Truth in flux: Goddess feminism as a late modern religion

Religion

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 199-213

  Raphael, Melissa ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 21244470587     PISSN: 0048721X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1006/reli.1996.0016     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Christianity and the Goddesses: Systematic Criticism of a Feminist Theology, London, SCM 1988, p. 149.
2. The terms 'Goddess religion' and 'Goddess feminism' are, in practice, interchangeable and I shall use them as such.
3. Religion and Magic in the Modern Cults of the Great Goddess', in U. King (ed.), Religion and Gender, Oxford, Blackwell 1995, pp. 167-72.
4. Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America, New York: Crossroad 1993, p. 39.
5. The term 'thealogy' was coined by Naomi Goldenberg and refers to (semi)theoretical discourse on the nature of thea - the Goddess or female divine principle. See, for instance, Naomi R. Goldenberg, 'The Return of the Goddess: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Shift from Theology to Thealogy', Studies in Religion 16:1 (January 1987), pp. 37-52.
6. Quoted in Carol Christ, 'Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections', in Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, New York: Harper San Francisco 1992, pp. 278-9. Christ's commentary on these remarks insists that the Goddess is a polysemic symbol and thealogy arises from each woman's experience. The Goddess is not reducible to one account of her nature.
7. The Spiral Dance: A rebirth of the Religion of the Great Goddess, New York, Harper & Row 1979, p. 81.
8. The Goddess, Shaftesbury, Dorset, Element, 1989, pp. 18-9.
9. 'Witchcraft and Women's Culture', in Christ and Plaskow, Womanspirit Rising, p. 263. It is unclear whether this declaration means that the Goddess is simply the totality of all that is, or that she is manifest in whatever protects ('serves') nature - which is a less monistic and more ethically demanding claim.
10. Carol Christ, 'Heretics and Outsiders: The Struggle Over Female Power in Western Religion', Soundings 61 (1978): 260-80. p. 278.
11. Christ, 'Heretics', p. 274.
12. See, for example, Heather Whiteside's triad of rituals which she designed to help her come to terms with her divorce. These included a ritual of self-affirmation, a herbal charm to heal her 'broken heart', and a three-day candle spell to ease the pain of separation. From Serinity Young, An Anthology of Sacred Texts By and About Women, London, Pandora 1993, p. 431.
13. Feminist witchcraft is a new religion incorporating contemporary feminist politics, Goddess worship, folklore, herbalism and magical practice. All feminist witches are Goddess worshipping, but not all Goddess feminists are witches.
14. For numerous examples of feminist Wiccan spells see Elizabeth Brooke, A Woman's Book of Shadows. Witdicraft: A Celebration, London, The Women's Press, 1993.
15. See e.g. Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic Sex and Politics, London, Unwin Hyman 1990, pp. 66-70.
16. See Eller, pp. 124-9.
17. Goddess feminism sometimes uses the positive charge or mana of menstrual blood to resacralize a profaned natural space. (Each month at Greenham Common, Moon, a travelling woman, would ritually tie a used 'blood-cloth' onto the locked gates of the nuclear installation for this very purpose.) See Celu Amberston, Blessings of the Blood: A Book of Menstrual Lore for Women, Victoria BC, Beach Holme 1991, pp. 60-1.
18. Quoted in Christ, 'Heretics', p. 277.
19. Gossips, Gorgons and Crones: The Fates of the Earth, Santa Fe, Bear & Co. 1993, p. 290.
20. For a discussion of the chaos metaphor in radical feminist religion see Melissa Raphael, Theology and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press 1996, pp. 220-61.
21. New York, Bantam 1994, p. 207.
22. 'Spirituality in Today's World', in Frank Whaling (ed.), Religion in Today's World, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark 1987, pp. 324-31.
23. Paula Gunn Allen, 'Foreword' to Caputi, p. xviii. Innumerable claims of this sort have been made. See e.g., Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions, Boston, Beacon Press 1979, p. 109; Naomi Ozianec, Daughter of the Goddess: The Sacred Priestess, London, Aquarian 1993, p. 300.
24. Paula Gunn Allen, 'Foreword' to Caputi, p. xviii. Innumerable claims of this sort have been made. See e.g., Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions, Boston, Beacon Press 1979, p. 109; Naomi Ozianec, Daughter of the Goddess: The Sacred Priestess, London, Aquarian 1993, p. 300.
25. Paula Gunn Allen, 'Foreword' to Caputi, p. xviii. Innumerable claims of this sort have been made. See e.g., Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions, Boston, Beacon Press 1979, p. 109; Naomi Ozianec, Daughter of the Goddess: The Sacred Priestess, London, Aquarian 1993, p. 300.
26. In Amberston, Blessings of the Blood, p. 86.
27. Cf. Philip Mellor's distinction between 'postmodernism' as a way of interpreting contemporary culture, and 'postmodernity' as modernity's 'aftermath'. In 'Reflexive Traditions: Anthony Giddens, High Modernity, and the Contours of Contemporary Religiosity', Religious Studies 29 (1993): 111-27, 112.
28. The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press 1990, p. 38.
29. See Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modem Age, Cambridge, Polity Press 1991, pp. 20-1; Mellor, 'Reflexive Traditions', pp. 125-6.
30. See Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modem Age, Cambridge, Polity Press 1991, pp. 20-1; Mellor, 'Reflexive Traditions', pp. 125-6.
31. See Philip Mellor and Chris Shilling, 'Reflexive Modernity and the Religious Body', Religion 24 (1994): 23-42, esp. pp. 26-7.
32. 'Witches of the West: Neopaganism and Goddess Worship as Enlightenment Religions', Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5 (1989): 77-95, esp. p. 93.
33. ibid., pp. 79-84.
34. ibid., p. 80.
35. 'Reflexive Traditions', p. 125.
36. The Goddess Movement in Britain Today', Feminist Theology 5 (1994): 11-39, p. 15.
37. Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 175; see also The Consequences of Modernity, p. 7.
38. Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 175; see also The Consequences of Modernity, p. 7.
39. Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 75.
40. See Sjöö, 'Breaking the Tabu - doing the unthinkable', From the Flames 10 (1993), pp. 22-3.
41. The Consequences of Modernity, p. 39.
42. See Melissa Raphael, 'Feminism, Constructivism and Numinous Experience', Religious Studies 30 (1994), pp. 511-26.
43. T. Parsons, in The Social System, quoted by Mellor and Shilling, 'Reflexive Modernity', pp. 35-6.
44. 'The Goddess in Judaism: An Historical Perspective', in A. Pirani (ed.), The Absent Mother: Restoring the Goddess to Judaism and Christianity, London, Mandala 1991, p. 52.
45. P. 215.
46. New Age and Armageddon: The Goddesses or the Gurus? Towards a Feminist Vision of the Future, London, The Women's Press 1992, p. 18.
47. ibid., pp. 17, 1.
48. De-Anna Alba, The Cauldron of Change: Myths, Mysteries and Magick of the Goddess, Illinois, Delphi Press 1993, pp. 11, 14.
49. Roundtable Discussion, 'If God is God She is not Nice, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5 (1989): 103-17, 106.
50. New Age and Armageddon, p. 126.
51. 'Witchcraft as Goddess Religion', in C. Spretnak (ed.), The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement, New York, Anchor Books, 1982, p. 56.
52. Sjöö, New Age and Armageddon, p. 1.
53. The Fifth Sacred Thing, p. 17.
54. Quoted in Eller, p. 139.
55. See e.g. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, New York, Random House 1989, p. 182.
56. For a contemporary thealogical reconstruction of this eschatology see Barbara Walker, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom and Power, New York, Harper Collins 1988, pp. 92-122.