Temple of the Goddess is happy to announce the new location for our 2006 rituals. Presently, the temple offers four ritual theater programs a year that combine mythology and art to re-connect us to the earth and to strengthen our connection to the earth. They are multi-media programs combining music, dance, liturgy, spoken word, visual art, and participatory theater. These multi-cultural events are directed toward family and community and in 2006 will be held at the Unitarian Neighborhood Church in Pasadena.
 

Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church
301 North Orange Grove
Pasadena, CA 91103-3599
 

The sanctuary is spacious and just right for the unique blend of ritual theater that the temple offers. This beautiful space is nestled among tall pines, spacious green lawns, and cobbled walkways. It's on the west side of Pasadena, just north of Colorado Blvd. It's accessible from all parts of the Los Angeles area by the 134, 210 5, 10, and the 110 freeways. Parking is easy and free.
 

We look forward to sharing our celebrations of the Sacred Wheel of the Year with you at the Neighborhood Church.

“The seasons and all their changes are in me.” — Henry David Thoreau
 

The days of winter are now turning to spring. Winter and death are being cleansed away, and as the days lengthen, hope grows for the warmth of new life and a new year. It is a time of nurtured beginnings, a sweeping away of the past and an affirmation of things to come.
 

We hope you will join the temple, in community, to honor the seasons, the Earth and our own personal growth for the following Sabbats.

March 25, 2006 Spring Equinox
Planting our seeds for the coming year.

June 24 , 2006 Summer Solstice
Watering our intentions and weeding the doubts and fears that inhibit growth.

September 23, 2006 Autumn Equinox
Reaping our harvest for the year.

October 28, 2006 Hallow’s Eve
Taking our dream seeds into the dark to nurture until the coming spring.

Paganism is a religion of celebration, not redemption. These celebrations take place within "the Wheel of the Year," an ancient and sacred ritual calendar marking the Earth's changing seasons and the Sun's never-ending journey across the sky, as well as the Moon's waxing and waning cycles. Each holiday, or Sabbat, brings joy and good times along with deeply felt spiritual, cultural, and ecological meaning. The Wheel represents the life cycle of continual birth, death, and renewal as expressed in the changing seasons. These changing seasons also represent a psychological "map of consciousness" facilitating human growth. They contain the framework for personal transformation, rites of passage, healing, empowerment, and manifestation.
 

The Wheel of the Year comprises the seasons of the year: spring, summer, autumn and winter and signify birth, growth, fading and death. These seasons of nature reflect the inner seasons of the human landscape as well. The Wheel consists of eight Sabbats, or holy days. These eight themes represent both the inner and the outer cycles of the seasonal, the celestial, the communal, the creative, and the personal.
 

Imbolc or Candlemas (February 1) Candlemas is the feast of returning light, a festival of purification and dedication. It is the day on which winter turns upward to the spring. Winter and death are cleansed away, and as the days lengthen, hope grows for the warmth of new life. Candlemas is nurtured beginnings, a sweeping away of the past and an affirmation of things to come.
 

Spring Equinox (March 22) Spring is the time of bursting forth, of realizing the potentials of Winter Solstice and Candlemas. On the equinoxes light and dark are equal in a moment's balance. The Spring Equinox is the time of conception, when the rising light is ascending and overcomes darkness.
 

Beltane (May 1) Beltane is the celebration and honoring of the Earth at Her most fertile time as She receives the seeds that will grow into the fall harvest. It signifies mystical union and harmony with the environment. The traditional Beltane fire symbolized the central hearth of the community and represented the mystic divine fire at the center of all things, whose spark of life is carried by each of us.
 

Summer Solstice (June 21) Summer Solstice is the shortest night of the year, Midsummer's Night. This is the time of fertility realized. Here the circle begins waning toward darkness and winter's mystery, though winter is still far away.
 

Lammas (August 1) Lammas is the Sabbat of first fruits and green corn, the ending of summer. Lammas is a time of completions. It is the fertile, prosperous harvest that assures life's survival is nearly ready but not yet certain. It is still vulnerable to change.
 

Fall Equinox (September 23) Fall is the time of Thanksgiving, a time of gifts and blessings worldwide. Day and night are equal and the balance of giving and taking, of light and dark, summer and winter, life and death are the focus of this Sabbat. Though the year is waning and winter approaches, the emphasis is less on death than on the message of rebirth in the harvest seeds and the plenty of the season.
 

Hallows Eve (October 31) This is the new year, the time when the veil between this world and the spirit world is at its thinnest. It marks the onset of a darker, more introspective time of year. The theme of Hallows Eve is honoring darkness, memory of the dead, communication with the spirit world, and purification for the future.
 

Winter Solstice (December 21) Winter Solstice, or Yule, is the night of longest dark, the point of deepest night and winter before the returning of new life. . .the rebirth of the sun. This time of year signifies enlightenment, when the light is reborn within the womb of darkness. It is the time of the turning sun.

And the Wheel turns . . . again.

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota for donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on "FUND FREE MAMMOGRAMS” for free (pink window in the middle). This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate a mammogram in exchange for advertising. (You can disable pop-unders and still click every day.)
 

BELIEFS: Blazing a Trail for Followers of the 'Divine Feminine'
 

A Venice woman's new book is a guide to sacred sites around the world related to goddesses.
 

By Lisa Richardson, Times Staff Writer
 

Entering author Karen Tate's Venice apartment is like discovering an intact pyramid. On the walls, in curio cabinets — everywhere — are Egyptian-style artifacts and goddesses large and small, in headdresses and gold leaf. A 6-foot statue of Sekhmet sits guard in the entry (although Tate says the lion-headed goddess on the throne is temporary, soon to be moved to her garden in the desert).
 

As an advocate of goddess spirituality, Tate has traveled much of the world to visit places where figures from ancient mythology, such as Isis, Astarte, Artemis and Diana, were venerated. Much of her art was brought back from these trips.
 

Now she has written a book, "Sacred Places of Goddess: 108 Destinations," to help other seekers of the "divine feminine" to journey along the same paths.
 

Interest in the divine feminine has soared in modern times. No one keeps count of how many goddess believers there are in the United States, but an industry has arisen to accommodate them. There are goddess books and newsletters, websites and specialty stores. There is also a booming business in goddess travel tours.
 

The intense interest, Tate believes, has arisen in part because the world is out of balance. Wars, violence and a disdain for nature are the result of patriarchy suppressing the more feminine spiritual values of healing, sustaining and nurturing, she says.
 

Goddess veneration works to restore a balance that Tate writes existed thousands of years ago.
 

"In the beginning, God was a woman, and from her womb she created all that is; thus she is all things and all things are her . . .That was true 30,000 years ago, and for millions it is still true today," she writes in her book.
 

Seated in an armchair with one of her two cats on her lap, she adds, "If you do believe in a god that is someone who's going to give birth, isn't that going to be a female and not a male — or at least a couple?"
 

Tate, who was born in New Orleans, calls herself a disconnected Catholic.
 

"I didn't ever feel very passionate about it; it wasn't a very warm, embracing faith — at least not as I was brought up in it," she said.
 

She moved to Los Angeles at age 30 and on a whim took a class through the Learning Annex called "Finding the Feminine Face of God." It was a revelation.
 

"I felt angry," she recalled. "I felt like I had been duped for the first three decades of my life."

But even before she began studying feminine spirituality, Tate had been drawn to goddess imagery. Instead of reading Dr. Seuss books as a child, she pored over Egyptian mythology.
 

"I can remember as a kid sitting there in awe, looking at these ancient relics," she said.
 

"Sacred Places," published by the Consortium of Collective Consciousness in San Francisco, is part of a series of travel guides focusing on spiritual journeys.
 

"People who frequently travel are looking for a little more in their journeys, rather than sitting around the pools sipping mai tais," said founder Brad Olsen.
 

His market research showed that most travelers will buy 2.4 travel books per vacation: an overall travel guide and a book that focuses on art or history or some other niche.
 

"That means they buy their 'Lonely Planet' or 'Let's Go' and then something else. That's who we're targeting," he said.