Feminism and Religion

What’s Your Feminism I.Q.? by Barbara Ardinger

Let’s begin a new year by finding out what we know about feminist history and goddess scholarship. Take this little quiz and find out where you stand as a Feminism/Goddess Scholar. (It’s okay to laugh at some of the choices. Laughing shows you’re paying attention.)

1. Who wrote When God Was a Woman?

a. Ernest Hemingway b. Merlin Stone

c. Sharyn McCrumb d. Isabel Allende

Transitions by Esther Nelson

It’s been a rough couple of years. Even though thousands of miles distanced us from the first-discovered Covid-19 outbreak (late 2019) in China, the virus soon traveled the world, doing what viruses do best—infect us, spread, morph, and then infect us, spread, morph all over again. More than five million people worldwide, including close to one million Americans, have died as a result. Shutdowns affected us economically and socially, making it difficult (sometimes impossible) to stay connected with family and friends.

An effective vaccine arrived on the scene in early 2021, yet many Americans (half?) eligible for vaccination have refused the life-saving injections, citing a variety of reasons: distrust of the vaccine—“It was developed too quickly;” invincibility—“I never get sick, never even had the flu;” and individualism—“Nobody gets to tell me what to do with my body.” (Many of those “hands off my body” people, though, have no problem telling those of us who have a uterus what we can and cannot do with its contents.)

Longing for Darkness by Elizabeth Ann Bartlett

When I moved to Minnesota, everyone back home voiced concern about how cold the winters would be. Nobody warned me about how dark they would be, nor how long the dark would last. For years, I complained, but gradually I have come to embrace the dark. The dark invites us to slow down, to rest, to sleep, to dream. It is a time to open to our depths, and to others. There is a kind of magic in the dark. Without the harsh light of judgment, in the dark we are more likely to share our secrets and stories, our wounds and our wonderings, our hearts and hopes with each other. As the deciduous trees lose their leaves, the sky opens as well, giving birth to the night sky. The winter dark gives us the gift of stars, giving me a sense of my place in the universe. They arrive like old friends. The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades appear in the evening, and Orion greets me every morning. When Hale-Bopp was visible from earth, I looked for her on my late-night drives home, and there she would be, my constant companion on those cold winter nights. The stars remind us that we are not alone, that we are all related, for we are all made of the stuff of stars.

Slaying Dragons Our Own Way, Part II by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm is a Scottish dragon-slayer folk tale with many enticing details linking it to elements of an older culture centering the Earth with a reverence for female spiritual power. You can read a summary of the story and these clues in Part I.

While the tale was obviously not originally meant to reflect the 21st century, it has echoes of our own society’s challenges today, including inequality, injustice, violence, and ecological disaster. It may be a revision of an older story but, not knowing what that story was, we can perhaps re-envision the story to be meaningful for our own time with the characters and practices hinted at in the details. Maybe something like this (I’ve named Assipattle’s unnamed sister Morag) …

Slaying Dragons Our Own Way, Part I by Carolyn Lee Boyd

In winter people traditionally gather around the fire to enjoy stories as the stormy winds thunder outside. Come closer to the hearth as I regale you with Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm, a centuries-old dragon-slayer folk story from Scotland’s Orkney Islands with many Norse elements. On the surface, it is a fairy tale about a village threatened by a gigantic sea serpent and how they responded to this existential threat. Though meant to entertain with its adventure and romance, it also has many details that perhaps link it to older roots of a culture that centered the Earth and healing and revered female spiritual power, all of which are profoundly needed in our own time. If we re-envision the tale through the lens of these clues, we may be able to find guidance for how our own communities — local, national, and global — can more successfully confront profound challenges.

Here is the summarized original tale:

Winter Stories by Sara Wright

Every November I begin to create stories inside. Except for going into the woods to tip balsam and making wreaths I never know what else I might decide to do, but by the time I have finished I know what the images are saying! This is a poem about the stories I created this year. With the silence of winter soothing me I begin this kind of play without awareness and without a goal…I love this idea of story being told through image.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: Of Birds, Angels, and Tidings of Great Joy

Moderator’s Note: We here at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died in July this year from cancer. To honor her legacy as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted December 23, 2013. You can read it long with its original comments here

A link to a video of a Crow Uses Plastic Lid to Sled Down Roof Over and Over Again on a mayonnaise-lid sled appeared on my Facebook timeline a few days ago. {moderator’s note: I believe this is the same video that Carol originally posted. The link has been updated since 2013 } For me this crow expresses the “spirit of the season” as aptly as anything I can think of. She brings a smile to my face on a grey and cold morning. She makes me want to climb up on the rooftop and slide down with her. She reminds me that we humans are not alone–we share the world with a vast multitude of other intelligent creatures. She tells me that there is nothing more sacred than the joy of life.

From the Archives: What Would Durga Do? by Barbara Ardinger

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted August 2, 2015. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

It’s one of my favorite T-shirts. Every time I wear it, people who know who Durga is comment. So do some people who don’t know who the Hindu goddess is.

“What would Durga do?” is of course an echo of the question What would Jesus Do?

I’ve just done a bit of research and learned that this phrase may come from the Middle Ages, that it was famously used in a sermon in about 1891, and that it became very popular among evangelical Christians during the 1990s. What would Jesus do? I think he’d remind us to pay closer attention to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, 7), especially the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matt.: 7:12). The Golden Rule is of course given in the other major religions, too. WWJD has also been turned into WWBD—“What would Buddha do?” I think the Buddha would tell us to live more mindfully.

From the Archives: There Is No Santa-The Antlered Flying Goddess With Gifts by Marie Cartier

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted December 25, 2015. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

*Marie bringing in Elen of the Ways*
*photo by Tony Mierzwicki*

One of my colleagues at Feminism and Religion recently wrote of Xmas and Feminine Wisdom. My blog, for Christmas Day continues this exploration.

Elen of the Ways is a figure primarily studied by scholar, Carolyn Wise. She wrote two core articles available on the web here and here. Wise writes that in order to “track” and find Elen of the Ways she had to peel back the layers:

…to the earliest track ways, the migratory tracks of the Reindeer and Elk. Elen moves across vast tracts of time, and land, cloaked and masked appropriately for each age.

As the Green Lady, she peers out between the trees in forests …As a British Venus… she is guardian of the underground streams that carry the sacred waters. She is the Guardian of the ancient track ways, the Leys, the Kundalini currents in nature. And as the Horned Goddess, she leads us to the first track ways, the migratory tracks of the reindeer and later, to the path of the red deer through the forests. From here she leads us to the lost Shamanism of the isles of Britain and we can follow her across Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, Siberia, India and beyond.

You can read more about Elen in the book edited by Carolyn Wise, Finding Elen: The Quest for Elen of the Ways. Elen is:

…part goddess, part dream, part saint, a green lady and a water nymph, primordial mother and patroness of deer, and guardian of the Old Straight Tracks and solar alignments. …Elen is as real as the roads named after her, as solid as the ancient paths that carry her presence.

What are these tracks? Part of the story can be explained by understanding that there are ley lines, or energy paths throughout the globe. These paths were “tracked” by shamans, pagans, and regular folk and still exert their influence today in very recognizable ways. People celebrated earlier this week on the Solstice (December 21) at Stonehenge. “One of the most important and well-known features of Stonehenge is its alignment on the midwinter sunset-midsummer sunrise solstitial axis,” a spokesperson said. “The midwinter sun sets between the two upright stones of the great trilithon.” The solsitial axis is part of the ley line network that connects sacred sites such as Newgrange in Ireland, a sacred burial mound which lights up only the morning of Solstice.

At dawn in Newgrange, on the mornings surrounding the solstice a narrow beam of light enters the 62-foot long passage and lights the floor. It moves along the ground, from the window box until it lights the rear chamber. This Neolithic light show lasts 17 minutes….Local expert Michael Fox told National Geographic, “Archaeologists have classified Newgrange as a passage tomb but it is more than that. ‘Ancient temple’ is a more fitting label: a place of astronomical, spiritual, and ceremonial importance.”

If light that travels around the world lighting up sacred sites and bringing the gift of light to all corners of the world starts to sound like Christmas, let’s extend that thought to understand the connection to flying reindeer. According to Caroline Wise,

…the only kind of female deer to have antlers are Reindeer. Not only does the female reindeer have antlers, but she is stronger than the male and does not shed her antlers in winter. It is an older female reindeer that leads the herds.

So as I like to tell my students, “the McDonald drive through version” of what we’ve heard so far is: Most likely, yes, Rudolph is a girl/female reindeer, keeping her antlers leading a herd of female reindeer keeping their antlers, traveling with Elen (Santa) throughout the sky giving the gift of light—the light of Rudolph’s red nose that keeps the sleigh on track—following the ley lines around the world, and lighting up the sacred sites, turning the sacred wheel towards spring.

Wise continues the thread of Elen and Christmas thus:

…Leys as shamanic flight paths was relevant to Elen in her guises of both Empress and the Reindeer-woman…the Father Christmas story is based on the shamans of the Sámi people. These people (and other reindeer societies) had a symbiotic relationship with the Reindeer. They would follow the herds along their migratory tracks. Their food, clothes, homes, tools, even needles and thread came from the reindeer. ..the Father Christmas story is based on the older, non-Christian Shamans of Lapland. …to aid their shamanic flights, the shamans needed the properties of the Fly Agaric mushroom, the fabulous red and white toadstool of fairy stories. Taking the mushroom can be risky, or at least unpleasant, because of toxins it contains. The Shamans noted that the reindeer ate the mushrooms, which grew around the silver birch trees, and suffered no ill effects.
The shaman lets the substance pass through the reindeer, neutralizing the toxins, and then drinks its urine. The active ingredients are unaffected, and the shaman enters his trance and begins his flight. Above the snow he can see the herds, see the predators, and gains helpful knowledge for the tribe. He gains wisdom of the plants and healing, as the Fly Agaric opens the gateways for him to be able to commune with the spirits of the land, the beasts, and the ancestors. He carries back the gifts of healing, and also news of the herds. When finishing his trance session, the shaman would enter the yurt through the smoke hole, and slide down the central silver birch pole with his bag of healing plants and his paraphernalia – Father Christmas coming down the chimney.

And Christmas trees?…the Fly Agaric is found mainly at the base of the silver birch and pine trees. It can be found beneath conifers, mostly evergreens, such as cedar, and the spruce and firs used for Christmas trees. …Reindeer Shaman spirituality was holistic within its environment, a complete cosmology including the people, the herds, the landscape, the stars…Therefore the trees that the mushrooms grew around were an an important part of the whole.

From the Archives: Paying Homage to Hestia by Sara Wright

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted December 23, 2020. You can visit it here to see the original comments.

This morning I was kneeling in front of my new wood stove kindling a fire from hot coals when I felt the presence of the Greek Goddess Hestia, Lady of the Hearth moving through the house. The goddess manifests as a crackling wood fire, and when I kneel before my wood stove to coax coals into flames I feel as if I am paying homage to her.

I have spent two winters without a wood stove, and have missed this ritual fall lighting of the fire, and the knowing that I am participating in ancient practice that extends back far beyond the Patriarchal Greeks to the dawn of humankind.

Today I felt her presence in a visceral way as I looked out the window at the first flakes of white snow disappearing into wet ground, and felt the hearth warming beneath my feet.