Category: Salon News

Wild Felines and Divine Females as Guardians of Sacred Place

ASWM Scholar Salon with Miranda Shaw

May 27, 2020 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time

“My presentation offers an explanation for the ancient and enduring association between wild felines – primarily lions — and revered female figures. Bringing together iconographic and zoological evidence, I will illustrate the highlights of a historical trajectory spanning the Upper Paleolithic and living traditions. The details of art and symbolism (e.g., floral, agrarian, martial, civic, royal, celestial, and cosmological) elicit the nuances of power evoked by the leonine imagery. The nature and scope of the power in turn helps us understand the shared character of the leonine females as guardians of sacred place (caves, settlements, cities, empires, nations). I also consider the behavior, qualities, and distinctive roles of the females of the lion species (panthera leo) in order to understand the reverence for and trust vested in a power shared in common by wild felines, divine females, and women. I draw conclusions about the contours of female ferocity, in contrast to the glorification of violent conquest that accompanied the rise of patriarchy. I will issue a call to reclaim the ideal of female ferocity in order to protect our sacred home, mother earth.”

Miranda Shaw (Ph.D., Harvard University) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and a member of the ASWM Advisory Board.  Her publications on women’s spiritual practices and female deities in South Asia and the Himalayas include Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (PUP, 1994), which has been translated into six languages, and Buddhist Goddesses of India (PUP, 2006).

Scholar Salons are an ASWM member benefit. Members will receive a link to join the Salon. If you are not yet an ASWM member, join here. The Salon recording will be available to members after the event.