Women’s Spirituality – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Sauna, Culture, Sweat and Spirituality: On the Architectonics and Cosmology of Sacred Space by Kaarina Kailo: Book Review by Beth Bartlett

Living as I do in the midst of both Finnish immigrant and Anishinaabe cultures, and where the two merge in the many here who identify as “Findians,” I was intrigued by the description of Kaarina Kailo’s book, Sauna, Culture, Sweat and Spirituality, as a comparative exploration of Indigenous sweat lodges — madoodiswan in Anishinaabemowin — and Finnish saunas.[i] As an outsider to both cultures, I have no ancestral or traditional knowledge of either saunas or sweat lodges and I wanted to learn more about both. Kailo’s book did not disappoint. What I hadn’t expected and was delighted to discover was that Kailo connects both with ancient goddess religions, contemporary feminist spiritualities, and ecofeminism.

Kailo’s book is a widely and deeply researched cross-cultural comparative study of the elements, practices, intentions, and spiritualities of sweat cultures ranging far beyond various Native American sweat lodge practices – Delaware Great Houses, Anishinaabe sweat lodges, Pueblo kivas – and the Finnish sauna,to Iberian/Galician saunas, Irish sweathouses, and Old Europe. As Kailo herself says, the value of such cross-cultural studies is the way they help to expand our thinking, enabling us to see things we might not have otherwise. She repeatedly says that she is looking for the “affinities” among these various sweat cultures, rather than focusing on their differences, and she finds many. In the process, she reveals the role of sweat lodges, sweat houses, and saunas as sacred spaces of healing, restorative balance, connection with the spirits, rebirth and regeneration, women-centered spirituality, and Great Bear religions. Infiltrated throughout are her reflections on how reviving the widespread use of sweat cultures and saunas, and the woman and life-centered spiritualities at their heart, would provide an antidote to the current economic, ecological, and political threats to the world.

A Cave Story by Arianne MacBean

A few years ago, I took a pilgrimage to Crete with the hope of meeting the Great Goddess. I was yearning from something undeniable, proof that would allow me to be a card-carrying believer. Although our group was led to powerful ancient sites where we enacted sincere rituals and dances, each time I failed to feel greeted by Her universal power.

Except once. And I almost missed it.

The great cavern, Skotino (Photo by Helen Marie Traglia)

One day, a small but determined group of women took it upon us to co-lead a ritual at Skotino cave, an ancient site used for sacred purposes from the Bronze Age through the Roman era. The collaborative approach to facilitating a ritual was new to us, so we all felt especially ignited and giddy. Before we descended into the depths of the cave, I sang, (something I NEVER do). I had been provided lyrics, but I made up my own melody, which my fellow initiates sang back to me, as a call and response.

Elemental Grannies: Snippets from Over the Edge of the World, A Fairytale Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham

Introduction: An old woman, Rose begins spinning the tale the children never tire of hearing. Grannies Sweep, Spark, Dirt, and Brine, were old, so old, they forgot who they were and how they came to live where they did: a sheer pinnacle, a walking forest, an old shoe, a ship moored off a hidden shore.

But Rose has never told the whole story—to anyone. The story of a world these children have never seen, where the rich lived inside a vast dome, protected from heat and cold, rain, wind—and hunger. Nor do the children know about madness or cruelty. She has never told them about Noone, the power behind the dome, his obsession with immortality.

If she never tells these stories, who will remember the bravery of the beauty singers who daily risked the ultimate penalty—being thrown over the edge of world. Who will remember the intrepid children who danced defiantly on the dung heaps. If Rose does not tell her own story, who could imagine her birth deep inside the dome, the dangerous secret of her existence. A secret guarded her two huge aunties, once ragged outside boys, who became outrageous bodyguards in towering wigs and heels. To protect the new world and the people she loves, it is time for Rose to tell…

Divining Goddess: Tattooed Sawbonna & Serpent by Margot Van Sluytman/Raven Speaks/Heyoka

Tattooed upon my body. Residing in my soul. Sawbonna. Serpent. Snake. SHE who is. Was. Always will be. Like waking from a solemn sleep. I walked with the intention of heading to my home where I have been building houses. Papier-mâché mansions and tiny, tiny shacks. Sheds too, that speak of shelter. Of warmth. Of community.

After time with Jess and Benn in Emma’s office, heading in the direction of my cozy cave of light. My sanctuary. Where silence rarely slumbers. I looked up. Above me there, right there, blue, blue, sky. Fat potent clouds. One errant, silent-speaking breeze redolent with hope. Reeking of Sawbonna. I knew that the time had come.

I knew what I had do.
I did not return home.
I turned left on to Hunter Street.
Wended my way to Simcoe Street.

After conversation with Nelson at Henry’s Barber Shop, Riverside Tattoo and I became acquainted. It was mid-afternoon.

If I am The Mother* by Rebecca Rogerson

If I am The Mother

then I am holy. Made of moonbeams and shadows, darkness and light, questioned and answered, lost and retrieved;

discovered remains

If I am The Mother

then I am a reflection, a depiction, an inflexion of a cosmos in bliss and chaos, birth and destitution; a primordial sound unleashed to form planet, life, and

you and me

If I am The Mother

then I am fermented in humanity, and sour the illusions of precipices we’re told that

we cannot cross

Cross the trinity of three’s and return to

the magic of all

Hopscotch Spells by Annelinde Metzner

In my work with the folklore and music of children’s games and circles, I’m enchanted by how many bits of magic are interwoven into everyday children’s games from many, many years ago. Our childhood closely intersects with the deep, witchy, magic world of spells, talking animals and whispering spirits.

POEM: “Hopscotch Spells”

One, two, three, O’lary,
four, five, six, O’lary….

I’m pulled like a slingshot’s band
back to those childhood, everyday spells.

Ally, ally, in-come-free!

Each day, we’d open the screen door
and hurry to our witches’ college,
pursuing a degree in the Child’s School of Magic.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four!

What drew us to each other this way?
The circle of street kids, our pals,
our fists beating out the rhythms,
our jumps and our skips conjuring powers.

Offerings to the Labyrinth on Papoura Hill, excerpt from the novel by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Sylvia’s discussion of Papoura Hill was posted yesterday; read it here.

I have so many words I want to pour out of my vessel of milk and honey upon Papoura Hill, on the big scar in Crete’s earth where the airport is being carved, on all the places slated for the construction of electricity pylons, and into so many other scars left by millennia of conquest and occupation, but for today what follows is just one song to her. These words are not full of fighting rage or defiance, but of praise, and softness, and memory. Of motherlines that cannot die, and fatherlines almost lost, but not quite. These words come from the beginning of a novel that I began writing during my first season living in Crete almost seven years ago now, a novel that has metamorphosed with me across these many years, shedding skins and growing new ones— both me, and the novel. The book is still in process, close to being born, but here is one of her many skins, laid at the center of the labyrinth on Papoura Hill with my love.

Moonrise Over Old Crete
an excerpt

The earth tilted toward dusk.
Along the shores of Crete, the Aegean turned for a moment to gold.

Women flocked down to the sea like dark birds to pour jugs of oil and wine into the water. Amphitrite of the cockle crown, they murmured, Aphrodite mother of vessels, mother of the foam and deep, bring our men home safe. The sun lowered under the edge of the world, leaving the last light along the coast. Threads of it pooled in sea-caves and in the inlets where fishermen kept their summer boats. The old storytellers said that in lost times, when the queen was called the Ariadne and her king the Bull, the women of Crete could gather up the last light from the sea onto their distaffs and take it home to spin golden thread for their skirt hems and finest vests.

Offerings to the Labyrinth on Papoura Hill by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Rhea, mother of Demeter, is coming down upon the seven mountain ranges of her Crete. Ariadne, granddaughter of Rhea, is coming up from her ten thousand perfect caverns inside those mountains with clear water in her arms. They have been quiet a long time, but they are not quiet now. Between them comes Demeter across the wide plateaus where her stones and soil are being stripped for profit, where her bees are dying from pesticide use in their hives, where her grain and oil are sold out from under her, the farmers who grew them cheated by countries with fatter economies and shinier marketing schemes.

They are gathering on Mt. Juktas and Mt. Dikti and Mt. Ida and on Papoura Hill, on all the old holy mountain places where nereids and kouretes were born, where midwives danced, and the dead were buried, and the priests and queens held night-long vigils to take divinations from the procession of the stars. From those divinations they turned the wheel of Crete’s festivals so that they continued year by year as precisely as Earth turned around her axis, so that Earth knew that she and her gifts were respectfully received, and truly loved.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Susan B. Anthony’s Bargain with the Devil

Moderator’s Note: Some of Carol’s pieces are so important that we are reposting them for a 2nd time. This was first posted in November 2019 and reposted in November 2021

Matilda Joslyn Gage

[T]he most grievous wrong ever inflicted on woman has been in the Christian teaching that she was not created equal to man, and the consequent denial of her rightful place in Church and State. –Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 1893, page 1

I do not approve of their [referring to Gage and Stanton] system of fighting the religious dogmas of people I am trying to convert to my doctrine of equal rights to women. –Susan B. Anthony to Olympia Brown, following the disputed merger of the radical National Women’s Suffrage Association with the conservative American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1889

Most readers of Feminism and Religion know that Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were leaders in the nineteenth century struggle for women’s rights. Fewer will know that Matilda Joslyn Gage was widely understood to be Stanton’s equal as a theorist and Anthony’s equal as an organizer. The fact that Gage’s contributions have been lost to history can be attributed to Susan B. Anthony’s bargain with the devil.

If Anthony’s bargain had affected only the reputation of Matilda Joslyn Gage, that would be bad enough. But Anthony’s decision to merge the NWSA with the AWSA signaled that the women’s rights movement would cease and desist from its policy of naming and indicting Christian dogma as the source and cause of women’s subordination in the law in Christian countries. This decision meant that feminists would no longer have a clear understanding of the forces they were reckoning with. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Susan B. Anthony’s Bargain with the Devil”

Mother Blues II: Interfaith Womanist Reflections on Nurturing a Resilient Bloom, part 1 by Chaz J

Even before her life unfurled beneath my heart, a quiet vow took root: to parent with purposeful grace. My unwavering compass points to this: to nurture an emotionally vibrant, confident, kind, compassionate, gentle, yet fiercely bold chocolate warrior queen, a child wholly devoted to her own radiant self. For in her spirit, I long to mend the broken echoes of my past, to see her soar where I once faltered, especially in the intricate landscape of the soul. She will possess a richness I only dreamed of; she will transcend.

Seven years, a fertile ground before her birth, from youth’s edge at twenty-two to twenty-nine, I dreamt of motherhood, shaping it idealistically. My spirit yearned to reweave the tapestry of mothering, to cast aside the heavy cloak of predetermined expectation: no longer would Black motherhood be synonymous with weariness, with anger’s sharp embrace, with bitterness, or a spirit held distorted and captive. I craved for her a vision unobstructed, a path where she could shatter the assigned roles that shadowed a Black girl’s journey into Black womanhood in this land. Above all, I wanted her to be FREE.