Laura Shannon in Women’s Dance Circle photo by B. Frey
In traditional contexts, women’s circle dances provide an embodied experience of community-oriented values including solidarity, shared leadership, mutual support, and a culture of peace. Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas associated these values with the egalitarian Neolithic civilisations she explored, and these are precisely the values which humanity needs to activate to ensure a viable future for our planet.
Women’s ritual dances of the Balkans belong to an oral tradition which has been handed down through female generations through thousands of years, as Elizabeth Wayland Barber has shown. Laura Shannon has spent over thirty years learning these dances from grandmothers in villages in Greece and the Balkans, with a focus on the symbolic ‘language’ of dance and textile patterns reflecting the image of the Old European Goddess.
Razgrad apron hem with 5 women dancers
This illustrated talk suggests that the open circle of the ritual dance may represent a symbolic womb through which dancers experience a metaphorical journey of life, death, and rebirth, particularly through spiral dances associated with springtime. The sacred centre of the circle may be understood as a symbolic omphalós or navel, with the danced path as an umbilicus connecting dancers to the life-giving Mother Earth. Bread ovens in these cultures are often also shaped like an omphalós: the community is nourished with vitality both through the women’s dance, and by the bread the women bake.
Traditional women’s ritual circle dances have relevance not only as living descendants of Old European Goddess cultures, but because of the insights and wisdom they offer participants today.
Laura Shannon
Laura Shannon has been researching, teaching, and writing about traditional women’s dances for over thirty years, and is considered a ‘grandmother’ of the worldwide Sacred/Circle Dance movement. She holds degrees in Dance Movement Therapy, Intercultural Studies, and Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Gloucester in England. Laura is also a faculty member of the Findhorn Foundation Sacred Dance Department, Founding Director of the Athena Institute for Women’s Dance and Culture, and an honorary lifetime member of the Sacred Dance Guild. She has been given the task of preserving Carol P. Christ’s literary legacy, and as the new director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual, will follow in Carol’s footsteps to lead Goddess tours on Crete.
Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:
January 13 2022 at NOON Eastern Standard Time “Dreaming the Presence: Exploring the Sacred Feminine in Dreams” Rabbi Jill Hammer
January 27 2022 at 3 pm Eastern Standard Time “Onsite research: Listening to the Land“ Elizabeth Cunningham
February 10 2022 TIME TO BE DETERMINED “Recent Thinking on the Maternal Gift Economy“ Genevieve Vaughan
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
Art by Jean Bartibogue, Mi’kmaq Clan Mother, Eskinopetij
Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our day, such as environ-mental protection and human rights. For those seeking change, she offers a set of cultural values that will preserve our collective survival for future generations. As she says, “Women are the water-bearers of the universe,” and a non-patriarchal view of culture is necessary for the survival of all people. Embracing traditional core cultural values teaches us that “the Earth Mother, and all life that lives upon her, has the same right to live as we do. There is a place within creation for all things, and all life holds equal value.”
Sacred Instructionsis “a roadmap for those who may be lost—and not even realize it. Sherri Mitchell’s hauntingly beautiful prose truly honors the traditional Native American wisdom that she shares with us as readers. She deftly makes the timeless suddenly modern again, and more relevant than ever, by using ancient perspectives to address the disconnect and disengagement that so many people feel in the world today.” –D.J. Vanas (Odawa Nation), Author of The Tiny Warrior: A Path to Personal Discovery & Achievement
Sherri Mitchell -Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset
Sherri Mitchell -Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset, (She Who Brings the Light) is a Native American attorney, teacher, activist and change maker who grew up on the Penobscot Indian Reservation. She is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, and convener of the global healing ceremony Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island. She is the founding director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the protection of Indigenous land, water and religious rights, and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life.
Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:
November 11 at NOON Eastern Standard Time “The Old European Roots of Women’s Circle Dance” Laura Shannon
January 13 2022 at NOON Eastern StandardTime “Dreaming the Presence: Exploring the Sacred Feminine in Dreams” Jill Hammer
January 27 2022 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time “Onsite research: Listening to the Land” Elizabeth Cunningham
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
Cornwall lies in the far south-west of Britain, originally a Celtic country (like Wales, Ireland and Brittany) with its own history, traditions and language. It still has probably the largest concentration of prehistoric sites in western Europe, and unlocking the key to these tells a story of the time when the Neolithic and Bronze Age people lived in harmony with the Earth Mother, and respected and loved a Goddess of the Land. In Cheryl’s book, ‘Pagan Cornwall: Land of the Goddess’ she discovered a continuity of Goddess-tradition in remote Cornwall from ancient times right up to the present day, using evidence from archaeological research, folklore and legend, and rural tradition and custom.
“My previous partner and I were both interested in embodiment, which was an ancient Cretan technique in which a priestess would embody the Goddess. We both started to create ritual around that idea. We devised the Celtic Goddess wheel of the year, and it felt natural to go to places in the land where you could celebrate. We would use Carn Euny for the Samhain ritual, which was a time in Celtic myth when the Otherworld was very close. At the winter solstice we have used a local fogou down here in Boscaswell. After sleeping the dreamless sleep we go down in the darkness to call back the Goddess of light out of the fogou, who will return with the first light.”
Cheryl Straffon
Cheryl Straffon spent the first 19 years of her life in Cornwall (UK), and then went to London and Cambridge Universities, where she studied English and Comparative Religion. Since 1986 she has returned to Cornwall, where she has researched, written and published a number of books about the sacred sites of Cornwall, and the prehistory and history of British and international Goddess cultures. These works include Daughters of the Earth: Goddess wisdom for a modern age, Pagan Cornwall: Land of the Goddess, Megalithic Mysteries of Cornwall, and Fentynyow Kernow: In Search of Cornwall’s Holy Wells. She produced and edited the Goddess Alive! Journal and for over 25 years she has also produced and edited the Cornish Earth Mysteries magazine Meyn Mamvro.
Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:
October 21 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time “Sacred Instructions” Sherri Mitchell
November 11 at NOON Eastern Standard Time “The Old European Roots of Women’s Circle Dance” Laura Shannon
January 13 2022 at NOON Eastern Daylight Time “Dreaming the Presence: Exploring the Sacred Feminine in Dreams” Jill Hammer
January 27 2022 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time “Onsite research: Listening to the Land” Elizabeth Cunningham
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
“The Goddess is the intelligent embodied love that is in all being.”
On July 14, beloved scholar and teacher Carol P. Christ passed away from cancer. Her last presentation, for the ASWM Symposium, was recorded only days before her death and will be archived in our Resource Library.
We acknowledge this deep loss to the community of goddess scholars and women everywhere, and we want to share resources, a beautiful obituary, and a call for papers for an upcoming symposium in her honor.
Everyone who knew her is invited to share memories and photos of Carol for a running tribute post on the Feminism and Religion Blog. Please email Xochitl Alvizo at feminismandreligionblog@gmail.com (the subject must include ‘blog’).
Also, filmmaker Cheri Gaulke has posted a video of an interview she and Anne Gauldin conducted with Carol during her Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in September 2019, the last tour Carol led.
OBITUARY: Carol Patrice Christ, 1945-2021 Ellen Boneparth and Mara Lynn Keller
“In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal.” — Carol P. Christ
Carol Patrice Christ died peacefully on July 14 from cancer. Carol was and will remain one of the foremothers and most brilliant voices of the Women’s Spirituality movement. At the conference on “The Great Goddess Re-Emerging” at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the spring of 1978, Carol delivered the keynote address, “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections.” Christ proposed four compelling reasons why women might turn to the Goddess: the affirmation and legitimation of female power as beneficent; affirmation of the female body and its life cycles; affirmation of women’s will; and affirmation of women’s bonds with one another and their positive female heritage (Christ 1979).
Carol graduated from Yale University with a PhD in Religious Studies and went on to teach as a feminist scholar of women and religion, women’s spirituality, and Goddess studies, at institutions including Columbia University, Harvard Divinity School, Pomona College, San Jose State University, and the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she was an adjunct professor since the inception of the Women’s Spirituality, Philosophy and Religion graduate studies program in 1993. Christ published eight profoundly thoughtful and inspiring books, several in collaboration with her friend and colleague Judith Plaskow, whom she met at Yale:
Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (1986)
Woman Spirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, anthology co-edited with Judith Plaskow (1992)
Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete (1995)
Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. Anthology co-edited with Judith Plaskow (1989)
Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (1987)
Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality (1998)
She Who Changes: Re-imaging the Divine in the World (2004)
Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Co-authored with Judith Plaskow (2016)
Christ’s first book, about women writers on spiritual quest, is a book of spiritual feminist literary criticism that focused on feminist authors Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Adriene Rich, and Ntozake Shange. She discovers four key aspects to women’s spiritual quest: the experience of nothingness; awakening (to the powers that are greater than oneself, often found in nature); insight (into the meaning of one’s life); and a new naming (in one’s own terms). She emphasizes the importance of telling women’s stories in order to move beyond the stories told about women by the male-centered patriarchy. Her concluding chapter speaks of a “Culture of Wholeness,” that encompasses women’s quest for wholeness, and she adds that, for this wholeness to be realized, the personal spiritual quest needs to be combined with the quest for social justice.
Olive Groves in Crete
After first traveling to Greece in 1981 with the Aegean Women’s Studies Institute led by her friend Ellen Boneparth, Carol fell in love with the country. She chose to live in Greece, first in Molivos on the beautiful island of Lesbos, and then moving recently to Heraklion, Crete. She had a passion for saving the environment and was active in the Green movement in Greece. she also had a love for swimming in the Aegean and sharing Greek food and wine with friends in Greece and from overseas.
Carol’s fascination with Crete, ancient and modern, led her to found the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual, through which she offered an educational tour, “Pilgrimage to the Goddess” twice annually. These tours introduced many to a direct experience of the ancient Earth Mother Goddess in Crete.
Ancient town of Gournia in Crete
In her most recent article, for the Encyclopedia of Women in World Religion: Faith and Culture, Christ wrote about the Goddess religion and culture of her beloved island of Crete, and the roles women played in that “egalitarian matriarchal” civilization. Her eloquent words speak not only to the Goddess religion of ancient Crete, but also to the spirituality and ethical values she also cherished, which are much needed in our own culture today.
As discerners and guardians of the mysteries, women created rituals to celebrate the Source of Life and to pass the secrets of agriculture, pottery, and weaving down through the generations. The major rituals of the agricultural cycle involved blessing the seeds before planting, offering the first fruits of the harvest to the Goddess, and sharing the bounty of the harvest in communal feasts. These rituals establish that life is a gift of the Goddess and institute gift-giving as a cultural practice. As women controlled the secrets of agriculture, it makes sense that land was held by maternal clans, that kinship and inheritance passed through the maternal line, and that governance and decision-making for the group were in the hands of the elders of the maternal clan. In this context, the intelligence, love, and generosity of mothers and clan mothers would have been understood to reflect the intelligence, love, and generosity of the Goddess.
FREE ONLINE SYMPOSIUM : Carol P. Christ: A Symposium in Celebration of Her Spiritual-Feminist Activism and Women’s Spirituality Scholarship
October 22, 2021. 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
Free Symposium via Zoom hosted by the Women’s Spirituality Graduate Studies Program, California Institute of Integral Studies
The land of misty coves that comprises the southern highlands of Appalachia is one of the most diverse bioregions in the world. One of the cultures that stubbornly clings to its old ways is the tradition of the cove doctor, the yarb (“herb”) woman. These women ran their subsistence farms and took care of the medical needs of their immediate communities. Their work included midwifery, fertility, tending the dying and dressing the bodies of the dead. Their tools were simple and their skills much sought after.
The materials of the yarb woman included the plants that were cultivated in the garden and those that were wildcrafted. These were gathered according to the signs of the Moon and preserved through drying, tinctures, poultices and salves. There was also a tradition of incantations brought from the British Isles and employed against many common ailments.
The folkways of the region have traditionally been in the firm, experienced hands of generations of strong women and that remains to this day. The work of yarb women continues and flourishes in the Internet age where students come from far afield to learn these old ways, ways passed down through families whose ancestors have walked the hills for many generations.
Byron Ballard with Monkey Boy
H. Byron Ballard is a WNC native, teacher and writer. Her essays feature in several anthologies, and she writes a regular column on Crone-life for SageWoman Magazine. Her books include “Staubs and Ditchwater,” “Asfidity and Mad-Stones,” “Embracing Willendorf,“ “Earth Works,” and “Roots, Branches and Spirits.” She has presented at festivals and conferences including Sacred Space, Southeast Wise Woman Herbal Conference, Glastonbury Goddess Festival, ASWM, Appalachian Studies Association and Scottish Pagan Federation Conference. She is one of the founders and serves as senior priestess at Mother Grove Goddess Temple in Asheville, NC. She can be reached at My Village Witch.
Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:
October 7 at NOON Eastern Daylight Time “Sacred Sites of Cornwall” Cheryl Straffon
October 21 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time “Sacred Instructions” Sherri Mitchell
November 11 at NOON Eastern Standard Time “The Old European Roots of Women’s Circle Dance” Laura Shannon
January 13 2022 at NOON Eastern Daylight Time “Dreaming the Presence: Exploring the Sacred Feminine in Dreams” Rabbi Jill Hammer
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
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