A Goddess is a female deity. In some cultures Goddesses are primarily associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household, in others they also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing. In some religions, a sacred feminine archetype can occupy a very central place in prayer and worship. In Hinduism, reverence of the Sacred Feminine or Shaktism is a major current of worship along with that of Vishnu and Shiva. In Tibetan Buddhism, the highest achievement any person can achieve is to become like the great female Buddhas who are depicted as being supreme protectors, fearless and filled with compassion for all beings. Some currents of Neopaganism, in particular Wicca, have a bitheistic concept of a single Goddess and a single God, who in hieros gamos represent a united whole, transcending all gender and such appearances as can be discerned by mortal minds. Kundalini energy has been represented as either a goddess or sleeping serpent lying "coiled" at the base of the spine waiting to be awakened.
Quotes
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- GOD IS COMING, AND IS SHE PISSED!
- Anonymous bumper sticker as quoted in My First Saturnalia (1981) by Michael Rumaker, p. 3
- GOD IS COMING, AND BOY IS SHE PISSED!
- Variant bumper sticker as quoted in River Angel: A Novel (1999) by A. Manette Ansay, p. 107
- There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock....
- Sri Aurobindo, in a statement of 16 April 1907, as published in India's Rebirth : A Selection from Sri Aurobindo's Writings, Talks and Speeches 3rd Edition (2000)
- I don't want to give too much away, but basically — she's God, by the end of the movie.
- Ty Burr, on Scarlett Johansson's character in the film Lucy (2014) in the video review Take 2: Lucy (24 July 2014)
- I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.
- Arthur C. Clarke, as quoted in Multiple Intelligences in Practice : Enhancing Self-esteem and Learning in the Classroom (2006) by Mike Fleetham, Section 2 : Using MI
- Jehovah, it seems clear, was once regarded as a devoted son the the Great Goddess, who obeyed her in all things and by her favor swallowed up a number of variously named rival gods and godlings — the Terebinth-god, the Thunder-god, the Pomegranate-god, the Bull-god, the Goat-god, the Antelope-god, the Calf-god, the Porpoise-god, the Ram-god, the Ass-god, the Barley-god, the god of Healing, the Moon-god, the god of the Dog-star, the Sun-god. Later (if it is permitted to write in this style) he did exactly what his Roman counterpart, Capitoline Jove, has done: he formed a supernal Trinity in conjunction with two of the Goddess's three persons, namely, Anatha of the Lions and Ashima of the Doves, the counterparts of Juno and Minerva; the remaining person, a sort of Hecate named Sheol, retiring to rule the infernal regions.
- Robert Graves, King Jesus (1946)
- I saw that God rejoiceth that He is our Father, and God rejoiceth that He is our Mother, and God rejoiceth that He is our Very Spouse and our soul is His loved Wife. And Christ rejoiceth that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoiceth that He is our Saviour. These are five high joys, as I understand, in which He willeth that we enjoy; Him praising, Him thanking, Him loving, Him endlessly blessing.
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 58
- Our Substance is our Father, God Almighty, and our Substance is our Mother, God, All-wisdom; and our Substance is in our Lord the Holy Ghost, God All-goodness.
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 58
- As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother; and that shewed He in all, and especially in these sweet words where He saith: I IT AM. That is to say, I IT AM, the Might and the Goodness of the Fatherhood; I IT AM, the Wisdom of the Motherhood; I IT AM, the Light and the Grace that is all blessed Love: I IT AM, the Trinity, I IT AM, the Unity: I am the sovereign Goodness of all manner of things. I am that maketh thee to love: I am that maketh thee to long: I IT AM, the endless fulfilling of all true desires.
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 58
- There are no rules anywhere.
The Goddess Prevails.- Principia Discordia (1965) by Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst)
- There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess.
- Principia Discordia (1965) by Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst); The Pentabarf
- May you be free of The Curse of Greyface.
May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes.
May you have the knowledge of a sage,
and the wisdom of a child.
Hail Eris.- Principia Discordia (1965) by Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst); The Golden Secret
- The kind of connectedness women's spirituality and goddess spirituality teaches about the earth is missing in politics today and the people who are guiding our countries see only nature as a resource for industrial growth. They don't see the sacredness and the interconnectedness and the simple fact that we live on a finite planet.
- Charlene Spretnak in Goddess Remembered (1989)
- The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts — Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be.
- Starhawk, as quoted in Womanspirit Rising : A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979) by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow
- In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control. Understanding this keeps us humble, able to admit that we cannot know or control or define everything.
- Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
- The goddess awakens in infinite forms and a thousand disguises. She is found where she is least expected, appears out of nowhere and everywhere to illumine the open heart. She is singing, crying, moaning, wailing, shrieking, crooning to us, to be awake, to commit ourselves to life, to be a lover in the world and of the world, to join our voices in the single song of constant change and creation. For her law is to love all beings, and she is the cup of the drink of life. The circle is ever open, ever unbroken.
- Ritual is more than self-soothing activity.
Spirituality is also about challenge and disturbance, about pushing our edges and giving us the support we need to take great risks. The Goddess is not just a light, happy maiden or a nurturing mother. She is death as well as birth, dark as well as light, rage as well as compassion — and if we shy away from her fiercer embrace we undercut both her own power and our own growth.
- I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
- "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.
- Robert Anton Wilson, Everything Is Under Control (1998) "Genesis", p. 197
- In its formative years, notably the 1970s and 1980s, the Goddess movement exhibited a range of attitudes towards female deity. As Carol Christ summarized in a threefold typology, members of the movement might hold to any of the following views:
- (1) the Goddess is divine female, a personification who can be invoked in prayer and ritual;
- (2) the Goddess is symbol of the life, death and rebirth energy in nature and culture, in personal and communal life;
- (3) the Goddess is symbol of the affirmation of the legitimacy and beauty of female power (made possible by the new becoming of women in the women’s liberation movement).[1]
- These perspectives could be elaborated and combined in various ways without disagreements or internal tensions surfacing. Thus, deity could be experienced, evoked and ritualized as single (the Great Goddess, the Mother Goddess), as triple (Maiden, Mother, Crone) and/or through culturally, religiously and mythically diverse individual goddesses (Athena, Cerridwen, Isis, Hecate, Kali, Tara and others).
External links
- ↑ C. Christ, 'Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections' in C. Christ and J. Plaskow, (eds.), Woman-spirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco 1992, 278.