From the moment I saw the title, Goddess Lost: How the Downfall of Female Deities Degraded Women’s Status in World Cultures, by Rachel S. McCoppin, I knew I would have to read it. When it arrived in my mailbox and I saw the cover, I was imbued with inspiration. Then I read two sentences in the Preface, which articulate what for me, and for many, is one of the most vital, powerful, and, as yet, under-addressed, facts.
“I am the Queen of Sheba and I am not impressed.” This is the first line of one of the monologues from chris wind’s book Thus Saith Eve. This book features 18 stories of biblical women, and a 19th, Lilith, from Jewish mythology. Each monologue offers a new interpretation and gives a voice to the women that we think we know.
In this book the voices and personalities of women such as Noah’s wife, Mary of Bethany, Zipporah, and Vashti are reimagined in an exciting and empowering way. Each of the stories also features an appendix where the reader can learn more about the biblical or mythological context of the woman who is telling her story.
As in her other works, wind uses historical people, events, and understandings to build a truly wonderful source of feminist fiction. In addition to being an extremely enjoyable and thought provoking read, the monologues can also be used for audition and performance pieces. On her website wind explains that two of the monologues, “I am Eve” and “I am Mary” can be performed with specific musical selections in the background. You can find those selections linked to her website above.
We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.
This is not your fault or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed into the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father and the celebrated chronicle of my brother.
Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
I am an expat author. My home is everywhere and nowhere. A wanderer, I have lived in many different places, from Minnesota, my birthplace, with its rustling marshes haunted by the cries of redwing blackbirds, to Bavaria with its dark forests and dazzling meadows and pure streams where otter still live, to my present home in the haunted moorlands of Pendle Witch country in Lancashire, England. My entire adult life has been a literal journey of finding myself in the great world.
For as long as I remember, I longed to be a writer. As a novelist I am on a mission to write women back into history. To tell the neglected, unwritten stories of women like my pioneering foremothers who emigrated from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) in the 1860s to break the prairie soil of southern Minnesota.
To a large extent, women have been written out of history. Their lives and deeds have become lost to us. To uncover their buried truths, we must act as detectives, studying the sparse clues that have been handed down to us. We must learn to read between the lines and fill in the blanks. My heroine’s journey, in other words, is about reclaiming the lost heroines of history. My quest is to give voice to ancestral memory of that lost motherline.
“Happy are those who find wisdom. . . . She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. . . Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy” (Proverbs 3: 13, 15, 17-18).
Sophia is DIVINE WISDOM, Her name comes from the feminine Greek word meaning Holy Wisdom. She is found all over the Bible (Proverbs, Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon..) and in the Gnostic Gospels (unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1947.) She has been called the MOTHER OF THE UNIVERSE, Mother of Yahweh and HOLY SPIRIT. The words: “Philosophy, theosophy and sophiology” all come from Sophia. The Bible links her to Christ: “Christ is the Wisdom (Sophia)” (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30). There is some evidence that Mary Magdalene was also called “Mary Sophia.”
Because She did not help advance the patriarchal scheme, Sophia was all but deleted from history. Hidden throughout the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, knowledge of the DIVINE FEMININE all but went up in flames. Even a great cathedral build in Her honor in Constantinopole, Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), was burned to the ground twice. It’s newest rebuild was a mosque and is now a museum. NOTRE DAME (Our Lady) has survived but they eventually claimed it was named after the Virgin Mary. (The famous Notre Dame rose windows are a common symbol of the Divine Feminine!). Some say there are secret societies that still exist to keep knowledge of Her alive.
feminismandreligion.com 