Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? by Donna Snyder

From infancy, my parents and sisters read me mythology that included tales of goddesses and gods from ancient times. My two sisters were enough older than me that they mothered me, too, teaching me vocabulary and to count by multiples of all the numbers one to ten to make up for not getting to go to kindergarten. They were smart and beautiful, but the single most powerful influence in my young life was Mama. Daddy was important and read to me, but he also worked 12 hour shifts, six days a week at the cotton gin where he was bookkeeper. Mama was the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most talented of any of the mere mortals I encountered in the rural Texas Panhandle. She was the Almighty Mama. It was only natural that I should find it easy to believe in a divine feminine source of all the most important things in life-poetry, the law, passion, learning, righteous indignation, judgment and retribution, miracles and magic.

The watershed experience in my development was reading Mirrors of Ancient Womanhood by Merlin Stone, while traveling in Turkey and Greece in my early 30s. That was when I learned the Goddess was not just an entity involved in jealousies and competitions, but, rather, was the source of all that was Good and Crucial. From then on, I never regretted my earlier repudiation of misogynistic Western religious traditions. From then on, I sang Her praises everywhere I lived and worked, and with everyone I encountered. From then on, everywhere I lived, I found Her there before me.

Donna J Snyder, El Paso, Texas, USA
http://donnajosnyderpoet.wordpress.com/


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This is an ongoing collective writing project, initiated by Magoism: The Way of S/He and Mother Tree Sanctuary in response to the question, "Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality?" We will feature different women's answers here and on the Magoism blog in the months to come as part of this project.

Contributions are welcome.  Please email magoism@gmail.com or join the discussion on the Magoism group on Facebook.

Originally posted on http://magoism.net