Carol Christ, in her 1978 clarion call “Why Women Need the Goddess,” summarized four powerful, foundational ways that the Sacred Feminine urgently matters for women crawling out from under patriarchy. Each way helps to heal the psychic damage of our upbringings and surmount the profound losses of our violated herstory. Christ shows how Goddess belief and worship affirms the legitimacy of our power, the sacredness of our bodies, the honoring of our will—and the centrality of our connections with our foremothers and each other.
All this is still so true. All so important.
AND . . . Christ’s framing of Goddessness as a precious path of women’s transformation is not enough anymore.
Times have changed in the forty years since Christ published her essay. Today’s world has been fast plummeting into an even more blatantly hellish (no, I don’t want to insult the source of that word, Goddess Hel, guardian of life and death—so I will change the adjective!) into an even more blatantly patriarchal state of affairs.
Autocracy, exploitation, corruption, chaos, and shameless violence more outrageously rampant than ever—not to mention the wanton destruction of the planet we depend on. And so now, in very specific ways, the irreplaceable powers of Goddesses (I think of Goddesses as plural; when I want to refer to the quality that Goddesses share, I call it Goddessness) —are far more urgently important than they were the 1980s.
It might seem a strange and uncanny coincidence that the exact, specific qualities of Goddessness are the ones that can heal our world today and move things back towards a humane state of affairs. But it’s not really surprising at all. Since the bizarre 5.000-year detour of patriarchy got us into this mess in the first place, it only makes sense that the process of re-calling and re-membering our way back towards our earlier Goddessery offers simple, direct guidance to setting things right again.
And not only for the women seekers Carol Christ wrote for and about. Nowadays, we ALL need the gifts of the Goddesses! So, with fond respect and regards to the pioneering brilliance of Carol Christ, and amid my warm memories of her, below is the beginning of five ways that anyone today can find necessary guidance in the joyful magnificence we call the Goddess, Goddesses, Goddessness—however you want to call Her/Them/It!
1. Honor our Wills Because Goddessness honors the will, all humans who have a will can benefit from Goddess-centered wisdom in this time of growing autocracy. Unlike hierarchical religions that pride themselves on breaking and controlling the wills of their adherents, Goddess thealogies understand your will, my will, everyone’s will as a sacred force in itself, connected to the Divine Feminine. (From this belief arises the first law of witchcraft: “if it harms none, do as you will!”)
Human will as a manifestation of Goddesses’ will is not anything to be feared, but something to experience and honor. The vexed question of “free will” that plagues the worship of any Controller-God is not an issue to those on Goddess paths—because there is no conflict between human will and Goddesses’ will. With Goddessness, there is all the room in the world to make space for the answering sacred within ourselves, our “inner light” as the Quakers call it.
The healthy will’s passion and self-realization, rather than obedience or humility, manifests the Goddess within. It’s not about abandoning our own needs and desires for some ideal of self-sacrifice; it’s not about making ourselves smaller, bowing before, and begging from, the Sacred. Instead, it’s about celebrating and connecting with the glorious Goddessness of the sacred Will that connects us with ourselves, each other, and the Divine Feminine.
And in so doing, we strengthen the Goddesses: not by subjugating ourselves to them, but by co-creating beauty and sacredness along with them. In this joyful collaboration and reciprocation between Goddessness and our own Sacredness, the human Will becomes, not a burden to shame and control, but a gift to accept and celebrate.
And here’s the huge gift and benefit in this path, at this very moment we’re all living through: As we embrace the passion of our wills, and those of the people around us, we will find power. And as we embrace the power of our wills, and those of the people around us, we will find freedom. And once we feel our wills in all their passion and power and freedom, we will no longer feel forced to hand our wills over to violent, greedy despots who abuse them.
For those who may be asking, “but without fear of God’s wrath, who will keep our wills in line? Who will keep us from hurting others?,” I invite you to think of the human ecosystem as a whole. Of the Five Directions—will, mind, body, heart, and spirit—the will is currently the most abused, shamed, and disappeared of them all. The resulting unbalance has made us confuse our wills with our bodies (addiction), our hearts (codependence and narcissism), our minds (dogmatism), and our spirits (fanaticism)—to the detriment of all. A healthy, unshamed will enjoys its own nature; it does not confuse itself with the body or mind or spirit. It has no need to mistreat others. And if it does, a healthy heart or mind or spirit will interfere, and it will listen to the heart or mind or spirt.
After thousands of years of religious, political, and financial systems have feared and dominated the freedom of the human will, can anyone say with a straight face that such treatment has ever worked to make anyone a better member of society? How clear can it be that our entire current world, suffering the inhuman abuses endemic to hierarchical control and power, clearly need this gift of the Divine Feminine right about now? Are we ready to accept the fully human spirituality that is all of our birthright—one that embraces freedom of will as a beautiful, naturally sacred reality?
(TO BE CONTINUED WITH THE OTHER FOUR QUALITIES OF GODDESSNESS THAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW)
Moderator’s Note: The link in the body of the post is Annie’s substack with one of her memories of Carol. Here is the link again.
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Powerful essay. I do think that we need to balance will with humility. The two are ONE – two sides of the same coin. Too much willfulness creates its own problems – all we have to do is to look around us. I think the Goddess or Goddesses etc – however you perceive them – I see them as forces of Nature need us to tread carefully if we are to successfully negotiate these times,
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Thank you Sara! I so appreciate your interest in the question of will, which is a key point for me in the entire question of Feminism and Religion. It breaks my heart to think of all the women I’ve known, and known of, who take the Abrahamic dictates of humility and selflessness to heart in self-undermining ways that have helped install patriarchy so thoroughly into our culture. I’m reading Virginia Guifre’s searing memoir; the way the “girls” trafficked by Epstein are described as doing as they are told–“dutifully,””obediently,” “humbly”–is a consistent pattern through the book. At this point, honestly, it’s hard for me to think of a way in which such behavior on women’s part serves anyone in our culture anymore. Most of the women I know seem to need to move in the other direction, amping up healthy self-acceptance and self-esteem which can lead to more authentic generosity and compassion for others based in self-love. Although the virtue known as humilty was designed by men for men, it seems it has mostly been used over the last few thousand years as a tool to keep women in their place. Its greatest use may be to help rein in the entitled excesses of patriarchal men, although it hasn’t done much good so far in that direction so I’m not holding my breath. I should have clarified the distinction between shame-based humility and compassionate self-esteem in the piece, and I’m very grateful for your comment.
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“Most of the women I know seem to need to move in the other direction, amping up healthy self-acceptance and self-esteem which can lead to more authentic generosity and compassion for others based in self-love” I thoroughly agree Annie. However I think genuine humility is based on self love that allows a woman her own power but does NOT slide into the KNOW IT ALL JUDGE and JURY – which of course is patriarchal…. Women in power often do just that…Understandable of course – but this does NOT make it right.
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Good point Sara! My sense of this, based on my own life and what I know about matriarchal cultures, is that women think and decide best in consensus, in groups and circles–I know I do! In such wisewoman groups, any individual woman’s will/judgment is revised and improved through the loving checks and balances of the circle’s collective common sense. But patriarchal structures are built on separating and isolating women from one another, and its in the isolation of a patriarchal system that women’s wills get out of hand!
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I loved the memory! You capture something of Carol’s amazing spirit here – that she embodied the goddess and demonstrated how to be with Her will remain a powerful beacon in my own life… especially now.
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