Women’s Spirituality – Page 40 – Feminism and Religion

Dancing with Kali Gets Us to the Other Side by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolyn portrait

Deep in the New England woods, Kali leaps from behind a pine tree, skulls jangling from her waist and an upraised knife in her hand. A band of women halts and the goddess and mortals face one another. “What must you do to pass?” Kali demands. After a few silent seconds, I step forward and take Kali’s hands, waltzing with her until I reach the other side where I continue on to the moon ceremony that was our destination that night.

A decade ago I waltzed with a priestess dressed as Kali at a Goddess camp. When I stared at the recreated wrathful goddess blocking my way, I knew that I could not run past or fight her, so dancing with all that She represented was my only option. I cannot say that I encountered Kali Herself that night but, since then, I have experienced over and over the transforming power of choosing to engage the wildness, mystery, beauty, truth, and chaos of our dynamic universe and of expressing both creative and destructive aspects of this spirit in our everyday lives.

Where Were the Women? by Kat Robb

Where were the women? I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, and it wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I ever saw a woman offer a prayer in church. That was when they hired a woman with a Masters of Divinity to be an Associate Pastor in charge of Christian Education, meaning they had hired another woman to be in charge of Sunday School and this one had a higher degree. I, very early on in my Sunday School career used to ask, why can’t women pray in front of the church? Why can’t women give the sermon? Why is the only place girls are allowed to be in the front of the church, the choir loft? Why do we only mention Mary at Christmas? Why was Eve bad and not Adam? Why is it all right for Mary to be an unwed mother but not me? My Sunday School teachers loved me.

The answer for prayer was that you can pray anywhere you are because it’s your conversation with God–but I would ask if that is true, then why aren’t we allowed up front? No one ever had a good answer for that. Continue reading “Where Were the Women? by Kat Robb”

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

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

A Valentine Towards an Ethics of Loving Women Making Art by Marie Cartier

It is still a radical and generous act to love a woman for who she is apart from, as well as with, others.

My favorite artist is Frida Kahlo because she was a woman who dared to do art about her own self, in fact often about her own physical self. When she did that it was brave; and it still is brave to consider your life as a woman important enough to focus on. Let’s face it– women are not considered a priority in a world which still underpays women for the same jobs that men do. When I entered the work force in 1976 women made 60.2% of what men make. In 1986 they made 64.3%; in 1996 73.8%; in 2006 76.9%; and in 2010 women made 77.4%.

Continue reading “A Valentine Towards an Ethics of Loving Women Making Art by Marie Cartier”

One Small Goddess, BunniHoTep by Kat Robb

Small joys are the things we often forget, we need to be reminded that they exist.

All gods, divinities, myths or legends started with one human being’s UPG (unverifiable personal gnosis). Human beings have a deep need to explain the unexplainable and we do it best by creating a deity and then sharing it with others, thus religions and pantheons are born.

This is the story of the birth of one small goddess in the Egyptian pantheon, BunniHoTep. Continue reading “One Small Goddess, BunniHoTep by Kat Robb”

Awakening to the Mystery of Absolute Beginnings by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolyn portrait

As I rise at 5:30 each morning, my spirit reawakens in a between-the-worlds realm of absolute beginnings. For those few minutes of quiet and slowly revealing dawn light, I revel in mystical newness, endless possibility, a horizon that is only the future. By 7 am, when I can hear cars on the road and see television screens through windows as I walk to work, normal, plodding space-time has taken over, leaving just a shimmer to linger in my memory.

I remember living all day with this feeling of being at the very beginning of my world when I was a young child and everything that I did and thought was for the first time. I believed this sense was lost forever when I was later taught by society, as so many of us are, that I was only the tiniest, most ordinary mite in a world already built many eons ago by people with a much brighter genius than me. Continue reading

Brigit and Patricia: Comrade-Women by Elizabeth Cunningham

Brigit is my comrade-woman
Brigit is my maker of song
Brigit is my helping-woman
My choicest of women, my guide

Brigit, celebrated by pagans and Christians alike on February 1, is a goddess who knows how to incarnate. When Christianity came to Ireland, she became a saint without missing a beat and without giving up any of her reputation for healing, poetry, or smith crafting, for being the keeper of the sacred flames and wells. The verse above is one of my favorites from “The Blessing of Brigit,” several versions of which are recorded in Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, Hymns and Incantations Collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the Last Century (which is to say the nineteenth!)

I adapted the verse and sang it in memory of author, educator, priestess, and visionary activist Patricia Monaghan who died November 11, 2012. Dawn Work-Makinne offered a beautiful tribute to Patricia’s life and work. Today I want to reflect on Patricia in relation to Brigit, a goddess Patricia researched and celebrated (look for the forthcoming anthology she edited with her husband, Michael McDermott Brigit: Sun of Womanhood)—and whose spirit she embodied as vigorously as the legendary Saint Brigit of Kildare. Continue reading “Brigit and Patricia: Comrade-Women by Elizabeth Cunningham”

Patterns for the New Year by Sara Frykenberg

Life last year continually pushed me to figure out how I should care for those close to me while also caring for myself. I have been pushed to see the difference between myself and other people: their choices and my own. This is perhaps, the most difficult challenge I faced in the first year of the Age of Aquarius… and life has been an unrelenting teacher.

Happy 2013! Or a statement more accurate to my feelings: Happy end of 2012! Last year around this time, I wrote a post entitled: Celebrating the Beginning of the Aquarian Age. The push to evolve was and is very exciting to me. This shifting astrological paradigm challenges us to break away from those habits and patterns that no longer serve us. But excited as I am, I have to admit that the first year of the Age of Aquarius really kicked my butt.

Did last year feel exceptionally difficult for anyone else out there? I really felt like I couldn’t catch a break for the entirety of 2012. This is not to say that my year was simply filled with loss and grief, though I am dealing with loss and a great deal of grief. But some really great things happened last year too, which I celebrated, but also found extremely difficult to manage. Many of my roles and relationships radically changed in ways that were more difficult than I expected or wanted. Riding the Aquarian tides, I felt tossed about and was often confused. I kept telling myself: just hang on. Just hang on, because you are not alone riding these cosmic waves. Hang on, because you will learn how to swim in these new waters.

Therefore, in honor of the New Year, I would like to take this opportunity to evaluate and strategize for my how.

I am not usually one for making new years’ resolutions. The cultural rhetoric surrounding resolutions either presupposes failure or relates success to the amount of money you spend to achieve a goal. Yet today I find myself considering how I approached last years’ challenges, successfully and unsuccessfully. I have concluded that I need to create more life giving patterns and habits in 2013. Many things I am doing now, my coping mechanisms and my defenses, can no longer meet my needs. So, I guess I am making resolutions. I, however, prefer to say that I am actively hope-ing to evolve my praxis of living. ;) Thus, I set the following intentions for 2013: Continue reading “Patterns for the New Year by Sara Frykenberg”

Inspiration by Jassy Watson

Jassy_Agora1-150x150 This “Mountain Mother” painting is an ode to women’s earth wisdom and is my prayer for reclaiming of that wisdom to heal the earth and all her beings.

When I am inspired to paint I can think of nothing else, the desire to put brush to canvas takes over every ounce of my being, and it is difficult to be present in everyday life. There are other times where I’ve wanted to create but inspiration was lacking: I would start a painting and have no desire to finish it. I would often get quite frustrated at myself. It’s only recently that I’ve had the realisation that down time is just as significant as the up time. Rather than get anxious about not creating a masterpiece, I have learnt to go with the flow, take pleasure in the time of rest, because I know it’s all part of the cycle. My inspiration always returns with abundance. Presently I am bursting at the seams with creativity, and I can’t find enough hours in the day to let all this inspired energy out. I am overcome with a sense of urgency I can’t explain. I am committed to paint and write with the intention that my personal message becomes part of the global message for change as our sacred feminine wisdom is being called forth. I am determined and full of courage to be part of the movement that brings about a shift in all aspects of life.

My present state of inspiration can be attributed to my recent Goddess pilgrimage to Crete with Carol Christ. I am sure that anybody who has attended such pilgrimages will attest that these experiences are life-changing. Travel alone is profound, but to share the experience in a circle of twenty amazing women is even more so. We sang, danced, trekked through the Cretan countryside, delved deep into caves; the womb of our great mother, climbed mountains and cleansed in the sea. We prayed and communed with the goddess daily, participating in rituals that were meaningful, un-contrived and safe. While I have always known that the goddess is everywhere, within and without–encountering her ancient past in a present day context is a feeling I’m not sure I can adequately describe with words, hence my desire to express some of these feelings through my art.

Continue reading “Inspiration by Jassy Watson”

Why are We Drawn to the Black Madonna? by Judith Shaw

Once the opportunity came my way to spend two weeks with my sister in Paris, I knew I had to visit the Black Madonnas at Chartres. I had been to Chartres many years ago, before I knew about the Black Madonnas scattered throughout Europe. I felt the power of the site at that time, but had little understanding of where that power came from.

History of the Black Madonna

The indigenous goddess worship of Europe, was influenced by Phoenician traders who introduced statues of dark skinned African and Middle Eastern goddesses such as Isis, Inanna, and others to the European continent from 1550BC to about 300BCE. The worship of these goddesses continued with The Roman invasion of Gaul (France) and other parts of Europe.

Once Christianity took hold in Europe, churches were built on top of sacred pagan sites. But old ways die hard; many of these dark skinned goddesses were incorporated into the newly built Christian churches. Today there are more than 500 known Black Madonna statues and paintings throughout the world, the majority in France. Continue reading “Why are We Drawn to the Black Madonna? by Judith Shaw”