Ronald Hutton – Feminism and Religion

Who Turns the Wheel? Gender in the Modern Pagan Year, part 2 by Myriapath

Part 1, yesterday traced how the eight-festival Wheel of the Year was assembled in the middle of the twentieth century from older ingredients, some surviving only in a line or two of medieval writing. It began with a blessing. Writing for this site in July 2017, Carol P. Christ closed a post with words that name no gender at all: “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed.” We return to it at the end.”

The divine couple, and who was told no

The gendering was there from the beginning. Hutton describes Gardner’s earliest seasonal rites as pairing a god and a goddess, “a divine couple who were intrinsically linked to the annual cycle of winter and summer”, the god predominating in the cold-season festivals and the goddess in the warm-season pair.

The seasonal love story that many readers first meet as something ancient is a modern liturgical pattern, not a preserved pre-Christian myth. That does not make it less meaningful to those who keep it; it makes it datable.

The pattern also carried an exclusion. The World Religions and Spirituality Project, in its profile of the Minoan Brotherhood, describes Gardner’s Wicca as a “fertility religion” organized around male-female polarity, God and Goddess, high priest and high priestess, and records that “Gardner was homophobic and refused initiation to anyone whom he thought was homosexual”, noting that Alex Sanders and Doreen Valiente rejected that exclusion. A framework built on a heterosexual pair puts pressure on those it does not fit, and some people built elsewhere.

Who Turns the Wheel? Gender in the Modern Pagan Year, part 1 by Myriapath

A blessing, and a calendar younger than it sounds

Pick up almost any introduction to the modern Pagan festival year and you will meet a couple: a goddess of the growing season and a god born, crowned and cut down at harvest. Writing for this site in July 2017, Carol P. Christ described Lammas as the point at which “the young male God identified with the harvest … is sacrificed.” She closed the same post with a blessing that names no gender at all: “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed.”

The eight-festival Wheel of the Year and its divine-couple story were assembled in the middle of the twentieth century by people whose names, meetings and dates are known. That recency is exactly why the wording has been open to revision, and revised it has been, in public and on the record. What follows traces that rewriting rather than judging it.

How the eight festivals came together

In a 2008 study in Folklore, the historian Ronald Hutton traces the eight festivals to two separate modern sources. The solstice and equinox feasts descend from Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morganwg, who invented four Druidic solar festivals between 1792 and 1826. The quarter days come from Margaret Murray’s now rejected account of witch festivals.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: “THE OLD RELIGION” OR A “NEW CREATIVE SYNTHESIS”?

Moderator’s Note: Carol Christ died from cancer in July, 2021. Her work continues through her non-profit foundation, the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This blog was originally posted June 30, 2014. You can read its original comments here.

Is Goddess feminism an old religion or a new creative synthesis? Can it be both? Goddess feminism draws on the feminist affirmation of women’s experiences, women’s bodies, and women’s connection to nature; the feminist critique of transcendent male monotheism as the symbolic expression of male domination of women and nature; and 19th and early 20th century discussions of Goddesses and matriarchy.

Most Goddess and other spiritual feminists have experienced Wiccan rituals, which are often simply called Goddess rituals. For many of us, elements of Wiccan practice strike a chord of knowing, while other aspects seem odd or strange or even just plain weird. What are the roots of Wiccan ritual?

“THE OLD RELIGION” OR A “NEW CREATIVE SYNTHESIS”? by Carol P. Christ

Is Goddess feminism an old religion or a new creative synthesis? Can it be both? Goddess feminism draws on the feminist affirmation of women’s experiences, women’s bodies, and women’s connection to nature; the feminist critique of transcendent male monotheism as the symbolic expression of male domination of women and nature; and 19th and early 20th century discussions of Goddesses and matriarchy.

In their syntheses of women’s experiences, ancient Goddess religions, and feminism, Z Budapest and Starhawk drew upon the earlier creative synthesis of the Englishman Gerald Gardner which he variously called “the Old Religion,” “Witchcraft,” and “Wicca.” Continue reading ““THE OLD RELIGION” OR A “NEW CREATIVE SYNTHESIS”? by Carol P. Christ”