Goddess – Page 5 – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: “The Divine Mystery”?

This post was originally published on Nov. 11th, 2013

“The mystery of God in feminist theological discourse” is the subtitle of Elizabeth Johnson’s widely read She Who Is. The notion that God is “a mystery” is rarely questioned in feminist theologies. But maybe it should be.

Although it is true that the finite cannot encompass the infinite, and that all knowledge is rooted in particular standpoints, I do not agree that the first and last thing to be said about the divine power is that it is “a mystery.” Indeed as I will argue here, speaking about God as “a mystery” obscures more than it “reveals.”

The notion that Goddess or God is “a mystery” is rooted in notions of “a God out there” that most spiritual feminists reject. Goddess or God “in” the world is, I suggest, not unknown, but known, not hidden, but revealed–in the beauty of the world and in ordinary acts of love and generosity.

The notion that God is “a mystery” is a well-worn trope in Roman Catholic theology. Protestants make similar claims when they speak of the hiddenness of God Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: “The Divine Mystery”?”

Amphitrite: Greek Sea Goddess — Balance, Abundance and Protection, by Judith Shaw

In the origin stories of the Greek deities the overarching importance of water, which surrounds their domain, is undeniable. Water held the power of life, death and renewal.

In each successive pantheon of Greek goddesses and gods — the Primordials, the Titans, and the Olympians — a goddess and a god ruled the seas together. During the time of the Primordial deities, it was Thalassa and Pontus, followed by the Titans, Thetys and Oceanus, and Doris and Nereu, and finally by the Olympians, Amphitrite and Poseidon.

“Amphitrite, Greek Sea Goddess,” gouache on paper, 11″ x 17″ by Judith Shaw

Guanyin: My Very Own Goddess of Compassion

It was a class that changed the course of a personal history. Mine. The year was 2001. I had arrived in the United States a couple of years earlier to study journalism. In my last term – after four semesters of trying hard to navigate the American education system, what with its confusing terminology of credit hours, electives, majors, minors, I decided to venture out of my comfort zone (this was my Breaking Bad moment) – and took a 3-credit grad course, Religion in China, as an elective (that word again; and oh, when I first arrived, I thought 3 credit hours meant dedication to a grand total of three hours of coursework over the entire semester; you get to choose when).

It was in this class I was first introduced to Guanyin, the Chinese goddess of Infinite Compassion and Mercy. Guanyin, a bodhisattva[i] who rushes to the aid of her devotees upon hearing their cries, herself has quite an interesting history. She arrived in China from India as Avalokiteshvara or “the lord who gazed down at the world” as a male. Little wonder then that this gender fluidity makes her a popular deity among members of the LGBTQ community. Somewhere along the journey, Avalokiteshvara transforms into Tara. Apparently, so moved was Avalokiteshwara by the suffering of those trapped in samsara[ii] that he wept copiously, his tears creating a lotus from which sprang the goddess Tara.

From the Archives: There Is No Santa-The Antlered Flying Goddess With Gifts by Marie Cartier

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 that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted December 25, 2015. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

*Marie bringing in Elen of the Ways*
*photo by Tony Mierzwicki*

One of my colleagues at Feminism and Religion recently wrote of Xmas and Feminine Wisdom. My blog, for Christmas Day continues this exploration.

Elen of the Ways is a figure primarily studied by scholar, Carolyn Wise. She wrote two core articles available on the web here and here. Wise writes that in order to “track” and find Elen of the Ways she had to peel back the layers:

…to the earliest track ways, the migratory tracks of the Reindeer and Elk. Elen moves across vast tracts of time, and land, cloaked and masked appropriately for each age.

The Solstice Tree of Life by Judith Shaw

The exact day of the Winter Solstice ushers in what I think of as the Winter Solstice Season — a ten day period when, in the northern hemisphere, the sun barely moves from it’s most southerly position in the sky. The days are very short and the nights are long, long, long.

At this time of year I embrace the worldview of my Celtic ancestors who relished the darkness in a way that is foreign to us today. Every day began at dusk not dawn. The new year began on October 31, as the cold set in and the world turned toward the dark. The harvest was in, thanks were given, and nature was moving into its period of death. I find an inherent wisdom in this counting of time.

In this moment, my connection to trees feels especially profound. I find such beauty in the winter trees, naked of their green and golden finery, etching stark lines in the sky. As we drew near to the solstice, I felt compelled to create a new painting that expresses my love for winter trees and the Winter Solstice.

From the Archives: I Sing Asherah Exalted! by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This was originally posted Dec. 16th, 2021

With this season of the festivals of light upon us (Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, Kwanzaa), I wanted to focus on the more joyful aspects of our lives. For that, I have been diving into passages about joy and singing in the bible.

Sometimes when I write these posts, they take me in directions I never thought to go. This post is one of them. The surprise direction I found is in the Psalm below:

Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.
Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD.
Psalm 105:2-3 KJV

As Above, So Below—A Cosmic Tale by Mary Gelfand

It was when I was studying to become a Witch that I first encountered the phrase ‘As Above, So Below,’ which I now know to be a paraphrase of a ninth century Hermetic text from an Arabic source. I liked this phrase from the beginning as it expressed something I believed but had struggled to articulate so elegantly. I believe that there is a sacred connection between our earthy human existence and the grandeur of the cosmos—our very bodies are composed of star dust.

I was delighted to discover a more specific description of that connection in the Journey of the Universe, by cosmologist Brian Swimme & Mary Tucker, founder of the Forum on Religion & Ecology at Yale. They discuss the creation of the universe in terms of natural cycles of expansion and contraction, which they also refer to as ‘attraction,’ or gravity. They write “All of space and time and mass and energy began as a ‘single point’ that was trillions of degrees hot and that instantly rushed apart. (p. 4)” That expansion is on-going, billions of years later.

Samhain: The Cailleach, Wolf, and Black Cat by Judith Shaw

Halloween, with its Celtic pagan roots in the sacred day of Samhain, which later morphed into a Christian holiday, is now mainly a nonreligious celebration in Europe and North America. It’s enjoyed by both young and old with scary outdoor decorations, parties, spooky costumes, haunted houses, carved pumpkins, and candy-giving.

Ariadne and Me – The .5% by Arianne MacBean

When I travelled to Crete on a Goddess Pilgrimage last year, we were asked to introduce ourselves by our matrilineal lines. I am Arianne, daughter of Bernadette, granddaughter of Helen and a long line of women, known and unknown, stretching back to Africa. Many of the women in the group were able to intone long lists of names in their matrilineal lines. I was not able to go further than my Grandmother, Helen. No one in my mother’s large Polish family could remember my Great Grandmother’s name.

My journey toward Ariadne has been as circuitous as the labyrinth itself. In many ways, I have been searching for her since those first bedtime stories my father used to tell me as a child, when Theseus was the main character and Ariadne, merely a stop on his road. I longed for her, even then, to have her own heroine’s journey. I tried to imagine what that might look like but, without models, could not conjure anything beyond holding the red thread so others could triumph. Later, I began a more conscious search for Ariadne as I became curious about the connections between her choices, feelings, expressions and my own longings, betrayals, and outbursts. Since then, there have been moments when I let myself fantasize about being connected to her in some real way, beyond being named after her, or feeling and acting as she may have. In these fleeting moments when I imagine we are bonded, I am awash in an intense sense of belonging, something I never felt as an only child of divorced parents. But then in a flash, my mind takes a sharp turn, as in a labyrinth, and I negate those feelings with logic. You want to be connected to Her, so you are finding ways to make it true.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: WOMEN ARTISTS AND RITUALISTS IN THE GREAT CAVES: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF INDOLENT ASSUMPTIONS

This was originally posted October 21, 2013

In an earlier blog, I suggested that women might have blown red ocher around their hands to leave their marks in prehistoric caves.

At the time I thought this was a rather bold suggestion.

Had I been asked why I thought the images were made by women, I might have said that people have understood caves to be the womb of the Great Mother, the Source of All Life, from time immemorial. I might have added that those who performed rituals in the caves cannot have been performing simple “hunting magic,” but must also have been thanking the Source of Life for making life possible for them and for the great beasts they hunted. Still I am not certain that I imagined women as the artists in the Paleolithic caves.