[Author’s Note: This is the Introduction chapter from: Pagan, Goddess, Mother, edited by Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre, Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 11-28, https://demeterpress.org/books/pagan-goddess-mother/.]
Introduction (continued)
Following Pagan, Goddess, Mother Threads
As editors, we see obvious interconnections between Pagan and Goddess traditions for empowering practices of actual mothers and mothering. Yet this is the first anthology we know of to explore this field from the perspective of mothers and matricentric (mother- centred) feminism. This gap of knowledge may be explained by the ongoing lack of focus on mothers and mothering as subjects of academic study and inquiry, despite humans being born from mothers.
As noted by motherhood studies leader and scholar Andrea O’Reilly, the study of motherhood and mothering remains peripheral to academic feminism (“Matricentric” 19). In pursuing matricentric feminism, O’Reilly notes that “Motherhood is the unfinished business of feminism” (14). Intriguingly, we note that “spirituality” and “Goddess” also remain sidelined topics in academia (Jordan, Inspiriting), as little material is found in any coursework or research across North American universities, despite our knowledge of the many vital scholarly and practice-based contacts and communities in these fields. Thus, to amalgamate Pagan and Goddess spirituality with matricentric feminism brings new perspectives forwards from both fields, with much material remaining to be uncovered. O’Reilly notes that one of the governing principles of matricentric feminism is that it “commits to social change and social justice, and regards mothering as a socially engaged enterprise and site of power, wherein mothers can and do create social change through childrearing and activism” (“Matricentric” 18)
For us, Goddess is the penultimate extension, expansion, and worldview of matricentric feminism. Through a spiritualized matricentric worldview, Goddess as deity, symbol, energy, form, culture, creative power, and practice feeds our daily lives as mothers, and nourishes our lives as people who engage in the gifting work of social change. We know the value of the motherwork we do, and the maternal gifts we give (Vaughan). We cocreate with and expect the support of others in raising our children. We equally value our self-actualization as spirited human beings. Thus, mothering is an ongoing weaving of many threads for thriving of self and other as in the philosophical value of “eudaimonia,” which refers to human flourishing and the blessedness of a life well lived.
As editors, we value how the mother-scholar authors in this anthology pursue what O’Reilly terms “the matrifocal narrative.” In such narratives, mothers play “a role of cultural and social significance in which motherhood is thematically elaborated and valued, and is structurally central to the plot” (Matricentric, 5-6). To begin exploring Pagan and Goddess spirituality through the lens of matricentric feminism, Pagan, Goddess, Mother is divided into three sections, with a total of thirteen chapters, including essays and poems. We mention the number thirteen, as we can only think that Goddess is giving us a wink—thirteen being, in the esoteric literature, the perfect coven (gathering circle) of witches. The number thirteen was also made famously unlucky in Western culture. Yet for Pagans and Goddess lovers, the number thirteen is well known as the original lunar calendar. This denotes the yearly cycle of thirteen moons for tracking human time on Earth. Furthermore, the phases of thirteen moons are interconnected with the timing of the life-giving female menstrual cycle, where body and cosmos are united as sacred cycles of life.
The first section, “Priestess, Witch, Artist, Midwife: Mother Stories,” opens the anthology. We delve into mothers’ narratives from the forefronts of home-, self-, and life-making as Pagan- and Goddess-loving mothers. In “Mamapriestess,” Molly Remer explores the intricate interconnections among her birthing, mothering, and Goddess spirituality priestessing in her working-from-home life. Remer is the home-based priestess of Brigid’s Grove, through which she leads and teaches Goddess-centred women’s spirituality programs, circles, and rituals. Her story deeply expresses how Goddess as Mother affirms her worth and value in her own maternal role. Remer shares and reflects upon her study of contemporary American priestesses who are, like herself, in the “immersive stage of life as a mother.”
Sarah Rosehill, in “Finding my Footing as a Witch and a Mother,” shares the intensity of birthing and becoming a mother to her daughter, alongside insights into her spiritual life as a witch, through the path of Anamanta, which “invites us to open to the world around us—the earth, the wind, the lake, the stars.” Rosehill’s experiences of early mothering are deeply informed by her Pagan pathway, where she finds solace and joy in surrendering to the demanding new rhythms of her mothering life. Mothering is coenriched by her spiritual life, revealing the deeper meanings of each.
In “Remothering and the Goddess,” Asia Morgenthaler reveals her interconnected journeys of becoming a mother and an artist as well as the enrichment of her life pathway through her relationship to the Goddess. As Morgenthaler emerges as an artist, she finds Goddess images pour through her, creatively healing childhood and family wounds. Morgenthaler artfully reclaims her once strained relationship to the figure of the Virgin Mary through Goddess-led meanings and symbolism and the power of painting “her sacred face.” Her artwork from her series “Mary” graces this anthology cover.
In her poem, “Minks,” Elizabeth Cunningham tells a mother- daughter story of remembering across the generations. In this, a wise daughter, wearing an old mink coat from her grandma, prays to heal the family’s past transgressions.
The chapter written by Welsh midwife and professor, Alys Einion, is titled, “‘Call Unto Thy Soul’: A Reflexive Autoethnography of a Pagan, Priestess, Goddess-Worshipper, and Mother.” Einion explores interlinking threads of her varied life roles, including her early-life dedication to the Goddess, her experiences as a lesbian woman and mother, and her service to women’s birthing powers as a midwife. Einion’s experiential and embodied dedication to her Goddess and birth- work pathways creatively reveals “the ecstasy of that femaleness, of the sheer power of what some call our physicality, but which cannot be separated from the divine. We are Goddess.”
The next book section, “Scholarship from Pagan Goddess Motherlines,” centres on three authors who provide thought-provoking propositions in developing mother-centred Pagan- and Goddess-based analyses, theologies, and philosophies. This section opens with Pagan theologian Christine Hoff Kraemer’s chapter, “Pagan Mothering, Body Sovereignty, and Consent Culture.” Kraemer, a mother and Pagan, describes the powerful paradox in Pagan communities of seeking one’s tribe while yearning for personal autonomy. She uses this lens to discuss the ethics of touch. Kraemer explores this from a Pagan view to provide a guide for consent culture in the context of mothering children, with strides towards building a more empathetic community.
Next is Kusumita Mukherjee Debnath’s chapter, “I Do Not Want to Be a Goddess.” Muhkerjee Debnath explores the conditions she faces in her Hindu homeland of India through the constructed trapping of women in stories and dictates of Goddesses Lakshmi and Alakshmi. Revealed through Hindu scripture and myth, Muhkerjee Debnath speaks to this cultural and religious landscape and what it means in her own life to feel the challenges of these juxtaposed Goddesses. These leave her in a quandary of expected duties to family and beliefs that restrict women in a world of men. She speaks to the inequities this entails, in which women in their sanctioned roles of wife and mother must support the household, whereas their personal aspirations and intelligences are eschewed. Muhkerjee Debnath ends on a hopeful note through her decision to emancipate herself from these Goddesses through a reinterpretation of how she has been taught to know them.
In the next chapter, “The Path of the Cold Hearth-Stone: Reflections on Sex, Saturn, and Solitary Working,” Georgia van Raalte shares the legacy of occultist Dione Fortune and others. Naming Fortune as, “the first (modern, western) attempt to bring esotericism to women and the middle classes,” van Raalte explores Fortune’s complex philosophies in relation to mothering and notes that the importance of family and motherhood have been lost from much of contemporary occultism. She argues that sexuality, motherhood, and family should not be considered separate categories. With the still sacrificial context of motherhood and the overly sexualized patriarchal imagination of the dominant culture, van Raalte proposes that the “truly revolutionary would be to position fulfillment in the space of ‘hygge’—in contentedness, growth and family in order to highlight a more public role of family members.
The final book section, “Empowering Spirited Mother-Daughter Lineages,” focuses on being a daughter and/or being a mother of daughters as well as the effects of Pagan and Goddess spirituality for family lineage, healing, and empowering women across generations. In “The Spiritual Dimension of Mother-Daughter Groups: Healing with Artemis, Demeter, and Persephone,” Laura Zegel speaks of the power of the mother-daughter Goddess archetype of Demeter and Persephone for modern mother-daughter support groups. Zegel relates these mother- daughter Goddesses and their mythology to the growth of mother- daughter groups in her local community. She explores the generative impact of community groups to support mothers in empowering their daughters as they grow into adulthood.
Author Jennifer Lawrence follows with a poem titled “My Persephone.” Lawrence explores her love for her daughter as they kneel together in the garden, where mothering a child is beautifully evoked as being like growing a garden, with prayers to Goddess Demeter for a daughter’s safety and wellbeing.
In “The Thread. From Mother to Daughter to Grandmother: Mothers Talk to Their Daughters, from Mythical Times to the Birth of History,” Arabella von Arx writes a fictional tale illustrated by hand drawings, told across generations of women who bear only daughters. Imagining those who might have been her own ancestors and how they bore their lives, von Arx spins a continuous, thread of wonders in the lives of the daughter, the mother, and the grandmother. Her stories explore the “collected the cares and sufferings and toils and brief moments of joy of the women to whom we owe our existence.”
In “Goddess Is Mother Love,” we, the coeditors, Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre, share a weaving of our own stories from the forefront of Goddess-centred homes. We interweave storied glimpses of our practices of Goddess spiritualty and the meanings and effects of such upon the empowerment of our mothering lives.
Cory Ellen Gatrall closes the anthology with “Death and the Mother: Integrating Death into a Pagan Family Life,” a loving look at the meaning of death from Pagan views. These teach the wisdom of the acceptance of death and the natural processes of grief as one encounters life’s end, along with the importance of an open approach to death as part of life. Gatrall was born to atheistic parents to whom death was the cessation of life, and nothingness followed. She found meaning in Paganism and its acknowledgment of life’s cycles, where death is honoured and importantly not spoken of with drama.
Cycling from birth to death and life in-between, through the richness of mothers living Pagan- and Goddess-centred pathways, we wish to thank our authors for their storied, creative, and scholarly contributions to this field. We hope this anthology sparks further spirited and matricentric feminist inquiries into Pagan and Goddess traditions. In the spirit of Mother Goddesses everywhere, we seek to keep matrifocal narratives and the importance of mothering at the forefront of our inquiries, where Goddess is the penultimate extension, expansion, and primordial Mother of the very notion of matricentric feminism.
Mother Goddesses—as deity, symbol, energy, form, culture, creative power, and practice—feed our daily lives as mothers and as people acting in the world towards social change and justice in public and family lives. We value the gift and potential of Pagan and Goddess spirituality to support and sustain new ways of empowering mothering for this generation and those to come.
Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion,
honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
And you who seek to know Me,
know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not,
unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek,
you find not within yourself,you will never find it without.
For behold, I have been with you from the beginning,
and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
(From Traditional Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente, adapted by Starhawk)
(End of the series)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Nane Jordan
Works Cited
Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess- Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. Arkana, 1987.
Ball, Caroline. “Wicca, Witchcraft, and the Goddess Revival: An Examination of the Growth of Wicca in Post-War America.” Goddesses in Myth, History, and Culture, edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Mago Books, 2018, pp. 413-33.
Baring, Anne, and Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. Arkana, Penguin Books, 1991.
Budapest, Zsuzsanna E. Grandmother Moon. The Women’s Spirituality Forum, 2011.
Christ, Carol. “Why Women need the Goddess: Phenomneological, Psychological, and Political Reflections.” The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Feminist Movement, edited by Charlene Spretnak, Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1982, pp. 71-86.
Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Towards a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Beacon Press, 1973.
Dashu, Max. Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700- 1100 AD. Veleda Press, 2016.
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. HarperCollins, 1988.
Gadon, Elinor. The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Time. Harper & Row, 1989.
Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess. HarperCollins, 1991. Goettner-Abendroth, Heidi. Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past Present and Future. Inanna Press, 2009.
Grahn, Judy. Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Beacon Press, 1993.
Green, Fiona Joy. “Practicing Matricentric Feminist Mothering.” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, vol. 10, no. 1 & 2, 2019, pp. 83-100.
Hiltebeitel, Alf, and Kathleen M. Erndl. Is the Goddess a Feminist: The Politics of South Asian Goddesses. New York University Press, 2000.
Hwang, Helen Hye-Sook, et al., editors. She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality. Mago Books, 2016.
Jones, Kathy. Soul and Shadow: Birthing Motherworld, the Healing Journey of a Priestess of Avalon. Ariadne Publications, 2017.
Jordan, Nané. Inspiriting the Academy: Weaving Stories and Practices of Living Women’s Spirituality. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of British Columbia, 2011, circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/ 39810. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.
Jordan, Nané, editor. Placenta Wit: Mother Stories, Rituals, and Research. Demeter Press, 2017.
Kent, Tami Lynn. Wild Feminine: Finding Power, Spirit & Joy in the Female Body. Atria Books, 2011.
Ma, Vajra. “The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power in the Fourth Wave of Feminism.” Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Wayshowers, edited by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Vicki Noble, Teneo Press, 2015, pp. 225-234.
Noble, Vicki. Shakti Woman: Feeling our Fire, Healing our World. HarperCollins, 1991.
Reid, Donna. The Burning Times. The National Film Board of Canada documentary series, 1990.
O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice. Demeter Press, 2016.
O’Reilly, Andrea. “Matricentric Feminism: A Feminism for Mothers.” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, vol. 10, no. 1-2, 2019, pp. 13-26.
Remer, Molly. Brigid’s Grove: Ritual Recipe Kit, 2014, www.brigidsgrove. com. Accessed 21 Nov. 2021.
Robbins Dexter, Miriam, and Vicki Noble, editors. Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries. Teneo Press, 2015.
Sjoo, Monica, and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. HarperCollins, 1991.
Spretnak, Charlene, editor. The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual power within the Feminist Movement. Anchor Books, 1982.
Starhawk. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. Beacon Press, 1997.
Starhawk. Charge of the Goddess (Traditional by Doreen Valiente, adapted by Starhawk). reclaimingcollective.wordpress.com/charge- of-the-goddess/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.
Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. Harvest/Harcourt Brace, 1976.
Teish, Luisah. Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals. HarperSanFrancisco 1988.
van der Meer, Annine. The Language of MA: The Evolution of the female Image in 40,000 Years of Global Venus Art. A3 Boeken Publisher, 2010.
Vaughan, Genevieve. The Gift in the Heart of Language: The Maternal Source of Meaning. Mimesis International, Philosophy n. 11, 2015.