Divine Feminine – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Embodied Knowing, by Molly Remer

You are your own
sacred space.

Your feet are always
on temple ground.

One of the key factors to me that differentiates feminist spiritual paths from many dominant religious traditions and frameworks is the recognition and acknowledgement of the body as a source of wisdom, a source of pleasure, a source of learning, and a source of knowing. Not viewed as unclean, dirty, or as something to be mistrusted or transcended, we can return to our bodies again and again, dropping down into our bellies, bones, and blood, returning to center, and returning home to ourselves. Those who embark into thealogy quickly realize that it is a spirituality better lived than analyzed. My own experience of my goddess-oriented path is an intensely embodied one. I am here on this earth, in this body, my feet on the ground, my eyes on the sky, listening, feeling, and sensing. This, to me, is sacredness in motion, this is the Goddess right in front of me, she is witnessed in the very fact that my pulse beats in my wrist and that my eyes alight on those three crows coasting lightly into the treetops.

Sara Avant Stover, writing in the Book of SHE says: “Our bodies aren’t indentured servants here to labor for us until we take our dying breath. They are sacred chalices . . . . Our bodies always tell the truth and hold the information we need to thrive” (p. 43).

And, one of my favorite quotes of all comes from Camille Maurine in Meditations Secrets for Women who writes: “Your body is your own. This may seem obvious. But to inhabit your physical self fully, with no apology, is a true act of power.

At one time, I would have focused my attention primarily on women and encouraging women to trust their bodies, to listen to their bodies, and to honor their bodies. I’ve come to see that a goddess-centered approach to ethics, values, and embodied spiritual experience includes all people who have a body. In my heart of hearts I would like all people to value their bodies, honor their bodies, trust their bodies, and listen to their bodies. I think if this was true, the fundamental way in which we relate to, treat, and care for one another would change and the feminist values of cooperation, compassion, and empathy would come to form the foundation of society. Every single one of us begins life within someone else’s body. We enter the world through someone’s body. And, we have a body that interacts with other bodies for our entire lives. This is altogether simple, obvious, and profound. Our bodies are our seats of reality, of being human, of being present in the world. A life firmly rooted in concept of the body as sacred, no longer allows room for violation of or harm to others.

Carol Christ writes in Rebirth of the Goddess: “The rituals and symbols of Goddess religion…[bring] experience and deep feeling to consciousness so that they can shape our lives; helping us broaden and deepen our understanding of our interdependence to include all beings and all people; binding us to others and shaping communities in which concern for the earth and all people can be embodied.”

When I talk to other people about self-trust and building self-trust, I often encourage them to check in with their bodies for a physical response to a decision, idea, choice, or happening. Where does it land in your body? What do you feel inside when you think about making this decision or taking this action? Does your body respond with a “yes” or a “no” when you think about this idea? For me, the sensation comes in my chest, around my heart—a lightening or expansion or a contraction or heaviness. This is not what all people will experience, perhaps you feel the answer in your belly, in your head, around your jaw. Perhaps you feel it as a color, sensation of warmth or coolness, or as a “rightness of being.”

I must also acknowledge that many people have experienced some form of physical trauma or abuse in their lives and that these experiences can complicate our relationships with our bodies, our sense of intuition, and our trust in ourselves. If your body has been a site of violation, it may be more difficult or complex to connect to this body-based sense of “knowing” or intuition that I reference and I do not wish to oversimplify what can be a complex and multilayered personal experience of embodiment.

In the books A Deeper Wisdom: The Twelve Steps from a Woman’s Perspective by Patricia Lynn Reilly and the The Book of SHE, there arises a theme of the body as home, and I would like to offer some questions today based on this theme:

What is your inner “house” like?
Does something need tending?
Where do you need to clear something out?
If you mentally walk through your body, what do you see?
What is your body as home like for you? How re-sourced is it?
What needs attention within you?
Do you have a sense of your inner and outer ground?
What do you feel in your belly, right now?

I have been leading a process this year called #30DaysofGoddess and one of the things I suggest on some of the days is to offer a “body prayer.” Since people have asked for additional guidance with what that means, I sat on my yoga mat one morning and let a body prayer emerge. After I moved through the motions, I typed it out and I offer it to you now (as well as prayercard version of it). May it nourish you.

A Body Blessing:
Fold your hands
in front of your heart,
feel your palms warm
and your pulse beat.
Kiss your fingertips.
Raise your hands and
cradle your face with love
and then,
move one hand
to the top of your head
and one to your heart.
Pause.
Cross your arms over your chest,
one hand on each shoulder
and sway back and forth gently.
Kiss your palms
and lay them upon your belly.
Run your hands down your legs.
Wiggle your toes.
Fold your hands in prayer pose
and bring them back to your heart-level.
Breathe deeply
and then open your hands.
Gaze into them.
Envision the day’s potential
nestled there.
What do you see
in your own cupped palms?
Kiss your fingertips again
and whisper what it is you
need to hear.
Say:
thank you.

Note: I do have a companion video about the body as home here.

Molly Remer’s new book Walking with Persephone is now available for pre-order from Womancraft Publishing. Her prayerbook, Whole and Holy: a Goddess Devotional was published in November. Molly has been gathering the community to circle, sing, celebrate, and share since 2008. She plans and facilitates women’s circles, seasonal retreats and rituals, mother-daughter circles, family ceremonies, and red tent circles in rural Missouri. She is a priestess who holds MSW, M.Div, and D.Min degrees and wrote her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses, original goddess sculptures, ceremony kits, mini goddesses, and more at Brigid’s Grove. Molly is the author of Womanrunes, Earthprayer, Sunlight on Cedar, the Goddess Devotional, She Lives Her Poems, and The Red Tent Resource Kit and she writes about thealogy, nature, practical priestessing, and the goddess at Patreon, Brigid’s Grove, Feminism and Religion, and Sage Woman Magazine.

Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn BOOK REVIEW by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Any new book by Judy Grahn is cause for celebration. For decades, Grahn has been a lyrical and passionate poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist whose work features both goddess wisdom and contemporary culture centering on women and queer people. Nightboat Books has just published her newest book, Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power, which offers ancient yet fresh world views with which to approach such issues as injustice, sexuality and gender, climate change, and more just when we need it most.

In Eruptions of Inanna, she brings what she calls her “poet’s eye” to eight stories featuring the Sumerian goddess Inanna as well as religious practices of those devoted to her. She explores how these have directly influenced our world and, in her words, can continue to “feed our needs and help us take better care of each other and our world.” According to Grahn, Inanna “is a combination of human, creature, erotic and other energetic forces, and civilization. She also inherited very old powers that grew out of women’s rituals” (55). Her essence engenders sovereignty and self-worth, especially in women and queer people. She is a goddess of love, espousing passion and the joy of eroticism as integral to both life and society. She practices an expansive justice that creates positive outcomes in response to horrific acts. She creates a civilization of the arts, beautiful and useful crafts, abundance, and a jubilant communal life. She demands respect for nature and ecological sustainability.

Touch the Earth by Chasity Jones

I was recently asked how I reconcile being a Christian with also being a critic of Christian theology, traditions, and culture. I am asked this often and my answer is always the same. I have not found reconciliation and might always be finding a way to reconcile this – an endless cycle of trying to make my heart fit into a structure in which centers whiteness and domination.

This time is different though. When I was asked my mind immediately returned to the Earth. Nature. Creation. How I have always longed for a plot of sacred Earth of my own in which I would continually give birth to and create life in various ways. How so far this dream has seemed from my brown fingertips. Never in my almost twenty-nine years, have I imagined I would have the opportunity to own my own land. However, in the last few years since I worked and lived on a farm and have been manifesting with lunar energy and ritual that one day I would harvest and care for a land of my own. A land that I would pass down to my children. A land in which we would find God. A land which would sustain us.

Biblical Poetry by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph

This blogpost is about biblical verses and uncovering the magic and spirit behind its words. Why, you might ask, is this a project that belongs on a blog dedicated to feminism?

I believe it does because it helps us to strip away the many layers of patriarchy with its attempts to hide and/or change original teachings. Remember; these stories were originally oral wisdom teachings of the “folk.” They weren’t written down until the Babylonian exile, hundreds if not thousands of years removed from their origins. And who was doing the writing? Priests, scribes, and prophets, all with their own agenda. Even the earliest writings we have, the Dead Sea Scrolls, were still written in patriarchal times.

Reflections on Miriam’s Cup by Rabbi Jill Hammer

For many years, I’ve had a Miriam’s Cup on my Passover seder table, next to the Cup of Elijah. Our cup of Elijah is a kiddush cup belonging to my great-grandfather Joseph Frankel and inscribed with his name. Our cup of Miriam was created by a ceramic artist and bears the word “Miriam” at its base. The Cup of Elijah, filled with wine, is an old tradition—a cup on the seder table for the prophet Elijah, who according to legend visits every Passover seder. The cup of Miriam, filled with water, is a custom only a few decades old, honoring the prophetess Miriam, who watched over the infant Moses, danced in celebration at the crossing of the Sea, and who according to a famous ancient tale had a well of water that followed her through the wilderness.

According to scholar Annette Boeckler, the custom of the Cup of Miriam began at a Shabbat table in Boston in 1989, made its way to the post-Sabbath Havdalah ceremony, and eventually found its way to the seder table. The custom was intended to honor the prophetess Miriam as well as the contributions of women to the Exodus and to Jewish life. Many of the heroes early in the book of Exodus are women, yet their stories are not part of the seder. The Miriam’s Cup at the seder is a way to give the participants an opportunity to include those stories. Continue reading “Reflections on Miriam’s Cup by Rabbi Jill Hammer”

Lily B and Messages From the Beyond by Sara Wright

The night before last I had a dream that has stayed with me. My dreams rise out of my body to teach and to comfort me so I pay close attention. I had recently written tributes for two men, Lynn Rogers, bear biologist, and Rupert Sheldrake, biologist and plant physicist. Both of these men mentored me like a “father” each encouraged me to believe in myself, celebrated my original thinking and told me to trust my intuition. Writing about these mentors reminded me of my own father with whom I had a most difficult relationship…

I am talking to my mother (she has been dead for 13 years) about having found someone who could help me with math and stuff I can’t do because of dyslexia. In this conversation my mother is not a personal figure (when she appears as herself it usually means that I am going to face some difficulty – As an impersonal ‘great mother’ figure she is very helpful). She replies that my father wanted to teach me all these things but he just couldn’t. So many problems were in the way. I choke up weeping over this knowing (and my tears carry over into waking) because I know that “my mother” is speaking the truth. I feel such heartbreak for both my dad and for me. Neither of us had a chance… as I awaken from this dream in the middle of the night Lily b., my dove, is bellowing. He is reiterating the truth of the dream.

Continue reading “Lily B and Messages From the Beyond by Sara Wright”

Grown Little Girl, Grow Little Girl by Chasity Jones Selenga

I have newly found myself a wife and in the throes of motherhood. In many feminist circles, I have encountered anti-family and anti-wifehood sentiments. The understanding is that to be a wife, and, to be a wife that chooses to start a family, is an oppressive position to occupy as well as the antithesis of the feminist movement. Though I am not typically a fan of tough physical, emotional, soulful labor, these two positions have been the highlights of my life so far.

My daughter embodies both my husband and me, physically. However, she is and will become her own person-soul. She is so young, but her soul is eternal, and has experienced eternity. I am here to help her navigate remembering who she is. She inhabits the intersection of Blackness, divinity, femininity, and infinity. Motherhood has greatly increased my capacity of appreciation for women and what women are capable of doing. Especially from the intersection of Blackness and woman-ness. From the capacity to create, labor, and deliver life to the task of raising Black children in a country that would have them annihilated, emotionally traumatized, and made to accept they are inferior.

Continue reading “Grown Little Girl, Grow Little Girl by Chasity Jones Selenga”

God’s Womb by Joyce Zonana

The first time I came across the phrase, I thought I must be making a mistake. “Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice,” the passage read in French, “May God’s womb enfold her.” or possibly, “May God enfold her in His womb.” His womb?

Joyce Zonana
The first time I came across the phrase, I thought I must be making a mistake. “Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice,” the passage read in French, “May God’s womb enfold her,” or possibly, “May God enfold her in His womb.” His womb?

I’d just started translating Ce pays qui te ressemble [A Land Like You], Tobie Nathan’s remarkable novel of Egypt’s Jews in the first half of the twentieth-century, and I couldn’t be sure I was correct in thinking that “womb” was the proper rendering for “matrice.” But a quick search confirmed my hunch. Matrice (from the Latin matrix < mater) might be translated as “matrix” or “mould,” but that made no sense here. “Uterus or womb” was the anatomical meaning, and it was the first meaning listed in my French dictionary.

The phrase, or something very like it, kept turning up, always after a dead person was named:

Que Dieu accueille son âme en sa matrice.

Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice.

Que Dieu la berce dans sa matrice.

May God’s womb welcome his soul.

May God’s womb enfold him.

May God’s womb cradle her.

In all, “God’s womb” is mentioned seven times in this novel set in Cairo’s ancient Jewish quarter, Haret al-Yahud. Each time, it’s part of a ritual prayer, a formulaic wish for the wellbeing of a departed soul. But what extraordinary wellbeing is wished for here, what a remarkable envisioning of God as the possessor of a welcoming, warm womb. Continue reading “God’s Womb by Joyce Zonana”

What If We Begin from the Hypothesis that Ancient Crete Was Matriarchal, Matrifocal, and Matrilineal? by Carol P. Christ

If we begin from the hypothesis ancient Crete was matriarchal, matrifocal, and matrilineal, what would we expect to be the central focus of the its religion?* Harriet Boyd Hawes and her colleague Blanche E. Williams presented an incipiently feminist, woman-centered, analysis of the religion of ancient Crete in Gournia, the book describing their excavation of a Minoan village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Boyd Hawes argued that the archaeological evidence showed not only the pre-eminence of the Goddess, a conclusion with which Williams agreed, but also the strength and independence of women in a culture she defined as matriarchal and matrilineal, centered around the Mother family. If ancient Crete was matrilineal, matrifocal, and matriarchal, we should expect to find evidence that women were not only strong and independent, but also that they had leadership roles in religion and culture. Williams noted the presence of priestesses. The miniature frescoes from Knossos show a group of older women sitting in the place of honor and a group of women performing a ritual dance. Where evidence concerning leadership roles is lacking, it should not be assumed that leadership must have been in the hands of men.

We should not be surprised to find the Goddess or mother earth to be at the center of rituals and ceremonies in ancient Crete. However, to say that the Goddess is central begs the question of what we mean when we say Goddess. In the west, deity is understood to be transcendent of the world, imaged as a dominant male other, and as the judge of the living and the dead. Citing the Oxford English Dictionary, archaeologist Colin Renfrew bases his discussion of Minoan religion on the idea of divine transcendence. But if we accept Marija Gimbutas’ insight that the Goddess represents the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all forms of life, a different picture emerges. The Goddess is immanent in, rather than transcendent of the world. She is the enlivening force in human beings and all of nature. She is not the judge of the living and the dead, for the dead are returned to her body. Unlike later Greek deities, the Goddesses of Old Europe and ancient Crete are not generally portrayed as idealized human beings. Though they often have eyes, breasts, and sacred triangles, they also have beaks and wings, are shaped like mountains, and decorated with flowing lines symbolizing rivers or streams. These hybrid forms suggest that all of life is in the image of divinity and that humans are not higher, better, or separate from other life forms. Hybrid images celebrate the connection of all beings in the web of life and call human beings to participate in and enjoy this world, not to seek to escape or rise above it. A religion centered around gratitude for life in this world is very different from one that centers around fear and judgment and a longing for life after death. Jacquetta Hawkes’ insight that the religion of ancient Crete celebrated “the grace of life” is exactly right.

Is the Old European or Minoan Goddess one or many? Monotheists have insisted that there can be only one God, yet polytheists revere a plurality of images, while animists celebrate the spirits of (perceived) living beings such as rivers and trees, mountains and caves. The terms monotheism and polytheism are not neutral. Both were developed by monotheists: monotheism describes the correct beliefs of the self; polytheism, the false beliefs of the other. I find theologian and liturgist Marcia Falk’s distinction between exclusive and inclusive monotheism helpful in resolving the question of the one and the many. According to Falk, inclusive monotheism is an intuition of the unity of being within the diversity of the world: celebrating the unity of being, it welcomes a plurality of images to represent diversity and difference in the world. From this point of view, the boundaries between monotheism and polytheism are porous. When Gimbutas spoke of the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life, she was referring to the unity of being underlying the diversity of life forms, including plants, animals, and human beings. Similarly, when indigenous peoples speak of mother earth as the giver of all and all beings as relatives, they recognize that all life is sustained by a single source. The fact that ancient Cretans imaged divinity in different ways and with different characteristics does not require the conclusion that they worshipped many discrete deities as some archaeologists argue: I suggest that they intuited a unity of being while celebrating the diversity of life. This appears to have been the conclusion of Williams who wrote of “the prominence of a goddess under various aspects.”

If matrilineal, matrifocal, and matriarchal cultures tend to view the earth as a great and giving mother, we can expect this insight to be expressed in rituals and ceremonies. Gratitude is the appropriate response to gifts freely given. I suggest that gratitude for the gift and gifts of life was not only a focus, but the central focus, of religion in ancient Crete. If this is so, we should expect to find rituals celebrating the gift of life in the birth of babies, the coming-of-age of girls, as well as in as well as in death rituals honoring the ancestors. We can also expect to find rituals honoring the mother line and expressing gratitude for the wisdom of ancestors. Many of these rituals would have taken place in the matrilineal House as archaeologist Jan Driessen suggests. Rituals for the ancestors might also have taken place in cemeteries. We should also expect to find rituals expressing gratitude for the food that sustains life, for example, in offerings of first fruits to mother earth and in the pouring of libations that are absorbed back into her body. If, women invented agriculture, and if as Gimbutas argued, Old European religion celebrated the processes of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life, we should find rituals focused on planting, harvesting, and storing seeds. Some of these rituals might have taken place in the matrilineal Houses, while others surely took place in nature and in the fields. If pottery-making and weaving were understood to be mysteries of transformation involving birth, death, and regeneration, we might find evidence of rituals associated with these activities in the Houses or in workshops. It is known that rites in ancient Crete involved trees, mountains, and caves, as well as water sources. We must ask if and how such ceremonies expressed gratitude to the mother earth, the source of life, and the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration.

*These musings are part of an early draft of the methodological prologue to an essay I have been asked to write on Religion in a Minoan Village to be published in the archaeological report on recent excavations at Gournia. In the preceding part of the prologue, I discuss the theories about matriarchal, matrifocal, and matrilineal cultures of Harriet Boyd Hawes, Blanche E. Williams, Marija Gimbutas, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, and others.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist and ecofeminist writer, activist, and educator who lives in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s recent book is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Honneger.

Listen to Carol’s a-mazing interview with Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry recorded in conjunction with her keynote address to the Parliament of World’s Religions.

Musings on The Crown by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph

Even though I was a late-comer to the Netflix series The Crown, when I did watch it, I was riveted. Lots of thoughts ran through my mind at this picture of royalty. The concept of royalty in human history is vast and multi-faceted, however in this blogpost I am only pulling on a few threads that tugged at me as I watched this show.

I laughed as people greeted the Queen and said, “your highness.” Does that make the rest of us lownesses? And where did all this pomp come from anyway? And why is the British monarch the head of the Church of England which is a bible-based Christian religion?

Monarchy, religion and war have always seemed so connected in our culture. Indeed, during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, she was handed “the sword of state” as if she would actually be using it. (I looked it up, true to the ceremony). Continue reading “Musings on The Crown by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph”