For the past few months, I have been getting into actively exploring earth/Goddess religions, as a way of getting to know my Goddess even better. I've been exposed to it on and off since 2006, when I moved in with my biological family, who are all various flavors of pagan/wiccan/etc.. One of my Christmas/Yule gifts was for the local used book store in NC, and I picked up The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk. I've had it and was reading it, except that I was reading it the same way I read fiction, that is to say just blazing through it. I realized the folly of this a few weeks ago, and started into actually reading it. However, since this is solo study and I suck at it, I asked my Goddess to help keep me on track for it. So She ordered that my blog post tonight be about what I've read. Admittedly, I've covered the Introduction to the Twentieth and Tenth Anniversary edition(s). So here are my impressions of it so far.
The first thing that stuck out at me was Starhawk's comments about how some of her coven's rituals didn't have any kind of pedigree. Specifically, she mentions a purification ritual at sunset on the beach at the Winter Solstace. Those participating stripped and went into the freezing water, then danced ecstatically around a bonfire. She then goes on to describe how it started, as a dare on one of her first Solstices, then, a few years later, they realized a bonfire would help to stave off hypothermia. She comments that "the less-than-celestial inspiration of this rite doesn't diminish the power of the ritual for me in the least."
This idea causes both comfort and discomfort in me. On one hand, not having a "divine tradition" keeps people from taking themselves too seriously, which can be very liberating, allowing for improvisation and ease in finding what works. On the other, I do worry about being led down the wrong path. I'm very much finite and capable of mistakes. Who am I, to be trying to craft a path for myself? What if I get lost and end up doing damage to myself, or worse, those I love? Either way, that is a risk. It's been my experience, even if I don't always use the lessons from it, that there is no such thing as objectivity. Everything learned is interpreted and colored within the framework of things that have come before.
Another thing that struck me was the fact that she openly credits Z Budapest as one of her teachers and inspirations. Z, from my understanding and possibly limited research, is a second wave feminist and virulently anti-trans. While, as a woman, a witch and a feminist, she has wisdom to share, from this point forth in the book, I now feel like I should question things more than I otherwise would. As I am writing this, I did a little reading on her response to the now-slightly-infamous Pantheacon incident. "But if you claim to be one of us, you have to have sometimes in your life a womb, and overies and MOON bleed and not die. Women are born not made by men on operating tables."(1) The biological determinism and negativity I see in that statement make me cringe. While she told Starhawk "In our tradition it's good to have needs and desires," I wonder if Z means needs and desires that she approves of, and that makes me wonder how much of Z's venom has darkened her view. I haven't figured out how to reconcile that with her next statement. "We are not a religion of self-abnegation," since
Next, she mentions that the way magic often works is by making everything fall apart. If that's the case, then my life has been magical since the beginning. All joking aside, I do see where any faith, when genuinely studied and practiced, would lead to drastic changes and unnecessary people, ideas and practices being cut away. Change is something I'm intimately familiar with, being who I am. This is not the place for me to go into everything I've lost, nor everything I've gained, but that particular aspect of studying Goddess worship is one I'm rather comfortable with, for lack of a better way of putting it.
(1) http://fruitofpain.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/in-response-to-the-lilith-rite-at-pantheacon/
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