Goddess feminism – Page 4 – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: Brigid, Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Smithcraft by Judith Shaw

This was originally posted on January 31, 2013

Brigid, the Celtic Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Smithcraft, begins her reign on Imbolic, February 2, the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox. On this day the ancient Celts held their Fire Festival in honor of Brigid and the growing light. In Scotland, as recently as the mid-twentieth century, houses were cleaned and the hearth fires rekindled on February 2, to welcome in Brigid. Remnants of this festival are found in America today on Groundhog Day.

Like the Cailleach, She existed in many places and was known by many names. The Irish called her Brighde; she was Bride in Scotland, Brigantia in Northern Britain, and Brigandu in France. Some called her Brid, Brig or Brighid. Later she was transformed by Christianity into Saint Bridget. Her older name was BREO SAIGHEAD. Her name has various interpretations, many relating to fire – “Power,” “Renown” “Fiery Arrow of Power ” “Bright Arrow”, “The Bright One”, “The Powerful One”, “The High One” and “The Exalted One”.

Why Feminism Needs the Fierce Goddesses by Susan Foster

Kali Ma – She who carries transformation upon Her breath.

The recent backlash against women and feminism, highlighted by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, has left many people asking: Is feminism dead? Or if it isn’t dead, is it lost? The decision dealt a blow to one of the most basic freedoms of women—control over their own bodies. In the rush to protect the life of embryos and fetuses, the lives of millions of women will be compromised if not lost altogether, especially poor and BIPOC women.

The Court is inflicting its right-wing views on a country that does not share its values; a majority of Americans support a woman’s right to abortion. “The “triumphal right,” says Susan Faludi in an interview with Michelle Goldberg, “has taken the gloves off and is pursuing a scorched-earth campaign against women’s most fundamental rights.” [i] And although the feminist movement cannot be reduced to the fight for reproductive justice (with issues such as maternity leave, equal pay, childcare, healthcare, etc., still on the table), banning abortion has become the tip of the patriarchal iceberg.

“Our Lady of the Shards”: Icons for the Buried and Rising by Lauren Raine MFA

When I became a feminist, I realized that somebody had to write all about this women’s art that was out there being totally ignored, and it was going to be me. And of course the ideas and the discoveries about what women’s art was……. I look at it for the information it gives me about women’s imagery, women’s psyches, women’s lives, and women’s experience.”

― Lucy Lippard in Talking about Art Since 1976

I have been making art, masks, and theatre about “surfacing” for a very long time. As a child I was always digging at the roots of trees, fascinated by their interwoven strength, wondering how far down they went. That fascination never really left me. Sometimes it occurs to me that I and most of my colleagues are “spiritual archeologists”, sorting through artifacts and the mythic overlay of the past to re-discover and re-vitalize the present. I joined many of those colleagues for over 20 years: un-earthing, re-inventing, and animating stories of the Great Goddess throughout world culture with the Masks of the Goddess Project (1999-2019), among other collaborations. I am not religious, so much as I am a mythologist, following archetypal trails of myth back and back, seeking the sacred source they often reveal.

In Memoriam – Carol P. Christ by Joyce Zonana

“thea-logy begins in experience” – Rebirth of the Goddess

It is hard to believe that Carol P. Christ – Karolina as she dubbed herself in her beloved Greece—has been gone for a year. She remains such a vivid presence in my life—in all of our lives. I think of her and draw strength from those thoughts daily, the way so many women say they think of and feel close to their deceased mothers. For Karolina was indeed a mother to me—a nurturing spiritual mother who initiated me into the ways of the Goddess she adored and, whom she so beautifully defined as “the power of intelligent love that is the ground of all being.”

I first met Karolina in June of 1995 on a bare hotel rooftop in Athens. I had just flown there from New Orleans to join the Ariadne Institute’s Goddess Pilgrimage Tour, a leap of faith inspired by my reading the previous year of Weaving the Visions: Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, a pioneering anthology edited by Carol and her long-time friend and collaborator, Judith Plaskow. That book, along with Carol’s Diving Deep and Surfacing and Judith’s Standing Again at Sinai had spoken to me more deeply than anything I had ever read before. I had grown up in a Middle Eastern Orthodox Jewish family. drawn to spirituality, I had never able to find a place for myself in the deeply patriarchal structures of synagogue or even family rituals … Carol and Judith offered me a way in, and I wanted immediately to embark on the paths they were clearing. I wanted to meet them, to know them, to learn from them, to share with them. Boldly, I decided to join the Pilgrimage, signing up for my first trip overseas trip, the most costly vacation I had ever granted myself. How could I have known that it would transform my life and bless me with a miraculous, deep friendship?

A Poem for Our Abortion Rights by Marie Cartier

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.

Symbols of Hope – Event in Support of Ukrainian Refugees

Womanspirit Ireland has organized an event for this coming Sunday, May 22nd, to exchange cultural themes with Ukrainian Refugees and to raise funds for the 30,000 refugees who have already arrived in Ireland, and the many more expected. All donations will go to the group: “IrelandforUkraine” to maximize the funding for Ukrainians in Ireland and those still in Ukraine.

FAR is happy to note that one our regular contributors, Laura Shannon, is part of the program. The event will include stories, songs, poetry, beautiful Ukrainian embroideries, rich with symbols, and an opportunity to reflect on the brokenness of the situation that brings folks at this time.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: Great Goddess, Mother Goddess, Creatrix, Source of Life

This post was originally posted on February 5, 2018

The symbol of the Goddess is as old as human history. The most ancient images of the Goddesses from the Paleolithic era are neither pregnant nor holding a child. In Neolithic Old Europe the Goddess was most commonly linked with birds or snakes and only rarely portrayed as mother. Yet we tend to equate the Goddess with the Mother Goddess. I suspect that images of the Virgin Mary with Jesus on her lap and prayers to God as Father have fused in our minds, leading us to think that the Goddess must be a Mother Goddess and primarily a Mother.

In a recent blog, Christy Croft reminded us that in our culture, women’s experiences of mothering and motherhood are not always positive:

[The mother] doesn’t always appear in our stories in simple or easy ways. Some of us mother children we did not or could not grow in our bodies; some of us birth babies who are now mothered by others. Some of us are not mothers at all. Some of us had mothers who could not love us unconditionally, or did not have mothers in our lives, or had mothers who brought us more pain and humiliation than comfort, from whose effects we are still recovering, are still healing.

Persephone Rising, Part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1, from last week, can be read here.

For those folks in the southern hemisphere who are entering fall as we the northern climates enter spring I offer this next personal narrative.

Every Autumn I buy a smooth skinned crimson pomegranate to celebrate the Fall Equinox. But until this fall I have never intentionally bought a pomegranate to acknowledge the Persephone in me although her cyclic journeys to the underworld have also been my own. I have resisted my alignment with Persephone because I have come to fear my own descents. In the last few years these periods of depression have become more severe.

The September I turned 70 on the last day of the ancient celebration of Persephone’s Eleusinian Mysteries. I spoke out loud as I set my birthday intention. I am aligning myself with Persephone. I held a pomegranate in the open palm of my hand, thinking of the fruit as a symbol of my willingness to take this step. I also saw the beautiful round fruit as the Earth, imagining the ruby –like seeds imbedded in the soft white flesh as Earth’s possibilities. As I surrendered and finally accepted my mythic identity/alignment with Persephone, I experienced a subtle energy shift. I thought about the maiden goddess who becomes Queen of the Dead, and the one who makes predictable cyclic descents into the Underworld. As I breathed through my body I experienced a palpable sense of relief… I recalled the recent dream that informed me that the “Way of the Goddess” was my way, and that I had to choose her again. Not surprisingly within a few days I once again entered a state of profound depression during which time I suddenly remembered my first encounter with a pomegranate…

Goddess Embroideries of Ukraine as Prayers for Peace by Laura Shannon

I imagine many of you share my feelings of anger, grief and dread about this invasion of Ukraine. It is hard to know what to do and terrible to feel so powerless. I would like to offer a practice which I am finding very helpful: to meditate on Ukrainian Goddess embroideries as a prayer for peace.

Early 20th C. Goddess embroidery, central Ukraine. Photo: Ukrainian Museum. In *The Tree of Life, the Sun, the Goddess: Symbolic Motifs in Ukrainian Folk Art*, p. 99

Goddess figures are ubiquitous in Ukrainian folk art, in woven and embroidered clothing, ritual textiles, pottery, painting, and pysanky, ceremonially decorated Easter eggs (which I will explore in a future post). Goddess embroideries are also found throughout the entire Slavic world, Eastern Europe, the Near East and North Africa, and even farther afield, as Mary Kelly and Sheila Paine have diligently shown.

Behold! The Treasures of Eden by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

The place and purpose of the Garden of Eden is a topic of endless fascination and interpretation. This blogpost looks at two biblical passages and the word eden itself to see what we can learn about its meanings. At its most basic, Eden is a garden of treasure and delight.

As I’ve written before, the written form of Ancient Hebrew words comes from the hieroglyphic tradition of Egypt. The pictures of the letters form a picture puzzle or rebus. The word roots are generally two or three letters. I use script called Semitic Early for my baseline of study.