This is another book I snagged at the library sale while ostensibly looking for something else. It’s meant to be a collection of essays about world goddesses for use in an introductory woman’s studies survey course. Although in general I’m wary of new age touchie feelie goddess efforts, The Book of The Goddess is a fairly levelheaded work of popular scholarship and, one or two entries excepted, largely free of annoying feminist cant. I quite enjoyed working my way through it and learned a lot, especially about the non-Western goddesses. It’s always quite stimulating to be surrounded by the sacred feminine – and if there’s a theme to these quotes that struck me it’s that re-sacralizing the female sex would mean re-sacralizing sex itself:

Unclothed, her very body seemed to have an efficacy. Often – but not always – she was big-breasted, and her hands were frequently placed under her breasts as if to display them.

Then again, she may be slender, the emphasis falling not on her procreative potency but on her sexual powers.

But regardless of manifestation or setting, it is clear she was seen as a chief magical source of power, both spiritual and material.

The goddess is faceless, usually naked, sometimes covered with a robe. She may be shown as a maiden (that is, not pregnant) who is running or dancing and whirling, her hair streaming behind her in the wind.

– Anne L. Barstow

The notion of divine incest or illegitimacy as pejorative was foreign to the ancient mind; divine sexuality was considered normal, and female sexuality in particular was most often considered beneficial in its consequences for the human community; divine "body" and "spirit" were not dichotomized or valued differently.

In its many reenactments, a king, representing Dumuzi, had sexual intercourse with "the goddess," consummated in an elaborately ceremonial and public setting, the temple of Inanna.

What is common to all of the sacred-marriage literature is the dominance of the goddess, who selects the ruler privileged to cohabit with her, and actively and explicitly enjoys him sexually.

Thus the sacred-marriage texts rapturously portray the active sexuality of the goddess as purely good, as yielding blessings for the king and the whole community. At least with reference to divine female sexuality, it held no connotations of evil or danger to the pursuit of righteousness by men. The goddess’s sexuality was celebrated as nonmonogamous, extra familial, and not linked to their reproductive capacity. The heart of the sacred-marriage rite resided in Inanna/Ishtar’s great power over fertility, war, and the destiny of peoples and cultures; in her commanding role in actively choosing and sexually enjoying the king; in the energizing and beneficent nature of her sexuality in her aspect as goddess of love and fertility, and in the consequent good fortune for the human community which it, in turn, fervently commemorated.

– Judith Ochshorn

The goddess was known to become wrathful at times and needed to be pacified by intoxicants.

– C.J. Bleeker

One cannot understand Gaia simply in human or psychological terms. Nevertheless, she is nature moving toward emergence in personal form.

– Christine Downing

Sophia’s marginality to both the heavenly world and this one suggests that Gnosticism exploits that sense of religious transcendence often found in "liminal" situations.

Whichever sociological hypothesis one adopts, Sophia’s liminal situation reflects the tensions and ambiguities of the Gnostic, who was both caught in this world and superior to its authorities.

The cosmological function of the divine female principle necessarily involves her in the lower world, but her divinity necessitates some form of ascent above that world.

As so often happens, Gnostic rhetoric has intensified the paradox inherent in the situation of a universal wisdom goddess who goes unrecognized by most of humanity. Yet she is clearly the source of salvation for the person who heeds her call.

– Pheme Perkins

The latter two poets emphasized the unconventional love between Krishna and Radha unbounded by the accepted standards of conjugal love. This unconventional, illicit love was transformed into a model of love between human beings and the divine.

Besides the commencement of the erotic and violent love in the spring Jayadeva writes that Radha surreptitiously meets with Krishna at night. The darkness of night obstructs prying eyes and forms a dark cloak over the lovers. This springtime, nighttime love takes place apart from the mundane world; it occurs in an ideal world of continual joy and bliss.

In other words, their love turns the world upside-down by overturning social conventions and accepted norms of behavior. In fact, their love laughs as social conventions. Their mutual amorous laughter is the mirth of the madness of their love as both participants find themselves beyond themselves. Their sexual union obliterates time, enabling an evening to become a moment.

The circle dance brings the lovers to an ecstatic state, enabling them to transcend their bodies and ascend to a spiritual union.

–Carl Olson

In her maturity Oshun’s cheerful gaiety blossoms into enchanting attraction. Men are overcome with the lushness of her figure and the way her hips sway so that her every movement is like the slow rolling of the river. As a woman of extraordinary sensuousness Oshun embodies the divine spark in the erotic life in human beings. She is truly an orisha , for it is in her form that the erotic mystery is recognized and venerated. The devotees of Oshun see her as a beautiful woman who reveals to them the wisdom of pleasure.

– Joseph M. Murphy

The goddess in her capacity as birth goddess may, through her sexual union with the sky father, give impetus to the idea of creation through emanation.

– Ake Hultkrantz

This seems somewhat strange, and the strangeness is significantly enhanced when one realizes that, while anthropomorphic symbol systems are quite common in the world religions, only the symbol system of Western monotheism has ever attempted or valued the expulsion of feminine symbolism.

The final suggestion about the meaning of the goddess – the reintroduction of sexuality as a significant religious metaphor – seems to me to be commonplace and obvious by now, especially since, like the coincidence of opposites and the life-giving properties of the female, sexuality is stressed in the symbolism of the ancient goddess. However, I consistently find this set of images involved in re-imagining the goddess. The reluctance or relief with which people respond to the notion of sexuality as religious metaphor reveals much about a lingering uncomfortableness about our embodied condition. Therefore, the reintroduction of the goddess, which demands the reintroduction of sexual metaphors, represents a basically sane and healthy turn of events, helping us to move beyond the lingering body-spirit dichotomy and consequent hatred of the body. The resultant coincidence of sexuality and spirituality has much to offer.

– Rita M. Gross

All excerpts from The Book of the Goddess, Past and Present: An Introduction to Her Religion edited by Carl Olson