Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucla-cs.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrba!cepu!ucla-cs!ellen
From: ellen@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Why Witchcraft is valid for men and women
Message-ID: <2089@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 13:58:43 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.2089
Posted: Fri Nov  9 13:58:43 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Nov-84 10:33:15 EST
Organization: UCLA CS Dept.
Lines: 71

[this bug's for you]

More quotes from:
	"The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the
         Great Goddess - Rituals, Invocations, Exercises, Magic" 
	 by Starhawk, 1979,
	 New York, San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers.
         Chapter One, pp.8-10.

	"Since the decline of the Goddess religions, women have lacked 
religious models and spiritual systems that speak to female needs and
experiences.  Male images of divinity characterize both western and eastern
Religions.  Regardless of how abstract the underlying concept of God may
be, the symbols, avatars, preachers, prophets, gurus, and Buddhas are
overwhelmingly male.  Women are not encouraged to explore their own strengths
and realizations; they are taught to submit to male authority, to identify
masculine perceptions as their spiritual ideals, to deny their bodies and
sexuality, to fit their insights into a male mold.
	"Mary Daly, author of ``Beyond God the Father,'' points out that the
models of the universe in which a male God rules the cosmos from outside
serves to legitimize male control of social institutions...The unconscious
model continues to shape the perceptions even of those who have consciously
rejected religious teachings...A new dogma, a parallel structure, replaces
the old.  For example, many people have rejected the "revealed truth" of
Christianity without ever questioning the underlying concept that truth is
a set of beliefs revealed through the agency of a "Great Man," possessed of
powers or intelligence beyond the ordinary human scope.  Christ, as the
"Great Man," may be replaced by Buddha, Freud, Marx, Jung, Werner Erhard,
or the Maharaj Ji in their theology, but truth is always seen as coming from
someone else, as only knowable secondhand..."

[the previous quotations which i posted came next in the book:
how the Goddess does not rule the world, how She is manifest in each of us
(male and female), how She does not serve to legitimize anyone as an authority
over others, that each of us must reveal our own truth.]

	"The importance of the Goddess symbol for women cannot be overstressed.
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 aggression as healthy,
our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit
and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life.  Through
the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies,
and celebrate our emotions.  We can move beyond narrow, constricting roles
and become whole. 
	"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.  Men are encouraged to identify with a model that no human
being can successfully emulate:  to be mini-rulers of narrow universes.
They are internally split, into a "spiritual" self that is supposed to
conquer their baser animal and emotional natures.  They are at war with
themselves:  in the West, to "conquer" sin; in the East, to "conquer"
desire or ego.  Few escape from these wars undamaged.  Men lose touch
with their feelings and their bodies, becoming the "successful male zombies"
described by Herb Goldberg in ``The Hazards of Being Male'': "Oppressed
by the cultural pressures that have denied him his feelings, by the
mythology of the woman and the distorted and self-destructive way he
sees and relates to her, by the urgency for him to "act like a man,"
which blocks his ability to respond to his inner promptings both
emotionally and physiologically, and by a generalized self-hate that
causes him to feel comfortable only when he is functioning well in
harness, not when he lives for joy and personal growth." [p.4]
	"Because women give birth to males, nurture them at the breast, and
in our culture are primarily responsible for their care as children, "every
male brought up in a traditional home develops an intense early identification
with his mother and therefore carries within him a strong feminine imprint."
[Goldberg, p.39]  The symbol of the Goddess allows men to experience and
integrate the feminine side of their nature, which is often felt to be
the deepest and most sensitive aspect of self.  The Goddess does not
exclude the male; She contains him, as a pregnant woman contains a male
child.  Her own male aspect embodies both the solar light of the intellect
and wild, untamed animal energy."