people think of as looking toward the past to prehistory, and too few realize can also represent the cutting edge of theo/alogical thinking. I want to invite you, after you read this post, to add as comments other authors you think are part of this trend.

Carol P. Christ’s book, She Who Changes (2003) brings us to the philosophical edge not only of Goddess spirituality, or Goddess religion as she sometimes calls it, but also of the(o/a)logy in general, by combining Goddess thought with process theology. Process theology could be said to be a philosophy of religion that strives to be scientifically based. At the beginning of this book's second chapter, "Change Is," Christ writes:

For process theology, the whole universe is alive and changing, continually co-creating new possibilities of life....The world is a web of changing individuals interacting....The body is the locus of changing life....The universe as a whole is changing in a continual process of evolution....all individuals, including human beings, other animals, cells, atoms, and particles of atoms, exercise creative freedom. Goddess/God is fully involved in the changing lives of every individual in the universe and in the evolution of the whole. Creation is co-creation. The whole world or cosmos is the body of Goddess/God. For process theology change, freedom or creativity, are interconnected. Everything in the world is in process.

Seems compatible with Goddess spirituality, right?

A little further on, Christ refers specifically to the "uncertainty principle" of physics and writes that the incorporation of this concept into process theology leaves room for freedom of humans and other animals as well as "the freedom of atoms to act in unexpected ways." She also writes that process theology is different from notions, including some Goddess and Pagan views and the Gaia hypothosis, that see the Earth as the "world," which is identified with female deity. Christ writes that the process view insists that the "world"

is not just the earth, but the universe as a whole...that is the body of Goddess/God.

I see nothing incompatible with Goddess thought in this, in fact I and others (see below) have also encouraged such thinking.

Where some of us may have trouble with adopting process theology whole cloth is in its view of divination and death. To a process theologian, as Christ explains, predictive divination is useless and there is no continuation of conscious being after death. However, IMO, it may be that we need to consider that perhaps the objections of process theologians are based on faulty assumptions. In her introduction, Christ writes that when divination is used to get information about the future, it is based on assumptions about the future. But she describes only one such assumption (which conflicts with process theology because it doesn’t account for change or allow freedom):

One assumption that might be made is that there is some perspective...from which the future is already determined, already known, or has already happened

Though this may be one assumption, it is not the assumption that most of the divining Pagans and Goddessians I’m acquainted with make. Speaking for myself, in the type of divination I practice, Tarot, I assume quite differently and inform people I read for that the future is not set in stone, that they retain free will, and that we are looking at possibilities, likelihoods even, but not certainties. We shuffle the cards to achieve randomness, a quality of the Universe. I also studied psychic messaging (no cards) with a nonPagan whose inspiration came from the Western Esoteric Tradition. Easily the most influential metaphysical teacher in DC in the second half of the 20th century, she emphasized that in a psychic reading, the readee retains free will.

In chapter 5, "Life is Meant to be Enjoyed," setting up the process argument that "life" after death is impossible, Christ writes:

...for process thinking, body and soul or body and mind are understood to be one continuum. There is no reason to expect that the mind and soul can live apart from the body.

This seems to me to be a conflation of "mind" and "soul" that may not be accurate. Are mind and soul the same? Or is mind merely a lay term for "brain" or "intellect?" To me, it’s closer to the latter. "Mind" is not synonymous with "soul" to me; "soul" is closer to "spirit," and whether there is such a thing as "soul" (or spirit) cannot be proven or disproven scientifically. The process position, as Christ presents it, is that there are no such things as "personal immortality" and "reincarnation." Yet she writes that process theology also includes the concept that "There is nothing in life or death that can separate us from the love of Goddess/God." How to reconcile these statements? To me, "personal immortality" and "reincarnation" are two different religious beliefs or even doctrines. "Personal immortality," sounds like a Christian description to me; it was theoretically what humans gained through Jesus’s crucifixion. Reincarnation—that human souls reincarnate as other humans and sometimes animals—is a concept that originates in Eastern religions (though mystical Judaism has a similar concept, it has some distinct differences). These are just two possibilities of what happens after physical death. And even if they aren’t "true," that still leaves other possibilities. The question to me is, Is there persistence of consciousness on some level after physical death in this world? In discussing her own mother’s death, Carol Christ recalls feeling that her mother was "going to love." How can a person go to love, and be with love (after physical death) if she loses consciousness of that love? How can nothing separate us from the love of Goddess if we no longer are conscious of that love. Wouldn’t loss of that consciousness necessarily entail separation?

Since we cannot really know, I prefer leaving options open regarding the persistence of consciousness after death. Although many involved in Goddess spirituality believe in such enduring consciousness, and some also believe in reincarnation, there is also room for those who believe that this life is all we have, that we "live on" in the recycling of our biological materials and in the influence our lives have had on others (which is the position of process theology). I think allowing for more than one view in a subject to which we have conflicting data is, at root, more compatible with the scientific method.

OK. I’ve gotten more wound-up with She Who Changes than I planned, so moving right along:

Glenys Livingstone in her book, PaGaian Cosmology (2005, 2008), relies heavily on science—mostly biology and chemistry with some physics—to construct a contemporary understanding of Goddess consistent with scientific thought. Her book also is probably the first to fully explore the meaning of the Sabbats in the Southern Hemisphere (her home is in Australia).

In her Preface, Livingstone explains that word, "PaGaian":

...expresses a reclaiming of the term "Pagan" as meaning a person who dwells in "country", yet with "Gaian" spliced in, it expresses a renewed and contemporary understanding of that "country". Gaia is a name for humanity’s Habitat, an ancient yet new name, which I understand to include whole Earth and Cosmos—there is no seam separating Earth from Her context.

In the first chapter, she says that what she is speaking of is

not a Deity: therefore this is not "theology" nor even "thealogy". It is cosmology: what I am speaking of and work with is a Cosmos—a place....PaGaian Cosmology is a way of speaking about this Place: it implies a metaphor and a practice. It is a synthesis of "celebrating Gaia-Goddess-Cosmos".

She writes that cosmogenesis is the "ongoing creative activity of the Universe" and quotes Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry on Einstein’s Cosmogenetic Principle. Livingstone writes:

That principle states that every point in the Universe is the same as every other point—basically that hydrogen in this part of the cosmos can be assumed to be the same as hydrogen in another part of the cosmos.

This principle, she continues, also states that the "dynamics of evolution" are the same at every point in the Universe, and that this means, among other things, that

the same Creative principle that gives birth to the Universe, pervades every drop of it with the same creative potency—that the center of the Universe is everywhere.

In the second chapter, exploring embodiment, Livingstone writes:

We do have a genetic code within each cell, that is a physical memory of our origins...[ellipses hers] we are seeded with memory. This is especially true of the female body, whose ovum transmits the cytoplasm from one generation to the next.

And a few paragraphs later:

I am suspicious of "texts" that would erase the body...since in patriarchal cultures it is the female particularly that is associated with physical reality....The early Greeks denied her inclusion in the "kosmos" because of her messy body.

In a discussion of the terms "masculine" and "feminine," Livingstone looks at the popularity of describing the "active differentiating force" as masculine and relating that "force" to consciousness, with the corollary that "maternal" consciousness is "simply amorphous and chaotic, and incapable of evolutionary move." She counters by pointing out that

The biological emergence of the male at about 1.5 billion years ago, is quite distinct from so-called "emergence of consciousness", which is quite distinct from the development of Neolithic matristic cultures, which again is quite distinct from the development of patriarchy....There is no need to masculinize this force/face that urges the move into individuation and complexification....the consciousness of the Mother is not an amorphous sludge....She has...full creative capacity, has always been quite capable of change; in fact, it is in her very nature.

In the chapter, "Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor," Livingstone integrates scientific theories of cosmogenesis with the Virgin, Mother, and Crone aspects of Goddess. Later, she examines the spirochete bacterium as "an example of the Female Metaphor."

Jeri Lyn Studebaker’s book, Switching to Goddess (2008), contains a large amount of material about ancient (and persisting) Goddess cultures. Yet it also includes science-based material. Though warning against using science in place of or as a form of religion, Studebaker uses significant amounts of material from scientific literature–especially biology and biochemistry–to back up her arguments on such topics as human behavior, the difference between men and women (mothers, in particular), the role of oxytocin and the relationship of all of this to how we image deity. For more on this book, see our review .

Moving on to Judith Laura’s Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century (1997, 2008): the first chapter explores concepts in Goddess spirituality including various understandings of "Goddess" that go beyond the conception of a specific concrete deity:

...this understanding of Goddess as "something more than immanence" goes even beyond panentheism because energy is exchanged between the creator and the created. This synergistic divinity is individual people, animals, the Earth, the planets—yet is also greater than the sum of these parts, providing guidance, inspiration, and healing that we as individuals or even as a group, cannot provide on our own. Goddess is within each of us and we are within her. She flows through all; she flows outwardly to connect us to one another and to nature in which she is also immanent.

And a little later in that same chapter, the author writes that a concept similar to Mary Daly’s "Be-ing" as a verb rather than a noun has become common among Goddessians and continues:

Others consider Goddess a term for a form of energy or a metaphor....Understanding Goddess as spiritual energy means that we accept that there is a spiritual dimension to the Universe, that we can (and do) interact with this dimension, and that this dimension is best understood when characterized as Goddess....The difference between understanding Goddess as energy and Goddess as metaphor is that to understand the former, you need to accept that there is a spiritual dimension to the universe. If you cannot accept this...then you can still understand and honor the Goddess as a metaphor for the natural world, which is divine....our metaphor for divinity is Goddess the Process who is one with the Universe ....she is one with her creation...the creator and created are in constant flow...the universe is interactive and in constant flux...we are to live as part of nature.

In the book’s last chapter, "Taking the Quantum Leap," ideas from new physics—such as the formation of the Universe; space-time and relativity (which the author sees being a possible explanation for intuitive or psychic experiences); theories of light and cones of energy; particle physics including the uncertainty principle and the fields of gravity, electromagnetism, and weak and strong interaction; dark matter, black holes, and "the void"—are integrated with Goddess concepts. A section on "The Universe: Stars and Spirals" begins, in part, with the following:

Spirituality that honors the Goddess is often called "Earth-centered"....The term was first applied to the cosmology of Ptolemy...the Earth was said to be the center of Universe....Today we know the Universe behaves quite differently, and we are certainly aware that Earth is not its center. When we talk about Earth-centered spirituality or Earth religions today, we are more likely to have in mind our interdependence with the Earth from an ecological perspective and spirituality that fosters closeness to the Earth and its cycles. Yet we would do well to reexamine the term "Earth-centered" in light of its original meaning and our current intent....
Women have been culturally inculcated to believe science is too much for them to
handle....Patriarchal religion has taught us that science and religion are incompatible. Neither of these notions is true....We may, therefore, want to consider whether it might not be more appropriate to refer to what we now call Earth-centered spirituality as nature-centered, and its religions, nature religions. These terms include not only the Earth, but also the rest of the cosmos.

Even in the unlikely event that it were proven that the generally accepted version of Goddess veneration in prehistory was a figment of our collective imaginations, works such as these would argue strongly for the legitimacy of the Goddess path because they speak to issues in today’s world and are compatible with contemporary science. We will continue to be inspired by the Goddess cultures of the distant past, yet it’s clear to me that a significant part of the present and future of Goddess spirituality/religions lies in their compatibility with science. Critics who see us as a movement tied to and only influenced by the Neolithic are not looking at the whole picture.

TAGS:life science and religion spiritual feminism Goddess Goddess spirituality women and religion