~ September 2006 Supplemental Page~

WHO ARE THE THE NEW GODDESS ADVOCATES?  (cont.)

First, to clear up any misconceptions right from the start, do not believe the spin of nay-sayers that advocates for reclaiming and redefining the veneration of Goddess are just angry, radical or liberal feminists. To begin with, this was a distorted perception of those seeking liberation for women created by spin doctors who were against a shift in roles for women in society. Unfortunately these ugly stereotypes persist to this day and have affected how some view the Sacred Feminine. Much is owed to those activists who sacrificed so much to achieve suffrage, economic parity, and a woman's right to choose and the much needed spiritual parity which the Feminine brings is not about the anger some erroneously associate with the earlier feminist movement. Quite the opposite. It's more about both genders embracing concepts identified as feminine so that a climate of kindness, compassion, justice, equality and fairness might prevail for ourselves and our children. And it's not compassion without a sword if necessary. I call this the Divine Feminine Movement. And this idea of Goddess is not without scientific or historic foundation.

As a sacred tour organizer myself, I chased down sacred sites of the Divine Feminine across more than five continents. The evidence is there for all to see. Compared to the estimated 30,000 years a goddess was venerated by humans on our planet, the concept of a monotheistic male god dominating the landscape is a relatively new idea, only several thousand years old. Along the vast time line of history across cultures and continents, humans believed the Creatrix of all was either a female or a female in concert with a male deity. Some scholars, the beloved Joseph Campbell included, concurred with anthropologists like Marija Gimbutas and James Mellart that many Neolithic cultures were not cavemen or barbarians. Their thriving civilizations perpetuated ideas of peace, equality among the sexes, and a female face of God.

Today many advocate for a societal shift which is in some ways a return to this ancient way of seeing the world. This is not to say that the panacea for the world's woes is in its entirety a shift back toward Goddess. History has taught us that countries whose populations worshiped a female god were far from utopias. Gimbutas' Old European civilizations could not defend themselves against marauding hordes and were obliterated or assimilated. In many ancient societies women had no rights. Contemporary devotion to Goddess among Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Polynesians, Shinto, Christians, and Native Americans has not solved society's ills in our patriarchal world. However, absent a feminine way of relating to the divine, coupled with a male-centered society, the natural order of life has been thrown out of balance, creating a Pandora's Box of problems, not the least of which is the female gender has been relegated to second class or slave status for thousands of years. Even today, in some parts of the world, women may have acid thrown in their face for not bowing to male authority.

In the United States, the hard fought battle for a woman to control her reproductive rights might be slipping away. Those accustomed to a book to guide them along their spiritual path sometimes ask me, "So what do you believe and in what book are your rules?" Absent a book dictating man-made doctrines or dogma that often are the source of division among peoples, some practitioners of Goddess Spirituality follow a loose set of spiritual ideals while others are more comfortable to overlap the feminine in their traditional worship. For some time this has manifested in some congregations with liturgy changing from gender specific to gender neutral or the Father being spoken of alongside the Mother.

Recently, I attended a worship service organized by Temple of the Goddess, an up and coming church presenting sacred goddess-oriented ritual theater at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena, CA and their facilitators stated the principles of their church and their beliefs.

* We believe that every person is the living embodiment of the Divine and a manifestation of Divine Immanence.
* We respect that every person is their own spiritual authority and no one can define the Sacred and Divine for anyone else.
* We recognize that there are many paths to the Divine, symbolized by the many "goddesses" and "gods" of all cultures and all lands.
* We support an ideology and spirituality of partnership in relations based on equality, reciprocity and caring as opposed to domination and control.
* Though we recognize the Divine in many forms, the focus of that which we call the Divine is manifested in the feminine as "Goddess."
* We respect and love Mother Earth, Gaia, as a sacred entity who is part of and connected to a vast living cosmos. We believe She is immanent in all of nature, life, and the cycles of life. We honor the interdependence of the web of all existence of which we are each a strand.
* We believe the loss of the feminine consciousness and ideologies have caused near irreparable damage to humanity and the planet; and we believe the emergence of the feminine consciousness, in balance with the masculine, is the greatest hope for humanity and the planet.
* The feminine consciousness is the ability to create, nurture, and enhance life and therefore respecting the feminine nature in all beings and in all aspects of life has the power to greatly enhance healing and our quality of life on the planet, conversely, disrespecting the feminine has and can cause damage to all of life because of its interconnectedness.
* We accept the abundant goodness of creation which purports that all beings are meant to life in joy, love and harmony.
* We believe in morality and ethics in which the primary imperative is to harm none.

Attendees of the spring service were uplifted by an assortment of moving musical offerings and a choreographed dance retelling the story of the Goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Later they planted seeds in earth-filled containers representative of the needs they hoped would blossom for the coming year. More and more seekers are being drawn to these alternative ways of expressing their spirituality. In today’s patriarchal world, many who find few answers and little hope for change are discovering socially, spiritually, politically and culturally they are Goddess Advocates! Recently, in Santa Monica the image of Goddess was created on the beach accompanied by words protesting the war. A local anti-war activist group used the image of the Goddess of justice and freedom, the Statue of Liberty, dressed in a pink slip, as a metaphor to call for the firing of President George Bush. Goddess advocates believe NASA climatologists about Global Warming. They are concerned with the subjugation of women, who are the backbone of families, the fiber of society's core, across the globe. These people are your neighbors, friends and co-workers. They are men and women working side by side. They are artists, sanitation engineers, teachers, mothers, fathers, actors, secretaries, ministers, environmentalists, activists, and waiters. They are black, white, and brown. They are Buddhist, Native American, Shinto, Christian, Muslim, Jewish and more. In other words, they are all of humanity.

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