by Mary Frankland

Around the world, there is a cry of joy: "the Goddess is returning!"  I believe that here in the north of England, She never went away but was hidden for a while in one of her secret places.  In this article, I hope to take you on an armchair tour of some sites which are or may have been associated with Her.

by Carolyn Lee Boyd

As I’ve gotten older, the distance between the past and present has gotten shorter and become an easier journey.  When I was in my 20s and first learned about ancient Goddess-focused cultures, they seemed as if they were so far away that they almost did not exist in the realm of possibility.

Now that I am twice as old, I can count the centuries in fewer of my own lifetimes and milestones between our own time and theirs seem much closer together.  Two of my half-century lifetimes ago, women were still in their struggle to get the right to vote and Seneca Falls, the Convention commonly thought of as the birthplace of national women's rights in the U.S., was only a generation in the past.  Four lifetimes ago, Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” was relatively new. If you go back only ten or fifteen times the distance between my life and Wollstonecraft’s, the Goddess statues that are being unearthed now were freshly carved or molded.  

A Ritual by Elizabeth A Kaufman

Each year, on August 1st, I begin a series of three rituals honoring the harvest of the year's bounty, whatever that may be, as well as preparing myself for the descent into the waning of the year. In general, my rituals from February through July have focused upon growth and increase. Now, as the first harvest comes in, I gather, give thanks and begin the inner spiritual work of the season.

The gathering of the harvest includes many things, not just food. Creative energies, healing works, spiritual quests are all part of this harvest. We have planted ideas as seeds and now we reap what we have sown. Consider that this is also a time, the waning of the year, where we can go within, below and nourish and feed the sprouted and growing seeds. 

by Sue Oxley

The beauty of nature is in the circles She creates, the spinning of the galaxies and the twining of the sweet pea, the turning of the seasons and the circle of our lives.  'Nature hates a straight line' my grandmother used to say, 'probably even more than a full-stop'.

Let's dance and move through the Circle of the Goddesses of Time, thinking about the shining reality of each while leaving behind Her clothes, sorting out what is real and valid and what is shimmering mist, as the circle twirls around us.

Persephone, the Child that sings in the meadow, that rolls down the hills through the flowers, that leaves behind the Mother and yet comes back at night when the dark is frightening.  Remember the wonder of moving so easily that it is like jumping on the moon, think of the loveliness of no worry, no knowledge of evil and hate, with just the dark to fear.

Many years ago I had the idea of making a swan feather cloak using hessian as the base material and tying in feathers with invisible thread. I bought the hessian, the easy bit, and then wandered around trying to find swan feathers.

One Sunday we went to Windsor, where the Queen has lots of swans on the River Thames, and tried picking up feathers from the riverside and underneath the bridge. This was not a raging success, ending up with very few and becoming very muddy and damp in the process.

by Rachel Mayatt

I’ve come to that age now when my body begins to change again as I make ready to initiate into the time of the crone and it’s a strange sensation sometimes. Thinking about it recently took me back to when I began to change as a young girl, developing hair in odd places, filling out on the hips and developing breasts. I don’t remember it being particularly obvious at the time, apart from the weird sensation that I had two bumps appearing on my chest when at one time it had been smooth.

One of my first, and still one of my favorite, reasons for learning about plants was to become more in tune with my environment: the weather, the flows of water, the places of special energy, Mother Nature herself. The woods are lovely and deep, and there are many mysterious and powerful plants there, but they are special allies for special times.

(Speaking of which, the Russian government, I am told, in desperation, went to consult with the witch Baba Mat, The Wise Old Woman Who Lives In The Land Of Many Tall Trees Beyond The Black Mountains. She is rumored to be an excellent herbalist and the only one who can save Mother Russia.) And while I like to walk in the woods, the plants I find myself using on a daily basis are the weeds right under my feet - in gardens, yards, driveways, playgrounds, hospitals, fence rows, institutions, and campuses. These ordinary plants have abilities that seem miraculous to me.

The Transmission of Women’s Power and the Demonizing of the Night 

by Lauren Kaye Clark

Since the era of female subordination, nighttime has become symbolic of evil, fear, and that which must be heavily resisted in many mainstream ideologies.  In the world of academia, it became synonymous with what is ignorant and mentally inferior, and therefore in need of “enlightenment”. Then, spiritually, the night became an aura of what is lost, and the time in which human beings “air” out our most sinful and wicked desires.  The inability to see the unseen with the conscious mind was unfortunately interpreted as that which was ignorant and uncivilized.  It is no coincidence that with the suppression of ancient female knowledge, wisdom, and spirituality, the night became symbolic of evil, and that which spiritually and intellectually must be resisted.

by Zoé d’Ay

A chance conversation on the 8th March reminded me again of something I had been stirred into writing after the last Glastonbury Goddess Conference where the maiden in us and the maidens among us were being lauded and applauded – yet something deep inside my soul, a kind of susurration, a frisson of discomfort,  was rising to voice something then inarticulate.  I went home after the Conference, the puzzle still on the threshold of consciousness – you know that odd feeling you get when you know you know something – but actually can’t put words to what it is?  Well, I woke the following morning and followed the thought until it ran all the way home.  It was ME I was sounding.  The story unfolded just like this:

Reviewed by Miriam Raven

Sometimes, I have to admit, I'm a bit sceptical of the hype about sacred sexuality as the ultimate way to spiritually bring together the masculine and feminine so that all live happily ever after … it doesn't seem so easy in a patriarchal society where gender inequality is inherent in all structures and makes itself felt in the workplace and in the family, in the media and in relationships. Apart from doubting the apparently "easy" solution, I also sometimes worry about the role of the woman in sacred sexuality – and I mean today, not in times when Priestesses held a sacred and revered role for the whole of society.

Seven Sacred Sites:  Magical Journeys That Will Change Your Life and A Magical Journey: Your Diary of Inspiration, Adventure and Transformation, by Serene Conneeley

Reviewed by Mary Frankland

These are truly unique books, each in their own way a guide to the inner self.  A Magical Journey is a slim volume, but has much useful information from phases of the moon to popular festivals from several cultures and religions.  In the latter, you will find everything from Goddess festivals to the Celtic tree calendar.  However, most of the book is a journal for you to complete yourself - your life story.  As the author says, "(A journal) allows you to explore your psyche, and is a valuable tool of self-expressions, self-discovery and self-knowledge." Every other page of the journal has a wise quotation from politicians, poets and philosophers.

A review by Helen Carmichael

I’d like to say that I had mapped and planned my presence at an afternoon in the company of two Canadian poets celebrating Earth Day and Canada’s National Poetry Month here in Vancouver, sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets.  But in reality I discovered it online with barely enough time to leap in my car and race to the venue, leaving a trail of half-baked childcare arrangements and birthday party pickup plans in my wake.

A Novel by Clarise Samuels

PREFACE

Brynhild is a goddess from a great literary epic, and she is also a symbol for spirited, strong feminists. Superior to most men but nevertheless greatly affected by the worldly power of men, Brynhild forges ahead and defiantly flies in the face of all male authority, even that of Odin, the Father of the Gods, who evicts her from the heavens for disobedience. She eventually accomplishes her missions at least partially, being forced to make compromises, which she endures with a certain amount of stoicism. Brynhild, in the end, must accept the imperfections she is confronted with on Earth, and more notably, she has to accept that even the heavens are not completely perfect.