Starhawk's response to Charlotte Allen's article
Editor
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'
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 Allen 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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