Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America
From Chapter 1: Feminists on Spiritual Quest:
On a small lake in Maine humming with blackflies and mosquitoes sits a girls’ club camp, not yet open for the season. Each cabin is fronted with a rustic sign that has a name artfully burned into it: Bluebird, Gopher, Daisy, and the like. This weekend, each sign is covered over with newsprint, and new inscriptions can be found in magic marker calligraphy: Cerridwen, Kwan Yin, Artemis, Spider-Grandmother. Inside, the wooden walls and plastic windows are covered with epithets: “Janie Grant ’86,” “Marlee wuz here,” “Team #8—softball ’77—Champions! Yeah!” But this weekend, the walls are also covered with brightly colored robes and necklaces hung from nails, and several milk crates sit on the floor, topped with velvet cloths, candles, and goddess figurines. Across a grassy slope sits a lodge that has been renamed the “womb room.” Xeroxed instructions in the orientation packet explain that this is a “peaceful, sacred space” where participants can spend time alone or with volunteers who are “caring listeners.”
But on Saturday night, the cabins have emptied out and the womb room is vacant; the hundred women who have come to the Feminist Spiritual Community’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration are all in the dining hall, where tables and chairs have been pushed out of the way to make space for the Crone Ceremony. Three women are being honored tonight for having passed their sixty-fifth birthday, the official age at which they become crones, or wise old women. The ceremony begins with all the women who have recently reached cronehood seated on folding chairs in a small circle in the middle of the room. They are surrounded by two large circles of women under 56 years of age who are sitting on the floor. As the younger women listen, the crones talk among themselves about what it’s like to be an older woman, how their lives have changed, how other people react to them now.
When their discussion winds down, all the women present break into smaller groups to begin a ritual called The Decades of a Woman’s Life. Each group stands in a circle, and when the first decade is called—zero to ten years—all those who have lived for some part of that decade take a step forward, and one by one, each woman gives a single word or phrase to sum up those years of her life. “Confused,” “happy,” “learning,” “abused,” “blossoming”: a chain of words forms and finishes, and all those who have lived the second decade of their lives step forward and repeat the process. The circle grows first tighter, as all of the women present step together into their twenties, and then gradually smaller and looser, as fewer and fewer women advance into their forties, fifties, and sixties, until finally there is a circle of one, as the lone seventy-year-old sums up her experience of her seventh decade. Adjectives abound, covering a whole spectrum of living. In the decade of the twenties, one woman nearing croning age says, “miserable marriage,” to the sound of sympathetic murmuring from the circle. Then the woman next to her, barely into her thirties, says, “Two miserable marriages,” and the circle breaks into laughter. Later, in the decade of the fifties, one woman triumphantly shouts, “Lesbianism!” casting a fond look across the circle at her partner, and when the next woman giggles and says, “Bisexual,” the circle once again erupts in hilarity.
When the decades are done, the group assembles around the crones again, and this time the three women about to be croned are included in the inner circle. Each of the crones describes what she likes about being older: being more at home with herself, not caring what people think of her, having the freedom to love whom she will. Then the official croning begins: Each woman in turn is presented with a “stole,” a chain of braided ribbons that the crones in camp have been wearing around their necks as a token of honor off and on throughout the weekend. They re also given a “crone stone” to symbolize the weight and solidity of the wisdom they have gained over the years. The presentations are made by personal friends, who preface the gifts of stole and stone with stories of how they met and what this woman’s friendship has meant to them. Several daughters of the new crones are present, and as their mothers receive the symbols of cronehood and acknowledge them, they sit beaming and proud. When all three presentations are made, the larger circle begins to call out to the crones, saying, “I thank you for your wisdom,” “I thank you for your strength,” “I thank you for your beauty.”
The ceremony is closed with singing, as a storm that has been brewing outside finally lets loose with wind and lightning, thunder and rain. But no one is ready to break the mood, and soon a full-fledged party is spilling over onto the patio. Sparklers and bubble soap are passed around, and women bring drums and bells out to play while other women dance. As the storm gradually exhausts itself and the clouds part to reveal a full shining moon, a limbo contest has begun on a patio slick with bubble soap, a new crone and her daughter are singing and dancing the miserlou, and showers of sparks spread out into the night. Inside, volunteer furniture movers are hard at work, getting the dining hall ready for breakfast the next morning. Later, heading back to their cabins are three proud crones, wrapped in their new stoles, and a hundred younger women, glad in the thought that they too will one day reach this age of women’s wisdom and power.[1]
This ritual and these women are part of feminist spirituality, a new religious movement begun in the early 1970s that is today growing and flourishing across the United States and Canada, in parts of continental Europe and England, and as far away as Australia. It is a spontaneous, grass-roots movement with no overarching organization, no system of leadership, and no regularized form of membership. It draws on many religious traditions, but answers to none. It has neither institutionalized nor stagnated, and is in constant flux. The primary characteristic of feminist spirituality is variety. For virtually very belief that one woman claims as authentic feminist spirituality, there is another woman who will assert the opposite belief but make the same claim.
Still, it is possible to sketch the movement in terms of the few things that are matters of general (if not total) agreement, and just as importantly, in terms of key areas of tension. The most important agreement is that virtually all practitioners of feminist spirituality view the religion as being uniquely empowering for women: empowerment (sometimes more conservatively termed healing) is both the goal and the reward of feminist spiritual practice. Whatever works to make a woman stronger is valid feminist spirituality. There is also a consistent interest in ritual as a tool of empowerment and a means of communication with the sacred, and in some form of magic, divination, or the cultivation of psychic skills. Nature is almost universally revered, and often personified as a (or the) goddess or as Mother Earth. Women, like nature, are revered, usually for their female biological functions (particularly menstruation and childbirth). However varied the specifics, feminist spirituality always relies on an interest in the feminine, or at least gender, to sustain its system of symbols, beliefs, and practices. Finally, much of the feminist spiritual imagination is given over to speculation about how gender relations have been structured over the history of the human race. This “sacred history” is an ongoing reconstruction of Western history according to which prehistoric societies worshiped goddesses, and were possibly matriarchal as well, until they were replaced by patriarchal societies, which are today the status quo worldwide. Most spiritual feminists see themselves working to move this history into its next stage, in which patriarchal societies will be replaced by cultural forms more beneficial to the human race, and especially to women.
Given these areas of agreement, it is not surprising that tensions in the feminist spirituality movement are mostly collected around varying perceptions of the nature and importance of gender. The ongoing controversy over the inclusion or exclusion of men in the movement is the prime example of this tension. In addition, spiritual feminists disagree over whether women are similar to men, different from men, equal to men, or superior to men, and in what ways and to what degree. They disagree over whether differences are rooted in biology, cultural experience, or varying combinations of the two. Nor do they speak with one voice when it comes to describing ancient matriarchies, the origin and characteristics of the patriarchy, or their vision of nonpatriarchal societies in the future.[2] Apart from gender questions, there is dispute over how spiritual feminists should relate (or not) to traditional religions and how freely women should borrow from religions not their own. There is also theological[3] debate, though rarely very heated, over the nature of the goddess: whether she exists, how she acts or interacts with humans, whether she is metaphor or personality, one goddess or many goddesses, or all of the above. Questions of morality and the nature of evil also arise, especially in relation to the practice of magic. And as a movement that simultaneously has no leaders and too many leaders, there is conflict over how leadership is to be conceptualized and exercised.
What is perhaps most significant about these agreements and disagreements is that dissension is so easily tolerated, and the urge to create dogma so readily suppressed. Even the grossest of internal contradictions seem to create very little anxiety among spiritual feminists. There are a few notable exceptions, but for the most part, spiritual feminists have agreed to disagree, to overlook differences, to treat competing views as compatible views. There are no factions vying for the exclusive right to define what feminist spirituality is or can be, and a “live and let live” policy reigns supreme.
However, there are opinions. And opinions. And more opinions. While spiritual feminists are willing to let just about anyone station herself under the umbrella of the feminist spirituality movement if that’s where she wants to be, there is still a great deal of contention about what a really good feminist spirituality looks like, and on the other hand, what are troublesome directions for spiritual feminists to take. Every participant is the acknowledged authority on what works for her, what she knows, what she experiences, what feminist spirituality is for her. But this is where authority stops and the free-for-all begins.
For this reason, it is difficult to characterize just what is and is not feminist spirituality. As far as possible, I will function within the participants’ worldview, which suggests that there are no sharp boundaries where feminist spirituality ends and something different begins, no place where an individual woman can go so far as to fall off the map of feminist spirituality if it is her intention to be included. Rather than attempting to fix the movement’s outer limits, then, I will set myself the task of locating its center. I will be working to trace out a mainstream, to search out its headwaters and its primary direction of flow, but also to find tributaries and eddies, variations upon feminist spirituality’s basic themes that may in the future become new centers.
Spiritual feminists, then, are women who say they are spiritual feminists. But this is a definition that begs for greater refinement. What of the woman who worships a goddess, tells everyone who will listen about the matriarchies of prehistoric times, and spends her summer vacations at feminist spirituality retreats, but for whatever reason shies away from the term “spiritual feminist”? (As well she might, for there are an abundance of terms in use to describe this movement or portions of it, and many women feel more comfortable using these other terms with their different shades of meaning.) Is she not to be counted as part of the feminist spirituality movement? There is no one convenient criterion for judging who is part of the movement and who is not. Many participants worship goddesses, but not all do; most find the sacred in nature, but some don’t; there are those who meet in spirituality groups with others and those who always practice alone. In short, there are whole constellations of beliefs and practices in feminist spirituality, with no one factor emerging as the universally applicable test of who is a genuine spiritual feminist.
To add to the confusion, much of the social world of feminist spirituality is shared with other spiritually minded individuals. Spiritual feminist can be found alone in their apartments practicing yoga postures, writing in their dream journals, or consulting the I Ching for advice on how to run their businesses. They can be found in lecture halls looking at slides of prehistoric religious artifacts or in classrooms taking notes on pagan holidays and the sacred tools of witches. They can be found patronizing masseuses, herbal healers, and psychics in the marketplace of a New Age fair, or standing in circles under the stars at a neopagan festival, chanting the many names of the goddess. They can be found at Native American sweat lodges, in Buddhist meditation halls, in 12-step groups, and at academic conferences.
Feminist spirituality intermingles with all these religions and spiritualities. Furthermore, it overlaps extensively with two specific alternative religions, both larger than itself, making it even more difficult to isolate feminist spirituality. Feminist spirituality’s first burst of religious zeal took the form of neopaganism or witchcraft, a religious movement that predated feminist spirituality and that was based on the recovery of pre-Christian European religions. Many early spiritual feminists thought of themselves as neopagans or witches who were advancing a particular type of neopaganism—feminist witchcraft or Dianic witchcraft—but not a new religion of their own. It is still common to hear spiritual feminists define themselves as “witches,” “pagans,” or “feminist witches,” and many spiritual feminists participate in neopagan groups or gatherings. Feminist spirituality also overlaps with the New Age movement, and the two borrow so heavily from one another that some commentators say they are coextensive.[4] Yet feminist spirituality is a distinguishable phenomenon, one not limited to or contained by either neopaganism or the New Age movement. All feminist spirituality, whether it claims to be neopagan or not, has features that set it apart from mainstream neopaganism. The same can be said of the New Age movement. In places where feminist spirituality is practiced in its purest form, mainstream neopagans and New Agers with their differing agendas would not necessarily feel comfortable, nor in some cases would they even be welcome.
I believe it is most helpful to think of feminist spirituality as a cluster of characteristics, and that any woman revealing some proportion of those characteristics counts as a spiritual feminist. It is therefore possible to have two women who share little in common, but who have enough of the attributes of feminist spirituality that both are rightly considered spiritual feminists.[5] In deference to the movement’s self-understanding, I will count as a spiritual feminist any woman who sincerely believes herself to be one, whatever she may believe or practice. But I will also count women who shun the identification, but adhere to at least three of the five major characteristics of feminist spirituality discussed above: valuing women’s empowerment, practicing ritual and/or magic, revering nature, using the feminine or gender as a primary mode of religious analysis, and espousing the revisionist version of Western history favored by the movement.[6]
[1] This ritual was held at the Feminist Spiritual Community’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration, Camp Mataponi, Naples, Maine, June 9, 1990. The Feminist Spiritual Community meets weekly in Portland, Maine.
[2] Passing reference to controversies involving feminist spirituality’s construction of gender and its theory of ancient matriarchies is made in these pages; a more extensive treatment can be found in my forthcoming book, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.
[3] Spiritual feminists commonly use the spelling “theology” to indicate that they are reflecting on the divine as feminine, substituting the Greek root thea, the feminine form of the word “god,” for the traditional theos, which is masculine.
[4] See, for example, Russell Chandler, Understanding the New Age (Dallas: Word Publications, 1988), 121-23.
[5] In classifying feminist spirituality in this manner, I am indebted to Jonathan Z. Smith’s discussion of taxonomies in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 2-4.
[6] The empowerment of women and the movement’s version of Western history are characteristics more unique to feminist spirituality than the others, and for this reason I would weight them more heavily in making decisions about how to classify individuals in borderline cases.
From Chapter 1: Feminists on Spiritual Quest:
On a small lake in Maine humming with blackflies and mosquitoes sits a girls’ club camp, not yet open for the season. Each cabin is fronted with a rustic sign that has a name artfully burned into it: Bluebird, Gopher, Daisy, and the like. This weekend, each sign is covered over with newsprint, and new inscriptions can be found in magic marker calligraphy: Cerridwen, Kwan Yin, Artemis, Spider-Grandmother. Inside, the wooden walls and plastic windows are covered with epithets: “Janie Grant ’86,” “Marlee wuz here,” “Team #8—softball ’77—Champions! Yeah!” But this weekend, the walls are also covered with brightly colored robes and necklaces hung from nails, and several milk crates sit on the floor, topped with velvet cloths, candles, and goddess figurines. Across a grassy slope sits a lodge that has been renamed the “womb room.” Xeroxed instructions in the orientation packet explain that this is a “peaceful, sacred space” where participants can spend time alone or with volunteers who are “caring listeners.”
But on Saturday night, the cabins have emptied out and the womb room is vacant; the hundred women who have come to the Feminist Spiritual Community’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration are all in the dining hall, where tables and chairs have been pushed out of the way to make space for the Crone Ceremony. Three women are being honored tonight for having passed their sixty-fifth birthday, the official age at which they become crones, or wise old women. The ceremony begins with all the women who have recently reached cronehood seated on folding chairs in a small circle in the middle of the room. They are surrounded by two large circles of women under 56 years of age who are sitting on the floor. As the younger women listen, the crones talk among themselves about what it’s like to be an older woman, how their lives have changed, how other people react to them now.
When their discussion winds down, all the women present break into smaller groups to begin a ritual called The Decades of a Woman’s Life. Each group stands in a circle, and when the first decade is called—zero to ten years—all those who have lived for some part of that decade take a step forward, and one by one, each woman gives a single word or phrase to sum up those years of her life. “Confused,” “happy,” “learning,” “abused,” “blossoming”: a chain of words forms and finishes, and all those who have lived the second decade of their lives step forward and repeat the process. The circle grows first tighter, as all of the women present step together into their twenties, and then gradually smaller and looser, as fewer and fewer women advance into their forties, fifties, and sixties, until finally there is a circle of one, as the lone seventy-year-old sums up her experience of her seventh decade. Adjectives abound, covering a whole spectrum of living. In the decade of the twenties, one woman nearing croning age says, “miserable marriage,” to the sound of sympathetic murmuring from the circle. Then the woman next to her, barely into her thirties, says, “Two miserable marriages,” and the circle breaks into laughter. Later, in the decade of the fifties, one woman triumphantly shouts, “Lesbianism!” casting a fond look across the circle at her partner, and when the next woman giggles and says, “Bisexual,” the circle once again erupts in hilarity.
When the decades are done, the group assembles around the crones again, and this time the three women about to be croned are included in the inner circle. Each of the crones describes what she likes about being older: being more at home with herself, not caring what people think of her, having the freedom to love whom she will. Then the official croning begins: Each woman in turn is presented with a “stole,” a chain of braided ribbons that the crones in camp have been wearing around their necks as a token of honor off and on throughout the weekend. They re also given a “crone stone” to symbolize the weight and solidity of the wisdom they have gained over the years. The presentations are made by personal friends, who preface the gifts of stole and stone with stories of how they met and what this woman’s friendship has meant to them. Several daughters of the new crones are present, and as their mothers receive the symbols of cronehood and acknowledge them, they sit beaming and proud. When all three presentations are made, the larger circle begins to call out to the crones, saying, “I thank you for your wisdom,” “I thank you for your strength,” “I thank you for your beauty.”
The ceremony is closed with singing, as a storm that has been brewing outside finally lets loose with wind and lightning, thunder and rain. But no one is ready to break the mood, and soon a full-fledged party is spilling over onto the patio. Sparklers and bubble soap are passed around, and women bring drums and bells out to play while other women dance. As the storm gradually exhausts itself and the clouds part to reveal a full shining moon, a limbo contest has begun on a patio slick with bubble soap, a new crone and her daughter are singing and dancing the miserlou, and showers of sparks spread out into the night. Inside, volunteer furniture movers are hard at work, getting the dining hall ready for breakfast the next morning. Later, heading back to their cabins are three proud crones, wrapped in their new stoles, and a hundred younger women, glad in the thought that they too will one day reach this age of women’s wisdom and power.[1]
This ritual and these women are part of feminist spirituality, a new religious movement begun in the early 1970s that is today growing and flourishing across the United States and Canada, in parts of continental Europe and England, and as far away as Australia. It is a spontaneous, grass-roots movement with no overarching organization, no system of leadership, and no regularized form of membership. It draws on many religious traditions, but answers to none. It has neither institutionalized nor stagnated, and is in constant flux. The primary characteristic of feminist spirituality is variety. For virtually very belief that one woman claims as authentic feminist spirituality, there is another woman who will assert the opposite belief but make the same claim.
Still, it is possible to sketch the movement in terms of the few things that are matters of general (if not total) agreement, and just as importantly, in terms of key areas of tension. The most important agreement is that virtually all practitioners of feminist spirituality view the religion as being uniquely empowering for women: empowerment (sometimes more conservatively termed healing) is both the goal and the reward of feminist spiritual practice. Whatever works to make a woman stronger is valid feminist spirituality. There is also a consistent interest in ritual as a tool of empowerment and a means of communication with the sacred, and in some form of magic, divination, or the cultivation of psychic skills. Nature is almost universally revered, and often personified as a (or the) goddess or as Mother Earth. Women, like nature, are revered, usually for their female biological functions (particularly menstruation and childbirth). However varied the specifics, feminist spirituality always relies on an interest in the feminine, or at least gender, to sustain its system of symbols, beliefs, and practices. Finally, much of the feminist spiritual imagination is given over to speculation about how gender relations have been structured over the history of the human race. This “sacred history” is an ongoing reconstruction of Western history according to which prehistoric societies worshiped goddesses, and were possibly matriarchal as well, until they were replaced by patriarchal societies, which are today the status quo worldwide. Most spiritual feminists see themselves working to move this history into its next stage, in which patriarchal societies will be replaced by cultural forms more beneficial to the human race, and especially to women.
Given these areas of agreement, it is not surprising that tensions in the feminist spirituality movement are mostly collected around varying perceptions of the nature and importance of gender. The ongoing controversy over the inclusion or exclusion of men in the movement is the prime example of this tension. In addition, spiritual feminists disagree over whether women are similar to men, different from men, equal to men, or superior to men, and in what ways and to what degree. They disagree over whether differences are rooted in biology, cultural experience, or varying combinations of the two. Nor do they speak with one voice when it comes to describing ancient matriarchies, the origin and characteristics of the patriarchy, or their vision of nonpatriarchal societies in the future.[2] Apart from gender questions, there is dispute over how spiritual feminists should relate (or not) to traditional religions and how freely women should borrow from religions not their own. There is also theological[3] debate, though rarely very heated, over the nature of the goddess: whether she exists, how she acts or interacts with humans, whether she is metaphor or personality, one goddess or many goddesses, or all of the above. Questions of morality and the nature of evil also arise, especially in relation to the practice of magic. And as a movement that simultaneously has no leaders and too many leaders, there is conflict over how leadership is to be conceptualized and exercised.
What is perhaps most significant about these agreements and disagreements is that dissension is so easily tolerated, and the urge to create dogma so readily suppressed. Even the grossest of internal contradictions seem to create very little anxiety among spiritual feminists. There are a few notable exceptions, but for the most part, spiritual feminists have agreed to disagree, to overlook differences, to treat competing views as compatible views. There are no factions vying for the exclusive right to define what feminist spirituality is or can be, and a “live and let live” policy reigns supreme.
However, there are opinions. And opinions. And more opinions. While spiritual feminists are willing to let just about anyone station herself under the umbrella of the feminist spirituality movement if that’s where she wants to be, there is still a great deal of contention about what a really good feminist spirituality looks like, and on the other hand, what are troublesome directions for spiritual feminists to take. Every participant is the acknowledged authority on what works for her, what she knows, what she experiences, what feminist spirituality is for her. But this is where authority stops and the free-for-all begins.
For this reason, it is difficult to characterize just what is and is not feminist spirituality. As far as possible, I will function within the participants’ worldview, which suggests that there are no sharp boundaries where feminist spirituality ends and something different begins, no place where an individual woman can go so far as to fall off the map of feminist spirituality if it is her intention to be included. Rather than attempting to fix the movement’s outer limits, then, I will set myself the task of locating its center. I will be working to trace out a mainstream, to search out its headwaters and its primary direction of flow, but also to find tributaries and eddies, variations upon feminist spirituality’s basic themes that may in the future become new centers.
Spiritual feminists, then, are women who say they are spiritual feminists. But this is a definition that begs for greater refinement. What of the woman who worships a goddess, tells everyone who will listen about the matriarchies of prehistoric times, and spends her summer vacations at feminist spirituality retreats, but for whatever reason shies away from the term “spiritual feminist”? (As well she might, for there are an abundance of terms in use to describe this movement or portions of it, and many women feel more comfortable using these other terms with their different shades of meaning.) Is she not to be counted as part of the feminist spirituality movement? There is no one convenient criterion for judging who is part of the movement and who is not. Many participants worship goddesses, but not all do; most find the sacred in nature, but some don’t; there are those who meet in spirituality groups with others and those who always practice alone. In short, there are whole constellations of beliefs and practices in feminist spirituality, with no one factor emerging as the universally applicable test of who is a genuine spiritual feminist.
To add to the confusion, much of the social world of feminist spirituality is shared with other spiritually minded individuals. Spiritual feminist can be found alone in their apartments practicing yoga postures, writing in their dream journals, or consulting the I Ching for advice on how to run their businesses. They can be found in lecture halls looking at slides of prehistoric religious artifacts or in classrooms taking notes on pagan holidays and the sacred tools of witches. They can be found patronizing masseuses, herbal healers, and psychics in the marketplace of a New Age fair, or standing in circles under the stars at a neopagan festival, chanting the many names of the goddess. They can be found at Native American sweat lodges, in Buddhist meditation halls, in 12-step groups, and at academic conferences.
Feminist spirituality intermingles with all these religions and spiritualities. Furthermore, it overlaps extensively with two specific alternative religions, both larger than itself, making it even more difficult to isolate feminist spirituality. Feminist spirituality’s first burst of religious zeal took the form of neopaganism or witchcraft, a religious movement that predated feminist spirituality and that was based on the recovery of pre-Christian European religions. Many early spiritual feminists thought of themselves as neopagans or witches who were advancing a particular type of neopaganism—feminist witchcraft or Dianic witchcraft—but not a new religion of their own. It is still common to hear spiritual feminists define themselves as “witches,” “pagans,” or “feminist witches,” and many spiritual feminists participate in neopagan groups or gatherings. Feminist spirituality also overlaps with the New Age movement, and the two borrow so heavily from one another that some commentators say they are coextensive.[4] Yet feminist spirituality is a distinguishable phenomenon, one not limited to or contained by either neopaganism or the New Age movement. All feminist spirituality, whether it claims to be neopagan or not, has features that set it apart from mainstream neopaganism. The same can be said of the New Age movement. In places where feminist spirituality is practiced in its purest form, mainstream neopagans and New Agers with their differing agendas would not necessarily feel comfortable, nor in some cases would they even be welcome.
I believe it is most helpful to think of feminist spirituality as a cluster of characteristics, and that any woman revealing some proportion of those characteristics counts as a spiritual feminist. It is therefore possible to have two women who share little in common, but who have enough of the attributes of feminist spirituality that both are rightly considered spiritual feminists.[5] In deference to the movement’s self-understanding, I will count as a spiritual feminist any woman who sincerely believes herself to be one, whatever she may believe or practice. But I will also count women who shun the identification, but adhere to at least three of the five major characteristics of feminist spirituality discussed above: valuing women’s empowerment, practicing ritual and/or magic, revering nature, using the feminine or gender as a primary mode of religious analysis, and espousing the revisionist version of Western history favored by the movement.[6]
[1] This ritual was held at the Feminist Spiritual Community’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration, Camp Mataponi, Naples, Maine, June 9, 1990. The Feminist Spiritual Community meets weekly in Portland, Maine.
[2] Passing reference to controversies involving feminist spirituality’s construction of gender and its theory of ancient matriarchies is made in these pages; a more extensive treatment can be found in my forthcoming book, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.
[3] Spiritual feminists commonly use the spelling “theology” to indicate that they are reflecting on the divine as feminine, substituting the Greek root thea, the feminine form of the word “god,” for the traditional theos, which is masculine.
[4] See, for example, Russell Chandler, Understanding the New Age (Dallas: Word Publications, 1988), 121-23.
[5] In classifying feminist spirituality in this manner, I am indebted to Jonathan Z. Smith’s discussion of taxonomies in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 2-4.
[6] The empowerment of women and the movement’s version of Western history are characteristics more unique to feminist spirituality than the others, and for this reason I would weight them more heavily in making decisions about how to classify individuals in borderline cases.
