In the land of the Northern Europeans, the very first beings were the giants and giantesses. I call them the Jötunn folk for they come from the realm of Jötunheimr. One story that I find particularly fascinating is that of Angrboða and her three children. She is known as the Hag of Iron Wood, one of the witches of Iron Wood who are a group of giantesses that gave birth to fierce wolves. Angrboða took Loki as her consort, and as a product of that union, gave birth to Fenrir, Jormungandr, and Hela.
Angrboða was called Hag, but this comes to us in the same way as Hagia, meaning wise. She was the tribal wise woman of the Nine Clans of Iron Wood, often referred to as the chief of chieftains. The Iron Wood Clan were known to be werewolves – some staying in animal form, others shapeshifting at will to other forms, some were feathered and some scaled. Continue reading “Angrboða, Her Children, and Our Shadow Selves by Deanne Quarrie”
While I would not wish to argue that Greek Orthodoxy is in any way a “feminist” tradition, the shadow of the Goddess falls long over the two great festivals of spring and midsummer.
In Greek Othodox tradition, there are two major spiritual holidays– Easter in the spring and the Dormition/Assumption of the Virgin at midsummer. The Panagia, She Who is All Holy, also known as Mother of God, Virgin, and Mary, is a central figure in people’s faith–dethroned neither by the Reformation nor by Vatican II. Indeed when I speak of the need for the “rebirth of the Goddess” in Greece, I am often told, “the Panagia is our Goddess.” This may not be theological orthodoxy, but it expresses a truth of practice. Continue reading “SHADOWS OF THE GODDESS IN GREEK ORTHODOX TRADITION: EASTER AND THE DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN by Carol P. Christ”
Pachamama prevails. Her body is one with the Andes and she births the caverns, canyons, and rivers that sustain the earth.
This month, the indigenous people of the Andes celebrate a high holy season in Incan mythology, honoring their beloved Pachamama. Pachamama is venerated as the earth goddess and during August, her followers give her payment (pago) with their central ritual of Challa. So, I’d like for my monthly article about Holy Women Icons to celebrate this earthy goddess of Peru, along with a similar manifestation of mother earth, Gaia. Thus far, the biblical dancer, the Shulamite, feminist scholar, Mary Daly, and literary figure, Baby Suggs, have been the icons with a folk feminist twist that I have discussed on Feminism and Religion. Now, I’d like us to join with our Andean sisters in toasting the holy women icons of mythology: Pachamama and Gaia. Continue reading “Painting Pachamama and Gaia by Angela Yarber”
Once what happened was after people started believing someone around also started believing in this temple and one person kept a statue on their steps. Her Aunty she believed and she is very much interested in small things. So she started decorating it up. And what happened was the statue starting getting bleeding, like monthly monthly. And the dress which the statue wore during those periods was stained with red bleeding. So they asked Guruji about what is this and he said that the shakti has come into the statue. So if you keep this in the home it will turn into a temple so go and leave it outside. This was followed by entry of snakes, king cobras, so what they did was they went and left it in the sea, after which her grandmother had a dream that you have left me in the water but still I am with you. I am the temple opposite here, put a lamp everyday at that place. So they started putting it out there, and now there is an earthen Kali which as come up in that place by nature. –Interview with Premila, March 18, 2008 Continue reading “Through Body and Space: A Glimpse into Women Worshippers of Aadhi Parashakthi by Amy Levin”
Once, when my life collapsed around me, as life is wont to do at times, I began creating clay images, placing them near the headwaters of watersheds around the United States. I called this project 100 Clay Buddha’s and it seemed at the time an incantation and a prayer for water, for the planet. Later, I came to understand that I was also re-figuring my life, image by image, waterway by waterway.
I was also working at the time with particular koans, myths, and fairy tales because they speak not only to the personal, but to the collective –to the ways things have been over time. The hero’s journey monomyth, although genderless in its most distilled terms, seemed, though its imagery, to speak mostly to the theme of the outer quest (slaying dragons, returning from battle, and whatnot). I felt as a woman, however, my journey had to do with a descent into the Great Below and with that a dying into something new. Continue reading “Soror Mystica: New Myth for a Changing Earth by Gael Belden”
I believe the current resurgence of interest in Mary Magdalen does reflect a collective desire for the divine incarnate in a woman’s body.
July 22nd. In the Village of St Maximin in the South of France, a (real) blackened skull with topped with gold hair (that looks a bit like a battle helmet) is being lovingly paraded through the streets in celebration of Mary Magdalen’s feast day. Except for this annual airing, the skull resides atop a gold bust of the saint in a glass case in the crypt of the basilica. Just under where her heart would be is a small glass cylinder reputed to contain a shred of tissue from Mary Magdalen’s breast bone, the place where Jesus touched her on Resurrection morning warning her: Noli me tangere. Don’t touch me. Not yet.
In the first scene of the Deepa Mehta’s 2005 Indian film Water, a father tells his eight year old daughter, Chuyia, “Child. Do you remember getting married? Your husband is dead. You’re a widow now.” These are some of the last words Chuyia hears from anyone familiar to her, as her condition abandons her in an ashram for Hindu widows to spend the rest of her life in renunciation. Chuyia, failing to realize her condition upon arrival, enters the ashram innocent and naive, as the elderly widows surround her and one proceeds shave her soft head. Watching Chuyia begin to understand her circumstance as she terrifyingly runs for escape screaming for her family, one can only feel a tragic catharsis watching an eight year old being sentenced to life in prison for a “crime” she did not commit. The ideas and criticisms that come to one’s mind are undoubtedly what writer and director, Deepa Mehta, aimed to evoke – injustice, patriarchy, and oppression by way of religion. Continue reading “Deepa Mehta’s “Water” and Homegrown Indian Feminism by Amy Levin”
We are going through a huge cultural shift toward restoring the female to her full radiance. However you want to define that, it is rising now, through us.
That which is Sacred, what should we call it? We’ve been told to name it he, him, his. That it was blasphemy to do otherwise, to say she, even as they desecrated the Divine with comparisons to mortal overlords, those cruel masters, despoliators, persecutors. No. Reconsider. That fearful address to an authoritarian punisher takes us far from true reverence. Rather revere the roots of Being, manifesting in all Nature around us, within us. The profound silence, and the Deep calling to the Deep.
Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing
made of a hundred roots that drink in silence. ― Rainer Maria Rilke
There are myriad emanations of the indescribable Source, but Goddess women call it she, as medicine to what they have forbidden in us, to us. That Shakti, the effulgence that pours through all living beings, including the rocks. The Shekhinah, the ever-flowing waters of Nummo, of Anahid. The Tao that is “the mother of whatever exists under the sky, upon whom myriads of beings depend for their birth and existence,” as the Dao De Jing says.
“The Universe is the Goddess. She is not separate from it, She did not create it and then let it be. She is what is, what was, and what will be.”1 So the Kemetic people praised Neith, Mother of the Neteru, on her great temple at Sa in the Nile Delta. Inscribed magnificats exalt her in some of the greatest spiritual literature of the world:
Neith, Mother of the Neteru
Greater is her name than of all gods and goddesses
Feminist theology was self-transcending to me. I was unafraid of going beyond the boundary of Christianity and its God.
Mago is the Great Goddess of East Asia and in particular Korea. Reconstructing Magoism, the cultural and historical context of East Asia that venerated Mago as the supreme divine, is both the means and the end. Magoism demonstrates the derivative nature of East Asian religions such as Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism while redefining East Asian Shamanism to be the religious expression of Magoism.
I encountered the topic of Mago during my doctoral studies. The topic of Mago fell out of nowhere at the time I was preparing for qualifying examinations. I had never heard the name, Mago. Only when I was able to collect a large amount of primary sources from Korea, China, and Japan, was I awakened to the cultural memory of Mago. I grew up craving the stories of Halmi (Grandmother/Great Mother), a common referral to Mago among Koreans. I had a childhood experience of being in the fairy land unfolded by my grandmother’s old stories. While “Mago” was unfamiliar to most Koreans, she was taken for granted in her many other names such as Samsin (the Triad Deity) and Nogo (Old Goddess) and place-names such as Nogo-san (Old Goddess Mountain) and Nogo-dang (Old Goddess Shrine). Continue reading “A Cross-Cultural Feminist Alchemy: Studying Mago, Pan-East Asian Great Goddess, Using Mary Daly’s Radical Feminism as Springboard by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang”
In the land of the Northern Europeans, the very first beings were the giants and giantesses. I call them the Jötunn folk for they come from the realm of Jötunheimr. One story that I find particularly fascinating is that of Angrboða and her three children. She is known as the Hag of Iron Wood, one of the witches of Iron Wood who are a group of giantesses that gave birth to fierce wolves. Angrboða took Loki as her consort, and as a product of that union, gave birth to Fenrir, Jormungandr, and Hela.
Feminism and Religion 