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The Fellowship of Isis (FOI) is a multi-faith, multi-racial, and multi-cultural spiritual organization focused on increasing awareness for the Goddess Isis. The Fellowship of Isis believes Isis best represents the energies of the dawning Aquarian Age. Despite worshipping pagan deities, the fellowship does not consider itself to be a Neopagan faith.
The FOI was founded at Huntington Castle, County Carlow, Ireland at the Vernal equinox of 1976. The three co-founders were Olivia Robertson, [1] her brother, Lawrence Durdin-Robertson (both are grandchildren of Thomas Herbert Robertson) and Lawrence's wife Pamela. They aimed to create a fellowship to "help the Goddess actively in the manifestation of Her divine plan." Olivia has described Isis as "God in female form." The FOI grew out of a "working group" created in 1963 called the Huntington Castle Centre for Meditation and Study. This Centre was active in gathering together various occult and theological figures such as Ross Nichols, Josephine and Mohun Lall, and Gerald Gough. The experiences shared within this group, along with the personal spiritual revelations and experiences of the three FOI co-founders led to the eventual founding of the Fellowship of Isis on the Vernal Equinox in 1976. From 1976 until the early 1990s, the group steadily grew.
In August 1993, the Fellowship of Isis was represented at the Parliament of the World's Religions at Chicago by Olivia Robertson and other member delegates. It is the first time that the Religion of the Goddess has been acknowledged as a world faith at this Parliament. [2] The Parliament "became a showcase for the new religions in America, especially since mainstream Christianity was much underrepresented . . . Two feminist neopagan groups, the Covenant of the Goddess and the Fellowship of Isis, were among the sponsors of the parliament." [3]
Custodianship of the Fellowship of Isis Foundation Centre is now under the aegis of the Durdin-Robertsons, heirs of the co-founders. In 2011, Olivia Robertson named her niece, Cressida Pryor, successor and FOI steward. [4]
In October 2014, Cressida announced the Irish-based Circle of Brigid the "central parliament" and "executive board" of the Fellowship of Isis Foundation Centre, of which she is the overall adviser. The Circle of Brigid is also responsible for festivals at the Castle Centre in Ireland and has a subcommittee to sort ethics grievances. [5]
The Fellowship is a globally organised religion, whose international and Internet presence is very large by comparison with its Irish base. [6]
"Over the past 30 years a body of liturgy has developed, detailing how the [Manifesto] principles can be practised by interested members through establishing a relationship between self and deity. Members are encouraged to express this spiritual relationship by enacting rituals, prayers and meditations, as detailed in the liturgy. This liturgy is drawn from the ritual structures of contemporary paganisms, Goddess spirituality and diverse archaeological scholarship into religious experience in the ancient world." [7] The Liturgy of the Fellowship of Isis was written by Olivia Robertson, each ritual honouring different pantheons, and including a divinely channelled oracle encouraging spiritual communion with that Deity. These rites may be used for personal spiritual enhancement or, via instruction from a Fellowship of Isis centre, various degrees may be attained. [8]
The stated goal of the Fellowship of Isis is to support and promote the idea of the Divine Feminine. The Fellowship of Isis Manifesto sets out the basic principles of this society. The Fellowship accepts religious toleration and is not exclusivist. Members are free to maintain other religious allegiances. The good in all faiths is honoured. The Fellowship of Isis has no particular affiliations. It practices total religious tolerance, forbids sacrifice of any kind and discourages asceticism. [9]
It is sometimes considered pagan, but co-founder Olivia Robertson stated in 2002: "We are happy to have thousands of Pagans among our 21,000 members in so many countries. But we also have Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Spiritualists and Hindus as members. All love and follow the religion of Isis of 10,000 Names." [10]
All members in the Fellowship of Isis have equal privileges within it, and membership is free. [11] Membership is open to anyone who wishes to join – once an individual has read through the Fellowship of Isis Manifesto and finds themselves in agreement with the principles laid out within it they become a member. There are no vows of secrecy. Members are free to resign at any time, if they so choose, and can rejoin again at a later time. [12]
The Fellowship is dedicated to spreading the religion of all the Goddesses throughout this planet. The Gods are also venerated. The Goddess is seen as Deity, the Divine Mother of all beings, as well as the embodiment of Truth and Beauty. "The ecumenical nature of this nonprofit organization reveals itself in a membership that includes Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists, Cabalists, Spiritualists, and Wiccan and pagan worshippers of all kinds." [13]
FOI sub-groups, called "FOI Foundation Center Societies" or "Daughter Societies" of the Fellowship of Isis consist of the ‘College of Isis’ (Lyceums), the ‘Spiral of the Adepti’ (Iseums), the ‘Spiral of Alchemy’ (Solar Iseums), the 'Druid Clan of Dana' (Groves) and the 'Noble Order of Tara' (Priories). There are sub-chapters of these societies of the FOI in many major cities and countries around the world.
The Fellowship of Isis claims over 24,000 members in nearly a hundred countries. Members often blend their own traditions and beliefs with those offered by the Fellowship. [2]
A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of spinning, weaving, beauty, love, sexuality, motherhood, domesticity, creativity, and fertility. Many major goddesses are also associated with magic, war, strategy, hunting, farming, wisdom, fate, earth, sky, power, laws, justice, and more. Some themes, such as discord or disease, which are considered negative within their cultural contexts also are found associated with some goddesses. There are as many differently described and understood goddesses as there are male, shapeshifting, or neuter gods.
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a type of religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Africa and the Near East. Although they share similarities, contemporary pagan movements are diverse and as a result, they do not share a single set of beliefs, practices, or texts. Scholars of religion often characterise these traditions as new religious movements. Some academics who study the phenomenon treat it as a movement that is divided into different religions while others characterize it as a single religion of which different pagan faiths are denominations.
Paganism is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi. Alternative terms used in Christian texts were hellene, gentile, and heathen. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".
Thealogy views divine matters through feminine perspectives including but not limited to feminism. Valerie Saiving, Isaac Bonewits (1976) and Naomi Goldenberg (1979) introduced the concept as a neologism. Its use then widened to mean all feminine ideas of the sacred, which Charlotte Caron usefully explained in 1993: "reflection on the divine in feminine or feminist terms". By 1996, when Melissa Raphael published Thealogy and Embodiment, the term was well established.
Romuva is a neo-pagan movement derived from the traditional mythology of the Lithuanians, attempting to reconstruct the religious rituals of the Lithuanians before their Christianization in 1387. Practitioners of Romuva claim to continue Baltic pagan traditions which survived in folklore, customs and superstition. Romuva is a polytheistic pagan faith which asserts the sanctity of nature and ancestor worship. Practicing the Romuva faith is seen by many adherents as a form of cultural pride, along with celebrating traditional forms of art, retelling Baltic folklore, practicing traditional holidays, playing traditional Baltic music, singing traditional dainos (songs), as well as ecological activism and stewarding sacred places.
The Goddess movement is a revivalistic Neopagan religious movement which includes spiritual beliefs and practices that emerged predominantly in the Western world during the 1970s. The movement grew as a reaction both against Abrahamic religions, which exclusively have gods with whom are referred by masculine grammatical articles and pronouns, and secularism. It revolves around Goddess worship and the veneration for the divine feminine, and may include a focus on women or on one or more understandings of gender or femininity.
Nature worship also called naturism or physiolatry is any of a variety of religious, spiritual and devotional practices that focus on the worship of the nature spirits considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible throughout nature. A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism, animism, Taoism, totemism, Hinduism, shamanism, some theism and paganism including Wicca. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural world and reverence towards it. Due to their admiration of nature, the works of Edmund Spenser, Anthony Ashley-Cooper and Carl Linnaeus were viewed as nature worship.
Modern Finnish paganism, also known as Finnish neopaganism or the Finnish native faith, is the contemporary revival of Finnish paganism, the pre-Christian polytheistic ethnic religion of the Finns. A precursor movement was the Ukonusko of the early 20th century. The main problem in the revival of Finnish paganism is the nature of pre-Christian Finnish culture, which relied on oral tradition which may be subject to change over time. The primary sources concerning Finnish native culture are written by latter-era Christians.
Kemetism "deity"), or Kemetic paganism, is a neopagan religion and revival of the ancient Egyptian religion and related expressions of religion in classical and late antiquity, emerging during the 1970s. A Kemetic or Kemetic pagan is one who follows Kemetism.
Phyllis Curott who goes under the craft name Aradia, is a Wiccan priestess, attorney, and author. She is founder and high priestess of the Temple of Ara, one of the oldest Wiccan congregations in the United States. She has been active as a leader in the Parliament of the World’s Religions since 1993 in multiple roles including co-chair of the inaugural 1993 Women’s Task Force and current Program Chair of the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. She is also author of several published volumes on modern witchcraft and Goddess spirituality.
Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic, and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God, thereby being generally dualistic. In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess.
Modern paganism in the United States is represented by widely different movements and organizations. The largest modern pagan religious movement is Wicca, followed by Neodruidism. Both of these religions or spiritual paths were introduced during the 1950s and 1960s from Great Britain. Germanic Neopaganism and Kemetism appeared in the US in the early 1970s. Hellenic Neopaganism appeared in the 1990s.
A triad, in a religious context, refers to a grouping of three gods, usually by importance or similar roles. A triad of gods were usually not considered to be one in the same being, or different aspects of a single deity as in a Trinity or Triple deity.
The Mari religion, also known as Mari paganism, is the ethnic religion of the Mari people, a Volga Finnic ethnic group based in the republic of Mari El, in Russia. The religion has undergone changes over time, particularly under the influence of neighbouring monotheisms. In the last few decades, while keeping its traditional features in the countryside, an organised Neopagan-kind revival has taken place.
A matriarchal religion is a religion that emphasizes a goddess or multiple goddesses as central figures of worship and spiritual authority. The term is most often used to refer to theories of prehistoric matriarchal religions that were proposed by scholars such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, and later popularized by second-wave feminism. These scholars speculated that early human societies may have been organized around female deities and matrilineal social structures. In the 20th century, a movement to revive these practices resulted in the Goddess movement.
Olivia Melian Durdin-Robertson was an author, artist, co-founder and high priestess of the Fellowship of Isis.
Donald Hudson 'Don' Frew is a figure in American Wicca, the Covenant of the Goddess, national and global interfaith dialogue, and Pagan studies.
Modern paganviews on LGBT people vary considerably among different paths, sects, and belief systems. There are some popular neopagan traditions which have beliefs often in conflict with the LGBT community, and there are also traditions accepting of, created by, or led by LGBT individuals. The majority of conflicts concern heteronormativity and cisnormativity.