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The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays by Founding Mothers of the Movement
Rather than codifying a religion exclusively for women, the authors address a range of contemporary issues that are informed by spirituality, our attitudes toward life on Earth. The values and perceptions presented in this essay collection constitute a holistic paradigm, a dynamic model for the postpatriarchal era.
622 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 1981
About the author
Charlene Spretnak
24 books32 followersCharlene Spretnak has been intrigued throughout her life as a writer, speaker, and activist with dynamic interrelatedness. She has written nine books on various subjects in which interrelatedness plays a central role, including its expression in the arts. She is particularly interested in 21st-century discoveries indicating that the physical world, including the human bodymind, is far more dynamically interrelated than modernity had assumed. Such discoveries are currently causing a “relational shift” in our institutions and systems of knowledge, as she suggests in Relational Reality (2011). Several of her books have also proposed a "map of the terrain" of emergent social-change movements and an exploration of the issues involved. She has helped to create an eco-social frame of reference and vision in the areas of social criticism (including feminism), cultural history, and religion and spirituality. Since the mid-1980s, her books have examined the multiple crises of modernity and furthered the corrective efforts that are arising. Her book Green Politics was a major catalyst for the formation of the U.S. Green Party movement, of which she is a cofounder. Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. She is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 31, 2026
AN EXCELLENT AND BROAD SELECTION OF ESSAYS, BY A LARGE VARIETY OF WRITERS
Editor Charlene Spretnak (b. 1946) is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion. She wrote in the Preface of this 1994 collection, “The women’s spirituality movement must have been gestating in thousands of hearts and minds, for when it sprang into being around 1974 it was complex, exuberant, and literally all over the map… The catalysts for the ‘new’ spirituality, which drew from the oldest forms of religion in human history, were both tangible and intangible. Word-of-mouth spread quickly about books that revealed previously censored chapters of cultural history in which the divine had been symbolized by the female and Neolithic matrifocal societies had flourished.” (Pg. xi-xii)
She continues, “The emergence of the women’s spirituality movement also drew from a number of influences that had taken shape in the sixties. For example, the practice of women coming together to form consciousness-raising circles was still popular in 1974… From the countercultural dimension of the sixties came additional political challenges to deeply held assumptions… this branch of feminism extended the challenge that was taking shape against the patriarchal status quo. The long-standing justification in Western culture for regarding the male as the norm… has been the implicit acknowledgment that men are the same sex as God… women were creating meaningful spiritual lives without male authority figures, misogynist theology… and patriarchal symbols of the divine.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
She states, “The centrality of IMMANENCE in feminist spirituality---that is, the recognition of the divine in all life forms---involves a rejection of the centrality in traditional Western religion of (male) transcendence of body and nature as the optimal spiritual path… What has changed in the women’s spirituality movement over the years?… I knew very well that women’s spirituality was attracting thoughtful, creative women who … were adding richness and depth to feminism… I sent a book proposal … to my agent… it was rejected by 27 publishing houses… [But then it was accepted by a black female editor] perhaps because the mixture of spirituality and activism was not at all unfathomable to someone raised in an African-American church…” (Pg. xiv, xviii-xix)
“When [this book] was included in a large group review in the New York Times Book Review of books by women about religion… the (male) reviewer divided them into two groups… [1] women who had gone too far and left patriarchal religion altogether… and [2] authors who had remained in the system… There were tensions between the two groupings … but they have largely subsided… both orientations recognize common ground in viewing postpatriarchal initiatives, social justice, and ecological wisdom as spiritual responsibilities… Many women who left patriarchal religion have recently begun sticking a toe back into traditions in which they were raised… What else is different today? More women of color are expressing feminist---and womanist---spirituality, both inside and outside of religious institutions.” (Pg. xix-xx)
Marija Gimbutas states in her essay, “There is absolutely no indication that Old European society was patrilineal or patriarchal. Evidence from the cemeteries does not indicate a subordinate position of women… The richest graves belong to both men and women… A strong support for the existence of matrilinearity in Old Europe is the historic continuity of matrilinear succession in the non-Indo-European societies… A matrifocal focus is reflected by the Old European manifestations of the Goddess and Her worship.” (Pg. 23-24)
Starhawk wrote in her essay, ‘Witchcraft as Goddess Religion,’ “Goddess religion is unimaginably old, but contemporary Witchcraft could just as accurately be called the New Religion. The Craft, today, is undergoing more than a revival, it is experiencing a renaissance, a re-creation. Women are spurring this renewal, and actively reawakening the Goddess, the image of ‘the legitimacy and beneficence of female power.’… The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world. She IS the world… The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy… our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create … as the very force that sustains all life… The Goddess is also important for men. The oppression of men in Father God-ruled patriarchy is perhaps less obvious but no less tragic than that of women.” (Pg. 50-51)
Merlin Stone writes, “It may be helpful to clarify at least three emerging aspects of [Goddess Spirituality]… The first aspect is the emerging interest in the history and prehistory of ancient cultures that worshipped a female deity and in the laws and customs of those societies… The second aspect is that of a growing concern with a feminist perception of spirituality and theology… The thirds aspect … is concerned with the more circumspect observation of the organized male-worshipping, male-clergied religions of today---an examination of the specific ways in which these religions have instituted and maintained a secondary status for women.” (Pg. 64-67)
Carol P. Christ observes, “In a Goddess-centered context, the will is valued. A woman is encouraged to know her will, to believe that her will is valid, and to believe that her will can be achieved in the world… In the Goddess framework, will can be achieved only when it is exercised in harmony with the energies and wills of other beings.” (Pg. 82)
In another essay on ‘Consciousness, Politics and Magic,’ Starhawk states, “The female image of divinity does not… provide a justification for the oppression of men. The female, who gives birth to the male, includes the male in a way that male divinities cannot include the female. The Goddess gives birth to a pantheon that is inclusive rather than exclusive. She is not a ‘jealous God.’” (Pg. 179)
Sally Gearheart explains, “What I am calling re-sourcement is the activity of women who are reaching out for new ways of understanding and viewing reality… astrology, the Tarot, numerology, the I Ching, and Kabala---all these and others … redeemed from their masculinist emphases…” (Pg. 195) Later, she adds, “the re-sourcement is a movement of women, and that means it has a strong and unashamed lesbian component…” (Pg. 203)
Naomi Goldenberg states, “My own respect for feminist Witchcraft has grown over a two-year period of association with contemporary Witches… modern Witches are using religion and ritual as psychological tools to build individual strengths. They practice a religion that places divinity or supernatural power within the person. In a very practical sense they have turned religion into psychology… Of course, it is impossible to give definitive proof about the practices and beliefs of Witches who lived many years prior to the 20th century. It is even impossible to decide whether or not the millions of so-called ‘witches’ who were brutally massacred in the Middle Ages at the urging of Christian clergymen were Witches at all… it is the witches of the present who are building a powerful religion…” (Pg. 213-214)
Carol Christ and Charlene Spretnak suggest, “Women’s spiritual quest concerns a women’s awakening to the depths of her soul and her position in the universe. A woman’s spiritual quest … involves asking basic questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my place in the universe? In answering these questions, a woman must listen to her own voice and come to terms with her own experience. Because she can no longer accept conventional answers… she opens herself to the radically new… powers or forces… that can ground her in a new understanding of herself and her position in the world.” (Pg. 329)
Charlene Spretnak points out, “we are dealing with a number of linguistic ironies:… this article ... speaks of the eras of the GodDESS, the priestESS, the mythical heroINE---all of whom predated their male counterparts… these derivative words are created and assigned by usurpers… we understand the power of NAMING OURSELVES..” (Pg. 393)
Hallie Iglehart argues, “Objections to womanspirit seem to fall into three main categories: all spiritualities and religions are oppressive; spirituality is escapist; and it is a wasteful use of womantime and womenenergy. These attitudes reflect a shallow view of history… The oppression associated with religion and spirituality is real---in a patriarchy… To dismiss all spirituality as oppressive, however, is akin to dismissing all politics as oppressive.” (Pg. 405)
Charlene Spretnak’s article about the Christian Right’s ‘Holy War’ against Feminism says, “For years feminists have been saying loud and clear that the patriarchal practices which demean and oppress women are outrageous, immoral, and WRONG… Is the Christian Right concerned about these atrocities? Very selectively.” (Pg. 475)
This marvelous and broad collection will be ‘must reading’ for anyone interested in contemporary spirituality.
Editor Charlene Spretnak (b. 1946) is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion. She wrote in the Preface of this 1994 collection, “The women’s spirituality movement must have been gestating in thousands of hearts and minds, for when it sprang into being around 1974 it was complex, exuberant, and literally all over the map… The catalysts for the ‘new’ spirituality, which drew from the oldest forms of religion in human history, were both tangible and intangible. Word-of-mouth spread quickly about books that revealed previously censored chapters of cultural history in which the divine had been symbolized by the female and Neolithic matrifocal societies had flourished.” (Pg. xi-xii)
She continues, “The emergence of the women’s spirituality movement also drew from a number of influences that had taken shape in the sixties. For example, the practice of women coming together to form consciousness-raising circles was still popular in 1974… From the countercultural dimension of the sixties came additional political challenges to deeply held assumptions… this branch of feminism extended the challenge that was taking shape against the patriarchal status quo. The long-standing justification in Western culture for regarding the male as the norm… has been the implicit acknowledgment that men are the same sex as God… women were creating meaningful spiritual lives without male authority figures, misogynist theology… and patriarchal symbols of the divine.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
She states, “The centrality of IMMANENCE in feminist spirituality---that is, the recognition of the divine in all life forms---involves a rejection of the centrality in traditional Western religion of (male) transcendence of body and nature as the optimal spiritual path… What has changed in the women’s spirituality movement over the years?… I knew very well that women’s spirituality was attracting thoughtful, creative women who … were adding richness and depth to feminism… I sent a book proposal … to my agent… it was rejected by 27 publishing houses… [But then it was accepted by a black female editor] perhaps because the mixture of spirituality and activism was not at all unfathomable to someone raised in an African-American church…” (Pg. xiv, xviii-xix)
“When [this book] was included in a large group review in the New York Times Book Review of books by women about religion… the (male) reviewer divided them into two groups… [1] women who had gone too far and left patriarchal religion altogether… and [2] authors who had remained in the system… There were tensions between the two groupings … but they have largely subsided… both orientations recognize common ground in viewing postpatriarchal initiatives, social justice, and ecological wisdom as spiritual responsibilities… Many women who left patriarchal religion have recently begun sticking a toe back into traditions in which they were raised… What else is different today? More women of color are expressing feminist---and womanist---spirituality, both inside and outside of religious institutions.” (Pg. xix-xx)
Marija Gimbutas states in her essay, “There is absolutely no indication that Old European society was patrilineal or patriarchal. Evidence from the cemeteries does not indicate a subordinate position of women… The richest graves belong to both men and women… A strong support for the existence of matrilinearity in Old Europe is the historic continuity of matrilinear succession in the non-Indo-European societies… A matrifocal focus is reflected by the Old European manifestations of the Goddess and Her worship.” (Pg. 23-24)
Starhawk wrote in her essay, ‘Witchcraft as Goddess Religion,’ “Goddess religion is unimaginably old, but contemporary Witchcraft could just as accurately be called the New Religion. The Craft, today, is undergoing more than a revival, it is experiencing a renaissance, a re-creation. Women are spurring this renewal, and actively reawakening the Goddess, the image of ‘the legitimacy and beneficence of female power.’… The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world. She IS the world… The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy… our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create … as the very force that sustains all life… The Goddess is also important for men. The oppression of men in Father God-ruled patriarchy is perhaps less obvious but no less tragic than that of women.” (Pg. 50-51)
Merlin Stone writes, “It may be helpful to clarify at least three emerging aspects of [Goddess Spirituality]… The first aspect is the emerging interest in the history and prehistory of ancient cultures that worshipped a female deity and in the laws and customs of those societies… The second aspect is that of a growing concern with a feminist perception of spirituality and theology… The thirds aspect … is concerned with the more circumspect observation of the organized male-worshipping, male-clergied religions of today---an examination of the specific ways in which these religions have instituted and maintained a secondary status for women.” (Pg. 64-67)
Carol P. Christ observes, “In a Goddess-centered context, the will is valued. A woman is encouraged to know her will, to believe that her will is valid, and to believe that her will can be achieved in the world… In the Goddess framework, will can be achieved only when it is exercised in harmony with the energies and wills of other beings.” (Pg. 82)
In another essay on ‘Consciousness, Politics and Magic,’ Starhawk states, “The female image of divinity does not… provide a justification for the oppression of men. The female, who gives birth to the male, includes the male in a way that male divinities cannot include the female. The Goddess gives birth to a pantheon that is inclusive rather than exclusive. She is not a ‘jealous God.’” (Pg. 179)
Sally Gearheart explains, “What I am calling re-sourcement is the activity of women who are reaching out for new ways of understanding and viewing reality… astrology, the Tarot, numerology, the I Ching, and Kabala---all these and others … redeemed from their masculinist emphases…” (Pg. 195) Later, she adds, “the re-sourcement is a movement of women, and that means it has a strong and unashamed lesbian component…” (Pg. 203)
Naomi Goldenberg states, “My own respect for feminist Witchcraft has grown over a two-year period of association with contemporary Witches… modern Witches are using religion and ritual as psychological tools to build individual strengths. They practice a religion that places divinity or supernatural power within the person. In a very practical sense they have turned religion into psychology… Of course, it is impossible to give definitive proof about the practices and beliefs of Witches who lived many years prior to the 20th century. It is even impossible to decide whether or not the millions of so-called ‘witches’ who were brutally massacred in the Middle Ages at the urging of Christian clergymen were Witches at all… it is the witches of the present who are building a powerful religion…” (Pg. 213-214)
Carol Christ and Charlene Spretnak suggest, “Women’s spiritual quest concerns a women’s awakening to the depths of her soul and her position in the universe. A woman’s spiritual quest … involves asking basic questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my place in the universe? In answering these questions, a woman must listen to her own voice and come to terms with her own experience. Because she can no longer accept conventional answers… she opens herself to the radically new… powers or forces… that can ground her in a new understanding of herself and her position in the world.” (Pg. 329)
Charlene Spretnak points out, “we are dealing with a number of linguistic ironies:… this article ... speaks of the eras of the GodDESS, the priestESS, the mythical heroINE---all of whom predated their male counterparts… these derivative words are created and assigned by usurpers… we understand the power of NAMING OURSELVES..” (Pg. 393)
Hallie Iglehart argues, “Objections to womanspirit seem to fall into three main categories: all spiritualities and religions are oppressive; spirituality is escapist; and it is a wasteful use of womantime and womenenergy. These attitudes reflect a shallow view of history… The oppression associated with religion and spirituality is real---in a patriarchy… To dismiss all spirituality as oppressive, however, is akin to dismissing all politics as oppressive.” (Pg. 405)
Charlene Spretnak’s article about the Christian Right’s ‘Holy War’ against Feminism says, “For years feminists have been saying loud and clear that the patriarchal practices which demean and oppress women are outrageous, immoral, and WRONG… Is the Christian Right concerned about these atrocities? Very selectively.” (Pg. 475)
This marvelous and broad collection will be ‘must reading’ for anyone interested in contemporary spirituality.
March 20, 2022
So glad I found this book! The first part discusses the matriarchal societies that existed 25,000 years before the patriarchy of abrahamic religions; the second, how to take back our power through consciousness, rituals and community; the third, and biggest: politics. It is past time for womxn to be at the front. They (patriarchy) only have as much power over us as we let them. Think about what we need to do…to be, and stay—FREE.
September 12, 2023
Useful for its comprehensiveness, always has something to say about this or that religion and antiquity is its strongest stake. In the beginning is Goddess Worship and all the rest upstarts.
Read it in the nineties when feminism was breaking boundaries in life and in scholarship, all sin was sin against the man and the father about time we took over. I have no idea now what happened, how come matriarchy did not make it in the polls, blame MacDo or Wallmart or was it all Bush's fault.
That's one sad thing about seeking answers in the archives when all over the mantra is, just rake it in, baby. Like diving into the wreck-- pardon, Adrienne-- and rising with tailings for face and hair...
Read it in the nineties when feminism was breaking boundaries in life and in scholarship, all sin was sin against the man and the father about time we took over. I have no idea now what happened, how come matriarchy did not make it in the polls, blame MacDo or Wallmart or was it all Bush's fault.
That's one sad thing about seeking answers in the archives when all over the mantra is, just rake it in, baby. Like diving into the wreck-- pardon, Adrienne-- and rising with tailings for face and hair...
April 13, 2012
Classic in the field.
September 4, 2022
Great collection of essays by more than 40 contributors!
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July 6, 2013Rather than codifying a religion exclusively for women, the authors address a range of contemporary issues that are informed by spirituality, our attitudes toward life on Earth. The values and perceptions presented in this essay collection constitute a holistic paradigm, a dynamic model for the postpatriarchal era.
This book is full of articles that try to convince the pre - the patriarchal society dominated by women, as the worship of female deities.
This book is full of articles that try to convince the pre - the patriarchal society dominated by women, as the worship of female deities.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews