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Feminist Theology

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Research article

First published online December 15, 2022

The Western Revival of Goddess Worship

Téa Nicolae [email protected]View all authors and affiliations

Volume 31, Issue 2

https://doi.org/10.1177/09667350221135089

Abstract
Origins of the Goddess Movement
Characteristics of the Goddess Movement
Psychological Research into Goddess Spirituality
Final Conclusion
Funding
References

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Abstract

In a modern society arguably disenchanted with religion, numerous Western women are transfixing their reality by making God in their own image. This compelling phenomenon is known as ‘the Goddess Movement’: a non-centralised religious current of neo-pagan origin that reveres the Divine as feminine. The revival of Goddess worship in a vastly secular age which appears not to favour religious devotion is a peculiar occurrence and leads to the following question: Why are women returning to a previously defunct spiritual practice? Building on the research scholars Paul Reid-Bowen and Janet L. Jacobs conducted on Western Goddess worship, as well as drawing on testimonies of Goddess followers, this article aims to elucidate the appeal the Goddess Movement holds for women. It argues that it represents a notable turn in female spirituality which demonstrates that images of feminine divinity offer women the opportunity to find meaningfulness, empowerment, and sexual or psychological healing.

In a modern society arguably disenchanted with existence (Weber, 1930), numerous Western women are transfixing their reality by making God in their own image. This compelling phenomenon is widely known as ‘the Goddess Movement’: a novel, non-centralised religious current of neo-pagan origin that worships the Divine as feminine. Due to the deliberate absence of a fixed religious doctrine, the practices of Goddess followers are individualistic and greatly vary, but, although of diverse nature, they are bound by one common element: an unequivocal devotion to the sacred feminine (Reid-Bowen, 2007).

The revival of Goddess worship is a peculiar occurrence: Western women are reanimating ancient Goddesses (Ruether, 2006) in an increasingly secular age that supports the expansion of atheism and agnosticism (Taylor, 2007). It seems to be an unfavourable time for religious devotion, which leads to the following question: why are women returning to a previously defunct spiritual practice?

Utilising a feminist discourse rooted in psychology, this article aims to elucidate the appeal the Goddess Movement holds for women, arguing that it represents a notable turn in female spirituality. I seek to demonstrate that images of feminine divinity offer women the opportunity to find meaningfulness, empowerment, and sexual or psychological healing.

In doing so, I will first offer a brief overview of the Goddess Movement and establish its main characteristics. Second, I will address the psychology of Goddess-worshippers through studies conducted on the therapeutic values of Goddess spirituality. Finally, the unearthed psychological findings will be used to explore testimonies of prominent female spiritual teachers emerging from this current.

To begin with, it is significant to note that, although a large proportion of Goddess followers are female, male devotees do exist (Green, 2012), and the movement is open to diverse expressions of gender and sexuality (Starhawk, 2010). Nonetheless, the Goddess Movement was founded by women (Eller, 2006), and this article solely centres on the female experience of Goddess spirituality.

Origins of the Goddess Movement

Let us first establish the Goddess Movement in a historical framework.

The Goddess Movement, also known as ‘Goddess Feminism’ (Reid-Bowen, 2007) and, more recently, as ‘The Divine Feminine’ (Roxo, 2020), arose in the twentieth century through the interweaving of the women’s liberation movement with female-centred spirituality (Rountree, 1999). Its roots were planted in the nineteenth century by first-wave feminists, who explored the concept of ‘God’ in the image of woman in their writings (Eller, 2006). Interest in their work was kindled in the 1960s, when second-wave feminists began to feel unsatisfied with the lack of feminine representation in religion (Ruether, 2006).

In this context, members of the women’s rights movement retrieved and embraced the feminine definitions of ‘God’ coined by their predecessors, and further expanded the dimensions of female spirituality through neo-paganism. Radical figures such as Z. Budapest and Starhawk consolidated the foundation of the Goddess Movement by blending the central tenets of Wicca with the principles of the feminist movement. Rejecting the male-centeredness of neo-paganism, they reclaimed both paganism and the ‘witch’ symbol, thus birthing a feminist, occult religion. In this process, the Goddess Movement became a self-contained religious current separate from neo-paganism (Ruether, 2006).

The appropriation of the ‘witch’ symbol was fundamental to the development of Goddess Feminism. Initially a pejorative and derisive term, it was appropriated by the women’s movement and transformed into an emblem of female strength and endurance. This phenomenon supported the growing fascination with the ancient Goddesses who offered patronage to sorceresses. It additionally served as a political act in the late 1960s, when the imagery of ‘witches’ became central to feminist activism, and members of the political group ‘W.I.T.C.H.’ began dressing as witches to carry out theatrical acts of protest centred on women’s issues (Eller, 1993).

As the impact of witch-centred political activism grew, so did interest in feminine spirituality, and Goddess Feminism started attracting numerous women’s rights activists, female artists and neo-pagans alike. In the 1970s, the Goddess Movement saw a considerable increase in its members, rapidly becoming a significant cultural movement with international resonance (Feraro, 2020) which continues to grow in the twenty-first century (Reid-Bowen, 2007).

In what follows, I will present the defining tenets of the contemporary Goddess Movement.

Characteristics of the Goddess Movement

Western Goddess worship represents a non-centralised religious movement which rejects hierarchical structures, embracing egalitarianism and personal power instead. Although the practices and ideologies of Goddess followers often intersect, the emphasis is placed on individual experience, rather than on shared belief systems (Griffin, 1995). The Goddess Movement thus welcomes various spiritual principles and fuses elements of similar or even contradictory theologies, such as reincarnation and heaven, non-duality and duality. For this reason, Goddess Feminism has been criticised as theologically incoherent (Reid-Bowen, 2007).

In the book Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy, Paul Reid-Bowen challenges this assumption. He contends that Goddess feminists hold a coherent albeit fluid religious worldview and suggests that the lack of a set doctrine may itself represent a challenge to rigid Orthodox structures, a view which this article adheres to. Reid-Bowen therefore identifies four concepts that are central to the Goddess Movement, namely, ‘deity’, ‘femaleness’, ‘nature’ and ‘politics’. He articulates that Goddess Feminism is ‘comprised of those who relate to these concepts in a similar way’ (Reid-Bowen, 2007: 24).

The first identified characteristic, that of ‘deity’, manifests in the Goddess Movement as a supreme female being, predominantly perceived as both immanent and transcendent, as a tangible mother-deity and as a psychological archetype. The Goddess is all-pervading and all-encompassing. She materialises in countless forms and as deities of various traditions (Starhawk, 1999).

As a result, most Goddess devotees are eclectic: they blend beliefs, deities and customs from diverse religions in their spiritual approach. The Goddess ethos includes ancient and neo-pagan Goddesses, Hindu and Buddhist deities, Christian female saints (Reid-Bowen, 2007) and female spirits such as faeries, nymphs and naiads (Starhawk, 1999). The most popular deities of Goddess spirituality are Greek Goddesses Aphrodítē and Athēnâ, the Mesopotamian Inanna and the Egyptian Isis (Kharal, 2017), as well as Hindu Goddesses Lakṣmī, Sarasvatī and Kālī (Aranyani, 2018). Some also revere complementary gods along with their chosen goddesses, the most worshipped pairing being The Triple Goddess and The Horned God (Farrar and Farrar, 1989).

Practitioners often do not dedicate themselves to one deity and instead call upon various beings in accordance with their prayer’s purpose (Wigington, 2020); for example, Aphrodítē, bestower of beauty and passion, would be summoned for matters of love or fertility, whereas the fierce Kālī would be conjured for strength and courage. Notably, the invoked Goddesses do not usually belong to the same spiritual tradition and are often not of Western origin, which has garnered criticism on the basis of cultural appropriation (Rountree, 1999).

Deity-centred practices greatly vary from traditional Christian prayer to transgressive pagan rituals (Reid-Bowen, 2007). The most widespread practices include conventional prayer, ceremonies involving the consumption of psychedelic drugs, tarot (Vogel, 2012), meditation and witchcraft (Griffin, 1995).

The second dominant characteristic of the Goddess Movement is the belief that ‘femaleness’ has been historically denigrated and disfigured (Reid-Bowen, 2007). Femininity is viewed as intrinsically holy, and Abrahamic religions are criticised for demonising the female body. Goddess devotees argue that major religions value the intellect and the esoteric over the earthly plane, and, furthermore, associate the first qualities with men, while the latter is seen as embodied by women. For this reason, the Goddess Movement vastly challenges salvation-orientated religious discourse and declares that spiritual liberation is to be found in the physical plane, in the body (Griffin, 1995). Moreover, Goddess spirituality rejects the assumption that femininity is feeble and reveres the female body, sanctifying sexuality. Female cyclical functions, such as menstruation and menopause, are transformed into celebratory and sacred rituals (Dinsmore-Tuli, 2014). The Goddess is often revered as the womb, and many practices are centred on womb imagery (Roxo, 2020).

The third characteristic is credence to the sacredness of nature. Nature is perceived as female and as the Mother Goddess herself. Mother Earth therefore is a central Goddess in the Goddess Movement’s pantheon (Reid-Bowen, 2007). A prevalent belief is that there is an intrinsic connection between women and nature, and both were subjugated out of fear of their inherent and destructive power. Noting that, historically, spiritual traditions that honoured nature concomitantly venerated the feminine, Goddess feminists call for respect for both the Earth and women (Dinsmore-Tuli, 2014).

The fourth and final aspect is the movement’s political element: numerous Goddess followers consider their spirituality to be political and partake in feminist community service, such as voluntary work in family planning centres or political activism (Griffin, 1995). Many are ecofeminists or environmental activists who revere the planet as a life-giving Mother Goddess and advocate for her protection (Dinsmore-Tuli, 2014).

In addition, the return of the Goddess in the West is one of the several spiritual movements being revived by women and racial or sexual minorities of younger generations. Other examples include West African Yoruba religion and brujería (Yu, 2018), African American witchcraft (Samuel, 2018) and the Afro-Coban santería (Yu, 2018). By reclaiming and reconceptualising religion in their image, discriminated groups are challenging the oppressive social systems which supported the development of exclusive religious paradigms (Flores, 2017).

Serving as both spiritual and political feats, these religious currents are reanimated in a secular age in which modernity often is associated with atheism or agnosticism (Taylor, 2007). Here, this article invokes José Casanova’s ‘The Secular and Secularisms’, in which Casanova challenges the assumption that modernity signifies the absence of religion. The author notes that, in various places such as the United States, the process of modernisation has been accompanied by an awakened interest in spirituality and an increase in religious practice, phenomenon he names ‘the religious revival’ (Casanova, 2009: 1055).

Although Casanova’s compelling observation seems to be directed at the re-popularisation of major religions, I believe that it also reveals a distinct facet of the Goddess Movement. For Goddess followers, modernity does not signify the rejection of divinity; it instead represents renovation and adaptation: the reconstruction of older spiritual structures in the likeness of the oppressed. Moreover, I contend that adherence to spirituality in an age that praises the secular directly defies the status quo. The Goddess Movement thus becomes intrinsically political: an act of resistance in itself.

This presentation, although brief, has hopefully sketched the theology and structure of the Goddess Movement as it has transpired from the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, as well as demonstrated its standing as a legitimate movement with numerous followers and sustained practices despite the absence of a fixed doctrine.

Nevertheless, the nature of Goddess followers’ resistance remains perplexing. In order to attempt to elucidate what the Goddess Movement offers to women, I will proceed to employ a feminist discourse rooted in psychology and psychoanalysis. The next section of this article centres on illuminating the psychological processes women undergo as supported by Goddess archetypes by addressing the work of scholar Janet L. Jacobs, who wrote about the therapeutic effects of female-centred spirituality.

Psychological Research into Goddess Spirituality

In her article ‘The Effects of Ritual Healing on Female Victims of Abuse: A Study of Empowerment and Transformation’, Janet L. Jacobs (1989) explored the healing values Goddess spirituality holds for the traumatised female psyche by researching a group of 25 women who were subjected to acts of male violence, including sexual assault, domestic violence, incest and psychological abuse.

To begin with, Jacobs referenced psychological findings suggesting that, in addition to feeling powerless, ashamed and isolated, victimised women often felt blame and responsibility for their assault (Burgess and Holmstrom, 1974), which was the shared experience of her 25 subjects. In order to address trauma, the female participants joined a women’s circle centred on Goddess spirituality, in the context of which they earnestly shared their pain with each other and engaged in various rituals (Jacobs, 1989).

The 25 women adhered to a loosely delineated Goddess-centred theology in which the Goddess was both a metaphysical deity and an emblem of female empowerment. Although of diverse nature, the rituals they partook in were centred on healing psychological wounds: the female victims intended to experience the Goddess as themselves and, by claiming ownership of her power, they desired to conquer their grief. Examples of such practices included invoking the Goddess; chanting songs of female solidarity in praise of the Goddess; smashing eggs while shouting the name of one’s abuser; guided meditations in which one envisioned themselves as the Goddess and confronted the perpetrator from a place of strength; writing down details of their abuse and burning the paper (Jacobs, 1989).

The women reported ‘an increased sense of personal power as a result of their participation in the rituals and an improved mental health outlook with respect to their victimisation’ (Jacobs, 1989: 269). They acknowledged that one of the most meaningful aspects of their spiritual practice was belonging to a community in which they could openly share their experience while also connecting with other victims. These declarations led Jacobs (1989) to argue that, through feminine-centred, community-based spirituality, ‘women relieve themselves of the burden of shame and secrecy’ (p. 269).

Moreover, Janet L. Jacobs (1989) concluded that reconstructing God as feminine provides women with ‘a legitimate source of power in the spiritual realm that can be internalised as a personal identification with strength’ (p. 277). By envisioning divinity as female, women do not depend on a male figure for their healing or salvation. Jacobs emphasised the significance of this by recalling that women often associate their helplessness with male violence; thus, a masculine God would make both their abuse and recovery dependent on external male figures. A female God therefore internalises the healing process, which becomes reliant solely on the woman’s self.

Paraphrasing Frederick Bird (1978), Jacobs deemed the integration of the Goddess archetype in a woman’s consciousness to be the ‘self-protective armour’ needed for personal transformation: ‘The symbol of the Goddess therefore becomes integrated into the consciousness of the participant, contributing to a redefinition of self as powerful actor rather than helpless victim’ (Jacobs, 1989: 278). However, Jacobs (1989) ended her study by questioning the long-term effects of Goddess ritual healing, which she further proposed to be ‘a valuable area of future research’ ( p. 278).

Building on her article, this article continues to analyse the spiritual experiences of women who, two decades years after the aforementioned study was conducted, use Goddess spirituality as a means to recover from sexual trauma.

Let us explore the testimonies contemporary Goddess followers offer and observe the findings Jacobs presented in her study in direct application.

Self-help Guides: Consumerism and Sexual Trauma in the Goddess Movement

It is first important to note that the Goddess Movement gave rise to an explosive current in the category of ‘self-help’ guides (Kieffer, 2020). I consider this literary niche to have been largely overlooked in the study of Goddess spirituality.

Indeed, at first glance, Goddess-centred self-help books unquestionably appear to be frivolous. Plastered with images of lustrous Goddesses, numerous guides advocating for female empowerment characteristically make grandiose and often preposterous claims: glossy covers promise ‘awakening, healing and transformation’ (Bashford, 2018), the sex life of a ‘Goddess’ (Roxo, 2020) or the unleashing of one’s ‘sacred feminine power’ (Kharal, 2017). Moreover, the authors, mainly White, middle-class women, often benefit from a large following and succeed in building a successful ‘Goddess’ business brand, through which they organise expensive retreats and conduct costly online courses on self-improvement (Kieffer, 2020).

The trend of Goddess self-help guides is undoubtedly fuelled by consumer-capitalism and it vastly commodifies spirituality. In addition, numerous Goddesses conjured in the writings of Western devotees do not belong to Western traditions, prompting the question of cultural appropriation.

Nonetheless, I will argue that, although the aforementioned allegations are valid, there still is value to be found in this literary current. I contend that such books provide the most direct insight one could find into the psychology of female Goddess followers and showcase the need for Goddess spirituality.

This essay article therefore proceeds to explore three popular semi-autobiographical self-help books written by prominent female teachers of female-centred spirituality.

Awakening the Goddess

In the book Awakening the Goddess, yoga teacher Krystal Aranyani recounts the experiences that set her on the Goddess path, which she has been walking for years: sexual abuse, domestic violence, suicide attempts, bulimia and substance addiction. She writes about her first traumatic encounters with menstruation and speaks of learning that her body was a source of shame. She describes feeling isolated, desperate and worthless. Finding no value or meaning in herself, she relentlessly sought healing, exhausting popular treatments such as therapy and traditional prayer. The end of her seeking came with her introduction to Goddess worship and to female-centred spiritual circles. She adoringly writes about devoting herself to Hindu Goddesses and credits her healing to them: ‘I discovered my inner power, my sacred womb space and my limitless gifts as a woman in their presence’ (Aranyani, 2018: 14).

Aranyani shares the tools she acquired through Goddess spirituality, enumerating exercises such as introspective journaling with Goddess archetypes, ecstatic dance in nature, mirror gazing, and ritual prayer conducted in the honour of the numerous forms of Śakti, the supreme Goddess in Hinduism. She dedicates a chapter of her book to the Goddesses that impacted her path and explains to her readers how to work with them. Throughout the book, her tone is candid, and she openly discusses her struggle, detailing how each exercise and corresponding Goddess aided her in unearthing her beauty and force as a woman.

She repeatedly affirms that, on her journey to wholeness, it was vital for her to embrace her sexuality. She laments being disconnected from her sensuality and blames the limiting messages concerning the female body that she absorbed in her childhood, accentuating the importance of deconstructing one’s internalised misogyny. Aranyani writes that the imagery of sensual, worldly Goddesses guided her to deify her body and her sexuality. She suggests that integrating Goddess archetypes in her psyche allowed her to transfix unworthiness into reverence for herself. She urges her female readers to gaze at their naked bodies with admiration, to transform self-pleasuring into a ritual and to discover the sanctity of their femininity (Aranyani, 2018).

Finally, Aranyani contends that self-love and Goddess spirituality saved her from suicide. Her expressed mission, which she articulates on her social media platforms, is to help women fall in love with themselves. She organises Goddess retreats and builds virtual communities for women (Aranyani, 2018). Her online accounts are flooded by numerous women who leave her comments of deep gratitude, confessing that her Goddess-infused coaching work soothed their pain and brought them joy and meaning (Aranyani, 2022).

In Krystal Aranyani’s testimony, one can recognise the findings articulated by Janet L. Jacobs in her study: she was a victim of domestic abuse; she felt powerless and responsible for the violence she was subjected to; she could not find comfort in the hypermasculinity of mainstream religion; she utilised Goddess archetypes to evoke her inner strength; she is part of a large community of women who seek healing together. Finally, it could be argued that Aranyani gained sexual agency by integrating Goddess images in her consciousness.

The Sophia Code

In the introduction of The Sophia Code, author Kaia Ra alleges being enslaved, sexually assaulted and abused in a child trafficking ring. She details barely surviving her teenage years and living robotically, harrowed by trauma. Ra attributes her recovery to the grace of an omnipresent Goddess she calls ‘Sophia’, a Mother Goddess whom she discovered on the eve of her planned suicide attempt. Ra considers that the presence of the Goddess ensured her psychological healing, as well as gifted her the strength to express herself fearlessly (Ra, 2016).

The book presents exercises and Goddess invocations intended to aid women in stepping into their sovereignty, which Ra herself has been using for years. I will focus on the practice of ‘affirmations’, which the book largely centres on. The Sophia Code offers statements meant to be uttered in meditative states, with the intention to conjure the sorrows buried in one’s psyche. The conjurer stays with these impressions during a guided contemplation, which ends with their release. The exercise is declared to be aimed at re-programming belief systems. Examples of such statements are as follows:

From within, I summon the judgment that one gender is more connected to God than another. From within, I summon the self-belittlement that others have a more direct connection to God than I do. (Ra, 2016: 71)
From within, I summon the fear that stepping into my personal power will deft God. (Ra, 2016: 72)
From within, I summon the fright that my personal power, which includes my sexuality, comes from an unholy source. (Ra, 2016: 73)

Let us briefly unpack two of these poignant declarations. Perhaps ‘I summon the judgment that one gender is more connected to God than another’ is the most evident in meaning, as it alludes to the historical oppression of women and to their exclusion from religious institutions. Canonical spiritual texts of Abrahamic religions are packed with misogynistic ideas advocating women’s subjugation, examples being ‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent’ (1 Timothy 2:12); ‘Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:22–33); and ‘For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner’ (1 Timothy 2:13–14). Such assertions deny women a direct connection to God, while also suggesting that men mediate the communication between women and God; men pray and teach, and women understand God through men’s knowledge. Women’s God is the man; men’s God is divine. One could easily imagine that this has left innumerable women feeling alienated from divinity, forced to acknowledge that spiritual leadership belonged to men by birth right.

Another striking statement is ‘my personal power, which includes my sexuality, comes from an unholy source’. Ra alludes to the demonisation of the female body found in Abrahamic religions: two examples are menstruation being classified as a state of impurity (Esposito et al., 2003) and the vilification of female sexuality as the fall of man through the myth of Eve (Gellman, 2006). Accordingly, several women describe being taught to view the female body as impure and shameful, and further attribute their low self-esteem and sexual trauma to this understanding (Kharal, 2017). Ra, like most Goddess devotees, emphasises the importance of taking ownership of one’s sexuality and finds sexual empowerment to be crucial to a woman’s healthy psychological functioning.

Finally, these types of affirmations regularly appear in books, courses and retreats centred on Goddess spirituality and generally represent a pivotal part of a Goddess-worshipper’s practice. As her social media accounts showcase, Kaia Ra holds ‘live transmissions’ in which she voices similar statements to groups of women, who cry, unleash and report undergoing radical transformations upon listening to Ra’s voice (Ra, 2022). Furthermore, the three authors discussed in this article use similar declarations in their work, and other prominent examples of leaders of the Goddess Movement who favour this approach are Sahara Rose Ketabi, Syma Kharal and Sophie Bashford.

I argue that the need to voice and release such statements points to the existence of a collective and profound female trauma, sprung from centuries of continuous female suppression and exclusion from spirituality. The ‘re-programming’ practices prescribed in Kaia Ra’s book bring another dimension to the female psyche sketched by Janet L. Jacobs in her study: it appears that many of those inhabiting female bodies have felt intrinsically severed from divinity. Jacobs suggested that being subjected to abuse created feelings of inferiority or helplessness, whereas the phrasing of affirmations used in Goddess followers’ spiritual practice points to an innate alienation that was magnified by abuse. This could perhaps explain the drastic healing effects women report upon hearing articulations of their experienced unworthiness, upon being guided to liberate themselves of such doubts. I contend that, in this case, Goddess spirituality is a direct response to being conditioned to feel undeserving of the transcendental.

. . . Like a Goddess

Alexandra Roxo’s (2020) recent debut in literature, . . . Like a Goddess, is an autobiographical self-help book which promises readers healing, empowerment and sexual liberation. Like Krystal Aranyani and Kaia Ra, she begins her book by recalling the traumatic events which guided her to the path of ‘The Divine Feminine’: she was sexually assaulted; her childhood was scarring and abusive; and she struggled with depression, co-dependency, disordered eating and body dysmorphia.

Roxo, a women’s coach, has been operating outside of the traditional framework imposed by the religions dominating the West for more than a decade. Her path to healing was often unconventional: it included Bondage, Dominance, Submission, Masochism (BDSM), dancing ecstatically with snakes wrapped around her limbs, ayahuasca ceremonies and sensuous breathwork. She mended her wounds by pouring herself into her art, by acquainting herself with her body and her pleasure, by experimenting with psychedelic drugs in nature (Roxo, 2020).

Roxo describes the confusion of her 15-year-old self, who struggled with the realisation that the Bible’s women either incorporated the role of the virgin, the mother or the harlot. As she could not identify with the first two, she was forced to accept her status as a ‘fallen woman’ at a young age. For this reason, she declares that orthodox religion has socialised women to believe that the female body is a source of sin. She contends that women are taught to be passive, which she believes distances them from autonomy and divinity. Roxo laments the exclusion of women’s tales from most spiritual texts and argues that the existence of female teachers and female deities is necessary for healthy psychological functioning in women. Mirroring the contentions made by Janet L. Jacobs in her study, Roxo (2020) claims that exclusively masculine images of God convey to women ‘messages of unworthiness’ (p. 25).

Although she praises non-Western societies that hold space for Goddesses, Roxo poignantly reminds her readers that stories of sexual abuse exist in every tradition, from Christianity to Tibetan Buddhism. Moreover, she describes the ways in which the numerous women she coaches are bound by similar, violent past experiences, such as sexual assault and domestic abuse. Her online mentorship programme brings together hundreds of women from different parts of the world to work through shared trauma together. Although she accepts that female trauma is shaped by race, class and other social factors as much as by gender, Roxo (2020) has found that, even so, women are connected by a common thread of pain (p. 11).

. . . Like a Goddess therefore boldly asks, ‘As a woman, to whom do you turn for a deep, safe spiritual practice of healing and connection with the divine?’ (Roxo, 2020: 14).

Disclosing that she was her ultimate healer, Roxo’s answer is simple: within. . . . Like a Goddess thus encapsulates the theology of female-centred spirituality as follows: ‘It is time for women (. . .) to become our own leaders and decision-makers and spiritual teachers’ (Roxo, 2020: 14).

Let us recall a central argument coined by Janet L. Jacobs (1989) in her study, who proposed that Goddess archetypes allow women to be independent of external male figures for their recovery (p. 277). Roxo’s story emphasises that Goddess spirituality was birthed from the desire to take responsibility for one’s healing. To achieve this, women assumed the positions of leadership they had been denied for centuries. I contend that the return of the Goddess represents a notable turn in feminist activism and spirituality specifically because women are coming forward as their own teachers, thus shedding traditionally assigned roles of submission.

Conclusion

A pattern develops: the testimonies of eminent contemporary female spiritual teachers emerging from the Goddess Movement are bound by the shared experience of sexual or psychological abuse. The memoirs I explored sustained the study expanded on in this article’s third section and reinforced its central hypothesis: images of feminine divinity hold therapeutic attributes which guide women towards psychic wholeness.

What is more, I argue that the autobiographical pieces contribute to the findings offered by Janet L. Jacobs. The three accounts illuminate that the abuse Goddess followers underwent enhanced a pre-existent alienation from divinity, which emerged from early encounters with patriarchal religion. I consider that the researcher’s final quandary is answered: two decades after the study was conducted, women continue using Goddess spirituality to cope with abuse and report long-standing results. Ritual work with Goddess archetypes therefore ensures profound and long-term healing.

Final Conclusion

In conclusion, this essay addressed the Western revival of Goddess worship and articulated that its emergence pierces old and oppressive religious paradigms. In doing so, I first situated the phenomenon in a historical framework and identified it as a legitimate movement arising in a secular age, with distinguishable practices and a coherent, albeit fluid, theology held by a female-centred worldview. Second, the therapeutic values of Goddess archetypes were illuminated through psychological studies and autobiographical accounts of modern spiritual leaders. The main arguments I made were as follows: Goddess followers felt intrinsically severed from an overtly masculine divinity and their alienation was magnified by abuse; Western women found representation and familiarity in Goddess archetypes; women are taking responsibility for their healing by embodying the roles of teachers, and thus the Goddess Movement represents a cornerstone in the development of female consciousness.

To conclude, I contend that the growing fascination Western women hold for psychological healing through Goddess archetypes unearths deep-rooted traumas which stem from centuries of oppression and exclusion from mainstream religion. Although in arguably privileged positions, a large proportion of women seeking the Goddess in the West is comprised of women who have been abused, sexually assaulted and exploited; women who found no comfort or solace in their communities; women who found no answers in orthodox religions or in secularism.

In conclusion, I argue that female sexual healing is difficult to achieve in the context of Abrahamic religions, and, in response, unconsciously or purposely, Western women have been forced to create their own religion, moulded on a female God that can mirror their mental processes. Such women are resisting secularism and are connecting with the transcendental on their own terms, while seeking self-understanding and self-realisation in a gynocentric cosmology. From deifying female sexuality to revering the cosmos as the womb of an all-pervading Mother Goddess, the Goddess Movement encapsulates women’s defiant quest for wholeness.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

References

Aranyani K (2018) Awakening the Goddess: 33 Sacred Practices for Healing, Self-love & Embodying the Divine Feminine. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.