Goddess feminism – Feminism and Religion

How We ALL Need the Goddesses Now . . . by Annie Finch

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.

Falling into Spring by Sara Wright

The glorious
white stars
waited in vain
for rain
for miner
sweat
mason
or bumblebee
to feast
on pollen
sacred to All
after three days
petals
drooped
golden
eyes shut
pearled
almonds
fell
one by one
next year’s
compost
soaked in
unshed
tears.
Perhaps
Bee Goddess
has a plan
Changing Woman
transforms
Sky Woman
holds the
seeds …
clasping
bloodroot
spears
and
buds
wrapped in
gray shawls
she may
yet
choose
to
intervene.

From the Archives: A Poem for Our Abortion Rights by Marie Cartier

This was originally posted on June 24, 2022

Fecundity: the ability to produce an abundance of new growth, but also the ability to produce new ideas

And now in the hour of our discontent, we are asked to worry about

fecundity. I suppose we can call it that—have we made enough babies yet?

As a people. A people ruled by patriarchy. No small thing. “A social system in which males dominate and hold primary power.”

Oh my god—am I sick of it? Anyone with a brain is sick of it…I want to think.

But they have brains, right? The afore mentioned patriarchs? Who are

creating this new social system?

A meme goes out on social media—I’m not pro-murder I’m pro-Ellen, thirteen years old and pregnant by her father

I’m pro-Margaret, with five kids and I cannot to afford to feed another

I’m pro-Eliza, pregnant with a baby known to have serious birth defects

I’m pro– you get the idea.

Earthprayer, by Molly M. Remer

Sometimes I describe my work and writing as “a love song to the Ozarks.” I am deeply embedded, body and soul, in this land that I come from, my bloodland, the place where I belong. Seven generations of my family have called these wooded hillsides and stony ridgetops home. This is my mystery school, where I explore hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

The Earth is my teacher
I shall always want
I witness her still meadows
She leadeth me to green pastures
She restoreth my soul
On tree covered hills
She reminds me I am home
and, yea, I walk in her valleys
and I fear no suffering
She is with me
Her mountains and rolling rivers
they comfort me joy bubbles through my veins
and enlivens my footsteps
my cup runneth over
truly I stand
in mysterious awareness
all the days of my life
and She holds me
in the palm of her hand
forever.

Spring Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Let us trust the cycles
of retreat and renewal
alive in both the land
and in our hearts right now
as the melody of belonging
continues to serenade us
and we follow April’s determination
to create and shape
this world anew.

And, so,
April arrives
all at once
to enliven the land,
trailing cool breezes
and the first blush of pollen possibility
across fields and forests,
fence rows and farms.
She blankets open spaces
with purple clover and violets,
with chickweed and dandelion.
When we pause to listen,
we can hear the laughter of awakening rippling behind her.
She brings an invitation into healing,
into extending outward and reaching up.
She offers wild promise
and tender hope
and the sweet, fresh breath of change.
Let us soften into spring,
into this invitation,
into restoration and reclamation.
It is now that we choose.
Let us be content to be here,
witnessing the changes,
leaning into the wind,
and savoring the blooming.
Let us trust the cycles
of retreat and renewal
alive in both the land
and in our hearts right now
as the melody of belonging
continues to serenade us
and we follow April’s determination
to create and shape
this world anew.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. This past summer, I compiled a post with 13 summer lessons from 13 years of posts here at FAR. I bookended that post with a Winter Lessons post as well. Now, here are thirteen lessons to share from past spring posts:

Miriam Is For the Girls by Zoe Carlin

The Book of Exodus is a well-known scripture, and it is one that many Jews, Christians, and even people who are non-religious are very familiar with. Growing up, our family continued to tell this story year after year during Passover. It was one of many classic Torah readings shown to us in our temple. So, one of the key figures in this story is Miriam, Moses’ older sister. Most remember that she helped her mother deliver Moses in secret at the Nile River when he was an infant due to the Pharaoh setting an order to kill every Hebrew son because of concerns of the population growing too much (Exodus 11:5-6). She also assisted in leading the Israelites across the Red Sea when Moses opened it up for the Hebrews to cross (Exodus 14:21-22). An article titled “Miriam: Midrash and Aggadah” shares a deeper analysis of the roles that Miriam upheld as a sister, a daughter, and a woman during this time. It has also informed my understanding of Miriam’s story.

Opening All the Windows and Returning the Goddess to Her Rightful Place by Caryn MacGrandle

The quote that describes Jesus as the “front door of God” is found in the Bible, John 10:7, where Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep”; essentially meaning that the only way to access God is through Jesus, as he is the entrance point to God’s presence.

I have been calling on Hathor, and last night, She came.

Ah, let me back up a few steps.

I have up to now not given much thought to Egyptian Goddesses instead preferring my Celtic and Greek ones. But a few days ago, I attended this lovely workshop by Tahya who has developed a modern day systrum, the percussion instrument used by Priestesses in honor of Hathor. And as so often happens on my path, when you crack the window, She comes.

The last two days I have been listening to Hathor meditations, the Mother of all creation, the Goddess of Love, an Egyptian Goddess whose worship may have begun in the Predynastic Era over 5,000 years ago.

Why Celebrating the 9th Anniversary of the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality Movement? (Part 2) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

As I noted in Part 1, this year marks the 9^th anniversary of the first volume of She Rises trilogy, a collective writing project, which was first published in 2015 by Mago Books. Entitled Why Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality?, the 93 contributors trumpeted the onset of the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality. It was followed by the second volume, How… Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?, with 96 contributors, in the following year, and the third one, What… Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?, in 2019. The 9^th anniversary of the first volume provided a new momentum for all contributors of the trilogy to come together as a virtual group, which we named “She Rises…” This group allows the authors of all three volumes to gather together for the first time, while inviting newcomers from outside the She Rises trilogy.

How we Began the Movement of Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality in the 21st Century (Part 1) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago is an East Asian/Korean word for the Cosmic Mother or the Creatrix. This piece is written as the first of a four-part essay. In this series I am surveying the past 9 years of The Mago Work (A collective effort to restore the consciousness of Mago, the Creatrix), which birthed the Movement of Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality, while being shaped by the latter.

Margins for Magic, by Molly Remer

My ritual today
is to forgive myself
and to begin again
with what I have….

A rite of renewal:
Step out under the sky
whether it holds thunder or sun.
Rest your hands against your heart.
Say: I am here.
I am grateful.
Open your arms to the sky.
Feel air soothe you
and wind bless you.
Say: I am radiant in my wholeness.
I am loved.
Sweep your arms down
to touch the Earth (or the floor.)
Say: I am connected.
I belong.
Settle your hands against your belly.
Say: I am centered.
I am powerful.
I am strong.
Return your hands to your heart.
Wait.
The sacred will meet you here.

We pause today in the middle of the road to listen to a mockingbird perched in a crabapple tree by an abandoned house. In clear and rapid succession, it runs through its impressive repertoire: Phoebe, cardinal, chickadee, titmouse, laser-gun, a few extra trills and beeps and back again. We stand, heads cocked and silent, to experience the performance before walking on with a smile, pausing again to inhale deeply as we pass the wild plum trees so sweet and fleeting. I have been preoccupied with projects, feeling bright, creative energy burgeon inside me as it does around me, so many things tug at the mind and ask for time, leaving my dreams restless, my eyes wild, and my mind awhirl with both pressure and possibility, a persistent urgency that calls me on and away and out of being where I am. On the way back home, we stop again because there are five red winged blackbirds, conversing by the neighbor’s pond and we circle through the grass to examine white flowers in the pear trees and to check for peach blossoms (none). I love spring in Missouri, it restores and nourishes me. It reminds me I am home. I sit with my tea listening to a distant chainsaw and the wild turkeys in their rites of spring, a light rustle of wind, and the clinking of my flattened spoon wind-chimes from years gone by. A lone crow glides in to alight on an oak tree beneath the sun. It tips back and forth briefly, wings a satin shimmer in the sunbeams and then drifts away like a black kite through the spring sunshine. I have joked that the description of my next book could be: “I sat. I saw these things.” And, this is true, for I did, and this is my news for today.