Winter Solstice: Can We Celebrate the Restful, Welcoming Darkness?

The days are slowly winding down toward Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest night of the year. Today the sun rose at 7:20 and will set at 5:08 in Crete. In Sweden, the sun will rise at 9:25 and set at 2:12. Though I light candles in the darkness of morning and have lights on my tree, I am not celebrating the “return of the light,” but rather welcoming the restful dark.

In The Spiral Dance, Starhawk writes that Winter Solstice is about the rebirth of the sun. This interpretation has taken hold. For most pagans, Summer Solstice also is a celebration of the sun on the longest day. Few are those mark it as the time of the dying of the sun or the rebirth of night.

In our culture we have learned to celebrate the light and to avoid and disparage the darkness. We have inherited this habit of mind from the Indo-Europeans who, as Marija Gimbutas wrote, celebrated the shining light of the sun as reflected in their shining bronze weapons. When the Indo-Europeans rewrote the myths of the land that came to be called Greece, they placed the “Olympian” deities on Mount Olympus while relegating many of the oldest female deities to the underworld, which became a fearful place. New Age spiritualities follow this pattern, celebrating “light and love.” This habit of mind reinforces racism. Continue reading “Winter Solstice: Can We Celebrate the Restful, Welcoming Darkness?”

On Mikeitz: How Joseph Brings Meaning to My Hanukah Observance during This Pandemic by Ivy Helman


It is Hanukah.  I have discussed the reasons I have found observing it difficult in a past blog.  Namely, as an ecofeminist, I will not celebrate the violence of war or the slaughter of animals at the temple.  This year presents a new challenge: how to celebrate the miracle of the oil in the midst of a global pandemic.  For inspiration, I have looked at this week’s Torah portion: Mikeitz.  Its Joseph tale has helped me find a meaningful practice for my Hanukah observance this year: the power of a human community’s action to preserve life.

The parshah begins with pharaoh having bad dreams.  He has called on every interpreter he can think of and no one could interpret them for him.  That is until he hears tale of Joseph and summons him.  After hearing his dreams, Joseph satisfactorily explains the dreams’ meaning.  Joseph says that there will be seven years of abundant crops followed by seven years of famine.  The pharaoh believes Joseph and begins to make preparations.  He appoints Joseph to oversee them.  

Continue reading “On Mikeitz: How Joseph Brings Meaning to My Hanukah Observance during This Pandemic by Ivy Helman”

Margery Kempe: The Self-Made Mystic

In the 15th century, as now, independent female travelers faced harassment and suspicion.

I’ve always been fascinated with the women mystics, such as 12th century powerfrau and visionary Hildegard von Bingen, the heroine of my 2012 novel, ILLUMINATIONS. Likewise my new novel, REVELATIONS, which will be published in April 2021, is centered on two 15th century English mystics, Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. Like Hildegard, they were women of faith facing the roadblock of institutional, male-dominated religion that sidelined them. But instead of letting this beat them down, they found within their own hearts a vision of the divine that mirrored their female experience. I believe it’s no mere coincidence that both Hildegard and Julian dared to create a theology of the Feminine Divine, of God the Mother. All three women seized their power and their voice to write about their encounters with the sacred, preserving their revelations to inspire us today.

While Hildegard and Julian are iconic, Margery Kempe is a more marginal figure–well-known among medievalists but much less known to a general audience. I first encountered Margery in a post-grad course entitled Late Medieval Belief and Superstition. I was blown away by the story of this enterprising woman who survived postnatal depression and a soul-destroying marriage to become an intrepid world traveler and literary pioneer. The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436–38) is the first autobiography in the English language.

Margery’s story explodes our every stereotype about medieval women.

She was not just a desperate housewife and mother of fourteen. She rebelled against the straightjacket of an abusive marriage by becoming an entrepreneurial businesswoman. First she ran a brewery, then a grain mill. When both businesses failed and she’d had enough, she left her husband behind and took to the road as a pilgrim, traveling to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela. This in an age when very few women traveled even in the company of their husbands, Margery blazed her own trail across Europe and the Near East.

Alas, like strong women throughout history, her independence and eccentricities drew suspicion. Before long she found herself on trial for heresy. A guilty verdict would have seen her burned at the stake, yet she kept her spirits high by regaling the Archbishop of York with a parable of a defecating bear and a priest.

Before leaving on her monumental pilgrimage, Margery sought the counsel of her sister mystic, Julian of Norwich. This was an exceedingly vulnerable time in Margery’s life. In leaving her husband and children behind, she had broken all the rules, and she was filled with self-doubt and uncertainty. Julian’s advice to trust her inner calling and not worry too much about what other people thought seemed to have a profound and empowering impact on Margery. While Julian had chosen to wall herself into a cell and live as an anchoress, she gave Margery her blessing to wander the wide world.

Sadly, some historians and theologians try to pit Julian and Margery against each other. Julian is held up as the real saint, the real deal, while Margery is dismissed as a hysterical wanna-be. Because she had the habit of copious weeping when in the throes of mystical experience, many people, both in her time and ours, have refused to take her seriously.

Yet a number of fascinating synchronicities connect Margery and Julian. In so many ways, their stories intertwine and complement each other.

Margery was born in 1373, the same year that thirty-year-old Julian received her “showings”—the divine visions that would inspire her landmark book Revelations of Divine Love, the first book written in English by a woman. Both women lived in Norfolk, in cities less than 45 miles away from each other. Both women were literary pioneers whose lifework was lost to obscurity, only to resurface in the twentieth century.

Immersing myself in Julian’s radical theology of the primacy of divine love was a profound experience. Like Margery, I often found myself moved to tears by the beauty of Julian’s visions, by her absolute assurance that no matter how dire things may seem, all will be well.

But what took me by surprise was how revelatory Margery’s dance with self-doubt was for me. In writing this book and delving into medieval mystical texts, I discovered that our doubts, as painful and wrenching as they are, aren’t a flaw or hindrance. In fact, they lead us deeper into the divine mystery, the vast “Cloud of Unknowing” where God dwells. Only when we set aside our preconceived notions of what we think we believe the divine to be, can we enter this numinous place.

As a mystic, Margery’s especially fascinating to me, because she found her spiritual bliss not in the cloister, but as a laywoman, in the full stream of worldly life with all its wonders and perils. May we all have the power to reinvent ourselves as courageously as Margery did.

Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. Her acclaimed novel Illuminations, drawn from the dramatic life of Hildegard von Bingen, is published by Mariner. Her new novel Revelations, about the globe-trotting mystic and rabble-rouser, Margery Kempe, will be published in April 2021. Visit her website.

Restoration by Molly Remer


In 2014, I sat on a low wooden bench nursing my 6 week old baby boy while wet plaster strips were laid across my face to create a mask. The final activity of the Rise Up and Call Her Name program, a women’s spirituality curriculum by Elizabeth Fisher that I’d been guiding over the course of an entire year, I had shown all of the women in my living room how to make masks and now it was my turn to have the mask material applied. My back was sore and I felt tired and lonely within my plaster shell. As my face faded from view, the women began to talk around me as if I suddenly wasn’t there and as my lips were covered, I became voiceless and closed in, shrouded and silent. When the plaster dried and I emerged again, I saw a dear friend sitting in the recliner drinking tea. While I was not sorry to have finished my commitment to the group and to have closed out the year-long program, I was suddenly awash with a deep longing for rest, a deep longing to be the one in the chair being brought tea, instead of the one to lead the group, baby dangling from her breast, tugged in a million directions by questions and needs.

This moment, this snapshot of maternal priestessing, has recurred for me many times over the last few years, a wondering of why I could not permit myself to be the tea-drinker instead of the hostess, the person to enjoy instead of the person to teach, the person to rest instead of the person to create experiences. Continue reading “Restoration by Molly Remer”

The Body is a Nation by Sara Wright

“The body is a nation I have not known.
The pure joy of air: the moment between leaping
from a cliff into the wall of blue below.”*

Oh, the pure joy of being weightless – I leapt to the stars, flung myself with abandon into the deep until the fire started burning and I was forced to surface for air…

I was a stranger to my body, escaping messy feelings by living through my mind. I dressed her, made her behave – learning that I must have control at any cost. I cultivated a winning smile to cover anguish I could not name. Buried all fear. This last one backfired during infancy. I lived pure terror. I had no Voice. It was years before I realized who stole it. Continue reading “The Body is a Nation by Sara Wright”

Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts by Carol P. Christ

In the 1960s and 1970s, American-born Genevieve Vaughan was living in Rome with her husband, philosopher Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and their three daughters. When Rossi-Landi, using Marxist models, began to write about language as a form of “exchange,” Vaughan was inspired to articulate her alternative theory based on the idea that language was developed and is learned through the gifts of the mother to the child. From that beginning, Vaughn developed an alternative theory of culture based on what she calls the “gift economy.”

We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.

According to Vaughan, the “exchange economy” is based in the gift economy, while at the same time it denies the gifts it has received from mothers and mothering figures and disparages mothers and their work. Mothers rear children who enter into the exchange economy, but these children would not be alive to enter the exchange economy unless they had first been nurtured by the freely given gifts of mother. Vaughan writes that prior to patriarchy, cultures and societies valued the gifts of mothers and were organized around the principle of gift-giving. Vaughan states that gift-giving economies are based in the idea of meeting the needs of others, while exchange economies are focused on the enrichment of the individual self. She believes that re-valuing and re-instating the gift economy is the only path to creating and restoring peace and justice in the world. Continue reading “Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts by Carol P. Christ”

It’s a New Day By Barbara Ardinger

It is just past mid-January. The almost-ex-prez is sitting at the desk, staring at his smartphone. It begins shaking in his hand. There is a pile of documents on the desk, his Sharpie lying on top. The Sharpie suddenly rises into the air, black ink dripping from its pointy end. Almost-Ex hears a strange sound and looks at the giant big-screen TeeVee hanging on the opposite wall. The TeeVee is sprouting red fur! It slides down the wall and lands on the floor with a furry crash. As it explodes, tiny people fall out and begin yelling in big voices. “It’s not over till the recount is done.” “Always attack.” “It’s a conspiracy.” “It’s Fake News.” “Don’t listen to nobody but us.” “We know the Real Truth.” “Never give up.” “Never give in.” “It’s time to fire—”

Almost-Ex fails to hear the door open. When he finally turns his head, someone is coming in. It’s a woman! She’s a goddess! She’s taller than he is. Continue reading “It’s a New Day By Barbara Ardinger”

Was Sefer Yetzirah Written by a Woman? Jill Hammer


This year, I published a book called Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah (available from Ben Yehuda Press, benyehudapress.com).  Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation, is an ancient Jewish mystical work (written in approximately the sixth century CE, though scholars offer dates from as early as the 1st century CE to as late as the 9th century).  This brief, cryptic, poetic book describes the process by which God creates the universe.  God engraves letters, which are also the elements and fundamental forms of being, into the cosmos.  These engraved letters act like energetic channels between the Creator and the Creation, allowing creative intention to flow from the One to the Many.  The book instructs the mystical practitioner to develop awareness of this creative process and seek to embody it, thus allowing energy to flow back from the Many to the One.

This flowing between One and Many is called retzo vashov, running and returning—the constant ebb and flow between unity and multiplicity.  Sefer Yetzirah says of the elements that “God’s word in them is running and returning.”  This means that the divine intention moves within creation, and the elements shape themselves in response to this intention.  In Sefer Yetzirah, as in most Jewish texts, the Creator takes a male pronoun.  However, the elements—water, air, and fire, since the book has a three-element system rather than the more common four elements— all have female pronouns.  These three elements, often identified with the Hebrew letters Aleph, Mem, and Shin, are sometimes known within the text of the book as the three mothers.  And, God’s breath or spirit, the ruach elohim chayyim or breath of the living God, which gives rise to all the other elements, also take female pronouns.  Not only that, but Wisdom, the feminine entity who is the sum total of all the engraved pathways between God and the world, is also feminine.  We can say with certainty that the text gives the feminine unusual primacy, compared with other Jewish texts of the time.  We also don’t see in this text any of the misogyny that is common in ancient texts of this time period. Continue reading “Was Sefer Yetzirah Written by a Woman? Jill Hammer”

Sappy modern carols won’t cut it; Gritty Advent Hope is what we need this year. — by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

As we careen toward ever more terrifying surges in the Covid pandemic, with experts predicting apocalyptic catastrophes by Christmas time, I find myself reacting to the vast majority of modern Christmas songs, stories, movies, and cultural norms with increasing distaste. In these scary, painful weeks leading up to Christmas, my culture has very little to offer other than distraction and superficial jollity. Ho ho ho, Santa Claus is comin’ to town.

Distraction does help, a little. It’s addictive, of course. We turn more and more to social media, with its carefully designed dopamine boosts from each “like” and “love” reaction, each funny cat video, each smug political joke, to keep us from confronting the terror and trauma of our current reality. It’s a legitimate coping mechanism, a crutch that can be useful in many ways. Continue reading “Sappy modern carols won’t cut it; Gritty Advent Hope is what we need this year. — by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Like Water Flowing Down a Mountain: Creating Lasting Change by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Carolyn Lee Boyd

As we strive to create a better future, we can look to our rich heritage of global goddess and heroine tales for insight into peaceful, creative, and effective means to achieve our goals. Let me introduce you to the delightful ancient story of two young Chinese heroines, Gum Lin and Loy Yi Lung.

Summarized from Merlin Stone’s Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood:  Gum Lin’s village was starving due to a drought. Even the bamboo she needed to make objects to sell had disappeared. Searching for bamboo on a nearby mountain, she found a lake, but a locked gate stopped its abundant waters from flowing down to the village. A dragon living in an underwater cave held the key. Gum Lin sang sweetly until the dragon’s daughter, Loy Yi Lung, arose from the depths and together they hatched a plan. They sang in unison to draw the dragon to the surface. While Loy Yi Lung continued her song and the dragon listened, Gum Lin swam to the cave where she encountered treasures she could easily steal for herself. She ignored them and found the key.  She unlocked the gate and the waters gently flowed down the mountain in a newly-made river, nourishing the rice and bamboo. In time, Loy Yi Lung moved to the village where she and Gum Lin happily sang at the edge of the water.

Continue reading “Like Water Flowing Down a Mountain: Creating Lasting Change by Carolyn Lee Boyd”