Tag: goddess

“Old South Asia” and “Old Europe”: New DNA Research Suggests Tantalizing Relationships by Carol P. Christ

When European scholars began to study Sanskrit they were surprised to discover linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin. Old Persian was found to be even closer to Sanskrit. Scholars thus began to speak of related groups of Indo-European languages stemming from an earlier language they called Proto-Indo-European.

Tracing the earliest incursions of Indo-European speakers into Europe from the north along the Danube River, Marija Gimbutas hypothesized that the Indo-European homeland was in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas. DNA research has confirmed Gimbutas’ view: Indo-European-speaking men from the Yamnaya cultural group who carried the YDNA gene R1b–which now is the largest YDNA group in Europe–arrived in large numbers about 2500 BCE from a homeland north of the Black and Caspian Seas.

Until now DNA evidence confirming the Indo-European incursion into India has been lacking. Hindu nationalist groups and some scholars have rejected the Indo-European hypothesis because it suggested that Hinduism and by extension “Indian culture” had a “foreign” origin.

Recent DNA research forwarded to me by Goddess scholar, iconographer, and bibliographer Max Dashu confirms that Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya men carrying the R1a gene entered Persia (Iran) and India in the second millennium (2000-1000 BCE). Moreover, this new DNA study finds the R1a gene in India to be located primarily in the Brahmin or priestly caste associated with the introduction and preservation of the Vedic religion and the Sanskrit texts. Continue reading ““Old South Asia” and “Old Europe”: New DNA Research Suggests Tantalizing Relationships by Carol P. Christ”

The Santa Goddess from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri

Frau Holda Poem

Hail to Frau Holda, the beautiful and bright,
Crowned and clothed, all in glistening Winter white.
Ay seeking and searching, She sweeps o’er the land,
Scourge for the slovenly, held firmly in hand.
As Holda fares forth, with Her own Holy Host,
May She deem distaffs full, befitting a Yule boast.
For when all is cleanly, content She shall be,
Thus Her bedding she flaps, with a whirlwind flurry.
Soon crisp snowflakes, come falling feather light,
Cleverly She shakes, cloaking the clutter with white.
‘Til Earth is enclosed, by a fine fluffy down,
A bedecked beauty, in Her sparkling snow gown.
Heed well and hear, when Holda’s housework doth end,
A faint satisfied sigh, for the mess Frau did mend.
© Rhonda Turner

 

Once I became a mother I found the demands as well as my own expectations for holiday gifting, decor and celebrations to be SO taxing that I quickly felt a bit of resentment toward Santa Claus for getting all of the credit. Now I tell my children that Santa Goddess is posing as homekeeping MRS. CLAUSE and that SHE and the elves do all of the work, and that “Santa” is merely their courier. Engulfed in modern society, I don’t think my young children hear me as they still dance with glee at any mention of Santa Claus.

Continue reading “The Santa Goddess from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri”

Honoring the Completion of the Year, by Molly Remer

“Beginnings and endings are so very sacred, to give honor to all that has transpired, every experience, every joy, every pain, is a doorway to the magical. Hold your entire year between your hands, every day, every thought, every breath. Now bless it with gratitude, love and humility. You have done more to transform this new year than a thousand resolutions.” 

 –K. Allen Kay

Two years ago, at the end of the year, I was supposed to hold a closing ceremony for a year-long Ariadne’s Thread study group I had been guiding throughout the year. Every member of the circle ended up backing out of the closing circle at the last minute, but I held the ceremony in full anyway, alone in my front yard, just for myself, and expanding it to include acknowledging and appreciating all the work I had completed in 2016, including my D.Min degree. People’s reasons for backing out of the ceremony were very valid and while on a cognitive level I understood why they couldn’t come, on an emotional level I still felt let down and disappointed at being “abandoned” by them. Holding the closing ceremony for myself anyway and acknowledging that I kept my own commitment to doing a full year of this work in circle, felt like a powerful declaration and affirmation of my own worth. In fact, it was such a validating and powerful experience that I continued the practice with a personal year-end closing ceremony for 2017 as well and I will do the same for myself this year too. Continue reading “Honoring the Completion of the Year, by Molly Remer”

My Original Uncultured Mother by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne Quarrie

In the earliest of times, I believe humans did not see themselves as separate from all that was around them.  All of life was interdependent.  I see this in my own practice today.  When we are born, we are born to a mother.  Our lives are solely dependent on her for survival.  We are birthed by her, nourished by her, protected by her, and sometimes forced out to experience on our own, by her.  She is at first, our own Original Uncultured Mother.  Once we move from her shelter, we begin to experience our world in the same way, looking not only for what nourishes, what protects and what shelters, but also for what we need to be mindful of for our own safety, those forces far out of our control.  Those forces, which were uncontrollable, the ancients held in high esteem, and honored with reverence.

Continue reading “My Original Uncultured Mother by Deanne Quarrie”

Let Us Proclaim the God Who Bleeds Now by Carol P. Christ

we need a god who bleeds now

we need a god who bleeds now
a god whose wounds are not
some small male vengeance
some pitiful concession to humility
a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord

we need a god who bleeds
spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet
thick & warm like the breath of her
our mothers tearing to let us in
this place breaks open
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
to hold her/to hold her
embrace swelling hills/i am
not wounded i am bleeding to life

we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything

–Ntozake Shange

Continue reading “Let Us Proclaim the God Who Bleeds Now by Carol P. Christ”

Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Three by Laura Shannon

Women’s apron from Pentalofos, Greek Thrace

In Rebirth of the Goddess, Carol P Christ offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The Nine Touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political.[1] In this series of blogs I am exploring ways in which these Nine Touchstones are embodied in the traditional women’s ritual dances of the Balkans, which I have studied as a spiritual practice for more than thirty years.

Carol P Christ’s Second Touchstone is: ‘Walk in love and beauty.’ As she says, ‘love and beauty are the great gifts of bounteous earth’.[2] Dancing women of the Balkans walk in love and beauty each time they put on their festive dress to dance together in the courtyard or the village square. Their ceremonial costumes are created from the bounty of the earth – just a couple of generations ago, this was literally the case, as the women tended the sheep, prepared and spun the wool, wove, sewed, embroidered and ornamented their garments with the work of their own hands. Even now, the cloth they buy is purchased with money they have earned from working and harvesting the land.

Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Three by Laura Shannon”

Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Two by Laura Shannon

In the first part of this article, I looked at how Carol P Christ’s Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality from Rebirth of the Goddess are related to traditional women’s ritual dances of the Balkans. After more than thirty years of researching and teaching these dances and the way that they pass on information in encoded symbolic ways, I have come to see them as an educational system, a women’s mystery school.[1] The main message which the dances convey is an ethic of community, partnership, mutual support, and other life-enhancing values aligned with the Nine Touchstones, which can be directly experienced in the dance.

We know from the research of Marija Gimbutas that these values were central to the Old European civilizations which honoured the Goddess, while Yosef Garfinkel and Elizabeth Wayland Barber show that circle dances have their roots in these same early Neolithic cultures of Eastern Europe and the Near East. This leads me to suggest that Balkan women’s circle dances surviving today may have their origin in early egalitarian matriarchal cultures of Neolithic Europe. The Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality provide an perfect template through which to explore the ethics of women’s ritual dances.

Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Two by Laura Shannon”

Challenging Christian Feminists to Re-Imagine the Goddess by Carol P. Christ

From the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference:

Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image:
With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life.
With the courage of our convictions we pour out our life blood for justice.
Sophia-God, Creator-God
let your milk and honey pour out,
showering us with your nourishment.

From my reflections on the Re-Imagining Conference presented at Hamline University on Novemeber 1, 2018:

One reason the creative re-imagining of God as female has not taken hold in churches and synagogues is fear of paganism and the Goddess. The creators of the Re-Imagining Sophia ritual took great care to guard against this charge by connecting it to Bible and tradition. Commenting on the reasons for the backlash against the Re-Imaging Conference, Sylvia Thorson-Smith stated:

One was the liturgical use of the biblical image of Sophia – but blown up as evidence of Goddess worship. Second was the milk and honey ritual – an ancient part of early Christianity, but attacked as a pagan substitute for communion.

While I understand her reasons for doing so, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Continue reading “Challenging Christian Feminists to Re-Imagine the Goddess by Carol P. Christ”

Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part One by by Laura Shannon

In Rebirth of the Goddess, feminist theologian Carol P Christ offered a list of ‘Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality’.[1] She revisited the Nine Touchstones in an interview with Karen Tate on Voices of the Sacred Feminine titled ‘Gratitude and Sharing: Principles of Goddess Spirituality‘, and in an inspiring series of blogs on this site recently exploring each touchstone in depth.

In her incisive analysis of the ethics of Goddess religion, Christ argues that Goddess spirituality can offer the ‘ethical guidance that we need to combat the forces of evil in our world’, and that this ethic is not imposed from a set of rational principles nor from a transcendent God known through the prophetic traditions of the Bible, as suggested by Rosemary Radford Ruether.[2] Rather, the ethics of Goddess spirituality are discerned through intuition and reflection on the world of which human beings are a part.[3]

Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part One by by Laura Shannon”

Goddess Pilgrimage: A Sacred Journey for Women by Carol P. Christ

A pilgrim leaves home and sets off on a journey, seeking healing, revelation, and direction in her life. She finds companions along the way whose stories reflect her own, validating her quest and shedding light on her journey. According to anthropologists Victor Turner and Edith Turner, pilgrimages have common structural elements. A pilgrim separates from family and friends, work and obligations. She steps across a threshold into “liminal space” in which daily routines are suspended, opening herself to discovering new ways of being and living.

For spiritual pilgrims, the goal is a place or places said by others to be a “sacred” because healing or revelation have occurred there through the intervention of a deity, a saint, or spirits. The place is often on a mountain, in a cave, or near a spring. Along the way, pilgrims meet and share stories as in the Canterbury Tales. Some pilgrims say that the experience of sharing community with other seekers is as important as the revelation gained at the destination. When the pilgrim returns home, she must re-integrate into the community she left behind or find a new one. Continue reading “Goddess Pilgrimage: A Sacred Journey for Women by Carol P. Christ”