Most of us were introduced to religion in a church or temple that looked pretty much like a courtroom. The spectators (us) were lined up in rows, and it was expected that we would pay attention, be on our best behavior, and not embarrass our parents. Between the front row of seated spectators and the place where the important people (mostly men) stood were an empty space and sometimes a wall or a fence whose purpose was to keep us plebians out of the high holy place. The officers of this church/court (mostly men) stood between us and the holy place, talking down to us like fathers addressing not-quite-well-behaved children. Although the judge was absent, we all knew he was a powerful and judgmental old man in a long robe. He knew if we’d been good or bad.
Many of us are no longer satisfied with this setup. We’re tired of sin and guilt and bloody gods. We long for caring and nurturing and loving-kindness. We want open access to the divine, and we’ve figured out that the divine essence of the world manifests as the world — in people, in plants and animals, in rivers and canyons and plains. We understand that the divine can manifest in our cities and neighborhoods and communities. Many of us have read the books that explain how people used to worship a Mother Goddess who created the world and embodied the earth. We’ve read how people used to honor each other, how “thou shalt not kill” once really meant something. We’ve read books1 that describe the echoes and remains of the earliest religions that were all but erased from existence by the later desert-born religions. We’ve read what once might have been and wondered if it might be again.
Not only that, but every day we see with our own eyes what shape our planet is in: the polluted air and water, the strip-mined and dumped-on land, the burned and clear-cut forests, overdevelopment at the expense of every other creature on the planet. We see what overpopulation and ethnic jealousies are doing to our mother earth. If we’re going to survive as individuals or as a planetary community, we need the living presence of the Goddess and all of Her children (even the ugly, unfriendly, and inanimate ones).
Intuitively, seriously, playfully, we’ve come to a new understanding of what our faith is about. We’re creating an equal-opportunity religion. Based on images and figures found in caves and rubble and on hints found between the lines of the standard-brand holy books and dissertations, we’re inventing our old-time religion. We’re building modern versions of what might have been the archaic religion of the Great Goddess, who was, and still is, the Queen of Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld.
When we attend to the Goddess, therefore, we do it alone or with a few close friends. I originally wrote this book and its rituals to be used by a woman at her private altar in her private space. That is still its primary purpose. The little rituals are personal and unencumbered; they’re mystical poetry intended to touch both heart and mind and help Everywoman practice the presence of the Goddess in her everyday life.
If you see yourself in any of the foregoing, this book is for you. You’ve come to a point where you want to acknowledge the change in our worldview and the change in our view of the divine. You agree that we can all find our proper places in the community of our blessed planet.
1. Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). Elinor Gadon, The Once & Future Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989). Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).