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Dianic Wicca, also known as Dianic Witchcraft, is a modern pagan goddess tradition focused on female experience and empowerment. Leadership is by women, who may be ordained as priestesses, or in less formal groups that function as collectives. While some adherents identify as Wiccan, it differs from most traditions of Wicca in that only goddesses are honored.
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.
Wicca, also known as "The Craft", is a modern pagan, syncretic, earth-centered religion. Scholars of religion categorize it as both a new religious movement and as part of occultist Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices.
Starhawk is an American feminist and author. She is known as a theorist of feminist neopaganism and ecofeminism. In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.
Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay is a Hungarian-American writer, activist, playwright and songwriter living in America who writes about feminist spirituality and Dianic Wicca under the pen name Zsuzsanna Budapest or Z. Budapest. She is the founder of the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1, which was founded in 1971 as the first women-only witches' coven. She founded the female-only style of Dianic Wicca.
The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans is an independent affiliate of Unitarian Universalists who identify with the precepts of classical or contemporary Paganism: celebrating the sacred circle of life and guiding people to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature. CUUPS members foster the development of "liturgical materials based on earth- and nature-centered religious and spiritual perspectives" as well as encourage "greater use of music, dance, visual arts, poetry, story, and creative ritual in Unitarian Universalist worship and celebration." Many members of CUUPS embrace the cycle of seasons and beauty of all life forms found in nature. Unlike many mainline religious sects, Unitarian Universalists and Pagans both value the "sacredness in the present world rather than on an afterlife." CUUPS is a community open to all Unitarian Universalist members and those who support the tenets.
Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia that proposes that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of spiritual ecology assert a need for contemporary nature conservation work to include spiritual elements and for contemporary religion and spirituality to include awareness of and engagement in ecological issues.
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.
Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today is a sociological study of contemporary Paganism in the United States written by the American Wiccan and journalist Margot Adler. First published in 1979 by Viking Press, it was later republished in a revised and expanded edition by Beacon Press in 1986, with third and fourth revised editions being brought out by Penguin Books in 1996 and then 2006 respectively.
Ecospirituality connects the science of ecology with spirituality. It brings together religion and environmental activism. Ecospirituality has been defined as "a manifestation of the spiritual connection between human beings and the environment." The new millennium and the modern ecological crisis has created a need for environmentally based religion and spirituality. Ecospirituality is understood by some practitioners and scholars as one result of people wanting to free themselves from a consumeristic and materialistic society. Ecospirituality has been critiqued for being an umbrella term for concepts such as deep ecology, ecofeminism, and nature religion.
Reclaiming is a tradition in neopagan witchcraft, aiming to combine the Goddess movement with feminism and political activism. Reclaiming was founded in 1979, in the context of the Reclaiming Collective (1978–1997), by two Neopagan women of Jewish descent, Starhawk and Diane Baker, in order to explore and develop feminist Neopagan emancipatory rituals.
M. Macha NightMare is an American Neopagan witch. She was born in Milford, Connecticut and was one of the founders of the Reclaiming Collective in the 1970s.
Full Circle is a 1993 Canadian documentary. Directed by Donna Read and made in conjunction with the National Film Board of Canada, Full Circle completes Read's trilogy of documentaries focusing on women's spirituality in the Western World at the end of the 20th century, the Goddess movement, and feminist Wicca new religious movements. The preceding films, Goddess Remembered (1989) and The Burning Times (1990), along with Full Circle were released as Women and Spirituality: The Goddess Trilogy by AliveMind in 2008 on DVD.
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 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.
Semitic neopaganism is a group of religions based on or attempting to reconstruct the ancient Semitic religions, mostly practiced among Jews in the United States.
Maxine Hammond Dashu, known professionally as Max Dashu, is an American feminist historian, author, and artist. Her areas of expertise include female iconography, mother-right cultures and the origins of patriarchy. She is lesbian.
A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States is a sociological study of the Wiccan and wider Pagan community in the Northeastern United States. It was written by American sociologist Helen A. Berger of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania and first published in 1999 by the University of South Carolina Press. It was released as a part of a series of academic books entitled Studies in Comparative Religion, edited by Frederick M. Denny, a religious studies scholar at the University of Chicago.
Born Dorothy Ivy Wacker, thea Gaia was the first female ordained as a Minister of Religion within the Congregational Church of Australia in Queensland. She has been described as the 'midwife' of Goddess spirituality in Australia.
References
- 1 2 3 "Pagans Among Us". ABC Radio National. 12 March 2011. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- 1 2 "Glenys Livingstone - About the Author". PaGaian Cosmology. 22 April 2013. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
- ↑ Livingstone, Glenys (1981). Motherhood mythology (Thesis).
- ↑ Livingstone, Glenys (2002). "The Female Metaphor - Virgin, Mother, Crone - of the Dynamic Cosmological Unfolding : Her Embodiment in Seasonal Ritual as a Catalyst for Personal and Cultural Change" . Retrieved 12 June 2022.
- ↑ Livingstone, Glenys D. (4 July 2016). "thea Gaia née Dorothy Ivy Wacker: Feminist Foremother and a Great "Ponderer" by Glenys Peacock". PaGaian Cosmology. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
- ↑ Livingstone, Glenys (2007). "Women Church and the Advent of PaGaian Cosmology". Women-Church vol. 40. p. 140. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
- ↑ Cackley, Ana (12 September 2022). "Spotlight on 'Women-Church' in Atla Religion Database and Atlas". Atla. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
- ↑ Livingstone, Glenys (2005). PaGaian cosmology : re-inventing earth-based goddess religion. New York: iUniverse. ISBN 0-595-34990-0. OCLC 122343205.
- ↑ "Contributors". Naturalistic Paganism. 27 October 2013. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
- ↑ "Glenys Livingstone". Return to Mago E*Magazine. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
- ↑ Livingstone, Glenys (18 May 2020). "Reaching for New Language for the Sacred" . Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- ↑ "PWR – The New Archaic". PaGaian Cosmology. 23 May 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- ↑ "Paganism: from myth busting and magic, to advocacy and climate change". ABC Radio National. 26 March 2022. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
- ↑ Foremothers of the women's spirituality movement : elders and visionaries. Miriam Robbins Dexter, Vicki Noble. Amherst, New York. 2015. ISBN 978-1-934844-50-2. OCLC 930709884.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link) - ↑ Hume, Lynne. "Review: PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion, Women-Church, 38, pp. 42–43". search.ebscohost.com. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
