Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!aero!gdh@calmasd.Prime.COM
From: gdh@calmasd.Prime.COM (Gerald Hall)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: feminist spirituality
Message-ID: <382@calmasd.Prime.COM>
Date: 29 Jun 89 02:38:42 GMT
References: <1336@cattell.psych.upenn.edu> <8906270132.AA08548@hop.toad.com>
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Reply-To: gdh@calmasd.Prime.COM (Gerald Hall)
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> Barbara G. Walker is not a reliable source for information on myths.
> ...
> 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.
> -- 
> Tim Maroney

I have to agree with Tim's criticisms of Walker's books:
there are many errors and there is insufficient footnoting.
However, I obviously disagree with the conclusion that the books
are worthless.

Any work of nearly 1200 pages attempting to find unifying themes
relating to women in all of the worlds religions and mythologies
is going to contain errors, both of fact and inference.
And attempting to turn such a book into a scholarly monograph
with careful footnotes and rigorous exclusion of anything that
couldn't be proven would have destroyed it by making the task too
difficult to be possible in a lifetime.

What the _Encyclopedia of Women's Myths and Secrets_ does manage
to do is open a door to a whole world of ideas relating to the
significant role of women in religion before the domination of the West
by the misogynist Pauline Catholic church.  It also manages to make
some sense out of otherwise incomprehensible elements of Christianity
by admittedly speculative but immensely plausible scenarios of the
early cooptation of many elements of 'pagan' traditions and dieties
into the Catholic Church and the merciless suppression of other
elements of pre-Christian religions by the Church.

Of course it is hard to thoroughly document and 'prove' many of
these things: until quite recently one would be put to an
excruciating death for advocating any of these ideas, and any
supporting evidence would probably be burned with you.
-- 
   / Gerald Hall, UNIX SysAdmin, (619) 587-3065
  / Calma - A Division of Prime Computer Inc.
 / 9805 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA 92121