goddess

Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power

mandy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Author Laura Amazzone offers her own intimate experiences (including the most painful ones) and personal growth in a book that is richly dense with information and observation. Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power encompasses spirituality, mythology, feminism, history, travel, and philosophy. Nearly every paragraph made me set the book down to consider or visualize ideas. In a very tight nutshell: Amazzone delves into the multicultural history and symbolism of this incarnation of the Goddess, offering a model of spirituality and feminism to a world that greatly needs it.

I must say here that I identify as an atheist and feminist. Because I personally cannot believe that the entire universe was created by a deity, unsurprisingly, some concepts and language in this book did not attract me; however, my mind is always open to be engaged. I eagerly boarded Amazzone’s train for female empowerment and higher consciousness.

Though I’m not religious, spirituality and mythology fascinate me. I have always wanted to learn more about goddesses and female deities, and the depth of traditions and storytelling surrounding the Goddess Durga is worth its weight in gold. I would love to see the ten-day Durga Puja and visit the goddess' temples. This book enlightened, inspired, and encouraged me to venture outside of what I had previously known.

Amazzone’s personal pain was parallel with my own. She generously shared her physical and emotional pain, and how she was able to heal through spiritual comfort. This is a journey many of us can relate to and benefit from sharing.

Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power would be of great interest to academics, spiritualists, and those interested in personal growth. The rest of us may want to stick with Women Who Run with the Wolves for personal guidance.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, January 26th 2011

Healing Pandora: The Restoration of Hope and Abundance

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Gail Thomas

North Atlantic Books

The mythic Pandora has long been misunderstood as one who brought evil into the world. She was thought to be the first mortal woman created and sent to Earth by the gods. Her infamous box, once opened, leads to the escape of diseases and other ills, resulting in a lasting curse upon humankind.

But this is not Pandora’s original story; in fact, the modern retelling of this myth is vastly different from Pandora’s true nature. In Healing Pandora, author Gail Thomas explores the origins of the Pandora myth, how it evolved into the tale we accept today, and Pandora’s influence on our culture.

Thomas asserts that long before Pandora’s myth became twisted, she inhabited the role of a goddess. Pandora was not just any goddess. She was the Earth Mother and maker of “all things, all gods, and all mortals.” But like many other female figures (historical or mythical), Pandora’s role as life giver transformed into one who bestows misfortune upon the world, and men in particular.

The first half of Healing Pandora takes a thorough look at the goddess and the vessel she carries, while in the second half, Thomas focuses on how people can apply Pandora’s lessons to modern culture. Thomas describes Pandora as “an archetypal image of culture, an image no longer in the consciousness of our world today.” She invites the reader to consider Western culture as a living entity and describe its appearance. The author bets the image would be one of “competition and scarcity.” By viewing culture through the Pandora myth, however, Thomas states that we will find “a bountiful feminine figure with outstretched arms and hands, waiting to provide everything we need.” The latter outlook seems most assuredly a rarity for Westerners.

Some solutions Thomas offers for transforming culture include women and men embracing their feminine side and also to become true stewards of the earth who recognize that spirit exists in all matter. She also suggests considering how different the world would appear to each of us if we imagined it as a bountiful place instead of one that is always deficient in some way or another.

Of course with a book titled Healing Pandora one would expect the author to spend some time analyzing myth. Thomas does this and takes liberty by discussing Pandora and many other mythic figures in great detail, so much that it’s difficult to keep track of the book’s main purpose. On the other hand, she does raise many valuable and thought-provoking insights toward culture today that are worth contemplating, and Thomas provides a much-needed background of Pandora before her myth became corrupted.

Written by: Beverly Jenkins-Crockett, April 8th 2010

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Paul Theroux

Harcourt

Here’s the thing about reading a book that’s set in the place you live: it obliges you to scrutinize the setting, the authenticity of the dialogue, and the accuracy of the story in a way you may not have done otherwise. This effect becomes magnified when the place in which you live is not the place you are from, and when your own situated existence in that un-rooted place resembles that of the author’s. Aside from one’s desire for realism and reflexivity in the story, the reading provides a way of sorting out or reinforcing one’s own position as possessing superior knowledge of, having become better acclimated to, or garnering more acceptance as a foreigner in that place. It is for these reasons that I urge you to take some aspect of my repugnance toward A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta with a grain of noon.

Paul Theroux’s seemingly self-aware writing of this noir-esque novel is navel gazing, thinly disguised. The narrator, Jerry Delfont, is loosely based on the author himself: a travel writer who has wound up in Calcutta with an acute case of writer’s block, or the double entrendred “dead hand.” Delfont receives a handwritten request from a wealthy American expat, the businesswoman cum philanthropist Merrill Unger, who is in need of his assistance to clear up a delicate matter involving her son’s friend (implied to be the son’s lover), Rajat, and the body of a dead boy. More mysterious than the mystery itself is the untidy explanation as to why exactly Mrs. Unger would call upon a travel writer to do a detective’s job, but this is giving too much inquiry to something so banal. There are far better things to take issue with here.

I don’t know Theroux’s history with the City of Joy, but he got several elements plainly wrong, like the timing of Durga Puja and monsoon, the turns of phrase in Banglafied English, and the ins-and-outs of Shakta philosophy, mythology, and tantric practice. Since it is pretty standard for Western authors to have a baseless preoccupation with the Oriental exotic, and so I was expecting these kinds of errors from the jump, even this wasn’t my primary source of disappointment. That came from the wretched writing (which becomes all the more wretched with Theroux’s attempts at the erotic) and the utterly predictable plot, whose saving grace could have been its setting, were it not for the obvious artifice of its description, its appearance a kitschy vehicle for an otherwise bland story.

A Dead Hand seems to be an exercise in giving mention to the things that amuse and repulse the handful of tourists who make their way to Calcutta, and from the looks of it, Theroux is quite taken with himself for producing such a book. (There is even a moment in the narrative where Delfont has a drink with the actual Theroux in what superficially comes across as self-deprecation, but is tinged with egoistic megalomania.) Unfortunately, he might be the only one so taken.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 26th 2010

Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by Chris Klassen

Lexington Books

Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation uses the publication of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards in 2000 as its point of departure. The co-authors embodied a third wave of feminist activism, but according to Chris Klassen, that they neglected new forms of feminist spirituality provides a rhetorical opening for a book such as this one that tries to capture a generational shift in feminist spiritual practice. The narrative the editor supplies, however, is a narrowly construed one. Mary Daly, as second wave icon, rejects traditional Christian theology, and Cynthia Eller’s work in the early 1990s helps to crystallize a movement in “contemporary Paganism and Feminist Goddess Worship” that grew out of North American spiritual experimentation in the 1960s and early 1970s.

As Baumgardner and Richards began teaching forms of activism and encouraging and re-energizing feminists of all ages, a contrapuntal phenomenon—a feminist impulse that turns inward rather than outward—exploded in our consciousness, especially because of the development of sites of worship on the web. At a conference at which these co-authors spoke, I asked whether feminism might not ultimately become a discrete religious practice—a query dismissed by those for whom feminism is essentially a political practice and also rejected by those for whom feminism is a force for change within an established religious tradition.

One of the remarkable features of this blog is the chronicling of both strands, interwoven and yet separate, in feminist thought. The growth in scholarship connected to feminist spiritual practice has been particularly remarkable, notably Danya Ruttenberg’s brilliant collection The Passionate Torah about feminism and its challenges to Judaism, Rosemary Ruether’s comprehensive study Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, and a host of books representing women’s spiritual struggles both within and without established religious traditions.

In that context, Feminist Spirituality disappoints in its reductiveness. It identifies Paganism and Goddess Worship as centrally defining “third wave” feminist spirituality. Sarah Marie Gallant contributes the first essay, essentially a review of the writings of Carol P. Christ and Starhawk. Catherine Telford-Keogh uses the tools of queer theory to help reclaim witchcraft as a part of her spiritual practice. Anna Mercedes and Jennifer Thweatt-Bates reflect on the influence of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) as a harbinger of third wave spiritual practice. Gene Meldazy and Kate McCarthy reflect on the emergence of popular culture as a part of spiritual practice.

The essays, by and large, are predictable within the framework Klassen provides and offer neither the original insight nor the comprehensiveness to represent an important contribution to an amazingly fruitful discourse.

Written by: Rick Taylor, December 11th 2009

The Hindus: An Alternative History

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:32:00 +0000

By Wendy Doniger

Penguin Press

Wendy Doniger, currently the most outstanding American scholar of Hinduism, serves us a feast of tasty historical events and interpretative myths in this rich curry of a book, covering social and cultural developments in the Indian subcontinent from prehistoric times to the modern day. It is an “alternative history” in that it concentrates on the interactions between the religious texts and rituals created mainly by those whom Gurcharan Das calls “Dead Male Brahmins” and the alternative peoples Doniger finds so significant in the evolution of the multiform Hindu tradition, such as lower-castes, women, Buddhists, Muslims.

Doniger’s themes include violence versus nonviolence towards humans and animals, tensions between the worldly “householder life” and ascetic renunciation, the desire to obtain a good rebirth on earth and the desire to avoid rebirth altogether. She emphasizes the Hindu sense of time, the feeling that things that happened in the past are the source of things happening now, that the past comes to fruition in the present, and the value of oral traditions in preserving variant voices in society. She maintains the importance of the history of ideas and the stories that express those ideas: “For we are what we imagine, as much as what we do.” Tales of animals are especially vital in Hindu mythology, and she recounts many different stories in which animals such as horses, cows, tigers, monkeys, dogs and an occasional cat play key roles. Gods even become incarnate as animals and are associated with particular animals, such as Shiva with his bull, Nandi.

Another important focus of Doniger’s work is the representation of the female gender, whether in animals or women, goddesses or ogresses. From the ancient myth of the doomsday mare in the depths of the sea, , to the rise of popular worship of the dark goddess Kali, the female in Hindu mythology is dangerous and must be controlled and propitiated. Doniger argues that there is “an inverse correlation between the powers of goddesses or supernatural women in texts and natural women on the ground.” The female divinities of India can be divided into goddesses of the breast, peaceful wives and mothers, and goddesses of the tooth, unmarried, independent of male control, often killers. Doniger finds that the situation in India, in general, destroys “the pious hope of goddess feminists” that the worship of goddesses is a good thing for women. The powers attributed to goddesses have not encouraged men to grant to women, or women to seize from men, greater political and economic powers. Indeed, the shakti or creative power seen as inherent in women leads men to try harder to control women, to silence them, except for those rebel women who defy convention and allow themselves to be possessed by the spirit of the fierce goddesses.

Doniger devotes considerable attention to the development of the custom of suttee, or burning wives on the funeral pyres of their husbands, along with other abuses such as female infanticide and the dowry murders of daughters-in-law still occurring in modern India. She notes that some eyewitnesses give evidence of widows who seemed willing to go to the pyre and others of widows forced to sacrifice themselves, adding that the voice we most want to hear is missing: “the voice of the woman in the fire.” We can never hear the testimony of the women who wanted to die and did, whether for pragmatic or religious reasons. The ritual itself arises from the mythology linking women and fire in the cycle of marriage, death, and rebirth.

The final chapters of this impressive study analyze the political and religious activities of Mahatma Gandhi, the efforts to reform or repeal the caste system, the migration of Hindus and Hinduism to England and America, and the political and religious controversies in present-day India. The Hindu goddesses continue to evolve: in Kerala in 2008 the goddess Bhagavati paid a ceremonial visit to her “twin sister,” the Virgin Mary, at a near-by church. Meanwhile the women painters of Mithila, who traditionally made wall and floor paintings in their homes for marriages and other domestic rituals, have begun to make and sell similar paintings on paper to art collectors in India and around the world. In spite of conflicts, the rich diversity of the Hindu culture is moving forward to a promising future.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, June 23rd 2009

Trivia: Voices of Feminism, Issue 9

admin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:48:00 +0000

Edited by Lise Weil, Hye Sook Hwang

What a journal! Trivia: Voices of Feminism, Issue 9 is a beautiful and inspiring electronic resource. Thinking about Goddesses is this edition’s theme. Editors Lise Weil and Hye Sook Hwang present fourteen articles made up of personal essays and poetry complete with moving artwork and pictures. What is Goddess worship? As a follower of Jungian theory, I am intrigued by the concept of the divine feminine—a fundamental force in the human psyche existing to be made conscious—a sacred element that brings unity with one self and nature, ultimately bringing balance to the masculine energies that have usurped our culture. The writing featured in this journal suggests that the urge towards spirituality advances the feminist cause rather than undermines it.

“My journey to Goddess was not about searching for something to believe in but more about looking for how to believe in myself,” writes Vanita Leatherwood in her personal essay "Testify," in which she recalls her battle between religion and sexuality and how turning to the Goddess led to greater “self-alliance” and empowerment. The same idea resonates throughout many of the fabulous works presented. There is a sense of wonder as you read these women’s stories; most of the writings here are fluid and embody a tone of profound sensitivity. Each of their personal philosophies seem to secrete from a place of deep knowing and you can’t help but feel that these women have become stronger as a result of reclaiming the lost feminine element in their lives.

Two essays particularly ensnared my curiosity. First, in "When hens were flying and God was not yet born," Luciana Percovich questions the responsibility of women and not just men in facilitating the climate of oppression. Acknowledging the opposing masculine and feminine forces, yin and yang, within the female body is vital in awakening consciousness; balancing these aspects would be to challenge “deadly envies” and “hierarchy” which exist in our society. In her current research about female cosmogonies, she discovers that in the same way as the X chromosome contains the Y, creation stories in the Early Times before God regard a ‘She-energy’ that encloses the male—the first sex is female, not male, as the ancient male narratives uphold.

The second remarkable proposal by Judy Grahn contends that menstruation lies at the root of all cultural practices. In "Goddess is Metaformic," she puts forward in convincing fashion the theory of Metaformic Consciousness—whereby any object natural or material holds menstrual significance; an object as simple as a pot becomes a symbol of the womb. And of course these objects or “metaforms” include deities. Exploring this notion in the context of South Indian society, Kerala in specific, where Grahn conducted her research, she explains that girls or “maidens” are worshipped as Goddesses during menarche (the first menstrual period). The powerful and primal energy of Shakti is evoked at this time and believed to flow through the adolescent who undergoes a menarche ritual that is celebrated as a kind of awakening or rebirth of consciousness as well as a transitory period.

In an interesting contrast, the poetry by Katie Manning, "First Blood," "Well" and "The History of Bleeding" encapsulates the shame and guilt felt by women in biblical times, where patriarchy construed the natural cycle as something unnatural and unclean. I am nonetheless quite gripped by Grahn’s idea as it contructs a female experience of the world and this is the feeling you consequently get after considering each of these passionate academic, personal and creative articles. By connecting everyday objects and the natural world to the sacred and feminine, we begin to respect, revere and heal our self and the Earth. As the title of this issue of Trivia suggests, Goddesses are entirely worth “thinking about” for this reason.

What is problematic about the reliance on the feminine principle however is the return it signals to the polarization of gender—the factor at the root of patriarchy. Whilst "feminine" is not equated with "woman" nor "masculine" with "man" in the context of the divine, they are still intimately allied. As the Goddess experiences in this installment unearth, this spiritual predilection is still a positive step towards creating a system that values a woman’s experience of the world. I loved learning about Amaterasu, the Japanese Sun Goddess and Inanna—a Mesopotamian deity with an array of attributes that include aggressive lover and warrior, and, in reading about how these powerful symbols influenced and strengthened the lives of these authors, I found the material enlightening.

Trivia: Voices of Feminism is an authoritative journal of great worth. The bonus: it’s free to access.

Written by: Payal Patel, June 20th 2009

The Lunar 2009 Calendar: Dedicated to the Goddess in Her many Guises, 33rd Annual Edition

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:24:00 +0000

By Luna Press

One of the reasons I chose to review The Thirty-Third Annual Edition of The Lunar 2009 Calendar: Dedicated to the Goddess in Her Many Guises by Luna Press was my attraction to the moon and the lunar phases of the moon. Not only am I astrologically a Cancer by heart, and ruled by the moon, but the moon has always been so mysteriously powerful and magical to me. Even as a child, I can remember always being very excited on full moon nights.

Nancy F.W. Passmore, editor of Luna Press, started this unique lunar calendar in 1975, which was a pivotal year in the United States during Second-wave feminism. Women were the first calendar makers and the first calendars were lunar calendars. According to the information provided in this calendar, more than 50,000 years ago women noted the correspondence between menstrual cycles and phases of the moon on lunar calendrical tally sticks. For generations women have been relying on the lunar cycle to guide them throughout their fertility cycles.

The '09 edition features beautiful artwork from twenty-eight artists, poets and writers. The front cover of The Lunar 2009 Calendar features a painting called "Prithvi, protectress" by Jamie Hogan. Hogan says: "With free reign for the calendar, I mixed it all up: an earth goddess, Prithvi, as a tiger queen bordered by decorative designs. This Lunar Calendar is "dedicated to the goddess in Her many guises," and I like to think that the Divine Feminine resides in every woman, queen or not. It’s a mix of nature wisdom, cycle awareness, poetry, and original art." The lunar calendar also features the tree-alphabet as inspired by the book-length essay The White Goddess by Robert Graves. I think the tree-alphabet is a powerful symbol of the fact that like the moon, we are part of nature and nature is a part of us. And while on the subject of nature: Luna Press, although costlier to print, only prints their calendars in the United States on recycled paper with soy-based inks. Just one more feel-good reason to purchase this calendar.

The Lunar 2009 Calendar is like no other because it follows the moon phases in an elliptical pattern, not just the calendar days in a block style. There are instructions in the back of the calendar titled: "How to Use your Lunacy!" that explain in detail how to read the calendar accurately. There is a lunar month diagram example that features letters A to L: each letter interpreting every section of the lunation.

The moon is a universal symbol for all people. Since the beginning of time we have been using the moon to live our lives by. The full moon and new moon phases can affect people in varying degrees, from feeling happy and full of energy to being exhausted, depressed and anxious. As Sarah Fuhro, long-time contributing poet, donor and reader of The Lunar Calendar says: "To know where the Moon is in her cycle, and in the sky, is to partake of her wisdom: there is a time for all things. The Lunar Calendar belongs to all who love the seasons, the keepers of the lunar rhythm." I would highly recommend ordering The Lunar 2009 Calendar. It is a beautifully well-produced calendar that helps us see time as tendrillar. To order yours, visit the Luna Press website.

Written by: MK Matson, March 31st 2009

Magic and the Power of the Goddess: Initiation, Worship, and Ritual in the Western Mystery Tradition

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:06:00 +0000

By Gareth Knight

Destiny Books

The planet is in turmoil and, according to Magic and the Power of the Goddess by Gareth Knight, we can heal it by connecting with the Goddess - the feminine energy that runs though our world. To fully connect with the Goddess though, one must study how she has been represented in various cultures throughout history.

The first part of the book deals with exercises and rituals (most involve meditation, circles, and candles) that one can perform in order to become more in sync with nature and the energy that runs through the planet. Knight claims that this energy is feminine and takes the form of the Goddess. By focusing on this energy, we should be able to heal not only ourselves, but the environment around us. The rest of the book concentrates on different myths from various cultures and how the Goddess is represented in each of these stories. Isis, Andromeda, Psyche, and the Virgin Mary are just a few of the women that Knight cites in these chapters.

Personally, I found this book to be a bit much. To me, meditation is a simple, stress-free practice, and I found Knight’s almost scientific approach to be very unappealing and complicated. The same goes for his take on ancient myths. I would have appreciated an in-depth analysis of how women and goddesses have been represented in mythology over time, but Knight’s analysis just seems to go in circles, never reaching any real conclusion. I’ve read a few new age books before, and while I’ve never really been a follower of what they preach, I could appreciate the author’s point of view. This book was different. I found Knight to be longwinded, rambling and, worst of all, boring. Maybe if I practiced Wicca I would be more impressed with Magic and the Power of the Goddess, but somehow I doubt it.

Written by: Victoria Kroeger, June 11th 2008

The Singing of Swans

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:06:00 +0000

By Mary Saracino

Pearlsong

Individualism. Capitalism. Survival. Of the fittest. These are values in our society that have evolved from the ideals taught in our mythologies. Historically, these mythologies have been male dominated and, in many cases, have been interpreted in ways designed to oppress certain groups - among them, women. Mary Saracino’s novel The Singing of Swans is a female-centered mythology focusing on the feminine divine, the Divine Mother.

The story revolves around Madalene Ross, a woman in contemporary society whose connections to those around her are tenuous at best. She lost her mother when she was a child, she has a poor relationship with her father and most of her friendships are work related. She discovers her spiritual connection to the past through dreams and an encounter with a homeless woman. Madalene is one in an ancient line of women: the Streghe, women with deep spiritual connections to the Divine Mother, who have been silenced by male dominated social structures, particularly the Catholic Church.

Saracino’s mythology gives a voice to women while also providing social commentary about oppressive forces throughout history. Woven through Madalene’s story are the stories of other Streghe: Ziza, Rosalina, Josephina, Ibla, and Magda, and their struggles to maintain their voice and their connections to the Divine Mother. Using the physical connection of blood ties – to our ancestors and Mother Earth – as well as spiritual ties, Saracino illustrates our sacred connection to the divine in nature and each other, woven as thread through a tapestry, to the past and the future.

While I occasionally enjoy a fun story in a nice, neat package, I truly appreciate those stories that leave me asking questions and searching within myself. How am I connected to all that has happened in the past and all that will happen in the future? We are not islands unto ourselves and Saracino shows our connections – how our pasts have shaped our world today and how we shape the future.

Written by: Jeanne Winslow, March 21st 2007