Goddess Re-Awakening: The Feminine Principle Today
Shirley J. Nicholson, Merlin StoneBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
This book shows how the feminine principle historically has been reinforced by symbols and myths that appear in all forms of art and literature, as well as in religion and psychology.Synopsis
This anthology, with essays by Riane Eisler, June Singer, and others, considers Goddess myths, current psychological perspectives, and the feminine principle in spirituality today. It offers a worldview that integrates intuition, intellect, and feeling.
Publishers Weekly
In this trenchant anthology, Nicholson ( Ancient Wisdom--Modern Insight ) gathers the work of 23 theologians, historians and other scholars in pursuit of what Stone, a pioneer of modern studies of the mother-Goddess, calls ``the universal feminine principle''--``the concept of a divine principle in the universe that is specifically associated with the female gender.'' These essays collectively imply that this feminine principle is far more profound than a simplistic antithesis of all that we think of as masculine. Addressing cultural representations of the mother-Goddess, female worship traditions and Goddess-centered rites, and the psychological, social and political implications of a feminine principle, the discussions are commendably free of jargon, combative rhetoric and scholarly infighting. In a particularly intriguing entry, psychologist June Singer suggests that by imagining their own deaths, hence letting go of a distorting sense of self-importance, women in a patriarchal society may reconcile the ``masculine'' definition of self through choice of career with the ``feminine'' emphasis on relations. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)