Women and the Goddess
Once again, Starhawk has an excellent (and brief) essay in the On Faith series, concerning the concept of the Goddess in Wicca, and what it means for women:
...Women have not faired well under most religions for the last five thousand years or so. But let’s take the long view: that’s just a blip on the timeline of human history...The Goddess is not just God-in-a-skirt, she represents a different spiritual orientation, one which locates the sacred in this world, in the cycles of nature, in the body and all its processes, that sees sexual communion, birth, maturation, healing, and even death and decay as sacred processes...in our tradition, we honor women without denigrating men, and there are also many wonderful, powerful and empowering men in our communities. But men do not have the automatic position of privilege—unearned, assumed authority—that they do in some other religions...
Most of the recent debates concerning spirituality have been dominated by two camps: the agnostic/atheistic view verses the JCM (Judeo-Christien-Muslim) culture. It's great that a Wiccan has finally been given a voice in the discussion. (Pic: Egyptian Predynastic Nadaqa dancing cow-goddess, about 4000 BC.)
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