Restoring the Goddess: Equal Rites for Modern Women

"In the beginning, in the time that was no time, nothing existed but the Womb. And the Womb was a limitless dark cauldron of all things in potential: a chaotic blood-soup of matter and energy, fluid as water yet mud-solid with salts of the earth; red-hot as fire yet restlessly churning and bubbling with all the winds. And the Womb was the Mother, before She took form and gave form to Existence. She was the Deep. . . ."

With this dramatic, poetic recasting of the Genesis myth, Barbara Walker begins this highly original and fascinating work, which is both an incisive critique of patriarchal religion and a bold proposal to establish a liberating alternative to the Judeo-Christian myth. She envisions a religion and a spirituality compatible with women's essential role in society and free of all the superstition and demeaning imagery characteristic of traditional, male-dominated religion. In place of theology she suggests "thealogy," replacing the academic study of the God concept with a down-to-earth "knowledge of the goddess" - a knowledge that incorporates the scientific understanding of the universe and recognizes the symbolic nature of religious concepts and the psychobiological foundations of religion. Rejecting the transcendent deity of patriarchal religion, thealogy would revere an immanent personification of the real universe, especially of the sacred Earth, the only source of life we know.

Hearkening back to the widespread worship of a mother goddess at the dawn of civilization, Walker argues for a restoration of this primal religious sensibility, which celebrated the Earth's fertility and woman's innate power to bear new life. Women are already rediscovering this ancient form of spirituality, Walker shows, and redefining modern religion to conform to woman's new appreciation of their rights and the long history of male dominance.

Through an analysis of biblical appropriation of Goddess-based religions and women interviewees' comments, the author of and reveals women's growing discovery of "thealogy" alternatives to patriarchal theology. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publishers Weekly

Walker's assessment of patriarchy's suppression of both knowledge and celebration of the Goddess compels her, as it has many before her, to begin restoring the lore of the Great Goddess. But Walker, a feminist author who has explored the dimensions of female myth and symbol in her previous fiction and nonfiction, does an odd thing here. Rather than offer yet another mythographer's source book, she wisely transforms her text away from the usual dialogue with the reader into an effervescent polylogue with other women about what such a restoration could mean and how it should be undertaken. As a result, Walker's enormously challenging and revealing book presents a community of voices. This is a volume of women talking: about the Goddess and patriarchy, about physicality, reproduction and the image of the Goddess, about rituals and purposes, about the New Age and about women's problems and fears as the Goddess re-emerges into secular culture. This format encourages continuing discussion in women's groups across the country about what Walker and other feminists term "thealogy," which she distinguishes from patriarchal theology. Thealogy returns worship tradition to the rediscovery of the sacred in the ordinary and transforms the undervalued lives of women into spiritual adventure. This book offers visible evidence of the advantages of redefining modern religion through women's participatory engagement. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Barbara G. Walker (Nokomis, FL) is a highly successful feminist writer of both fiction and nonfiction works. Her previous books include Feminist Fairy Tales, Amazon: A Novel, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, and The Skeptical Feminist.