Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Can We Celebrate the Dark? Can We Sleep?

This was originally posted on December 19, 2019

According to Marija Gimbutas, the religion of Old Europe celebrated the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Agricultural peoples understand that seeds must be kept in a cold dark place during the winter if they are to sprout when planted in the spring. People who work hard during the long days that begin in spring, peak at midsummer, and continue through the fall, are grateful for the dark times of the year when they can rest their weary bones on long winters’ nights. Long winters’ nights are a time for dreams, a time when people gather around the hearth fire to share songs and stories that express their understanding of the meaning of the cycles of life.

The Indo-Europeans were not an agricultural people. Herders, nomads, and horseback riders, they celebrated the shining Gods of the Sky whose power was reflected in their shining bronze armor and shining bronze weapons. When the Indo-European speaking peoples entered into a Europe, they married their Sun and Sky Gods to the Earth Mother Goddesses of the people they conquered. These were unequal marriages in which the Sun was viewed as superior to the Earth. The unhappy marriage of Hera and Zeus reflects this pattern, as do the many rapes of Goddesses and nymphs recorded in Greek and Roman mythology.

Witches’ New Year: She is Everywhere by Caryn MacGrandle

Samhain, the Witches ‘New Year’ was a busy time for me. I did a workshop at a local large artist facility Lowe Mill Arts in Huntsville, Alabama. I watched and participated in a releasing burning ceremony the next night at the same artist site. There is so much we are needing to release especially with where we are in the world right now.

And then the following night, I was in charge of a Fire Circle at the Witches Ball at Mill Kat Healing Arts Center where I host my weekly circles.

I admit to some trepidation hosting the very public Fire Circle. I live in the deep south of Alabama most definitely not known for its open mindedness. A friend told me that she shared the Witches Ball event on her facebook page and received the comment, ‘that is how they indoctrinate you.’

Oh my.

But we are not in a time to be deterred by fear. I have been called to share this magic. And people need it.

Bulletproof: How BTS – and ARMY – are Changing the World

There’s this boy band I’m a little obsessed with. Try to love me. I know some of their early stuff has the toxic masculinity you’d expect from a group of teenage boys. But not only do they openly admit their faults, they keep learning and trying to do better. They’ve really matured as artists, with a genuine desire to help make the world a better place. They sing about love, and female empowerment; loneliness, social justice, and inclusion. And even though they’re from another country and culture, I love listening to them, and it’s fun to get to know them through their interviews and little jokes.

Yup. I’m a Beatles fan.

Mother Sky: I See You, I Hear You by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Deep field galaxy cluster from 4.6 billion years ago. — Deep field galaxy cluster from 4.6 billion years ago with light from galaxies 13.5 billion years old soon after the “Big Bang” 13.8 billion years ago.

The sky is telling us a story of our universe’s first moments while the cosmos sings, and now we can see and hear these wonders through our bodies as well as our imaginations, spiritual journeying, and intuition. These feats are made possible by the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the sonification of sound waves emanating from galaxies that have, for the first time, been converted into a range audible to human ears. Now, experiences that we have only heard about in ancient myths have come to the human realm.

The JWST, according to NASA, allows us to see stars and galaxies as they formed 13.5 billion years ago. Because the light from these stars and galaxies took billions of years to reach us, we see them at the first moments of their birth.

Biblical Poetry – Trees by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Image from an Egyptian tomb ca. 1314-1200 BCE. Isis is giving nourishment in the form of fruit and drink,

In many cultures of the world, including our own, trees are considered the ancestors of humanity – own our ancestors.

Trees are connected with great goddesses throughout antiquity. We see this in the bible where, as I’ve noted before, the Tree of Life is Eve’s tree for the word Eve means life. It is, in essence, the Tree of Eve. Goddesses in trees feeding humans were common themes in ancient Middle Eastern art. The tree was Hers to give freely of as she wished.

Anthropologist and religious scholar, Mircea Eliade writes extensively about the associations of trees ancestral connection to humans. He calls them both mystical and mythical.[1] His examples include the Miao groups of Southern China and Southeast Asia who “worship the bamboo as their ancestor.” He also notes Australian tribes who view the mimosa as their progenitor. And there is a tribe from Madagascar, called Antaivandrika which means “people of the tree,” who considered themselves descended from the banana tree.

Unsung Heroines: Pamela Coleman Smith by Mary Gelfand

If you’ve ever had a Tarot reading or played with reading cards yourself, you’re probably familiar with the work of Pamela Coleman Smith, illustrator of the great-grandmother of all contemporary Tarot decks—The Rider Waite Smith Deck. First published in 1909, the illustrations in most contemporary decks are direct descendants of Smith’s work. Yet most people who engage with Tarot are unaware of Smith’s significant contribution to the world of Tarot. In my eyes, Pamela Coleman Smith is an Unsung Heroine.

When Earth Meets the Son by Sara Wright

As I curl up

in my hatchback

open to sky

I am a snail

loving her shell
sun warms

me from behind
Autumn light
shimmers, leaves
a testament
to breeze

some withered

by a freeze.
Burnt umber
Gold
Salmon
the understory
in full glory
Bare hardwoods

peer down

sentries stationed
Overhead
Acorn browned oak
leaves smudge

sage greens

dark crimson

bleeds
geese fly by

haunting goodbye
A dragonfly lands
on my foot
Not a grouse
in sight
Hunted
in thickets
too thorny
for stealth
She’ll
live to see
another dawning
Scarlet pockmarked palms
lie face up

on the ground.

Warning.

Signs are everywhere.
Insect ridden leaves –
puncture marks
deform once

smooth hands
some shriveled

beyond recognition.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: It’s Time to Thank Stacey Abrams Again

This was originally posted on January 18, 2021

The insurrection in the Capitol on January 6 has dominated the news ever since. Coverage of the Democrats’ victories in the two Senate runoffs in Georgia has been virtually nil. Now that it seems that at least as long as the National Guard is deployed to defend the national and state capitols, the insurrectionists have been stopped, it is time to thank Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff–and most of all to Stacey Abrams–for returning control of the Senate to the Democrats.

As is well-known to most readers of FAR, Stacey Abrams narrowly lost the election for Governor of Georgia in 2018 due to voter suppression.

Voter suppression of voters of color and young voters is a scourge our country faces in states across the nation. Georgia’s 2018 elections shone a bright light on the issue with elections that were rife with mismanagement, irregularities, unbelievably long lines and more, exposing both recent and also decades-long actions and inactions by the state to thwart the right to vote.

The Mixed Bag that is Toldot by Ivy Helman.

The parshah for November 26th is Toldot, Genesis 25:19-28:9. In it, we have the struggles of Isaac and Rebecca to conceive, the relations between Abimelech and Isaac’s family, the birth of Esau and Jacob, and the loss of Esau’s birthright and his father’s blessing. As we will see, this is a tricky portion from a feminist perspective because of Rebecca, yet, from an ecofeminist perspective, I find the way in which the portion discusses the interconnection between the water, the land, and divinity helpful.

Let me begin with the water and then we will look at Rebecca. Toldot takes place in and around the city of Gerar in Philistine territory, while Abimelech ruled. Isaac and his family travel through the land quite a bit between verses 26:16 and 26:32. Most of this section pertains to them moving and then digging new wells, the covering of wells, and the finding of water. What I find particularly interesting here is the way in which water and peace seem to go together. For example, in 26:20-21, Isaac and his family have constructed a well but it is causing them to have troubles with the locals. Isaac seeks peace and thus leaves. In verse 26:26, Isaac is visited by Abimelech and eventually a formal peace is declared. This is followed in 26:32 by Isaac’s servants finding water in a freshly dug well. In other words, Isaac is willing to uproot his family time and again to cultivate peace; he is not willing to go to war over what in the desert really is a quite limited resource.

The Guru Question: Are Spiritual Hierarchies Inherently Oppressive?

Painting of a noblewoman seeking counsel from two Tantric yoginis, in the Mughal style, about 1750. From the British Museum’s recent exhibition, Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution. A beautiful starting point to learn about Indian spirituality in its original context. May all our paths be crossed by wise teachers.

I’ve received a tremendous response to my essay on cults, published on Feminism and Religion in December last year. The topic continues to be a burning issue as more and more survivors break their silence on the spiritual abuse they suffered. Cults are a feminist issue because women and girls suffer the worst abuses at the hands of male cult leaders.

To fully understand how this cult dynamic works, I highly recommend watching Dan Shaw’s lecture on the subject, in which he explains how cult leaders are traumatizing narcissists whose goal is to subjugate their followers and “purify” them by utterly destroying their sense of self. Yet for me, the most haunting moment of his presentation came just near the end, during the Q & A session. An audience member and survivor of Siddha Yoga, the same cult that Shaw once belonged to, asked, “Are there gurus that people can trust?” She asked if guru-driven spirituality was “inherently subjugating.”

Shaw, perhaps understandably not wanting to come across as a white man casting judgement on another culture’s deeply-rooted spiritual traditions, wiggled out of answering by saying that it was up to the individual to discern if a particular guru was safe or not.

But I think this anonymous woman’s question deserves a more nuanced answer.

In Hinduism, since the age of the Upanishads, gurus have played a crucial role in preserving wisdom teachings in a religion with no centralized authority figure or governing body. The teachings are passed on orally to disciples who worship the guru as a divine being in order to realize their own innate divinity. I would love to hear from Indian feminists on how this guru-disciple relationship plays out in India today, particularly with female practitioners.

However legitimate and honorable these systems might be in their original cultural context, I think it’s fair to say something gets lost in translation when Eastern spirituality moves West. Great abuses have come to light. Katy Butler, in her article, “Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America,” writes that guru abuse has become so prevalent due to the “unhealthy marriage of Asian hierarchy and American license that distorts the student-teacher relationship.”

It’s pertinent to point out that many of these misbehaving gurus, lamas, and swamis are white men. Spiritual hierarchies can be abusive across cultures—look at the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Cults are not necessarily “Eastern” or “foreign.” There are plenty of Christian cults, self help cults, and wellness cults.

Another thing that often gets lost in translation is what Eastern spirituality actually intends to offer the student. Many Western students turn to Eastern disciplines like meditation and mindfulness for stress reduction, but that is not their original purpose. These disciplines are intended to liberate the practitioner from the wheel of death and rebirth, to transcend this world of suffering and our worldly attachments, in order to enter an enlightened state—i.e. not to be reincarnated again, a goal some Western people might find world-denying and nihilistic.

Dr Willoughby Britton, professor of psychiatry at Brown University, speaking to Rachel Bernstein on IndoctriNation podcast asks, “How problematic or paradoxical is it if you believe that enlightenment is a destination that someone else can take you to? What dependence does that create?”

The goal is unmeasurable and the endpoint keeps shifting according to the power dynamics. You become much more dependent on the teacher who decides if you have reached this invisible destination. If you’re being charged a lot for the teachings, the teacher may decide that you don’t achieve the end result for a very long time.

Willoughby says practitioners can empower themselves by asking themselves the following questions:

Where do you want to go with this practice?

If you are seeking enlightenment, what does that mean for you?

You get to define your own outcomes and measure your success by what you want to show up in your life, i.e. better sleep, reduced anxiety, improved relationships, and inner peace.

In evaluating teachers and spiritual groups, ask yourself:

What were you initially promised?

Has it been achieved after all your hard work?

Do you feel you are closer to your goal?

Or have your initial reasons been shifted by the teacher into their reasons and their goals that are no longer yours?

Are you under pressure to perform for and please the teacher?

Are you expected to use scripted, stilted language to describe your experience?

If you question the teacher and the teacher retaliates, that’s your tipping point, says Britton. If you say that a practice isn’t working for you and the response you get is, “Well, that’s because you don’t have the right karmas/aren’t dedicated enough/haven’t reached the right level of spiritual maturity” etc., you need to leave and find a different group.

In order for anyone to have a healthy experience with a teacher, you need the freedom to say, “I think this isn’t working for me, and, in fact, it’s hurting me and I need to move on.” Depending on how people respond to you setting your boundary, you’ll know if you’re in a healthy space or not.

As Dan Lawton says on another episode of IndoctriNation Podcast, a spiritual practice can only be as healthy as the person teaching you that practice. The endgame for a lot of teachers is often building a personal brand around the supremacy of a certain spiritual practice. Once you’re locked into that box, there are a lot of things you’re not going to be able to see and there’s a possibility of doing real harm to your students.

Good, ethical teachers, whether they call themselves gurus or not, are deserving of deep respect. But they need to be vetted and held accountable. And maybe in the West, at least, the obligation to see the teacher as enlightened or divine is indeed too subjugating. Maybe it would much healthier to look up to them as a wise elder or mentor. Surrendering our agency to another human is always going to be subjugating.

Perhaps we can follow the example of the female seeker in the 18th century painting above, who is taking counsel from two yoginis, female practitioners who live in the forest, outside the strictures and hierarchies of patriarchal society. Instead of placing all our hopes in one exalted individual, why not instead seek the deep wisdom of the female collective?

Mary Sharratt is committed to telling women’s stories. Please check out her acclaimed novel Illuminations, drawn from the dramatic life of Hildegard von Bingen, and her new novel Revelations, about the mystical pilgrim Margery Kempe and her friendship with Julian of Norwich. Visit her website .