Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade. They tend to get lost in the archives. We are beginning this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted October 1, 2017. You can visit it here to see the original comments. This post is the 3rd and final of a series which has been posted for the past 2 days. They were curated by Barbara Ardinger to stand together for their relevancy, now, 5 years later.
Members of this community (and others) have been feeling that the world is out of balance since the 2016 election. There’s a feeling that people are becoming less kind and that some men (following the model that lives and tweets in the White House when he’s not at one of his golf resorts) are more misogynistic. I’ve heard that Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eight-Four is more popular than ever before. We seem to be living in a new dystopia. It’s very sad and very scary.
I’ve recently reread three novels written by women that I think may be both prophetic and inspiring. I’m hoping that if you read them, too, you’ll inspired by their brave heras to keep on resisting. The novels are Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1996) by Sheri S. Tepper, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy, and The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) by Starhawk.
Starhawk (Miriam Simos) was probably the most famous “out” witch in the last quarter of the 20th century. Her book The Spiral Dance (1979) introduced uncountable numbers of people to the Goddess, Paganism, and Witchcraft. Nowadays, she’s teaching “Regenerative Culture, Earth-based spirituality, and Permaculture.” She is no doubt working up to the Uprising described in The Fifth Sacred Thing that separated northern and southern California—a generally bucolic San Francisco filled with Pagans and an eclectic mix of every other religion with free healthcare for all and a City of Angels (Los Angeles) filled with Stewards, ruins, and sex slaves.
The Fifth Sacred Thing opens in 2048 with Maya, a 98-year-old Orthodox (sic.!) Pagan climbing a mountain. At the Lammas (August 1) ritual, she tells how the Uprising began. Global warming has happened, and during the drought of 2028, four old women (remember Tepper’s bag ladies?) went with pickaxes to a major thoroughfare in San Francisco, dug up the pavement, and planted seeds in the earth. The Uprising was led by people who had participated in the Summer of Love (1967) and demonstrated against the Vietnam War.
In the next chapter we begin to meet the Stewards, who in 2028 canceled the elections and took control. Now “the Corporation,” which banished women from every profession but the oldest one, owns the Southlands and apparently most of the U.S. Although Starhawk wrote this novel in 1993, the Stewards look like Trump’s cabinet and true believers exponentially multiplied. The Steward are allied with the Millennialists, who have suppressed every religion but their own and whose Creed reads in part, “…we abhor the earth, the Devil’s playground, and the flesh, Satan’s instrument. We abhor the false…gods…who tempt us to wallow in the worship of demons, whether they be called Goddesses, Saints, Lucifer, or the so-called Virgin Mary. For we know that Our Lord never lowered Himself to take on loathly flesh….” Maya’s grandson, Bird, has been their prisoner for ten years. He’s been drugged (like Connie), but now he’s beginning to feel his magical powers returning.
Another protagonist is Madrone, a healer and midwife. As we read through a long Council meeting (they’ve got Councils for everything), we see the similarities between San Francisco is 2048 and Piercy’s free future of 2137. The values are much the same, although Starhawk’s future is determinedly Pagan and Witchy (and very PC). Madrone has lost a patient to a mysterious fever that morning. In the council meeting, one character says they’re still living in the “toxic stew” of pollution in the Bay. Is this fever becoming an epidemic? Is it biological warfare?
Bird summons the best magic he can and escapes with two other prisoners. As he travels up the California coast, sometimes along what was once the Pacific Coast Highway, sometimes along what was Interstate 5, he learns what happened to him ten years ago. When he and some other Witches destroyed an atomic reactor (probably in Santa Barbara County), his friends were killed by the Stewards and he was captured. Now he’s regaining his memory and his powers as he’s meeting other outlaws.
When Bird arrives in San Francisco, not much has changed: there’s still a lot of free love and arguing and they all still work collectively. Madrone recently went into “the ch’i worlds” to search for the virus, caught it, and almost died, but now she’s mostly recovered. They hold a meeting in which they discuss nonviolent resistance. After much argument about how best to resist, Madrone finally decides to travel south to find out if the Stewards are really planning an invasion. As she retraces Bird’s trail and meets the people who helped him, she gives them free healings and teaches them Witchy powers. The book thus turns into what is essentially a handbook of resistance and Witchy powers. When Madrone goes to Hollywood to take part in raid on a drug warehouse, we learn that in the Southlands only the rich have water, medicine, fresh vegetables, cars, access to education, healthcare, and any kind of technology (which is mostly built by prisoners).
Yes, there is a war in this novel. Just think of any superhero-action-adventure movie and add Nazis, and you’re seeing it. The Stewards’ army invades San Francisco, and nonviolent resistance seems to wither under bullets. Although she finds pockets of rebellion and resistance, Madrone nearly dies in Los Angeles. She finally gets home and learns that Bird has been captured again. But the Witches are also learning how to get soldiers to desert.
The novel has a sort of happy ending. Is it prophetic? I hope not! I live in the Southlands. But anyone who is paying attention to the daily news sees that we’re already on the path to a world run by the Stewards and the Millennialists. Starhawk has written a sequel, City of Refuge (2015), around the three major characters to tell what happens next in the North and the Southlands. I have not read the new novel.
But I know that Witches can prophesy. And so can writers, and so we have in these three novels four protagonists—Carolyn Crespin, Consuelo Ramos, and Maya and Madrona—who can teach us a great deal about resistance. The four sacred things are earth, air, fire, and water. The fifth is spirit. Blessed be.
BIO: Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (barbaraardinger.com), is the author of Secret Lives, a novel about crones and other magical folks, Pagan Every Day, a unique daybook of daily meditations, and other books. She really enjoys writing her monthly blogs for FAR. Her work has also been published in devotionals to Isis, Athena, and Brigid. Barbara’s day job is freelance editing for people who have good ideas but don’t want to embarrass themselves in print. To date, she has edited more than 400 books, both fiction and nonfiction, on a wide range of topics. She lives in Long Beach, California, with her rescued calico cat, Schroedinger.
Feminism and Religion 