Book of the Goddess Past and Present An Introduction to Her Religion by Carl Olson.pdf

Contents

Preface 2002 vii

CARL OLSON

Preface 1983 ix

CARL OLSON

• Introduction 1

CARL OLSON

1 • The Prehistoric Goddess 7

ANNE L. BARSTOW

2 • Ishtar and Her Cult 16

JUDITH OCHSHORN

3 Isis and Hathor: Two Ancient Egyptian Goddesses 29

C. J. BLEEKER

4 • The Mother Goddess Among the Greeks 49

CHRISTINE R. DOWNING

5 Magna Mater: Great Mother of the Roman Empire 60

M. RENEE SALZMAN

6 • The Canaanite-Hebrew Goddess 68

STEVE DAVIES

7 • The Virgin Mary: A Goddess? 80 —

E. ANN MATTER

8 • Sophia and the Mother-Father:

The Gnostic Goddess 97

PHEME PERKINS

9 • Kali, the Mad Mother 110

C. MACKENZIE BROWN

10 • Sri Lakshmi and Radha: The Obsequious

Wife and The Lustful Lover 124

CARL OLSON

Vi .

THE BOOK OF THE GODDESS

11 • The Untamed Goddesses of Village India 145

RICHARD L. BRUBAKER

Kuan-yin: Savior and Savioress in

Chinese Pure Land Buddhism 161

DIANA PAUL

13 • The Significance of Amaterasu in

Japanese Religious History 176

KYOKO MOTOMOCHI NAKAMURA

14 • Oshun the Dancer 190

JOSEPH M. MURPHY

15 • The Religion of the Goddess in North America 202

AKE HULTKRANTZ

16 • Hindu Female Deities as a Resource for the Contemporary

Rediscovery of the Goddess 217

RITA M. GROSS

17 • Symbols of Goddess and God in Feminist Theology 231

CAROL P. CHRIST

• Suggestions for Further Reading 252

Contributors 260

Preface 2002

B eautiful and ugly, violent and benign, sexually aggressive

and sexually passive, terrifying and soothing, awe-

inspiring and capricious, loveable and terrible, close and remote,

violent and peaceful—these adjectives and many others characterize

goddess figures. Often, these seemingly contradictory features can be

discovered in the same goddess. Although scholars had neglected

goddesses as subjects of serious study for some time, this is no longer

the case, as evidenced by the many studies on them in the past few

decades. When I wrote the original preface to this book in 1982, I

referred to the return of the goddess to our purview, by which I implied

the Western viewpoint. Little did I realize then that the goddesss

return would be so overwhelming and dramatic. The recovery of

interest in various goddesses accompanied the rise of feminist

scholarship and its challenges to the field of religious studies and

beyond.

The re-publication of this book comes at the urging of many scholars

of religious studies conveyed to me personally over the past few years.

Some of these scholars had published books on goddesses themselves.

Numerous people combined their encouragement with comments

about The Book of the Goddess still being the best thing available for stu-

dents of the subject. Encouraged by such supportive statements by

well-meaning professional colleagues, I decided to look into the possi-

bilities of making the book available once again to students for course

use. After returning from my research fellowship at Clare Hall of the

University of Cambridge, I decided to take the advice of others and to

seek to re-issue a very successful book.

Through the contribution of the scholars represented in this book and

other fine studies, goddesses are much less strangers to those in the

West. These many scholarly contributions about various goddess figures

have enabled readers to broaden their religious horizons and under-

standing. The re-publication of this book continues the arrival of the

goddess to the religious awareness of Westerners.

Preface 1983

W hile teaching a course on goddesses in the history of

religions a few years ago, I discovered that

there was no common source book available to my students. The

lack of an adequate source book for classroom use led me to

outline a work that would be faithful to the diverse religious

cultures and periods of history in which goddesses have played an

important role.

Without trying to be exhaustive or encyclopedic in scope, this

book includes examples of ancient and modern goddesses, encom-

passing Eastern and Western religious traditions, major world reli-

gions and tribal religions, living religions and those that have passed

into historical memory. Besides serving students of religion as an

introduction to the subject, this volume is intended to help the

reader understand the various manifestations of the goddess and

her often complex nature.

Throughout the course of the history of religions, the goddess

has manifested herself in numerous ways. She has been a source of

creativity and destruction, a passionate lover and a pure virgin, a

temptress and a repeller, beautiful and ugly, terrible and benign.

She has been a vivid symbol of fertility, prosperity, and wealth, as

well as a symbol of loss and death, both beckoning and repulsing

the religious devotee. Since I felt that it was practically impossible

for one individual to master the numerous and varied cultures in

which goddesses have appeared, I invited an international group of

scholars to elucidate various goddesses, thereby making a vast range

of information about goddesses available in a single source.

Besides discussing the manifestations of the goddess and her

complex nature, this book is also an invitation to the reader to share

in a renewal of interest in the goddess and in a celebration of her

return to the religious consciousness of those who have forgotten

her. The arrival of the goddess brings with it her message concern-

ing the earth, society, culture, the individuals place in the world,

the meaning of existence, and the nature of the divine. Finally, this

book attempts to discern the significance of the goddess for con-

temporary feminist thinkers.

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