Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: From Kabbalah to Quantum Physics

by Judith Laura

Is Goddess a Being? A metaphor? A process? This award-winning second enlarged edition of Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century clarifies these and other concepts guiding contemporary Goddess spirituality. It also delves into the history of Jewish Kabbalah and Western Esoteric Qabalah, examining their biases and proposing a more gender-balanced version that links back to the Goddess Tree of Life. This book also explores the similarities between Goddess concepts and quantum physics and cosmology, and includes guided meditations and rituals. The Second Enlarged Edition contains the entire first edition plus a new Foreword, a new Preface, expanded discussion of a few subjects, musical notation for songs in the rituals, Tarot spreads using symbolism from the re-visioned Tree of Life, and a discussion guide. From the Foreword by Rachel "This remarkable book manages to say more than many works on these subjects four or five times its size. What's more, what it says is not just clear and lucid, and stocked with information, it also is valuable for women and men living their lives today....Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century is a rare book, a kind of sacred quest of ideas."

Genres: Goddess

215 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2011

About the author

Judith Laura is author of the trade paperback novels, Beyond All Desiring, recipient of multiple awards, and Three Part Invention. You can read more about the former, including reviews and excerpts, on http://www.judithlaura.com/beyond.html Similar information about the latter can be found on http://www.judithlaura.com/3PI.html
Beyond All Desiring recently became available as an audiobook. Both novels are available in virtually all e-book formats.

Judith Laura is also author of three books on Goddess spirituality, the most recent of which is Goddess Matters: the mystical, practical & controversial (see http://www.judithlaura.com/gm.html). She is also author of Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics and She Lives! The Return of Our Great Mother,The guided meditations from these two books have recently become available as an audiobook, Goddess Guided Meditations, which she narrates, and also as a Kindle e-book.(see www.judithlaura.com/ggmeds.html). The Second Enlarged Edition of Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics,is Winner in the comparative religion category of the USA Best Books 2009 Awards. There is an additional e-book Study Guide for the Kabbalah/Qabalah chapters of this book (see http://www.judithlaura.com/gs21.html). She Lives! The Return of Our Great Mother, is now in its Third Combined Edition (info on http://www.judithlaura.com/slgm.html). Multiple editions of Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century are shown on Goodreads, so here's a tip: the award-winning Second Enlarged Edition has a cover with a dark background and a picture of a Goddess sculpture by Abby Willowroot.The ISBN of the most recent and second printing (2011) is 9780982819715. The ISBN of the first printing (2008) is 9781601453822.The cover of the second printing can be distinguished by the line of gold type at the top, announcing the award. Multiple editions of She Lives! are also shown on Goodreads. The most recent and most complete is the 2010 Combined Third Edition whose black-background cover bears a picture of a red-backgrounded "Demeter Goddess Icon Banner" by Lydia Ruyle. Its ISBN is 9780982819722.

Judith Laura's poems and short fiction have appeared in journals, 'zines (both print and online), and anthologies.

She was born in Brooklyn, NY; grew up in Ewing, NJ; received a BS in Journalism from Ohio University, and now lives near Washington, DC. She has worked as a newpaper reporter, feature writer, and as editor-in-chief of a variety of publications, including a health magazine and an arts newspaper. For further bio info, see http://www.judithlaura.com/about.html

Reviews

[Joanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am somewhat perplexed by this book, which is less an overview of 21st century Goddess Spirituality as an in depth consideration of the relationship between the Kabbalah and the feminine, moving in the last chapter to ideas about Quantum Physics and contemporary spirituality. Some of her writing is beautiful and her knowledge of both Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah seems in depth. She makes some fascinating points about the changes that would occur to the gender associations of the Sephiroth if we assign genders based on original Hebrew name endings. But it seems to me that interpreting the Tree only in terms of the gender of the Sephiroth is limited and limiting – although perhaps nowadays necessary, at least for awhile, to allow a space for re-interpretation, given how our views differ from earlier Kabbalistic writers, such as Elphias Levi, quoted by Laura: 'Women does not possess within herself strength and justice, these she must receive from man. When she rules, she brings about only revolt and violence. It is in this way that woman became man's overseer by drawing him into sin.' (!)

Yet despite the importance of re-evaluation it seems to me that the conclusion Laura reaches, that ancient Kabbalistic knowledge has, in the last 4000 years, only been corrupted by patriarchy, and that the Tree should be 'cleansed' to take it back to a more ancient and Goddess centred symbol, suggests that the years of Western Civilisation and the development of the Western Mysteries have served for nothing but a corruption ancient knowledge. It is a shame, I think, when interest in pre-historic Goddess faith comes hand in hand with a rejection of the entirety the 4000 years of civilisation that have allowed us to be what we are.

Her chapter on Dion Fortune's interpretation of the Kabbalah is simply disappointing – it seems to me that Laura is unable to release the lens of contemporary feminist politics and therefore misses much of the wisdom of Fortune's work. I'd also be interested to know whether she has read more of Fortune than The Mystical Qabalah. In the context of fiction like The Sea Priestess, Moon Magic, or even The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage, it seems completely inaccurate to suggest, as Laura does on p. 101, that Fortune stereotypes 'feminine as negative and passive and masculine as postive and active'.

On the other hand, the chapter on Quantum Physics and its connections with contemporary faith is interesting. I particularly enjoyed her ideas about using a 'dance of the particles' in ritual, and in associating the four force fields of contemporary physics with the four Elements.

An interesting read, interesting ideas, but overall, it seems to me to contain more politics than wisdom. Yet perhaps – simply a result of a world where gender politics are changing so rapidly that new wisdom has yet to be reached?

[M.c. · Rating 5 out of 5]

To my mind, this book combines 3 different subject areas. It is about the recent history and development of “Goddess Spirituality” especially in the United States and explains its ideas. This section is helpful in understanding the book’s next two subjects: the history of both Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah, and quantum physics. The Introduction to the original edition is also included in the second enlarged edition and includes material about Christian and Jewish feminism. The preface to the second enlarged edition updates the Introduction and also gives updated information on the validation of the author’s kabbalah theories and progress in relating science and goddess.

In the first chapter, Judith Laura explains “Concepts of Contemporary Goddess Spirituality.” There are several topics, all interesting, but for me the most interesting were her discussion of immanence and transcendence, and the “nature of the Goddess.” The next two chapters give a history of the development of Jewish Kabbalah. She points out traditions within Judaism that she says are likely derived from earlier practices she feels enhance women’s status, including wives representing the Shekhinah on the Sabbath. She discusses early Kabbalah including merkavah mysticism, and then books dating from around 300-600 CE, including the Sefirs Yetsirah, Bahir, and Zohar. She then gets into the theories of 16th and 17th Century kabbalists Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria. She gives a beautiful description of a ritual held in the fields of the town of Safed to welcome the Sabbath Queen, the Shekhinah. She carefully traces the development and changes of Kabbalah over time, not only as they relate to gender and the status of women but also as they relate to the separation of spirit and matter, and views of nature. In the fourth chapter, Laura discusses Hermetic Qabalah, first developed in Europe. The Hermetic Qabalists came from Christian backgrounds and many were Masons or Rosicrucians. She discusses the ideas and personalities involved in the Golden Dawn in the late 19th and early 20th Century in England, the group that is mainly credited with the development of Hermetic Qabalah, and points out that they were probably the first metaphysical group in that place and time to admit women, and that they included goddesses in their qabalistic workings as well as Christian symbolism in their interpretation of the Tree. I found her discussion of Dion Fortune even-handed. Yes, she is critical of some of Fortune’s Qabalah concepts, but no more than she is critical of other concepts. This is no hatchet job or mindless rant, and her intent doesn’t seem nasty. In fact, as with the Jewish kabbalists she seems to like some things, such as Fortune’s explanation of the ensoulment of symbolic images and Fortune’s assertion that occultists not only believe in deities but also “adore them.” Mostly the things Laura objects to are related to what was going on culturally and socially at the times Kabbalah and Qabalah were developing. As Rachel Pollack says in her Foreword to the book, “the Kabbalist traditions are not somehow magically free of patriarchal bias. They are not an absolute truth outside of culture.” I was glad to be tipped off about this because with other books I’ve read and things I’ve read on mailing lists and web sites it is often hard to see through the verbiage to what is really being described. Laura’s explanations are very clear and logical. Throughout these chapters Laura refers to primary and widely recognized sources such as, in addition to the 3 early Kabbalah books I already mentioned, Scholem’s Kabbalah, Levi’s The Book of Spendours, and Torrens’ Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn. In the next chapter, Laura presents her “Re-Visioning of the Tree,” and introduces a way to view the parts of the Tree which really startled me, actually gave me goose bumps, but I won’t say more because that would be a spoiler. The book also includes traditional graphics used for Jewish and Hermetic Kabbalah and Qabalah, charts explaining various symbolisms, and graphics to demonstrate her re-visioning theory. I found all of these helpful.

The final chapter of the book takes on quantum physics and cosmology. Included are such subjects as stars, spiral galaxies, space-time, light patterns, particles, quarks, dark matter, black holes...all related to metaphysical and/or goddess ideas. Though both kabbalah and physics may sound complicated to many people including me, the way Laura explains them makes them easier to understand. She doesn’t dumb it down but somehow seems to understand them so well that she can write about them without resorting to jargon or complicated sentences. For that alone I would be tempted to give it 5 stars, but there is more: the book includes meditations and rituals. I like that because often experiencing something–especially new spiritual concepts–helps me understand them better than just reading about them. Many of the rituals and meditations are quite beautiful, such as the meditations for her version of the Tree of Life.

It’s not every day that you read a book that isn’t simply a rehashing of what other books have said and Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century is an innovative book with original, well thought out ideas, whether you agree with it or not, whether you feel it flies in the face of established doctrine or theories by so-called authorities or not. For these reasons I rate it 5-stars.

[Judith Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am the author, so I'm not adding a review. :-)