I've been interested in feminine figures since I was a small, Catholic child presented with the Virgin Mary! Further down the road in graduate school and in my teaching career as an English Professor at a small Liberal Arts college, I began to research comparative mythology and the study of archetypes with a particular emphasis on the female divine. Now, after publishing three books and several articles on the goddesses, I'm happy to help others in their journey of discovery. I believe a good way to approach that study today is to focus on how our contemporary women writers portray goddesses in their works of fiction and non-fiction.
I wrote
The Myth of the Year: Returning to the Origin of the Druid Calendar
The book is told from the goddess Circe’s point of view, beginning with her childhood among the Titans until she is banished to her island where she becomes a powerful oracle, enchantress, herbalist, and feminist with magic powers to seduce men.
Her narrative is at once enthralling because Circe, being a goddess who lives for over a thousand years, experiences the heroes from the Trojan War, the demi-gods of Greece, and the adventures of her lovers and her own self-discoveries that mark her journey through the ages.
On a personal note, Circe’s journey hits home with anyone, like myself, who has struggled with becoming an independent woman.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…
Margaret Atwood’s feisty, feminist tale is told from the perspective of a demi-goddess, Penelope, who has been abandoned for ten years while her husband, Odysseus, has gone off to the Trojan War.
Unable to manage the loneliness and grief, Atwood suggests that Penelope, as a descendent of the Moon Goddess, started a cult with twelve priestesses who sing to her and worship Artemis. Atwood’s short and engaging novella gives us a new perspective on how women of ancient times created their own realities and centers of feminine power.
On a personal note, Atwood reminds us that as women today, we are still responsible for creating our own support groups and circles of feminist power in times of crisis.
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.
Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.
The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and…
Pete is content living a simple life in the remote Montana town of Sleeping Grass, driving the local garbage truck with his pot-bellied pig Pearl and wondering about what could've been. Elderly widow Wilma is busy meddling in Pete's life to try and make up for past wrongs that he…
Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Antelope Wife, focuses on a battered woman who turns to her ancient tribal beliefs in the spirits of Nature, and in particular, the antelopes of the prairie, to help her overcome abuse.
The Antelope Wife and the Antelope Goddesses are totem figures in Native American Mythology that symbolize freedom and independence, especially for those who are abused and beaten by their spouse.
The generations of Antelope women who follow the goddess are presented by Erdrich as strong, independent females who must overcome the hardships of life in the city by retaining their belief in themselves and their ability to overcome disaster.
The story is an uplifting tale of bravery and cunning that will inspire and comfort any reader who seeks guidance and those readers who simply yearn to see an example of fortitude and success in the face of danger. On a personal note, it’s a good book for those who can relate and those who should empathize.
Past and present combine in a contemporary tale of love and betrayal from Louise Erdrich, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, 2012
'Everything is all knotted up in a tangle. Pull one string of this family and the whole web will tremble.'
Rozin and Richard, living in Minneapolis with their two young daughters, seem a long way from the traditions of their Native American ancestors. But when one of their acquaintances kidnaps a strange and silent young woman from a Native American camp and brings her back to live with him as his wife, the connections they all…
The Horse Goddess is a novel for anyone who loves horses!
It is the story of the Indo-European migrations in prehistoric central Europe, specifically in what is now Switzerland, where the lover of Epona, a young and spirited goddess, sweeps her away to his home, which is the plains of Russia.
Here, very far from home and anything that she knows, Epona experiences taming horses, riding horses, going into battle on a horse, and anything equine that remotely would inspire her to return home with her knowledge and gifts for her people.
Her journey is one that we can all relate to whether we are horse-people or not. It’s about the gifts of knowledge and creativity that a woman who becomes a goddess brings to enlighten her people.
On a personal note, the story is one that inspired me to the epiphany that being part of a culture and gifting that culture with your own discoveries is what makes us feel that being a part of something much larger than ourselves gives meaning to life.
The adventures and exploits of Epona--who flees her Celtic trible with the Scythian warrior, Kazhak, and battles the menacing Shapechanger--shape the legends that make her a goddess
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Marija Gimbutas’ The Living Goddessesis a great place to start your study of goddesses.
Gimbutas is a major researcher in the field of goddess studies, and her book is quoted more than often. Instead of reading other scholars’ work that quotes Gimbutas, why not read the original study of Paleolithic and Neolithice archetypes and their descendents in several Bronze and Iron Age cultures.
Additionally, Gimbutas postulates how those archetypes have evolved in contemporary culture. Matrilineal social structure as mirrored in religion and myth is the basis of Gimbutas’ gift to women today.
The Living Goddesses crowns a lifetime of innovative, influential work by one of the twentieth-century's most remarkable scholars. Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity in her original--and originally shocking--interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. Gimbutas flew in the face of contemporary archaeology when she reconstructed goddess-centered cultures that predated historic patriarchal cultures by many thousands of years. This volume, which was close to completion at the time of her death, contains the distillation of her studies, combined with new discoveries, insights, and analysis. Editor Miriam Robbins Dexter has added introductory and concluding remarks, summaries, and annotations. The first part…
The Myth of the Yearreveals the astronomy underlying Celtic and Greek mythology using the calendar of the Druids discovered in Coligny, France and the Sacred Calendar of Eleusis of ancient Greece. The myths of the ancients follow the seasons through the constellations illuminating the path of knowledge our ancestors lived throughout their years. To fully explain the meaning of these seasonal myths, the origin of the goddesses and the gods are traced to their Neolithic roots using Marija Gimbutas' archetypes of the Neolithic Pantheon. Indo-European adaptations made to some of the major deities are also discussed, providing a profile of the evolution of the ancient goddesses and gods from Neolithic times to their present representations in the night sky.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The Oracle of Spring Garden Road explores the life and singular worldview of “Crazy Eddie,” a brilliant, highly-educated homeless man who panhandles in front of a downtown bank in a coastal town.
Eddie is a local enigma. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a…
