[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.]
Yvonne Lucia: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” -British suffragist and journalist Rebecca West
“When the God is male, the male is God.” -Mary Daly
Yvonne Lucia
Lila Moore: My first piece of performance art was a ritual inspired by Isis. However, as a young artist, my interest in combining art and ritual was devalued by my teachers and critics alike. I felt isolated and persecuted. Only after relocating to London was I able to gradually understand that my personal and creative aspiration was integral part of a collective and global feminine and feminist awakening. I realised that personal experiences of women have political perspectives, and that being a contemporary woman artist positions me in the midst of historical and cultural enterprise.
As an artist-film-maker and scholar, I have regarded my work as a spiritual quest, exploring through dance-ritual and art films the interaction of the body and psyche with the natural environment and technology. In the 21st century, my interest in the healing and transforming aspects of images on screen has been combined with a growing sense of activism. It seems inconceivable to take images of nature out of context by ignoring the ecological holocaust which is evident everywhere. I have felt compelled to ask whether the needs of the body and mind can be separated from the needs of the Earth?
Likewise, it has become ethically difficult to signify the feminine or the goddess outside the oppression, prejudices and mounting challenges that still affect women around the world.
Currently there is a growing global movement which gathers the combined powers of established and young artists, scientists and activists as never before. Screen-based technology and the internet have amplified Artivisim (art+activism) and have given a voice to minority groups and individuals wherever they may be. My recent involvement in activist peace events and environmental projects has made me realise the potential available in integrating art film, ritual and interactive media in small-scale though global settings. The time is ripe for the diffusion of women’s spirituality with evolving and transformative views of life on Gaia, our home planet.
Lila Moore, PhD
Jerusalem/London
http://www.screeningthespirit.com/
Jeri Studebaker: Why Goddess Spirituality? Because It Could Save the World. Utopia vanished when Mother Goddesses did. Here’s the story:
It’s 4000 BC. Worldwide, Mother Goddess is the central archetype. But suddenly, She turns deadly: the Sahara and the gigundo central-Asian deserts form. Great masses of people starve. Salvation (rain) now comes from the sky, so people turn away from dry-as-a-bone Mother Earth, and toward moist Father Sky gods.
In groups where people share food, no one gets enough, and the group goes belly-up in a hurry.
In other groups, the strongest (young males), grab all the food for themselves, and these groups survive. A new way of life starts: strong men bashing the weak is not only okay, it’s all that gets you a pat on the back, a wink of the eye, a nod and a high-five.
Institutionalized warfare, slavery and inequality begin. And spread, eventually, via violent force, to even the still-green areas of the earth.
If we recognize and erase “Starvation Culture” (which still eats away at us today — but subliminally) and turn back to Mother Earth as our guiding archetype, we could possibly dump and ditch all the things that seem to be spelling our doom: war, inequality and environmental degradation.
Jeri Studebaker, Maine, US
jeristudebaker.com
Facebook.com/jeri.studebaker
godmotherascending.blogspot.com
Lizette Galima Tapia-Raquel: Speaking about being the child of the Goddess has been very empowering for me.
I am a child of the Goddess
I was imagined in many waking dreams even before I was conceived.
I was birthed with blood and tears by a woman
as an entire community labored and awaited my coming
Many arms embraced me and many breasts nourished my soul.
Many hands raised me up when I fell down
and when I was lost, many more led me home.
I heard so many voices. Some whispered sweet comfort
and some cheered me on towards the goal.
And when I was ready to be on my own, they let go of my fingers
and watched me with tears until I was out of sight.
I crossed rivers and climbed mountains, ran after my dreams
and opened my soul to others.
I was changed and will never be the same.
I birthed myself again and again.
Then the Goddess came to me in a dream. She invited me to come home
and willed me to remember my beginnings.
I was afraid that she would think I was strange and send me farther away.
But she said, you have come home and found your own soul.
You have discovered your own goddess within.
Lizette Galima Tapia-Raquel
Assistant Professor
Union Theological Seminary
Philippines
www.diwatalakayan.wordpress.com
David Hazard The male-ego spiritualities are at each other like dogs, prepared to fight to the death; we need the great woman to arise and split the angry atmosphere of the world with equally fierce compassion.
Claudia Morgana Vico I´m a Goddessian because I/we need to overcome patriarchy. I feel safe in Her arms of cosmic cyclicity. We need to return to the pacific ways of matriarchal/matrifocal times when all humans were respected despite gender considerations, and Nature was respected as well because She was recognized as our source and final destination.
Claudia Morgana Vico, Buenos Aires, Argentina
http://www.diosademilnombres.blogspot.com/
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