Women’s Spirituality – Page 4 – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: The Full Spirited Four-Fold Goddess: The Maiden, the Mother, The Queen and the Crone by Mama Donna Henes

Moderator’s Note: This was originally posted on February 24, 2013. Sadly Mama Donna died on Sept. 21, 2024. You can read FAR’s post that honored her life here.

The Queen paradigm promotes a new understanding of what it might mean to be a middle-aged woman today who accepts complete responsibility for and to her self, and it celebrates the physical, emotional, and spiritual rewards of doing so.

Although I have been passionately devoted to the Many Splendored Goddess in Her complex multiplicity for more than thirty years now, I am not a believer in the Triple Goddess paradigm. It has never resonated with me because it belies what I believe to be the true nature of nature. The Triple Goddess in Her tripartite phases is widely understood to represent the complete cyclical wholeness of life. She who is Three is likened to the moon, the tides and the seasons, whose mutability She mirrors. And therein, lies the rub.

I am sorry, but forty years of researching, teaching, and writing about Celestially Auspicious Occasions — the cycles of the cosmos and the earthly seasons, and the multi-cultural ritual expressions that they inspire — I can state unequivocally that the moon has four quarters, not three, and that there are, as well, four seasons in the year. Continue reading “From the Archives: The Full Spirited Four-Fold Goddess: The Maiden, the Mother, The Queen and the Crone by Mama Donna Henes”

Female Wisdom in Eden: A Guide for Faith-Formed Feminists By Susie Austin

If you were taught that “men lead” is God’s design, this is your permission slip to ask a harder question: what if that teaching was never Eden’s plan — but a wound the world mistook for a rule?

Many of us grew up inside churches that loved us, baptized us, and gave us language for hope—while also wrapping womanhood in shrinking instructions: be agreeable, be modest, be quiet, be helpful. We learned to make ourselves small so that men could feel large. We learned to translate our leadership as “support,” our wisdom as “intuition,” and our authority as “being difficult.” We learned to carry the room’s temperature without ever touching the thermostat.

Feminism — and the women who lived it before it had a name — has always asked religion to remember itself. Not to abandon Scripture or tradition, but to recover what was true before fear called itself theology. Before we rewrite our lives, let’s reread the beginning.

A forgotten reading of the oldest story

Look again at Genesis: the woman sees that the fruit is “desirable to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). In Scripture’s own poetry, Wisdom is feminine—personified as Lady Wisdom (Hebrew: Chokma) calling us to life (Prov. 8:1-4, 22-31). And Genesis 3:6 ends with four words we usually skip: “who was with her.” Translation: she leads; he lingers.

How Women Construct And Are Formed By Spirit: She Who Is Everywhere In Women’s Voices, part 1 By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

I dedicate this article, an excerpt from my dissertation to Rita Rosalind Kolb Grenn, Hanna Eule, Verena La Mar Grenn & their mothers,
Franziska Silberstein, Kaye Schuman and Regina Possony,
and to the Kolb, Berlstein, Bernstein, Mathivha, Sabath, Gruenbaum,
Silberstein, Lawler and Scott female ancestors.

“She is Creator of the Universe, and of Mankind…She is Creator Woman”
– Meshack Raphalalani, Venda artist describing his sculpture, 2001

“The Shekhinah1 is considered an alternative way of thinking about God in the orthodox community… not the major way of thinking about God…
but not heresy at all. It’s right there in the tradition.“
– Blu Greenberg, co-founder, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, interview, 2001

“He created me in his image so he’s inside, within me.“
– Hanna Motenda, Lemba translator at Hamangilasi village, 2001

Keyvermestn by Janet Madden

in memory of Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein

1.
On a sunny Elul afternoon
I kneel at your grave
a sprig of rue in my pocket.
I recite a tkhine for visiting the graveyard
and imagine that you know this ritual–
stretching string to calculate
the space your body inhabits.
The unspooling wick rests gentle
on rough-cut grass, touching
the edges of mortality,
its twists separating and connecting worlds:
the dead and the living
the past and the now
mine and yours,
a woman I never met,
a writer dead these 40 years.

Sex Radical. A new film by Andy Kirshner; film discussion by Janet Rudolph

At the bottom of this post you will find information for a free streaming of the film.

We are witnessing now in real time what happens when the full weight of the Federal Government turns its attentions and goes after individuals and even companies with the intent to squash dissent, intimidate and punish dissenters. This is perhaps most prominent among the immigrant population and those who the administration have been targeted with the legal system. But before there was Mahmoud Khalil, CBS, The Washington Post, UC Berkeley and all the others who have been hounded by government, there was Ida Craddock who faced the full weight of a government that turned its sights on her.

From the Archives: Censored Angel: Anthony Comstock’s Nemesis. A Novel by Joan Koster

This was originally posted on October 10, 2024.

Moderator’s Note: With the Trump administration getting closer and closer to re-establishing the Comstock Laws in their efforts to stop all abortions in the United States, we felt it important to repost this story. It is about Ida Craddock, her life and her efforts to stand against Anthony Comstock. Joan Koster wrote a powerful book about her. This post today is also a prelude to tomorrow’s post which will discuss a new movie Sex Radical that will be premiering this month about Ida Craddock’s life.

“I would lay down my life for the cause of sex reform, but I don’t want to be swept away. A useless sacrifice.” Ida C. Craddock, Letter to Edward Bond Foote, June 6, 1898

In 1882, Ida C. Craddock applied to the all-male undergraduate school of University of Pennsylvania. With the highest results on the entrance tests, the faculty voted to admit her. But her admission was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who said the university was not suitably prepared for a female. (U of P only became co-ed in 1974)

With her aspirations blocked, Ida left home determined to leave her mark on women’s lives by studying and writing about Female Sex Worship in early cultures. At the time, little information was available to women about sexual relations. To do her research, Ida resorted to having male friends take books forbidden to females, such as the Karma Sutra, out of the library for her.

An unmarried woman, she turned to spirituality and the practice of yoga, a newly introduced practice to the American public at the time, as a way to learn about sex. In her journals, she describes her interaction with angels from the borderlands, and in particular, her sexual experiences with Soph, her angel husband through what was likely tantric sex.

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.