AN OVERVIEW OF GODDESS WORSHIP

In 1976, art historian Merlin Stone wrote that at the dawn of religion God was a woman. She is referring to the Paleolithic period, more than twenty thousand years ago, when homo sapiens sapiens first responded with spiritual awe to the swelling of women's bellies and the miracle of life that came forth from their wombs. As our ancestors struggled to survive, they created carvings of the pregnant Mother as a sacred symbol imbued with life force. The Mother Goddess was viewed as the Divine Feminine, the great matrix of creation, with life — giving and sustaining powers. As the Charge of the Goddess so beautifully expresses, the Goddess is earth, the nurturing mother who brings forth the manifest world. She is the power of fertility, the womb of creation and creativity. As earth, the Goddess embodies all life; she is immanent or indwelling in all of creation. She is the tree, leaf, plant, wind, river, lake, bud, flower, fur, claw, and fang. She is the pregnant Paleolithic Mother, the Neolithic bird and snake goddess, or the "Lady of the Beasts" flanked by lions. The Goddess is present in the form of energy, even in seemingly inanimate objects such as rocks and stones. She governs the elemental forces of nature. Yet, she is also the celestial Goddess, the morning and evening star, or the moon that symbolizes women's menstrual cycles. The moon rules the tides of the oceans – the watery womb of the first microorganisms – and the waves of the lakes and rivers that are the arteries of Mother Earth. Moreover, the moon is symbolically associated with profound feelings and emotions that wash over us like waves.

As the moon, the Goddess has three aspects: As she waxes, she is the maiden or virgin; full, she is the mother; and as she wanes, she is the crone or wise woman. As the feminine triad of virgin, mother, and crone, infusing the manifest world with change and transformation, the Goddess is the living body of a sacred organic universe. She is life eternally attempting to reproduce, regenerate, and sustain itself – and she represents a force that is even more implacable than death, although death is ultimately an aspect of life as well.

As an expression of the mystery of the ever — unfolding life cycle, the Goddess also serves as a model for re — sacralizing woman's body and sexuality. As humans, we literally carry the biochemical components of Gaia, also known as Mother Earth, in our physical bodies. Goddess religion trusts the wisdom that comes through our bodies, and identifies sexuality as the expression of the creative life force of the universe. Sexuality is considered sacred because it is a sharing of energy that occurs while in passionate surrender to the power of the Goddess. As the Charge of the Goddess puts it, "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals." In Goddess religion, flesh and spirit are one.

According to Starhawk, author, feminist, and cofounder of the Wiccan Reclaiming Collective, the symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the archetype of "God the Father." The Goddess does not rule the world nor is she separate from it. She is the world, manifest in each being. The Goddess does not exclude the male: she contains him, as a pregnant woman contains a male child. Although the divine is ultimately seen as one, pagan rituals conceptualize the divine as having both female and male aspects. Two of the oldest forms of the divine – the great Goddess and her consort, the Horned God – illustrate this concept. The conception of a single divine force containing both male and female aspects can be found in the mythologies of many cultures. One of its most enduring expressions – still celebrated today with variations in numerous religious traditions – is the ritualistic sacred marriage originating from ancient Mesopotamia.

The Divine Feminine also represents death and dissolution. Just as everything originates from the Mother Goddess ...in the end, everything returns. Birth, growth, decay, and death are sacred stages within the life cycle. The Goddess also governs the destructive elemental forces of nature manifesting as volcanic eruptions and devastating floods. In her fierce and terrifying manifestations, the Goddess is the Dark Mother who dances on cremation grounds and appears at crossroads and pivotal junctures in our lives. She demands that we face our repressed "shadow" issues and embark on our arduous night journey of the soul, going beyond our attachments and limitations. The Dark Mother embodies the great dissolution: ego — death and physical death. She symbolizes the pearls of wisdom to be gleaned from the "Great Below." At the esoteric — mystical level, the Goddess invites us to delve into the mystery of Being, and Goddess worship helps us rediscover the infinite freedom of Being within our true Self. She is a bridge to this Self, which is the source of our innate talents and creativity, and encourages us to overcome limiting cultural and personal conditioning so we can manifest our fullest potential. To "know oneself" has since ancient times been the core principle within all pagan mystery religions. Aspirants were initiated into the essence of being which allowed them to see the true nature of reality. The Goddess is the ship on which we may sail the deep uncharted seas within. She is the gate through which we may pass into the eternal now.

At the exoteric — external level, the Charge of the Goddess – a core liturgy text – is read by pagan communities and Wiccan covens throughout the world. The term wicca derives from an Anglo — Saxon root word meaning to "bend or shape" and refers to the wise women – notably healers, teachers, poets, and midwives – who seek to shape the unseen to their will. Goddess — centered religions such as Wicca are a viable spiritual path that began at the dawn of human civilization. Today, these religions offer a potent constellation of psycho — spiritual, ecological, and political ideas focusing on the conception of femininity as divine. Many people consider a belief in the Divine Feminine to be an essential counter — balance to our overly masculinized contemporary culture.

After millennia of suppression of the Divine Feminine, as a result of the increasingly patriarchal paradigms that emerged in all systems of organized religion across the cultural spectrum, the Goddess is once again becoming a...