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Marjorie always thought of God as a judgmental "man in the sky who punishes you if you're bad and rewards you if you're good." Then she was introduced to the concept of the "goddess," a female deity who was "nurturing, mysterious, and loving like the earth, or like a mother." Goddess worship seemed to provide Marjorie with the mystical experience she'd never experienced in her lukewarm religious upbringing.
Rena, a middle-aged woman who was hurt and angered by a painful divorce, was led through a friendship with a kind older woman to join a group of 13 Wiccans. "We believed we could harness positive female energy for good," says Rena. "It was fun and different, and they were like my sisters." One of Rena's first assignments was to set up a home altar with a statue of a goddess.
Marjorie and Rena aren't the only ones drawn to goddess worship. According to a recent American Religious Identification Survey, 200,000 to 300,000 women actively practice it in the U.S., with numbers growing steadily. Many more nibble around the edges, intrigued by the promise of a religion that empowers women and values their spirituality. In fact, the Internet features thousands of websites devoted to goddess worship, as well as books, magazines, training camps, college courses, fairs, and membership groups, often called covens or groves.
An Ancient Religion Made NewGoddess spirituality, goddess worship, the sacred feminine, and the feminine divine all refer to a deity most often identified as "Mother Goddess" or the "Great Goddess." Other names used include Mother Earth, Gaia, Sophia, Artemis, Diana, and Isis. Often associated with the earth, the moon, and fertility, the goddess is usually described as an energy force inside every living and nonliving thing.
Popular writers such as Dan Brown and Sue Monk Kidd have helped to take goddess worship mainstream. Brown's The Da Vinci Code, a blockbuster novel with 50 million copies in print, falsely claims Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married, that Mary's special relationship to Christ endowed her with the true leadership of the church, and that she carried on an ancient tradition of special feminine holiness.
In her New York Times bestselling novel The Secret Life of Bees (slated to become a movie starring Dakota Fanning), Sue Monk Kidd tells the fictional story of motherless 14-year-old Lily, who escapes her abusive father to find comfort in a universal mother/goddess. Bees has sold four million copies and been translated into 23 languages.
Early in her career, Kidd identified herself as a Christian. But in her 1996 memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Kidd describes a gradual awakening to a whole new identity that didn't include Christ. "My soul is my own," Kidd proclaimed. "It is all right for women to follow the wisdom in their souls, to name their truth, to embrace the Sacred Feminine. … She is in us."
The Seductive LureWhat lies behind the allure of goddess worship and its sister religion, witchcraft/Wicca? For many—especially those women who feel marginalized or devalued by what they perceive as the traditional, male-dominated church—its appeal is found in its affirmation of female spirituality. The worship of Gaia—Mother Earth—appeals to those with a strong interest in ecology and nature spirituality, while curiosity about the use of magic fascinates others. Annie, a former witch, writes that she "craved the sense of power and mystery this tradition offered." Rena agrees: "It's very cloak-and-dagger. You feel as if you're part of a secret society." Another enticement is the rituals that claim to harness spiritual power. "People desire a sense of control in their life. They think, If I do this ritual or that spell, then I will receive this result," explains Russ Wise of Christian Information Ministries.
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