Mountain Mother – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: A New Glossary for Crete: The Power of Naming and the Study of History

This was originally posted on Sept. 2, 2013

The words we use affect our thinking. In the case of ancient Crete the repetition of the terms “Palace,” “Palace of Knossos,” “King Minos,” “Minoan,” “Priest-King,” and “Prince of the Lilies” shape the way we understand history–even when we ourselves know these terms are incorrect. We must engage in “new naming.”

Ariadne. May have been a name of the Goddess of pre-patriarchal Crete. The ending “ne” signifies that Ariadne is not of Greek or Indo-European origin and thus predates the later Greek myths.

Ariadnian. The name I have given to the Old European pre-patriarchal culture of Crete, from arrival of the Neolithic settlers from Anatolia c.7000 BCE to the Mycenaean invasion c.1450 BCE. Arthur Evans named the Bronze Age (c.3000-1450 BCE) culture of Crete “Minoan” after King Minos of Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Europa, husband of Pasiphae, father of Ariadne, whose gift of the secret of the labyrinth to Theseus led to the downfall of her culture. Evans assumed that Minoan Crete was ruled by a King.

This image I call “Ariadne Dancing” could become the new “icon” of Ariadnian Crete.

Whose Land Am I Living On? by Sara Wright

I went into the dark woods today to look for mushrooms. Mycelial threads made visible. Golden chanterelles, lactarias, russulas, waxy caps, corals, spindly fingers burst out of rich moist earth. Not a ghost pipe in sight.

The fungi know who they are and who they are attached to. I feel like a stranger in this land where everyone is related. I feel those connections but cannot name them. This network so mysterious as to be incomprehensible, a living being that stretches across the earth. What branch of fungi evolved here?

Ancestor Wisdom by Sara Wright

“The wisdom of our ancestors is clear about this: If we do not take the journey inward to discover who we are, the creative potential within us will implode and we will destroy ourselves and the world”.
Betty Kovacs

Jesus said something similar in one of the Gnostic Gospels: If you bring forth what is within you it will save you – if you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you.

(no wonder the Gnostic Gospels are ignored)

Lowlands: Who Will Answer the Call? by Sara Wright

I live under a steep craggy mountain that is gushing with the sweetest mineral rich water that pours out of an old spring. On this piece of land feeder brooks stream down the mountain feeding hemlock and cedar before silvery clear water slides into a rushing brook (miraculously) still filled with trout. Sadly, the main artery of my brook comes from another mountain that has been brutally logged, dammed up for someone’s pleasure and is currently running amok. Silt ridden water floods this lowland routinely not only changing the course of the stream now riddled with dying trees, (collapsing trees must have soil to stay upright) but creating unusual vernal pools that are beginning to mature. As a result, this has been the best frog and toad year that I have had since my first magical year spent on this land before all the surrounding areas were chopped into parcels. Once I roamed free up and down this mountain through unbroken forests fields and fens, marshes, seeps, bogs and springs. I have never lost that feeling of belonging to this land not just the area I ‘own’ (oxymoron) but all of her.

It doesn’t surprise me that in most pre -christian traditions the Original Mother of Us All was and still is a mountain! When the other mountains all around me were first being raped by dirty yellow machines someone remarked to me quite sagely, “the bones of the mountains are still here”. And so they are, and so is She.

Mountain Mother: Earth, Woman, Goddess (Part 2) by Jeanne F. Neath

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

In Part 2 we’ll complete our travels into Mountain Mother’s realms, as we explore female-centered economics and spiritualities as a means toward creating earth- and female-centered communities and small-scale societies.

Imagine living on Turtle Island prior to 1492. At that time Indigenous peoples had been living in respectful relationship to nature, tending her for thousands of years. European invaders and colonists were amazed by the abundance, but assumed they were seeing wild nature. These were subsistence societies! People’s needs were met by the Earth, her plants, animals, waters, and human efforts. No one charged a fee. Everything was a gift.

Mountain Mother: Earth, Woman, Goddess (Part 1) by Jeanne F. Neath

Growing up in the 1950s in the U.S. I was deeply immersed, trapped like so many girls and women, in capitalist, colonizing, patriarchy. I rescued myself in the 1970s when I jumped head first into the Women’s Liberation movement. I found that the currents pushing communities of women were wild at times, yet taking me where I wanted to go. At that time, it was possible to live one’s life, as I did, largely within this subculture and its women’s dances, bookstores, battered women’s shelters, women of color organizations, festivals, land groups and more. These female-centered and female-only spaces gave women a gut level knowledge of what a world without patriarchy could be like. We could imagine a female-centered world because we were, in many respects, living in one.

Thanks to a decades long assault by the right wing and other anti-feminist forces, women’s spaces became difficult to access. Now the grassroots women’s movement is making a comeback. Over 50 years of second wave feminist thought, research and organizing inform our work. Women’s communities are on the rise. These communities have the potential to become the base for an earth- and female-centered future, as I’ll discuss below.

Mountain Mother: Symbol from the Past, Beacon for the Future by Jeanne F. Neath

Dreaming of and working toward creating an earth- and female-centered future is proving to be my best strategy for surviving and enjoying the ecologically and politically problematic present. Current realities and predictions for the future, such as those made by climate scientists, are certainly grim. What else can we expect in a global society that puts male power and profit above the needs of people and planet?

Those in power cannot possibly undo today’s polycrisis as they are too invested, personally and financially, in the status quo. They cannot even begin to dream of the transformations called for. This is something that we women can do that they cannot. We are the ones who give birth, create new life. We can certainly dream up and create new ways of living.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: WANGARI MUTA MAATHAI AND SACRED MOUNT KENYA

This was originally posted on September 23, 2013

September 25, 2013 is the second anniversary of the death of environmental, peace, justice, and democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Muta Maathai.

Wangari Muta was born in 1940 in a round hut in rural tribal Kenya. Wangari’s tribe considered the fig tree to be holy, and she was taught that one is never to cut a fig tree down or to use its branches for firewood. Wangari spent many happy childhood hours in the shade of a fig tree that grew by a nearby stream. Fig trees play an important role in the ecological system of the Rift Valley of Kenya. Their roots penetrate the hard rock surface of the mountains to find underground water, thus opening channels where the water flows upward to fill streams and rivers.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Reading Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as Matricide and Theacide

This was originally posted on October 22, 2012

When I read Plato’s allegory of the cave as an undergraduate, I was told it had something to do with the idea that the “form” of a table is more “real” than the table itself. I must confess that I had no idea what this could possibly mean.

As a graduate student, I struggled with philosophical and theological ideas rooted in Platonism. Rosemary Radford Ruether named the flawed worldview created by a “classical dualism” that separates mind from body, spirit from the world, rationality from emotion, and male from female. Her ground-breaking essay “Mother Earth and the Megamachine” clarified the difficulties I was having.

Return to Mountain Mother[1] by Jeanne F. Neath

Mountain Mother, I hear you calling me.
Mountain Mother, we hear your cry.
Mountain Mother, we have come back to you.
Mountain Mother, we hear your sigh.
Lyrics by Carol P. Christ [2]. Sung to the tune of “Ancient Mother.” (origin unknown)

What do a bunch of feminist women do while riding a tour bus around the Mediterranean island of Crete? If they are on the Goddess Pilgrimage started by Carol Christ and continued by Laura Shannon, they sing songs honoring the Goddess. The song that drew me most from the first time I heard it on the fall 2022 Goddess Pilgrimage was “Mountain Mother.” Not surprising since the rocky, sparsely vegetated, yet hauntingly beautiful mountains of Crete surrounded us much of the time as our trusty bus wound its way up and down and around the island.