some studies suggest as many as two-thirds of Contemporary Pagans are women.[1] As Harvey argues:
In its Pagan manifestation this Goddess-talk has primarily been concerned with the embodied living of life by women. “The Goddess” is not equivalent to “Woman” as archetypal being but more like “the innermost being of women” or “that which exists between women encountering each other”. The diversities and particularities of women’s lives are significant, not merely some overarching archetypes to which people might be expected to conform.[2]
That is, thealogy fundamentally seeks to go beyond ‘hypodermic’ models of patriarchal God worship in which participants are expected to conform to some ideal typified by an infallible male deity.[3] In contra-distinction, female deities empower female practitioners to create new expressions of feminine being which are not rooted in subordination to masculine gods or patriarchy.[4]
Her-Story and Gyn-Ecology
Such revisions concerning explicitly feminist and egalitarian models of worship by Goddess spiritualists also have had concomitant effects on the way they view the histories of patriarchy and misogyny. That is, goddess worship has often become associated with a revisionist historiography, accompanied by eco-feminist sentiment which equates nature with the
feminine body.[5] Such sentiments have been allied to a feminized version
- ↑ Dennis D. Carpenter, ‘Practitioners of Paganism and Wiccan Spirituality’ in James R. Lewis (ed.), Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 1996b, 373-406.
- ↑ Graham Harvey, Listening People, Speaking Earth, London: Hurst & Co. 1997, 69.
- ↑ For example, Starhawk, The Spiral Dance; Jone Salomonsen, Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco, London: Routledge 2002.
- ↑ Ibid.; also Emily Culpepper, ‘Roundtable Discussion: If God is God She is Not Nice’ in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5:1 (1989), 106-9; Catherine Madsen, ‘If God is God She is Not Nice’ in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5:1 (1989), 103-5; Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ, Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1989.
- ↑ For example, Leonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland (eds.), Reclaim the Earth. Women Speak Out for Life on Earth, London: Women’s Press 1983; Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, London: Women's Press 1984 [1978]; Susan Griffin, Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, London: Women’s Press 1984; Irene Diamond and Gloria Orenstein (eds.), Reweaving the Web: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1990; Judith Plant (ed.), Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, London: Green Print 1989; Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London: Routledge 1993.
