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Religion From Nature, Not Archaeology
Starhawk Responds to the Atlantic Monthly
January 5, 2001
I write in regards to Charlotte Allen's article "The Scholars and the
Goddess" (January 2001). Although Ms. Allen interviewed me and others at
great length for this article, she still seems to have missed the core
insights and perspective of Goddess spirituality.
Goddess religion is not based on belief, in history, in archaeology, in any
Great Goddess past or present. Our spirituality is based on experience, on a
direct relationship with the cycles of birth, growth, death and regeneration
in nature and in human lives. We see the complex interwoven web of life as
sacred, which is to say, real and important, worth protecting, worth taking
a stand for. At a time when every major ecosystem on the planet is under
assault, calling nature sacred is a radical act because it threatens the
overriding value of profit that allows us to despoil the basic life support
systems of the earth. And at a time when women still live with the daily
threat of violence and the realities of inequality and abuse, it is an
equally radical act to envision deity as female and assert the sacred nature
of female (and male) sexuality and bodies.
Any discussion of "the Wiccan narrative" must begin from that framework if
it is to make any sense at all. And to truly understand our theaology (with
an 'a' from thea: 'Goddess') you have to be willing to move outside of
Jewish or Christian concepts of deity. Ms Allen, producer of the Catholic
page on Beliefnet and author of a book on Christ, seems unable to stretch
beyond her own belief system, and her conclusions should be read with that
in mind.
To us, Goddesses, Gods, and for that matter, archaeological theories are not
something to believe in, nor are they merely metaphors. An image of deity, a
symbol on a pot, a cave painting, a liturgy are more like portals to
particular states of consciousness and constellations of energies. Meditate
on them, contemplate them, and they take you someplace, generally into some
aspect of those cycles of death and regeneration. The heart of my connection
to the Goddess has less to do with what I believe happened five thousand
years ago or five hundred years ago, and much more to do with what I notice
when I step outside my door: that oak leaves fall to the ground, decay and
make fertile soil. Calling that process sacred means that I approach this
everyday miracle with a sense of awe and wonder and gratitude, and that in
very practical terms, I compost my own garbage.
The current discussion within the Goddess tradition about our history and
scholarship is part of the healthy development of a vibrant tradition that
tends not to attract true believers of any sort. We enjoy the debate, but we
are sophisticated enough to know that scholars, too, have their biases and
fashions. What is declared untrue this year may be true five years from now,
and vice versa. Archaeologists may never be able to prove or disprove Marija
Gimbutas's theories, but the wealth of ancient images she presents to us are
valuable because they work -- they function elegantly, right now, as
gateways to that deep connected state. We may never truly know whether
Neolithic Minoans saw the spiral as a symbol of regeneration, but I know the
amazing, orgasmic power that is raised when we dance a spiral with two
thousand people at our Halloween ritual every year. I may never know for
certain what was in the mind of the maker of the paleolithic, big bellied,
heavy breasted female figure that sits atop my computer, but she works as a
Goddess for me because my own creativity is awakened by looking at her every
day.
Allen makes a big point of asserting that ancient peoples were polytheists, and
that this somehow disproves the myth that they worshiped a Great Goddess. She
utterly misses the point that we are polytheists, now, today. No one, certainly
not Gimbutas, ever postulated a monolithic, monotheistic Goddess religion of the
past. But even the terms "polytheistic" and "monotheistic" come out of a framework
that actually makes no sense to us. It's like asking "Is water one or many?" The
only possible answer is "Huh? Hey, it's wonderful, miraculous, life giving, vital
stuff that we need to honor and respect and conserve and not pollute, that's the
point." Goddess traditions of today, in all their forms and nuances: Paganism,
women's spirituality, Wicca, Witchcraft, indigenous Goddess worship, are vast,
diverse, and constantly evolving. Allen's bias is shown in the extremely narrow
selection of Goddess thinkers and writers she chooses to interview or quote from.
She quotes at length from the book I wrote over twenty years ago, but doesn't
bother to mention the seven other books I've written or co-authored since, which
include an economic and sociological analysis of the Witch burnings in Dreaming
the Dark (Beacon, 1982), and a long discussion of the textual evidence for
Goddess worship and the transition to patriarchy in ancient Sumer in Truth
or Dare (HarperSanFrancisco 1988). She cites Cynthia Eller, whose own bias
is revealed in the very title of her book, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.
"Matriarchy" is a term that most Goddess scholars set gently aside sometime back
in the early eighties, if not before, because none of us envision an ancient society
that is the mirror image of patriarchy. Using the term implies that Eller is either
not up to date on the very movement she's critiquing, or unwilling to engage with
the full range of thought within that movement.
Allen doesn't bother to cite the dozens of other Goddess scholars,
philosophers, and journalists from Carol Christ to Margot Adler, who might
have provided a counterbalance to what she puts forth as the new received
historic truth. But her own bias is most clearly revealed in her use of
pejorative terms such as "bunk" and "hokum." This is not the language of
either objective scholarship or dispassionate journalism. I doubt that Ms.
Eller would write an article on new biblical scholarship, and then dismiss
Jewish theology or Christian mythology as "bunk." I doubt that the Atlantic
Monthly would publish her if she did. In today's world, people of good will
of every religion are striving for tolerance, understanding, and sensitivity
to other traditions. By resorting to religious attack under the guise of
scholarly critique, Ms. Allen demeans herself and your magazine.
Sincerely,
Starhawk
Author of The Spiral Dance
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