Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!tittle
From: tim@toad.COM (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: feminist spirituality
Message-ID: <8906270132.AA08548@hop.toad.com>
Date: 27 Jun 89 19:47:27 GMT
References: <1336@cattell.psych.upenn.edu>
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Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu

Despite the message from Gerald Hall, Barbara G. Walker is not a
reliable source for information on myths.  The fact that she tries to
draw metaphors from Cinderella's glass slipper should have been a
tip-off; even outside the realms of folklore and literary history, it
is widely known that the term "glass" was a mistake for the similar
French term for "squirrel fur" in the original.  Anyone with
specialist knowledge in any religion will find a multitude of equally
stupid errors in Walker's entries describing that religion.  The book
is a tissue of unfounded speculations without sufficient references to
even make it possible to check references that one is intrigued by.
It is therefore worthless and frustrating.

Every time I see a later Walker book on the shelves, THE SKEPTICAL
FEMINIST, I can't suppress a feeling of nausea.  If she's a skeptic,
then Uri Geller was Pyrrho in a past life.

One more note -- someone else referred to an exhaustive survey of
religions that led them to realize that the moon was always female and
the sun always male.  I can't take too seriously an "exhaustive
survey" that somehow omits the still living, very successful, and very
widely known religion of Shinto.

-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com
Postal: 424 Tehama, SF CA 94103; Phone: (415) 495-2934

"Those Jesus freaks, well, they're friendly but
 the shit they believe has got their minds all shut."
    -- Frank Zappa, "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing"

--
mi gloria es vivir tan libre, como el pajaro del cielo |tittle@ics.uci.edu
no hago nido en este suelo, donde hay tanto que sufrir |tittle@uci.bitnet
y nadie me ha de seguir, cuando yo remonto el vuelo    |..!ucbvax!ucivax!tittle
     --jose hernandez, _martin_fierro_, 1872