encounter Her/Them? Can you tell me how you usually encounter Her/Them and in what ways? (For example, is it usually during ritual or in everyday life? Do you physically ‘see’ the Goddesses? How often do you encounter Her/Them?).
The next section asked questions about the relationship between
the participants’ self-defined spiritual path and Goddesses. The final
section asked a series of questions concerning the ways in which
participants themselves constructed gender; questions about the
dimensions of gendered inequality; and, the potential benefits and/or
consequences of Goddess-centred male spirituality at the personal,
religious and societal levels. For example, Do you think that your life has changed, or that you have changed as a person since encountering the Goddess/Goddesses? If so, in what ways? Do you view Men and Women has being essentially different? Do you think that currently there is a ‘crisis’ in masculinity? If so, can you tell me the forms that this crisis takes? Do you think that men still have to change their attitudes and behaviours in order to create better societies? If so, in what ways? (For example towards ‘others’, the natural world, etcetera.).
Given that this was merely a pilot study, I adopted a simple
probability sample built around a snowballing strategy. During the first half
of 2005[1], the internet link to the questionnaire was sent to a number of
Pagan journals, magazines, e-lists and organizations internationally
requesting for participants and that the link to the questionnaire be
forwarded to other potential participants. Given this sampling stratagem, I
cannot claim that the research is in any sense representative of male
Goddess spiritualists, nor can I make any estimation of its incidence.
However, in the following sections some of the headline findings will be
discussed and theorized.
Men and the Goddess: A Sociological Profile
The survey was open for a six month window and yielded 216 respondents. Of these 51 per centcame from the USA, 44 per cent from the UK and Ireland, 2 per cent from both Canada and Australia respectively, and 1 per cent from Continental Europe. It is impossible to say whether this is typical of the MGM as a whole, but I suspect that the over-representation of
participants from the UK is an artefact of my sampling methodology and
- ↑ Whilst the initial survey for this article was started in 2005 my analysis and conclusions are informed by on-going contact with the MGM and the broader Pagan movement. This will be discussed briefly in the article’s conclusion.
