“Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Helen Benigni (Eds), Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess” reviewed by Kaarina Kailo (original) (raw)

Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture

Textbook, 2018

This book fills the very real need for an affordable, accessible, academic textbook featuring Goddesses from a wide range of world religious, cultural and mythological traditions. As a textbook, its primary audience is professors and students in university and college courses in Goddess Studies, Religious Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. It will also be of interest to students and instructors in the many Goddess-themed courses outside the academy. The contributors to the textbook were selected for their scholarly expertise and qualifications in their respective areas of study, both established and emerging scholars from Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Scandinavia, and Australia. The Goddess traditions surveyed in the 22 chapters include the Female Divine in the major world religions—not only Hinduism and Buddhism, but also in the “Western Religions” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, popularly regarded as impervious to the Goddess. The coverage ranges from ancient to contemporary, Mago to Mary Magdalene. As such, it is a unique and much-needed resource for students and faculty, as well as a treasury of Goddess scholarship.

Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre eds., Pagan, Goddess, Mother (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2021), reviewed by Barbara Bickel

S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, 2022

Mission Statement: S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies is a web-based, peer-reviewed international scholarly journal committed to the academic exploration, analysis and interpretation, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, of Goddesses and the Female Divine in all religions, traditions, and cultures, to be ancient, historical, or contemporary. The journal is a multidisciplinary forum for the publication of feminist scholarship in Goddess Studies and for discussion, comparison, and dialogue among scholars of differing feminist perspectives.

Goddess Thealogy: An International Journal for the Study of the Divine Feminine Vol 1 No. 1.1 (A4) December 2011

2011

While many magazines have emerged in the past several decades that focus on the nature of the Goddess more from a nonacademic orientation, Goddess Thealogy is intended to serve as a home mainly for scholars. However, it is our hope that contemplatives and practitioners alike, who may or may not have a graduate background in religious studies or a related field, will contribute to the discussion and the shaping of the field of thealogy. It is important that the bridges between theory and practice remain in integrity, alliance, and open dialogue. This journal is not intended to serve as a basis for ‘armchair’ thealogy. As such, the wisdom and perspectives of the communities who participate in veneration of the immanent-transcendent Sacred Feminine should always be a focal point from which to engage in the art of thealogy. Moreover, this journal is not traditional in the sense that it is structured to allow for more than simply philosophical thealogy and intellectualizing—it embraces artwork and commentaries related to creative pieces. Thealogy itself and thealogians to come will determine, shape, and reshape how thealogy manifests as a discipline. We hope that this first issue sets the stage for future thealogical works to emerge.

“Susan Ackerman, Gods, Goddesses, and the Women who Serve Them,” reviewed by Mary Ann Beavis

S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, 2023

Studies is a web-based, peer-reviewed international scholarly journal committed to the academic exploration, analysis and interpretation, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, of Goddesses and the Female Divine in all religions, traditions, and cultures, to be ancient, historical, or contemporary. The journal is a multidisciplinary forum for the publication of feminist scholarship in Goddess Studies and for discussion, comparison, and dialogue among scholars of differing feminist perspectives.

The ‘Goddess’ and Contemporary Spiritual Values

Psychology and the Arts: Perceptions and Perspectives (pp.85-93)

In this paper I will be discussing why some artists, musicians and writers use the 'Goddess' as a spiritual ideal in their work and life. We are going to see why during these last few decades images of goddesses became very popular with some female artists. In the early 1970's a good number of female artists were significantly influenced by the Goddess Movement. Women especially in the Women's Spirituality Movement in the 1960's felt that they had no authoritative role in conventional religions. Female artists started to include images of Goddesses in their work and the prehistoric goddess became for them the symbol of female spirituality. Primarily goddesses appeal to all those who are dissatisfied with mainstream religions, political institutions and all male-centred cultures. Many feminists find that institutionalised religions are dissatisfying because of the missing female element.

Criticism to the "Great Goddess" concept: a short bibliography

2020

The short bibliography presented in this paper relates to the critique to the "Great Goddess", a notion that several scholars, first of all Marija Gimbutas, believed to be present and well rooted in many different and distant in time and space prehistoric civilizations, as a sort of "feminine archetype".

Encounters with the Goddess: An Ethnographic Study of the Emergence of Feminine Forms of Consciousness

1994

This dissertation examines one aspect of how new cultural meanings have developed among some contemporary American women. This particular development concerns a shift in their meaning system away from male-centered symbols towards a meaning system that includes and even emphasizes feminine symbolic forms. From an outsider's point of view, the contemporary "goddess movement" might be seen as a fad, but what does it mean from an insider's perspective? This dissertation presents an ethnographic exploration in depth from the insider's point of view, into the lives of eight women for whom goddess symbols have become an integral part of their meaning systems, their consciousness, and their social worlds. This study explores the emergence of goddess forms in the experience of these informants. It examines what images appear in their consciousness, how they interpret these patterns, and how their interpretations of these patterns affect their daily lives within their s...