Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
Tomorrow being Thanksgiving in the United States offers an opportunity to reflect on gratitude. With so much anger bubbling up on all fronts is it possible that gratitude could be the salve to heal our wounds?
Continue reading “Gratitude – A Salve to Heal Our Wounds by Judith Shaw”
This article was originally published by The Beltane Papers issue #30 February 1998. FAR is republishing it with permission from the author in order to digitally archive this important work. Part 1 is available here.
The indigenous Brazilian tribes worshiped all Mothers and believed they created life without the male presence. All Goddesses were virgins, but their virginity was only a symbol of independence and self-sufficiency, without any physical meaning. In some myths, the virgins are impregnated by numinous energies, manifested as animals (snake, birds, porpoise), forces of Nature (rain, thunderbolts, rays of light), ancestors or Deities. As other native people, they weren’t aware of the male participation in the conception and respected and revered the menstrual blood as something sacred, filled with magical powers, because after the “supernatural” ceasing of the monthly flow, life was created. Only after the interference of the white settlers and the massive Catholic indoctrination that the native cosmology was distorted, the Father assumed the main place, the Son became the second one in the divine hierarchy and the Mother was transformed in a suffering and silent virgin. Even so, many native traditions survived in the legends, folk beliefs, shamanic healing and magical practices as the Pajelança and Encantaria.
Besides the “Good Mother”, some of the native legends also mention the “Terrible Mother”, Boiuna, the Giant Snake of the Amazon River. The bottom of the river was her habitat and she appeared only at night, destroying boats and devouring people. Her terrifying aspect and her connection with the darkness, death and night are, as a matter of fact, features of the Dark Goddess, the Reaper, who controls the eternal cycle of birth, life, death and transformation.
Another manifestation of the Dark mother is Caamanha, “Mother of the Woods”, protector of the wild life who punished all intruders and violators of her domain. In other myths, she was transformed either in the Curupira or the Caapora, strange male beings, with twisted feet, who walked backwards, thus acting as guardians by misleading hunters or even attacking them.
In some Guarani myths we find mentions to the “Mother of Gold”, described as a beautiful woman or a brilliant globe, which seduced the gold prospectors and took them deep in the mountains, far away from the gold mines. Considered a Guardian of Mother Earth’s treasures, she sometimes manifested herself as Boitatá, who could appear as a phantasmagorical snake, with a luminous body and huge eyes, or only as a giant head, floating over hidden treasures, frightening or punishing those who destroyed Nature in search of fortune. Continue reading “The Brazilian Great Mother by Mirella Faur (Part 2)”
Fall is here, the leaves are changing color, the days are shortening and our ongoing natural cycle of change and transformation now moves toward the dark, quiet days of winter. Both the idea and the process of transformation have fascinated me my whole life. Blame it on my Scorpio rising. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto, the planet of transformation and regeneration. Diving deep and surfacing has always been my mode.
Continue reading “Season of Change – Transformation by Judith Shaw”
This article was originally published by The Beltane Papers issue #30 February 1998. FAR is republishing it with permission from the author in order to digitally archive this important work.
Brazil is traditionally known as a Roman Catholic country, with a great influence of African cults and a growing number of various Protestant sects and different spiritualist, new age and esoteric groups. One of these, Wicca, has been catching up the public attention, appearing lately on the media and making us ask ourselves many questions such as – with so many myths and legends in our origins, why do we have to import from abroad, through books and especially virtual information, other cultures’ traditions and practices?
There are not, yet, reliable written records or academic research, except a few private studies, proving the existence of an ancient cult of a Brazilian Great Mother. On taking possession of Brazil’s primitive land, European conquerors discarded and destroyed the ancient universe of the native people. Modern archaeological discoveries prove that the rock art, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and the ceramic objects left by the people that inhabited Brazil 15.000 years ago, have magical and religious attributes, similar to those found in Europe. There are also plenty of native myths and legends left, some of them disguised in folklore or children’s stories, that can be, in the future, used to translate the country’s pre-history, shedding more light on the lost past and recovering the vestiges of an Ancestral Mother. For the time being, we must count upon the Afro-Brazilian cults and the hidden meaning of legends to discover images of a Mother Goddess, as the ones below.
Despite of its fundamentalist official religion and patriarchal society, Brazil concentrates, with the exception of India, the greatest amount of worshipers of one of the manifestations of the Divine Mother, which is Yemayá, the ancestral Goddess of Water, and Lady of the Ocean.
Every year, on New Year’s Eve and on February second, millions of Brazilians, dressed in white, take their offerings and prayers to the sea shore or sail in boat processions. These processions, similar to the Egyptian and Roman ceremonies called Navigium Isidi, dedicated to Isis, the protectress of the seafarers, who, like Yemayá, is also called “The Lady of the Navigators”. Although this huge Brazilian devotion to Yemayá, her cult is not an indigenous one, being brought to Brazil by the Yoruba slaves, in the XVIII century. Continue reading “The Brazilian Great Mother by Mirella Faur (Part 1)”
With the ongoing occurrence of huge hurricanes, floods, mudslides, earthquakes, possible nuclear war and more in both the US and worldwide it seems that the wrath of the Goddess has been awakened. I felt the need to revisit the Celtic Triple War Goddess, The Morrigan. One of Her aspects is Badb, which translates as “Hooded Crow” and “One Who Boils.” She signifies fury, rage and violence. She brings war, death, chaos but also enlightenment, life, and wisdom. Continue reading “Badb, Goddess of Life and Death by Judith Shaw”
She Rises: What … Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 3 Two books: The main book and a sectional booklet including poetry, prose, art, the like.
Coeditors include Deanne Quarrie, D.Min., Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.
I am the source, I dream the dreams, I am the spark, Creation lives in me. Jana Runnalls, The Source, Speaking in Tongues
Using She Rises Volume 1 and Volume 2 as a springboard, the collective writing project of She Rises Volume 3 aspires to interweave new patterns in the tapestry of Goddess feminist activism. She Rises Volume 3 invites possible contributors by asking the questions: What do you envision for Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? What is Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality for you? What do you seek from Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? What are our practices that will bring more Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality into the world?
You may like to engineer the question on your behalf or answer it for us all. Here are some examples of the question: “What keeps me continuing in Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?” or “What does Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality mean to me?”
The first volume evolved around stating/proclaiming the rational or cause of our Goddessian/Magoist commitment by answering the question, “Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?” and the second volume took a step further to ask the “How?” question, “How… Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?”
It is our hope that the question “What?” potentially produces a record number of ways we engage in Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality. We foresee the possibility that She Rises Volume 3 may become a guidebook of the common cause for Goddess feminists and activists.
She Rises, Volume One, asked WHY? and 93 contributors answered the question with depth, honesty, insight, creativity, imagination, and inspiration. She Rises, Volume Two, asked How? and 96 contributors answered the question with depth, honesty, insight, creativity, imagination, and inspiration.
Now we are asking What? Your answers will offer:
Let’s weave a tapestry of answers! Are you interested?
To be part of this weaving, please send your contribution to both emails (please indicate “She Rises Volume 3” in the subject line) See submission form and guidelines below:
Deanne Quarrie – deanne.quarrie@outlook.com
Helen Hwang – magoism@gmail.com
Primary Deadline: January 31, 2018
Submission details:
Short writing – up to 200 words
Longer essays – up to 4,000 words
Research papers – 4,000-12,000 words,
Poetry – any length (please indicate formatting)
Art, photography, illustrations – any form, which may be accompanied by a descriptive paragraph attached as a separate Word file
Please include a brief bio of no more than 100 words at the end of your Word document.
Text: As attachment of Word files (.doc or.docx)
Font: Garamond or Times New Roman (12 font size, 1 spaced)
Style: Chicago Style, footnotes
Art, photography, and illustrations: As attachment of jpg files (must be 300 dpi)
For sample short writings, see below:
http://magoism.net/…/special-post-1-why-goddess…/
For ongoing submissions, see below:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/magoism/
Multiple proposals are allowed. The submission form is included below.
Submission Form
Please fill out the following form and pasted it in the body of your email submission.
| Your name and email address:
“I agree that my proposals may be published in the main book AND the secondary sectional book (poetry, prose, and art).” |
| Number of proposals and their genres: |
| List the titles/contents of attachments including your short bio: |
The solar eclipse has had me sensing deep alignment with earth, sea, and sky, with my sisters and brothers and Self. This, then, from my 1995 journal of my first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete with Carol Christ, a trip still engraved in my heart:
June 3 – Yesterday, anointing us with rose, lavender, or olive oil, Jana said, “Your journey has begun.” But for me it is this morning, with the purchase of this journal at the biblio on the square across from the hotel, where I sit now in the lobby, traffic noise outside, our group gathering, preparing for our journey . . . happy to be here . . .
Bleeding at the home of the Panagia, the all holy, the sacred mother, sacred myrtle, ancient tree of Aphrodite, Mary, black-bent nuns: we tie ribbons to the tree, sing, “all manner of things shall be well. Blessed be, walk in beauty.” And I am utterly in tears as I walk on the grounds of this ancient place, the birds singing everywhere, yet there is quiet, stillness, an ancient peace . . . A pilgrimage, a shrine, a very holy place.
Continue reading “Notes from A Goddess Pilgrimage by Joyce Zonana”
Even though snakes never inhabited Ireland, as in the rest of the ancient world both the serpent and the dragon were ancient symbols of life, fertility, wisdom and immortality for the Celts. Ancient Celtic ornamental work is entwined with serpents and dragons. The Celtic Knot can be seen as a never-ending serpent. A large stone with a carved serpent is found at the sacred cairn sites of Knowth. The megalithic structure of Brug na Bóinne (Newgrange) has multiple serpent-like spirals on the entrance stone.
In Scotland there is the earthen serpent at Glen Feochan, Loch Nell. The Pictish Aberlemno Serpent Stone is engraved with a serpent and other symbols. The torque collar, a symbol of kingship and status was created in the form of a hybrid horned dragon/snake. The serpent was connected to healing pools and springs and the Druids believed the serpent had healing powers together with a certain type of egg shaped stone called a “serpent’s egg.” Continue reading “Corra, Celtic Serpent Goddess by Judith Shaw”
“Drinking the water, I thought how earth and sky are generous with their gifts and how good it is to receive them. Most of us are taught, somehow, about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered.”
–Linda Hogan in Sisters of the Earth
The women have gathered in a large open living room, under high ceilings and banisters draped with goddess 
tapestries, their faces are turned towards me, waiting expectantly. We are here for our first overnight Red Tent Retreat, our women’s circle’s second only overnight ceremony in ten years. We are preparing to go on a pilgrimage. I tell them a synopsis version of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, her passage through seven gates and the requirement that at each gate she lie down something of herself, to give up or sacrifice something she holds dear, until she arrives naked and shaking in the depths of the underworld, with nothing left to offer, but her life.
In our own lives, I explain, we face Innana’s descents of our own. They may be as difficult as the death of an adult child, the loss of a baby, the diagnosis of significant illness, or a destroyed relationship. They may be as beautiful and yet soul-wrenchingly difficult as journeying through childbirth and walking through the underworld of postpartum with our newborns. They may be as seemingly every day as returning to school after a long absence. There is value in seeing our lives through this mythopoetic lens. When we story our realities, we find a connection to the experiences and courage of others, we find a pattern of our own lives, and we find a strength of purpose to go on. Continue reading “Sacred Water by Molly Remer”
In the early 1990’s I discovered the compelling story of Inanna, the ancient Sumerian Goddess, translated and retold in the book, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer. I was inspired to create a series of paintings from Inanna’s story.
Continue reading “Inanna, Queen of Heaven & Earth Brings Gifts, by Judith Shaw”
Feminism and Religion 