Carol P. Christ and the Pilgrimage to the Goddess: Online Memorial Gathering, December 20, 2023

Dear FAR community,

Two and a half years ago, our beloved friend and mentor Carol P. Christ passed to the realm of the ancestors. It’s been wonderful to read her archive posts every week as well as so many posts remembering and referencing her brilliant work. The FAR community was so important to her: as Carol herself pointed out, she not only offered her own posts each Monday, she also read and responded to every post, every day. I also cherish the daily connection to our FAR ‘family’, and find profound comfort for the loss of such a tremendous presence through this daily connection with others who knew her and miss her as as I do.

Carol P. Christ and the Pilgrimage to the Goddess 

Online Gathering, December 20, 2023                    This year on December 20, Carol’s birthday, friends of Carol and of FAR are warmly invited to an online Zoom Gathering and ritual in Carol’s honour, with a focus on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete which she initiated and led for over 20 years. This Zoom gathering has become an annual event and we are offering it this year for the 3rd time. I will show some photographs from her personal archive, some of Carol’s friends will share cherished memories, and participants in Carol’s Goddess Pilgrimage will share about their experiences as well as specific aspects of the Cretan Goddess. Presenters at our 2023 Zoom gathering will include Cristina Nevans; Trista Hendren; Joan Cichon spoeaking from her recent book, Matriarchy in Bronze Age Crete; Paula Mariedaughter on ‘”Carol Christ, Both an Activist and a Philosopher”; Jeanne Neath on the Mountain Mother; Terry Folks (who recently posted on FAR about her Goddess Pilgrimage experience); photos of Crete by Jane Vincent; and more. Our special guests will be ritual artist Eirini Delaki with exquisite drumming and singing to accompany a ritual of remembrance, and filmmaker Laura Hirch, who will share a bit about her fabulous new film project, docuseries ‘From the Goddess‘. Laura H. will show a short clip from Episode 3, ‘The Foremothers – starting the Goddess Movement’, which features Carol along with many of her contemporaries and friends.

To join our Zoom celebration on December 20th, please register with your name and email address at the link available here.

Rebirth of Carol’s Goddess Pilgrimage In the months before she passed, Carol made several requests of me. She asked me to serve as her literary executor; to give a home to her goddesses and books; to take on the directorship of her non-profit organisation, the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual; and to continue to lead the Goddess Pilgrimage on Crete. Carol made it very clear that if I could not take it on, the Ariadne Institute would close down and the Goddess Pilgrimage would end. I accepted her request and agreed to take up the mantle of guiding future Pilgrims to the Goddess.

Why did Carol choose me to follow in her footsteps? My love of Crete – its history and landscape, music and dance, and of course the ancient Cretan Goddess – has been a constant in my life for over 30 years.

I’ve dedicated my life to researching and teaching Goddess spirituality, particularly through women’s ritual dance, and have been inspired by Carol’s writings since I was a teenager. Living partly in Greece since 2005, I speak fluent Greek, and have experience leading dozens of Women’s Dance and Culture Tours on Lesvos (where Carol was a regular guest speaker in my groups) as well as in Morocco, Bulgaria, Scotland, and various parts of mainland Greece. Carol trusted that these skills and experiences, together with support from her long-time Pilgrimage co-leaders Mika Scott and Cristina Nevans, would equip me to step into her role as guide and director of the Goddess Pilgrimage on Crete. We’ve had two beautiful Pilgrimages already, in Fall 2022 and 2023; the next tours are scheduled for Fall 2024 and Fall 2025. (They are fully booked, but you can email institute@goddessariadne.org to join the waiting list.)

As her very last wish, Carol asked three of her closest friends – Ellen Boneparth, Tina Nevans and me – to scatter her ashes in her favourite sacred site on Crete. In an earlier post I described how the three of us fulfilled her wish in September 2021. It has been particularly poignant to revisit this same site with continuing groups of Goddess Pilgrims, making offerings to our ancestors and the Goddess in Carol’s memory – and to see evidence like this stone spiral of other groups of priestesses using the site for ritual, music, and dance. There is a tremendous sense that the Goddess is coming alive again now, on the beautiful island where Her open reverence lasted longer than anywhere else in Old Europe.

Another highlight of the Pilgrimage continues to be our ritual of walking the labyrinth in Mochlos, which has remained in excellent condition, also clearly being used with care and respect by others.  The labyrinth was a key symbol for Carol’s understanding of her own journey to the Goddess, and the ‘serpentine path’ of Pilgrimage in general. Among many possible interpretations, the labyrinth  can be understood to embody the great mystery of life, death and regeneration which is one of the meanings of the Goddess herself.

We feel very strongly that our steps are guided by the Cretan Goddess and by Carol’s spirit, as we continue to share Carol’s teachings and honour her memory, in the sacred places she loved so much and in new places that continue to reveal themselves to us as we travel on the island with open minds and hearts.

The Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual is the non-profit organisation founded by Carol P. Christ as the administrative ‘home’ for her Goddess Pilgrimage on Crete. We are currently rebuilding the Ariadne Institute website, a long-overdue project that we hope will see the light of day early in 2024. Other plans include the Carol P. Christ Memorial Library and Study Centre to house her books in Greece and make them available to scholars, German translations of some of her books, and posthumous publications of some of Carol’s final work. The Ariadne Institute also maintains a scholarship fund to enable lower-income women to join the Goddess Pilgrimage. Can you help support Ariadne? Your gift will help keep Carol’s vision alive, sustain her literary legacy, and enable future generations to experience the living Goddess in the sacred sites of Crete. Any amount is welcome! Please contact institute@goddessariadne.org to make a donation or see details below.

We hope to see you online on December 20th!

With blessings of the Goddess to you, and in memory of our beloved teacher, friend, and sister Carol,

Laura

Remembering Carol Christ: Online Gathering, December 20, 2021
From 10am-12 noon Pacific, 1-3 pm Eastern, 6-8 pm UK, 19.00-21.00 in Central Europe, 8-10 pm Greece. Free of charge, but donations to the Ariadne Institute are very welcome. To join us, register with your full name and email address at this link and you should receive an automatic confirmation from Zoom (if you don’t receive the Zoom link after registering, check your spam folder).

Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual/Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete Please visit our webpage here (it’s in the process of being updated, but the basic info is there). We welcome your donations via PayPal at institute@goddessariadne.org or with a check in US dollars payable to Ariadne Institute, P.O. Box 5053, Eugene, Oregon 97405. The Ariadne Institute is a licensed 501(3)c, so donations are tax-deductible in the US.

Friends of Ariadne This mailing list provides news of all Carol-related projects, including upcoming tours, new publications and the creation of her Memorial Library. Sign up with an email to institute@goddessariadne.org. (There is a separate mailing list for Ariadne Sisters who have been on one of Carol’s Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete; please email institute@goddessariadne.org if you’ve been on a tour and aren’t already on this list.)

BIO Laura Shannon is one of the ‘grandmothers’ of the worldwide Sacred / Circle Dance movement. She trained in Intercultural Studies (1986) and Dance Movement Therapy (1990), holds an M.A. in Myth, Cosmology, and the Sacred from Canterbury Christ Church University (2020), and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Gloucestershire (UK). Her research in Balkan dance highlights out songs, dances, rituals and textile patterns which descend from the Goddess cultures of Neolithic Old Europe, and which embody an ancient worldview of sustainability, community, and reverence for the earth. Laura is a longtime faculty member of the Sacred Dance department of the Findhorn eco-spiritual community in Scotland, an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Sacred Dance Guild, Founding Director of the non-profit Athena Institute for Women’s Dance and Culture, and Carol P. Christ’s choice to succeed her as Director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual. Her articles and essays on women’s ritual dances have appeared in numerous publications. Laura lives in Greece and the UK.